Author Description

This insider's account deals in detail with the political developments that led to the emergence of independent Bangladesh. The post-independence challenges described here are a valuable source of information on different aspects of state building. Kamal Hossain gives us a vivid eyewitness account. His own involvement in different phases of the political struggle was intimate. It began from his personal association as legal defence for freedom of the media and victims of repression in the 1960s, in particular in the Agartala Conspiracy case. His later association with the Awami League's team at Ayub's Round Table Conference and, still later, with Yahya Khan in 1971, provides valuable historical insights into the events leading to Bangladesh's war of independence. After independence, as Minister of Law, Chairman of the Constitution Drafting Committee (1972), and later as Minister of Foreign Affairs, and of Petroleum and Minerals (1973-1975), he focuses on the challenges of state building and political transformation. He offers thoughtful analyses of how a country ravaged by war and deprived of resources managed to give itself a secular, democratic Constitution, won the respect of the world, gained membership of the United Nations and actively pursued peace and stability in the region. Bangladesh's pursuit of democracy was short lived as representative governance and secular, democratic politics were to be stifled by military rule. Bangladesh: Quest for Freedom and Justice as a political memoir offers critical insights into the processes of state formation in the initial years.