Nomad Dragonfly
August 13, 1947. The Pakistani crescent-starred flag and white-green festoons were flying on the streets and houses of the Boxirhat area of Chittagong city; political speeches and “Pakistan Zindabad” slogan by thousands of locals filled the entire area.
Before midnight, fireworks were set off from the roof of a two-storey house at 20 Boxirhat Road (Sonapotti, the jewellers’ section). The owner of the shop, Dula Mia Saudagar, was a member of the Muslim League National Guard. He proudly donned the uniform of that force in the joy of the creation of Pakistan. Then put on his “Jinnah cap” and took to the streets with his young children.
At exactly 12 o’clock, the electricity was cut off and a moment later electricity came to a new country. India was divided and Chittagong became a part of Pakistan. The entire city was filled with the “Pakistan Zindabad” slogan. The night sky was lit up with fireworks.
The sons of Dula Mia, a goldsmith and supporter of the Pakistan Movement, were deeply committed to the Partition of India and the creation of Pakistan. For seven-year-old Muhammad Yunus, it was a moment of pride that he could feel in his veins. His dreams and hopes were fulfilled that day.
“The roaring slogan resounded again and again, from every part of Chittagong — Pakistan Zindabad! At the age of seven, this was the first shot of pride and intoxicating enthusiasm for our people I had felt in my veins. Many more were to come,” Yunus writes in his book Banker To The Poor.
In addition to Yunus, Dula Mia took to the streets that night with his eldest son Salam, aged 10, Ibrahim, aged two, and baby Toonu in his arms.
Salam was Yunus’s playmate, reading companion and political informant. Yunus would get jealous when Salam would raise the flag with his friends and chant “Pakistan Zindabad.”
Ibrahim, aged two, was just learning to talk. “He called the white sugar he liked ‘Jinnah sugar’, and the brown sugar which he did not like ‘Gandhi sugar’ (Jinnah was the leader of the partition movement, and Gandhi of course wanted to keep India whole.)”
Their mother, Sufia Khatun, would tell the children stories about Jinnah, Gandhi and Lord Mountbatten every evening. This is how all the children started to embrace Pakistan. Every year, when Muharram came, little Yunus would listen to the bloody history of the Karbala plain from his mother.
“And when she finished the story of their murder, she would point to the dusk and explain that the blue on one side of the house was for the poison that killed Hassan and the red on the other side was the blood of Hussain. To me as a child, her depiction of this was no less moving than the version I heard much later from our great Bengali epic Bishad Shindhu (‘The Sea of Sorrow’).”
Yunus writes that his father Dula Mia had some Hindu friends and colleagues; such as Doctor Banik, Nishi Uncle, Nibaran Uncle and Praful Uncle. But the child Yunus knew that the minority Muslims in India had many grievances and distrust towards Hindus.
He had read in the newspapers and heard on the radio that there was violence between Hindus and Muslims in India. However, its influence was very little seen in Chittagong. “Our political leanings were never in any doubt. We were all deeply committed to partition from the rest of India.”
Dula Mia was a devout Muslim all his life and went to Mecca for Hajj three times. He always wore white pajamas, a Punjabi, a cap and sandals. His square-framed glasses and white beard made him look like an intellectual. But he was never a bookworm, because he could not pass school. He was more inclined towards business. His other two important tasks were to pray five times a day in the mosque and to spend time with his family.
He would check on his children’s studies but would not punish them too severely; he would see if they were sitting with their books. He would be happy and praise them if they read loudly.
At a young age, the eldest son, Dula Mia, would give up his studies and devote his time to his father’s gold business. At that time, Hindus were mainly engaged in the goldsmith business, but Dula Mia succeeded in this business in a short time and became popular among all the Muslims in the area. In addition to running a shop, he also traveled to different areas of Chittagong to buy and sell gold and lend money at interest.
The couple and their nine children lived in that two-storey house in Sonapotti. The other five children died at a young age. After the eldest daughter Mumtaz, Salam, Yunus, Ibrahim, Toonu, Ayub, Azam, Jahangir and Mainur were born.
On the ground floor was a gold shop. And on the second floor there were four rooms and a kitchen. Three of these rooms were called the mother’s room, the radio room and the big room. Everyone ate three meals together in another room. And the children slept in the big room. They played on the roof.
Yunus’s mother, Sufia Khatun, also helped her husband in his shop. She worked with velvet, wool and ribbon in addition to gold earrings and necklaces. She used to help relatives and neighbors with the income she earned from this work.
When Yunus was nine years old, his mother developed mental problems. She behaved abnormally; He would talk incoherently, shout and abuse his children and neighbors. He would even scold dead people and imaginary enemies and behave violently. Dula Mia and Yunus would calm him down so that he would not physically harm his younger siblings.
Dula Mia took him to a doctor for treatment and had him tested. But no one could diagnose the disease. Sufia Khatun’s mother and two sisters had similar mental problems, but Yunus mentioned in his book that none of his children had such problems.
In despair, Dula Mia turned to “unorthodox solutions, incantations, mumbo-jumbo, superstitions, even hypnosis. Mother never co-operated with any of these treatments, and none of them bore fruit. Some were downright cruel… In the course of trying to find anything that would help her, one doctor prescribed too much sedative, and she became addicted to opium.”
Dula Mia had married Sofia Khatun in 1930 when she was 22. “He was loyal and good to her all the fifty-two years of their marriage until her death in 1982.”
Yunus began his education at Lamar Bazar Primary School, where all the boys of Sonapotti studied. There, all the students and teachers spoke the language of Chittagong. Even in his high school, there was no co-education for boys. However, in addition to moral education, the school taught religious education and the songs and poems of Rabindranath Tagore and Kazi Nazrul Islam.
Salam, his three-year-old brother, was Yunus’ best friend. They would fly kites together, collect detective thrillers, and read newspapers and magazines at the neighboring doctor Banik’s house. Yunus wrote his first mystery story at the age of twelve.
“We also loved to keep up to date on current affairs. In order to do this, Salam and I spent some time every day in the waiting-room of our family physician, Dr Banik – just around the corner – reading the various newspapers he subscribed to.”
Due to their addiction to reading books, Salam and Yunus would sometimes buy or borrow books, and even steal them. For example, Shuktara magazine published in Kolkata was their favorite. Once, the winners of a competition were given that magazine for free. Yunus chose a name from among the winners and wrote a letter to the editor.
Claiming to be the winner, he wrote that his home address had changed. The next courtesy number was supposed to be sent to the Boxirhat address. “I didn’t give our exact address, only our next door neighbour’s, so that my father would not see the magazine. But every month, we kept our eye out for our free copy. And it worked like a dream.”
Yunus received a Competitive Scholarship Examination while studying in high school. However, as he could not cover his living expenses with that monthly stipend, Yunus would take advantage of his father’s trust and steal money from the cash box.
His book says, “I acquired the balance of the cash I needed by taking advantage of Father’s simple trust in his sons. During the peak business periods of the day, Father often needed extra help in the shop and gladly accepted it from me, if I was around. During that time, I helped myself to a few banknotes and coins from the drawer where he kept his loose change. This embezzlement never amounted to much, but it was enough to build up a fund to meet my modest requirements. Father never detected this.”
While studying at Chittagong Collegiate School, Yunus and a friend learned to paint from an artist. However, all the painting materials had to be hidden at home because his father did not support drawing human figures according to Islamic rules. In addition, Salam and Yunus would collect postage stamps.
Yunus writes, “At home I arranged my easel, canvas and pastels in such a manner that I could hide them away from Father at a moment’s notice. As a devout Muslim he believed that reproducing human figures was not sanctioned by Islam, but also he wanted us only to study and study. So all of our extra-curricular activities had to be done in secrecy. Some uncles and aunts in the family who liked art became my co-conspirators, helping and encouraging me.”
He states that Chittagong Collegiate School gave him first and foremost a change of outlook. The atmosphere, in this secondary school, was completely cosmopolitan. “My classmates were sons of government officials on transfer from various districts. They were a much more sophisticated lot than the pupils I had been with before and many went on to high stations in life and became government officials themselves.”
Scouting and his good grades reconciled his father to the extra-curricular activities. “He gave me all the funds required by my scouting adventures and began to have an unshakeable confidence in me. Later on in life he always backed me 100 per cent in whatever venture I undertook.”
At the age of 13, Yunus had the opportunity to travel by train to Pakistan to participate in the first National Boy Scout Jamboree held in 1953; then to Canada in 1955 and to Japan and the Philippines in 1959.
In his words, “I especially recall a train trip across India on the way to the First Pakistan National Boyscout Jamboree in 1953, when we stopped to visit important historical sites and relics. The journey became a time-travel through our history, almost a pilgrimage to meet our own true selves.”
After completing his master’s degree in economics from Dhaka University, while teaching at Chittagong College from 1962-65, he took a loan from a bank and joined the printing and packaging business. “I noted that all packaging materials had to be brought from western Pakistan, that we in the eastern half of the country had no capacity to make boxes or wrapping material. So I persuaded my father to give his consent to set up a packaging and printing plant. I prepared the project proposal and applied for a loan from the government-owned Industrial Bank. We were among the rare Bengali entrepreneurs who wanted to invest in order to set up an industrial unit. Our loan was immediately approved,” he writes.
“This turned out to be a successful project, making a very attractive profit… My father was the chairman of the board, and I was the chief executive officer. My father was extremely reluctant to have us borrow from a bank. He comes from the old school that did not believe in commercial credit. Having a bank loan outstanding made him so nervous and so worried that he made me pay the loan back early. We were probably the only start-up business that ever repaid a loan before it became due. When I went to repay the bank, they offered us a 10 million taka loan for setting up a paper plant, but my father would not hear of it. This experience gave me a lot of self-confidence. It confirmed my belief as a young man that I had no need to worry about money. I was teaching half the time, and being a businessman the other half.”
At the age of 16, Yunus had been elected general secretary of the Chittagong College United Students’ Progressive Party. “This party was confined to our own college, Chittagong College, but it was a dominant party with a good chance of winning the election for the students’ union. We were against the government of the day which was oppressively conservative and exploited the religious sentiment of the people, but this did not mean I was ready to take orders from the highly regimented and secretive underground ultra-left party which controlled us as one of their front organizations.
“With the support of my central committee, I engineered a coup d’etat within my student party, and ousted senior functionaries who were manipulating us. It had been quite a feather in my cap to be general secretary, but to use the post to challenge the status quo created a political bombshell in student politics, which sent ripples all through the Chittagong District. Ever since then I had always tried to steer an independent course.”
Life in US
In 1969, he went to America to do his PhD on a Fulbright scholarship at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee and later became an Assistant Professor of Economics at Middle Tennessee State University.
At the height of the Vietnam War, Yunus writes that he along with other foreign students “quite naturally joined anti-war rallies and protest marches. But I was extremely shy and never made any speeches.”
He further clarifies that although he had voiced opposition to the war, he “always tried to keep an open mind and not merely to spout what was fashionable or to veer into groupthink. What I loved best about the campus at Boulder was the student centre. I could spend hours there watching the students come and go, chatting, laughing out loud, eating, wearing their crazy clothes. The youth of America looked so strong and healthy and full of vitality.”
Yunus writes that his leftist Bengali friends hated him for his positive opinions about America, “but I did not let that bother me. Back in Dhaka there was a lot of anti-American sentiment. Every student on every one of our campuses was calling the US dirty capitalists, and shouting, ‘Yankee Go Home!’ But I wrote back to my friends at home: ‘The United States is a beautiful country. My life would have been unfulfilled if I had not come here and seen this place, and experienced the personal freedom they enjoy here.’”
Campaigns for Bangladesh
When the Liberation War began, 31-year-old Yunus, along with other Bengalis in America, including former East Pakistani embassy officials, teachers and students, campaigned for the recognition of an independent Bangladesh, the release of Prime Minister-elect Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and to stop US military aid to Pakistan.
On March 27, Yunus was elected secretary of the Bangladesh Citizens Committee. In a TV interview with a local channel, the interviewer asked, “Do you have a message for the Tennesseans?” “Yes, I do. I said,” Yunus writes in his book. “’Please write to your congressmen, write to your senators immediately to stop military aid to Pakistan. Your arms and ammunitions are being used to kill innocent unarmed civilians of Bangladesh. Please ask your president to put pressure on Pakistan to stop genocide in Bangladesh.’”
Among the other noted campaigners were Dr. F. R. Khan, Enayet Karim, S. A. Karim, A. M. A. Muhith, Zillur Rahman Khan, Dr. Mohsin R. Siddique, Dr. Khandaker Mohammad Alamgir, Dr. Shamsul Bari and Dr. Hasan Chowdhury. They formed several organizations, organized rallies and concerts, and published a magazine called Bangladesh Newsletter to shape public opinion in favor of the Liberation War.
“The Bangladesh League of America was working from New York under the leadership of Dr Mohammad Alamgir, and the Bangladesh Defense League was created by Dr F. R. Khan in Chicago. Shamsul Bari became its secretary general. He published the first issue of the Bangladesh Newsletter. I took it over from him and started publishing the newsletter regularly from my Nashville apartment at 500 Paragon Mills Road. My apartment virtually became the communication centre. The phone would never stop ringing whenever I returned from my long campaigning trips. Calls came from all over North America and the UK. All Bengalis in North America wanted to know every detail of the war every day.
“Through the efforts of the Bengalis in Washington, a ‘Bangladesh Information Center’ was set up near the hill to do the lobbying in the House and the Senate. I took up the responsibility of running the Information Center for the initial period and then went on the road to organize teach-in workshops in university campuses all over the United States, where we also set up Friends of Bangladesh Committees.”
Interestingly, Yunus had a wish to form the provisional government of Bangladesh! This wild idea came up in his mind on March 30, after Yunus and Shamsul Bari visited the embassies of Sri Lanka, India and Soviet Russia. “We could give convincing answers to all the questions except one: ‘Do you have a government of your own?’
“Bari and I decided that we had to have our own government immediately. How can you form a government in Bangladesh while you are in Washington? Probably nobody inside Bangladesh was thinking about forming a government because by now all the leaders were either dead or in hiding. I had an idea. Why didn’t I fly to Calcutta, find a few people to form a cabinet and announce to the world that a Bangladesh government had been formed. Then we would have a country and a government. The issue of recognition could be pressed with vigour. Bari liked the idea. We made up our minds. That’s what I would do tomorrow – go to Calcutta to form a government in exile.
“Hasan left for Calcutta and Agartala the next day, as planned. From Calcutta, he sent a bitter message of disappointment in the leaders and advised me not to come. Soon the Mujibnagar government was formed. Bengalis in the USA and Canada concentrated on the campaign for Bangladeshi recognition, on stopping military aid to Pakistan and genocide in Bangladesh, and on freeing Sheikh Mujib,” Yunus writes in his book.
Ventures in independent Bangladesh
After returning to the independent country in 1972, he started working as a deputy director in the Planning Commission, but a few months later he joined the Economics Department of Chittagong University as a teacher. He worked on various formulas for the reconstruction of the newly independent country and the eradication of poverty. However, he did not participate in any of his works with the then government of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
After the brutal assassination of August 15, Yunus fully supported the military government. As a result, he quickly became a trusted friend of the military ruler General Ziaur Rahman. In 1978, he received the President’s Award for his Nabajug Tebhaga Khamar project, which was initiated in 1975, and in 1981, he was elected a member of the government’s National Committee on Population Policy.
During the era of General Ershad, Yunus got his Grameen Bank project (started in 1976) transformed into a separate bank in 1983, with the help of Muhith, who became the finance minister. During this period, Ershad also included Yunus as chairman and member of various important reform committees (land, education, health, natural disasters and banks).
As a result of, Yunus, the Managing Director of Grameen Bank, received the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 1984, the Central Bank Award in 1985, the Independence Day Award in 1987, and the Aga Khan Award For Architecture in 1989. At that time, he joined various foreign organizations and worked to expand Grameen Bank’s activities abroad. He also started associate enterprises using the funds of Grameen Bank by establishing Grameen Kalyan and Grameen Fund.
As a pro-US civil society leader, Dr Yunus became an advisor during the first caretaker government in 1996 and played a key role in the military-backed caretaker government of 2007-08. It is believed that Yunus got the Nobel Peace Prize, together with Grameen Bank, in 2006 on the recommendation of the US to qualify him for this political step because the award was given “for their efforts to create economic and social development from below”, not for establishing peace.
Because of these, no one stopped him from embezzling Grameen Bank funds through irregularities, revising the bank’s rules and provisions as per his will, and opening business firms bypassing due rules. No one questioned him for being the chairman of over 50 such enterprises, widespread nepotism and lack of accountability.
During the 1/11 government, Prof Yunus sought to destroy the country in the name of reforms by weakening the Awami League and rehabilitating the Razakars in Jamaat-e-Islami and militant groups like Harkat-ul-Jihad-al Islami Bangladesh (HuJI-B). But due to public anger, the US puppets were forced to declare elections on December 29, 2008.
In a letter to Dr Yunus in 2000, the former general manager of Grameen Bank, Khandaker Mozammel Haque, said he had pushed Grameen Bank into crisis in 1995-99. Dr Yunus’ reluctance to hand over power and responsibilities pushed the bank to the edge, and his reputation and influence reached a point where he was far above any kind of accountability.
Mozammel also criticized Dr Yunus for keeping secret a Bangladesh Bank audit report (1998) from several senior management of Grameen Bank and the board of directors of Grameen Bank. “Audit report states that Grameen Bank can disburse micro-loans to the landless and destitute. But under no circumstances can Grameen Bank give loans to any institution. Therefore, giving loans to Grameen Bank’s subsidiaries has been identified as a violation of Section 19 of Grameen Bank Ordinance 1983.”
For performing the duties of the Executive Chairman (Executive President) of all the associated institutions, Dr Yunus did not give the kind of time and attention that was required to be given to all other institutions, let alone Grameen Bank. As a result of which, conflict of interest arose as a special concern and uncomfortable issue which needed to be resolved very much.
Mozammel also wrote that Dr Yunus stayed abroad for around 130 days or 12 days a month on average. In November 1999, he visited the Grameen Bank office only three days. He benefited personally from the foreign tours, but the bank did not get any benefit from these tours, rather it caused harm.
“Acting managing director was supposed to make decisions in absence of Dr Yunus, but in reality, he does not have any such power. Dr Yunus destroyed the balance of chain of command of the bank’s management and made it ineffective,” the letter reads.
Moreover, the bank’s transfer and promotion policies were inhuman, he said. For these reasons, many employees of the Grameen Bank left their jobs in 1997-98.
Mozammel said Grameen Bank had drifted away from principles and philosophies for various reasons. It is not possible to implement the objectives and ideals of Grameen Bank’s associated institutions by retired bureaucrats. They can be made chairman of the board but not the chief executive. The people of a particular region/district played a special role in determining and managing the policies of Grameen Bank and its affiliates. Questions were raised about the competence, impartiality and sincerity of many of them.”
Regarding Packages Corporation, Mozammel said, “Most of Grameen Bank’s printing works are being printed by Packages Corporation without any tender at around 40% above the market price. In many cases the print quality is below acceptable level, but the Grameen Bank has to accept it.”
Hillary, a peacemaker?
After the Awami League came to power in 2009, when the irregularities and misdeeds of Grameen Bank started to be exposed, Prof Yunus sought Hillary Clinton’s help. In an email on September 17, Dr Yunus asked Hillary to “find a way to clear her [Sheikh Hasina] mind of all the terrifying thoughts” she had about him and become a peacemaker.
On January 9, 2011, the US Embassy in Dhaka emailed the State Department to notify the top officials that Foreign Minister Dipu Moni had a meeting with diplomats to brief them about the government’s impending announcement of an investigation committee to deal with the allegations surfaced in a Norwegian TV documentary.
On February 6, 2011, Grameen Foundation President Alex Counts shared a web link with Melanne Verveer, the Chief-of-Staff to Hillary, of the New York Times article on Bangladesh launching an inquiry into Dr Yunus’ wrongdoings.
On May 5, 2011, Hillary expressed her frustration after Dr Yunus lost the last legal battle to stay in Grameen Bank as the MD, the proceedings the Dhaka Embassy and the State Department were following closely.
On January 6, 2012, Dan Mozena, Ambassador to Bangladesh, sent an email to Hillary via State Department officials, informing her of Melanne’s visit to Dhaka.
On May 8, 2012, the State Department officials shared a news report where Bangladesh Finance Minister AMA Muhith slammed Hillary for her comments that she hopes Bangladesh’s government will not interfere in internationally acclaimed microlender Grameen Bank were unwarranted. Muhith said the government never meddled in the Bank and denied claims by Dr Yunus that the administration was trying to take it over.
On June 27, Senator Barbara Boxer, under the influence of Hillary, led the women of the United States Senate in writing to PM Sheikh Hasina, urging her to allow the Bank’s Board of Directors to appoint a managing director.
In early August the same year, Vidar Jorgensen, President and Founder of Grameen America and Grameen Research, and Advisor to Grameen Trust and Grameen Health Trust, thanked Hillary for “all the support from the US for Professor Yunus and the independence of the Grameen Bank” and her “exceptional support in this area.”
On August 2, Alex Counts, President of Grameen Foundation, in an email said the Bangladesh government’s actions, including confirmation of a new “audit” of Dr Yunus personally, had “all the makings of a threatened witch hunt to intimidate — not very subtle.”
Melanne also wrote to Gene Ludwig, a former comptroller of the currency and founder of Promontory family of companies and Canapi LLC, the largest financial technology venture fund in the US, seeking his support for Dr Yunus and Grameen Bank.
On August 4, Gene replied, saying that he had “set up a foundation to support him [Dr Yunus], hired attorneys and producing legal memoranda.”
Hillary was happy to know about the development. “…please tell Gene how much I appreciate his efforts,” she replied to Melanne.
The same day, Gene shot an email to his confidants, saying Grameen Bank and Dr Yunus were under serious threat. The receivers included Mark Willis, Robin Golden, Nathan Steinwald, Martin Gruenberg, Steven Harris, Sarah Ludwig, Catherine Bessant, David Vitale, Thomas Curry, Donald Riegle, Robert Post, Christopher Edley, Strobe Talbott, Alice Rivlin, Robert Dugger, Albert Dwoskin, Michael Levy; Konrad Alt; Matthew Roberts, Warren Rudman, Kenneth Duberstein, Bob Barnett and Nicholas Tabor.
On the other hand, the State Department drafted the op-ed, headlined Keep Nobel-Prize Winning Bank Independent, for the Wall Street Journal, to be authored by George Shultz and Madeleine Albright. The final op-ed carried the headline: A Nobel Prize Winner Under Siege.
In the audio clip leaked in 2013-14, it is known how he worked against the Sheikh Hasina government by directly associating with BNP and other anti-Awami parties. After 13 years, that “meticulously designed thing” of Hillary-Yunus succeeded. The true face of Chief Advisor Yunus and the radical student leaders is slowly being revealed due to his dependence on Razakars and Jihadists to overthrow the Awami League government on August 5. By forming a pro-Pakistani and pro-US Council of Advisors and appointing leaders and supporters of Jamaat, AB Party and BNP in various government offices, armed forces, law enforcement agencies, top universities and even the judiciary, the son of Muslim League National Guard member Dula Mia is bringing forward the meaning of pushing the “reset” button that he mentioned recently.
His hatred, anger and disrespect for the Liberation War, Awami League, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Hindus and other non-Muslim citizens and India have been manifesting since the July student movement. Apart from issuing an ordinance to exempt protesters for committing murders and arson attacks, he is also blatantly using the judiciary to cancel the “Joy Bangla” slogan, March 7th, the National Mourning Day and the Constitution Day, and acquit himself from the corruption and tax evasion cases, the convicts in the sensational August 21 grenade attack case, and releasing Islamic extremists and convicted top criminals from jail.
With the help of his supporters and sympathizers in the United Nations, the West, civil society, local and international media Prof Yunus has again started to implement his minus-two formula and depoliticization of the 2007-08 period to help rehabilitate the anti-secular and anti-Bangladesh elements in the name of reforms and establishing a discrimination-free democratic and secularist country.
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