Joy Bangla Youth Award celebrates resilience: Honouring Khelaghor and Shadhin Bangla football team

Joy Bangla Youth Award ignites captivating tales of resilience against fundamentalism and military rule by honouring Khelaghor and Shadhin Bangla Football Team, said a press release.

Two months after the language movement when students were shot dead on 21 February 1952 by Pakistan Junta for waging protest in demand of language, a band of brave and influential figures including Poet Habibur Rahman, dared to defy the junta and spearheaded a movement to infuse the strength of secularism and science in the minds of children through Khelaghor.

For over 19 years, since its inception, Khelaghor, an organisation came into being with the target of breaking the wall of religion-based rule unleashed by the Pakistan Junta that culminated in the birth of the youngest nation in South Asia, led by the father of the nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

The nine-month struggle has seen minorities hunted down, leading to a forcible displacement of hundreds and thousands from now-defunct East Pakistan in 1971.

In independent Bangladesh, the length and breadth of Khelaghor sprawled across the country that boasts of half a million members but withstood sea hurdles imposed by Pakistan-style military-backed regimes that ruled for decades and amended the constitution to destroy the syncretic culture, upturning secularism and installing the menace of communalism, a clear pointer to the rise of radicalism during two dictators and later carried forward by BNP and Jamaat regime.

But the power of Khelaghor's campaign prevailed and over fifty years down the line the valuable and courageous seven decades of work were brought into the spotlight before the nation once again, thanks to the conferring of the Pathfinder Award at Joy Bangla Youth Award held on 28 October.

On behalf of the organisation, Mahfuza Khanam, chairperson of Khelaghor, with one of the cadets went on the stage to receive the award. She received the special honour from Sajeeb Wazed, the chairperson of the Center for Research and Information at the Joy Bangla Youth Award, an effort that would send a blow to communal forces.

Gripped by emotion, the little cadet tied a scarf on Sajeeb Wazed, in a gesture of acknowledgement for the honour, according to many a big boost to carry forward the legacy of the award. Sajeeb Wazed, kept the scarf till the end of the event and gave speech reiterating his commitment to stand for a brighter Bangladesh, drawing applause from the audience full of hundreds of change-makers gathered from different parts of the country.

"Let's stand with patriotism, we are pigeons of peace, always uphold the true ideals for liberation war values", are some of the slogans we advocate ardently with a singular objective to imbibe the true values of science, knowledge and non-communalism, said Mahfuza Khanam.

She dedicated the award to the hundreds of thousands of members involved with the platform. Shadhin Bangla Football Team: Amid the death and destruction inflicted by the Pak army in 1971, all of the members, then youngsters, the Shadhin Bangla Football team took up a daunting task in their desperate efforts to mobilise global opinion to free their motherland.

As a team, with a singular objective to shore up global support in demand of Bangladesh, they played at least 16 exhibition matches in different states and cities of India including West Bengal, Bihar, Odisha, Hyderabad, Jaipur, and Mumbai.

Photo: Courtesy

They got to play alongside and against the likes of Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi and Chuni Goswami, Bollywood stars in the form of Dileep Kumar and Kishore Kumar extended helping hands and the Shadhin Bangla Football team handed over 16.33 Lakh Taka to the Provisional Government of Bangladesh.

Zakaria Pintoo, who led the 1971 football team and vice-captain Pratap Shankar Hazra, on behalf of the team, went on the stage and took the medal from Sajeeb Wazed, while recounting a fascinating tale on strong attachment to football the founding father of the nation attached to.

Pintoo conjured up his memories with Sheikh Mujibur Rahman "I held deep ties with Mujib. Mujib saw the potential in me and inspired me saying that I would become a great footballer one day."

"Mujib was the captain of Wonders Club for two years. In a tournament, held in Bogura, he scored two goals and bagged some awards. I am truly thankful for the recognisition. This effort put in place by Young Bangla and CRI is truly motivational", added Pratap.

Both Khelaghor and Swadhi Bangla Football Team were conferred with special honour under the pathfinder category, a new addition introduced in 2021 for the first time at the biggest celebration of young trailblazers: Joy Bangla Youth Award.