Dr Kamal Hossain

It was a privilege for me to work with professor Anisuzzaman in the drafting of the Constitution. I had the extraordinary good fortune of knowing him for more than 50 years, since our school days in St Gregory’s School, Dhaka. Since then we have travelled side by side towards the independence of the country and in the struggles for democracy.

On 28 December he [jail superintendent] came to me and said that I should pack up as he had received an order that I was to ‘shift to new location’. My immediate reaction was one of joy, at the prospect of leaving the jail after nearly nine months of solitary confinement.

The Constitution which we adopted on November 4, 1972 and which came into force on December 16, 1972 is unquestionably the outcome of our victory in the Liberation War, won at the cost of countless lives. It bears the signatures of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Syed Nazrul Islam and Tajuddin Ahmad.

The Constitution, adopted on November 4, 1972 and which came into force on December 16 that year is unquestionably the outcome of our victory in the Liberation war. We can derive satisfaction that the Constitution has survived for over four decades. We, thus, have the opportunity to now assess the extent to which the goals of the Constitution have been realised.

We are celebrating the 47th anniversary of our independence today. Our independence was won through the sacrifices of countless lives and untold sufferings.

We can recall with respect that Justice AB Mahmud Husain was the second chief justice of Bangladesh, immediately after the constitution of the Supreme Court.

In the absence of a functionally independent judiciary there can be no guarantee for the Rule of law in the country or protection of the citizens' fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution.

Our current history begins from the emergence of independent states in societies which till then had been under colonial rule.