A spontaneous outpouring of moral fury against the architect of genocide.
The date was January 1, 1981. The location was the sacred precinct of Baitul Mukarram National Mosque in Dhaka. But this was no ordinary day, and the man who entered the mosque premises was no ordinary worshipper. It was Ghulam Azam, the chief collaborator and mastermind of the infamous anti-liberation forces of 1971, who had quietly returned to the country he actively fought to destroy.
What followed was not a police arrest or a judicial verdict, but a raw, explosive display of the Bengali people’s visceral memory of betrayal: a public, spontaneous act of shame as infuriated worshippers, unable to tolerate the sight of the architect of genocide walking free, struck him with their shoes—the ultimate symbol of contempt.
The Traitor’s Return and the Eruption of Rage
Ghulam Azam, former Amir of the Jamaat-e-Islami and the primary ideological fuel for the mass killings during the Liberation War, had fled Bangladesh after the 1971 victory. His controversial return to the sovereign state he once vowed to annihilate was an affront to every martyr and every survivor.
On that day in 1981, while attending a funeral prayer (Janaza), his presence was immediately recognized. The sight of the man who had overseen the formation of the Razakar and Al-Badr auxiliary forces—militia groups directly responsible for mass murder, rape, and the execution of Bangladesh’s brightest intellectuals—was too much for the congregants to bear.
In a moment of collective, unscripted fury, the crowd surged. Ignoring police presence, the worshippers turned their footwear into instruments of protest. A barrage of shoes rained down upon the collaborator, striking him repeatedly in an act known locally as Jutapeta (shoe-beating). The powerful visuals and the few surviving photographs of the incident immortalized this moment as the ultimate non-institutional verdict against the man who had betrayed his motherland.
The Crimes of 1971: The Context of the Contempt
To understand the ferocity of the 1981 attack, one must recall the scale of Ghulam Azam’s treason in 1971.
Ghulam Azam was not a passive opponent of liberation; he was an active and zealous participant in the genocide. He used his position to:
- Ideological Incitement: Provide the theological justification for the mass killing of Bengali nationalists and secularists, branding the war as a fight between Islam and ungodly forces.
- Architect of Auxiliary Forces: He personally spearheaded the creation of the Razakar and Al-Badr forces, turning young men into killing machines who aided the Pakistani Army in its “scorched earth” campaign. These groups hunted down and executed professionals, students, and intellectuals, culminating in the horrific massacres just before Victory Day.
- International Lobbying for Genocide: While the blood of millions soaked the Bengali soil, Azam traveled to Saudi Arabia and the UK, lobbying foreign governments to continue their support for the Pakistani military junta and actively campaigning against Bangladesh’s recognition as a sovereign nation.
The shoes thrown at him in 1981 were not just leather and rubber; they were weighted with the memory of three million deaths, the anguish of hundreds of thousands of raped women, and the broken dreams of a generation.
An Enduring Symbol of Public Justice
The Jutapeta incident was more than a mere street brawl; it was a defining moment where the nation, still nursing its wounds, delivered a public, moral execution of shame. It underscored a stark truth: while the state machinery might allow a war criminal to return under a veil of ambiguity, the people would never forget or forgive.
This act of defiance remains an enduring symbol: a powerful reminder that there is no space for the collaborators of genocide in the heart of Bangladesh, and that the verdict of the street, delivered by the ordinary citizen, often precedes the verdict of the court. The condemnation of Ghulam Azam, delivered through a shower of shoes, forever cemented his legacy not as a political figure, but as the quintessential traitor.
