The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) celebrates November 7 as National Revolution and Solidarity Day. The Awami League has observed it as Freedom Fighters Killing Day. The Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal, whose revolutionary organisation helped initiate the uprising, commemorates it as Soldiers and People's Uprising Day.
These differences extend well beyond political observation. They have shaped newspaper columns, historical essays, memoirs, court proceedings and the public reputations of the military officers involved.
A review of a few Bengali and English commentary reveals a recurring pattern in writing sympathetic to the Awami League: the November 3 intervention led by Khaled Mosharraf is frequently presented as an attempt to restore military discipline, while November 7 is described primarily through the killing of officers and Zia's subsequent consolidation of power.
One of the clearest examples appeared in The Daily Star on November 6, 2020.
In an article titled Recognise the tragedy of November 7, 1975, Mahjabeen Khaled, a former Awami League lawmaker and daughter of Khaled Mosharraf, described her father's November 3 intervention as an attempt to restore discipline after Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's assassination.
She argued that Zia had failed to act against the officers responsible for the August 15 killings, leaving Khaled and his associates to intervene.
Her account presented the November 7 uprising as a violent military mutiny rather than a broad popular movement. She questioned the description of it as a soldiers' and people's revolution and called for the anniversary to be recognised as Freedom Fighters and Soldiers Killing Day.
The article also alleged that Taher's supporters spread claims portraying Khaled as an Indian agent to turn soldiers against him.
A similar emphasis appears in the work of journalist and columnist Syed Badrul Ahsan.
Writing in The Business Standard on November 7, 2021, Ahsan described the killings of Khaled Mosharraf, Khondkar Najmul Huda and ATM Haider as part of the breakdown of law and order following the August and November assassinations.
He argued that their deaths destroyed hopes of restoring stability. He also examined allegations about the role of Taher's followers and questioned why the killings had never been adequately investigated.
His essay, 7 November 1975: Questions that call for good answers, however is more complicated than a simple partisan defence of Khaled.
Ahsan explicitly questioned why Khaled had allowed the August 15 assassins to leave Bangladesh, why he had failed to act against them earlier and whether his November 3 intervention was intended to restore constitutional government or merely the army's chain of command.
In a 2022 Prothom Alo essay, November 7, 1975, and a letter from Khaled Mosharraf, Mahjabeen Khaled revisited the events through a wartime letter written by her father to General MAG Osmani.
She described the circulation of leaflets accusing Khaled of serving Indian interests and the mobilisation of soldiers against officers. She also identified Major Jalil and Major Asad as participants in the killing of Khaled and his companions.
The essay reinforced a particular interpretation: Khaled had acted against the August 15 military faction, while Taher's revolutionary organisation helped destroy the military order he was trying to restore.
Another example appeared in Prothom Alo under the headline The Soldiers' Revolution of November 7: Fact and Fiction.
Columnist Hasan Ferdous questioned the political ownership of the uprising, observing that BNP organisations dominated commemorative events even though Taher and the revolutionary left had played a central role in the operation.
His argument challenged the assumption that the uprising had been conceived principally to install Zia as the country's future leader.
A more direct critique of Zia appeared in a Prothom Alo column by Sohrab Hasan titled Why should Khaled Mosharraf's murder not be tried?.
Hasan drew on interviews with military participants, including former Major General Syed Muhammad Ibrahim, and examined the circumstances in which Khaled, Haider and Huda were killed.
A 2023 opinion essay in the Bengali edition of Dhaka Tribune, November 7: The Day Freedom Fighters Were Killed, reconstructed the killings at the 10th Bengal Regiment's officers' mess.
It described the revolutionary soldiers' campaign against Khaled, including accusations that he was an Indian agent and slogans demanding officers' blood.
The account placed the murders at the centre of the day's meaning and presented the uprising as a campaign that mobilised soldiers against their commanders.
A November 2016 Bangla Tribune report offered another example of the same framing.
Its account began by describing November 7 as the start of a process of killing freedom-fighter soldiers, which it said continued until Zia's own assassination in 1981.
On November 7, 2009, bdnews24.com reported that the Awami League observed Freedom Fighter Killing Day while the BNP celebrated National Revolution and Solidarity Day.
At an Awami League programme, then state minister Kamrul Islam accused the BNP of obscuring the history of the date. He called on journalists, columnists and military officers to clarify the events.
The report illustrates how the competing interpretations became institutionalised through party commemorations, not merely individual newspaper essays.
In 2020, Awami League leader and then information minister Hasan Mahmud similarly described November 7 as a dark day in Bangladesh's history and an occasion marked by the killing of military officers.
He also cited the subsequent execution of Taher as evidence against the BNP's celebratory interpretation.
The statement, reported by Bangla Tribune, linked the killings of Khaled's group and Taher's execution within a single account of Zia's political rise.
The treatment of Colonel Abu Taher presents another difficulty for any single-party account of November 7.
Taher was a decorated freedom fighter and a revolutionary socialist. His organisation, the Biplobi Sainik Sangstha, played an important role in the soldiers' uprising. He also opposed the political and military order associated with Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's government.
After Zia was released, Taher's attempt to establish a revolutionary military command failed. He was arrested, tried by a special military tribunal and executed in July 1976.
His execution subsequently became a central element of criticism directed at Zia.
In March 2011, the High Court declared Taher's military trial illegal and unconstitutional. The full judgment, published in May 2013, characterised the execution as a prearranged killing and held Zia responsible for the decision.
Historian Mohiuddin Ahmad has produced some of the most detailed Bengali accounts of the events, particularly through his research on the JSD.
In his Prothom Alo essay An Examination of November 7, Mohiuddin described the Biplobi Sainik Sangstha as an organisation that had developed before the uprising, rather than an improvised force created by Taher.
He traced the JSD's revolutionary preparations to 1973 and 1974, described Taher's contacts with Zia and reconstructed the emergency meeting at which the uprising was discussed.
In The Daily Star, Dhaka University professor Naadir Junaid explicitly warned against writing history through selective political loyalties.
His November 2020 essay, Looking at the November Coups Through a Neutral Lens, examined the actions of Zia, Khaled and Taher as decorated freedom fighters who subsequently became political and military adversaries.
He called for a proper investigation into the deaths of Khaled, Huda and Haider, while acknowledging the role of the November 3 coup in challenging the officers responsible for the August 15 assassination.
A similar concern appeared in Shahriar Feroze's 2013 The Daily Star essay, November 7: Let the Truth Be Known.
Feroze questioned the propaganda portraying Khaled and other officers as agents of India. He also argued that published accounts of November 7, including some sympathetic to Taher, had been affected by political assumptions.
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