Bangladesh: A historical inevitability

There are, in terms of history, a good number of reasons why the state of Pakistan failed in its eastern province. The decline set in very early, soon after the vivisection of India in 1947, with Mohammad Ali Jinnah's insistence on Urdu as the state language of the new country. The language issue, coupled with the systematic as well as systemic assaults on constitutional politics, was only to lead to a widening of the gap between the two parts of the country. The constitution adopted in 1956 together with the setting up of the One Unit system in West Pakistan was a huge source of disappointment for Bengalis.

And then came the decade of authoritarian military rule under General Ayub Khan, a phase which swiftly led to politics of an exploitative nature for Bengalis. Economic disparity assumed larger dimensions, and discrimination in areas such as the civil service and the armed forces increasingly convinced the Bengalis, Pakistan's majority population, that the state had little to offer them. Add to that the persecution of liberal and secular politicians in East Pakistan through regularly accusing them of a lack of patriotism – this happened every time Bengali politicians raised the very legitimate demand for democratic rights – and what you have is the making of the potions that would swallow Pakistan from deep within. The dismissal of the Jukto Front ministry in May 1954 was intrigue working at its highest. The coup d'etat of October 1958, only months before the country expected the first general elections to take place, would sow new doubts in Bengali minds about their future in Pakistan.

The rest is history. The growing nature of Bengali nationalism, given new impetus by the Tagore centenary celebrations in 1961, would pan out into a wider landscape through the announcement of the Six Point plan for regional autonomy by Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in February 1966. Ayub Khan's threat to deploy the language of weapons against the proponents of the Six Points was one more self-inflicted wound for the ruling circles based in Rawalpindi. The regime's attempt to neutralise Mujib through the Agartala Conspiracy Case spectacularly backfired, forcing Ayub and his loyalists to quit power in March 1969. Bengali nationalism would get a new shot in the arm through the electoral triumph of the Awami League under Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in December 1970. The expectation, in Bangladesh, was that Pakistan under Bangabandhu's leadership would turn a new corner and move on to build a stable, productive democratic order for itself on the basis of the Six Points.

But it was at this point, in early 1971, that the state of Pakistan began to move toward a swift and tragic end in its eastern province.

With Pakistan People's Party Chairman Z.A. Bhutto deciding to boycott the inaugural session of the newly elected national assembly on 3 March in Dhaka, the first signs of a gathering political storm appeared all over the country. General Yahya Khan compounded the problem by announcing, without consulting majority leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and following a meeting with Bhutto in Larkana, a postponement of the assembly session. Pakistan was in mortal danger once that announcement had been made.

Bangabandhu's address at the Dhaka Race Course on 7 March was both a pointer to the future for Bengalis and a chance for the junta to go for damage control. The generals failed to seize that chance and even as they carried on the fiction of political negotiations in Dhaka, they made sure that troop movements from West Pakistan to Bangladesh continued apace. The generals were not serious about a settlement; and Bhutto's unbridled ambitions considerably wounded an already weakened Pakistan. The Awami League, still believing that a peaceful settlement could be arrived at, suggested at the end that the modalities for Pakistan to be reconfigured into a confederation. The generals hit the roof but promised to respond. That was on 24 March. The response never came.

Yahya Khan then added to the escalating crisis when, without formally calling an end to the negotiations with Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and without speaking to him, stealthily left Dhaka on the evening of 25 March. A few hours later, a little before midnight, the Pakistan army fired the first shot that would leave the state that Jinnah had built haemorrhaging and eventually silenced in death in Bangladesh. But the end of Pakistan in Bangladesh would be preceded by a good number of other blunders the junta would commit. The army abducted Bangabandhu, the elected leader of the country, and whisked him away to distant West Pakistan. If that was an outrage, it would be followed by another: placing the spokesperson of the Bengali nation on trial before a military tribunal headed by a brigadier! Politics was turned on its head, irreversibly, in Pakistan even as the outside world cast opprobrium on the military regime. 

But the regime remained unashamedly untouched by it all. It gathered its sycophants, rightwing political elements who had lost miserably before the Awami League tidal wave in December 1970, in peace committees whose task was to undermine the peace through helping the army kill and maim and rape.  The junta brazenly denied that any refugees were going to India. It did not have the wisdom – military rulers are devoid of that quality anyway – to comprehend the brilliance with which the Mujibnagar government was waging war against it. It looked to China, America, and the Middle East for safety and salvation. In its increasingly expansive folly, it imagined that Peking's soldiers in the north and Washington's navy in the south would save it. It was imagination that let go of imagination as it ought to be. It was imagination gone wild.

And so Pakistan sank, even as Bhutto hectored the UN Security Council on his country's determination to wage war for a thousand years. He would build a new Pakistan, he hollered. Away in Rawalpindi, an inebriated Yahya Khan failed to see that the floodgates to disaster had fully and finally opened, that his regime was sinking in the rushing waters, like so much debris from a ship rushing headlong to the bottom of the sea.

In Dhaka, General Niazi – they called him Tiger Niazi – put the final touches to Pakistan at the Race Course. Many of those who witnessed the capitulation remembered that it was the same place where Jinnah had spoken in defence of Urdu in March 1948, where Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was anointed as Bangabandhu in February 1969, where the Father of the Nation had called for freedom in March 1971.

It was December. It was a cold afternoon drowned in the good cheer of millions of Bengalis, in the effusiveness inherent in Joy Bangla. In the rise of Bangladesh on that afternoon, Pakistan was fast becoming a painful memory.

A half century on, it is time to sit back and wonder, indeed marvel at the strides Bangladesh has made since winning the war on the battlefield. In these past many years, indeed decades, the country has left Pakistan way behind in nearly every area of activity. Once derided as an international basket case – a putdown emanating in the Washington of Nixon, Kissinger and their loyalists – Bangladesh is today proud of the progress it has achieved in ensuring better health for all its citizens. Infant mortality is down. Maternal health, the welfare of children and indeed all social indicators are today evidence of the strides the nation has made in its efforts to deal with the future head-on.

The garments sector has lifted Bangladesh to an increasingly higher niche in terms of the economy. Similar has been the story of the hard struggles put up by Bangladeshi workers in the Middle East, Southeast Asia and elsewhere, for these citizens through the remittances they have sent home have empowered the national economy in no small measure. The export basket needs to be filled even more, and there are all the signs that it will be done. Infrastructure development has been remarkable, the Padma Bridge being a surefire instance of the progress that has been made. With the country poised to move from LDC status to that of a middle-income nation, its upward mobility as an economic powerhouse is an idea taking increasingly deeper hold of the national imagination.

Education has expanded across the nation, turning out increasingly higher numbers of young people ready to enter such areas of professional activities as government service and business enterprises as also non-government organisations. The rise in the number of colleges and universities is a pointer to the academic goals to be attained in the years ahead. The infusion of digital technology has been a miracle, connecting every village one with the other, every town one with the other, thereby bringing the country at par with the rest of the world.

All these decades after 1971, the truth is undeniable: the rise of Bangladesh as a sovereign nation-state was a historical inevitability. Today, across its ancient landscape, across its heritage, the country remains busy fulfilling the promise that came with the struggle for freedom. Having won the war, it is cheerfully winning the peace – through making possible for its 170 million people to build a secure and fulfilling socio-economic order. 

Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's dream of economic emancipation for his people is today the underpinning of our sovereign nationhood.