Part 1: The Birth of Bangladesh
A generational
memory lasts about twenty years. Fifty three years after its birth, the current
generation of adults, born twenty years after 1971, have at best a foggy memory
of the events that led to the birth of Bangladesh. Let us first recapitulate
those momentous events which led to the birth of a country.
But first,
the birth of Pakistan.
Pakistan, India’s invalid twin, was born out of Jinnah’s call for lebensraum
(literally ‘living space’, metaphorically, a homeland) for the subcontinent’s
Muslims. Therein lay the disease- an uncompromising sectarian constitution.
After much negotiation two non-contiguous Muslim majority areas separated by a
thousand miles of Indian territory, one towards the west (the current day
Pakistan), and the other on the east (East Bengal, current day Bangladesh),
were selected for the formation of Pakistan. On the eve of partition and
independence, a mass, unorganized but incomplete exchange of populations took
place, with Punjab and Bengal bearing the brunt. Hindus from East Bengal
trudged westwards, and Muslims from West Bengal trudged eastwards. This mass
migration took place in the midst of much violence fanned by the Muslim League.
Despite this migration, at the time of independence, 24% of the population of
East Pakistan (the erstwhile East Bengal) were Hindus. Among those who trudged
eastwards were a significant number of Muslims from the Indian state of Bihar.
In East Pakistan, they were referred to as Biharis, this term, in later years
became a pejorative for the Urdu speaking non-Bengali population.
What was
wrong with Pakistan?
While being united by their religion- this unity being expressed in their
anti-Hindu sentiments, the two wings of Pakistan were divided in every other way
possible. The West was dominated by the Urdu (and Punjabi)-speaking Punjabi
Mussalmans, who felt that they were the original inheritors of Islamic
sovereignty. Their strong sense of identity had its origin in the British theory
of martial races, which considered Punjabi Muslims to be martial, and the
Bengalis to be effeminate, and non-martial. There was something ironic about
this theory, given that the most serious threats to British rule had arisen
from the mutiny in the Bengal Army in 1857, and the twentieth century
revolutionaries from Bengal! But this theory, reinforced the self-image of the
West Pakistanis as the natural rulers of the new state of Pakistan. Consequently,
from 1947-1971, Pakistani politics was dominated by individuals from the West,
and there was almost continuous agitation in the East for equitable power
sharing, distributive justice, and development. This state of unstable
equilibrium could have in principle, continued indefinitely. However it was
rudely interrupted when Gen. Yahya Khan, the then martial law ruler- who had
seized power in 1969 after deposing Gen. Ayub Khan- who had himself seized power
in 1958, and lost a disastrous war with India in 1965, decided to conduct
elections on 7th December 1970, with a view to hand over power to an
elected civilian government. Yahya could have rigged the elections, and
contrived a pre-determined result to keep power within the West Pakistani
ruling elite. But he unwittingly permitted the very first free and fair
election in Pakistan.
The result was a
monumental disaster. As it happened, East Pakistan was more populous compared
to West Pakistan, and consequently had a larger number of seats. In East
Pakistan, the Awami League headed by the charismatic Sheikh Mujibur Rehman (father
of the recently toppled Sheikh Hasina) swept the polls winning 167 out of the
169 seats. In the West, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) headed by Z. A.
Bhutto won 86 out of the 144 seats. On the basis of the principle of parity,
Mujibur Rehman-headed Awami League should have formed the government with the
Bhutto-headed PPP in opposition. However Yahya and Bhutto refused to hand over
power to a party, and a Prime Minister hailing from the East. The inauguration
of the National Assembly (Pakistan’s Parliament) was indefinitely postponed,
and confabulations began to deprive the Awami League of its election victory.
When the Awami League did not relent, and negotiations hit a dead end, Yahya imprisoned
Mujib, and unleashed a war of attrition against his own Bengali population in
East Pakistan, leading to a massive influx of refugees into India. With the
burden of this humanitarian relief becoming unbearable, India invaded East
Pakistan to restore law and order there, and facilitate the return of the
refugees to their own land. The Indian armed forces won a short (4th-16th
December 1971), intense war and liberated Dacca (now Dhaka) in under twelve
days, securing the surrender of over 97000 Pakistani soldiers, the largest
surrender ever after the Second World War. The end of the war saw the birth of
Bangladesh and the installation of the Awami League government under Sheikh
Mujibur Rehman.
This is a brief
sanitized version of the events that led to the birth of Bangladesh.
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