leems sparrow
The long nine-month battle between East Bengal and West Pakistan in 1971 will be remembered in Bangladesh and Pakistan equally. That was awful and embarrassing for Pakistan. Nevertheless, some argue that human history has been constructed by the prevailing side, whereas the opponent takes all the blame. Without being too biased, I’ve long wondered if West Pakistan was genuinely responsible for the separation of East and West, or should we believe the so-called Indian plan that fragmented two different parts of a single country?
The British tactic of divide and rule was first implemented on the Indian subcontinent with the partition of Bengal in 1905. However, a few famous intellectuals and educators resisted the fragmentation, refusing to acknowledge that religiously motivated fragmentation was the reason it persisted for just five years, and Bengal was rejoined in 1911. Anyway, later, that fragmentation had inspired successfully a few more splits in other parts of the subcontinent as well as Punjab and Kashmir, and that old fragmented Bengal, who had been reunited in 1911, was also re-fragmented again because of a second partition in 1947.
Though the second partition of Bengal was also constituted based on communal sentiment like the first partition in 1905, this time it was quite different for the attachment of ‘Lahore Resolution.’ The seeds of Bangladesh’s independence were produced from the ‘Lahore Resolution’ of 1940. Anyway, the real story reveals our lack of understanding it properly, and most of us know only little or absolutely nothing regarding the ‘Lahore resolution. Moreover, despite most of us assuming this resolution was proposed for the independence of Pakistan, it actually came with provisions for numerous independent Muslim states in the northwestern and eastern parts of the Indian subcontinent.
In the fourth assertion of the ‘Lahore resolution,’ A K Fazlul Haque demanded independence and autonomy for every Muslim community and region; however, in 1947, all Muslim leaders from West Pakistan and East Bengal decided to form a single federal country where every province would govern its own territory. Though Hossain Shahid Suhrawardy advocated for a united Bengal, the ethnocentric sentiments of both the Congress and the Muslim League impeded his efforts. Rather, they founded Pakistan and India while effectively resisting the independence of unified Bengal.
Dividing territory and people into two distinct entities without their consent or opinion, combining one half with another union that shares no culture or language but only religious faith, and then forming a nation based on that, imposed an overwhelming stress on a newborn state like East Bengal. In truth, West Pakistani politicians had a prejudicial view of Bengalis, considering them lower-class Muslims and asserting that nearly all of them had been influenced by Indian culture.
Negligence towards eastern people had been evident since the Pakistan Federation’s inception. When Mohammad Ali Jinnah, a famous Muslim League politician and Pakistan’s first Governor General, revealed ‘Urdu’ would become the state language, Bengali students and politicians immediately denied him. Furthermore, in 1948, the Muslim League of Students and Towmuddin Mojlis formed the ‘National Language Movement Council’ at Dhaka University’s Fazllul Haque Hall. They started the movement and called for strikes on March 11, 1948.
Sheikh Mujibur Rahman staged the first strike after Pakistan had been established. Then he was taken into custody by Pakistani authorities. Gaziul Haque, an important figure of the language movement struggle, stated in his book that “Pakistan police took Sheikh Mujibur Rahman on the day of that strike, and he was in jail until February 1952, so he could not take part in the 1952 language movement.” Considering their brutality, for initiating a strike against the government’s decision, a citizen was sentenced to prison for 36 months. This brave leader suffered imprisonment for approximately 12 years under Pakistan’s 23-year tyranny due to his uncompromising and unshakable attitude.
West Pakistan’s actual actions included not only imprisoning them but also taking immediate action against all the demonstrators in every movement and flaming them to death. It was shocking how West Pakistani officials refused the Bengali people’s demands. Though around 56% of people spoke Bengali and only 5% spoke Urdu at the time, they ignored the majority’s desire and designed their own, which reinforced the totalitarian image of the Pakistani governance in East Bengal.
The language movement was only the beginning; the concept of federal autonomy for both states sparked a significant debate, and when it was denied by former Prime Minister Liakot Ali Khan, it turned into a matter of faith for East Bengal. Sheikh Mujib wrote in his book ‘The Untold Story’ that when he presented Mr. Liakot Ali Khan with the draft of the Awami League’s agenda demanding autonomy through the six-point movement, Mr. Liakot Ali Khan became quite angry with Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. This constituted an obvious violation of the ‘Lahore Resolution,’ which had been recommended for various independent republics, but West Pakistan did not adopt it.
Why did they fail to grant autonomy to the East? Perhaps it was that West politicians did not believe East politicians to be on their level, thus they did not grant autonomy to the East, but the concept of neutralizing others’ culture and identity was deeply ingrained in them. According to the prominent writer Ahmed Sharif’s book ‘Bangla, Bangali, Bangladesh,’ Ayub Khan tried his hardest to write Bengali in the Arabic script and banned Rabindra Sangeet, but ended up unable to carry out his narrow-minded framework.
Hatred towards Bengali culture hadn’t been the only issue; it turned out more sophisticated, and they envisioned eliminating Bengali identity. West legislators never used the term ‘East Bengal’; they always used ‘East Pakistan’. On the 23rd of August 1955, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman pointed it out to the Pakistan Assembly in Karachi. He said, “Sir, you will notice they want to use the phrase ‘East Pakistan’ rather than ‘East Bengal.'” We persistently demanded that you use Bengal instead of Pakistan. “The word Bengal has its own history and tradition.”
The six-point movement painted a clear picture of West Pakistan’s economic discrimination against East Bengal. East Bengal, later known as Bangladesh, accounted for over 63% of Pakistan’s population.The export of East Bengal jute earned a significant amount of revenue for Pakistan as a whole. Despite receiving considerable funding from Bengal, which continued to face significant discrimination at the hands of West Pakistani MPs and administration, only around 28 percent of total income had been spent on East Bengal throughout Pakistan’s 23-year rule. Even the third point, which called for a separate currency or a ban on capital transfers from east to west as well as separate reserve banks for the two parts of Pakistan, was rejected by the West Pakistani military dictators and their political allies and supporters.
Aside from that, the 1970 election was the defining moment between the two states. After obtaining the mandate of the entire federation, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman had the opportunity to become the federation’s prime minister, and according to the constitution and legislation, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and the Awami League had full authority to be Pakistan’s next representative. Unfortunately, General Yahya Khan, Julfikar Ali Bhutto, and General Tikka Khan challenged Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and the Awami League’s leadership. So, as an undemocratic move, they nominated Nurul Amin as Pakistan’s prime minister instead of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
The last chapter of history is well known: an atrocious genocide whereby West Pakistanis massacred innocent civilians, students, and intellectuals in East Bengal. My queries are: why did West Pakistan behave this manner towards East Bengal? Why did they never provide autonomy to the East? Why did they hesitate to hand over authority to East Bengal? Did India insist on this behaviour? If so, then how did they insist? If not, why do some people doubt India and blame them for Pakistan’s split, despite the fact that West Pakistan nurtured hate among the Bengalis?
They may express concerns because they are swayed by dangerous conspirators who directly opposed the liberation fight of Bengali. During the war, a well-known war criminal, Ali Ahsan Mujahid, the leader of JAAMAT-e Islam, published lots of articles in the Daily Sangram, all of which gave importance to Pakistan’s sovereignty and the necessity of opposing freedom fighters. He opposed the independence war by fabricating allegations against freedom fighters and attempting to persuade people in the name of Islam to support a united Pakistan. He even characterized Tajuddin Ahmad, Bangladesh’s first prime minister, as an Indian spy. According to Peter Tomson, an American former diplomat and political scientist, the Pakistan Secret Service, collaborating with JAMAAT-e Islam, developed paramilitary groups ‘Al Bdar’ and ‘Al Shams’ to carry out missions against Pakistan’s opponents. It appears that they chose to give up their independence.
Questions may be raised about India, but the truth is that India provided weapons and refuge to Bengali freedom fighters, even deploying a battleship alongside Soviet Russia against America’s seventh fleet, which arrived in the Indian Ocean to deliver armaments to the West Pakistan army. If the West Pakistan army could receive those weapons, can we imagine what would happen to East Bengal people? Even after that, if still somebody believes India was to blame for the partition of Pakistan, it may be that person is extremely biased and lacks nationalism, because a nationalist always believes East Bengal gained independence through the sacrifice of lots of lives and shades of blood and fighting, and it is Pakistan that created Bangladesh on their own through their long service of oppression in East Bengal.
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