Chuadanga, East Bengal
THE key to the tragedy of Bengal was forged with the birth of Pakistan 24 years ago. In the wake of independence Chowdhury Mohammed Ali, a member of the ICS (the "heaven-born" Indian Civil Service) who had become secretary to the new Pakistan government and who later rose to be prime minister, prepared a top secret report on East Pakistan. It said East Pakistan was sure to go its separate way one day and that therefore the federal government should not waste any resources on developing the province. This cynical if realistic assessment became a guideline for successive governments of Pakistan.
Founding father Mohammed Ali Jinnah himself had queered the pitch for East Pakistan. Visiting Dacca once he warned that Urdu would be the lingua franca of the new country. Urdu with its Persian base was alien to Bengalis, whose language has a fundamentally different Sanskrit base. Besides, an entire philosophy of nationalism revolved round Bengali. Even in the days of Jinnah's unquestioned authority, Bengalis had risen against the Urdu fiat.
The leaders in West Pakistan never got the message. In 1949 they attempted to do what every Bengali dismissed as preposterous - to replace the Bengali script with Arabic. The leaders had evidently convinced themselves they could achieve integration through administrative decrees. In fact they only sowed among Bengalis seeds of permanent mistrust of the establishment in the western wing.
This unimaginative attitude was in contrast to the statesmanlike eye with which the leaders had regarded the future during the movement for Pakistan's establishment. In 1940, in recognition of the cultural, psychological and physical differences between the widely separated areas of the then northwest and east of India, they had resolved that the two areas "should be grouped to constitute independent states in which the constituent units should be autonomous and sovereign". This was the famous Lahore resolution of the Moslem League which was to be used by the venerable old Maulana Bashani as the basis of his demand for an independent East Pakistan well before the present liberation movement started.
In Lahore the Moslem League leaders were wise enough to realise that Islam alone might not for ever hold together two peoples with nothing else in common. But, with power, wisdom apparently gave way to the kind of expediency articulated by Chowdhury Mohammed Ali. The build-up began. Given the attitudes that grew in West Pakistan soon after independence, it was inevitable the relationship between the two halves of the country should develop into a classic colonial pattern. Given the colonial character of the relationship, it was inevitable a struggle for independence should grow in the eastern wing. And the record of such struggles in Asia suggests that Bangla Desh will become a fact one day.
If the basic fact of the colonial relationship did not attract world attention until now, it was because the world equated Pakistan with the western wing where the government was situated. In the light of the present flare-up, telltale facts are clearly seen: East Pakistan has all along been a supplier of raw materials and financial resources to West Pakistan; it also was a captive market for the western wing's manufactured goods; and Bengalis hardly received a square deal in such matters as employment in government services, recruitment to the armed forces, promotions, even facilities for scientific and technical education.
At the time of independence the total regional income of West Pakistan was slightly lower than that of East Pakistan which was then producing 80% of the world's jute. By last year it was at least 25% higher. West Pakistan's growth rate in recent years has been 6%, East Pakistan's 4%. The west's share in GNP increase is 58.4%, the east's 30.6%.
For many years East Pakistan's resources were transferred to West Pakistan at the rate of #20 million a year. Out of Pakistan's total bank deposits of Rs15,000 million the western wing keeps as much as Rs12,500 million. The eastern wing's jute and tea earn most of Pakistan's foreign exchange, but the bulk of these earnings are used for the western wing's industrial development and imports. During the last 20 years West Pakistan imported goods worth more than Rs30,000 million, three times as much as East Pakistan - and Rs20,000 million in excess of its own export earnings.
The pattern extends to fund allocations also. In the second five year p}an (1960-65) development expenditure per capita stood at Rs521.05 for West Pakistan and Rs240 for East Pakistan, revenue expenditure at Rs309.35 for West Pakistan and Rs70.29 for East Pakistan. The disparities have since grown. Only some 20% of the total foreign aid received has gone to East Pakistan.
East Pakistan's allocations in absolute terms have increased from plan to plan but this only added to the Bengalis' frustrations and confirmed their worst fears. For administrative bottlenecks invariably prevented East Pakistan from receiving the full amounts allocated to it. A West Pakistan project would be promptly implemented while an East Pakistan project, sanctioned simultaneously, would get bogged down in red tape. This explains why the Bengalis have been condemning bureaucrats along with the west's politicians and capitalists as East Pakistan's enemies.
As early as 1949 the central government bluntly showed its willingness to hit the eastern wing below the belt for the benefit of the western wing. Following the devaluation of the pound, India devalued its rupee. Pakistan refused. This was beneficial for the western wing which was then beginning its industrialisation programme and wanted to import machinery and other goods. But it dealt a body blow to the eastern wing, as India stopped buying not only Bengal's jute but also its fish. East Pakistani leaders begged their central government for a change of policy, but in vain.
After the 1965 India-Pakistan war, East Pakistan was forced to buy its cement and coal from China and Sweden at three times the prices prevailing in West Bengal across the border. It was already the largest consumer of goods produced in the western wing, absorbing 60% of the output. What grated on the Bengalis was that they were paying considerably higher prices than the West Pakistanis for these goods. They also knew that if this captive market were lost West Pakistan would be left to the mercy of international competition.
While the Bengalis were doing much to prop up West Pakistan's economy, they were getting less than their share of key government jobs. They could see that in India, though West Bengal was a small state, its citizens had risen to the highest positions in the country - chiefs of the army, navy and air force, chief justice, secretaries to government. In Pakistan, Bengalis formed a majority but they were nowhere near the top. They account for less than 15% of personnel of the central government services, less than 10% of the armed forces. The highest rank achieved by a Bengali in the armed forces was Brigadier, a solitary officer. Usually they stop at major.
For 24 years the frustrations and the bitterness smouldered in Bengali hearts. The election in December was the first ray of hope that things would become equitable. When those hopes suddenly crashed to the ground, pent-up emotions caught fire. West Pakistan's leaders are once again showing short-sighted lack of imagination in the method they have chosen to put out the fire.
The full story of the atrocities that started in East Pakistan on the night of March 25 has not been told. First, the story is still unfinished; second, the authorities put a blanket ban on reporters. But evacuees have described what reporters were barred from witnessing. It is a story of extreme cruelty .
In the first few days the killings were particularly gruesome. Dacca and Chittagong were in the first line of fire. Tanks and mortars were used in densely populated areas, followed by a rain of incendiary bombs. Houses were bombed with residents shut in, crowded bazaars completely gutted, pavement sleepers shot in their sheets. Small groups of people who had sought refuge in nooks and corners were bayoneted. Those who saw the weird tableaux of dead bodies said the groups included little children.
The attitude of the troops was summed up by the comment of an air force officer who was asked by a British evacuee on her way to the Dacca airport why his men were killing children. He answered: "If we leave the children orphan, they will grow up to be anti-West Pakistan."
A Dutch student who reached Calcutta from Chittagong in a British freighter described how the Police Lines (barracks) in Chittagong were taken care of. The Pakistani army major who carried out the operation told him: "We lined up the policemen and reduced them to dogfeed. We've looked after them for 23 years and now they dare behave in this manner. Who the hell do they think they are?"
The Dutch student also said he saw some 15 people buying food in a shop. The troops asked them to come out, then lined them up and shot them down. Such firing squads, he said, operated in many places in the city. Some 200 girl students of Dacca's university were said to have been killed in one lot. The troops then ran bulldozers over the heaped bodies for easier disposal. Often slogan- shouting Bengalis were tied to military trucks and dragged bleeding behind them at full speed until they died. Bombs and grenades were dropped from transport planes.
Evidently the troops were not merely suppressing a rebellion. They were sadistically giving vent to hatred, fear and contempt. The suddenness with which the army struck made things worse. In the packed dormitories of Dacca university students never had a chance to duck for cover. The tanks came at dead of night. Children and old women living in the houses of faculty members were seen shot in their beds.
It is said that when the Yahya-Mujib talks in Dacca finally collapsed, General Tikka Khan, Dacca's hardline new military governor, asked for 72 hours to set things right. Perhaps mindful of world reactions and anxious to "set things right" before other countries had a chance to realise what was happening, President Yahya Khan is reported to have given his martial law administrator only 48 hours in which to do the job. The intensity of the killings in Dacca in the first two days was apparently the result of this calculation.
The West Pakistanis have no monopoly of barbarism.
When the EPR (East Pakistan Rifles) mutinied their first reaction was to wipe out the non-Bengalis in their own ranks. Some 40~o of the 10-15,000 strong EPR consisted of West Pakistanis including most of the officers. One cartload of bodies was dumped by EPR men one night across the border by the Indian checkpoint town of Haridaspur.
A sadder story is that of the Biharis - Moslems from the Indian state of Bihar adjoining West Bengal who could not migrate to West Pakistan at the time of partition because of the distance and who were then ceremoniously led into East Pakistan by Abdul Ghaffar Khan, a respected leader of the old Congress movement in India. Numbering a few million. the Biharis are mostly poor, working as labourers. Being nonBengali, they have been taken as supporters of the West Pakistan government and therefore spies. Many of them have been murdered by the Bengalis. Many others have been put in detention camps, perhaps as hostages for the Bengalis still left in West Pakistan.
An American missionary who made the refugee ship from Chittagong told me that poor Bengalis had started killing one another in places around Chittagong. Prices have gone up beyond control, food and other goods are scarce and already the first signs of famine are visible. Driven by desperation, the poor do not stop to identify their victims when they kill and loot in search for something to eat.
Bengali desperation is perhaps the natural result of West Pakistani cruelty. That cruelty in turn is a reflection of the anger which the failure of the Dacca talks inspired in General Yahya Khan and the army. According to a reliable intelligence source, the talks failed not over the question of autonomy or the details of federation, but over that of Yahya's own position. It appears the president was inclined to accept a proposal by the Bengali leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman that he end martial law and transfer power to the provinces pending the framing of a constitution. During the period Yahya was to stay on as provisional head of state.
But Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the consummate western politician, pointed out to Yahya that as head of state in such a provisional setup he would have no legal status. He said the proposal was a trap set by "the bloody Bengalis" to get rid of martial law and establish their political supremacy. His suggested solution: that the newly-elected National Assembly duly elect Yahya Khan as head of state before martial law is ended and power was transferred.
Yahya is said to have appreciated this point and suggested to Sheikh Mujib that the National Assembly meet for one day. Mujib would not agree. This convinced Yahya Khan that the Bengalis were indeed laying a trap for him. He then angrily decided to go along with the hawks in the army who had been putting pressure on him all along.
The hawk group in the army includes four lieutenant generals-Tikka Khan, Hassan, Irshad Ali Khan and Pirzada (the last being General Yahya Khan's personal staff officer). The first army contingents these officers dispatched to East Pakistan on their own initiative arrived on March 19, only four days after Yahya Khan himself reached Dacca for the talks. Plans for the offensive were reportedly completed by March 23, two days before D-Day.
Informed sources now believe the hawks had reluctantly agreed to go through the motions of the December elections in the hope that no party would win a decisive majority and that the inevitable coalitions would make continuance of army control possible. When the elections result upset this applecart, they decided to put their foot down. When Yahya Khan bowed to them for his own reasons, the decks were cleared for the bloodbath.
Admittedly neither the Awami League nor the people of Bengal were prepared for a showdown with the army. Only after the Dacca talks were halfway through did some local leaders in scattered areas begin making some preparations on their own. In the Chuadanga-Kushtia area for example, communication lines and rail links were cut well before the army began its offensive.
For several days the resistance remained pathetically disorganised. The East Bengal Regiment contained the only trained and properly equipped soldiers among the liberation forces. It consisted of six battalions, and its top officers had been West Pakistanis. The East Pakistan Rifles was a paramilitary organisation, armed only with old weapons. For the rest the liberation forces comprised policemen and homeguard units known locally as Ansars and Mujahids.
Slowly a makeshift communication system developed. It started with a courier service, mostly using bicycles. In the first week of April the three sector commanders of the eastern districts, all majors, were at last able to meet and work out a co-ordinated strategy. The three majors - Khalid Shaffesque who was reported promoted to brigadier by the Bangla Desh government, Ziaur Rahman and Safiullah - along with Major Osman who operates in the western sector seem to be the high command of the resistance movement. Nothing has lately been heard of Major Jia Khan who was first mentioned as head of the provisional government of Bangla Desh.
Last week's announcement of a six-member cabinet could mean another step in the process of consolidation. But there is no evidence yet that this government has a base in Bangla Desh itself. One report alleged that the cabinet in fact met in Calcutta. Perhaps the announcement was one last attempt to persuade some countries to recognise Bangla Desh.
The question most frequently asked now is whether the liberation forces can hold out for long. In a military sense they obviously cannot, unless material aid from outside is forthcoming. This will have to include more than Indian aid - which by itself would only reduce the Bengali freedom movement to the level of the familiar India-Pakistan confrontation. The Pakistan government has been shrewdly trying to make it look like this already - and with some success. India has helped through the glee some political groups have expressed in the looming division of Pakistan, the emotional resolutions passed by various parties advocating such measures as sending in volunteers, the exaggerated reports in some newspapers. If the Bengali freedom fighters put all their eggs in Indian basket, however natural this might seem, it would be an invitation to other countries to stick to the legalistic postures they have traditionally adopted in the wider Pakistan-India context.
But the question remains whether the West Pakistan establishment itself will be able to hold out very long. The western wing's economy also is in the doldrums as a result of the crisis. Prices have shot up, especially of tobacco, meat, tea and jute goods. Though the tightly controlled press has given no indication of it, labour unrest has reportedly broken out in a serious form. Industrial workers have been marching in processions in places like Lyallpur and Lahore. There has been trouble also in Karachi, Multan and Hyderabad. In some cases the troops are reported to have resorted to firing.
The general elections had aroused great expectations in West Pakistan also. Bhutto's unexpectedly impressive victory was the direct result of widespread popular desire for a return to democracy and for social reform. Now the army seems to have gone back to square one and all talk about a constitution and socialism (Islamic or otherwise) has been forgotten. The students and workers who threatened dire consequences if Bhutto so much as delayed social reforms will now be as frustrated as the Bengalis themselves.
The establishment also has powerful minorities in the western wing to reckon with, the Pathans and the Baluchis who have their own bones to pick with the Punjabi-dominated central government on the issue of autonomy. In late March there were scattered reports of some unrest in the Northwest Frontier Province home of the Pathans and fights within barracks between Baluchi and Punjabi soldiers. The few West Pakistani soldiers who surrendered in the current fighting in the eastern wing were Pathans.
Islamabad obviously has its hands full. What it hoped would take 72 or 48 hours has stretched into a guerilla war which threatens to go on indefinitely. Diplomatic efforts from outside alone may now restore a semblance of order in the country. The brutalities the army has indulged in have made any kind of compromise between the two wings all but impossible. Pakistan, as conceived by Jinnah and known to the world for a quarter century, is no more.