Baltimore Sun

Pakistan's future prime minister, as Awami League party leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was once described by President Agha Mohammed Yahya Khan, sits in a jail in West Pakistan, doing some gardening to while away the time and brooding over his own, and his people's, predicament. Since his arrest on the night of March 25, Mujib has had only one piece of encouraging news—the replacement of Lt. Gen. Tikka Khan by Bengali leader Dr. A. M. Malik as East Pakistan governor.
Whether this department, along with an amnesty proclaimed in East Pakistan by Yahya, signals the government's alarm at continued guerrilla warfare in that province or a genuine bid at reconciliation is toe early to say.
Mujib should, in any case, be the beneficiary. He is being tried "for waging war on Pakistan" and for treason. But if he is punished severely this will only infuriate the Bengalis and bring hordes of new converts to the Mukti Bahini ( the guerrilla army ) and destroy what slim chance there might be of a reconciliation between the two wings.
"His crime will not go unpunished," Yahya has warned. Since Mujib is being tried by the military in secret, and Yahya is the commander-in-chief of the Pakistan armed forces, it is unlikely that Mujib will be acquitted. Still, the Pakistan government asked him to pick any Pakistani lawyer of his choice and Mujib selected A. K. Brohi, former central minister and high commissioner to India. Brohi is one of Pakistan's top lawyers and hails from the West Pakistan province of Sind.
Mujib is the leader of the All-Pakistan Awami League. On the formation of Bangla Desh republic on April 17, he became its first president but, since he was in detention in West Pakistan, vice-president Syed Nazrul Islam became the acting president.
The charge against Mujib is that he defied the lawful authority in Pakistan and set up a parallel government in East Pakistan and sought to take East Pakistan into secession. Mujib, according to Pakistani sources, denies the charges. He tells his interrogators that had he favored secession, he would have declared East Pakistan independent on March 7, when the Pakistan army was weak in East Pakistan. Instead, he sought a political and peaceful solution.
The last time Mujib was tried, in 1968, the government was unable to prove that he had conspired with India to separate East Pakistan from Pakistan by force. The case had to be withdrawn at the height of the political agitation against President Ayub Khan.
Being in political trouble, and jail is not a new experience for Mujib. Born of a middle class family in the village of Tongipara in East Bengal on March 17, 1920, Mujib as a student was an active member of the All-India Moslem League, which was trying to create Pakistan. But after the new country had been created in 1947, Mujib was quick to take on the establishment. He became a leader in the language movement when Urdu was decided upon as Pakistan's sole national language, even though the Bengalis who constituted the majority of the population could neither speak nor write Urdu.
Several Bengalis were killed in the agitation but Bengali was finally accepted in February, 1952, as one of the country's two national languages. Yet Mujib, an insurance salesman by profession, continued his agitation for autonomy for East Pakistan because he was convinced that the vested interests were exploiting the people. Two and a half years ago, when East and West Pakistan were in revolt against President Ayub and constitutional talks were being held in Rawalpindi, Mujib was warning other Pakistanis to be more sympathetic to East Pakistan's demands—otherwise separation would grow in his province.
"I have tried to maintain unity of the wings and will always do so, but it depends on the people's will," he said. "I don't know how much longer their patience will last."
His words proved prophetic. During the election of 1970, he said: "The most solemn pledge the Awami League can make to the people of Pakistan is that we must stand by their side and indeed lead them in resisting the forces of oppression and exploitation.
"No people have secured freedom and justice unless they have been prepared to die for it. We, therefore, serve notice upon the forces of reaction in our society that we, along with the people of Pakistan, will confront them and if democratic processes are obstructed, we shall resist them by every means possible."
Mujib's Awami League fought the last election on the basis of a six-point plan which, in essence, provided for a loose center controlling foreign affairs, defense and currency and the provinces enjoying wide autonomy.
Mujib announced his six-point plan from Lahore in March, 1966, explaining to the West Pakistanis that the scheme was meant to remove what East Pakistan considered as grievances and would strengthen Pakistan in the long run.
In July, 1970, Mujib again came to West Pakistan and presented his case. His Awami League party contested the December, 1970, election from both parts of the country. But while winning 167 of East Pakistan's 169 seats in the 313-man National Assembly, he got no support in West Pakistan. This not only weakened his ease as a national leader hut may have diluted his interest in a united country. Despite invitation from President Yahya Khan and others, he declined to visit West Pakistan after the elections.
Mujib's critics say that what happened in Pakistan in March, 1971, was the result of Mujib's conspiracy with India. They assert that the hijacking of an Indian plane by two Kashmiris on January 31, 1971, to Lahore was an Indian plot to gain an excuse for banning Pakistani civilian flights over India.
But the hijackers were lauded as heroes by Pakistan People's party leader Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and greeted by others as freedom fighters. Mujib was the only Pakistani leader to express grave reservations over the incident, calling for the return of the plane and for a judicial inquiry into the whole business.
If he was a conspirator and secessionist, East Pakistanis argue, -why did he keep haggling with President Yahya Khan when power was being offered him on a platter? He refused, preferring to discuss details of substance regarding Pakistan's new constitution.
Mujib did, in the end, become extremely rigid, deriding the "damn army," accusing West Pakistanis of "sucking the blood" of East Pakistan and boasting that he would "break" the West Pakistanis "and bring them to their 'knees."
But Mujibs' real crime, in West Pakistani eyes, seems to have been his flat refusal to Bhutto and others to make a public and substantial retreat from the 6-point plan on which he had fought the election. And therein lies his strength with the East Pakistanis.
An East Pakistani friend told me recently that he deplored Mujib's lack of statesmanship. his arrogance and his inflexibility which brought such horrors on the East Pakistani people. But the same friend said all of East Pakistan was united on the 6-point plan and wanted to be the master of its own meager resources and its dignity either within the framework of Pakistan or in a Bengali republic.
The East Pakistanis today have neither. That is why Mujib to them is a symbol of their aspirations. They don't believe the charges levelled by Islamabad against him and see in his trial the political trial of the 75 million East Pakistanis.