New Statesman

Calcutta: When a political bomb goes off, the world wonders why peace endured so long. East Pakistan, like Northern Ireland, has been an anomaly for years. But it was a quiet anomaly. Now it seems surprising, even miraculously, that it ever postponed its bid for independence. Not that things are all over bar the shouting. It is just conceivable that some compromise may be worked out between Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in Dacca and President Yahya Khan in Islamabad, with Zulfikar Bhutto contributing a rare flash of silence to the mixture. It is also possible that East Pakistan will be driven to play for the highest stakes and lose; that in one or two years it will join the expensive limbo which already houses Kurdistan or Biafra. What is not possible is that the world should ignore, as it has done for 20 years, the huge gap between Pakistan’s two halves. The thousand miles of territory which divide them are almost the least part of it.

The name Pakistan even leaves the Easterners out of it. P for Punjab, A for Afghans, K for Kashmir and S for Sind. The whole word means iand of the pure’, which may or may not include the Muslims of East Bengal, cut off by Curzon’s famous partition of the province and then left after India’s partition with nowhere to go but out. They number more than half of Pakistan’s population, some even out of 12 million, but live on about one sixth of its territory. It is rich but vulnerable land, as last year’s floods showed all too dramatically: Bengal’s Mogul conquerors described the province as ‘hell overflowing with bread’. According to East Pakistani calculations, it is certainly left with the hind tit (to quote the American South’s picturesque phrase). Of the state’s bounty it receives less than a quarter of Pakistan’s revenue expenditure and one third of its development expenditure; one quarter of all goods and one fifth of all foreign aid. The ' last two shares are particularly galling, since East Pakistan’s jute provides almost all the country’s foreign exchange.. Of course, a poorer area usually pays less, as well as getting less. But prices are higher in East Pakistan. Rice, for example, costs twice as much as in the West. And jobs are still handed out with less than Solomonesque precision. East Pakistanis hold 15 per cent of central government jobs and make up 10 per cent of the armed forces.

From Dacca, it looks very much as if the people of Bengal are an exploited proletariat keeping a military clique in Karachi in undeserved luxury. Not so much a bastion of freedom against China as a possible springboard for the reconquest of Kashmir. East Pakistanis, like West Pakistanis, are quite happy to play with Chinese friendship when it suits them, but they are no keener to be subjugated than anyone else. Kashmir is not their problem, and they do not see, why it should be their burden. Regional grievances build regional loyalties. Last year’s elections gave East Pakistan a chance to voice unanimous rage while for West Pakistan it was merely a welcome return to diversity of opinion. Bhutto’s People’s Party won 83 seats out of a possible 137 in the Western wing while Sheikh Mujib’s Awami League won 151 out of a possible 153 in the East. But the two victories are not quite comparable. Whom would the Queen send for in a British Parliament divided between English socialists and Scottish nationalists, with the Scotnats in an overall majority?

For all his opportunism, Bhutto was the leader of a united party, with a programme for the whole country. Sheikh Mujib was both more or less. His success concealed a wide ideological spread, and he has to keep moving rapidly to avoid being outflanked on his Left. More important still, his six points of regional autonomy were anathema to some of the present regime. Bhutto saw a slim chance and gambled on it by refusing to attend the promised Constituent Assembly unless the unity of Pakistan was guaranteed in advance. President Yahya Khan yielded to Bhutto and called the assembly off. Sheikh Mujib’s response was a general strike in East Pakistan: a tactic whose Gandhian complaisance forced Yahya Khan to return to his original intentions and reconvene the assembly for 25 March; an historic date, the anniversary of Ayub Khan’s original take over. Now it was Sheikh Mujib’s turn to say no, unless martial law was lifted and an inquiry held into last week’s shootings. This was not the time for masterly inactivity. It might be inconvenient to harmonise the very different mandates of the country’s two elected leaders, but they clearly stood for something.

Certainly for the moment Sheikh Mujib is master in his own house. The last week has been an impressive display both of his non-violent methods and of his power. Dacca has been paralysed at his command; the Awami League’s symbol is a boat, and every house in Dacca has its wooden model on display, but the situation has been more like a log jam. East Pakistani soldiers and policemen apparently already take their orders from Sheikh Mujib. The military governor has reportedly been deserted by his household staff, and reduced to the desperate expedient of eating food prepared by military guards. Dacca Radio has renamed itself ‘Dacca News Centre’ instead of ‘Dacca Station of Radio Pakistan’, and the Sheikh has told Bengalis not to work for papers which give only West Pakistan’s side of the story.

The current information battle is a grisly one, reminiscent of Amman, over the numbers killed by Pakistan government troops in the suppression of last week’s riots. West Pakistan admits to 172, East Pakistan claims at least 500. Apart from that, during the first half of this week West Pakistan maintained the angry silence of a schoolmaster ignoring disorderly pupils. It was Yahya Khan who promised to fly to meet Sheikh Mujib rather than the other way round. Due to the current Indo-Pakistan quarrel over an aircraft hijacked from Kashmir to Lahore, all such flights must avoid India and go via Ceylon, reinforcements and presidents alike. The logistics, as well as the morals, of reasserting central authority provides their own problem.

And Yahya Khan will find he has more than East Pakistan’s original six points to consider. Latest reports speak of 41 points in an Awami League draft for a new federal constitution. This would divide the ‘United States of Pakistan’ into five areas: Bengal, Sind, Punjab, Pakhtoonistan and Baluchistan. Each state would control its own agriculture, industry, banking, insurance, steel mills and communications, as well as its own militia. Urdu and Bengali would be equal official languages. The original proposal for separate currencies has been dropped, but each state would have its own reserve bank and a separate foreign exchange account. The central government would exercise such power as was left over currency, foreign affairs and defecnce. Even here, some separation would prevail, since the navy’s headquarters would be in Bengal, the army’s in Punjab and the airforce’s in Sind. To each his own.

This programme may be like much of Britain’s economic policy: too much too late. It is almost certainly too much for the present military rulers. By now it may be too late for the people of East Pakistan, who are growing both more obstinate and more confident in their daily defiance of central government. Every day of postponement heightens the ambition of either side. One may take the leaders at optimum value, granting Sheikh Mujib’s sincere desire to avoid bloodshed and Yahya Khan’s sincere desire to return an undivided country to civilian rule. One may even accept that East Pakistan would be an unviable entity ripe for encroachment by its neighbours (though who would want a slice of such misfortune?), and that years of neglect must and will be made up by a government embracing both areas. But the time has outstripped sincerity. It is very difficult to see at present how either side can climb down, or how further violence can be avoided. Unless one of them does, the figures coming out of Dacca may be higher still next week.