Revisiting 1971: The crow is white, Bengal is Pakistan
Most Pakistanis feel uneasy coming to terms with the reality that is Bangladesh. They hide themselves behind a shoddy narrative of 1971, and neatly categorise the whole thing as a 'conspiracy'. It might well have been one. But who conspired against whom and when? What were the Bengalis up to? And how did they reach breaking point?
The political picture in 1947
The areas that constituted Pakistan in 1947 were ruled by the British under different arrangements. Bengal, Punjab, Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (then 'NWFP') were provinces with elected assemblies.
Balochistan was governed by an appointed Commissioner; tribal areas by Political Agents; and a number of so-called princely states by Rajas under the paramountcy of the British Crown.
These states came in all sizes. The princely state of Amb was so tiny that it drowned in the Tarbela Dam Lake in the 1970s. The Bahawalpur state was one of the largest princely states of India and its area now forms three large districts of Punjab. The Baloch states were very thinly populated, while Punjab was quite crowded.
But every one of these entities had a standing as a 'state', however rudimentary its stage might be.
When the 'Bengali problem' arose
It had begun in 1947 already. The people who were handed over the reigns of the new country on August 14 were tasked with working out a system which allowed all the above-mentioned entities to coexist peacefully and prosper together.
But when they sat down to figure out this formula for an equal distribution of power, every option they considered led to the same concern: the Bengalis were more in number than all the rest put together, and under a democracy, nothing could bar them from getting a majority share in the new state.
Now that did not sit well at all with the infant country's larger, grander designs of spearheading a new Islamic renaissance and hoisting its flag on every other building in South Asia.
The dark-skinned Bengalis, who shared their language and culture with their Hindu compatriots did not cut a figure to fit the coveted slot. This glorious feat could only be performed by the blue-blooded Muslim elite that had migrated from India, with a few others playing second fiddle and the rest serving as foot soldiers.
So, that was the first crossroad that our nation found itself at; that if the simple democratic path was to be taken, we would miss the golden opportunity to revive all of our lost glories (by losing the government to a Bengali majority). And if we stuck to this cherished goal, we would need to get around democracy and find some undemocratic solution to 'the Bengal problem'. At the end, it didn't turn out to be very difficult.
First draft — how an impasse was created
The ruling elite unearthed a trove of edicts, historical references and quotable quotes that allowed them to bend the rules to serve 'the larger national interest' and avoid rigidly following democracy, which was anyway a 'Western concept quite unsuitable to our kind of polity'.
One of our visionaries had forewarned us about the pitfalls of democracy, which counted everyone as one without distinguishing them on the basis of their piety.
When the first draft of the Constitution (Interim Report of the Basic Principles Committee) was presented to the Constituent Assembly in September 1950, it provided for two elected houses: the House of Units where all provinces would have equal representation (as provinces have in the Senate these days) and the House of People.
The Committee did not forward any suggestion about how the provinces would be represented in the latter House, whose members were supposed to be directly elected by the people. The Bengalis, who were being offered half the seats (when population-wise, their proportionate share was more than that), were not ready to surrender their right.
Thus evolved the impasse.
Second draft — Nazimuddin's partial 'Principle of Parity'
Prime Minister Nazimuddin was, however, able to make clear suggestions. When he presented the second draft in the Assembly, it provided for 120 seats in the House of Units and 400 in House of People.
Half of both of these were given to Bengal in the east and the other half was divided among the nine units of western Pakistan (the provinces of Punjab, Sindh, NWFP, what is now Fata, Bahawalpur, Balochistan, Balochistan States, Khairpur State and Federal Capital), roughly according to their share in population. But this principle — share proportionate to population — was not adopted in the division of seats between east and west Pakistan.
This blatant imparity and injustice was given the name, 'Principle of Parity'.
This is how the narrative went: Pakistan comprises of two wings, East Pakistan, consisting of East Bengal and West Pakistan, constituted by nine units; and the two wings must get equal representation.
The Bengalis did not accept this and the draft was rejected.
Third draft — Bogra's mathematical masterstroke
The next Prime Minister, Mohammad Ali Bogra, came up with an uber-complex equation to resolve the impasse.
In October 1954, he presented the third draft, which clubbed the nine units of western Pakistan into four groups and gave them and the fifth unit — Bengal — equal seats (10 each) in the House of Units. The 300 seats of the House of People were roughly accorded to each unit according to their share in the population.
In this way, East Bengal got a majority in the House of People (with 165 out of 300 seats), but not in the House of Units where it had just 10 of the 50 seats.
All the laws had to be approved by both the Houses and in a joint sitting (of 350 members). East Pakistan (with 165+10=175 seats) was in parity with the West. In a way, it offered a win-win solution to both the Bengali nationalists and the Pakistani establishment.
But a solution was not what the ruling elite was looking for. The draft was approved by the Constituent Assembly and a team was tasked to write the constitution. Governor General Ghulam Muhammad, however, dismissed the government and dissolved the Assembly the same month.
The One-Unit Scheme
The undemocratic step was sanctioned by the judiciary that innovated and employed the 'Law of Necessity' for the first time.
It took the Governor General a year to put in place the second Constituent Assembly. Unlike the first one, it followed the 'Principle of Parity', that is, only half of the members of the second Constituent Assembly (40 out of 80) were taken from East Bengal, while in the first one they had 44 of 69 seats.
The first important thing that the new Constituent Assembly did was to 'unify' the nine units of the western wing into one province — the amalgam was called West Pakistan, and the initiative the One-Unit scheme. That gave the parity narrative some legal and moral grounds as the country now comprised of two provinces being treated equally, instead of 10 units with one being less equal than the other nine.
The ruling elite — or 'the establishment' as we know it now — made it known, loud and clear, that it would not accept anything more than 'parity' for East Bengal. There is no surprise then, that the Constitution that this Assembly finally passed in March 1956 provided for one elected House —National Assembly — comprising of 300 members elected directly by the people with half coming from East Pakistan and half from the West.
Bengalis held faith in democracy and lost in Pakistan.
The first Assembly could not dare hold general elections. Everybody knew that given the vast disagreements, elections under the prescribed system would be disruptive. General Ayub thought that the blatant use of force was a viable alternative and jumped in. He was wrong. He held the country together at gun point.
A decade later, when he finally had to withdraw the gun, General Yahya agreed to hold direct elections under adult franchise to a National Assembly that would formulate the country's constitution. His Legal Framework Order (since there was no constitution in place at that time) conceived a 300 member National Assembly with 162 elected from East Bengal, accepting the old Bengali demand. But perhaps, it was already too late.
Revisiting 1971: Bengali, Indian, Muslim, Poor, Farmer
It is but natural that every one of us has multiple identities. The many faces that we wear can peacefully coexist, complement and/or conflict with each other. Their interplay is complex and the politics that they generate is even more complicated, knotty and intriguing.
In other words, one can very easily be a Bengali Muslim or a Punjabi Muslim or a Muslim farmer or a Hindu farmer or a Punjabi farmer or a Bengali farmer. Political pursuits and aspirations of each of these groups converge at certain points and diverge at others. The success of a political party or a leader depends upon its ability to cut across a multitude of political interests and ambitions and rally them for a common cause.
If you wish to see this now-it-converges and now-it-diverges phenomenon walk in our history, you need to meet Mr Abu Kasim Fazalul Haq. He was Prime Minister of the undivided Bengal when Quaid-e-Azam chose him to present the Pakistan Resolution at the general meeting of the All India Muslim League (AIML) held on 23 March 1940.
Muslim politicians from Punjab, Sindh, Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan and other parts of India who had gathered in Lahore for this meeting, supported the Resolution and it became Muslim League’s cause célèbre. Only a few of these leaders were actually elected from the platform of AIML in the 1936 elections, but they made common cause with the Muslim League.
Fazalul Haq or
Sher-e-Bangla (as he was popularly known as), was heading a coalition government in undivided Bengal at that time. His 'Krishak Praja Party' (literally meaning Agricultural People’s Party) had emerged as the third largest party of the state in 1936 elections. The top position was secured by Indian National Congress and the second by Muslim League. None had a simple majority and only a coalition government was possible.
Haq did not like the increasingly communal politics of the Muslim League and had campaigned against this party of Muslim jagirdars and nawabs during elections. He wanted to build on Bengali identity and thought that the Congress, (which was, like him, against communalism) would be his natural ally.
But Congress probably found Haq’s farmer-centred politics too ‘red’ to accommodate. Some leaders of the Praja Party were suspected to be communists. Bengali farmers identified zamindars and financiers of agriculture, most of whom happened to be Hindus, as their main adversaries, while Congress found many ardent supporters in the same privileged Hindu class. Moreover, Congress stressed more on the Indian-ness than on being Bengali, Punjabi etc.
So, Congress refused to join hands with Haq and pushed him towards Muslim League, which was actually waiting for this opportunity.
A coalition cabinet was sworn in, but in a week's time, a section of the Praja Party joined Congress to oppose some of their own party’s budgetary measures. On the other hand, the more ‘red’ of Praja’s members thought that the party was reneging on its election agenda. Diverse ambitions gave rise to factionalism, which weakened the Praja party and Haq’s position as the leader of the coalition. He became more and more dependent on Muslim League, that was hell bent on dividing the Bengali polity along the religious lines.
Sometime after the Pakistan Resolution, Haq started opposing the two-nation theory and openly campaigned against it. That, however, doesn’t mean that he did not empathise with the Muslims’ quest for identity in the Indian political theatre.
Haq, who was three years older to Quaid-e-Azam, was the secretary of the Bengal Provincial Muslim League from 1913 to 1916, and the President of the All India Muslim League from 1916 to 1921. He was an active member of the Khilafat Movement of the early 1920s. In 1917, Haq also served as the Joint Secretary of Congress. (It wasn’t considered a sin to be a member of both the Muslim League and the Congress till then.)
But like most Muslim politicians of that time, he saw the question of Muslim identity in the broader context of India nationalism. Over the years, many Muslim leaders took their quest to the next stage – a separate homeland for Indian Muslims, but Haq failed to reconcile with it.
Muslim League was able to project ‘the Muslim homeland’ as the panacea for all ills, and the idea clicked. Haq’s Praja Party got a severe drubbing in the 1946 elections, winning just four seats of which two were his own.
Muslim League, on the other hand, had its dream come true with 110 of 117 Muslim reserved seats in Bengal. Hussain Shaheed Suharwardee of the Muslim League formed the government in the state. Hindu-Muslim riots broke out in August 1946, with blood flowing everywhere the communal lines turned into borders. Haq joined Muslim League in September 1946 and moved to Dhaka after Partition. He started serving the East Pakistan government as Advocate General.
Haq failed in coalescing his various aspirations into the politics of his liking and was outmanoeuvred and overrun by others. Muslim League succeeded in shaping the political discourse along its preferred religious lines and achieved its main goal. But the party misunderstood the Bengali support. Bengalis did not think that being Muslim required them to stop being Bengali or being Pakistani compelled them to quit being Hindu.
A few months after the Independence, Bengali students protested against Urdu being declared as the only national language and demanded that their language should also be given the same status. Haq joined the protest and was injured when it was baton-charged by the police.
The Constituent Assembly found itself in a perpetual logjam. Bengalis were not asking all else to bow before them. They simply demanded their democratic rights – their language, culture shall be respected; their resources shall belong to them; they should get from the federal pool a share proportionate to their population.
The blue-blooded Muslim League thought that it could continue to gamble on the back of the wild card of religion. So if you demanded rights for your homeland, you were accused of narrow provincialism that was against the lofty pan-Islamist ideals, if you dared to ask for your share in resources, you were blamed for obstructing the renaissance of Islam and if you wanted respect for your language, you were definitely a traitor and an Indian stooge.
Bengal was no banana state, neither was Muslim League an imperial power. So Bengalis made up their minds to send a shut up call.
The rulers in Karachi, the then capital, probably knew what was around the corner. The tenure of the assemblies of Punjab, Sindh, Pakhtunkhwa and Bengal elected in 1946, was to expire in 1951. The Constituent Assembly had failed to build a consensus on even the broad features of the new State by that time and in the absence of a new design, the old state assemblies had to continue.
Elections to the Punjab Assembly were held in March 1951 and to the Pakhtunkhwa Assembly, then NWFP, in the latter part of that year. Sindh came under the Governor’s rule in 1951 before elections to its assembly in 1953.
Muslim League managed to win in all of these elections. It was also the ruling party in East Bengal since 1946. The writing on the wall was quite clear and all that the League could do was to delay the next elections, as much as possible.
The cow (the people) refuse any more milk to the president telling him "Oh go away, you don't fool me any more ... that stuffed thing (labeled: Muslim League today) is not my calf!"—Dawn, Karachi, 18 March 1954
Finally, elections to the East Bengal Assembly were announced for March 1954. A large number of disgruntled Bengali Muslim Leaguers had parted ways with their party as early as 1949. Hussain Shaheed Suhrawardy, Molana Bhashani, Sheikh Mujibur Rehman and many others formed All Pakistan Awami Muslim League.
Fazalul Haq who had supported the Bengali language movement all along, formed the Sramik Krishak Party (literally meaning Workers’- Farmers’ Party) in 1953. The two decided to jointly contest against the Muslim League in the 1954 elections and chose Fazalul Haq to lead the alliance known as 'Jugtu Front'.
Jugtu Front presented a 21-point program that promised a national language status for Bengali, rejection of the draft Constitution that had refused to give Bengalis share in parliamentary seats proportionate to their population, dissolution of the Constituent Assembly and its replacement with a new directly elected assembly mandated to draft a constitution for the country.
Muslim League frantically searched for a magic wand. It sent Fatimah Jinnah to East Bengal on a whirlwind election campaign. Bengalis had already had enough. She could do no miracle. In the 309-member house there were 237 Muslim seats, of which Muslim League could win a paltry 10, independents three, Khilafat-e-Rabbani one and the United Front 223! There could be no stronger verdict than this.
The Central government in Karachi refused to replace the Constituent Assembly with the one directly elected by the people, as demanded by the United Front and went about framing and approving a Constitution which was in no way acceptable to Bengalis.
The so-called establishment of Pakistan knew that Bengalis won’t budge; they delayed the next election for 16 long years and when these were finally held in 1970, Awami League won 160 of 162 seats allocated to East Bengal in the house of 300. The verdict again was loud and clear and yet again, the Bengalis found no one listening to them in the federal capital.
They must have realised that they can wake up someone who is asleep but not the one who is pretending to be sleeping.
Revisiting 1971: What if they elected traitors?
Pakistan started counting traitors before it actually became a nation. There has hardly been a time since its birth that it did not find itself on a crossroad, crying foul at the top of its voice.
Those in power had very strong ideas about what kind of state and government they wanted and demanded an electoral democracy only to legitimise their plans.
Poor democracy, however, lacked the capacity to oblige, despite all the sincere efforts made by its administrators. They wanted it to come back again and again to square-one, but democracy would insist on producing more numbers than required. It can't be by coincidence that all of Pakistan's traitor-designates or traitor-suspects were voted feverishly by the people.
Let me illustrate my point with an example:
Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan moved the Objectives Resolution in the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan on March 7, 1949. The Assembly gathered in Karachi for its fifth session in its 20-months life. It was the first day of proceedings, starting at 4 o'clock in the afternoon when Liaquat Ali Khan moved the resolution and made a lengthy speech. Immediately afterwards, opposition leaders – Hindus from East Bengal – rose and raised many objections apprehending that the Prime Minister wanted to bulldoze through the Resolution.
Quoting from the debate (official document):
Mr Sris Chandra Chattopadhyaya: ... We need time to study it, in consultation with our friends in East Bengal and for the sake of clarification. In fact when we left East Bengal this time we had no idea that such a Resolution was to be brought forward. There was no indication of it in the Agenda papers circulated. The budgetary session is almost at an end. The attendance in the House is very thin. Many members of my province - East Bengal - the Prime Minister (of Bengal) who might very well give us advice and guidance have left already. I presume they had no idea about it. There are some Members who did not attend the session at all. Surely they would have attended this meeting to take part in the discussion of such a Resolution if proper notice was given to them. Practically no notice was given to them. I, therefore, venture to suggest that the consideration of an important matter like this should be postponed and the Resolution be circulated for eliciting public opinion, till the next session or a special session may be convened for this purpose ...
The Honourable Mr Liaqat Ali Khan: Sir, I am afraid there is a lot of contradiction in the arguments that have been advanced by the Honourable Members who have moved the motion for circulation of this Resolution. One of the chief arguments that has been advanced is that the House is very thin as most of the members have left and are not here and that they have not had enough time. As far as the Members of my Honourable friend's party are concerned, every single of them is present in the House except one, who unfortunately is not well but is present in Karachi. So far as absence of Members is concerned I do not think that this is really very valid ground.
Mr Sris Chandra Chattopadhyaya: There is no party of mine. I will deal with every one.
The Honourable Mr Liaqat Ali Khan: When I said 'party' I meant the non-Muslim Members of the House, because after all if anything can be said about this Resolution, if any objection can be raised, it can only be from the non-Muslim Members of this House, and I said just now, every one of them is present here ...
So the prime minister did not consider it important for the Muslim members to be present in the Assembly at the time when he tabled the most important constitutional instrument of our history. In fact, he did not want them to forward any arguments, or, God forbid, make any objection. They were expected to nod their heads like brides do, from underneath the pile of exotic fabric that is piled up on them, when approached by the
nikah khwan. No good Muslim should even think about opposing anything (including rule) being done in the name of Islam.
But good Muslims were in short supply in East Bengal as they kept demanding their rights. They wanted a constitution drafted by an assembly that is elected directly by the people. They wanted Pakistan to be a federation that treats all of its units with equality and justice. They wanted maximum provincial autonomy and effective safeguards against economic exploitation. They demanded respect for their language and culture.
All of this was not acceptable to what we have known as our 'establishment'. But none of it could be suppressed because whenever democracy was allowed to prevail, people enthusiastically supported all of the Bengali demands. So, for around a quarter of a century, they tried to remodel democracy to suit them.
Nothing worked. By 1969, the civil-military establishment came to this depressing conclusion that they have to accept at least some of the Bengali demands.
So, general elections were announced. The principle of one-person-one-vote was accepted and people were to directly elect a Constituent Assembly (as opposed to the indirect elections introduced by General Ayub). East Bengal was given representation in the assembly proportionate to its population. So it had 162 of the 300 general seats and seven of 13 reserved for women. Polling was held in December 1970, and the results were as following:
Awami League led by Sheikh Mujibur Rehman swept all the East Bengal seats except two. It definitely was the strongest possible verdict. It gave the Awami League agenda legitimacy of the highest order. Its leaders stood victorious and vindicated. They had passed the toughest of the tests with flying colors.
The elected Assembly was supposed to draft a constitution for the country within 120 days of its first meeting. General Yahya announced to hold the first meeting of the Assembly on March 3, 1971 and Awami League's parliamentary committee announced the salient features of the constitution on February 27.
Since the party had simple majority in the House, there was no way it could be stopped from adopting the basic principles in its inaugural meeting. This would have effectively ended the rule of the Pakistani establishment over at least East Bengal, if not the entire country.
Yahya postponed the inaugural session and engaged in talks with Mujib and Bhutto, which remained fruitless. The General soon admitted his defeat on the democratic front and challenged Bengalis on the other.
Pakistan army declared war on East Pakistan on the night of March 25.
They left behind tremendous evidence of their hatred for free-thinking people, who were fearless while giving verdicts as well. Bengalis swear that these people were in millions. I will share only one with you here.
Within days, the military campaign changed into a full-scale civil war as Bengalis were ready for the worst. The assembly elected in December 1970 did not meet. Pakistan banned the Awami League and disqualified 76 of its 160 elected members for being traitors. So, the Awami League was cut down to size with its strength reduced from the commanding 167 to just 84 in the House of 313. That was at par with PPP, which had 81 in Punjab and Sindh. A divided and hung parliament is always in 'the best national interest'.
The General was, however, living in a fool's paradise. He amended his LFO in September 1971 to facilitate the Election Commission to organise by-elections on these 'vacated seats' of East Bengal. By that time, it was simply out of question for the government of Pakistan to perform in Bengal.
Religious parties saw an opportunity in this absurd and bleak situation. Six of them, led by Jamaat Islami, met and decided to field joint candidates on these seats knowing that their nominees will return uncontested as no one else considered the exercise legitimate. So on November 11, the EC found only one candidate each on 63 of these seats. All of them thus, were returned uncontested. This is how each party fared on these seats:
Jamaat Islami — 15
Pakistan Democratic Party — 12
Pakistan Muslim League — Council 7
Nizam-e-Islam — 6
Pakistan Muslim League — Convention 6
Pakistan Muslim League — Qayyum 5
Pakistan People's Party — 5
PPP initially flayed the by-elections but later found the loot sale too tempting and joined the fray. 63 seats were decided and the EC announced to hold polls on the rest of the 15 from December 7 to 20, 1971. Curtains fell on this theatre of the absurd on December 3, as war broke out on the western front as well and the EC announced postponement of by-elections.
ZA Bhutto became the President and the Chief Martial Law Administrator on December 20, four days after the Pakistan Army surrendered in Dhaka. Bhutto nullified the by-elections on December 23, depriving Jamaat Islami of its biggest ever electoral triumph.
The 'Bengali problem' had already arisen in 1947, when the ruling elite found it hard to digest Bengali majority.
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Bengalis did not think being Muslim required them to stop being Bengali or that being Pakistan meant not being Hindu.
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And elect the Bengalis did. Not one, not two but a whole house full of elected traitors! Yahya could never accept that.
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