Pakistan: Prophet of Violence
Friday, Apr. 18, 1969
Wreathed by a wispy beard, his face reflects an almost otherworldly serenity. As he plays with his grandchildren in a tiny village 60 miles north of the East Pakistan capital of Dacca, Abdul Hamid Bhashani, 86, looks the part of a Moslem maulana or guru, and to millions of Bengali peasants, he is. But the kindly grandfather is also Pakistan's most outspoken advocate of violence.
As much as any one man, Bhashani inspired the riots that last month forced President Ayub Khan to step down from the presidency. Now Bhashani is the most severe single threat to a fragile peace brought to the troubled and geographically divided land by the imposition of martial law. Under fear of harsh penalties, Pakistan's other politicians, including Bhashani's chief Bengali rival, moderate Sheik Mujibur Rahman, have kept silent. Not Bhashani, who continues to receive newsmen and followers at his bamboo-walled hut. "What have I to fear?" he asked TIME Correspondent Dan Coggin, as he adjusted his soiled straw skull cap and straightened the green sweater that he wore inside out. "I would welcome being hanged for my people."
Secessionist Sentiments. Such potentially explosive expressions run exactly counter to the aims of General Yahya Khan, the army commander who has taken over as President. In his first press conference, Yahya last week declared that he gives top priority to keeping the peace. He also said that it would take some time before the country could be returned to constitutional rule. But Bhashani has served notice that he may start new trouble soon unless the President begins to confer with Pakistani politicians, including himself, about ways to settle the country's problems. Bhashani plays on the secessionist sentiments in East Pakistan. He rails against domination by the much better-off West and demands that the new government redress the old inequities—or else. Says he: "What the people did against Ayub, they can do against General Yahya. But this time, the demonstrations will be even deadlier."
Would the Pakistanis really revolt against the army? "Is it possible for the army to kill 125 million Pakistanis?" counters Bhashani angrily. "Have the North Vietnamese quit fighting? We are Southeast Asians like them. When the flame of discontent is lit, the people will stop at nothing."
Living Saint. Bhashani's rhetoric, of course, outruns the facts. So far, Pakistanis have shown no desire to take on the troops, and Bhashani's own following is limited mainly to peasants in the East. But there are a formidable 30 million to 40 million country folk who revere him as a living saint. During the past 60 years, he has built up his following by siding with the impoverished peasants, first against the British raj and later against the rich absentee landlords. Living and dressing simply, he walks from village to village, dispensing a pastiche of religion and politics that he calls "Islamic socialism."
Other Moslem holymen contend that Islam and Bhashani's brand of socialism do not mix. His critics also charge that he is seizing ,on secessionist tendencies chiefly because an independent East Pakistan would be so weak that it would be susceptible to influence from China and the neighboring Indian state of West Bengal, which is now ruled by a Communist government. Bhashani, while not a Communist, is a radical leftist with close personal and political ties to Peking.
An eclectic theologian, Bhashani completely ignores the fatalistic aspect of Mohammedanism. "My religion is revolutionary, and I am a religious man," he argues. "Therefore, it is my religion to rise up against wrong." He scorns the established order that the Koran bids the faithful to support. In his view, the status quo must be completely upset so that the new order in which he believes may take root. Bhashani also makes no apology for his allegiance to China, heightened during his first visit to Peking in 1952. Says he: "I admire everything about China except its godlessness."
Chinese Protection. After Mohammed Ayub Khan took power ten years ago, Bhashani became the unofficial go-between who helped Ayub establish better relations with Peking. It was a role that shielded him from arrest while other Pakistani leaders were being packed off to Ayub's prisons for criticizing the army-backed regime.
When the big riots broke out last month, Ayub may have wished that he had jailed Bhashani anyway. Operating apparently on Chinese orders to start a Maoist revolt, Bhashani's well-trained party workers led some of the worst rampaging, in which hundreds of people, including a dozen minor officials, were murdered and many houses burned down. Bhashani shrugs off the violence as "male-ganimat," or retribution, which is condoned by the Koran.
