Prafull Goradia
Helping to separate the eastern wing from the rest of Pakistan was a blunder for us as Bangladesh can prove to be a launch pad for terror
A number of Indians have written articles celebrating the country’s joint victory with Bangladesh in 1971. I have no quarrel in principle with commemorating any triumph, including one on the cricket or hockey field. Although a victory over Pakistan is an intra-sub-continental affair and therefore rather like a para-civil war and not an international triumph. We have not enjoyed such an achievement since Chandragupta Maurya defeated Seleucus, the appointee of Alexander the Great over Bactria in 317 BC.
That is a quibble contrasted with the blunder of helping to separate the eastern wing of Pakistan from the rest of the country. International realpolitik would have suggested that the eastern wing with a majority of the country’s population was a millstone around Pakistan’s neck. First and foremost, the population of the eastern wing was larger than the western’s. Two, the Bengalis appeared prouder of their language than their religion, whether Islam or Hinduism. In fact, Bengal was a reluctant applicant to Pakistan. Fazlur Rahman and Sir Abdul Rahim were negotiating with Sarat Bose to keep the province united to be a third separate dominion over and above Hindustan and Pakistan. Jinnah was encouraging them because a Muslim-majority dominion would mostly side with Pakistan, especially with a Muslim Premier, forever. The Communist Party was also backing this third opinion.
What East Bengal — now Bangladesh — meant to Qaid-e-Azam Jinnah is reflected in the fact that he had never visited it before March 19, 1948. When he did, he addressed the Dhaka University only to tell its students that Urdu would be the sole national language of Pakistan, angering his audience. On March 21, he warned a large crowd at the Dhaka Race Course against what he called the forces of subversive conspiracy bent on destroying Pakistan’s unity. Feeble protests were heard from the crowd. Far louder voices of protest were to be heard only days later. The Qaid had through his Dhaka speech set East Bengal on a course that was to lead, over the next 24 years, to the breakup of Pakistan and the rise of East Bengal as the independent republic of Bangladesh.
Moreover, Ayesha Jalal, the Cambridge scholar who has authored a volume titled The Sole Spokesman, called East Pakistan a rural slum, meaning worthless except for growing rice, which the locals ate, and raw jute with no mills to weave it until later. And, of course, in the Sylhet district there were some tea plantations. But it must be said that the jute and tea earned some hard currency in foreign exchange, more than what the western wing earned in 1947-48. Nevertheless, the tall, fair west Pakistanis looked down upon the easterners as dark, short and inferior. The least one did was to look upon the New Medinawalas (Aligarh University students) where the sub-continental ‘brotherhood of Islam’ were to gather. In that potential fortress of Islam, could one momin look at another momin of the east with such contempt? Yet he did until he was rid of the dark, short brother/sister in 1971, in his heart of hearts good riddance.
West Pakistanis were smug besides being contemptuous. One example was Field Marshal Ayub Khan, at the peak of his power, amalgamating all of west Pakistan into one province with Khan Saheb, the brother of Frontier Gandhi, as the Chief Minister. He called it west Pakistan. Instead, he should have sub-divided east Pakistan into, say, four provinces. So that the eastern wing would have united to vote for the Awami League in 1971 and won all the seats except two and be in a position to vote out the whole of the western wing. The crisis had thus begun with Mujibur Rahman claiming to be the Prime Minister-in-waiting. How could short, black people rule over the tall, fair people? The western wing considered this an abdominal thought and therefore sent Lt General Tika Khan to devastate the Bengalis.
In the late 1990s and during the regime of Begum Khaleda Rahman, Bangladesh awarded India with six chopped heads of its Border Security Force personnel on bamboos like shikared animals across the border. Indians were so dreaded that they took the beheaded heads of their soldiers with equanimity! There have been highs in Indo-Bangladesh relations in the years of Bangabandhu and these six heads on bamboos were the low. When Morarji Desai came to power in 1977, he said that “we had one Pakistan but Indira Gandhi has given us two”.
Our relation with Dhaka appears to be warm since Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power but recently Bangladesh rewarded India by desecrating 92 temples there and killing a few local Hindus. It is possible that the mischief was resorted to by one or more terrorist groups and had nothing to do with the majority party, the Awami League. Nevertheless, the rioting proved, once again, that Bangladesh can prove to be, from time to time, a haven and launch pad for terrorism. What did India gain by freeing Bangladesh from the yoke of Islamabad? If not infiltrators, terrorists?
(The writer is a well-known columnist, an author and a former member of the Rajya Sabha. The views expressed are personal.)
