by John Keay
Over the previous months Bhutto, once Ayub’s most trusted adviser, had emerged as his most outspoken critic. Riding a wave of hostility directed partly at the Ayub regime which Bhutto had once upheld, partly at the war which he had promoted, and partly at the Tashkent talks which he had attended, he now discovered his vocation as the voice of the people. Morarji Desai had once described Mrs Gandhi as ‘a dumb slip of a girl’; supporters flocked to her because of who she was and what she stood for, not what she said. Bhutto was the opposite. He told his supporters what they wanted to hear. His histrionic oratory laced with cleverly marshalled arguments convinced even himself. Indira Gandhi’s ‘Out with Poverty’ might be a well-intentioned slogan, but Zulfi Bhutto’s cry for ‘Bread, Cloth and Housing’ addressed the needs of the masses. Backed by his demands for social justice and the nationalisation of all the most remunerative sectors of the economy, it carried conviction.
So did his heavily publicised meetings with China’s leadership. While Ayub sucked his pipe and cast a fly like the Sandhurst product that he was, Bhutto sported a Chairman Mao forage-cap and looked to Beijing for the arms shipments still denied to Pakistan by the US embargo imposed during the ’65 war. Of the great powers, China alone supported Pakistan’s position over Kashmir, which was reason enough for a Sino–Pak alignment. Bhutto’s own belligerent stance on Kashmir was not forgotten either. It played especially well in the Kashmir-adjacent Punjab and NWFP; it also served to deflect attention away from the secessionist province in the east to the one in the north that had yet to accede. In an essay published in 1969 Bhutto argued that India’s continued occupation of most of Kashmir lay at the core of all Pakistan’s problems.
Why does India want Jammu and Kashmir? She holds them because their valley is the handsome head of the body of Pakistan. Its possession enables [India] to cripple the economy of West Pakistan and, militarily, to dominate the country … If a Muslim majority area can remain a part of India, then the raison d’être of Pakistan collapses. Pakistan is incomplete without Jammu and Kashmir both territorially and ideologically. Recovering them, she would recover her head and be made whole, stronger, and more viable.12
To that end he revived the promise of ‘a thousand-year war’ and taunted Ayub with having betrayed the Kashmiris in the Tashkent agreement. The people loved it. In mass rallies he lambasted the regime, castigated the US and savaged an economic system that enriched the few and did nothing for the many. Students, labour unions and the intelligentsia responded with enthusiasm. Of all the parties, only Bhutto’s PPP reached out across West Pakistan’s ethnic, social and linguistic divides. Even among the military his commitment to the country’s defence and to the nation’s integrity won respect and allies.
It was thus inevitable that, without Bhutto or Mujib, Ayub’s last attempt at conciliation would collapse. At the instigation of General Yahya Khan, martial law was reimposed and, as Ayub’s authority drained away, on 25 March 1969 he resigned. In defiance of his own Constitution he nominated Yahya Khan as Chief Martial Law Administrator and his successor as President. Two years later, it would be Yahya Khan’s regime that initiated the crackdown in East Pakistan which precipitated that province’s rebirth as independent Bangladesh.
Like Ayub ten years earlier, Yahya immediately clamped down on various corrupt practices and promised a new Constitution plus early elections at both provincial and national level followed by a return to parliamentary government. But this time the elections were to be on the basis of ‘direct adult franchise’ and, unlike Ayub, Yahya was as good as his word. New constituency boundaries were drawn, electoral rolls prepared and a date for the poll set in late 1970. Meanwhile a Legal Framework Order was promulgated, within whose guidelines the soon-to-be elected members of the National Assembly were to agree what would be Pakistan’s third Constitution. The 1956 Ayub–Mirza Constitution was therefore abrogated, Ayub’s elaborate ‘Basic Democracy’ was allowed to lapse, and his ‘one-unit’ West Pakistan was rescinded in favour of West Pakistan’s reinstated provinces.
The Legal Framework Order stipulated that the new Constitution would be subject to presidential approval, but was otherwise surprisingly inclusive. Islam was to be respected, elections were to be based on universal adult franchise, provincial autonomy was to be guaranteed save in respect of the central government’s conduct of external and certain internal affairs, and the economic and employment disparities between the provinces were to be removed. Against considerable opposition from his supporters within the military, Yahya’s advisers had come up with a formula that might just have worked.
Even Mujibur Rahman could live with it. Of the 326 seats in the new Assembly, 169 would be filled by members from East Bengal, so finally reflecting that province’s numerical superiority and giving it a majority over the combined membership from all the other provinces; the Awami League duly put up candidates for all of the East Bengal seats. But Mujib, under pressure from his extreme supporters, kept his distance from the Yahya regime. He preferred to conduct the election as if it were a referendum on the Six Points and let it be known that secession was still a possibility. Bhutto, on the other hand, though a one-time supporter of Mujib’s Six Points, now vehemently rejected them and, strengthening his links with the military, posed as the saviour of the undivided nation.
Thus twenty-three years after its creation, while India geared up for its fifth round of direct national elections, Pakistan launched into its first. Since ‘the activities and electioneering of the participants were nothing like anything yet experienced in the history of Pakistan’, predictions about the outcome were understandably tentative.13 In West Pakistan, against a kaleidoscope of parties representing purely provincial interests plus various shades of Islamic orthodoxy, ideological preference and Muslim League tradition, Bhutto was expected to be a major contender; in Sind, feudal landowners should secure the vote for Bhutto as one of their own; and in Punjab, whose eighty-one seats comfortably exceeded the combined total for the other West Pakistan provinces, Bhutto could expect to carry the urban vote and, by dint of hard bargaining with landed interests and Sufi divines, make inroads into the rural vote.
Mujib’s task in a heavily politicised East Bengal looked more daunting. In addition to the Islamic parties and the Muslim League factions, his Awami League was there in danger of being upstaged by the quasi-Maoist and outright secessionist National Awami Party led by the eighty-nine-year-old ‘Red Maulana’, Abdul Hamid Khan Bhashani. Maulana Bhashani, however, was a man of inflexible principle. He would have nothing to do with Yahya’s Legal Framework Order. Despite the boost to Mujib’s prospects (or possibly to ensure it), he therefore instructed his supporters to boycott the elections. That cleared the way for Mujib’s Awami League to make an exclusive claim to the votes of all those who increasingly called themselves ‘Bangla-desh’ (‘Bengali-land’) patriots.
As so often in ill-starred Bengal, it was a natural disaster that had the final say. First, monsoon flooding necessitated a postponement of the vote from October to December. Then in November a cyclone named Bhola moved slowly up the Bay of Bengal. It struck the coastal districts of East Bengal on the evening of 12 November. Coinciding with the high tide, a storm surge up to ten metres high tore across the offshore islands and swept inland up the low-lying delta. Tens of thousands of villages were erased, fields, fishing fleets and livestock carried away. Around half a million people are known to have lost their lives, and over three million to have been left homeless and destitute. In all probability what is widely recognised as ‘the deadliest cyclone ever recorded’ accounted for more fatalities than the combined toll for the massacres of Partition, the ’47–48 Kashmir war, the ’62 India–China war and the ’65 Indo–Pak war.
The elections nevertheless went ahead as rescheduled; it was thought that another postponement might attract accusations of bad faith. But such accusations could hardly have compared with those of complacency and incompetence levelled at Islamabad over the relief effort. The regime a
ppeared not to take the disaster seriously, then to skimp on assistance when belatedly shamed into action by the international community. Eighteen helicopters were rushed to the scene by the US and the UK; Islamabad managed just one. It blamed India for refusing transit rights; India denied this and blamed Pakistan for not allowing it to fly its own considerable relief effort into East Bengal. Red tape and the misappropriation of resources further angered the survivors. Whatever their voting intentions might have been, East Bengalis now united in protest against a criminal indifference that seemed to epitomise West Pakistan’s two decades of neglect in the province. Maulana Bhashani turned out before a crowd of 50,000 to excoriate the regime’s response. Mujib noted wryly that ‘We have a large army but it is left to the British marines to bury our dead.’
The cyclone effect, allied to Bhashani’s boycott, carried the elections. Mujib’s Awami League won an astonishing 160 of East Bengal’s 162 seats (a further seven being reserved for women). Even Mrs Gandhi would never achieve such a result. It was the most impressive performance ever recorded in a free election of comparable magnitude. Mujib was assured of an overall majority in Pakistan’s National Assembly whatever the outcome in the provinces of West Pakistan. Yet there Bhutto too did better than expected, his PPP capturing eighty-one of a possible 138 seats. There were thus two clear winners. And just as Mujib had won not a single seat in the west, so Bhutto had won not a single seat in the east. Pakistan’s first proper election had exposed the structural fault that decades of constitutional wallpaper and military whitewash had failed to obscure, let alone rectify.
The nightmare scenario foreseen by many, including Ayub and Yahya, had now materialised. ‘Bengali supremacy was no more acceptable to Punjabis [or Pathans, Sindis, etc.] than Punjabi supremacy had been to Bengalis. Compromising on Mujib’s Six Points would induce a revolution in the East; denying Bhutto a share of power would trigger a revolution in the West.’14
Any chance of a political settlement now depended on negotiations between Mujib, Bhutto and Yahya Khan. None of them was a free agent. Yahya had to contend with a military junta deeply suspicious of his intentions, Mujib with zealous supporters whose expectations no longer stopped at autonomy, and Bhutto with importunate power-brokers in the West Pakistan provinces. All three were guilty of inconsistent statements tailored to circumstance. Their motivations and strategies are thus hard to discern. Yahya strove for a peaceful accommodation while his junta busied itself with plans for military intervention; Mujib hinted at compromise on his Six Points while publicly ruling out anything of the sort; and Bhutto posed as a mediator while nursing designs as a principal.
Yahya’s first response to the result was conciliatory. He accepted Mujib’s claim to the prime ministership of all Pakistan, and agreed that the National Assembly convene in Dhaka rather than Islamabad. Mujib took this as a commitment, and expected to hold Yahya to it. Bhutto objected. Since Mujib insisted on making his Six Points the basis of the new Constitution, Bhutto demanded that the Constitution be settled before the Assembly met. Otherwise the PPP would not participate, which would be ‘like staging Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark’, said Bhutto. Yahya thus had both a good reason (i.e. Mujib’s recalcitrance) and a handy excuse (i.e. Bhutto’s boycott) for postponing the Assembly.
But on 1 March 1971 an announcement to that effect just two days before the Assembly was due to convene was the last straw for Mujib and his supporters. ‘It struck the Bengalis with the force of an atomic bomb,’ according to one observer.15 An indefinite general strike was called; millions took to the streets and widespread fighting was reported. Pakistani flags were burnt and replaced by ones displaying a golden outline of East Bengal/Bangladesh within a blood-red disk against a lush green surround. The police were overwhelmed; the army opened fire. West Pakistan in the persons of Yahya and Bhutto had betrayed the Bengalis once too often. ‘The struggle now is the struggle for our independence,’ Mujib told a mass rally on 7 March. ‘Turn every house into a fort. Fight with whatever you have.’
While in India Mrs Gandhi was savouring her electoral triumph, in Pakistan Yahya was presiding over an electoral disaster. He named a new date for the opening of the Assembly, but it was only by way of playing for time. Echoing Bhutto, he now referred to Mujib as a ‘bastard’ and ‘traitor’, while his generals pressed ahead with plans for a military solution.
But this too proved to be far from straightforward, for mounting what they called ‘Operation Searchlight’ had just got a whole lot harder thanks to a seemingly unrelated incident. On 30 January an antiquated Fokker Friendship belonging to India’s state airline had been hijacked to Pakistan’s Lahore while on an internal hop from Srinagar to Jammu. There were no casualties; crew and passengers had been released; and the hijackers, being Kashmiris, had been fêted. But the plane itself had been deliberately burnt, and in protest India hastily placed a ban on all Pakistani overflights of its territory. Though it would later be claimed that the whole affair was in fact the work of RAW, the Research and Analysis Wing of Indian Intelligence, the ban on overflights stood. For Pakistan, ferrying men, munitions and supplies from west to east now involved an eight-hour flight with a refuelling stop in what was still Ceylon.
By this roundabout route Yahya and Bhutto headed to Dhaka for last-minute negotiations in mid-March. The negotiations turned out to be little more than window-dressing. In the East Bengal capital the visitors were made to feel like unwelcome foreigners, mobbed by black-flag-waving crowds and heavily guarded for their own security. Meanwhile Mujib took the salute from student militias parading under the colourful new ensign of Bangladesh. An eleventh-hour compromise was rumoured, but was overtaken by events. Yahya flew home empty-handed on the 24th, Bhutto following within hours. When the PPP leader landed in Karachi, the Pakistan army’s genocidal ‘Operation Searchlight’ had already begun. Knowing this full well, Bhutto issued another of his rhetorical clangers. ‘By the grace of God, Pakistan has been saved,’ he announced.
*
The war in East Bengal began on 25 March 1971, two years to the day after Ayub Khan had stepped down as President. Yet despite the election results and the frantic attempts at negotiation, it took the world by surprise. Foreign correspondents leisurely dissecting the outcome of the Indian election in Delhi were summoned to the telex and reassigned to Dhaka. A scramble for airline seats ensued, only to be aborted by the cancellation of all East Bengal-bound flights. Dhaka’s airport had been closed. The land which the journalists were starting to call ‘Bangla Desh’ was already under lockdown.
In what would prove to be a two-part war, the first phase from March to June pitched regular Pakistani forces against Bangladeshi irregulars and brought a quick but uneasy victory for the former. The Awami League’s ill-prepared and uncoordinated militias were no match for the armour and superior firepower of the Pakistan army’s ‘Operation Searchlight’. By May all the main cities had fallen, the last being Chittagong, from where a weak signal from a radio station had carried a declaration of Bangladesh’s independence. It was read by the then little-known Ziaur Rahman, a major in the Pakistan army’s East Bengal regiment who had thrown in his lot with the resistance.
Mujib himself had been quickly arrested and taken to West Pakistan for trial. Other Awami League leaders had made their escape across the ever permeable border into India, there to be joined by thousands, then millions, of fleeing Bangladeshis. The Pakistan army had locked down the cities, but it had done nothing to win over their teeming populations; nor did it control the countryside and the rural masses. Instead of pacifying the population it seemed bent on decimating it. Hearts and minds were ignored, intimidation and vengeance prevailed. The despised Bengalis had challenged the two-nation theory, and hence the very existence of Pakistan; now they must pay the price.
The atrocities were not peculiar to the Pakistan army. They had begun even before the war. As law and order collapsed, Awami League activists had retaliated against the shooting of demonstrators by lynch
ing West Pakistani officials and anyone seen as collaborating with them. The violence – killings, burnings and rapes – partook of the horrors of Partition and targeted Partition’s most vulnerable groups, including East Bengal’s still large community of Hindus (the whipping boys of both sides), along with its smaller community of ‘Bihari’ Muslim migrants (the already twice-over victims of Partition) and the predominantly Buddhist ‘tribal’ peoples of the Chittagong Hill Tracts.
With the launching of ‘Operation Searchlight’, the Pakistan army had responded in kind and on a much more ambitious scale. Disaffected units of locally recruited regiments that had not already deserted to the enemy were ruthlessly purged. So were suspect Bengali members of the administration. Students and intellectuals being in the forefront of the movement, Dhaka University was an early target. Its halls of residence were shelled, hundreds killed and hundreds more, both students and academics, bussed away to be later exhumed from mass graves. With official sanction, killer squads prolonged the carnage in the cities; sweeps into the countryside left a swathe of burnt-out villages and a trail of raped and mutilated victims. Those on the run dodged between aerial bombings and overland raids.
We spent a night in a village but next mornng we heard that the [Pakistani] troops were headed for that village. Again we left along with the owner of the house. After a couple of days when we returned, we found the whole village burnt to ashes. Many of the people who could not escape were killed. The carcases of livestock were strewn all over. The stench was unbearable. It was hell!16
Once again Hindus, seen by the Pakistan army as India’s fifth columnists, suffered disproportionately. Muslim Biharis, whose pre-Partition roots in India were no different from those of muhajir elements in the Pakistan army, fared better. A few were transported to West Pakistan for their own safety; others were recruited as informants and auxiliaries, for which services they would pay dearly when the tide of war turned.