A young Nawaz Sharif – with a considerably lighter mop of hair on is head – came to power for the first – but certainly not the last – time in November 1990 after a massive showing in rallies leading up to the elections. He waved and waved to the crowds across the land and apparently owed his elevation to popular public sentiment in his favour. Regardless of the fact that the victory of the right-wing Islami Jamhoori Ittehad (IJI) remains politically tainted to date, it was the time when Nawaz Sharif – and his family – entered big time politics.
Living out the legacy of his mentor
By I.A. Rehman
MIAN Nawaz Sharif became prime minister of the country twice within two decades of the death of General Ziaul Haq, his principal benefactor, and his two terms were like a sequel of the general’s regime. His priorities were theocratisation of the polity, promotion of free enterprise, fulfilment of nuclear ambitions, and assertion of civilian authorities’ rights through centralisation of power in himself. While doing the last part, he clashed with the establishment and lost power in the first term, and both authority and freedom in the second one.
For obvious reasons the business community’s interest came first with Nawaz Sharif. Several steps were taken under the label of economic reform, including a tax holiday for some, abolition of restrictions on bringing foreign exchange into the country or taking it out and on maintaining foreign currency accounts, and no questions asked. Privatisation of not only nationalised units but also other enterprises, such as PIA and WAPDA, was undertaken with extraordinary zeal. Despite allegations of irregularities these steps increased the prime minister’s popularity in the circles that mattered.
Soon after assuming power in both terms, Nawaz Sharif displayed his love for special courts. In the first term, Article 212 B was added to the Constitution through the 12th Amendment. The provision was not much different from Article 212A that Zia had crafted in 1979 for setting up military courts and which was dropped in 1985. These special courts were not subject to high courts and the Supreme Court and were assailed for being a parallel judicial system.
In the second term the special courts were rejected by the Supreme Court 10 months after their formation and this became one of the issues in the skirmishes between the prime minister and the chief justice. However, an already brutalised public was happy. Nawaz Sharif also gained in popularity with the masses by using force rather indiscriminately to curb lawlessness in Karachi, and more goodwill when he decided to punish the MQM after Hakim Saeed’s murder by dropping it from the coalition and ordering a crackdown in Karachi.
Contrary to what the photograph might depict, Nawaz Sharif has hardly ever been a silent, contemplative spectator on the national political scene. SHORTLY before being elected prime minister in November 1990, Nawaz entered into coalition, among others, with the Mohajir Qaumi Movement in urban Sindh. He is seen here at a rally in Karachi with MQM leader Altaf Hussain (left). Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi, who was heading the Combined Opposition Party (COP) in the National Assembly and was soon to become the caretaker prime minister, is on the extreme right next to Syeda Abida Hussain. | Photo: Hasan Bozai.
He also persisted in his campaign against Benazir Bhutto in the first term in the form of president’s references, and against her husband Asif Ali Zardari in the second term through the Ehtesab Cell that he had created to the chagrin of the chief ehtesab commissioner by amending the Ehtesab Act.
Soon after becoming prime minister in 1990, Nawaz Sharif revived Ziaul Haq’s so-called Islamisation drive with a Shariat Enforcement Act, but a major effort in this direction was made in his second term in the shape of the 15th Amendment that had two objectives. First, it sought to add Article 2B to the Constitution declaring Quran and Sunnah to be the supreme law, and, secondly, it proposed that the Constitution could be amended by a simple majority of members present in either house or at a joint session of parliament.
Countrywide protests forced the government to abandon the second part of the bill and the National Assembly only adopted the proposal to add Article 2B to the basic law. It read: “The federal government shall be under an obligation to take all steps to enforce the Shariah, to enforce Salat, to administer Zakat, to promote amr bil ma’aroof and nahi unil munkar (to prescribe what is right and to forbid what is wrong), to eradicate corruption at all levels, and to provide substantial socioeconomic justice in accordance with the principles of Islam as laid down in the Quran and Sunnah.”
The bill resembled the Zia sponsored 9th Amendment that was adopted by the National Assembly in 1986, but it was not sent to the Senate and lapsed. Similarly, the 15th Amendment was withheld from the Senate as the government was not sure of its majority there and it too lapsed. The text of the 9th and the 15th Amendments is not found in our statute books. Thus ended Nawaz Sharif’s bid to push Zia’s Islamisation further and to change the Constitution through a single enactment.
During his second term, several issues – Pakistan’s nuclear ambitions, policy towards India, and the army chief’s desire to steal a military victory over India – got intertwined and offered Nawaz Sharif a mixed bag of joy and disappointment.
He met Indian premier Inder Kumar Gujral during the SAARC summit and they agreed to be friends. Shortly thereafter, Attal Bihari Vajpayee became the prime minister of India. Among the first things the BJP government did was to carry out five nuclear tests in May 1998 that brought Nawaz Sharif under intense pressure from the people and the military to achieve parity with India in terms of nuclear capability.
Ignoring the strong advice of the country’s main economic patrons and partners, he allowed five nuclear tests on May 28, 1998, and a sixth, two days later. This made the prime minister highly popular with the military and the people, but the steps accompanying the blasts, especially freezing of foreign currency accounts that the judiciary eventually overruled, did not.
Vajpayee met Nawaz Sharif in New York and proposed the start of a friendship bus service between India and Pakistan. Nawaz Sharif, with his characteristic impulsiveness, promptly agreed. Vajpayee duly arrived in Lahore by bus in February 1999 and the event did cause a thaw in India Pakistan relations, but it did not yield Nawaz Sharif the political dividend he had expected because the people had not been prepared for the policy shift and the army had not been taken on board.
Then almost from nowhere Kargil happened. The prime minister feigned ignorance of the operation to capture a few Kargil peaks while the army chief, General Pervez Musharraf, maintained that everything had been cleared by his civilian boss.
As was expected, India threw its air force and heavy guns into the battle and Islamabad got worried. Nawaz Sharif literally forced US president Bill Clinton to see him on July 4, 1999, the American National Day, and agreed to pull back his troops. The people, fed on stories that Pakistan always defeated India in armed encounters, were unhappy. Worse, the army top brass put down Nawaz Sharif as a person they could never trust, a perception that was going to cause Nawaz Sharif’s downfall more than once.
Nawaz Sharif’s desire to completely control the government brought him into conflict early in his first term with president Ghulam Ishaq who also considered himself a true inheritor of Ziaul Haq’s mantle.
Among other things, he denied the premier any say in the selection of judges and appointed General Abdul Waheed Kakar as the army chief, following the sudden death of Gen. Asif Nawaz, without informing the prime minister. In April 1993, Nawaz Sharif denounced the president in a TV address and the next day the president dissolved the National Assembly and sent him packing.
The Supreme Court restored Nawaz Sharif in the saddle only 37 days later. His failure to oust the then Punjab chief minister, Manzoor Wattooo, who was openly supported by the president, re-ignited the feud with Ghulam Ishaq. Eventually, the army chief intervened and both vacated their offices in July 1993.
General Kakar, the gentleman general who coveted neither power nor glory for himself, demonstrated that even if the army had to intervene in a political crisis, imposition of military rule was not the only solution, a precedent yet to be emulated.
Between his first and second tenures at the helm during the politically troubled 1990s, Nawaz Sharif kept himself busy with public appearances across the land. He is seen here alongside Khan Abdul Wali Khan of the Awami National Party at a Rawalpindi rally in December 1994.
When Nawaz Sharif regained power in February 1997, the circumstances were wholly in his favour. He had two-thirds majority in the National and Punjab assemblies and his party was able to form coalition governments in Sindh and the NWFP (since renamed KP). Armed with a heavy mandate, he resumed his drive to eliminate the rival centres of power.
No trouble was expected from president Farooq Leghari with whom Nawaz Sharif was reported to have struck a deal before the PPP government was sacked and who had allegedly facilitated the Sharif brothers’ election in the 1997 elections by amending the ineligibility laws related to loan defaulters. The president was paid off with a Senate ticket for a relative, appointment of a friend as Punjab governor, and obliging Zulfikar Khosa to make up with Leghari.
Having done all that, Nawaz Sharif calmly told a befuddled Leghari of his decision to remove Article 58-2(B) from the Constitution that was to deprive him of the power to sack a government. The formality was completed the next day with the adoption of the 13th Amendment, a step hailed by all democrats.
Meanwhile, the prime minister’s relations with chief justice Sajjad Ali Shah deteriorated. While sparring over the selection of five judges for the Supreme Court, both resorted to bizarre tactics; the PM reduced the Supreme Court strength from 17 judges to 12, hoping to remove the need for new appointments, and the chief justice suspended a constitutional amendment. Eventually, the premier gave in. But the suspension of the 14th Amendment on legislators’ defection, which gave the party bosses the last word, annoyed the prime minister and he declared that while he had ended ‘lotacracy’ the Supreme Court had restored it.
Deposed for the second time, Nawaz Sharif, with his brother Shahbaz Sharif, is seen at the entrance of Anti-terrorism Court No 1 in Karachi in December 1999 when he was tried for ‘kidnapping, attempted murder, hijacking and terrorism’. It was the trial that led first to his conviction and a life sentence, and subsequently to the infamous agreement under which the Sharif family remained exiled in Saudi Arabia for about a decade.
Soon enough, the chief justice hauled up the prime minister for contempt. What followed was incredible. The Supreme Court was stormed by an N-League mob that included several parliamentarians. The chief justice’s appeal for succour was heeded neither by the president nor by the army chief. Eventually, Justice Sajjad Ali Shah was dethroned by his brother judges through a process that is still mentioned in whispers, and, ironically enough, he fell a victim to his own judgment in the Al-Jihad Trust case. Before the year 1997 ended, president Leghari resigned to hand Nawaz Sharif his second victory in quick time.
In October 1998, army chief General Jahangir Karamat suggested the formation of a National Security Council. This, too, was first proposed by Gen. Zia and he had inserted an article to this effect in the Constitution, but it was deleted at the time of the bargain over the 8th Amendment on the terms and conditions for lifting the martial law in 1985.
Nawaz Sharif asked the army chief to resign and the latter complied with the order (though he had the last laugh when after some time a National Security Council indeed started functioning.)
By the end of 1998, Nawaz Sharif had freed himself of all possible threats from the presidency, the judiciary and the GHQ, and had become the most powerful ruler of Pakistan ever. But he had built a castle on sand. On October 12, 1999, he ordered Gen. Musharraf’s replacement as the army chief by the then ISI chief who had failed to warn him of the officer corps’ decision not to tolerate the ‘humiliation’ of another chief. The Musharraf plane affair was bungled and the army took over. His arrest, conviction for plane hijack and exile to Saudi Arabia for nearly eight years is another story in political wilderness
The writer is a senior political analyst and human rights activist.
The photograph above shows the indomitable Benazir Bhutto whose two tenures put together couldn’t add up to match the one that her father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had at the helm of the country’s affairs. She started off on a bright note of symbolism, being the Muslim world’s first woman prime minister, but left behind a legacy that was not entirely unblemished. Though she adjusted her style of governance – not as much as she adjusted her headgear, as she is seen doing here – her best was still not good enough for reasons that were often, but not always, beyond her control. | Photo: Shakil Adil
Another Bhutto at the helm
By I. A. Rehman
BENAZIR Bhutto occupies a unique place in the political history of Pakistan. Twice elected prime minister of the country and the first woman head of government in any Muslim-majority state, she inspired the hope that she could put democracy back on the rails. Inability to fulfil this expectation dented her image somewhat. Allowed to complete neither of her two terms and hounded from one court to another for a long time, she was compelled to spend a decade in self-exile. Yet the establishment never stopped fearing her as a potential game-changer; a threat that could only be averted with physical liquidation.
BENAZIR Bhutto ran an election campaign in 1988 that was as electric as her return to the country from exile a couple of years earlier. | Photo: Dawn / White Star Archives
Several factors contributed to her enormous popularity at the start of her political career. Young, charming and well-educated, she commanded sympathy across the land as the daughter of a former prime minister who many thought had been hanged unjustly. She had also won admiration for refusing to surrender to General Ziaul Haq’s autocratic rule despite cruel harassment.
Within 28 months of her return from self-exile, General Zia perished in a plane crash which removed a big roadblock on the path to democracy. Also during these months, she became the wife of Asif Ali Zardari, a marriage that was going to considerably affect her political career.
As the judiciary declined to restore the dismissed government of Mohammad Khan Junejo – though its sack by Zia was not upheld – and struck down the law on parties’ registration which endorsed party-based elections, the prospects for Benazir looked good. Also welcome was the flow of professional election fighters towards her Pakistan People’s Party.
Benazir Bhutto had an eloquent presence in the National Assembly reminiscent of her father, the Quaid-i-Awam. | Photo: DEMP
However, there was no illusion about the task of return to democracy having been made extraordinarily daunting by the outgoing – and dead – dictator. He had transformed the form of government from parliamentary to presidential, and turned the state into a virtual theocracy. Above all, his Afghanistan policy had embroiled Pakistan in a many-sided crisis that was getting worse by the day.
The election to the National Assembly on November 16, 1988, did not give Benazir Bhutto a majority in the house, but her party emerged as the largest single group, having secured more seats (52) from Punjab than were won by the Islami Jamhoori Ittehad (IJI), an alliance clobbered by the establishment as a successor to the anti-Bhutto coalition of 1977 – the Pakistan National Alliance (PNA).
Three days later, apparently the establishment struck and did so most viciously by manipulating the provincial elections in Punjab to ensure that the IJI got more seats (108) than the PPP (84) and, thus, cleared the way for Mian Nawaz Sharif to become the chief minister of the politically most advantaged province. That effectively changed not only Benazir’s career but also the course of Pakistan’s history.
A Zia amendment had empowered the president to first nominate the prime minister before she/he could be elected by the National Assembly. President Ghulam Ishaq Khan did not name her as prime minister for nearly two weeks, until she had ceded to him and the military her authority in key areas, such as Finance, Defence and Foreign Affairs, especially Afghanistan. Yet she decided to take her chance.
LIKE most of her predecessors, one of the things Benazir did on her elevation to the office of the prime minster was to visit Saudi Arabia to perform Umrah. | Photo: The Directorate of Electronic Media and Publications [DEMP].
She started on a sound note, making a humanitarian gesture by offering relief to death row prisoners. She also strengthened her regime through alliances with the Mohajir Qaumi Movement (MQM) for the stability of her government in Sindh, and with the Awami National Party (ANP) to bag the chief minister’s post in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP; since renamed Khyber Pakhtunkhwa).
However, preventing Nawaz Sharif from undermining her government soon became Benazir’s main preoccupation. The Punjab chief minister rejected the federal government’s choice for the provincial chief secretary’s post, tried to launch a radio station and decided to found a commercial bank. These steps converted the Punjab elite to the idea of provincial autonomy, an idea it had vigorously spurned when raised by the other provinces, especially East Pakistan that had been got rid of 16 years earlier.
Besides, working was not easy alongside a president who had little respect for the parliamentary system even though Benazir had swallowed the bitter pill by proposing him for a five-year term as president. He contested her right to have a say in making important appointments, and often choked the government by simply sitting on the papers sent up to him.
Benazir visited the conflict-ridden Siachen sector, becoming the first prime minister on either side of the border to do that.| Photo: DEMP.
Adding to her worries were quite a few other problems. The Balochistan assembly was dissolved on the advice of chief minister Zafarullah Jamali as he was not sure of his majority in the house, but Benazir’s inability to set matters right before the high court restored the assembly shifted the blame on to her. Further, Benazir was not found good at retaining the goodwill of her allies. The break with MQM was no surprise as the pact with it was unworkable and the party had been seduced by Nawaz Sharif and their common benefactors. The alliance with ANP, too, was difficult to sustain but the efforts to save the Sherpao ministry in the NWFP did not add to the prime minister’s credit.
The break with MQM was followed by a surge in violence in Karachi and Hyderabad. The Pucca Qila incident became a sore point for both sides. While dealing with Sharif’s challenge, the government clearly took an exaggerated view of its capacity to tame a rich provincial chief being backed by the establishment. Before Benazir completed her first year in office, the opposition tried to dislodge her through a no-confidence motion that was taken up on November 1, 1989, and was defeated. However, the differences between the prime minister and the military on the one hand, and between her and the president on the other could not be resolved. On August 6, 1990, the president dissolved the National Assembly and Benazir ceased to be prime minister after barely 20 months in office. The charge-sheet against her included allegations of making the National Assembly dysfunctional, ignoring responsibilities to the federating units, lawlessness in Karachi, ridiculing the judges, and corruption.
Benazir Bhutto was a gracious host when Rajiv Gandhi, her Indian counterpart, came visiting. The two at the time had tragic family histories behind them and, unbeknown to them, future gruesome and fatal tragedies awaiting them. | Photo: The Press Information Department, Ministry of Information, Broadcasting & National Heritage, Islamabad.
In view of the appointment of opposition leader Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi as the caretaker prime minister, Benazir had little hope of winning the elections that were held three months later. In fact, her wait lasted three years when she came to power again after the October 1993 elections, which were held after president Ishaq and prime minister Sharif had knocked each other out.
Once again her party emerged as the largest group in the National Assembly. With the help of the Junejo faction of the PML and some independents, Sharif’s party, the PML-N, was denied power in Punjab as well. Soon after her trouble-free election as prime minister, her nominee, Farooq Leghari, was installed in the presidency. She felt far more comfortable at the helm of affairs and more powerful than she had ever felt earlier.
She began asserting herself by getting the PML-N ministry in the NWFP, led by Sabir Shah, suspended and governor rule imposed. The move was struck down by the Supreme Court. Then she set about changing the composition of the superior judiciary apparently to tame it and the subterfuge was quite unconvincing. This became the subject of a bizarre reference to the Supreme Court by president Leghari that the prime minister bitterly opposed. Eventually, Justice Sajjad Ali Shah, her controversial choice as chief justice, pronounced a judgment in what is now called the Judges’ Case that negated all her work.
The other main developments during this term included a failed attempt to oust Punjab chief minister Manzoor Wattoo of PML-J; Sufi Muhammad-led uprising in Malakand for Shariah rule; a huge increase in killings in Karachi; a hike in terrorist attacks; and sectarian violence. Stories of corruption involving Benazir and Zardari also gained currency at an uncomfortable pace. The allegations, even if not proved in courts, clearly reduced the prime minister’s popularity and credibility in equal measure.
Murtaza Bhutto’s return home and his arrest caused Benazir an ugly split with Begum Nusrat Bhutto, and his death after an encounter with the police dealt a severe blow to her government. Eleven days after the incident, on November 5, 1996, the president dissolved the National Assembly and Benazir was again out of power. The charges against her were Karachi killings (though the number had fallen by around 75 per cent from the 1995 figure), disregard for federal institutions, ridiculing the judiciary, and corruption.
The day – November 13, 1993 – when Sardar Farooq Ahmed Khan Leghari (extreme right) took oath of the office of the country’s president from Chief Justice Nasim Hassan Shah (extreme left) would have been a day of relief for Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, seen here sitting alongside acting president Wasim Sajjad, for Leghari was her own nominee and that was critical in the presence of Article 58-2(B). A week short of three years later, the president dismissed her government using the same constitutional clause. The famed Shakespearean utterance, ‘Et Tu, Brute?’ must have crossed Benazir’s mind at the time. Photo: Dawn / White Star Archives
As subsequent events showed, this was the end of Benazir’s role in the country’s government though she remained active in politics till an assassin’s bullet silenced her for ever near the place where the country’s first prime minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, had been shot dead in a conspiracy of another kind.
Benazir Bhutto’s positive work as prime minister included giving the government a humanitarian face. The commutation of death sentences to life imprisonment was followed by banning of lashing (except for Hadd cases) and public hanging. The plan to offer the disadvantaged relief through special tribunals did not work, so a separate ministry of human rights was created. Her effort to amend the procedure in blasphemy cases was scotched by the conservatives, but her instructions not to arrest any accused without a proper inquiry did lead to a fall in such cases.
Women activists complained that she didn’t do anything substantial for them, but they could not deny the favourable ambiance Benazir had created. And her uncompromising resistance to pseudo-religious militants was not matched by anyone, with the possible exception of Afzal Lala of Swat.
The hurdles that held Benazir back included the absence of a culture of democracy; the habit of political parties to treat one another as their worst enemies and a tendency among them to destroy political rivals with military’s help; the personality cult in the PPP and its centralised decision-making without democratic centralism; and the politicians’ failure to remember that what was not permitted to authoritarian rulers was prohibited for them too.The PPP also suffered as a result of its shift away from a left-of-centre platform as it blunted the edge it had over the centrist outfits.
The time after the dismissal of her first government was not quite spent in political wilderness. Among other things, Benazir Bhutto conducted a couple of strategically planned Long Marches to mount pressure on all concerned. Just three years later, she was back in the saddle. | Photo: Dawn / White Star Archives
An assessment of Benazir Bhutto’s prime ministership usually takes two forms: one, that she was incapable of establishing a democratic order, and, two, that the establishment did not let her work. A realistic view will begin by noting the absence of a stable, efficient and fair-minded state apparatus that could relieve her of routine chores and allow her to concentrate on broad political and socio-economic issues.
Also, no politician could (or can even today) roll back the Zia legacy through a frontal attack, except for a popular revolution. Besides, the deeply entrenched, highly trained and generally better informed establishment needed to be outmanoeuvred in a subtle and adroit manner. Benazir Bhutto was outmanoeuvred by the dominant power centre and she might also have sometimes unwittingly helped it.
The real losers as a result of Benazir Bhutto’s elimination from politics were the people. Their concerns remained off the government’s agenda and the dream of a democratic and egalitarian Pakistan receded even further.
The writer is a senior political analyst and human rights activist.
Crucial moments were drawing closer by March 1971. The postponed meeting between Yahya Khan and Shaikh Mujib was held on March 20 and 21. When the President and Awami League head were in a meeting on March 21, Bhutto landed in Dhaka. He could assess the gravity of the situation. Leading a team of 15 leaders he was straightaway driven to the President House. Bhutto knew that Yahya and Mujib had been meeting, thus, the contents of those meetings were first conveyed to him by Yahya.
Bhutto was told that a general understanding had taken place between Yahya and Mujib agreeing on immediate end to martial law; establishment of federal and provincial ministries; assemblies empowered to legislate; and East Pakistan granted more provincial autonomy. According to the agreement, Yahya Khan was to continue as president for the time being and a coalition cabinet would be formed comprising all political parities.
It was also agreed that the power at the Centre would not be immediately transferred but the powers to the provinces would be delegated to the majority party of the respective province and martial law would be lifted on the day provincial cabinets took oath. These points, in fact, were to form the basis of the future constitution.
A draft statement covering all these points was also prepared for making public and was released to the Press in the evening by the official news agency. But after a couple of hours, the news agency withdrew the statement with the advice that no substitute would follow.
It later transpired that when the draft was shown to Bhutto, he disagreed saying that lifting of martial law would create a vacuum nullifying the proposed constitutional structure. He emphasised that to avoid that lacuna the approval of the constitution should bear the support of members of the assemblies of both wings.
On March 22, the three —Yahya, Mujib and Bhutto — met, but that proved very unfortunate. At this meeting Bhutto said that his party was examining various clauses of the agreement prepared by Mujib and agreed by Yahya. The same evening a crucial development took place which was an indicator to what may happen in the next few days or hours.
Shaikh Mujib and his confidant, Tajuddin Ahmad, met Yhaya Khan without any previous schedule. At this meeting Mujib in clear terms rejected the proposal of a coalition cabinet insisting that he being the leader of the majority would not take other parties on board. Mujib and Tajuddin thought that to defuse the situation, power should be transferred to both wings.
At the same time, Dr Kamal Hussain, a lawyer and activist of the Awami League, who later became the law minister in Shaikh Mujib’s government, met aides of Yahya and presented a draft constitution prepared by the Awami League experts. In the background of the history of constitution making, this draft was a formal announcement of granting a separate constitutional status or making Pakistan a country with two constitutions. Kamal Husain insisted that the draft be announced in the form of a proclamation within two days. There was no immediate response but it made clear what was to follow.
A day later, Pakistan Day was to be celebrated to mark the adoption of the Lahore Resolution. On the eve of March 23 Mujib announced that it would be observed as Resistance Day. The day began with the hoisting of the then Bangladesh flag over the house of Shaikh Mujib. Armed processions were taken out in Dhaka and other cities. Mujib went to every building where the Bangladesh flag was being unfurled. On one occasion Mujib was reported as saying that a new country had emerged on the map of the world.
Disturbances had taken over East Pakistan. Reports of arson, looting and killing were pouring in from all corners. What measures had been planned to face the new situation were not known to the people. President Yhaya left for Karachi in the afternoon. Bhutto had also sent some of the members of his team to Karachi, himself staying behind with Ghulam Mustafa Khar and J A Rahim. Bhutto was told that the meeting between Khar and Mujib was of no use.
Mujib announced another protest day for March 26 — the day Bhutto and his party’s men had booked their seats for Karachi. Most of the West Pakistani leaders were staying at a hotel. Soon they saw a huge crowd outside shouting pro-Bangla slogans. The leaders saw Dhaka in flames. Tanks were rolling on the roads and the thud of firing could be heard all over.
Soon after the military operation ‘Searchlight’ began in former East Pakistan on March 25, 1971, the uprising became the subject of discussion all over the world. Chained by censorship, West Pakistan newspapers did not give a single word to their readers about what was happening in the Eastern wing; hence only foreign news radio was heard and believed. BBC’s were the most popular broadcasts.
March and April saw the worst. Roads were literally littered with garbage and bodies. The latter included Bengalis and non-Bengalis, Muslims and Hindus, without discrimination. In the absence of evidence it is still a bitter controversy as to who did most of the killing. The estimate of deaths swing between 300,000 to three million.
Reports say that some 220,000 girls and women were raped and after gaining independence a UN team was sent to help them. Some foreign agencies reported that more than 10 million refugees fled to India. Confirmed reports could not be obtained owing to the fact that in the absence of independent sources the information remained murky at best. However, most writers believe that there were over three million deaths between March 1971 and December 1971.
Repression by the Pakistan armed forces had begun from the moment the announcement of establishing Bangladesh was made. Due to the situation, the country faced acute shortage of food and medicines. Atrocities continued making headlines in the international media. Many reported ghastly nature of killings; some said that many women were mutilated before they were killed.
Mukti Bahini activists helped by India did not hide their identity in committing inhuman deeds either, but they were quickly countered by a number of civilian volunteer groups who were armed by the army to get organised and stage encounters. History will record with disgust the role of such organisations which undertook arson, looting and dishonouring not only of pro-Awami League people but also of innocent Bengalis.
They included members and supporters of the right-wing parties, led by Jamat-i-Islami. They had been routed by Awami League in 1970 elections and now wanted to take full revenge by calling the AL anti-Islam. The most active were three armed groups, Al Shams, Al Badar and the Razakar. These and other similar groups were accused of working as thunder squads, looting and disgracing Bengalis who were labelled as non-Muslim. Reports said that before action, these groups used to prepare plans and lists of those who were to be taken to task.
Bengali nationalist armed groups responded by unleashing their fury on Beharis and other non-Bengalis.
It is hard to understand why Yahya Khan seemed so confident about the success of his Operation Searchlight and thought that peace had been restored as thousands succumbed to death. In the beginning of April 1971 he was told by his cronies that the situation had improved.
Generals Hamid, M Pirzada, Omar and Rao Farman Ali even told him that the issue of East Pakistan had been resolved.
Banking on their advice former judge Justice Corneillius was asked to prepare a constitution for the country which should grant maximum provincial autonomy to East Pakistan while remaining a part of Pakistan. In fact the situation had gone contrary to all that. Politicking continued in West Pakistan. Bhutto kept meeting Yahya and his men, however Yahya appeared to be losing the reins. On May 24, at a press conference in Karachi, Yahya painted a very gloomy picture of the country’s affairs and said that the economy had fallen to the lowest ebb.
His answers to newsmen were irrelevant and sometimes off the subject.
His approach towards the East Pakistan crisis seemed to have changed, and he appeared to evolve some positive solution. What made Yahya Khan change his stance is anybody’s guess, but on June 28, he announced the appointment of a team of experts to form a constitution and pledged that transfer of power would take place in four months. He had the misconception that holding by-elections and making the Assembly functional would cool down the people.
While Mujib languished in Mianwali jail, Bhutto continued to meet Yahya. He visited Iran and wanted to visit Afghanistan with the aim of impressing upon Yahya that he was still popular with these countries. However during his visit to Iran Bhutto gave an interview to BBC in which he said that the crisis had not risen due to Mujib, but then quickly denied having said that. Perhaps he had second thoughts leading him to a new proposition.
President Mohammad Ayub Khan is seen smiling as he leaned out of his train on his way to a US Marine Base in Okinawa, Japan, in December, 1960. During his tenure, Ayub worked actively on building up the image of the country in the eyes of the world. In doing so, his own persona came pretty handy. — Photo: The Tahir Ayub Collection
IN the first Pakistan, the one that existed before it lost its eastern wing in 1971, President General (later self-elevated to field marshal) Muhammad Ayub Khan’s decade from 1958 to 1969 was foundational in numerous critical ways and set the direction for Pakistan for years to come. It gave rise to models of military dictatorship, to US dependence, regional imbalances and the over-centralisation of government.
Often known as the ‘Decade of Development’, as ‘Pakistan’s Golden Years’ of a ‘Socially Liberal Military Dictatorship’, Pakistan’s first military dictator laid the foundations of a capitalist economy under military rule. This resulted in numerous economic and social contradictions, which played themselves out, not just in the 1960s, but beyond, where Ayub Khan’s rule created the social and economic conditions leading to the separation of East Pakistan, and to the rise of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s awami inqilaab.
Unlike most generals who have led Pakistan’s armed forces since 1969, all who have claimed they have absolutely no political ambitions, Gen Ayub Khan very early in his career made it clear that he wanted to play a role in framing Pakistan’s destiny, and not just as its commander-in-chief (C-in-C). He had ambitious aspirations right from the early 1950s when, in 1951, Ayub became the country’s first Pakistani army chief under prime minister Liaquat Ali Khan with, what Shuja Nawaz in his monumental Crossed Swords calls, “all the qualities of a political soldier”.
Less than two months as C-in-C, Ayub was asked by the prime minister to help deal with an alleged conspiracy by a group of leftists along with a host of senior military officers, who wanted to overthrow the government in what is since called the Rawalpindi Conspiracy Case.
With the absence of any semblance of political leadership following the assassination of Liaquat in 1951, the Pakistan Army, along with a string of bureaucrats, began to emerge as the only organised and stable institution in the country. The army saw first blood when martial law was imposed in parts of the Punjab on March 8, 1953.
There were many changes of leadership in the first few years of Pakistan’s existence, when pro-US Mohammad Ali Bogra was made prime minister in 1953, and in 1954 the serving C-in-C of the Army became part of the cabinet as defence minister.
Ayub was Pakistan’s only serving head of the army who had the experience of being in a civilian cabinet prior to running the country. Over the subsequent four years or so, before he eventually took over power in a coup in October 1958, some decisions were made by the various governments of that time, which were to have an impact on events after 1958. Pakistan became part of the US-led alliances in the region to counter communism and the threat from the Soviet Union.
President Ayub Khan and Queen Elizabeth are seen on their way to Buckingham Palace, London, in an open stage coach in November, 1966, when the president was on a state visit to the United Kingdom. — Photo: The Tahir Ayub Collection
Becoming part of the South East Asian Treaty Organisation in 1954 and the Baghdad Pact in 1955, Pakistan chose a path of dependence which has continued until recently. Domestically, to deal with the perceived threat of East Pakistan’s majority, to counter ‘provincialism’, the One Unit in West Pakistan was created. An overly centralised system of governance with concentration of power, largely in the hands of the military and bureaucracy, with US interests in the region, set the stage for the years to come.
POLICIES
As governments continuously changed hands, both in East and in West Pakistan, it was clear that despite the constituent assembly framing a constitution in 1956 finally promising the possibility of elections, the military stepped in to take power in October 1958 declaring martial law. The Aligarh-educated, Sandhurst-trained Ayub was a representative of his age, of a tradition like so many other ‘men on horseback’, with justification found in academic literature endorsing the modernisation mission of authoritarian leaders, almost all from the military. This point is important and is often overlooked, but the 1950s and 1960s in what we now call the global south, were a time of modernisation, economic growth without regard to inclusiveness, and, with few exceptions, often under the guidance of ruthless military dictators.
There is a very long list of social and economic reforms undertaken by the Ayub regime, which are striking, resulting in extensive social engineering. All military governments since, ruling with an iron fist lasting a decade or a little less, have done the same.
President Ayub Khan taking aim with a rifle during a hunting trip on the outskirts of Moscow during his official visit to the erstwhile USSR from April 3 to 11, 1965. — Photo: The Adnan Aurangzeb Collection
Ayub’s achievements are numerous and some specific ones are worth citing. Since ‘democracy had to be taught’ in accordance with the ‘genius of the people’, what better way to start than at the grass roots, at the local panchayat level. Hence, the system of Basic Democracies — elected representatives in constituencies were given the task of local development.
The Muslim Family Laws Ordinance of 1961, still considered one of the most progressive sets of family laws compared to many Muslim countries even 56 years on, gave, at least on paper, some protection to women allowing them far greater rights, raising the marriageable age, requiring greater documentation to file for divorce, or for men to seek permission from their existing wife if they wanted a second marriage.
Pakistan’s family planning laws under Ayub were the most advanced for their times and such interventions drew a great deal of criticism from religious groups who considered them unIslamic. To show how different times were then compared to how they have changed since 1977, Ayub was even able to drop the name ‘Islamic’ from the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, albeit eventually having to give in to pressure from the ulema and religious political leaders, particularly Maulana Maudoodi.
Economic growth in Pakistan during much of the 1960s was stellar, and on Jan 18, 1965, the New York Times wrote that “Pakistan may be on its way towards an economic milestone that so far has been reached by only one other populous country, the United States”, a view which was endorsed by the Times from London a year later, stating that “the survival and development of Pakistan is one of the most remarkable examples of state and nation-building in the post-War period”.
Clearly, high growth rates, but exclusively in Punjab and in Karachi, and not in East Pakistan, gave rise to such praise. Distributive issues were unimportant in the economic policies advocated by the Harvard Advisory Group which ran Pakistan’s meticulous Planning Commission. In fact, this was a time when ideological pronouncements based on the ‘social utility of greed’ and ‘functional inequality’, were encouraged.
Following large-scale land reforms undertaken in 1959, the Green Revolution in agriculture in central Punjab changed the social and economic relations of production permanently. Growth rates, both for agriculture and for industry, were often in double digits. Ample US aid and assistance helped build dams, roads and other infrastructure. Pakistan was on the road to economic progress.
Politically, of course, this was, not surprisingly, a repressive regime. Political leaders were imprisoned, political parties were banned, dissent was not tolerated, newspapers were censored and taken over, and Ayub’s regime continued to be opposed by nationalists from West and East Pakistan, as well as by Maulana Maudoodi’s Jamaat-i-Islami. Yet, Ayub sought some form of public legitimacy as all military dictators have been forced to, lifting martial law in 1962 following the implementation of a presidential-form constitution.
Ayub now set his sights on being an elected soldier-president, a model which later generals were encouraged to emulate. In January 1965, Field Marshal President Ayub Khan was ‘elected’ president of Pakistan by an electoral college composed of Basic Democrats, who had been patronised under a system of grants and development funds since their own elections in 1959.
Many historians and observers believe, that had he allowed free and fair elections to take place, expanding the electoral franchise, his opponent Fatima Jinnah, who despite a rigged system gave him a hard fight, might just have won.
President Ayub Khan and Indian Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri in animated conversation at a dinner during the Commonwealth Heads of State Conference in London in June, 1965. — Photo: The Tahir Ayub Collection
The year 1965 was also, of course, the year when Ayub Khan’s downward slide began. The war with India in September, on which much has been written in recent years by historians, has raised questions on strategy, intention and tactics, and whether Pakistan actually ‘won’ the war. The role of Pakistan’s foreign minister, a young, charismatic and ambitious Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, has also been scrutinised by historians, suggesting that Bhutto led Ayub into a military disaster, and was to gain political mileage after the Tashkent Declaration, parting ways with Ayub to become his main opponent.
CONSEQUENCES
There is little doubt that Ayub Khan’s Decade of Development, which his government was celebrating in 1968 at a time when opposition to his regime was mounting, changed Pakistan’s social and economic structures unambiguously. There is little doubt that there was economic growth, but given the ideological drivers of this growth, regional and income inequalities grew very sharply, giving rise to a political category of the super rich, called the ‘Twenty-two Families’, a metaphor for accumulation and corruption.
The growth model followed by Ayub gave rise to manufacturing and industrialisation, the growth of a working class, agricultural wealth created by the Green Revolution in the Punjab, and the emergence of what were later to become Pakistan’s middle classes. It was many of these disenfranchised social groups under Ayub that gave Bhutto the support to create his Peoples Party and bring about a social revolution, while in East Pakistan, these same contradictions gave impetus to Sheikh Mujib’s Awami League.
While the President was busy playing out his own agenda, there was much happening at home in the 1950s and 1960s in terms spreading progressive thought among the masses. Seen here is the iconic Faiz Ahmed Faiz (extreme right) and director A. J. Kardar (centre) on location for Jaago Howa Savera in Chittagong in 1959. Faiz penned the screenplay for the film which later got awarded a Gold Medal at the first Moscow International Film Festival. — Photo: The Faiz Ghar Archives.
It was not only inequality amongst individuals which increased, but on account of the Green Revolution, and due to capitalism’s own locational logic, central Punjab and Karachi developed far more than other parts of the country, particularly East Pakistan, which had always felt deprived and exploited.
With the Punjabi-Mohajir bureaucracy and a Punjabi military dominating politics and economics in an overly centralised state, East Pakistan’s politicians and population felt completely marginalised. The policies of the Ayub era, both economic and political, led in 1966 to Mujib asking for more rights, including the right to universal franchise for all Pakistanis. A centralised military government, now located in its new capital Islamabad, failed to pay heed to calls for inclusion and participation. Signs of what was to come were clearly evident.
Ayub’s decade unleashed a process of social and economic change, created economic and social contradictions for socialist and nationalist politics to emerge, and also helped modernise many institutions and policies.
All this was done with complete support from the US until the 1965 war when American policy was rethought with regard to South Asia. Most importantly, Ayub’s decade of military dictatorship brought the military into politics, and created a pattern which was replicated, albeit with different ideological underpinnings, in very different eras and global and regional circumstances, in 1977 and 1999.
The writer is a political economist based in Karachi. He has a PhD in History from the University of Cambridge. He teaches at Columbia University in New York, and at the IBA in Karachi.
IF we had drawn any lessons from the events of 1971, we would have forsworn military rule forever, indeed consigned the very memory of coups d’etat to a never-to-be-opened hall of national shame.
For it was military rule and the legacy of folly it accumulated which led, almost inexorably, to the tragedy of 1971: dismemberment of Pakistan and the humiliating surrender of our forces in the east.
We have done nothing of the sort. Far from forgetting military rule, we have almost embraced it as a national way of life. After ‘71 Pakistan’s brief experiment with elective democracy (although much mangled by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto) was snuffed out in 1977, leading to the long night of Zia’s dictatorship, whose consequences we have still not outlived. And if that wasn’t enough, there was another coup in 1999 from whose shadows the nation has yet to emerge.
Indeed, in one of those ironies in which history abounds, the loss of East Pakistan, far from weakening the spirit of militarism, as ideally it should have, went about strengthening it. Although the army, the bureaucracy and Punjab all conspired to give East Pakistan a rough deal — treating it little better than a colony — the people of East Pakistan brought noise and colour to Pakistani politics.
Punjab’s forte was, perhaps still is, bending the knee before the status quo. That is why Punjab has welcomed every conqueror and, in our own day, paid homage to every tinpot dictator. Bengal, west and east, always has had a streak of anarchy about it. Small wonder if oratory and a flair for agitation have been hallmarks of the Bengali political character. This was good for us while united Pakistan lasted because Punjab on the one hand and Urdu-language chauvinism on the other were leavened by East Pakistani turbulence. We were the richer for this balance and mix.
There were no surprises in West Pakistan largely acquiescing in Ayub’s dictatorship. Like we have a Q-League now, we had a Convention League then and like the Q-League, in keeping with Punjab’s famous temperament, draws most of its support from Punjab, the Convention League drew most of its support from West Pakistan. Conversely, what there was of an opposition drew most of its strength and fire from East Pakistan. It is sobering to remember that in the 1965 National Assembly there were only two opposition members from the whole of West Pakistan, Hasan A. Shaikh from Karachi and Mian Arif Iftikhar from Kasur-Lahore.
East Pakistan gone — we saw to it that it went — clamping military rule on the country and maintaining it has become so much easier. The present military order has been around for six years (and a bit more) and although its achievements are more impressive on paper than in reality, it sits comfortably in the saddle largely because there is not a spark of life in the opposition.
Oh, if this had been united Pakistan, what sounds of commotion and turbulence would have come from Dhaka. We can only indulge in nostalgia now because given the political class we are left with, there is nothing much to expect of it.
I have mentioned this before. I seek indulgence for repeating it (for the last time). On his way to Shimla for talks with Mrs Gandhi in 1972, Bhutto called a meeting of PPP assembly members (national and provincial) in Lahore to sound them out on their views. When the discussion got a bit long, my father, also an MNA, said: ‘…why are you asking these people? Mrs Gandhi can come at the head of her tanks and they will stand in line to receive her. So do what you have to and rest assured that they will clap when you return.’ (Words to that effect of course.) He wasn’t far wrong.
Seeing the performance of the eastern command, and indeed the performance of the army on the western front (where too we lost territory to India) we should have cut military flab, reduced the amount of heavy brass, and made the military into a more fit and professional fighting force. I don’t know about the professionalism but there is more flab and heavy brass in the army today than ever before, with the system of privileges — officer housing societies and jobs for senior ranks after retirement — more entrenched than ever. Officers need housing. So do soldiers and NCOs. Are there any colonies for soldiers? As for officer colonies, we all know the money being made from them.
I suppose there is a logic to all this. The armies of Myanmar, Indonesia and the Philippines-to quote only three examples, although the list can be much longer — are (perish the thought) not meant to fight any external enemies. Their purpose is to maintain internal control. We seem well advanced down the same road.
Today the size of the combined military, Allah be praised, is almost three times what it was in 1971. As for the weight of brass — the number of generals, admirals and air marshals — they must be four or five times the number then. Who says we’ve made no progress?
There is nothing unique or strange about defeat itself. The strongest are not immune to it, defeat coming the way of the greatest captains of war and happening to the mightiest empires. But nations with life in them, in whose veins real blood flows, learn from their defeats. Why put it so modestly? Defeat is a great teacher, in its crucible resolve and fortitude being tempered. What’s our record?
After 1971, we should have left juvenility behind and entered the realm of adulthood. As a mark of growing up we should finally have discarded the myths and shibboleths accumulated since 1947 in the name of that fuzzy concept, the ideology of Pakistan. Far from doing anything of the kind, we are more confused, our hatreds more virulent. Pakistan must be one of the few countries in the world still agonizing over the meaning of its creation and birth, no other subject triggering such a frenzy of self-serving mythology. As for hatred, for all its other shortcomings, and there were many, pre-1971 Pakistan was not the citadel of religious intolerance it was to become later.
I suppose intolerance in the name of religion was always present beneath the surface. But it was prevented from flowering because of a larger national canvas. Geography shrinking with the loss of East Pakistan, some of our vision, our capacity for thinking large thoughts, was also lost. Defeat should have opened our eyes. Instead, it served to close them a bit more.
Dec 71 should have made us wiser about the United States. The Yahya junta was of course foolish and there was nothing in the world that could have rescued it from its chosen path of folly. But the Nixon White House added to its confusion by promising help it was in no position to deliver — offering illusions which Yahya and coterie took for reality.
But we learned nothing. In the 1980s we became foot soldiers in an American crusade against the Soviet Union. American strategic objectives secured, America walked away from Afghanistan. We were left holding the dishes. In 2001 we allowed ourselves to be recruited in another American crusade avowedly against “terror” but in reality for the higher interests of the American empire. This crusade was meant to secure peace. It has fomented strife and turbulence.
The surrender ceremony at Race Course Ground, Dhaka, on this day should have left a lasting impression on our minds about the need to respect constitutional norms because not respecting them, or rather not having any norms to respect, is what led to Pakistan’s December tragedy in the first place. But if we look back at the last 34 years, our most spectacular flouting, our most flagrant disrespect, has been reserved for the Constitution framed in the aftermath of the ‘71 war. This doesn’t say much for our learning capability.
Twenty-four political parties prepared to land in the election arena of 1970, held under Gen Yahya Khan’s martial law. Every party had its programme but two parties — the Awami League and the Pakistan People’s Party — were being eyed by the electorate as the winners. The presence of established ruling families posed a formidable force to be broken but the approach of the leadership of the said parties began setting directions of the election results at an early date.
On January 4, 1970, on his 42nd birthday Zulfikar Ali Bhutto launched his election campaign by addressing a public meeting at Nishtar Park, Karachi and in his forceful style he told the people that they were his ‘Round Table Conference’. In Punjab he started from Rawalpindi’s Liaquat Bagh. After Punjab he entered Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (then NWFP).
In East Pakistan Shaikh Mujibur Rahman, through his emotional and livid speeches, spoke about the injustices meted out to Bengalis since the inception of Pakistan and told them that the only solution lay in his six-point programme. With a few skirmishes among various party supporters, electioneering continued. Nomination papers for the National Assembly were filed on October 14 and for provincial assemblies the following day.
While Mujib put up a few candidates in West Pakistan, Bhutto completely ignored East Pakistan. In the western wing 1,070 candidates filed papers for 138 NA seats while in the eastern wing there were 870 candidates contesting 162 seats. In East Pakistan the Awami League fielded 162 candidates out of which two seats were conceded — one of Nurul Amin for whom Mujib had asked the workers to allow a few votes for the grand old man and the other of Raja Tridevrai as a minority member.
However, in West Pakistan the People’s Party could not achieve a similar sweep as did Mujib in the East; the PPP bagged 81 seats against a total of 138 seats (62 from Punjab’s 82 seats, 18 of 27 seats from Sindh). The results showed the Awami League as the largest party without a seat from West Pakistan. Similar was the case with the PPP which had no seat in East Pakistan. This created a situation whereby Yahya Khan sent congratulatory messages to both the party leaders, but addressed Mujib as the future prime minister.
The result was more disquieting for Yahya Khan who had in a pre-poll assessment been told that no party could take a clear lead and there would be a coalition government which could be easily handled by Yahya from the top. With all pre-poll predictions gone wrong the rightists could manage only 37 seats in a house of 300.
A tormenting situation arose for Yahya. While Mujib sat in Dhaka discussing the future government’s priorities, Yahya saw himself in a quandary. He had pledged that the constitution would be prepared within 120 days or the assemblies would stand abolished; and now time was racing away. On December 17, 1970 Mujib said that no one could stop the creation of Bangladesh. Bhutto readily replied that no constitution could be framed, nor government run at the centre, without his party’s cooperation.
To find a solution Yahya visited Karachi on December 28 where among others he met Bhutto. No independent source disclosed what transpired at the meeting but the following day a proclamation was issued that the first session of the Assembly would be held at Dhaka. After the results the two leaders had taken a rigid stand on their viewpoints. Mujib wanted Dhaka to take a pivotal role and everyone who wanted to meet Mujib should come to Dhaka.
Before Yahya could make another move, Mujib addressed a public meeting at the Ramna Racecourse grounds on January 3, in which all elected members were sworn to accept no less than Bangladesh. Yahya wanted to break the impasse and arrived at Dhaka on January 12, 1971; he held in-depth talks with Mujib. When he returned to Karachi he said that Mujib would be the next prime minister but then he (Yahya) would not be there.
Yahya had something to discuss with Bhutto and called on him at Larkana during which Yahya advised Bhutto to visit Dhaka and talk to Mujib. As Yahya and Bhutto discussed the situation various options, including the formation of a coalition government with smaller parties came up for discussion. But as we know that was not to be.
As February 1971 was drawing to a close, Yahya Khan became conscious that after undertaking the arduous exercise of holding the polls, he had failed to transfer power to a consensus civilian government. But he decided that it should not be the end of the ‘mission’. It could be sluggish but he would not allow himself to be cornered by two power-seekers, Mujibur Rahman in East and Z A Bhutto in West Pakistan. He decided to act. The dissolution of the federal cabinet was the next step on February 21.
The next day, he summoned a meeting of close aides at Rawalpindi, which was attended by the Deputy Chief Martial Law Administrator, General Abdul Hamid, all provincial governors and his Principal Staff Officer, Lt-Gen S G M Pirzada. From the very composition of the meeting the agenda and possible outcome became predictable. However, a report said that the participants, especially Governor Admiral Ahsan, were told in clear terms that if Mujib did not show flexibility on his six-point programme, the planned action should follow. For that purpose extra troops were promised.
Apparently there was no hope left for any change at a stage when the Bengali people only knew Joye Bangla (long live Bengal). East Pakistan’s Governor Ahsan, a British army veteran and a former military secretary to Quaid-i-Azam, met Mujib next. Though the meeting remained futile, it shook Mujib. After the meeting he appeared depressed and speechless. Perhaps Ahsan illustrated what army action meant. He could foresee destruction all around.
While leaders in West Pakistan were making various predictions, the situation in East Pakistan was very disconsolate. Mujib feared the worst and had expressed some kind of flexibility but the Awami League (AL) activists were overzealous and hoped that with street power they would cow down Islamabad. They continued working on the proposed constitution and, showing the federal government their roadmap, announced the draft constitution on February 27.
Unlike previous constitutions prepared in West Pakistan, the AL draft was almost new in all respects. For instance, the name of the country was suggested as Federal Republic of Pakistan; two capitals Dhaka and Islamabad were named; East Pakistan was to be renamed as Bangladesh and the NWFP as Pakhtunistan; headquarters of the armed forces were to be shifted to Dhaka; departments of foreign affairs, defence and currency were to stay with Centre while the rest with the provinces, and the Centre would take a share from provincial taxes. The draft constitution was striking but no political leader openly reacted to it.
Instead, it was all doom and gloom. On February 28, Bhutto reiterated his decision of not attending the NA session if a meeting between him and Mujib was not held before the session; he said he would launch a movement from Khyber to Karachi. However, the same day Mujib told businessmen at Dhaka that reasonable recommendations would be accepted, but did not mention Bhutto’s objection to his six-point programme.
The next morning no earthshaking change was expected, but it appeared that some unsolicited happening was approaching. On March 1, Yahya announced postponement of the National Assembly session indefinitely. This shocked East Pakistanis. Dhaka turned into a frenzied mob showing anguish and hatred. Even Shaikh Mujib’s press conference at his Dhanmondi residence had become impossible as angry Awami League workers besieged the venue. The event was marked by pro-Bangladesh slogans. When the press conference was over the town had already been taken over by protesters who spared nothing. Arson, looting and all kinds of lawlessness ruled the city.
What Yahya aimed at was not clear as the communication credibility had been lost in the polarisation; yet it is said that Yahya had a feeling that in the case of an army action in the province, Admiral Ahsan might not be very effective as he was a proven friend of Mujib’s. Perhaps this was not so. Anyhow, the admiral was replaced by General Yaqoob Ali Khan, who had already served in the eastern wing. Immediately after taking over Gen Yaqoob suggested that Yahya settle things politically and not militarily. Perhaps he was the first army general who had thought of settling political issues in their right perspective.
Paradoxically, this very earnest advice went down the drain. The suggestion was rejected, perhaps with condescension. Gen Yaqoob found an honourable escape and quit the job on March 4, before it became too rowdy. The next day also proved unfortunate as Begali radicals took to the streets shattering the town. Similar processions were reported from other parts of the province. They were also joined by Maulana Bhashani and Prof Muzaffar Ahmed’s groups known for their separatist intentions.
The Indian air force had been carrying out reconnaissance flights over West Pakistan during December, 1971, along the 2,430-km border. No sooner had the East Pakistan operation been launched than Pakistan got reports about Indian intentions on West Pakistan, especially the November 9 CIA report which cautioned Nixon and Yahya Khan that India wanted “to change the borders of West Pakistan too and destroy the Pakistan Army”.
In a bid to frustrate such plans, Pakistan launched pre-emptive air strikes on Indian bases nicknamed Operation Changez Khan on the evening of December 3, 1971. Indian air bases at Amritsar, Agra, Srinagar, Pathankot, Jodhpur, Ambala, etc., were bombed. This led India directly into attacking the western wing which it wanted from the day the crisis in East Pakistan had began. India retaliated immediately and from the night it bombed Pakistan airfields and vital installations. The Indo-Pakistan war of 1971 had begun. Pakistan was now engaged on two fronts. While Indian air force attacked Pakistani installations every day, the Indian navy launched an attack on the Karachi port — the lifeline of Pakistan. Called Operation Trident the Indian navy used missile boats which damaged Pakistani destroyer PNS Khyber and a minesweeper PNS Muhafiz on the night of December 4 and 5.
Pakistan Navy suffered another loss when its submarine PNS Ghazi sank in the Bay of Bengal, where India had enforced a naval blockade of East Pakistan. Here India’s only aircraft carrier Vikrant was deployed not only to carry out a naval blockade of Bay of Bengal but to undertake air attacks inside East Pakistan. This also made East Pakistan navy ineffective. India too suffered a loss of a frigate INS Khukri near Karachi on December 9.
After the first round of air force and naval attack on Karachi on December 4, India wanted to cripple Pakistan by blocking the Karachi seaport. Pakistan Navy retaliated by bombing Okha harbour in Gujarat and its fuel reserves, but three days later the Indian navy undertook another operation against Karachi titled Operation Python on the night of December 8 and 9, and sank three merchant navy ships but the loss of oil reserves at the port was severe. All 22 fuel tanks were ablaze for three days. After December 8, Karachi seaport virtually stopped operating. Trade stood still. Besides the damage caused to the naval facilities at Karachi harbour, the attacks caused serious damage to civilian life and material. In their air attacks the Indian pilots missed their targets and the heavy explosives fell upon the civilian population like in the neighbourhoods of Gulbahar, Agra Taj Colony, and the like. This created panic among the citizens and many moved houses. The people from upcountry living in Karachi rushed to their hometowns. The naval and air attacks on Karachi continued till there was a ceasefire after Dhaka fell.
After the December 3 situation, the Indian air force bombed the air bases in Punjab and Kashmir and the infantry pushed through Sindh, Punjab and Kashmir. Here the Indian army stayed till the final withdrawal truce. As the war had flared up, world leaders regained new efforts for considering ways to stop it and bring the parties to the negotiating table.
Indira Gandhi, with large armaments on both fronts without declaring war on Pakistan, had written a letter to Nixon on December 5, claiming that war had been thrust upon her. She asked the US president to exercise his influence on Pakistan to stop fighting and “…to deal immediately with the genesis of the problem of ‘East Bengal’ which has caused so much trial and tribulations to the people not only of Pakistan but of the entire subcontinent”.
The next day (December 6), Gandhi spoke at the Indian parliament and announced the recognition of East Pakistan as Bangladesh. This happened when the UN Security Council which had begun its session on December 4, was still discussing ways and means to stop fighting. After three days of deliberations the United States moved a resolution demanding immediate ceasefire and withdrawal of the troops. The resolution was quickly vetoed by the Soviet Union, defeating this belated attempt.
On December 8, the day the UN General Council adopted a resolution with a majority of 104 votes, Nixon and Kissinger did not seem satisfied with the developments as they apprehended that Indian invasion of West Pakistan would mean total Soviet domination of the region. To show sympathy with Pakistan, the United States on the same day sent planes and military supplies through Iran, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, and encouraged China to increase arms supplies to Pakistan.
They also ordered to send the Seventh Fleet Enterprise and other naval forces into Bay of Bengal, for, according to the US State Department, Foreign Relations, 2005 report, preventing a “Soviet stooge supported by Soviet arms” from overrunning an ally. The Soviets in turn sent 16 ships in two groups of gunboats, cruisers, destroyers and a nuclear submarine, but apparently combat was not their mandate.
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?
This article is the first of a four-part series that looks back at the events of 1971 in Pakistan from the perspective of the development of democracy in this country.
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.
This article was first published on dawn.com on December 10, 2012.
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?
This article is the Part 2 of a four-part series that looks back at the events of 1971 in Pakistan from the perspective of the development of democracy in this country. Read the first part here.
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.
This article was first published on dawn.com on December 13, 2012.
Revisiting 1971: What if they elected traitors?
Tahir Mehdi
Updated December 17, 2012
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?
This article is the Part 3 of a four-part series that looks back at the events of 1971 in Pakistan from the perspective of the development of democracy in this country. Read Part 1 and Part 2.
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.
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.
![LIKE most of her predecessors, one of the things Benazir did on her elevation to the office of the prime minster was to visit Saudi Arabia to perform Umrah. | Photo: The Directorate of Electronic Media and Publications [DEMP].](https://i.dawn.com/primary/2017/11/59fc7eeaaa79c.jpg)
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