The End of Bangla Desh
“Reddened with blood, bathed in tears, the crazy world was marking its course through splice with the groans of the sick, the hungry and injured.” (Andreyev)
East Pakistan, so recently shuddering from a gigantic cyclone, was then the scene of an appalling blood-bath. The government used tanks and air-power to massacre its own people. The official story is that the Bengali autonomists had been preparing a revolt for 26 March, a revolt which was wisely and firmly put down by the loyal armed forces.
But what is really behind it all? Why should a state — already $5,000m in the red — engage in a ruinous internal war? Why is it so vitally important for Yahya Khan to “preserve the unity and integrity” of Pakistan, when 98 per cent of the East Wing supports the Awami League autonomists? And why have the Bengalis of East Pakistan been so bitter and persistent in their opposition, for at least a decade, to the existing political set-up and so vehement in their demand for autonomy? And would autonomy do them any good if they got it?
To attempt an answer to these questions, we must first go back a bit in history. At the end of the independence struggle, the Muslims of India were demanding a separate homeland to be sited in areas where they formed a majority of the population. Hence, partition: a partition which resulted in a secular India, led by Nehru and the Congress Party, confronting a Muslim Pakistan made hostile by the savage inter-communal riots and massacres all over the sub-continent, which took place at the time of Independence.
Pakistan is in the North of India. East Pakistan, with about 56 per cent of the population, is in the northeast and is part of the old province of Bengal. Its language is Bengali, its main cereal crop rice, its main exports jute and tea; it has a predominantly agricultural economy with per capita income about 200 rupees, as compared with the average for Pakistan as a whole which is 418 rupees (about £30). The land is low-lying and subject to floods, tornadoes and cyclones. In the nine years from 1960-69, there were 15 “major natural calamities”—6 floods, 7 cyclones and 2 tornadoes; in only one of these years “no major calamity occurred” but in 1968 “all the 17 districts were affected” in a single flood. In this period more than 50,000 people died in these various calamities and in 1 cyclone alone in 1965 more than 20,000 died. (Pakistan Observer, 22 November 1970).
The West Wing of Pakistan comprises four provinces: Sind, Punjab, Baluchistan and the North-West Frontier Province. They speak Sindi, Punjabi and Pushtu, and together make up the remaining 44 per cent of the population. Its main cereal crop is wheat, it exports cotton and other manufactured goods— mainly to East Pakistan which is a protected market due to a tariff wall. Whilst the East Wing is adjacent to Burma and the sweaty jungles of the Far East, the West Wing is closer in character to the desert countries of the Middle East. The widely separated halves of Pakistan have nothing in common but their religion.
After Independence, the economy was deteriorating under a succession of incompetent and corrupt governments, until in 1958 General Ayub Khan, backed by the Army, seized power. By 1968, when threatened with civil war over his trial of the East Wing leader (Sheikh Mujibur Rahman) he was forced to hand over power to General Yahya Kahn, corruption and graft had increased to remarkable proportions. Ayub’s own family had become one of the richest in the country and most of the economy was controlled and owned by a clique notorious as the “twenty families”—all closely connected with Ayub and his Punjabi generals.
It was during the ten years of Ayub’s rule that the nationalist Bengali movement for autonomy grew up. It fed greedily on such appalling statistics as the fact that defence expenditure rose in ten years from 30 per cent to about 60 per cent of total government spending; that in 1961 the East was receiving less than 15 per cent of the government’s revenue budget expenditure; that in 1959-60 the Capital Budget allocated the East Wing a little over naif what it allocated the West Wing; that more schools, hospitals, university institutions, irrigation works, plush government jobs and lush government contracts went to the Punjabis, who thanks to their control of the armed forces had got complete control of the whole administration.
Further, although East Pakistan every year had a good balance of payments—thanks to its jute and tea exports—most of the foreign exchange earned was used to finance the growing industries of the West, not to mention its soaring demand for imported cars, washing machines and fridges. The country now spends well over 50 per cent of the GNP on defence and has incurred foreign debts of over $5,000m., which use up 20 per cent of all Pakistan’s foreign exchange earnings for debt repayments. Add to all this the fact that there is an annual transfer of resources from East to West of around Rs.250m. and you can understand why the growing movement for autonomy so closely resembles that of a colony bidding for independence.
East Pakistan has 84 per cent illiteracy, 28 per cent unemployment, a population density of about 800 per sq. mile, and average peasant holdings of 3 acres with 3 head of cattle/buffaloes, 1 sheep/goat, 4 fowls and about 2.5 acres growing rice (Pakistan Observer, 25 November 1970). Its population is 40 per cent aged under 14 and has an infant and child mortality rate as high as its life expectancy is low.
When Yahya Khan came into power in 1968, there was a possibility of civil war due partly to the unrest in the East Wing which centred on the trial for “treason” of Mujibur Rahman and his associates. Yahya bowed to the storm, dropped the trials and made speeches about restoring a democratic framework, holding elections and establishing a Constitution. Political parties were allowed to form. In the West, Z. A. Bhutto—a former Cabinet Minister under Ayub—emerged as a front-runner with his People’s Democratic Party, while in the East Wing Mujibur Rahman’s nationalist Awami League (a city-based organisation with support from most moderate business and professional people) and Maulana Bashani’s (Maoist) Awami Party (supported by students and having a strong village grassroots-level support); both demanded autonomy. In the end the Awami Party much splintered by dissenting groups, decided to boycott the elections.
The first one-man, one-vote elections ever to be held in Pakistan were postponed last year from September to December, due to floods in the East Wing in the summer. Then, three weeks before the December date, the cyclone struck. No very accurate figure has emerged (or ever will now) of just how many lost their lives in and after that appalling night of 12 November. Probably more than 900,000 men, women and, above all, children will have died in the disaster area of only about 4 million people: this amounts to a casualty rate of nearly 23 per cent. (The worst ever recorded cyclones in Bengal, those of 1737 and 1876, only caused casualties of about 300,000 each).
After the cyclone, it became obvious, as miserable days and weeks dragged by, that the administration was not exactly exerting itself to get aid to the survivors. Even a fortnight after the disaster only one cargo aircraft and one helicopter were in action to drop supplies over a total land area of 9,300 square miles.
There is also considerable evidence that the Administration could have prevented many of the casualties by broadcasting an evacuation warning and by not concealing what it knew of. the size, speed and proximity of the impending cyclone. A fortnight before the disaster, meteorological warnings were reaching the (Punjabi) Governor of East Pakistan and continued in a crescendo until, 8 hours before the cyclone struck, the new radar station at Cox’s Bazar announced that the unprecedented pressure had burst its instruments. Yet no warning to evacuate went out on the radio and still the Governor did not take any steps to prepare for relief work. Probably only a quarter of the casualties were unavoidable, another quarter died as a result of the tardiness and ineffectiveness of the relief operation and 50 per cent of those who died perished within reach of shelters and safe places which would have protected them in the cyclone had they received a radio evacuation signal. The Met officers and Radio Pakistan could not broadcast a general evacuation order without sanction from the Govemor.
Yet the election was not postponed. Bengalis seething with bitterness backed the Awami League 98 per cent and thereby gave Mujib’s party a clear majority in the National Assembly to be held to create a constitution. The Assembly was not held. Yahya Kahn talked to Mujib, privately, for weeks while the Army prepared its plan and brought from the West Wing immense reinforcements, especially of tanks trucks and aircraft. Yahya also brought over Bhutto—a man much detested in the East—possibly in the hope of provoking riots, which the Army would then have to quell. Finally having completed his preparations, he broke off his talks with Mujib and flew back to Rawalpindi. The Army then moved in, massacring students, Awami Leaguers, Hindus, men, women and children—anything that moved. Bengalis in panic fled the city and with primitive Second War rifles and bamboo sticks fought the Army in pathetic local stands. Millions of refugees have crossed the border to the refugee camps of India. Paddy fields are not being planted out, the jute crop is a write-off, and jute-mills and tea-plantations have suffered badly. There is at present no prospect of things getting really back to normal and the armed forces are still being reinforced. For the Bengalis the prospect is one of a quick death by napalm or a slow one by starvation.
This war, if any, is one that is being fought over plunder. The power to grab the profits of the jute and tea trades, the power to use East Bengal as a captive market for the industries of West Pakistan, the power to import cheaply the agricultural produce of the East: these are the reasons why Yahya Kahn is determined to “preserve the unity and integrity of Pakistan”.
And for what would the Bengalis be fighting, if they are fighting indeed and not just dying? Why, for the ineffable right to be exploited by Mr. Big Business Bhuiya or Choudhury or Haque, instead of by General Khan or one of General Khan’s many friends and relatives.
C. S.