The scars caused by the Dhaka debacle in 1971 have not yet healed,for reasons that are not hard to understand
Nights without lights appear mysterious, menacing and awe-inspiring. We are overwhelmed, and surrounded by frightening invisibility. We see nothing. Darkness swallows us. We buckle up, and then lean back against a support that we do not perceive, but feel it. Unidentified sounds add to the dread of the scary nights.
In the life of each one of us we experience fear of a dark night that remains buried in our subconscious, and occasionally crops up to remind us of the calamity that once tore us apart. But, not all people feel the pricks of the past in that way. Sensitivity differs from person to person. The same awful incident afflicts each person with different intensity. How many of us recall the painful parting of ways between two brothers in 1971? The Indians have not forgotten the break up of India even after 57 years of their country’s division. People in Pakistan have easily scraped from their memory the break up of their country three decades ago. For some the scars, whether visible or invisible, recall the events of the painful past.
It was one of the dreadful nights of the year 1971. The month was December. The hour was around midnight. Karachi was covered with a thick black blanket. People were forbidden to put on lights. I was standing in the corridor of the Radio Pakistan, Karachi. The prevailing mood in the country was melancholic. Pakistan was fighting a lost war in East Pakistan. However, in the newsroom, adjacent to my office a huge map of East Pakistan was sprawled on the news translators’ elaborate table under a lamp that hung suspended from the ceiling, and was positioned 12 inches above the map. The lamp was covered with a big black improvised shade that focussed the light on the map of East Pakistan. A team of war strategists constantly remained in the newsroom. They pegged the roads, rivers, and the bridges in the map systematically, hour by hour, and divulged to the broadcasters that Pakistan was on the verge of inflicting a crushing defeat on the enemy. However, the war was preordained to be lost. You can’t win a war when your own people do not support you.
It was a full-fledged war for which the short-sighted, narrow minded, and prejudiced politicians of West Pakistan had sowed seeds in 1954, and then nurtured it for 17 years. From the day Pakistan came into existence in 1947 West Pakistan, comprising four provinces — Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan, and the NWFP — went into the hands of ruthlessly powerful Zamindars, Jagirdars, and tribal Sardars. They became the legislators. On the basis of population East Pakistan was the majority province of the country. It enjoyed the status of the eastern wing of the country, and was called East Pakistan. The politicians from East Pakistan occupied more seats in the National Assembly than the politicians of the four provinces of West Pakistan.
The elected representatives of the people of East Pakistan were humble, enlightened, educated, and were drawn from ordinary strata of the social and political set-up that had been flourishing in East Bengal (East Pakistan) for centuries. They had a grasp of global events, the changing political scenario after the Second World War, and growing economic parity between the rich and the poor countries. To cut a long story short, the legislators from East Pakistan dominated the National Assembly of Pakistan. The Zamindars, Jagirdars, and the Sardars from the four provinces of West Pakistan were reduced to their insignificant size. To safeguard, and to salvage their feudal pride, the West Pakistani landed aristocrats in the assembly entered into a clandestine unholy alliance with the establishment in the formation of the United Front against East Pakistan. It was devised in the catchy name of ‘National integrity and solidarity.’ They named it, One Unit.
One Unit was vociferously opposed by East Pakistan, and the people of Sindh. Riots broke out in Dhaka and Chitagong. People took to the streets in Karachi, Hyderabad, Sukkur, Larkana, Nawabshah and some other towns of Sindh. Street battles between the police and the public became the order of the day in East Pakistan and Sindh. Then stepped in the progressive people of Punjab, the writers, poets, students, scholars, and intellectuals. They joined in the rallies, processions, and country-wide agitations. When the situation went out of control of the government of the feudal politicians of West Pakistan, they begged of General Ayub Khan to come to their rescue. General Ayub Khan promptly obliged the Sardars and the Jagirdars, and imposed martial law on the country in 1958.
For 10 years Field Marshal Ayub Khan added fuel to the fire in East Pakistan with his unwise and reckless policies. His every action was opposed with fierce counter reaction. During the 10-year tumultuous reign of Field Marshal Ayub Khan, Pakistan saw the emergence of two dynamic leaders on the political horizon of East Pakistan and West Pakistan. They were Shaikh Mujibur Rahman, a student leader from Dhakka, who had mustered up tremendous support in East Pakistan, and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the blue-eyed boy of the field marshal turned rebel. He cultivated massive support in West Pakistan.
By 1968, the field marshal grew sick and tired of unending ferocious conflicts, riots, street battles, and the agitations in East Pakistan, Sindh, Balochistan, the NWFP, and pockets of Punjab. He abdicated in favour of General Yahya Khan for the perpetuation of martial law in the country. (To be concluded)
