Death of the generals

May 22, 2005

By Amar Jaleel

The secession of East Pakistan was not a process that took place overnight

IN the drop scene of the gory drama that saw East Pakistan culminate into Bangladesh, Gen Niazi and his 90,000 strong troops surrendered on December 16, 1971, and laid down arms at the feet of Lt-Gen Jagjit Singh Aurora. The ones who had to bear the brunt of bullets died an ignominious death. The ones who were subjected to insults and humiliations hung their heads down in shame. The blood of the Bengalis that flowed in the streets of East Pakistan dried by the time Pakistan, formerly West Pakistan, finally accepted secession and recognized Bangladesh as an independent country on the map of the world.

Lt-Gen Jagjit Singh Aurora died last week in Delhi at the age of 92. Gen Niazi expired last year. The two generals were together at Staff College Quetta as trainee soldiers during the British Raj. Thereafter, the two of them fought against each other in the East Pakistan war in 1971. For some of us he was the last of the major characters who had played a pivotal role in the cessation of East Pakistan. Shifting responsibility for political blunders and crimes to others is the hallmark of our culture.

The history of Pakistan has been distorted to the extent that our children born around the tumultuous years of 1970-71 believe to this day that the major characters in the lamentable play were Gen Yahya Khan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Shaikh Mujibur Rahman, Indera Gandhi, Gen Niazi, and Lt-Gen Jagjit Singh Aurora. It tells our students that India alone was responsible for the cessation of East Pakistan, and its ultimate transformation into Bangladesh. Otherwise, Bengalis were happy serving their masters from West Pakistan.

If not supported by its own people an army is bound to lose war on the home front. After a civil war in East Pakistan, people fought fierce street battles against the Pakistan Army. In such a situation, how could you think of people’s support for the armed forces when India entered the war? In this context Justice Hamoodur Rahman’s report is worth reading. The report is an admonition for the rulers of Pakistan to refrain from inducting the armed forces in unsavoury situations to crush their own people.

The people do not go out for cessation overnight, or on the spur of a moment. It takes years of thinking over the pros and cons of cessation. During this period inventories of social, cultural, economic and political injustices inflicted on the aggrieved are prepared. To assume that the separation of East Pakistan was hatched during 1970-71 would be a fallacy. It took Bengalis 23 years in bidding farewell to the ruthless rulers of West Pakistan for whom East Pakistan was a colony.

Gen Yahya Khan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Shaikh Mujibur Rahman, Indera Gandhi, Lt-Gen Aurora, and Gen Niazi were lateral entrants to the gory drama. They were the performers in the concluding scene of the play written in blood. Who wrote the script? Who directed the play? Who were the significant and insignificant performers in the initial episodes?

Who drafted the first ever speech of the Quaid-i-Azam that he delivered in a massive rally in Dhaka in early 1948? As governor-general of Pakistan he in his address from the soil of Bengal announced, “Urdu, and Urdu alone shall be the state language of Pakistan.” It spontaneously provoked the Bengalis who had come to listen to his speech. The entire province rejected the Quaid-i-Azam’s verdict. It sowed the seed of suspicion in the heart of the Bengalis. Gifted with artistic and sensitive nature the East Pakistanis were politically more mature than the West Pakistanis. Pakistan at that time was beset with enormous problems. Was there any necessity for raising the language issue within six months of Pakistan’s birth? The speech writer forgot that Bangla (or Bengali) is one of the subcontinent’s developed languages, and is extremely rich in literature. It is the language of Tagore, Nazrul Islam, and Sarath Chandar Chaterjee.

As if it was not enough, Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan rode roughshod over East Pakistan in the first report of the Constituent Assembly in 1950. The report suggested that Pakistan would have a bicameral legislature having equal number of elected representatives from both wings of Pakistan. The report not only ignored the 56 per cent (majority) population of Pakistan living in the eastern wing, it also recommended Urdu to become the national language of the country. It gave birth to the language movement throughout East Pakistan in 1952 that proved a major contributory factor to the creation of Bangladesh in 1971.

History doesn’t tell us that Gen Yahya Khan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Indera Gandhi, Shaikh Mujibur Rahman, Gen Niazi, and Gen Aurora had anything to do with the merger of four provinces of West Pakistan into One Unit in 1956. It was virtually a united front of West Pakistani feudal politicians against the Bengalis. East Pakistan rose in revolt. Soon the entire country turned into an inferno. For a couple of years feudal politicians and their rulers couldn’t contain the uprising. They begged Gen Ayub Khan to step in and take over the country, and save the obnoxious One Unit.

Gen Ayub Khan stepped in and imposed martial law on the country in 1958. For the next 10 years what he did in the name of national integration proved counter-productive, and paved the way for the disintegration of the country. The rest is history.