For the first time in Pakistani history, on December 7, 1970, voters were allowed to directly elect members to the national assembly. The Bengali dissatisfaction and populace made itself known for the first time as the Awami League won 160 out of the 162 seats for East Pakistan, while the ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) came in second only winning 81 of 138 seats for West Pakistan. Based on the Pakistani Constitution, the Awami League would have been delegated with the political predominance and power they deserved, but instead the election results were annulled and they were denied an inaugural assembly.
This may be my last message. From today Bangladesh is independent. I call upon the people of Bangladesh wherever you are and with whatever you have, to resist the occupation army. Our fight will go on till the last soldier of the Pakistan Occupation Army is expelled from the soil of independent Bangladesh. Final victory is ours. Joy Bangla! – Sheikh Mujibur Raman
After Yahya intentionally delayed the assembly with the advice of PPP’s Leader Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, political deadlock only further worsened. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, delivered his famous 7th of March speech in 1971 on Ramna Race Course Ground in Dhaka, declaring independence from Pakistan and urging Bengalis to launch a campaign of civil disobedience. Yahya Khan willed extensive military operations to suppress the Bengali civil disobedience in addition to declaring martial law: banning the Awami League party and arresting Prime Minister-elect Rahman. By Constitution, Mujibur Rahman was to be Prime Minister of Pakistan but after Rahman’s call for Bengalis to rebel, Yahya Khan instead appointed General Tikka Khan as Governor of East Pakistan.
Tikka and Yahya Khan led a six month war which was heavily funded by the U.S. under the Nixon administration and manipulated Islam in order to issue a religious fatwa for paramilitary groups to carry out systematic rape as an instrument of ethnic cleansing.
Tikka Khan was the chief architect and planner behind Operation Searchlight, under instructions from Yahya to carry out direct action, indiscriminate killings to terrify the East Pakistani populace. On the evening of March 25, 1971, thousands of innocents were systematically slaughtered wholesale in the capital of Dhaka. While the initial victims were the Hindu minority, intelligentsia, students, civilians, military personnel and Bengali activists of any sort, Khan’s regime sought to kill everyone in sight. Of priority were the academia and civil members of society, including teachers, students, doctors, lawyers and politicians, all killed in mass burial sites along with their families.
Dhaka University was a huge site for killings, while every radio station in West Pakistan were ambushed. Members of the Pakistani military and paramilitary forces from the Pakistani Muslim League (i.e. Razakars, Al-Shams & Al-Badr) took part in the systematic, deliberate rape of between 200,000 and 400,000 Bengali women, deemed genocidal rape. This was justified by a radically religious fatwa incited by Pakistani Islamists. Millions of Bengalis sought refuge in India, while the US turned a blind eye as President Nixon’s ties with Yahya to keep Pakistan as a Cold War ally against Russia and China. An estimated influx of 9.8 million refugees flocked to the Indian state of Tripura, where untold thousands died in camps. The events leading up to Operation Searchlight, up until the first few days of war, received little outside attention. The Mukti Bahini (Freedom Fighters of Bangladesh), resisting the Pakistani onslaught, put up a substantial guerrilla warfare defense.
Indira Gandhi, although compelled by her solidarity with humanitarian sentiments for Bengal, and even threatening war on May 12, 1971, couldn’t immediately intervene due to Pakistan’s claims of sovereignty in the UN Charter. Directly declaring war violated international law, but Indian Ambassador D.P. Dhar then suggested:
“War–open declared war-fortunately in my opinion, in the present case is not the only alternative. We have to use the Bengali human material and the Bengali terrain to launch a comprehensive war of liberation.”
Instead, India covertly aided the Mukti Bahini in training them within camps on the border in addition to Indian intelligence working closely with Bengali insurgents. When faced with the question of whether India was aiding the Mukti Bahini in the U.N., Indira Gandhi just broadly stated “They have their resources.” A U.N. Resolution to send UN High Commissioner of Refugees officials on the Indian-Bangladeshi border to investigate the Pakistani claims of Indian aiding & abetting in violation of international law was prevented through Gandhi’s alliance with Russia. This private information led to the buildup to an unconditional West Pakistani surrender to the Bangladeshi populace of East Pakistan. During the war, Pakistan saw its forces annihilated once Indian intervention came in with its near-total air supremacy and dominance on the naval front. The Mitro Bahini, the Indian Army allied with Mukti Bahini, found themselves retaliating at their best by November 21, 1971. However, on December 3, 1971, Pakistan unleashed Operation Chengiz Khan in direct opposition to India. Operation Chengiz Khan was a pre-emptive strike on 11 Indian airbases, giving Indira Gandhi the reason to hold the airstrikes as a declaration of war against India.
The direct confrontation between Pakistan & India escalated the Liberation war to become the Third Indo-Pakistani War. India swiftly secured the victory to the Mukti Bahini within just 13 days. In the Nine Months of the Liberation War, the Mukti Bahini manpower of 175,000 with Indian Allied Forces of 250,000 held against Pakistan’s 365,000 servicemen. However, the open declaration of war in the Third Indo-Pak War doubled India’s deployed manpower to 500,000, ensuring Pakistan’s defeat and Bangladeshi Secession. On December 16, 1971, the Eastern Command of the Pakistani Military signed the Instrument of Surrender, marking the formation of East Pakistan as the new nation of Bangladesh.
Bangladesh established itself as the People’s Republic of Bangladesh, in the name of all Bengalis regardless of faith or ethnicity who fought for Liberation. The Indian army took in over 93,000 Pakistani servicemen as prisoners. Defeat and dismemberment was a shocking loss to Pakistani military junta and civilians alike, as Yahya Khan’s dictatorship crumbled over to Ali Bhutto. The surrender of Pakistan struck fear in the hearts of Americans, as Nixon’s ties to Yahya proved deadly, bringing Cold War relations between the U.S., China & Russia into crisis brinksmanship. India began to assume its ulterior motive as regional hegemon, which also meant assuming Pakistan’s role as manipulator of Bengali commerce and politics.
Still, India’s proven goodwill to namely aid and advance Bengali secession efforts towards liberation did hold humanitarian sentiment, but was merely a byproduct of India seizing an opportunity of a weakened Pakistan to seize its role as regional hegemon.
How exactly Bangladeshis held out against an exponentially wealthier, more armed and internationally-backed central Pakistani government for six months baffles people to this day. The United States under President Nixon had especially good ties with the Pakistani Prime Minister during the 1971 Liberation War over strategic interests to keep Pakistan away from Soviet influence. This carries over today into the prevailing Democratic following of Bangladeshis, following Nixon’s Republican administration’s complicit role in the 1971 Liberation War. Consul General to East Pakistan, Archer Blood, wrote a famous telegram to Nixon, now known as the Blood Telegram, which reported Yahya’s Pakistan engaging in a “selective genocide” among the Bengali populace of East Pakistan. This was met with Nixon dismissing Consul General Blood, further proving America’s complicit role with Pakistan.
A Revolutionary, Not a Statesman: Mujib’s Fatal Flaw
“Revolutionaries are not necessarily good statespeople.” Journalist Shahidul Alam gave this remark in a 2013 Al Jazeera interview with David Frost in regards to Mujib’s transition from Bangladeshi founder to Prime Minister. “I didn’t think he was sufficiently aware of that difference. He tried to run it, but the things that went wrong started with the one-party system.”
My greatest strength is the love for my people, my greatest weakness is that I love them too much. – Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (Interview with David Frost on BBC, 1972)
Bangladesh was a parliamentary democracy on paper, but a year into nationhood, Mujib essentially put democracy aside in a desperate bid to save democracy. On February 24, 1975, Bangladesh Founder and First Prime Minister Sheikh Mujibur Rahman proclaimed Bangladesh a one-party state. With three presidential decrees, Mujib banned all existing political organizations, wiping out 13 political parties and effectively positioning Awami League as the sole political party in the new nation. From communists on the left to hardline Islamic groups on the right, Mujib declared that Bangladesh would now only have one party to help promote “the fundamental principles of state policy, namely nationalism, socialism, democracy and secularism.” The establishment of a one-party Bangladesh follows Mujib’s plan to leave his Prime Minister title and assume his new absolute powers as President.
On August 15, 1975, which is also Indian Independence Day, junior Bangladeshi military officers walked into Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s Dhanmondi residence and assassinated Mujib, and seventeen members of his family– a tragedy of the ages, which still shakes Bengalis to the core to this day. The only two surviving members of the Mujibur Rahman family were future and current Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her younger sister, Sheikh Rehana who were traveling in Germany at the time. The sheer brutality of the murders, so soon after the genocide crippled the morale of the country, but also served as an opportunity for a growing elite within the nation totally separate from Mujib’s Awami League party to this day.
While the one-party decision would prove to be a fatal mistake that would open the floodgates for a military coup and preceding military rule, there were multiple other factors that led to Mujib’s political and physical death. Mujib made use of a political militia established in 1972 called the Jatiya Rakhi Bahini which operated as a second national armed-force loyal to Mujib and the Awami League. The JRB’s 30,000 troops routinely intimidated and tortured Awami League opponents as a law enforcing agency to maintain internal security. The JRB also received disproportionate funding from the overall military budget that angered the military and the likes of the Mukti Bahini. Mujib has also been accused of nepotism and corruption within his family. In 1974 the next year, Awami League politician Gazi Mostafa kidnapped Army Major Shariful Haque Dalim and his wife from the Dhaka Ladies Club. Mostafa initially planned to take them to the Rakhi Bahini headquarters, but ended up taking them to Mujib’s residence where Mujib mediated a compromise. When word got out about the abduction, Mostafa’s house was ransacked while his entire family was taken prisoner. The Dalim-Mostafa conflict led to many army officers losing their job and Dalim later became an orchestrator of Mujib’s 1975 assassination.
The five-month track record of Mujib’s one-party rule was riddled with corruption according to journalist Lawrence Lifschultz who wrote in the Far Eastern Economic Review how “the corruption and malpractices and plunder of national wealth” in Bangladesh were “unprecedented.”
Ziaur Rahman gradually assumed the role of Bangladesh as Prime Minister after Mujib’s death. Ziaur reinstated multi-party politics, freedom of the press, free speech, and free markets and accountability. This was the change that the West wanted, away from Mujib’s communist inclinations calling for a totalitarian government under Soviet influence. Even outside the West, the post-Mujib Bangladesh seemed to be graciously welcomed by the international community as Saudi Arabia and China established relations with Bangladesh almost immediately with Ziaur coming to power.
In B.Z. Khasru’s book, The Bangladesh Military Coup and the CIA Link, Khasru elaborates on the prominent and documented theory that U.S. Intelligence had advanced knowledge of Mujib’s assassination plot and yet decided to do nothing. Mujib had fallen out of favor in the West by slowly but surely shifting allegiance towards the Soviet Union and its Eastern Bloc of communist states in Central and Eastern Europe, East Asia and Southeast Asia under Soviet hegemony during the height of the Cold War (1947-1991). While Communist leaders like Fidel Castro would laud Mujib for being like “the Himalayas,” the U.S. never forgave Mujib for his turn towards communism and made use of the CIA to exploit cracks within Mujib’s newfound nation within a matter of months.
The military coup instigators and benefactors proved to be the beginning of an entirely new political elite within the country as Ziaur established the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). The BNP is the only other major political party to hold power in Bangladesh other than Mujib’s Awami League.
Mujib’s enemies were not just limited to Bangladeshis and Pakistanis as his socialist inclinations and decision to turn Bangladesh into a one-party state, earned him Western notoriety as a communist sympathizer in the Cold-War era.
Sins of the Father: Bangladesh, a Blood Feud to this Day
Mujib’s decision to make Bangladesh a one-party state and play with the idea of socialism earned him enemies abroad and at home. Mujib can either be a big rallying point for Bangladeshis or a regrettable chapter, begging for a new turn of events. At any dinner table, Bangaldeshi families have either unending love, support and heartbreak over Mujib or hatred and pessimism over how political dynasties starting with Mujib have led to two parties taking turns looting the country ever since Bangladesh’s breakaway from Pakistan.
To this day, the only viable political parties in Bangladesh have been directly intertwined with the first major political upheaval within the first decade of the liberation: Awami League and the BNP.
The last twenty years of Bangladesh have seen the same two women, who are widow and daughter of the first two prime ministers of Bangladesh, hold the seat of Prime Minister of Bangladesh. Instead of the parliamentary democracy Bangladesh puts itself out to be on paper, instead, we are observing a blood feud between dominant political dynasties taking hold of a country, its people and its resources.
A recent Al Jazeera documentary, All the Prime Minister’s Men, exposed immense corruption on behalf of the Head of the Military, Aziz Ahmed, whose brothers engage in money laundering abroad following a life of crime in Bangladesh. The 2018 Bangladesh elections exposed the lengths Hasina’s Awami League today engages in through wide-scale voter intimidation. Looking back a decade, when the BNP was in power, we notice that the BNP engaged in similar if not identical tactics of corruption, nepotism and overall refusal to let parliamentary democracy take its course. Members of Parliament from both sides of the aisle have engaged in corruption. As a result, most of the nation’s economic and social progress has come in the form of non-governmental organizations and the initiatives of Bangladeshis abroad who come back to take on social enterprises such as BRAC and Grameen Bank.
“The people who make Bangladesh are the farmers in the field, the garment workers, the migrant workers. People like us —middle class people—live off them yet we do very little for them. This is not a country that takes care of people.” Journalist Shahidul Alam aptly captures the ongoing nature of Bangladeshi society as a result of dynastic politics at the hands of Awami League and the BNP.
“It is a question of who can utilize that [Presidential] term to get benefits for him or herself. Today we have essentially major right-wing political parties taking turns to loot a country one after another.”
Conclusion
Mujib is a figure, whom without Bangladesh could not possibly exist today. He was a man of the hour, who came in with the right ideas and motives, carrying with him a nation that could no longer tolerate being governed by a West Pakistan government divided by over a thousand miles of India.
However, from the facts presented in this piece and commentary shared by journalists such as Shahidul Alam and countless other leaders, academics and countrymen alike, we witness that Mujib was not a good head of state. An independence leader and patriot who held an immense love for his country and people, but a man whose love drove him to become the dictatorial figure that transformed Bangladesh from a parliamentary democracy on paper to an autocracy.
Bangladeshi-Canadian author, Neemat Imam, wrote a historical novel in 2013 called The Black Coat where Sheikh Mujibur Rahman is presented as a deadly dictator. To Imam, this dark and dystopian novel is “a meditation on power, greed and the human cost of politics.”
Ultimately, there is a wide consensus that Mujib was a necessary force who brought independence to Bangladesh. Although his tenure in office has laid bad precedent for the autocratic nature of Bangladesh, Mujib’s towering legacy and presence is simply one Bangladesh could not do without.
The fact that the last twenty years of Bangaldeshi politics has seen the same two women from the same two parties, from the same two families that scrambled for power within its first decade of existence, says a lot about the Bangladesh we all know today.