It was always obvious that the narratives about the war of independence in erstwhile East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) were always going to be tainted by bias, with historians and nationals of every party trying to give accounts that supports their own party’s perspectives.
The breakup of Pakistan was inevitable though, from whichever point you look at it. The Pakistanis blame Indians and their alleged agents in the eastern wing, the Indians will always blame Pakistan, the countries have had issues since before the partition in 1947.
This inevitability of her birth maybe considered deterministic that existing conditions could have caused no other event. Anatol Lieven argues that “no freak of history like united Pakistan with its two ethnically and culturally different wings separated by 1000 miles of hostile India, could possibly have lasted for long.”
Cold war intrigues and other regional politics were always factors in the break up but the two totally different peoples with linguistic and cultural bipolarity were never going to have a strong seam sewn by the religion they shared.
Besides, the economic deprivation imposed on the east by the western wing in spite of earning huge revenues from the jute that the east produced (about 50% of total exports) and spending all the aid and assistance in developing the west and maintaining a bureaucratic-military oligarchy of a defective polity and a history of almost a quarter century of post-colonial feudal treatment meted to the Bangalis, made the emergence of Bangladesh a birth foretold.
This determinism is nicely captured in Salman Rushdie’s novel, Shame: “That fantastic bird of a place, two Wings without a body, sundered by the landmass of its greatest foe, joined by nothing but God.”
Srinath Raghavan’s book “1971: A Global History of the Creation of Bangladesh” is a wonderful and informative account that tells of the role of geopolitics behind the creation of Bangladesh.
He, however, holds the view that the birth of Bangladesh which most Bangalis hold as inevitable may not be the case, that is, he doesn’t want to give it the tag of being deterministic. He brings forth various factors in play during the sixties – decolonisation, globalisation, the Cold War, advances in technology, a worldwide awareness of basic human rights and humanitarianism and many NGOs like Oxfam involved with it.
He also brings forth the worldwide mood among the youth, especially students that erupted in 1968 after the Soviet tanks rolled on to Prague; there is no doubt that affected the radical student movements in Pakistan (in the East as well as the West wing).
That is an acceptable posit. And he rightly points out that it is the movement of the students of the East that forced, ultimately, the dithering of the politicians between autonomy and full-fledged independence.
There is a detailed study on how and why India did what she did in those nine months and how the super as well as medium powers had a bearing on her course.
The enigma of China, the sluggish Russians and the hawkish Nixon/Kissinger dominated US, bent on tying up with China with the help of Yahya, had immense effects.
The counter-culture spreading the world over, especially with music, galvanised public opinion all over against the genocide that the Pakistani forces wrought on East Bengal.
The songs of Joan Baez and then the move by Pandit Ravi Shankar to create songs and compositions for the plight of East Bengal played major roles. Shankar’s successful attempts to persuade George Harrison to bring together the rock musicians, the genre of music that dominated the western world, resulted in The Concert for Bangladesh.
Even Bob Dylan came out of hibernation to perform in the concert. This concert and the subsequent record sales went a long way in moving people in empathy for the victims of genocide in East Pakistan.
Their governments were playing along standard diplomatic lines in tune with the Cold War rhetoric of a bipolar world. But the hollering public forced many governments to come out of apathetic stance to one that had to bring pressure on the marauding Pakistanis.
Great Britain and France decided at one point to desert the norm of toeing the US line and abstained in voting for the US sponsored resolutions at the United Nations.
The United Nations and its Secretary General U Thant come across as quite ineffectual in the face of such dire catastrophe of the refugee crisis in the eastern part of India. They could only suggest cessation of all hostilities and stationing UN peacekeepers on both sides of the borders.
Even if India wanted to take it slow and try and bring a gradual solution to the problem, the swelling number of refugees forced their hand at actively training the freedom fighters and increase in the number of them from the number that had been arrived at initially.
They were moving in with the freedom fighters inside East Pakistani territory to ensure quick success. At midpoint of 1971, 50,000-60,000 refugees crossed over to India every day and the total number of them swelled to near 10 million.
Raghavan, however, brings a conclusion with the help of Jorge Luis Borges, “the garden of forking paths.” Events could have gone in different directions depending on certain actions – what if Bhutto didn’t play intrigues in order not to let the Awami League (AL) come to power; what if the AL were allowed to form the government, what if Yahya sat with Mujib and other high-ups of the AL in the middle of 1971 to look for a political solution?
What if Khandaker Mushtaque’s attempts in the middle of the war to form a loose confederation with the west with the help of the United States came about, what if Yahya didn’t drink as much and reined in his ego, what if ... endless forking paths!
But eventually Raghavan concedes that even if not in 1971, an independent state of Bangladesh was a distinct possibility. I think, the formation of an independent Bangladesh was inevitable and not only a possibility.
Why? Because the difference in culture and language and the feeling of being superior nurtured by the West Pakistanis would always have come to the fore and only a common religion would never have saved the union, not even a loose confederation would have lasted long.
Inevitable vivisection of a nation that was never meant to be, even if not a birth of a new nation, Bangladesh, in 1971, still not much later but inevitable. We, the Bangalis are a different people, needless to say, rebellious since time immemorial.
And the West Pakistanis replacing the British as masters with life-draining oppression in all matters including economic deprivation and stifling of the voices of dissent and equal opportunities being a far cry would always have been a deal breaker.
The book by Raghavan, well researched, fluently presented, with clarity of vision and a tremendous knowledge of geopolitics, is a very good read though.
