‘Separation of East Pakistan was neither a military nor a political but a collective failure’

Former army chief Qamar Javed Bajwa’s remark on the East Pakistan debacle during his farewell address at the GHQ last month has revived a debate on who was responsible for the separation of East Pakistan: the military or political leadership.

His comment also found a mention during a wide-ranging discussion on the events that led to the breakup of Pakistan here on Friday. The seminar titled ‘Fall of Dhaka: Unlearned Lessons’ was organised by the Pakistan Institute of International Affairs (PIIA) at its library.

In a brief introduction, Dr Masuma Hasan, chairperson of the institute, said the separation of East Pakistan changed the lives of many people and left behind a wound that has not been healed yet. “It was a series of events and a civil war that could have been avoided if there had been statesmanship and a greater desire to give and take and to respect and accept diversity,” she lamented.

Dr Farhan Hanif Siddiqi, director and associate professor of the Quaid-e-Azam University’s School of Politics and International Relations, said, “We often blame others for what are essentially problems and conflicts of our own making. Take up Balochistan that is in its fifth and longest phase of insurgency and we are again blaming outsiders for exploiting our ethnic fault lines.”

He said the former army chief argued that the separation of East Pakistan was a political and not a military failure. “It was neither a military nor a political but a collective failure,” he opined, adding that the sense of denial lies at the root of our national identity crisis.

The professor said the denial of culture and linguistic diversity as well as the demographic majority of the Bengalis contributed to the crisis. “We denied East Pakistan their culture, language and political representation. We did this rather very intelligently…. the biggest evidence is One Unit policy where we reduced the majority of East Pakistan into a parity and sanctified it through the 1956 constitution,” he maintained, adding that democracy was finally established in the country through the 1970 elections, but then the East Pakistan was denied the right to form a government despite winning majority, and instead a military operation was launched, which was eventually exploited by India.

He said the best definition of Pakistani identity should be based on the notion of accepting diversity rather than rejecting it. Unfortunately, the denial of diversity had been part and parcel of our policy from the very beginning and uniformity had been imposed from the top, he opined. “If we will define Pakistani identity too restrictively and regressively then we have to contend with the problem of social disharmony,” he said.

“If we have to drive right lessons from the separation of East Pakistan and move forward, the first element is to be self-reflective and self-critical and the second is to normalise diversity.”

‘Handcuffed’ memory

Syed Sikander Mehdi, former professor and chairman of Karachi University’s International Relations Department, said, “To me, the memory of Bangladesh in Pakistan is still a handcuffed memory. The reality is far different from what is written in many books in Pakistan. For instance, I was reading a book recommended to CSS aspirants [for the preparation of the competitive exam] and it had only one paragraph about Bangladesh that said the country was created because of Hindus in East Pakistan and Indian forces. There was nothing else about the alienation of the Bengali people.”

He said any study on the federation of Pakistan and management of the country could be incomplete without “treating Bangladesh as a teacher for Pakistan”. “Bangladesh is a teacher as Hiroshima is a teacher. When we will learn from what we did to Bangladesh, then we won’t do those things to the federating units of Pakistan.”

Mehdi said one can resolve a problem by giving justice and rights to people and not by denying them with use of force. “Bangladesh was not created in one day and not by India, but it was created by us as we meted out injustice to the people of Bangladesh.”

Debunking myths

Vice Admiral (retired) Asaf Humayun, former vice chief of the naval staff, said, “Many of us shy away from studying the breakup of our country because of the shame of 93,000 prisoners of war, often repeated accusation of killings of three million people by Pakistani troops and failure of Pakistani rulers and politicians. These are some of the prevailing myths. However, the separation had a long gestation period starting from the language rights in East Pakistan in 1952.”

He added that there was a long chain of events that led to the creation of Bangladesh. He said there is a prevailing myth in Bangladesh that the Pakistani forces killed three million people and raped 2,000 women during the 1971 war, adding that Sheikh Mujibur Rahman repeated these figures but never gave any supporting evidence. He said the Hamoodur Rehman commission, many books written on the debacle, including those authored by Indian journalists, had all unequivocally debunked the claims of the deaths and rape. He said many Bangladeshi people had also contested these figures.

Dr Abdul Mu’min Chowdhury in his book titled ‘Behind the Myth of 3 Million People’ said the figure of three million deaths had first appeared in the editorial of a Bengali newspaper and termed it a conspiracy, he maintained. “These figures had also been challenged in the Bangladesh Assembly but such remarks were immediately expunged from the proceedings to perpetuate the myth. This is what is drilled into the minds of Bangladeshis in schools and colleges,” he added.

Humayun claimed that Sheikh Mujib had been preparing for the liberation of Bangladesh since 1961 with covert help from India. “He didn’t visit West Pakistan to win public support even once after his electoral victory in East Pakistan and avail the opportunity to lead Pakistan because his ambition was Bangladesh.” He said Gen Yahya Khan could not also bridge the gap between the two aspiring prime ministers -- Bhutto and Mujib.

He said the Awami League chose a violent route to seek the emancipation as after the postponement of the general assembly on March 1, Sheikh Mujib called for a strike on 3rd of March, after which attacks on West Pakistanis, their houses and businesses began and firearms were looted from arm dealers. There was a complete civil disobedience in East Pakistan as the Dhaka University became a ground for military training and arms depot.

“If the Pakistan Army and law enforcers had acted on 3rd of March and onward perhaps there had been less bloodshed and Sheikh forced to seek a rather political solution.”

Besides, the vice admiral said, it was also a myth that Indian mischief to separate East Pakistan started with the Agartala conspiracy; in fact, Sheikh Mujib had been in league with Indian deputy high commissioners and agents since mid-1950s.