The Pakistani Revolution – IX

The Agartala Conspiracy Case and after

W B Bland

Pursuing its offensive against the leaders of the Awami League (AL), in January 1968 the government announced the discovery of a new ‘conspiracy’. It was alleged that a number of Bengali army officers and civil servants had met agents of the Indian secret service at Agartala in India to plot to bring about the secession of East Pakistan. Sheikh Mujibur Rehman, the leader of the AL, already in detention, was named as one of the conspirators. In June 1968 the case of the State versus Sheikh Mujibur Rehman and 28 other defendants began before a special tribunal in Dacca. The case was officially called the Agartala Conspiracy Case, but Sheikh Mujib always referred to it as the ‘Islamabad Conspiracy Case’, as “That is where the conspiracy was hatched.” The trumped-up nature of the case was fully exposed when the second witness for the prosecution, one Kamaluddin Ahmad, broke down in court, admitting that his evidence had been completely false and that he had testified falsely only after prolonged torture by intelligence officers of the military dictatorship. Sheikh Mujibur Rehman, giving evidence in January 1969, said that neither he nor the AL stood for the secession of East Pakistan, but for its autonomy within the Pakistani state.

The Upsurge Begins

The defection of Bhutto from the Ayub regime and the formation of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) released a great explosion of popular anger in West Pakistan towards the end of 1968. The upsurge began on November 7 in Rawalpindi, where already agitating students organised a demonstration in support of Bhutto, who was visiting the city. The police opened fire on the demonstration, killing a student, and the government then closed down all colleges in Rawalpindi. On November 10, 1968, a student fired two shots during a meeting addressed by Ayub in Peshawar. On November 13 Bhutto, Chairman of the PPP, was arrested for “inciting the masses, particularly students, to violate the law and create disorder”, together with Wali Khan, President of the ‘right’ National Awami Party (NAP-Wali). The three opposition leaders who allegedly stood for extra-constitutional political action – Rehman, Bhutto and Wali Khan – having been detained, and believing that the students had been sufficiently intimidated, the government reopened the Rawalpindi colleges on November 26. But the students reassembled and issued a call to the workers for a general strike. The response was almost total, and students and workers began to fight back with sticks and stones against police violence. By the beginning of December 1968 this spontaneous upsurge had spread to East Pakistan also.

The Operation to Save the ‘Karachi’ Clique

On February 14, 1969, the London Times wrote: “With the entry of the working class into the revolt, hitherto limited to the students and political parties, observers are beginning to doubt whether the government or the opposition can control the forces unleashed in Pakistan.” But the political representatives of the ‘Karachi’ clique had seen this danger to their rule at the beginning of December 1968. Realising that their apparatus of repression was no longer adequate to contain this spontaneous popular upsurge against their hated military regime, they proceeded to mount an astute series of political manoeuvres, which took the following form:

Manoeuvre 1: To draw the AL and the ‘right’ NAP-Wali (the leadership of which could transform the spontaneous popular upsurge into an organised revolutionary national-democratic movement) into a ‘united front’ with the ‘constitutional’ opposition parties, whose leaders were already combined in the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM). At the beginning of January 1969 the National Executive of the PDM resolved to boycott the elections, to endorse “in principle” the six-point programme of the AL, and to build a mass movement. They then approached AL and NAP-Wali with the proposal to establish a united front on this basis. As a result of the acceptance of this proposal, the Democratic Action Committee (DAC) was set up, with a nine-point programme as follows:

1) Repeal of the University Ordinances (banning students from political activity);

2) Restoration of parliamentary democracy and direct elections on the basis of universal adult suffrage;

3) Freedom of the press from state censorship;

4) Full autonomy for East Pakistan;

5) Establishment of a sub-federation for West Pakistan, giving full autonomy to North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), Sind and Balochistan;

6) Nationalisation of the banks, insurance companies and large industrial firms;

7) Immediate ending of the state of emergency, restoration of the right to strike;

8) Release of all political prisoners and abandonment of the Agartala Conspiracy Case, and

9) An independent foreign policy, including withdrawal from SEATO and CENTO.

Manoeuvre 2: To utilise ‘leftist’ political leaders to divert the mass movement from the objective of overthrowing the military dictatorship of the ‘Karachi’ clique. The ‘leftist’ political leaders involved were found principally in the leadership of four organisations:

1) The ‘left’ NAP, headed by Maulana Bhashani;

2) The East Pakistan Students’ Union (EPSU, leftist), formed as a breakaway organisation from the East Pakistan Students’ Union in 1965 and headed by Maoist Rashed Khan Menon. It was this organisation that invited Tariq Ali to come to Pakistan to “lead the movement”;

3) The East Pakistan Workers’ Federation (EPWF), a ‘leftist’ breakaway organisation from the East Pakistan Federation of Labour, headed by Siraju Hossan (who had been released from prison in December 1967), and

4) A section of the student movement in West Pakistan, most influential in Rawalpindi, headed by Raja Anwar.

In West Pakistan, these ‘leftist’ leaders strove to divert the mass movement for the overthrow of the military dictatorship of the ‘Karachi’ clique along the lines of a demand merely for the removal of Ayub Khan: “Throughout Pakistan the fires still raged, but the student movement made no effort to coordinate, to set up a province-wide organisation…Not a single comprehensive programme containing the demands of the students movement of West Pakistan ever appeared…It seemed that since the chief object of hatred was Ayub, and since his removal had become the main demand, the students felt that there was no need for ideological clarity on their part…Their (i.e., the West Pakistan students’– Ed.) main demand now became that Ayub should quit. They were unclear as to the alternative, and preferred not to talk about it” (Tariq Ali: Pakistan: Military Rule or People’s Power? London, 1970, p.196).

In East Pakistan, where political consciousness was on the whole higher than in West Pakistan, these ‘leftist’ leaders strove to disrupt the mass movement for the overthrow of the military dictatorship of the ‘Karachi’ clique by means of the Trotskyite slogan of “Socialism Now”. “The Left (i.e., the ‘leftist’ leaders of the student movement in East Pakistan – Ed.) argued that this struggle (i.e., the national-democratic struggle – Ed.)…must be viewed as part of the struggle for socialism. The Right (i.e., those who did not support the above ‘leftist’ line – Ed.) argued that this was the first stage…The right-wing argument was a typical Menshevik/social-democratic analysis of the situation. It could only lead to right-wing deviations…The EPSU (leftists) were forced to struggle against the political position of…the EPSU…In East Pakistan…a Student Action Committee (SAC) had been established and its leaders had adopted an eleven-point programme of demands which was anti-capitalist in content” (Tariq Ali, Ibid., p. 180,181-197).

Manoeuvre 3: To make such concessions to the DAC as would enable the ‘constitutional’ opposition leaders to press the genuine ‘extra-constitutional’ leaders represented on the Committee into acceptance of negotiations with the military dictatorship.

On February 1, 1969, President Ayub Khan, in a broadcast, invited “responsible political leaders” to meet him for talks on the country’s future. The DAC replied that they were willing to meet the President if some preliminary concessions to their demands were made as a gesture of good faith. On February 12 censorship of the press was abolished. On February 14, it was announced that the state of emergency in force since 1965 would end on February 17, and that all persons detained under the emergency regulations would be released. On February 20 the urban curfew was ended. On February 21 Ayub announced that he would not contest the next Presidential ‘election’. On February 22 the Agartala Conspiracy Case was dropped, and all the defendants, including Sheikh Mujibur Rehman, were released. This series of concessions had barely commenced when, on February 16, the DAC accepted Ayub’s invitation for talks. After a preliminary meeting a Round Table Conference with the President was fixed to open on March 10.

Manoeuvre 4: To organise, with the objective assistance of the ‘leftist’ political leaders, widespread acts of terrorism unchecked by the state, in order to frighten the national bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie into accepting a compromise settlement at the Round Table Conference which would save the political power of the ‘Karachi’ clique under Martial Law, at the cost of replacing Ayub Khan as President by the Commander-in-Chief of the army and the promise to restore parliamentary democracy.

During the first stage of the development of spontaneous student militancy in November 1968, the ‘left’ NAP-Bhashani had remained inactive. “The pro-Peking NAP had remained aloof from the struggle in West Pakistan for a whole month…The Left faction of the NAP in West Pakistan contained all the pro-Peking Communists in West Pakistan and many of these were in leading positions in the party. Their attitude towards the upsurge was initially one of hostility” (Tariq Ali: Pakistan: Military Rule or People’s Power? London, p. 174, 192). Then, in the first week in December 1968, the leaders of the ‘left’ NAP suddenly became outspoken opponents of Ayub. Maulana Bhashani began to tour the country, making inflammatory speeches about blood and fire. “Only Bhashani was able to keep up with the rapidly developing radical consciousness…Maulana Bhashani called a funeral meeting on Sunday, February 16, 1969. It was at this meeting that the 86-year old peasant leader ended his oration with the call “Bangla Jago, agun jelo” (Bengalis awake and light the fires). No sooner had the Maulana said these words than smoke was seen rising from the city centre…The leadership of the left NAP was meeting at a house in Eskaton. The old Maulana was pacing up and down in the garden…weeping as he heard the sound of machine-gun fire – the other ‘leaders’ were debating how to escape if the army should raid the house. At one stage, workers ran to the house and asked Bhashani for guns to use against the army, but…none were made available…At this crucial moment, Maulana Bhashani left his political base in East Pakistan and embarked on a tour of the western province. In West Pakistan he visited three cities and made extremely inflammatory speeches, which caused his enemies to say that he was acting in league with the army and deliberately exacerbating the situation to provide an excuse for Martial Law…The army had quite clearly made up its mind to ‘save the nation’ once again…They obviously used some of Bhashani’s statements to scare the West Pakistani middle class” (Tariq Ali: ibid., p. 176, 207, 208, 214).

The military dictatorship gave the ‘leftist’ leaders every assistance in their actions: “The students…virtually controlled Dacca…Numerous acts of violence occurred in the towns…The state of anarchy was most intense in the villages…The provincial and local authorities…made little attempt to maintain order…Police patrols in Dacca were, on March 19 reported to have been completely absent from the streets of the city for a whole fortnight, and village police…were said to be remaining in their barracks in many parts of the province…Leaders of the Opposition political parties alleged that the authorities were permitting and even encouraging the disorders to provide a pretext for imposing martial law” (Keesings Contemporary Archives, p. 23354-55).

It was against this background that the ‘constitutional’ opposition leaders within the DAC repudiated the agreement on which the Committee had been set up, aided by Bhutto and Bhashani, who had been brought into the Round Table Conference by the President. On March 10, 1969 the Convenor of the Committee, AL renegade Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan, put forward to Ayub Khan two demands on which the political leaders represented at the Conference now agreed: the restoration of parliamentary democracy and the election of a National Assembly (NA) and Provincial Assemblies by direct vote on the basis of universal adult suffrage. Three days later, Ayub Khan accepted these two demands. On March 25, 1969, in a broadcast, Ayub declared that he had refused to accept the demand for full regional autonomy for East Pakistan “because the opposition leaders were not agreed on this demand” and because “…the acceptance of this demand would have spelled the liquidation of Pakistan. I have always told you that Pakistan’s salvation lay in a strong Centre. I accepted the parliamentary system because in this way also there was a possibility of preserving a strong Centre…It is impossible for me to preside over the destruction of our country.” Speaking of the “fast deteriorating situation in the country”, Ayub declared: “The situation is no longer under the control of the Government…Every problem of the country is being decided in the streets. Except for the armed forces there is no constitutional and effective way to meet the situation. The whole nation demands that General Yahya Khan, the Commander-in-Chief of the Pakistan Army, should fulfil his constitutional responsibilities…In view of this, I have decided to relinquish today the office of President.”

Ayub Khan’s resignation announcement was followed by a proclamation from General Agha Mohammad Yahya Khan, in which he declared Martial Law and assumed the position of Chief Martial Law Administrator, saying: “My sole aim in imposing martial law is to protect the lives, liberty and property of the people and to put the Administration back on the rails…I have no ambition other than the creation of conditions conducive to the establishment of a constitutional government. It is my firm belief that a sound, clean and honest Administration is a prerequisite for the smooth transfer of power to the representatives of the people elected freely and impartially on the basis of adult franchise. It will be the task of these elected representatives to give the country a workable Constitution.” Under the various Martial Law regulations issued, “mutiny, rebellion or rioting” were punishable by death, participation in strikes, including student strikes, and the spreading of reports “liable to create alarm or despondency” by 14 years imprisonment, the holding of political meetings without permission by seven years imprisonment.

The AL had meanwhile withdrawn from the DAC in protest against the betrayal of the agreement upon which it had entered the Committee, and on the evening of the day on which Martial Law was declared, the Committee dissolved itself on the grounds that “…its basic objectives have been achieved”. Simultaneously, the ‘leftist’ leaders – their “basic objectives” having also been achieved – immediately called off their campaign of incitement.

On March 31 1969, General Yahya Khan assumed the post of President. In the Black Dwarf of April 18, 1969, Tariq Ali wrote: “The struggle has been victorious.”

Preparations for the Restoration of Parliamentary Democracy

In August 1969 President Yahya Khan appointed a seven-man civilian cabinet. In November 1969, in a broadcast, President Yahya Khan announced that a General Election would be held on October 5, 1970 for a new NA, which would formulate a new Constitution, and that permission would be given for “political activity” from January 1, 1970. In the same month the Industrial Relations Ordinance restored freedom of trade union association for workers and the right to strike. The restricted nature of the “political activity” to be permitted was revealed in a regulation issued in December 1969: in this rules were laid down for the conduct of political parties, and its most important provision read: “No political party shall propagate opinions or act in a manner prejudicial to the ideology, integrity or security of Pakistan.” In March 1970 the Legal Framework Ordinance was promulgated. By this Pakistan would once more be known as “The Islamic Republic of Pakistan”, and the new NA would consist of 300 seats, plus 13 reserved for women (the latter elected indirectly).

The ‘Karachi’ clique now decided that – with the ‘Punjabi’ landlord clique challenged politically by the West Pakistan national capitalists (represented by the PPP) and by the landlords of the former NWFP and Balochistan (represented politically by the ‘right’NAP) – their own position was strong enough to cancel the concession made to the ‘Punjabi’ landlord clique in the shape of One Unit, and to reduce the political influence of this clique by dismembering West Pakistan into separate provinces. In April 1970, therefore, a Presidential ordinance divided West Pakistan into the four separate provinces of Punjab, Sind, NWFP and Balochistan. In August 1970 President Yahya Khan postponed the general election for two months, until December 7, 1970.

The 1970 General Election

In December 1970 the General Election for a new NA took place – the first General Election with adult suffrage in the 23 years of Pakistan’s existence. The two key political parties contesting the election were the PPP, led by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, representing the interests of the national capitalists of West Pakistan, and the AL, led by Sheikh Mujibur Rehman, representing the interests of the national capitalists of East Pakistan. Because of the similar class interests they represented, the programmes of these two parties were similar in many respects. Both stood for the nationalisation of banking and key industries, the development of cooperative farming, and an independent foreign policy, including the withdrawal of Pakistan from the SEATO and CENTO pacts. But the two parties differed on one important issue. The AL took its stand on Sheikh Mujibur Rehman’s six points, i.e., for full political and economic autonomy for East Pakistan, now amplified to embrace control over its own foreign trade. But the national capitalists of West Pakistan, while wishing to win power from the ‘Karachi’ landlord/comprador bourgeois clique, were at one with the ‘Karachi’ clique in seeking to maintain – for their own benefit – the semi-colonial status of East Pakistan as the basis for their own national capitalism: thus the PPP stood for “a strong Central Government” with only very limited autonomy for East Pakistan.

The ‘Karachi’ clique had calculated that in the existing political circumstances in Pakistan, the General Election would produce a NA in which no party would have a majority. Thus, any government which could command the confidence of the NA would have to be a coalition government, giving the ‘Karachi’ clique the opportunity – through their nominee, President Yahya Khan, and their own political party, the Convention Muslim League (CML) – to play off one party against another, to make and break governments, just as their previous nominee, President Mirza, and their previous political party, the Republican Party, had done so astutely. The only party that could theoretically win a majority of seats in the NA was the AL, but the opponents of the AL needed to obtain only 12 out of the 162 seats in East Pakistan to prevent this. It was calculated that, when the AL was challenged by the CML, the Pakistan Democratic Party (PDP) (representing the Bengali landlord/comprador bourgeois clique), and various religious parties – with women voting for the first time – [the ‘Karachi’ clique anticipated that these would poll well in East Pakistan] there could be no reasonable doubt that 12 of the 519 candidates standing against the AL would be elected.

The result of the General Election was, however, not as the ‘Karachi’ clique had expected. The ‘President’s Party’, the CML, won only two seats in the whole country, none at all in East Pakistan. The PDP won one seat only, in East Pakistan, where its leader, Nurul Amin, was elected. The religious parties won no seats whatever in East Pakistan. The result was that the AL won 160 seats out of the 162 seats in East Pakistan.

In West Pakistan, the PPP did somewhat better than had been anticipated. It won a majority in Punjab and Sind, but its total was only 87 out of a total of 313 seats in the NA. The shock of the election for the ‘Karachi’ clique was that the AL, with 162 seats in a House of 313, had an absolute majority in the NA and so, constitutionally, could frame a new Constitution along the lines of the six-point programme – i.e., along lines unacceptable in principle both to the ruling ‘Karachi’ clique and to the national capitalists of West Pakistan. The events that followed demonstrated the Marxist-Leninist truth that ‘parliamentary democracy’ is never anything more than a false facade hiding the real face of the State as an apparatus of coercion.

Preparations for the Military Attack upon East Pakistan

On January 3, 1971, Sheikh Mujibur Rehman, leader of the AL, addressing a crowd in Dacca estimated at two million, said that the future Constitution would be drafted in accordance with the six point programme of the AL. On February 17, 1971, however,  Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, leader of the PPP, announced that his Party would not participate in the new NA, in view of the fact that the AL held a majority of the seats. At a press conference on February 24, Sheikh Mujibur Rehman said that the opponents of the AL were concerned not with maintaining the territorial integrity of Pakistan, which was not at issue, but with maintaining the semi-colonial status of East Pakistan, so that it could continue to be exploited by vested interests in the West. These “dark, conspiratorial forces”, he warned, were now engaged in “a last, desperate bid” to frustrate the adoption of a Constitution by the elected representatives of the people, and it was this attack on democracy that was threatening the territorial integrity of Pakistan and destroying the last opportunity for the peoples of Pakistan to live together within one State.

On March 1, 1971 President Yahya Khan postponed indefinitely the session of the new NA, which was due to open on March 3, on the grounds that without the participation of the PPP, the NA could not be “representative”. On the following day, a general strike began in East Pakistan, called by the AL and embracing all sections of workers. On March 6, President Yahya Khan declared in a broadcast: “Let me make it absolutely clear that, no matter what happens, as long as I am in command of the Pakistan armed forces and Head of State, I will ensure the complete and absolute integrity of Pakistan.”

On March 15, in the third week of the total general strike in East Pakistan, President Yahya Khan arrived in Dacca for ‘negotiations’ with the leaders of the AL in which he was later joined by Bhutto. While Yahya Khan was pretending to ‘negotiate’ with the AL leaders, troops were being poured into East Pakistan by sea and air. On March 25, when these military preparations had been completed, Yahya Khan abruptly broke off the ‘negotiations’ and returned to West Pakistan the following day. Immediately on arriving back in West Pakistan, Yahya Khan promulgated Ordinances banning the AL (which he denounced as a party of “traitors”), prohibiting strikes and all political activity throughout the country, and imposing complete press censorship, together with an indefinite curfew in East Pakistan. He then announced that the Pakistan Army had been instructed to “re-establish the authority of the Government in East Pakistan”.

Operation Genocide

The initial offensive of the Pakistan Army against the people of East Bengal lasted three weeks. Its aims were to exterminate actual or potential opponents of the ‘Karachi’ clique’s military dictatorship, to re-establish the authority of the dictatorship and to intimidate the population at large into acceptance of this authority. In an attempt to prevent the extreme brutality of the operation from becoming known to the outside world, 35 foreign journalists who were in East Pakistan when the offensive began were detained in the Intercontinental Hotel in Dacca for 48 hours and then deported, after all film and documents in their possession had been confiscated. However, two foreign correspondents escaped the round-up and deportation: Simon Dring, a Daily Telegraph correspondent, and Michel Laurent, an Associated Press photographer. They managed to make an extensive tour of Dacca before sending reports from outside Pakistan.

Dring’s despatch, published in the Daily Telegraph of March 29, described Dacca as “a crushed and frightened city” after “24 hours of ruthless shelling by the Pakistan army”. He estimated that more than 75,000 East Bengalis had been killed – more than 7,000 in Dacca alone, where the first target had been the university where 200 students had been butchered outright in the students’ union headquarters: “Troops had occupied the university…and were busy killing off students still in hiding.” The second target of the troops had been the densely populated old city, where 700 men, women and children had been killed and the greater part razed to the ground: “Fires were burning all over the city.” Dring’s account was confirmed in all essentials by a despatch from Laurent, published in The Times of March 30. Three months later the report of a World Bank mission headed by Peter Cargill, director of the Bank’s South Asia Department, described: “…a continuing reign of terror in the East Wing conducted by some 70,000 West Pakistan troops stationed there. The army has been given a free hand to deal with ‘secessionists’. Any Hindu or member of the Awami League is said to fall under this heading…The mission found towns with only 10 percent of the population remaining. The rest had been killed, dispersed to India or fled to villages. Troops had shelled and destroyed public buildings. Bazaars and commercial life were at a standstill” (The Guardian, June 28, 1971, p.3). Reginald Prentice, MP, a member of the British parliamentary delegation that visited both East and West Pakistan about the same time, wrote: “In East Pakistan there is bound to be continuing repression, using the most brutal methods, simply because this is the only way in which a few thousand troops can maintain power over 70 million hostile people” (R Prentice: “The Repression in Bengal”, in Sunday Times, July 11, 1971, p.10). Sunday Times correspondent Murray Sayle describes the regime imposed by the Pakistan Army in East Bengal as: “a regime of paid informers, bigots and thugs answerable to no one and apparently above whatever law is left in East Pakistan” (M Sayle: “A Regime of Thugs and Bigots”, in Sunday Times, July 11,1971, p.13), and declared: “There is an atmosphere of terror in East Pakistan…There are now, according to the military authorities, 5,000 razakars (i.e., special constables – Ed.) in East Pakistan…They are paid three rupees a day (about 25p at the official rate) and receive seven days’ training…Their work consists of ‘security checks’– guiding the West Pakistan troops to the homes of supporters of the Awami League…These people are, in fact, representatives of the political parties which were routed at the last elections, with an admixture of men with criminal records and bigoted Muslims who have been persuaded that strong-arm methods are needed to protect their religion – a mixture strangely reminiscent of the Orange Lodges, ‘B Specials’, and political terrorists of Northern Ireland…A military directive states that complaints against razakars are to be investigated by the military authorities…It is clear that only a very brave or very foolish refugee would even try to return as things are” (M Sayle, ibid., p. 11,13). This picture is confirmed by all reliable sources. By September 1971 some 10 million refugees had fled from East Bengal into India.

The Democratic Republic of Bangladesh

The military offensive by the Pakistan Army against the people of East Bengal made it clear that any prospect of obtaining full autonomy within a Pakistan dominated by the military dictatorship of the ‘Karachi’ landlord/comprador bourgeois clique was an illusion. As the attack began, and just before his arrest by the occupying forces, Sheikh Mujibur Rehman, leader of the AL, called for the setting up of “the sovereign, independent Democratic Republic of Bangladesh”. On March 28, a clandestine radio broadcast an Order of the Day by the Commander-in-Chief of the Liberation Army of Bangladesh (called at first the Mukti Fauj, later the Mukti Bahini), Major Zia Khan, in which he declared: “I order the freedom fighters of Bangladesh to continue the struggle till ultimate victory”, and asked for international recognition of the Republic.

On April 12, a six-member provisional government of Bangladesh was set up, with Sheikh Mujibur Rehman (now in prison) as President, Syed Nazrul Islam, Vice-President of the AL, as Vice-President and Tajuddin Ahmed as Prime Minister and Foreign Minister. On April 17, 1971 the Democratic Republic of Bangladesh was formally proclaimed at a ceremony at Mujibnagar. On April 18, the Deputy High Commission in Calcutta, staffed predominantly by Bengalis, declared its allegiance to the Democratic Republic of Bangladesh and announced that its office would in future function as the diplomatic mission of Bangladesh in India. Later a number of other Pakistani diplomats switched their allegiance to Bangladesh.

The Liberation Army of Bangladesh then began the first stage of its war of liberation against the Pakistan military dictatorship in the shape of guerrilla warfare, at the same time training considerable numbers of guerrilla fighters, principally from among the refugees who crossed the border into India.

The Attitude of Foreign Powers

The attitude of foreign powers to the war of liberation of Bangladesh had been dictated by the relations between the Pakistan military dictatorship to these powers in the new world line-up which was in the process of development. As a member of the US-dominated bloc of states, the Pakistan government had received the support of the US imperialists and their ally, China. Despite its claim to support national liberation movements everywhere, the Chinese government, in particular, gave open and unreserved support for the repressive actions of the Yahya Khan dictatorship in East Bengal, repeating verbatim the propaganda put out by that dictatorship. While the Pakistan Army was still carrying on its initial offensive against the people of East Bengal, Chinese Prime Minister Chou En-lai sent on April 12, 1971, a message to Yahya Khan expressing the full support of the Chinese government for Yahya Khan’s “…useful work in upholding the unification of Pakistan and in preventing it from moving towards a split. We believe that, through the wise consultations and efforts of Your Excellency…the situation in Pakistan will certainly be returned to normal…The Chinese government holds that what is happening in Pakistan at present is purely the internal affair of Pakistan.”

The counter-revolutionary position of the Chinese government on this issue gave rise to further rifts within the Maoist parties and groups throughout the world. In West Bengal, India, one section of the Maoist Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), headed by Ashim Chatterjee, called for guerrilla attacks upon the Liberation Army of Bangladesh, while another section of the party, headed by Charu Mazumdar, advocated neutrality. The Maoist Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist), loyal to its Chinese backers, obediently supported the Peking counter-revolutionary line, while the Maoist Irish Communist Organisation, citing an article from Peking Review, declared: “The only meaning to be got from the article is that the people of Pakistan are standing against foreign subversives who are trying to break up the territorial state of Pakistan. But it is clear that the actual situation is nothing remotely like this…The Peking Review article bears no resemblance to the facts. It repeats the propaganda of the West Pakistan Government, which is attempting to hide the fact that it is trying to establish a naked dictatorship over the Bengalis” (Irish Communist, June 1971, p. 5,8). The Maoist Finsbury Communist Association sneered at its fellow Maoist groups for their confusion over the issue of East Bengal: “Particular difficulties are posed for the various Maoist parties and groups in England. The Communist Party of China has given them no lead (sic!). So are they to affirm solidarity of the British working class for Pakistan based on ‘the traditional friendship of the British and Pakistani peoples’ or for East Bengal based on ‘the traditional friendship of the British and Bengali peoples?” (Finsbury Communist, July 1971; p.3). This body sought to dissociate itself from this ‘confusion’ by dismissing the war of liberation of Bangladesh as a “foreign matter” of no concern to the British working class. It declared: “The English ‘left’ knows damn well that the working class is not interested in international solidarity” (Ibid., p.4). The Maoist Working People’s Party of England, throwing overboard its pretence of being a “Marxist-Leninist organisation speaking with a single voice”, put forward two opposite viewpoints for its supporters to choose from. Alex Hart and John North sought to excuse the attitude of the Chinese government, while Paul Noone and Michael Mouzouros cried in pathetic despair: “What of People’s China? Why the support of butcher Yahya Khan? Why the failure to support Bangladesh, and the people’s liberation fight? Some so-called Maoists in this country try to condemn the Bengali people’s struggle or belittle it. This is ludicrous opportunism…In fact, People’s China has OFFICIALLY condemned Bangladesh, supported a ‘united Pakistan’, complimented Yahya Khan on his action, and allowed Pakistan to overfly Chinese territory with troop planes. This is a tragic error…This is a set-back for all revolutionaries who look to Mao Tse-tung and the Communist Party of China for world leadership” (Worker’s Broadsheet, April/May 1971, p.10).

On the other hand, the powers that were lining up in a bloc opposed to that dominated by US imperialism supported the Bangladesh liberation movement as a force tending to weaken the Pakistan state, a member of the US-dominated bloc. On March 31, 1971, the Indian Parliament adopted a resolution denouncing the actions of the Pakistani military dictatorship, and expressing support for the Bangladesh liberation movement: “This House records its profound conviction that the historic upsurge of the 75 million people of East Bengal will triumph. The House wishes to assure them that their struggle and sacrifices will receive the wholehearted sympathy and support of the people of India” (Text of Resolution of the Indian Parliament, March 31, 1971, cited in L M Singhvi (Ed.): Bangla Desh, Part 2, Delhi, 1971, p.103-104). The Soviet Union, as the leading power in the developing anti-US imperialist bloc, naturally aligned itself with India in supporting the Bangladesh national movement.

The Indian Intervention

The policy of the Indian government towards the Bangladesh liberation struggle was dictated not only by the desire to weaken its traditional enemy Pakistan, but also by the fact that a part of the Bengali nation – West Bengal –lies within India. The presence of Bangladesh freedom fighters and several million refugees from East Bengal on Indian soil, the possibility of the emergence of Bangladesh as a genuinely independent state as a result of the war of liberation, aroused the fear that these factors would stimulate Bengali nationalism within their own frontiers.

It was all these factors that led the Indian government, in November 1971, to order Indian armed forces to intervene actively “in support of the Bangladesh liberation army”, with the aim of securing the establishment of a Bangladesh that would be nominally ‘independent’ but in reality dependent upon India. “The ideal solution in the opinion of some Indians would be to have Bangladesh independent but bourgeois, and deeply dependent on India for trade and defence” (Observer, August 8, 1971, p.5). The advance of the Indian army in East Bengal was rapid and effective. On December 14, 1971, the East Pakistan government resigned, and two days later President Yahya Khan accepted the Indian terms of unconditional surrender.

National-Democratic Change in West Pakistan

The collapse of the Pakistan army in the east led to a virtually bloodless national-democratic change in the west. The dominant national bourgeoisie, represented politically by the PPP headed by Zulfiqar Bhutto, was able to oust the ruling comprador-bourgeois clique headed by Yahya Khan, and on December 20, 1971, installed Bhutto as President and Chief Martial Law Administrator in succession to Yahya Khan. The new government released Sheikh Mujibur Rehman from prison, the latter significantly flying to London for talks with the British government before returning to Dacca.

On January 1, 1972, the Bhutto government confiscated the passports of leading members of the comprador-bourgeoisie and ordered them to bring home the large capital sums they held abroad. On the following day it announced the nationalisation of key industries. In March 1972 the new government announced a land reform directed at “eradicating the curse of feudalism”. Ceilings for land ownership were reduced by 70 percent, the excess to be made available to poor and landless peasants.

The remains of the artificial state of Pakistan were however, faced immediately with internal dissension from NWFP and Balochistan. In April 1972 martial law was lifted, and a new Constitution brought into force giving measures of autonomy to these areas.

Parliamentary Democracy in Bangladesh

On January 12, 1972, two days after his return to Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rehman announced a provisional Constitution for the new state, setting up a parliamentary democracy based on cabinet government. He promptly resigned as President and took over the position of Prime Minister, together with the portfolios of Home Affairs, Defence, Cabinet Affairs and Information, thus making himself the Minister responsible for the army, the police and the paramilitary forces. One of the first acts of the new government was to demand that the Mukti Bahini should surrender their arms to the state, a demand which was only partially complied with. By March 1972 the new state had been recognised by all major governments, except for those of the US and China. In April, Bangladesh joined the British Commonwealth.

By March 1972 the last Indian troops had left the country, but the economic plight of the country – most of its factories deserted by their West Pakistani managements, its transportation system virtually destroyed – provided the justification for the government to call for foreign ‘aid’. This was provided in the first place by India and the Soviet Union, enabling these powers to bring about at an early stage a measure of dependence of Bangladesh on these powers.

The Revolutionary Process in Pakistan

The scientific definition of the concept ‘nation’ was put forward in 1913 by Stalin: “A nation is a historically constituted stable community of people formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture” (J V Stalin: “Marxism and the National Question”, in Works, Vol. 2, Moscow, 1953, p.307). A nation comes into being out of a pre-national community as a result of the development of the capitalist mode of production: “A nation is…a historical category belonging to a definite epoch, the epoch of rising capitalism” (Stalin: ibid, p.31). In a multi-national state, nations that have been “pushed into the background” are hindered from developing into independent national states by the ruling strata – which are usually the ruling strata of the dominant nation or nations: “The nations which had been pushed into the background and had now awakened to independent life, could no longer form themselves into independent national states; they encountered on their path the very powerful resistance of the ruling strata of the dominant nations, which had long ago assumed control of the state” (J V Stalin, ibid., p.315).Thus, the young oppressed nations are compelled to struggle for their independence: “Thus arose the circumstances which impelled the young nations…on to the path of struggle. The struggle began and flared up, to be sure, not between nations as a whole but between the ruling classes of the dominant nations and those that had been pushed into the background…The bourgeoisie of the oppressed nation, repressed on every hand, is naturally stirred into movement…Thus the national movement begins. The strength of the national movement is determined by the degree to which the wide strata of the nation, the proletariat and the peasantry, participate in it” (J V Stalin: ibid., p. 315, 317).

In the last two quotations cited above, Stalin is speaking specifically of the multi-national states of Eastern Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But his description is equally valid for the multi-national states of the Subcontinent in the mid-20th century. Marxist-Leninists hold, of course, that the Subcontinent is inhabited not by a single ‘Indian nation’, but by peoples of many different nationalities: “Today India is spoken of as a single whole. But there can scarcely be any doubt that in the event of a revolutionary upheaval in India (N.B.: Stalin is speaking of India under British colonial rule – Ed.), scores of hitherto unknown nationalities, having their own separate languages and separate cultures, will appear on the scene” (J V Stalin: “The Political Tasks of the University of the Peoples of the East”, May 1925, in Works, Vol. 7, Moscow, 1954, p.141).

When the leadership of the Communist Party of India (CPI) was still faithful to Marxist-Leninist principles, this view of India as inhabited by peoples of many different nationalities, some of them developing into nations, was accepted by the party as a matter of course: “Every section of the Indian people which has a continuous territory as its homeland, common historical tradition, common language, culture and psychological make-up and common economic life would be recognised as a distinct nationality with the right to exist as an autonomous state within the free Indian union or federation, and will have the right to secede from it if it may so desire. This means that the territories which are homelands of such nationalities and which today are split by artificial boundaries of the present British provinces and of the so-called ‘Indian states’, would be reunited and restored to them in Free India. Thus Free India of tomorrow would be a federation or union of autonomous states of the various nationalities such as Pathans…Punjabis…Sindhis, Bengalis…etc.” (“On Pakistan and National Unity”: Resolution adopted by the enlarged Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPI, September 1942).

At the same time as the CPI was putting forward this Marxist-Leninist analysis of the multi-national character of the Indian Subcontinent, British Marxist R Palme Dutt was asking: “Can the diversified assembly of races and religions, with the barriers and divisions of caste, of language and other differences, and with the widely varying range of social and cultural levels, inhabiting the vast sub-continental expanse of India, be considered a ‘nation’?” (R P Dutt: A Guide to the Problem of India, London, 1942, p.80), and was answering the question in the affirmative, in terms acceptable to the dominant section of the Hindu capitalists: “In the modern period the reality of the Indian nation can in practice no longer be denied” (R P Dutt: ibid., p.99).

In contrast to this line, the CPI, its leadership then still loyal to Marxist-Leninist principles, recognised the existence of a single Bengali nation: “Our first formulation is that the Bengalis form a nation and so should be given the right to self-determination…It is correct to say that the Bengalis are a nation and Bengal should have its own separate state” (C Adhikari: “Pakistan and National Unity”, the CPI, 1943). The Bangladesh liberation movement must therefore be seen as the most developed section of the national-liberation movement of the Bengali nation as a whole, part of which is dominated by the Indian state. The Bangladesh national liberation movement must also be seen as the first stage in a whole series of national-liberation movements that are developing throughout the Subcontinent, movements in which the aim of the national capitalists, who at present constitute the leading force in these movements, is to redraw the existing state boundaries of the Subcontinent along national lines, and secure the establishment of a number of national capitalist states.

While the working class has an objective interest in supporting these national-liberation movements, its interests are served not by the establishment of new national-capitalist states in the Subcontinent, but by the establishment of a federation of socialist states in which the exploitation of the working class has been abolished and in which the working class is the ruling class. The objective interests of the working class lie, therefore, in working for the transformation of the these national-democratic revolutions into socialist revolutions. This transformation is possible only if the working class gains the leadership of the national-democratic revolutions from the national capitalists, and if the working class itself is led by a Marxist-Leninist Party which has rid itself of all revisionist trends.

The formation of Marxist-Leninist Parties of the working class in Pakistan and in India is thus an urgent necessity for the working class.

(Concluded)