Bangladesh- The Cloudburst Revolution
The recent uprising in Bangladesh that resulted in former PM Sheikh Hasina’s hasty resignation and flight to India was a cloudburst - an extreme amount of precipitation in a short period, sometimes accompanied by hail and thunder, which can create flood conditions. The analogy to cloudbursts here is partially appropriate because though the storm that ultimately drowned Hasina’s government looked like a cloudburst, it was brewing for many years.
Soon after the 1965 war between India and Pakistan, riots erupted in East Pakistan when the Awami League demanded regional autonomy based on Mujibur Rehman’s Six Points. The Six Points called for abolishing Ayub Khan’s Basic Democracies system, restoring parliamentary democracy based on universal adult suffrage, devolving federal power to the East and West Pakistan provinces, separating fiscal, monetary, and trade policies for East and West Pakistan, and increasing security spending for East Pakistan.
In 1968, a secession plan known
as the Agartala Conspiracy came to the fore, and Mujibur Rehman, along with 34
others including a Bengali CSP officer and personnel from the armed forces, was
tried for treason. Mujib and his co-conspirators described Agartala as a hoax.
The 1 July 2024 meltdown in
Bangladesh started when students from Dhaka University, and later other
universities in Bangladesh, took to the streets to demonstrate against the 'government
job allocation quota system' that disproportionately favoured wards of veterans
of military and paramilitary Mukti-Bahni Force, and civilians who fought in the
1971 war of independence against Pakistan. For the Awami League, what is the
emotional significance of Mukti Bahini and Bengali civilians who fought against
the Pakistan Army between 23 March and 16 December 1971?
For almost forty years, Awami League and its mentor India had been denying the existence of the Agartala conspiracy. On 7 March 2010, PM Sheikh Hasina (she dropped the surname “Wazed” after her husband’s death) confessed that her father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman did plan a comprehensive conspiracy to dismember Pakistan with the help of the Indian government.
On 22 February 2011, Shawkat Ali, the surviving
co-conspirator and Deputy Speaker of the Bangladesh Parliament confessed to the
parliament at a point of order that the charges read out to them before a
Pakistani court were correct. He further stated that they had formed a Shangram
Parishad (Action Committee) under Sheikh Mujib for the secession of East
Pakistan.
The job allocation quota system was the instrument through which Sheikh Hasina and the Indian government kept exploiting the Bangladeshi people. The present beneficiaries of this quota system belong to the third generation of post-1971 survivors of the Awami League and its collaborators who fought against the Pakistan Army.
After having
squeezed it completely, the Awami League narrative on the 1970-71 revolt
against West Pakistani authoritarianism has lost its appeal for the teeming
millions in Bangladesh reeling under poverty during the first quarter of the 21st
Century. Hence the student unrest.
The controversial job quota
system did play a significant role in the recent unrest in Bangladesh, but it
was one dimension in a multi-dimensional conflict. Born on 28 September 1947, Hasina
served as the tenth prime minister of Bangladesh from June 1996 to July 2001
and again from January 2009 to August 2024. Propped up and maintained by India,
Hasina was autocratic and barbaric. The last three elections held under her
administration were an eyewash.
Economically, Bangladesh was
doing much better than Pakistan. There is some truth in the statement of
Hasina’s son when he commented on the present turmoil, stating that
Bangladeshis were an ungrateful people who did not deserve his mother, and that
soon Bangladesh would become like Pakistan (This day had to come). That people
stood up against Hasina’s government, despite Bangladesh’s soaring exports and
foreign exchange reserves, demolishes the thesis being pedalled in Pakistan
that economic stability reinforces political stability.
In the aftermath of the recent happenings in Dhaka, there is an ongoing debate in Pakistan about whether Sheikh Mujib was a hero or a traitor. The short answer is that Mujib was a hero for the Bangladeshis because he led them towards independence. He was a traitor to Pakistanis for his role in seeking India’s help in organizing, training, and arming the Mukti Bahini to fight against the Pakistan Army.
Though Maneckshaw
had sought a couple of months from Indira Gandhi to attack Pakistan, the Indian
army had started its preliminary operations against East Pakistan in May 1971.
On 15th May the Indian Army launched a coordinated operation, codenamed
Operation Jackpot, under General Aurora, to train the Mukti Bahini insurgents
at Fort William, Calcutta. The Bengalis eulogized Mujib and acknowledged him as
the Father of the East Bengali nation, then turned against him when he
gradually became a despot, indifferent to the woes and sufferings of the common
man.
Mujib, along with his family members was murdered (less Hasina and Rehana who were in Germany at that time) when an army contingent stormed his house during the early hours of 15 August 1975. They wanted to take revenge for a young girl who was raped and murdered by an Awami League politician. Mujib came down the stairs and said, “Why do you want to kill me? You are all like my children”.
According to another version,
he said “So, you want to finish me? Even the Pakistan Army couldn’t do that”.
His tobacco pipe fell when a hail of bullets sprayed and ripped apart his face.
Mujib’s dismembered jaw, tenuously attached with a thin membrane, flailed in a
pool of blood.
The horrendous massacre of Mujib
and his family in 1975, followed by an unceremonious funeral, and the
demolition of his statues in the wake of Sheikh Hasina’s ouster from power in
2024 do not diminish Mujib’s stature in history. Public outrage, largely based
on emotionalism, is not the accurate determinant of a person’s popularity in
society. The vandalizing of Mujib’s statutes can be better explained as an
outrage against Hasina’s extremely unpopular rule. Mujib was punished for his
arrogance and dictatorial rule, but his popularity will keep waning and waxing
– waning for his critics, waxing for his supporters.
Another question agitating the
minds in Pakistan’s corridors of power is whether a Bangladesh-like situation
can occur in Pakistan. The answer is largely no. It is because, unlike
Bangladeshi society, Pakistan is a hodge podge of nationalities who love to
hate each other and who are strapped together by a central government that is
as oblivious to the people's sufferings as a pagan god.
Bengalis have a historical
revolutionary streak of defiance missing in the conformist feudal and tribal
societies of Punjab, KPK, and Balochistan. After defeating the Sepoy Mutiny in
1857, the British disbanded the Presidency armies of Bengal, Bombay, and Madras
in 1895. They also reclassified Indian nationalities by declaring the Bengalis,
and all those who fought against them, as non-martial races. Those who fought
with the British were acknowledged as martial races.
Pakistan’s only successful political uprising was the agitation against Ayub Khan’s eleven-year rule. Rawalpindi’s Gordon College students started the agitation in October 1968. The agitation simmered for a few weeks, slowly gained momentum, and forced Ayub Khan to abdicate in March 1969.
There were two
major causes why the agitation was successful: 1) The Bengali students who
joined the movement in early 1969; and 2) the CIA’s involvement. The US was
angry over Ayub Khan’s misadventure in 1965 and wanted to punish him for
disturbing the US strategic apple cart in the Indian Subcontinent.
Hasina was received at the Hindon Air Force Station by Ajit Doval, Modi’s spymaster. Rumours suggest that she is getting lukewarm treatment because the Indian security apparatus has advised Modi to shrug her off like a political deadwood. The US, EU, and UK, it is believed, have also politely refused political asylum to Hasina.
Will Finland.
Belarus or some Central Asian republic host her? Or, like the Shah of Iran, who
was denied political asylum by the US, Panama, and Morrocco, she would find
refuge and die in a country ruled by another dictator who himself was
assassinated during a military parade? Who would be Hasina’s Anwar Sadat? As
for the future, Sheikh Hasina and Khalida Zia’s legacy will alternately haunt
the political scene in Bangladesh for many coming decades.
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