The Anatomy of East Bengal’s secession

The upheaval that led to the eventual breakup of Pakistan started not on the national question but on the basis of class struggle

The infinite debates of who was actually responsible for the breakup of Pakistan in December 1971 have only confused the real issue. Blaming individuals, institutions and accidental events only ends up in obscuring the role of the system and the state in that secession. In the wide spectrum of diverse tendencies of the dominant bourgeois intelligentsia, the arguments put forward range from conspiracy theories reverberating from religious chauvinism to the liberals who simply confine the whole episode to national oppression.

The secession of East Bengal proved the futility of creating a modern nation state on the basis of religion, especially with a geographical bifurcation of more than a thousand miles. The two main nationalities that were cruelly carved up with a cleaver in the bloody partition of 1947 were Bengal and Punjab. The rich culture and history of resistance against the British were torn apart in the name of religion and the revolution of 1946 was defeated by the betrayal of the native bourgeoisie. Imperialism was able to sustain its plunder and exploitation after the formal independence of the subcontinent. Pakistan came into being not as a nation state but as a state comprising of different nationalities held together on the obsolete premise of religion. Pakistan’s nascent ruling classes soon discovered their inability to solve the burgeoning crisis of capitalism and develop society. In that adverse situation they resorted to ruthless class exploitation and blatant national oppression to sustain their class rule.

The masses of East Bengal whose elite Muslim leaders had so enthusiastically opted for a theocratic state were immediately faced with discrimination and plunder by the West Pakistani, mainly Punjabi-dominated ruling classes. This sense of national deprivation led to the struggles against national exploitation and oppression as early as the beginnings of the 1950s in the former East Pakistan. It was not only in Bengal that this sense of national oppression prevailed. The situation has deteriorated alarmingly since and the national question in today’s Pakistan is a festering wound that is destabilising society. The ruling classes have failed to create a modern unified nation state. However, national oppression was not the only form of despotism by this state. The oppression on the basis of religion, race, ethnicity, gender and, above all, on a class basis, has worsened with the escalating crisis of weak and putrid Pakistani capitalism.

The protests, struggles and riots in East Pakistan in the 24 years of the common state’s existence on the question of language and national oppression were widely reported by the media but the movements of class struggle in East Bengal were deliberately concealed as it also threatened the interests of the media barons. The upheaval that led to the eventual breakup of Pakistan started not on the national question but on the basis of class struggle. The event that triggered the mass revolt — the killing of a student by police firing on a procession — took place in Rawalpindi in West Pakistan. If at any time the people of Pakistan were united, it was during those 139 days between November 6, 1968 and March 25, 1969 when the revolutionary storm swept both wings of the country. The slogan of revolutionary socialism resonated from Chittagong to Peshawar. In East Pakistan, the movement was not being led by the nationalist leadership of the Awami League in the initial stages but by Bashani, an old socialist of Maoist shade at the helm of the National Awami Party. However, when Bashani under the pressures of the Chinese leaders, who were cordial with Ayub Khan, was forced to abandon the movement at its peak in the heat of class struggle, it quickly began to divert along nationalist lines.

The Awami League under the leadership of a bourgeois demagogue, Mujibur Rehman, won almost all seats of the National Assembly in the 1970 elections from East Pakistan. The megalomaniac bosses of the state failed to strike a deal with Mr Rehman, who was more than accommodating to be in power in a larger state. But he was also facing immense pressure from below. The movement of the Bengali youth and masses he had unleashed with his nationalist rhetoric wiped out any chance of a compromise. The national liberation struggle had attained its own momentum and this was accelerating by the day. It is a historical fact that whenever the people rise up in revolt, no state force, however mighty it is, can defeat those masses up in arms. Those areas that were liberated from the state swept away old institutions like the police, bureaucracy, judiciary, etc, and were being replaced by people’s councils or soviets of the workers, youth and the poor peasants that took control. The national liberation movement was rapidly transforming into a class struggle. That transformation sent tremors through the echelons of power from Delhi and Islamabad to Washington and London. With the left already being a mass force in West Bengal, a socialist transformation in the east would have been the death knell for Indian capitalism. A unified socialist Bengal would have spread revolutionary currents throughout the South Asian subcontinent. The Indian bourgeoisie was in a terrible fright. The Indian army invaded East Pakistan not just to defeat the Pakistan army, which had already been lethally damaged by the Bengali masses, but their main task was to crush the soviets that were being organised by the JSD and the left wing of the Mukti Bahini. US imperialism’s seventh fleet was already in the Bay of Bengal with marines on board in case the Indian army failed to carry out the counter-revolution.

Bangladesh came into being as an independent capitalist state. Capitalism was saved and revolution foiled by the lack of a Marxist Leninist leadership. But after 41 years of its liberation on a bourgeois basis, Bangladesh is in the throes of a severe social and economic crisis. The masses are suffering from extreme poverty, misery and deprivation. The living conditions of the ordinary people have not improved, rather deteriorated after the so-called independence. All socially conscious beings cannot but support the liberation of the masses in East Bengal but this is yet another example that national liberation on a capitalist basis does not solve any of the real problems faced by society. The toiling masses need a revolutionary transformation through a victorious class struggle to free themselves from the miseries of exploitation and repression by the bourgeois system and state. To achieve genuine liberation, economic and social emancipation is indispensible.