This is the seventh installment in Kapil Komireddi’s series, Pakistan: Anatomy of a Failed State. Click here for the rest of the series.
In March 1970, Pakistan’s military ruler, Yahya Khan, decreed that the country’s first general election would be held the same year. But the election that should have produced the first people’s government of Pakistan led instead to its dismemberment: Created expressly to safeguard the Muslims of India, the original Pakistan ceased to exist the following year — after committing the single most terrible slaughter of Muslims since the birth of Islam.
What is often forgotten is that a majority of Pakistanis at this point lived in the country’s Eastern wing; in what is now Bangladesh. Yet, for quarter of a century, East Pakistan had been exploited and neglected, its resources shipped out to fuel the Western wing’s needs, revenues from its jute and tea exports lavishly spent on imports for the Punjabi-dominated West, and its people marginalised and dehumanised.
In spite of their numerical strength, Bengalis occupied less than 20 percent of the country’s civil service posts and made up no more than 10 percent of the country’s army. In official circles, they were referred to as “Bingo bastards” and “black monkeys.”
More troublingly for the establishment, Bengalis were hostile to the refined Islamic identity invented by West Pakistan. For over two decades, West Pakistan attempted to erase Bengali culture, which was deemed too “Hindu,” and replace it with what it believed was an Islamic one.
Songs by the Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore were banned on state media because Tagore, beloved of the Bengalis, happened to be a Hindu. Denouncing Bengali as a Hindu language, West Pakistanis subordinated it to Urdu in the benighted belief that the latter was a Muslim language. When East Pakistan erupted with indignation, it was accused of turning its back on the culture of Muslims. Impoverished and crippled within Pakistan, Bengalis could scarcely feel any sympathy with West Pakistan’s efforts to “liberate” Kashmiris from “Hindu domination.”
So when Mujibur Rahman’s Awami League swept the polls in 1970, winning 167 of the 169 seats in the Eastern wing and trouncing Zulfi Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party to secure an overall majority in the National Assembly, Yahya Khan did not invite Mujib to form the government. What followed was a calculated campaign of butchery which the world, to its great shame, has all but forgotten.
More to come…
7 responses so far
1 ericna // Dec 13, 2009 at 2:48 pm
Two additional points: 1) The murders were actually aimed mainly at Hindus and Bengali intellectuals. 2) During the war the Pakistanis received arms from USA. Nixon and Kissinger demonstrating their unfailing ability to support unsavoury characters.
2 ericna // Dec 13, 2009 at 4:41 pm
I am sure Mr. Komireddi has many admirable qualities, but the ability to write objectively or even knowledgeably about Pakistan is not among them. I am often shocked by the remarkable prejudices that even well-educated Indians and Pakistanis have about each other.
3 Rafi123 // Dec 13, 2009 at 5:42 pm
@ ericna: With due respect, what has Mr. Komireddi about Pakistan that is not knowledgeable or prejudiced? I have personally found this series very useful because it goes beyond the regular tropes of why Pakistan is a victim and blames its condition on its own choices. Is there such a thing as free will in your universe?
I have followed Mr Komireddi’s work for a year and he is no apologist for India, he has written some acid criticism of his native country and its Hindu extremists. He is extremely pro-American in his writing. Are we now saying that a wrong thing too?
Besides, why is it prejudiced to point out that Pakistan’s army killed so many Muslims or that it has failed as a state or that it has exported terrorism? You wouldn’t call a critic of nazism anti-german I suppose.
4 netizen // Dec 13, 2009 at 8:11 pm
ericna writes–
I am sure Mr. Komireddi has many admirable qualities, but the ability to write objectively or even knowledgeably about Pakistan is not among them.
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Ericna, After reading your comments I re-read the piece. Couldn’t find anything to justify your wild accusation . Mr.Lomireddy is very objective and accurate. Can you clarify?
I read your first comment. Are you saying pakistan army slaughtered only Bengali Hindus? That wouldn’t be true. Several hundred thousands of Bengali muslims were slaughtered by Pakistan army. In fact this was the biggest slaughter of muslims anywhere in world history since Islam was founded some 1400 years ago. Carried out by the Islamic Republic of Pakistan!!
Also it is true US supplied arms and ammunition to Pakistan army. How does this fact absolve pakistan army? and how does it make Komireddy less knowledgeable or prejudiced.
I am afraid you seem to be prejudiced against Mr.Komireddy.
5 harkol // Dec 14, 2009 at 12:28 pm
Erinca: Here is an objective facts for you.
- At Independence India has just above 10% muslims, and today it has close to 13.8%.. A growth of more than 30%.Pakistan had above 18% Hindus and today it has less than 2% a decline of more than 90%. Where did the millions of Hindus disappear in Pakistan? How is Muslim population growing in India if they are discriminated against and How did a Muslim became president of India?
- Third rate citizenship for Hindus: Pakistan treats hindu’s as a Third class citizens behind christians who have better rights than Hindus. In India Minorities enjoy same privileges as everyone, but special protection by constitution, however in Pakistan there are no constitutional safe guards and there are Blasphemy laws that restrict practice of any other religion than Islam in Pakistan.
6 MrPerkins // Mar 16, 2010 at 10:28 am
shame on you Kapil Commiereadies for propogating such politically influenced nonsense. It wouldnt escape the intelligent reader that you are a Indian foreign policy mouthpiece devoid of impartiality
Pakistan may have corrupt morally bankrupt dynastic politicians but it has a strong independant judiciary and a capable military and one fact ignored by Indians is that during the Musharraf years it had the 5th fastest growing GDP per capita income in the world behind China, India and Turkey amongst others!
As someone who has actually visited Islamabad recently in my capacity as an engineer i can tell you very much the city and its people are far more prosperous than the scenes I saw on my Delhi and Amritsar postings.
India only prospered economically when dynastic politics were destroyed and it has been the same throughout Asia. Indonesia has prospered when 50 years of dynastic politics and the era of Sukharno came to an end.
Similarly Pakistan will prosper to heights India cannot reach due to its crippling population levels, once the Meglamaniacal Bhutto and Sharif dynasties collapse and true democracy untainted by corruption and India and the USA’s nefarious intelligence influences is established.It is the normal process of a nation maturing and othert similarly aged Asian nations such as Indonesia have managed it while the Phillipines like Pakistan languishes beneath its true potential.
Those hindu fundamentalists who bleat of Pakistan as a “failed state” ought to consider their own nation of 900 million slumdog dwellers living in abject poverty amidst huge social problems of illiteracy and forced prostitution and ethnic tensions. Yet of course they prefer to talk of the call centre culture and 80 million middle class so beloved of consumerism! Not realising it is exactly such talk which is sowing the seeds of Indias inevitable implosion into smaller states as the economic divide increases
Those hindu fundamentalists who bleat myths regarding so called Pakistani genocide, ought to consider the genocide the Indian army is conducting on its own civilians who happen to be muslims in Kashmir a region forceablely annexed by India against all UN resolutions. So much for the offer of safety to Muslims in India!
From my posting in India it seems every problem is immediately blamed on the muslim.
A more article on 1971 would include information on how India since partition had been working day and night to destablise Pakistan and had enlisted Mujib ur Rehman as a traitorous paid up member of the Indian secret services. He did his job of rabble rousing, and Mr Kapil should perhaps show some integrity and mention how Mujibs Awami league were rigging local elections, murdering and ethnically cleansing loyal Bihari non bengali east pakistanis all the whilst intimidating those who did not wish to vote for them
Also the looting and exploitation of East Pakistan was mostly done by the affluent Hindu East Pakistanis but of course Mujib was used to blame West Pakistanis for this.
Please dont bother writing unless you can be objective.Otherwise one day you will end up like your zionist bedfellow David Frum with the blood of 800,000 innocents killed in war on your hands , due to your hate mongering and lies!
Shame on you. Call yourself a journalist!
7 MrPerkins // Mar 16, 2010 at 10:29 am
Im sure freedom of speech will not last long before my comments start o be taken down for daring to offer the other side of the story
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