Tukde Tukde Pakistan- The Muslim League, which was the basis of the formation of Pakistan, started disintegrating after the formation of Pakistan. In Dhaka in 1949, a group broke away from the Muslim League and formed the ‘All Pakistan Awami Muslim League’. All Bengalis were in this group. Prominent among them were Abdul Hameed Khan Bhashani, Yar Mohammad Khan, Shamshul Haq, etc.
Later, Hussain Shaheed Suhrawardy, the founder of ‘Direct Action Day’, joined this group. This party was prominently the Bengali avatar of the Muslim League. Meanwhile, in the former Bengal state of Pakistan, the movement for the Bangla language started smoldering. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman formed the ‘East Pakistan Muslim Students League’ at Dhaka University.
He was an emerging student leader. The Muslim League of West Pakistan was talking about the strictness of Urdu in East Bengal. In protest against the Muslim League, the student wing of all political parties organized a massive strike on 11 March 1948 in East Bengal. Mujibur Rahman and other student leaders were arrested.
But due to the pressure of the student movement, all these had to be abandoned on 15th March. On March 21, 1948, Quaid-e-Azam Jina asked the people of East Bengal to adopt Urdu. There was strong opposition to it. Dhaka University became the center of this movement and again on September 11, 1948, other student leaders including Mujibur Rahman were arrested. This arrest took a long time. He was released on 21 January 1949.
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Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was now going to become the face of Bengali Muslim students. He started having sharp differences with the Muslim League. Therefore, on 23 June 1949, he joined the ‘East Bengal Awami Muslim League’, a breakaway party from the Muslim League. He was the main voice of the continuous movements.
His party later became the ‘Awami Muslim League’ of which he was the National General Secretary. (After a few years, the word ‘Muslim’ was dropped from the party’s name, in view of the large number of Hindu voters in East Bengal. The name of the party remained ‘Awami League’ from Pakistan, until the break-up of East Pakistan.) He was coming to the fore in the politics of Bengal and as the main leader of the ongoing movement for Bengali identity.
In 1954, he contested the East Bengal Legislative Assembly for the first time on an Awami League ticket. He won from Gopalganj by more than thirteen thousand votes. Later in 1958 democracy came to an end in Pakistan due to military rule. But Mujibur Rahman, to save the Bengali identity, still kept fighting with the government of Karachi.
The sixties were a time of great upheaval for Pakistan. The army was running the administration under the leadership of General Ayub Khan. But in the war with India in 1965, Pakistan was badly defeated. This defeat changed many equations in Pakistan. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman of East Pakistan emerged as an effective opposition leader in the country.
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After the Tashkent Agreement, a joint meeting of all the leaders of Pakistan was held in Lahore on 6 February 1966. In this meeting, Mujibur Rahman kept a six-point program, under which there were formulas for the restoration of democracy in the country and the protection of Bengali identity in East Pakistan.
But the military rule of Pakistan and the Punjabi leaders rejected this proposal outright. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was called a separatist. Later on February 21, this six-point program was unanimously accepted in the meeting of the Awami League in Dhaka. Dissatisfaction was increasing in East Pakistan, ie East Bengal. The main source of Pakistan’s income used to come from East Pakistan.
The export of jute there was an important part of Pakistan’s economy. But what were they getting in return? The leaders of West Pakistan were giving step-motherly treatment to East Pakistan, which has almost half of the country’s population, that is, to the Bengali citizens there. Whatever little development was happening in Pakistan, it was limited to Punjab and Sindh. Former Bengal used to have a negligible share in its account.
The amount spent on West Pakistan between 1965 and 1970 was 11,334 crore Pakistani rupees. This was 71.16 percent of Pakistan’s total expenditure. In the same period, the amount spent on East Pakistan was 4593 crore Pakistani rupees. This was only 28.84 percent of the total expenditure. People’s anger started boiling in East Pakistan against this discriminatory policy of West Pakistani leaders. Almost the whole of East Bengal rallied behind the Awami League and its leader, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
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The discomfort had increased in the Pakistan Army after losing the 1965 war. This resulted in the departure of Ayub Khan. The power was still in the hands of the army. But now his command was in the hands of General Yahya Khan.
On the other hand, pressure was being created by the democratic countries of the world to restore democracy in Pakistan. That’s why Yahya Khan decided to hold elections. This was perhaps the first direct and democratic election after the formation of Pakistan. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was emerging as a leader in West Pakistan. He had the full support of Yahya Khan. The Pakistani army was feeling that after the elections the power would come in the hands of Bhutto, who is nothing more than a puppet of the army.
In this election, there was a struggle between the ‘Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) of West Pakistan and the Awami League of East Pakistan. The results of the election changed both the history and geography of Pakistan. The National Assembly had a total of 313 seats, out of which elections were held for 300 seats.
The Awami League led by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman won 167 seats by performing tremendously. This alone party had 16 seats more than the majority. Bhutto’s party won 86 seats. The Muslim League which made Pakistan, that Muslim League of Jina and Liaquat Ali Khan, got only 9 seats in the whole of Pakistan..!
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This was probably unexpected for West Pakistani leaders. He had no idea that the people of East Bengal would unite and be in a position to rule the whole of Pakistan. Awami League won 167 out of 169 seats in East Bengal.
It was amazing. The former Bengal which was considered to be of low status, the same Bengalis will now rule us..? All the leaders of West Pakistan united and refused to work under the leadership of the Bengal Party. This is what Yahya Khan wanted. He canceled the first direct election held in Pakistan through a democratic method.
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Author– Prashant Pol
Courtesy: vsktamilnadu.org, This article was originally published on vsktamilnadu.org
