Vol. 79/No. 2      January 26, 2015

But another side of Bangladesh is less known outside this South Asian nation: the history of mass battles for freedom, sometimes in face of overwhelming odds.

During a reporting trip to Bangladesh in October, a team of Militant reporters learned about the 1971 independence war and how the living memory of that massive struggle still marks politics here.

Bengal was the main center of resistance to British colonial rule in the Indian subcontinent. Today, visitors to the Liberation War Museum here see a display listing a dozen popular rebellions and movements in Bengal against colonial oppression between the late 1700s and the 1930s. India won independence from London in 1947, part of the post-World War II anti-colonial upsurge in Asia.

On the eve of their withdrawal, however, the British rulers acted to leave behind two separate and warring states, India and Pakistan. The partition, designed to maintain imperialist domination of the region by pitting Hindus against Muslims, was a blow against the revolutionary struggle for a united, secular Indian republic. The propertied rulers in both states fanned chauvinist violence along religious and ethnic lines to reinforce their domination. Millions of Muslims and Hindus migrated between India and Pakistan, as religious riots led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands.

British partition India, Pakistan
The British rulers, backed by local bourgeois forces in the Muslim League, artificially created Pakistan as a “Muslim” state by joining two regions with wide differences in nationalities, cultures and languages, separated by 1,000 miles of Indian territory.

West Pakistan, made up of various nationalities, was dominated by the Punjabi elite. East Pakistan was created by partitioning Bengal, a Bengali-speaking region with its own rich literary and cultural heritage. Western Bengal was incorporated into India and the eastern part into Pakistan.

Pakistan’s Punjabi-dominated government treated East Pakistan as a virtual colony. After the 1947 partition, capitalist interests in the East were taken over by wealthy Punjabis. Three-quarters of the government revenue was spent in the West, though the East had two-thirds of the population. Some 85 percent of government jobs were held by West Pakistanis.

In 1948 the government proclaimed Urdu the sole national language. This sparked protests in the Bengali-speaking East, launching what became known as the Language Movement. On Feb. 21, 1952, police fatally shot dozens of student demonstrators, setting off a wave of opposition. The government eventually retreated, granting official status to the Bengali language in 1956. Today Feb. 21 is a national holiday in Bangladesh.

The Bengali nationalist movement continued to grow, leading to a 1969 popular upsurge. In December 1970, after 12 years of army rule, the first general elections in Pakistan were held under Gen. Yahya Khan.

When the Awami League, a capitalist party advocating greater rights for the Bengali-speaking region, won a majority of seats in the national assembly, the Pakistani rulers moved to block the new government from taking office. This was met by a general strike in East Pakistan. Khan extended the martial law regime, but thousands poured into the streets, defying the curfew. Pro-independence sentiment grew explosively.

In March 1971, to terrorize the population into submission, the Pakistani army launched a carefully planned bloodbath in the East. The occupying troops, with the collaboration of local rightist Islamists, torched working-class neighborhoods in Dhaka, bombed rural villages and gunned down students, teachers and professionals. The Hindu minority was a special target.

At least 1 million people, perhaps many more, were slaughtered. Troops raped and killed hundreds of thousands of women. Millions fled across the border to West Bengal in India.

The Awami League had initially advocated only autonomy within Pakistan. Pressed by the mass popular upsurge, however, its leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman proclaimed independence as the goal.

Toilers mobilize to win independence
Working people across the country joined a war of resistance, including guerrilla units that increasingly controlled the countryside. Strikes and “noncooperation” actions confronted the occupiers in the cities. Women were active in all aspects of the struggle, flocking to join popular militias. A new nation, Bangladesh, was born in the crucible of this struggle.

In December 1971, after nine months of civil war, India’s capitalist rulers intervened. They sought both to deal a blow to their Pakistani rivals and to end the war before the popular resistance escaped capitalist control. Indian troops poured into Bangladesh, and within 12 days the Pakistani army surrendered.

Washington, which faced rising protests over its own war against the Vietnamese people, feigned neutrality but quietly sent military aid to the Pakistani dictatorship. In China, the Stalinist regime of Mao Zedong openly supported its Pakistani ally’s murderous war.

The Bangladeshi liberation struggle won worldwide support. In August 1971, 40,000 people filled New York’s Madison Square Garden in a benefit “Concert for Bangladesh” organized by musicians Ravi Shankar and former Beatle George Harrison.

Today in Bangladesh, the Awami League government is organizing “war crimes” trials that have issued death sentences against several leaders of Islamist parties who headed anti-independence death squads during the Pakistani occupation. The government wants to use popular hatred for these figures to boost its own position against the rival Bangladesh Nationalist Party and its Islamist electoral allies.

None of that takes away from the real legacy of the Bangladeshi liberation war: the power of millions of working people fighting for their own interests and defeating a seemingly more powerful enemy.
 
 
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