The struggle for Bangladesh was a rather unique happening in history. Or take modern history as a beginning argument. It was unique because Bangladesh’s independence, unlike independence movements elsewhere, was not brought about through discussions around the table with the colonial power, in this case Pakistan, but was the result of a hard-fought war against the colonial power
And that is the difference between the Indian independence movement and the Bangladesh struggle. Where the Indian National Congress and the All-India Muslim League engaged in a series of negotiations, apart from street agitation, with the British colonial authorities to secure political freedom for India and Pakistan, Bangladesh was afforded no such opportunity.
The negotiations between the Awami League and the Yahya Khan regime in March 1971, had they been allowed to run their normal course, and had there been an enlightened Pakistani government at the helm, might have led to a negotiated solution to the crisis. But a dead end was reached on 25 March when the Pakistan army went into action against the Bengalis.
For Bangabandhu and his Awami League, the situation had reached the point by mid-March that holding on to the old Pakistan had become untenable. The talks which took place in Dhaka between 16 and 24 March were in no way aimed at a preservation of the Pakistan state as it was but was an issue at the core of which lay the question of a reconfiguration of the state created through the partition of India in August 1947.
In fact, Bangabandhu’s final proposal to the junta that a confederation of Pakistan rather than a preservation of a unified Islamic republic be deliberated on was a measure of how far the Bengali leadership had travelled in an evolution of its political philosophy. The Awami League sincerely believed that the Dhaka talks would throw up a new form of political equation in Pakistan.
The Awami League’s expectations were thwarted by the military crackdown on 25 March. The scale of the armed assault on Bengalis and the military’s clear motive of pursuing and detaining the party’s senior figures once Bangabandhu had been arrested brought about a whole new change in Bengali aspirations.
Avenues to a peaceful resolution of the crisis having been clamped shut by the junta, it was natural for the Awami League to adopt a position entailing a guerrilla movement against the Pakistan army. And thus it was that where in 1947 independence for the subcontinent came through negotiations, in 1971 freedom for Bangladesh was an issue to be resolved through battlefield struggle.
There are clear parallels to be drawn between the Bangladesh War of Liberation in 1971 and the American War of Independence in 1776. George Washington and his associates wrested freedom from Britain through concerted armed revolt against it. Bangladesh adopted a similar position with respect to its struggle against Pakistan.
Interestingly, another parallel might be of significance here. Where in the 1940s Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose waged a war for Indian independence through forming a government and raising an army, in 1971 Bangabandhu’s war was taken to its military conclusion by the leadership he had prepared to carry on the struggle in his absence. The Mujibnagar government, with its military struggle in the shape of the Mukti Bahini, was in many ways a reminder of Netaji’s Indian National Army (INA).
In the end, of course, twists of fortunes on a global scale prevented Netaji from marching on Delhi and raising the tricolour at the Red Fort. The Mujibnagar government had better fortune, going back home in triumph and setting the pieces of governance in logical order. Had Netaji emerged triumphant, he would face a daunting task of rebuilding a fractured India out of the detritus of war in much the same way that Bangabandhu was confronted with a country with its economy and infrastructure in ruins.
The difference between Subhas Chandra Bose and Sheikh Mujibur Rahman is to be easily noted: where the former was unable to have his goal come to fruition, the latter proved able to turn the tables on his enemies and give shape to his new country.
Independent Bangladesh was an outcome of politics defined by war. It had nothing to do with a negotiated settlement because its foes had opted for a genocide, for a military approach to the crisis. When, therefore, Bangladesh emerged in December 1971 as a sovereign nation-state, it was in a new formulation that upheld the principles of democracy, secularism, socialism and nationalism.
It was not a successor state to Pakistan. And those who have made the misleading argument that Bangladesh’s rise was possible only because of the creation of Pakistan in 1947, thereby crediting Pakistan with the Bengali victory, are unable to comprehend the lessons of history. A veteran politician cheerfully noted in 1972 that the emergence of Bangladesh was a fulfilment of the 1940 Lahore Resolution.
It was no such thing. The writer was clearly drawing attention to the original Muslim League resolution envisaging independent Muslim states, one of them ostensibly in Bengal, but which stipulation was undermined by Mohammad Ali Jinnah through changing the term ‘states’ into ‘state’ in 1946. That said, Bangladesh did not achieve sovereign status because Pakistan had paved the way toward that reality.
Bangladesh was a revolt against Pakistan. Its rise came about through an armed struggle against Pakistan. Bangladesh was the idea that Pakistan could not be improved upon but would have to go lock, stock and barrel.
And let it not be forgotten that where Pakistan was, and continues to be, a Muslim state, Bangladesh’s emergence was the triumph of secularism. Bangabandhu’s Six Points were a clear assertion of the secular approach he brought to the politics of his party. Independent Bangladesh was a validation of the secularism embodied in the Six Points.
There was absolutely no scope for majoritarianism, religious or sectarian or ethnic, in the Bangladesh concept. Bangabandhu’s Bengali nationalism successfully displaced Jinnah’s Muslim nationalism between the mid-1960s and early 1970s. And therein endures the moral and political underpinning of the Bangladesh state.
Independence Day is therefore a reiteration of the ethos of Bangladesh, of the fundamental nature of its existence. The War of Liberation was a renaissance of thought in the way the American and French experiences of 1776 and 1789 were an outpouring of the secular spirit in North America and Europe.
It is this spontaneity, this spirit of this People’s Republic of Bangladesh we have always had cause to celebrate since Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman declared the nation’s independence in the early minutes of 26 March 1971.
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