Various political conflicts are currently present in the country, bringing forth multiple logics from many sides. However, I suspect we are facing a fundamental problem now: the crisis of historical narrative—in a word, I’d like to call this topic, ‘Rationalizing Bangladesh.’
We have arrived at such a moment in history where the Awami/Baomi/Indian narrative for rationalizing Bangladesh as a state has been invalidated. The majority of the country’s people are starting to recognize that narrative as a sub-section of Indian history, and after overcoming many myths and false obscurities, the truth is peeking through in history. Consequently, ‘Rationalizing Bangladesh’ is becoming a very new project. We must be able to answer a very fundamental question in this new era of history: Why Bangladesh?
The historical dilemma can be further clarified this way: In the Awami/Baomi/Indian narrative of history, the ‘Two-Nation Theory’ is a fallacy, Jinnah is the villain of that history, and in that narrative, Pakistan is an illegitimate state—an abnormal state due to the 1200-mile distance between its two wings! Bangladesh is the correction of that fallacy, a few steps forward in history on the path to becoming ‘Akhand Bharat’ after overcoming the ‘pain of partition.’ Although the idea of ‘Akhand Bharat’ might seem like a myth-history of the BJP-RSS today, it is fundamentally the ‘Bharat’ state-idea of Congress/Gandhi. Even though the BJP often criticizes Gandhi now, they are essentially just carrying forward Gandhi’s ‘Bharat-State’ project.
If we invalidate this Awami/Baomi/Indian historical narrative—if we see this narrative as the historical condition for Baksali Fascism in Bangladesh, and if we are forced to invalidate this narrative by the overwhelming pressure of truth—then Jinnah becomes a hero of history, who worried about the security of the minority in British India. Jinnah, who sacrificed his personal desire for the sake of the collective (the minority of British India) even when Gandhi tempted him with the Prime Ministership of ‘Akhand Bharat’, successfully established Pakistan as a legitimate state (Rationalizing Pakistan) using the ‘Two-Nation Theory’ out of historical necessity to achieve Pakistan.
This is where Bangladesh as a state falls into a huge predicament: If Pakistan is a legitimate state, and Jinnah is a hero of history, then how do we rationalize Bangladesh? Why is Pakistan not our ultimate destination?
Some other truths have emerged in history in such a way that the project of ‘Rationalizing Bangladesh’ cannot overcome its difficulties without a necessary resolution of them. For instance:
a. Even after winning the 1970 election, Yahya Khan did not hand over power to Sheikh Mujib. Was this an unjust act, an injustice by General Khan? If that cannot be proven, we will struggle to rationalize Bangladesh. At face value, this is certainly an injustice. However, the new truth of history is that Sheikh Mujib was involved in the Agartala Conspiracy, rising to be the political leader within Pakistan as an Indian pawn. If Mujib was an Indian Manchurian Candidate, can we still consider withholding the power of Pakistan from him an injustice? If Bhashani was also involved in that Indian conspiracy, and Bhashani wrote a letter to Indira with the dream of creating a Confederation with India, and Bhashani cleared the electoral field for Mujib to achieve that—was Yahya still unjust? If the Bangladeshi side cannot show why Yahya was unjust, Bangladesh itself, as a state, will struggle to remain rational in history!
In understanding these things, we must abandon a certain method of understanding history itself. History is not merely determined by the desires of a few actors at a given moment. Just as the individual adds value to history, history largely creates the individual’s becoming, and even what the individual’s desire/whim will be at a certain moment.
In 1970-71, we see Yahya-Mujib-Bhutto as individual actors, but all three were born through the historical record of Pakistan that preceded them, in which the main actor for the previous 12 years was Ayub Khan.
Many are reluctant to notice a similarity between Ayub and Hasina: both suspended democracy; the logic is largely the same! That is, the colonial-civil-political elite and bureaucracy of Bangladesh used Hasina as a means to suppress Islamist politics under the pretext of crushing Pakistan-sympathizing political forces. In reality, by suspending democracy, the election-voting populace and Islamist politics formed an alliance that drove out the entirety of Hasina’s political force, and Islamist politics has never been this powerful in the country’s history before.
On the other hand, Ayub Khan fought a war against India, spoke of uniting the state of Pakistan, and sang the song of development like Hasina. But in reality, the state of Pakistan became weaker, and politics that served Indian interests became powerful in East Pakistan. Because democracy was suspended, the interests of East Pakistan and India converged at a single point, allowing the Awami League to convince the people of East Pakistan that the Agartala case was an attack on East Pakistan’s interests—a notion accepted by Muslim Bengalis.
Suspending democracy creates the possibility for political forces to develop internally that may not be democracy-friendly. Mujib’s Awami League left behind enough evidence in history to support this idea—Baksal, Mujib, and Hasina. And there are many in today’s Bangladesh who doubt how much legitimacy Islamist politics gives to democracy. Here, we must note that Islamist politics could previously be defeated only by the accusation of ‘Pakistanism,’ but after Hasina’s flight, that machete has become completely dull. Consequently, there is no theoretical opposition to Islamist politics, as no such literature was produced before. The Pakistan issue was always handy, so no one felt the necessity! Besides, Islam is a sensitive issue in the country, and the Pakistan issue was safe to avoid and conceal the Islamophobia of Bengali Nationalism!
Okay, back to the topic: the extent to which Sheikh Mujib’s Awami League grew during Ayub’s suspended democracy was probably not realized by anyone. In 1954, Sheikh Mujib’s trickery as a minister (Industry Minister Mujib gave exclusive licenses to Awami League people to supply raw materials to factories illegally) provided the Awami League with a huge economic foundation, and that foundation strengthened internally during Ayub’s 12 years.
Bhutto’s immense movement in the West made Ayub Khan unacceptable to the civil-military elite there, forcing him to resign. In that turmoil, Mujib and his allies received an automatic release from the Agartala case. Ayub released Bhutto 20 days before Mujib, and a month later, Ayub had to relinquish power.
If we look closely, the real architect of Mujib’s release was Bhutto! Because after his release, Bhutto did not reconcile with Ayub; rather, he swore to restore democracy, returning power from the generals and bureaucrats to the people. He promised to treat East Pakistan as a ‘brother’ and build the country together on the foundation of equality. If Bhutto had been, say, Anu Muhammad, he might have formed an alliance with Ayub first to suppress the East Pakistan movement, just as Anu lulled the oil-gas-Rampal movement to sleep during Hasina’s crisis moment. Ayub might have released Bhutto 20 days before Mujib for that reason. But Bhutto did not do that; Bhutto did not accept Ayub as a legitimate President. Meanwhile, Mujib’s League’s Six-Point Movement was actually a demand made to the West—a movement of the people of East Pakistan, accepting Ayub as legitimate. The Six-Point talk about Pakistan’s political system was that Mujib wanted a Parliamentary system instead of a Presidential system. In the Six Points, Ayub was not exactly an illegitimate President, nor was the Six Points a movement to overthrow Ayub! Mujib’s Awami League accepted Ayub’s Basic Democracy, and Mujib legitimized Ayub and his Basic Democracy by supporting Fatima Jinnah against Ayub in the Presidential election. [Was Mujib so great then?]
That 1965 Presidential election was amusing: ‘Mother-of-the-Nation’ Fatima Jinnah was campaigning for universal suffrage among the voters of Basic Democracy! It’s like holding an election to abolish feudalism, where only the feudal lords are the voters :)! What’s more amusing is that Mujib’s League and Jamaat supported Fatima together at that time—the League-Jamaat alliance seems quite old 🙂
That pretext of universal suffrage is also present at the beginning of the Six Points. However, the movement that the Awami League conducted for the Six Points, we only see regional-Bengali Nationalist demands imprinted on the public psyche; we do not see it becoming a movement for establishing democracy across the whole of Pakistan at all!
It’s noteworthy that the Awami League grew during Ayub’s regime, and the idea of Pakistan became very unpopular among Muslim Bengalis in East Pakistan due to the pressure of Bengali Nationalists. This means that, in a historical-political assessment, the Ayub era was a very Awami-friendly era!
However, it is very likely that Ayub or the subsequent Yahya or the West Pakistani military-civil establishment did not understand the matter of Mujib’s Awami League at all! Consequently, the West was hugely astonished by Mujib’s victory in the 1970 election.
The problem is, if Mujib’s League is allowed to contest the election in Pakistan, then after winning that election, you cannot help but hand over power to him! That is, the Pakistani court could have punished Mujib in the Agartala case, but that was suppressed in the turmoil of Ayub’s overthrow. But after winning, by not handing over power to Mujib, it was as if the punishment of the Agartala case was being handed down politically. The idea was to confront him politically instead of punishing him in court, but since they failed to confront him politically, Yahya became the court himself!
Meanwhile, Mujib got a huge opportunity. He had the majority of Pakistan
75millionintheEast,56millionintheWest
, the entire East Pakistan, and he wanted to establish majoritarian rule. Note that when you move to suspend democracy itself in the name of Basic Democracy, the potential for majoritarian rule emerges, crossing the territory of democracy! You find the same thing with Hasina. The League had to flee after suspending democracy, and the result is that Bangladesh is now facing the possibility of populist-majoritarian tyranny! Bangladesh will likely survive in the end; we will probably be able to return to democracy, even if weakly—because Hasina failed to destroy the BNP despite so many years of plots and schemes!
At this point, we thus see that no matter how bad Mujib’s League was for Pakistan, it was a result of Pakistan’s historical record through Ayub. And by not punishing him in court, allowing him to contest the election, and then failing to take the decision to confront him politically after he won, when Yahya himself became the court, Pakistan collapsed as a state! That act by Yahya-West was thus a betrayal of the very idea of Pakistan, a betrayal that Ayub Khan had begun earlier! No matter how much Mujib-League-India conspired, the historical condition for their success was provided by the murder of that betrayal—the Operation Searchlight on March 25! In this way, by attacking Muslim Bengalis instead of handing over power to the people’s elected representatives, Bangladesh, as a state, was able to become rational in history.
b. A few historical truths have now emerged in such a way that some claims about the Liberation War have become quite awkward.
Victory Day is celebrated on December 16 in Bangladesh and India. The question arises: Whom did we defeat that we are celebrating Victory Day?
It’s noteworthy that on December 18, 1971, the part of the Pakistan Army that occupied Bangladesh (Eastern Command) surrendered to India, not to Bangladesh. And before Tajuddin returned to the country from India on December 22, the whole of Bangladesh was under Indian occupation, and we have no way to consider being under Indian occupation as our victory.
We can read a couple of historical events together here. Before Hasina fled on July 24 during the protests, she sought the help of the Indian military, but Modi didn’t even give Hasina a plane to escape. In recent years, we have seen Bashar al-Assad in Syria call in the Russian army, and Putin had announced he would send forces to support Belarus’s Lukashenko in 2020. In 1971, Pakistan formally attacked India on December 3, along the Pakistan-India border. Pakistan had previously conducted small attacks on Indian soil along the Bangladesh border, but those were aimed at Bangladeshi refugee and freedom fighter locations.
Like Syria’s Assad and Belarus’s Lukashenko, Tajuddin gave permission for the Indian Army to enter Bangladesh on December 3. And in reality, just as the Pakistan Army had Razakars and Al Badrs, the Freedom Fighters (Mukti Bahini) became the Razakars of the Indian Army! Because the Bangladesh Army fought under the command of the Indian Army after December 3, and the Mukti Bahini then became the tail (a flattering name, Gono Bahini, exists though) of the Bangladesh Army operating under Indian command. It seems that the Awami League’s repeated calls for the Indian Army, as Hasina did, are quite old.
However, some might say that the story of Bangladesh should not be compared with the stories of Syria and Belarus, because Bangladesh was under occupier’s control, while those two countries are experiencing civil-war-like situations!
But the point is, we did not win, India won. Therefore, we have no reason to celebrate so much on December 16. You can compare it with the British rule. If the Emperor of Hindustan, Shah Alam, had defeated the British in 1857, we could have celebrated that victory day, but we had no reason to celebrate in 1947. Because the British left on their own; we did not win independence by defeating the British, as America did! Thus, gaining independence and winning are two different things. Furthermore, on December 16, we were not even independent; we just went under Indian occupation instead of Pakistani!
So, how could things have been? Tajuddin should not have given permission for the Indian Army to enter on India’s terms. At most, a few members of the Indian Army could have been borrowed under the command of the Bangladesh Army. Because the Indian Army was not entering East Pakistan; it was entering Bangladesh! However, the best would have been to be more confident: that if India keeps occupying Pakistani territory in the West, we ourselves could defeat the Pakistani forces in Bangladesh. If we couldn’t, then how much right do we have to the state of Bangladesh, and how will we defend ourselves from India or Myanmar!
But can the weakness and lack of courage of our leaders, and India’s intervention, invalidate the rights of the people of Bangladesh? No.
The Pakistan Army started the massacre/genocide on March 25. They viewed the Muslim Bengali vote for the Awami League as treason and a crime. Whatever the reason—the trickery and manipulation of Bhashani-Mujib or the conspiracy with India—the Muslim Bengalis of East Pakistan voted for Mujib’s Awami League. Pakistan attacked instead of accepting the representatives the Muslim Bengalis chose through the election!
We must acknowledge and give value to the people’s acceptance (Kobuliyat) from the standpoint of political ethics. People can make mistakes, and they can realize it later. We can explain, we can invite, but we cannot force them. Because slavery begins with the use of force without valuing acceptance, and the slavery created by force is the worst state of human dignity—unacceptable!
In response to Pakistan’s attack, Muslim Bengalis said, “We will not stay together; we will deal with India later; first, I will separate from you.” We found that desire of the Muslim Bengalis to separate in Kalurghat on March 27. The same Major Zia, a Muslim Bengali soldier who had shown bravery and received a medal from the Pakistan military in the 1965 war, said, “We revolt!” Major Zia is the face of a massive failure in the historical record of the Pakistani state through Ayub—the same loyal and brave soldier from five years ago now says, “We revolt.” This is where we find the legitimization of Bangladesh as a state in history.
c. The Bengali Nationalist narrative of the ’71 history is extremely one-sided—the common people of the country have largely understood this; they are no longer blinded by false illusions!
By one-sided, I mean that the narrative did not show the history of the killings; it only sang the song of its own victimization! According to sources outside that narrative, roughly 300,000 Bangladeshis were killed by Pakistan in ’71, which that narrative exaggerates tenfold to 3 million. On the other hand, according to those same sources, at least 20,000 Biharis were killed by Bengalis. War crimes occurred on both sides. There is even a picture after December 16 of the Kaderia Bahini bayonetting a Razakar.
Now it appears that Bengalis started killing Biharis even before March 25. Many are using these incidents to try to justify the Pakistan Army’s Operation Searchlight on March 25; they want to show that operation as a ‘reaction.’ In rationalizing/justifying Bangladesh as a state in history, the issue of Bihari killings must be viewed as another difficulty. Because if Operation Searchlight is merely a reaction, and we must view that operation as a necessary measure by the Pakistani state to save the Biharis, then Major Zia’s response on March 27 begins to lose legitimacy!
Therefore, we must confront this issue. For those of us who consider Bangladesh a legitimate state in history and want to keep it going, that confrontation is crucial. Otherwise, Bangladesh will continue to lose its moral ground, and the idea that Bangladesh is a historical accident will become powerful among the country’s citizens, and they will advance step by step toward Pakistan to mend history!
So, how will we confront it? Where the percentage of victims among the Biharis is higher when considering the total population-to-victim ratio!
Initially, we must note that those called Biharis were people on the side of Pakistan, a Pakistan that was unwilling to accept the elected representatives of the people of East Pakistan. Consequently, even before a single person was killed, we can see that these Biharis were on the side of the oppressor (Jalim).
Here, I will ask you to remember the ‘Direct Action Day’ in Calcutta 25 years earlier. August 16, 1946, was Jinnah/Muslim League’s Direct Action Day, and the Bengal government declared a holiday. The Muslim League was the representative of the minority in British India, a minority worried about its security, unwilling to hand over its fate to the clever Congress, and suspected the British were trying to do just that. From there, they took to the streets. Then the violence began. There is a claim that the violence started from the Muslim League side. But in the end, roughly equal numbers of both Hindus and Muslims were killed—estimated to be a total of 4,000–10,000. On the one hand, the Muslim League was carrying out a movement for a very just cause, but whether they decided to start the violence or some rash individual among them did, the response came back equally from the other side. Even if it started from the Muslim League side, the Congress Hindus of the time were the oppressor side. Our real point to see is: whose cause is justified? We should accept that violence is a human core, and the only way to keep it cool is justice (Insaf). Therefore, there is little meaning in which race or religion of people are violent, because all people can be violent when necessary, and the lack of justice encourages that potential. On the other hand, when two sides fight over two causes, even if one is accepted as justified, completely innocent people often become victims merely because of their identity. That happened in Calcutta on both sides. After so many years, we generally recognize that as a riot, where not only one side was oppressed and the other purely the oppressor!
As a proponent of justice, I will propose viewing the oppression against the Biharis in 1971 as a Bengali-Bihari Riot, comparable to 1946. The Bengalis’ cause was just then, but considering the arithmetic, the Biharis were victims. But they were also the oppressor side; Bengalis were also killed by them. There are innocent victims on both sides, so we must see which side has the just cause.
Even if Bengalis killed Biharis, and Biharis killed Bengalis along with the Pakistan Army, I will advise against seeing either as the villain. There are signs of the failure of the Pakistani state within these events!
Note that East Pakistan was the majority in Pakistan; we see a difference of roughly 20 million in the 1970 election. This very fact ultimately served as a massive leverage for Mujib-League-India.
If the political elite of West Pakistan and Ayub Khan had been democratic, they would have worried earlier about this advantage of East Pakistan’s majority! But they were content with ‘measuring their dicks’ instead of counting the people!
Yet, if they had thought about it earlier, they could have focused on managing this demographic difference during Ayub’s 12 years, and the Biharis could have provided a huge advantage to the West in that! Besides, the attacks on Hindus in East Pakistan that occurred, when Jogen Mandal left for India, and more and more Hindus left, the West could have welcomed those Hindus! They could have adopted a policy of encouraging Bengalis to migrate to the West instead of being racist! Many Bengalis went to the West on their own (Bhutto’s party’s tag-line, ‘Roti, Kapra Aur Makaan,’ was written by a Bengali), but the West did not adopt such a policy. During the 1960s-70s, birth control began globally. Ayub could have campaigned for birth control by singing the song of development to reduce the birth rate in the East! But the political elite of the West, I guess, left the matter to nature. They probably assumed that the Bengalis would be washed away by hurricanes, typhoons, and floods, and would not be able to remain the majority! The opposite happened in reality. Human instinct then sought to give birth more, and the people of the East were enraged because Ayub/the West were not doing enough to save the citizens. Mujib’s League eventually harvested that fruit!
So, by settling Biharis and Bengalis in the West and giving them land, making them voters, the West could have reduced the advantage of the East’s majority and thus weakened the propaganda of Mujib-League-India by becoming democratic.
Consequently, the Biharis who were killed in the East in ’71 are also victims of the failure of the Pakistani state’s demographic policy. And that failure ultimately served to advance the Indian agenda.
Thus, the incidents of Bihari killings create the possibility of trying Bengalis for war crimes, but they cannot delegitimize Bangladesh as a state in history. War crimes occurred on both sides, which often happens in war, because war creates a loose time where the devil inside man becomes most powerful. Man’s just cause is then used by the devil inside him as an opportunity for mischief.
So, is this long discussion futile? Many in today’s Bangladesh would like to say so. But I often think about the future crisis that may be emerging now, but which people do not yet recognize as a crisis because it is so small. I get scared then. It feels like by the time people understand, it might be too late.
The dominant/leading/controlling historical thought within a population creates political motivation according to its dictates. The Bengali Nationalist narrative in Bangladesh’s historical thought has collapsed. Therefore, we must rebuild the foundation of Bangladesh in our historical thought. Otherwise, just as the people of the country were under the oppression of an anti-Bangladesh historical thought for the last 50 years, some other historical thought will occupy that ground, and that too will possibly be anti-Bangladesh. It certainly takes courage to remain independent, and it takes more desire (Bashna). And the mother of that desire is History. Political desire is born within the well of historical understanding.
August 12, 2025
comment/ফতোয়া