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EARLY HISTORY, 1000
B.C.-A.D. 1202
For most of its history,
the area known as Bangladesh was a political backwater--an observer rather
than a participant in the great political and military events of the Indian
subcontinent. Historians believe that Bengal, the area comprising
present-day Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal, was settled in
about 1000 B.C. by Dravidian-speaking peoples who were later known as the
Bang. Their homeland bore various titles that reflected earlier tribal
names, such as Vanga, Banga, Bangala, Bangal, and Bengal.
The first great indigenous
empire to spread over most of present-day India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh
was the Mauryan Empire (ca. 320-180 B.C.), whose most famous ruler was Asoka
(ca. 273-232 B.C.). Although the empire was well administered and
politically integrated, little is known of any reciprocal benefits between
it and eastern Bengal. The western part of Bengal, however, achieved some
importance during the Mauryan period because vessels sailed from its ports
to Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia. During the time of the Mauryan Empire,
Buddhism came to Bengal, and it was from there that Asoka's son, Mahinda,
carried the message of the Enlightened One to Sri Lanka. After the decline
of the Mauryan Empire the eastern portion of Bengal became the kingdom of
Samatata; although politically independent, it was a tributary state of the
Indian Gupta Empire (A.D. ca. 319-ca. 540).
The third great empire was
the Harsha Empire (A.D. 606-47), which drew Samatata into its loosely
administered political structure. The disunity following the demise of this
short-lived empire allowed a Buddhist chief named Gopala to seize power as
the first ruler of the Pala Dynasty (A.D. 750-1150). He and his successors
provided Bengal with stable government, security, and prosperity while
spreading Buddhism throughout the state and into neighboring territories.
Trade and influence were extensive under Pala leadership, as emissaries were
sent as far as Tibet and Sumatra.
The Senas, orthodox and
militant Hindus, replaced the Buddhist Palas as rulers of a united Bengal
until the Turkish conquest in 1202. Opposed to the Brahmanic Hinduism of the
Senas with its rigid caste system, vast numbers of Bengalis, especially
those from the lower castes, would later convert to Islam.
The British Raj
Beginning in the middle of
the eighteenth century, when the foundations of British rule were
effectively laid, the British government showed increasing interest in the
welfare of the people of India, feeling the need to curb the greed,
recklessness, and corrupt activities of the private British East India
Company. Beginning in 1773, the British Parliament sought to regulate the
company's administration. By 1784 the company was made responsible to
Parliament for its civil and military affairs and was transformed into an
instrument of British foreign policy.
Some new measures
introduced in the spirit of government intervention clearly did not benefit
the people of Bengal. The Permanent Settlement (Landlease Act) of Lord
Charles Cornwallis in 1793, which regulated the activities of the British
agents and imposed a system of revenue collection and landownership, stands
as a monument to the disastrous effects of the good intentions of
Parliament. The traditional system for collecting land taxes involved the
zamindars, who exercised the dual function of revenue collectors and local
magistrates. The British gave the zamindars the status and rights of
landlords, modeled mainly on the British landed gentry and aristocracy.
Under the new system the revenue-collecting rights were often auctioned to
the highest bidders, whether or not they had any knowledge of rural
conditions or the managerial skills necessary to improve agriculture.
Agriculture became a matter of speculation among urban financiers, and the
traditional personal link between the resident zamindars and the peasants
was broken. Absentee landlordship became commonplace, and agricultural
development stagnated.
Most British subjects who
had served with the British East India Company until the end of the
eighteenth century were content with making profits and leaving the Indian
social institutions untouched. A growing number of Anglican and Baptist
evangelicals in Britain, however, felt that social institutions should be
reformed. There was also the demand in Britain, first articulated by member
of Parliament and political theorist Edmund Burke, that the company's
government balance its exploitative practices with concern for the welfare
of the Indian people. The influential utilitarian theories of Jeremy Bentham
and James Mill stated that societies could be reformed by proper laws.
Influenced in part by these factors, British administrators in India
embarked on a series of social and administrative reforms that were not well
received by the conservative elements of Bengali society. Emphasis was
placed on the introduction of Western philosophy, technology, and
institutions rather than on the reconstruction of native institutions. The
early attempts by the British East India Company to encourage the use of
Sanskrit and Persian were abandoned in favor of Western science and
literature; elementary education was taught in the vernacular, but higher
education in English. The stated purpose of secular education was to produce
a class of Indians instilled with British cultural values. Persian was
replaced with English as the official language of the government. A code of
civil and criminal procedure was fashioned after British legal formulas. In
the field of social reforms, the British suppressed what they considered to
be inhumane practices, such as suttee (self-immolation of widows on the
funeral pyres of their husbands), female infanticide, and human sacrifice.
British policy viewed
colonies as suppliers of raw materials and purchasers of manufactured goods.
The British conquest of India coincided with the Industrial Revolution in
Britain, led by the mechanization of the textile industry. As a result of
the British policy of dumping machine-made goods in the subcontinent,
India's domestic craft industries were thoroughly ruined, and its trade and
commerce collapsed. Eastern Bengal was particularly hard hit. Muslin cloth
from Dhaka had become popular in eighteenth-century Europe until British
muslin drove it off the market.
Reappraisal of British
Policy
The uprising precipitated a
dramatic reappraisal of British policy--in effect a retreat from the
reformist and evangelical zeal that had accompanied the rapid territorial
expansion of British rule. This policy was codified in Queen Victoria's
proclamation of 1858 delivered to "The Princes, Chiefs, and Peoples of
India." Formal annexations of princely states virtually ceased, and the
political boundaries between British territories and the princely states
became frozen. By this time the British territories occupied about 60
percent of the subcontinent, and some 562 princely states of varying size
occupied the remainder. The relationship the British maintained with the
princely states was governed by the principle of paramountcy, whereby the
princely states exercised sovereignty in their internal affairs but
relinquished their powers to conduct their external relations to Britain,
the paramount power. Britain assumed responsibility for the defense of the
princely states and reserved the right to intervene in cases of
maladministration or gross injustice.
Despite Queen Victoria's
promise in 1858 that all subjects under the British crown would be treated
equally under the law, the revolt left a legacy of mistrust between the
ruler and the ruled. In the ensuing years, the British often assumed a
posture of racial arrogance as "sahibs" who strove to remain aloof from
"native contamination." This attitude was perhaps best captured in Rudyard
Kipling's lament that Englishmen were destined to "take up the white man's
burden."
As a security precaution,
the British increased the ratio of British to Indian troops following the
mutiny. In 1857 British India's armies had had 45,000 Britons to 240,000
Indian troops. By 1863 this ratio had changed to a "safer mix" of 65,000
British to 140,000 Indian soldiers. In the aftermath of the revolt, which
had begun among Bengalis in the British Indian Army, the British formed an
opinion, later refined as a theory, that there were martial and nonmartial
races in India. The nonmartial races included the Bengalis; the martial
included primarily the Punjabis and the Pathans, who supported the British
during the revolt.
The transfer of control
from the British East India Company to the British crown accelerated the
pace of development in India. A great transformation took place in the
economy in the late nineteenth century. The British authorities quickly set
out to improve inland transportation and communications systems, primarily
for strategic and administrative reasons. By 1870 an extended network of
railroads, coupled with the removal of internal customs barriers and transit
duties, opened up interior markets to domestic and foreign trade and
improved links between what is now Bangladesh and Calcutta. India also found
itself within the orbit of worldwide markets, especially with the opening of
the Suez Canal in 1869. Foreign trade, though under virtual British
monopoly, was stimulated. India exported raw materials for world markets,
and the economy was quickly transformed into a colonial agricultural arm of
British industry.
In 1905 the British
governor general, Lord George Curzon, divided Bengal
into eastern and western sectors in order to improve administrative control
of the huge and populous province. Curzon established a new province called Eastern Bengal and Assam, which had
its capital at Dhaka. The new province
of West Bengal (the present-day state of West Bengal in India) had its
capital at Calcutta, which also was the capital of British India. During the
next few years, the long neglected and predominantly Muslim eastern region
of Bengal made strides in education
and communications. Many Bengali Muslims viewed the partition as initial
recognition of their cultural and political separation from the Hindu
majority population. Curzon's decision, however, was ardently challenged by
the educated and largely Hindu upper classes of Calcutta. The Indian National Congress
(Congress), a Hindu-dominated political organization founded in 1885 and
supported by the Calcutta elite, initiated a well-planned campaign against
Curzon, accusing him of trying to undermine the nationalist movement that
had been spearheaded by Bengal. Congress leaders objected that Curzon's
partition of Bengal deprived Bengali Hindus of a majority in either new
province--in effect a tactic of divide and rule. In response, they launched
a movement to force the British to annul the partition. A swadeshi
(a devotee of one's own country) movement boycotted British-made goods and
encouraged the production and use of Indian-made goods to take their place.
Swadeshi agitation spread throughout India and became a major plank
in the Congress platform. Muslims generally favored the partition of Bengal
but could not compete with the more politically articulate and economically
powerful Hindus. In 1912 the British voided the partition of Bengal,
a decision that heightened the growing estrangement between the Muslims and
Hindus in many parts of the country. The reunited province was reconstituted
as a presidency and the capital of
India was moved from Calcutta to the less politically electric atmosphere of
New Delhi. The reunion of divided Bengal
was perceived by Muslims as a British accommodation to Hindu pressures
In East Pakistan the
political impasse culminated in 1958 in a violent scuffle in the provincial
assembly between members of the opposition and the police force, in which
the deputy speaker was fatally injured and two ministers badly wounded.
Uncomfortable with the workings of parliamentary democracy, unruliness in
the East Pakistani provincial assembly elections and the threat of Baluch
separatism in West Pakistan, on October 7, 1958, Mirza issued a proclamation
that abolished political parties, abrogated the twoyear -old constitution,
and placed the country under martial law. Mirza announced that martial law
would be a temporary measure lasting only until a new constitution was
drafted. On October 27, he swore in a twelve-member cabinet that included
Ayub as prime minister and three other generals in ministerial positions.
Included among the eight civilians was Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, a former
university lecturer and future leader of Pakistan. On the same day, the
general exiled Mirza to London because "the armed services and the people
demanded a clean break with the past." Until 1962, martial law continued and
Ayub purged a number of politicians and civil servants from the government
and replaced them with army officers. Ayub called his regime a "revolution
to clean up the mess of black marketing and corruption."
The new constitution
promulgated by Ayub in March 1962 vested all executive authority of the
republic in the president. As chief executive, the president could appoint
ministers without approval by the legislature. There was no provision for a
prime minister. There was a provision for a National Assembly and two
provincial assemblies, whose members were to be chosen by the "Basic
Democrats"--80,000 voters organized into a five-tier hierarchy, with each
tier electing officials to the next tier. Pakistan was declared a republic
(without being specifically an Islamic republic) but, in deference to the
religious scholars, the president was required to be a Muslim, and no law
could be passed that was contrary to the tenets of Islam.
The 1962 constitution made
few concessions to Bengalis. It was, instead, a document that buttressed
centralized government under the guise of "basic democracies" programs, gave
legal support to martial law, and turned parliamentary bodies into forums
for debate. Throughout the Ayub years, East Pakistan and West Pakistan grew
farther apart. The death of the Awami League's Suhrawardy in 1963 gave the
mercurial Sheikh Mujibur Rahman--commonly known as Mujib--the leadership of
East Pakistan's dominant party. Mujib, who as early as 1956 had advocated
the "liberation" of East Pakistan and had been jailed in 1958 during the
military coup, quickly and successfully brought the issue of East Pakistan's
movement for autonomy to the forefront of the nation's politics.
During the years between
1960 and 1965, the annual rate of growth of the gross domestic product per
capita was 4.4 percent in West Pakistan versus a poor 2.6 percent in East
Pakistan. Furthermore, Bengali politicians pushing for more autonomy
complained that much of Pakistan's export earnings were generated in East
Pakistan by the export of Bengali jute and tea. As late as 1960,
approximately 70 percent of Pakistan's export earnings originated in the
East Wing, although this percentage declined as international demand for
jute dwindled. By the mid-1960s, the East Wing was accounting for less than
60 percent of the nation's export earnings, and by the time of Bangladesh's
independence in 1971, this percentage had dipped below 50 percent. This
reality did not dissuade Mujib from demanding in 1966 that separate foreign
exchange accounts be kept and that separate trade offices be opened
overseas. By the mid-1960s, West Pakistan was benefiting from Ayub's "Decade
of Progress," with its successful "green revolution" in wheat, and from the
expansion of markets for West Pakistani textiles, while the East Pakistani
standard of living remained at an abysmally low level. Bengalis were also
upset that West Pakistan, because it was the seat of government, was the
major beneficiary of foreign aid.
THE UPRISING OF 1857
On May 10, 1857, Indian
soldiers of the British Indian Army, drawn mostly from Muslim units from
Bengal, mutinied at the Meerut cantonment near Delhi, starting a year-long
insurrection against the British. The mutineers then marched to Delhi and
offered their services to the Mughal emperor, whose predecessors had
suffered an ignoble defeat 100 years earlier at Plassey. The uprising, which
seriously threatened British rule in India, has been called many names by
historians, including the Sepoy Rebellion, the Great Mutiny, and the Revolt
of 1857; many people of the subcontinent, however, prefer to call it India's
"first war of independence." The insurrection was sparked by the
introduction of cartridges rumored to have been greased with pig or cow fat,
which was offensive to the religious beliefs of Muslim and Hindu sepoys
(soldiers). In a wider sense, the insurrection was a reaction by the
indigenous population to rapid changes in the social order engineered by the
British over the preceding century and an abortive attempt by the Muslims to
resurrect a dying political order. When mutinous units finally surrendered
on June 20, 1858, the British exiled Emperor Bahadur Shah to Burma, thereby
formally ending the Mughal Empire. As a direct consequence of the revolt,
the British also dissolved the British East India Company and assumed direct
rule over India, beginning the period of the British Raj. British India was
thereafter headed by a governor general (called viceroy when acting as the
direct representative of the British crown). The governor general, who
embodied the supreme legislative and executive authority in India, was
responsible to the secretary of state for India, a member of the British
cabinet in London.
Emerging Discontent,
1966-70
At a 1966 Lahore conference
of both the eastern and the western chapters of the Awami League, Mujib
announced his controversial six-point political and economic program for
East Pakistani provincial autonomy. He demanded that the government be
federal and parliamentary in nature, its members to be elected by universal
adult suffrage with legislative representation on the basis of population;
that the federal government have principal responsibility for foreign
affairs and defense only; that each wing have its own currency and separate
fiscal accounts; that taxation would occur at the provincial level, with a
federal government funded by constitutionally guaranteed grants; that each
federal unit could control its own earning of foreign exchange; and that
each unit could raise its own militia or paramilitary forces.
Mujib's six points ran
directly counter to President Ayub's plan for greater national integration.
Ayub's anxieties were shared by many West Pakistanis, who feared that
Mujib's plan would divide Pakistan by encouraging ethnic and linguistic
cleavages in West Pakistan, and would leave East Pakistan, with its Bengali
ethnic and linguistic unity, by far the most populous and powerful of the
federating units. Ayub interpreted Mujib's demands as tantamount to a call
for independence. After pro-Mujib supporters rioted in a general strike in
Dhaka, the government arrested Mujib in January 1968.
Ayub suffered a number of
setbacks in 1968. His health was poor, and he was almost assassinated at a
ceremony marking ten years of his rule. Riots followed, and Bhutto was
arrested as the instigator. At Dhaka a tribunal that inquired into the
activities of the already-interned Mujib was arousing strong popular
resentment against Ayub. A conference of opposition leaders and the
cancellation of the state of emergency (in effect since 1965) came too late
to conciliate the opposition. On February 21, 1969, Ayub announced that he
would not run in the next presidential election in 1970. A state of near
anarchy reigned with protests and strikes throughout the country. The police
appeared helpless to control the mob violence, and the military stood aloof.
At length, on March 25 Ayub resigned and handed over the administration to
the commander in chief, General Agha Mohammad Yahya Khan. Once again the
country was placed under martial law. Yahya assumed the titles of chief
martial law administrator and president. He announced that he considered
himself to be a transitional leader whose task would be to restore order and
to conduct free elections for a new constituent assembly, which would then
draft a new constitution. He appointed a largely civilian cabinet in August
1969 in preparation for the election, which was scheduled to take place in
December 1970. Yahya moved with dispatch to settle two contentious issues by
decree: the unpopular "One Unit" of West Pakistan, which was created as a
condition for the 1956 constitution, was ended; and East Pakistan was
awarded 162 seats out of the 300-member National Assembly. On November 12,
1970, a cyclone devastated an area of almost 8,000 square kilometers of East
Pakistan's mid-coastal lowlands and its outlying islands in the Bay of
Bengal. It was perhaps the worst natural disaster of the area in centuries.
As many as 250,000 lives were lost. Two days after the cyclone hit, Yahya
arrived in Dhaka after a trip to Beijing, but he left a day later. His
seeming indifference to the plight of Bengali victims caused a great deal of
animosity. Opposition newspapers in Dhaka accused the Pakistani government
of impeding the efforts of international relief agencies and of "gross
neglect, callous inattention, and bitter indifference." Mujib, who had been
released from prison, lamented that "West Pakistan has a bumper wheat crop,
but the first shipment of food grain to reach us is from abroad" and "that
the textile merchants have not given a yard of cloth for our shrouds." "We
have a large army," Mujib continued," but it is left to the British Marines
to bury our dead." In an unveiled threat to the unity of Pakistan he added,
"the feeling now pervades . . . every village, home, and slum that we must
rule ourselves. We must make the decisions that matter. We will no longer
suffer arbitrary rule by bureaucrats, capitalists, and feudal interests of
West Pakistan."
Yahya announced plans for a
national election on December 7, 1970, and urged voters to elect candidates
who were committed to the integrity and unity of Pakistan. The elections
were the first in the history of Pakistan in which voters were able to elect
members of the National Assembly directly. In a convincing demonstration of
Bengali dissatisfaction with the West Pakistani regime, the Awami League won
all but 2 of the 162 seats allotted East Pakistan in the National Assembly.
Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party came in a poor second nationally, winning
81 out of the 138 West Pakistani seats in the National Assembly. The Awami
League's electoral victory promised it control of the government, with Mujib
as the country's prime minister, but the inaugural assembly never met.
Yahya and Bhutto vehemently
opposed Mujib's idea of a confederated Pakistan. Mujib was adamant that the
constitution be based on his six-point program. Bhutto, meanwhile, pleaded
for unity in Pakistan under his leadership. As tensions mounted, Mujib
suggested he become prime minister of East Pakistan while Bhutto be made
prime minister of West Pakistan. It was this action that triggered mass
civil disobedience in East Pakistan. Mujib called for a general strike until
the government was given over to the "people's representatives." Tiring of
the interminable game of politics he was playing with the Bengali leader,
Yahya decided to ignore Mujib's demands and on March 1 postponed
indefinitely the convening of the National Assembly, which had been
scheduled for March 3. March 1 also was a portentous date, for on that day
Yahya named General Tikka Khan, who in later years was to earn the dubious
title "Butcher of Baluchistan" for his suppression of Baluch separatists, as
East Pakistan's military governor. The number of West Pakistani troops
entering East Pakistan had increased sharply in the preceding weeks,
climbing from a precrisis level of 25,000 to about 60,000, bringing the army
close to a state of readiness. As tensions rose, however, Yahya continued
desperate negotiations with Mujib, flying to Dhaka in mid-March. Talks
between Yahya and Muhib were joined by Bhutto but soon collapsed, and on
March 23 Bengalis following Mujib's lead defiantly celebrated "Resistance
Day" in East Pakistan instead of the traditional all-Pakistan "Republic
Day." Yahya decided to "solve" the problem of East Pakistan by repression.
On the evening of March 25 he flew back to Islamabad. The military crackdown
in East Pakistan began that same night
Pakistan Period, 1947-71
Pakistan was born in
bloodshed and came into existence on August 15, 1947, confronted by
seemingly insurmountable problems. As many as 12 million people--Muslims
leaving India for Pakistan, and Hindus and Sikhs opting to move to India
from the new state of Pakistan--had been involved in the mass transfer of
population between the two countries, and perhaps 2 million refugees had
died in the communal bloodbath that had accompanied the migrations.
Pakistan's boundaries were established hastily without adequate regard for
the new nation's economic viability. Even the minimal requirements of a
working central government--skilled personnel, equipment, and a capital city
with government buildings--were missing. Until 1947 the East Wing of
Pakistan, separated from the West Wing by 1,600 kilometers of Indian
territory, had been heavily dependent on Hindu management. Many Hindu
Bengalis left for Calcutta after partition, and their place, particularly in
commerce, was taken mostly by Muslims who had migrated from the Indian state
of Bihar or by West Pakistanis from Punjab.
After partition, Muslim
banking shifted from Bombay to Karachi, Pakistan's first capital. Much of
the investment in East Pakistan came from West Pakistani banks. Investment
was concentrated in jute production at a time when international demand was
decreasing. The largest jute processing factory in the world, at Narayanganj,
an industrial suburb of Dhaka, was owned by the Adamjee family from West
Pakistan. Because banking and financing were generally controlled by West
Pakistanis, discriminatory practices often resulted. Bengalis found
themselves excluded from the managerial level and from skilled labor. West
Pakistanis tended to favor Urdu-speaking Biharis (refugees from the northern
Indian state of Bihar living in East Pakistan), considering them to be less
prone to labor agitation than the Bengalis. This preference became more
pronounced after explosive labor clashes between the Biharis and Bengalis at
the Narayaganj jute mill in 1954.
Pakistan had a severe
shortage of trained administrative personnel, as most members of the
preindependence Indian Civil Service were Hindus or Sikhs who opted to
belong to India at partition. Rarer still were Muslim Bengalis who had any
past administrative experience. As a result, high-level posts in Dhaka,
including that of governor general, were usually filled by West Pakistanis
or by refugees from India who had adopted Pakistani citizenship.
One of the most divisive
issues confronting Pakistan in its infancy was the question of what the
official language of the new state was to be. Jinnah yielded to the demands
of refugees from the Indian states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, who insisted
that Urdu be Pakistan's official language. Speakers of the languages of West
Pakistan--Punjabi, Sindhi, Pushtu, and Baluchi--were upset that their
languages were given second-class status. In East Pakistan, the
dissatisfaction quickly turned to violence. The Bengalis of East Pakistan
constituted a majority (an estimated 54 percent) of Pakistan's entire
population. Their language, Bangla (then commonly known as Bengali), shares
with Urdu a common Sanskritic-Persian ancestor, but the two languages have
different scripts and literary traditions. |
