On November 7, 1975, barely four years after Bangladesh won its independence, the country was shaken by a popular uprising within the military. The regime of Brig. Khaled Musharraf, which had seized power just four days earlier, was toppled amid jubilant street demonstrations. However, a new military regime headed by Gen. Ziaur Rahman quickly took its place.
The events of that day marked more than just another coup, according to a detailed account of the army mutiny by Lawrence Lifschultz entitled, "Abu Taher's Last Testament-Bangladesh: The Unfinished Revolution." It appeared in the August 1977 issue of the Economic and Political Weekly published in Bombay, India.
Lifschultz, who reported from Bangladesh for several years as a correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review, terms the rebellion "a soldiers' uprising that had not been seen in the [Indian] subcontinent since 1857, when the colonial army of India rebelled against the British."
In his examination of the rebellion and the events that surrounded it, Lifschultz brings to bear a wide range of documentation, including leaflets distributed by the rebellious troops and previously unpublished letters and documents by Abu Taher, a central figure behind the army mutiny and a leader of the underground socialist party, the Jatyo Samajtantrik Dal (JSD-Socialist National Party).
During the uprising and the days that followed, the troops demanded the creation of a "revolutionary army," the "release of all political prisoners,"
the selection of officers from among the ranks, and the setting up of "revolutionary army organisations,
" to be linked with committees of "revolutionary students, peasants, workers, and the common masses of the country."
To prevent the rebellious troops and their civilian supporters from realizing their objectives, General Zia, who had come to power as a result of the uprising, quickly cracked down. Political activists, including Abu Taher, were arrested, some military units were disbanded or disarmed, and a general witch-hunt was launched against the JSD. The following year, a number of JSD leaders were brought to trial before a secret military tribunal. Several were sentenced to long prison terms and Taher was executed.
Lifschultz notes that the political conflict between the forces represented by Taher on one hand and Zia on the other was "over an issue which in essence could be said to divide the entire underdeveloped world. What would it be-revolutionary socialism in one of the poorest of the world's nations, or a path of capitalist development based on the largesse of the Americans and the plans of the World Bank?"
National Liberation and Socialism
In an effort to analyze the dynamies of that conflict in Bangladesh, Lifschultz goes back to the origins of the modern Bengali nationalist and socialist movements.
Before independence in 1971, Bangladesh was known as East Pakistan (or East Bengal). It was dominated, economically and politically, by the rulers in West Pakistan, more than 1,000 miles away. The Bengalis strongly resisted this national oppression, one of the earliest expressions of which was the 1952 language movement aimed at defending Bengali against the forcible imposition of Urdu, Pakistan's official language.
The largest Bengali nationalist organization was the Awami League. Lifschultz characterizes it as "a bourgeois nationalist party whose principal objective in the struggle first for autonomy and later for independence was to establish the Bengali bourgeoisie as a class in its own right and not subordinate to West Pakistan's capitalist interests."
Despite these aims, it was successful in winning mass support from the Bengali population in so far as it fought against West Pakistani domination.
During the 1960s a number of leftist organizations appeared in East Bengal. Among the Maoist groups, some, such as Mohammed Toaha's East Pakistan Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist), identified the nationalist struggle with the Awami League leadership, arguing that it reflected no more than a conflict between different wings of the Pakistani bourgeoisie. They consequently took a sectarian approach toward the Bengali nationalist struggle, counterposing to it a nonexistent unity between the workers of East and West Pakistan against their common class enemy.
Some Maoist groups later participated in the Bangladesh war for independence, but most were thrown into disarray, both by their failure to recognize the centrality of the national question in the class struggle in East Bengal and by Peking's open support for the Yahya Khan regime in West Pakistan.
On the other hand, the pro-Moscow Communist Party of Bangladesh and the National Awami Party (Muzzafar), which also looked to Moscow, actively supported the Awami League campaigns. Lifschultz states that "the pro-Moscow left advanced the thesis that socialism could be achieved peacefully through the parliamentary path." After independence, these two parties were among the staunchest supporters of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's Awami League regime.
Besides the pro-Peking and pro-Moscow groups, there was a third current that also considered itself socialist. After independence this current surfaced as the JSD. Lifschultz writes:
The history of the JSD, according to recent party doeuments and statements by its leadership, began in 1962 when "a group of conscious young men" formed a "nucleus" at Dacca University. Their position differed from other radical groups in several important, particularly strategic, respects. Not unlike many others, they held the view that socialism was the only solution to East Bengal's vast poverty, severe backwardness, and increasing underdevelopment. They argued, however, that the independence of East Bengal, or Bangladesh, was a necessary element and condition in the struggle for a socialist society. They organised themselves into what they termed a "nucleus" which centered around a number of personalities including Sirajul Alam Khan, the former General Secretary of the East Pakistan Student's League. The principal thesis of the group was that the "national question" had to be approached as the major political contradiction of Bengali society at that stage of history. The exploitation of East Pakistan by capital based on the western wing had taken on the form of "national" oppression. And the economic bias of West Pakistani based capitalism provided in their view the pivot for a mass political movement. ....
The experience of an intense nationalist movement in East Bengal which at the same time would struggle for democratic rights against an autocratic military regime would draw millions into the experience of mass politics and agitation. Pakistan's history of anti-democatic military regimes made it certain that state violence would be used to crush such a movement, and thus the final achievement of democratic rights for the people of East Bengal would ultimately have to take the form of armed struggle. Once such a stage had been reached the JSD nucleus believed it would be possible to transform an armed nationalist movement into a revolutionary one.
Despite their position in favor of an independent, socialist Bangladesh, these young Bengali socialists did not see the importance of maintaining their class independence from the bourgeois Awami League, going so far as to join it. "But from the very moment of their association," Lifschultz reports, "they took the view that in reality there existed 'two parties in one.' And when the appropriate moment came, they expected one to emerge from the other.""
Although Lifschultz does not characterize it as such, this was a major political error, allowing the Awami League's leadership of the nationalist movement to escape serious challenge at a crucial period in the struggle's development.
As it was, this socialist "nucleus" appeared to the masses as the most militant layer of the Awami League's younger members. Where the Awami League leadership wavered at decisive moments, the socialists put considerable pressure on it not to betray the nationalist struggle. This was most evident during the political crisis immediately preceding the outbreak of war.
The War of Independence
In December 1970, the Awami League, campaigning on the demand for regional autonomy, won a landslide victory in the elections to Pakistan's National Assembly, taking an absolute majority of the seats. The Pakistani rulers, however, could not countenance an Awami League regime and refused to convene the National Assembly. While Mujibur Rahman sought to negotiate a compromise with Yahya Khan, the Pakistani dictator began putting his troops into position. Finally, on March 25, 1971, he launched a massive military assault against the Bengali people.
Even before the elections, however, the "nucleus" within the Awami League was pressing for abandonment of the autonomy demand and adoption of the call for full political independence. One of them introduced a motion before the East Pakistan Students League in August 1970 de manding an Independent Socialist Bangladesh. Two months earlier they had drafted a declaration of independence and designed a new Bangladesh flag.
After the elections and the indefinite postponement of the convening of the National Assembly, Lifschultz writes, Sheikh Mujib was uncertain and wavering:
He was unable to decide whether to push beyond his existing position in favour of federated autonomy or to make an unequivocal demand for independence. On March 2, at a mammoth rally which Mujib attended, A S M Abdur Rab, who would later become General Secretary of the JSD, ceremonially burned the Pakistani flag and hoisted the new national banner. The following day, March 3, at another mass meeting on the Paltan Maidan, Shahjahan Siraj, who later emerged to become a leading figure in the JSD, read out the "Manifesto of an Independent Bangladesh." Finally, on March 7, the student leadership of what was now called the Bangladesh (no longer East Pakistan) Students League presented Mujib with an ultimatum: he must declare independence or they would abandon him and take an independent course.
Rather than have that happen, Mujib relented. At a rally of more than one million persons March 7, he declared that the struggle was now one for complete "emancipation and independence."
During the subsequent war, in which nearly a million Bengalis died, the Awami League leadership tried to maintain its grip on the independence struggle from its headquarters in India. But the Pakistani extermination campaign spurred massive resistance from the Bengali population and various guerrilla groups arose, some more or less independent of the Awami League's direct control.
One of these was led by Abu Taher, a former officer in the Pakistani army who fled from West Pakistan to Bangladesh to join the struggle. Together with another guerrilla leader, Mohammed Ziauddin, he opposed the emphasis of the Awami League and its Indian allies on waging a conventional war against the Pakistani forces. Instead, he favored the organization of a mass guerrilla army. The Awami League resisted this, fearing that a mass mobilization could escape control. Nevertheless, Taher's forces went on to win some of the most important battles of the war.
Taher and other guerrilla leaders also opposed direct Indian military intervention on the side of the Awami League, arguing that it was necessary for the Bengalis to win the struggle themselves, however long it might take.
The Awami League and the Gandhi regime in India rejected this. "Their objective," Lifschultz writes, "was to bring an Awami League government to power in Bangladesh as soon as possible." Lifschultz cites two of the factors behind the Indian military intervention: New Delhi's traditional rivalry with Pakistan and its desire to install a regime in Bangladesh that would be dependent on Indian aid.
There was another, more important, factor, however. New Delhi feared that if the struggle continued much longer, the prosocialist elements among the independence forces could gain dominance.
A statement issued by the United Secretariat of the Fourth International in April 1971 noted that the struggle for national liberation and socialism in Bangladesh "can only be impeded by any intervention of the Indian bourgeoisie, which is only interested in preserving the status quo and preventing the struggle in Bangla Desh from overflowing into West Bengal," a Bengali-populated state in India.
To forestall such a possibility, Indian forces moved into Bangladesh in massive numbers on December 3, 1971. Within less than two weeks the Pakistani army surrendered and Bangladesh gained its formal independence. As planned, Mujibur Ranman's Awami League was installed in power.
Emergence of the JSD
The new regime was almost immediately confronted with political challenges from the socialist "nucleus" within the Awami
League. As early as January 1972, they began to present a public face by launching the daily newspaper Gonokontho (People's Voice). Over the next two years the paper attained the second largest circulation of any daily in the country.
Lifschultz continues:
Mujib returned to mass acclaim in Dacca [on January 10]. But on arrival he was immediately approached by the same leaders of the Students' League who a year earlier had pressed him into declaring an independent Bangladesh. They outlined their proposals on a vigorous programme of nationalisation, co-operatives, agrarian reform, and post-war reconstruction. They called upon the Awami League to adopt a specific programme for the transition to socialism. They also proposed the formation of a "government of national unity" including all partiesnot just the Awami League-which had fought against Pakistan.
After Mujib refused, the socialists openly broke with the Awami League. They split the Students League in half, forming a rival organization. They did the same with the mass peasants and workers federations. Although it did not officially establish itself as a party, the JSD was formed in October 1972. One of its secret members was Col. Abu Taher.
About the same time, the Mujib regime's initial popularity quickly declined. The Awami League leaders were engaged in massive corruption and blackmarketeering. While about 100,000 persons died during the famine of 1973-74, government officials enriched themselves from the shipments of international relief aid.
As discontent and unrest spread, some of the guerrilla forces involved in the independence war took up arms once more, initiating small-scale insurgencies in the countryside. The JSD itself rapidly grew into a mass party in the cities. By December 1973 it was able to hold mass demonstrations of up to 100,000 persons. In January and February 1974 it led two
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countrywide general strikes against the Mujib regime.
Mujib turned increasingly toward repression. The offices of the JSD newspaper, Gonokontho, were sacked and burned, a number of JSD supporters were gunned down in the streets, and several prominent leaders of the party were arrested. In December 1974, Mujib placed Bangladesh under a state of emergency.
In response, the JSD went underground and turned toward preparations for armed action against the regime. In July 1974 it officially formed an armed wing, the Biplobi Gono Bahini (BGB-People's Revolutionary Army), commanded by Taher. Later it established the Biplobi Shainik Sangstha (BSS-Revolutionary Soldiers Organization), a clandestine formation within the regular Bangladesh army.
The JSD had already been planning an insurrection against the Mujib regime when he was overthrown by a coup on August 15, 1975. Mujib was killed and Khondakar
Mustaque Ahmed came to power. He was in turn overthrown November 3 by Brig. Khaled Musharraf. According to Lifschultz, Gen. Ziaur Rahman, an old friend of Taher's from the independence struggle, was arrested and forced to resign his position as army chief of staff. But just before his detention he called Taher and pleaded for help.
The 'Sepoy Revolution'
The Khaled coup was extremely unpopular. The Indian press hailed it, however, reinforcing widespread rumors that the Indian regime had had a hand in the coup (by that time there were already strong Bengali resentments over the growing Indian influence in Bangladesh).
The JSD leaders viewed the situation after the Khaled coup as an opportune moment to strike. But their overall aims in launching a mass insurrection appear to have been vague and confused. Lifschultz quotes from the February 23, 1976, issue of Samyabad (Communism), the JSD theoretical organ. According to the JSD, the decision to act was taken:
First: to shatter the unity of the most active, organised, and oppressive armed group of the bourgeois state machinery. Second: to minimise the organising capacities of the bourgeoisie.
Third: to weaken the imperialist, revisionist, and hegemonist forces which are the patrons of the national bourgeoisie. Fourth: to force the new rule to bring back a democratic situation as far as possible with a view to ultimately eliminating the elements of bourgeois democracy.
Fifth: to prepare the ground for an introduction and growth of proletarian state power and political forces parallel to the bourgeois system of state power.
In addition, Lifschultz notes, one of the JSD's immediate concerns was to win the release of the country's 62,000 political prisoners, about 10,000 of whom were members of the JSD, including a number of National Committee members.
The JSD, and Taher in particular, organized a series of clandestine meetings of junior officers and sepoys (soldiers) under the auspices of the JSD's secret organization within the army, the BSS. On No-
MUJIB: Toppled in coup.
vember 5, thousands of leaflets were distributed to troops and urban workers. On November 7, the BSS supporters at the Dacca Cantonment, together with forces of the JD's other military wing, the BGB, led the revolt against Khaled, quickly toppling his regime. Khaled himself was killed during the uprising.
Demonstrations and marches had been planned to coincide with the insurrection and thousands of civilians filled the streets in response to the JSD's call. Lifschultz reports that on "the day of the mutiny crowds poured into the streets to cheer the soldiers. Sepoys joyously shooting their weapons into the air and shouting slogans-"The Soldiers and People Have United'-rolled through the capital's streets. The mood was exuberant."
Besides Dacca, troops revolted in Rangpur, Chittagong, Comilla, and Jessore. In Dacca and Rangpur alone, about forty officers were believed to have been killed by their troops. By November 9, a senior officer claimed that less than 35 percent of the officer corps remained in control of their commands.
On the day of the uprising, according to Lifschultz, the JSD proposed:
• . the establishment of an interim government, which would include all parties which had suf fered repression during Mujib's regime, and which had supported the independence struggle of the country.... The JSD called for such a government to hold fresh elections, restore press freedom, and allow open political meetings. Within the army, the urban work force, and in the rural areas they called for the setting up of new organs of authority in the form of soldiers' committees, thus by-passing the state bureaucracy as the source of authority.
The JSD did not have much time in which to try to implement its demands. Its leaders committed a major error in allowing General Zia, who had been freed during the insurrection, to come to power. In fact, Taher admits in his court testimony that it was he who proposed that Zia be appointed martial law administrator.
Based on their past experience with him, Taher and the other JSD leaders apparently believed that Zia would at least be willing to comply with some of their democratic demands, such as the release of political prisoners. Zia did order the release of JSD President M. A. Jalil and General Secretary A.S.M. Abdur Rab. He also signed the list of twelve demands put forward by the rebellious troops.
However, Zia had other aims. Lifschultz writes:
Forces fundamentally antagonistic to the radical dimensions of the upsurge rapidly tried to reestablish their position. Mabubul Alam Chashi, an important behind-the-scenes figure in the coup which toppled Mujib, reportedly was able to persuade Zia onto a new course. Basing its strength in the institutions of the Americantrained national police, particularly the Special Combat paramilitary police units, and the National Security Intelligence (NSI) agency of the country, the right formed up its ranks.
Commenting on the JSD's initial confidence in Zia, Lifschultz states, "It was a serious miscalculation comparable to the trust the Chinese communists had put in their alliance with Chiang Kai-shek prior to the 1927 massacres."
By November 15, however, the JSD had publicly dissociated itself from Zia. Jalil and Rab called for the immediate formation of "revolutionary councils" among the troops, industrial workers, peasants, and intellectuals to prepare for a socialist revolution.
But Zia struck first. On November 23 he had Jalil, Rab, and other JSD leaders arrested. The next day Taher was also seized. A general crackdown was launched against the JSD throughout the country.
Since much of the regular army was no longer reliable, Zia was forced to use the police and special paramilitary units to carry out the repression. Two dissident units in Dacca were reportedly disarmed with some difficulty and reports filtered into the capital of hundreds of arrests of soldiers in other cities. In December, the Dacca press reported the capture of 1,000 "miscreants," the military regime's term for JSD members. The same month a new mutiny broke out at the Chittagong naval base and in March there were reports of unrest among army units stationed with the Chittagong Brigade.
Military Justice' Behind Closed Doors
Zia's repression against the JSD encouraged some of the more openly reactionary elements in the military and the government administration to reassert their direct influence. Among these were a layer of
Bengali officers who had remained in West Pakistan until 1973 and had not participated in the independence struggle. These rightist figures clamored for a trial of the imprisoned JSD leaders.
Lifschultz reports:
Other pressures built up from the top officials of the National Security Intelligence (NSI) and the Home Ministry for a trial which would settle the matter... These two organisations, the first directed by A M S Safdar, and the second by Salauddin Ahmed, were headed now by men who were the senior-most intelligence and internal security officials during the era of (Pakistani dictator] Ayub Khan. These men moved into their positions immediately following Mujib's assassination. A number of these suddenly rehabilitated technocrats had during 1971 been accused of active collaboration with the Pakistani Army.
At the same time, General Zia won the open support of the Maoist East Bengal Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist), led by Mohammed Toaha. Toaha publicly denounced the JSD's political activities, accusing it of "trying to sow seeds of discontent and dissension among the jawans [soldiers] of the armed forces by raising the bogey of class differences in the different strata of the armed forces. Using this cunning tactic they have been trying to disrupt the defence forces and to pave the way for the easy walkover of the Indian Army into the soil of Bangladesh."
In June 1976, a Special Military Tribunal was set up to try Taher and other leading political prisoners in secret. It was later announced that they had been accused of mutiny, treason, and the "propagation of political ideology and disaffeetion among the officers and other members of the Defense Services, the Bangladesh Rifles, the Police Forces, and the Ansars."
Besides Taher, Jalil, and Rab, the accused included
Hasanul Hug Inu, the general secretary of the Krishak (Peasants) League; Mohammed Shajahan, president of the Shramik (Workers) League; and M.R. Manna, general secretary of the Chattra (Students) League. Sirajul Alam Khan, a founder and central figure in the JSD who had gone underground, was tried in absentia.
grouna, was trea in aosentia.
In the transcript of his court testimony, which is now banned in Bangladesh, Taher denied the charges of conspiracy and refused to recognize the authority of the tribunal to try him. He told of the solitary confinement, torture, and threats he had been subjected to. He recounted his role in the independence struggle and the November 7 uprising. He concluded his testimony by saying, "I warn this tribunal as I warn the corrupt gentry of the country. do not dare my life. If you do, you will burn the soul of this nation."
On July 17 the military tribunal announced its verdicts. Taher was sentenced to death, Jalil and another JSD leader to life imprisonment, and other defendants to varying jail sentences. Thirteen defendants were acquitted.
Although Lifschultz did not note it, the August 15, 1976, Washington Post reported that the same day the verdicts were handed down there "was a mutiny at the military camp at Bogra, 100 miles northwest of the capital. About 100 men were arrested during the day-long rebellion....
(On September 30, 1977, there was yet another mutiny at Bogra, followed two days later by a military uprising in Dacca. After it was put down, the JSD and two other parties were banned and nearly 100 soldiers were condemned to death.)
Just four days after the sentences were handed down, on July 21, 1976, Abu Taher was hanged. His was the first official execution for political reasons in Bengal since 1934. According to a letter from a close acquaintance of his, Taher shouted just before his execution, "Long Live Bangladesh! Long Live Revolution!"