[The following article is taken from the April 6 issue of the Dublin daily Irish Times.]
The brutal massacre of Bengalis conducted by the invading armies of the West Pakistani dictator, General Yahya Khan, is the penultimate act of a tragedy that began in 1947, when Pakistan was established. The curtain will come down only with the withdrawal of the invading armies, the establishment of an independent East Bengali State and the end of Pakistan as we have known it up till now.
The origins of the present crisis in East Bengal are to be found in the very creation of Pakistan and the division of the Indian sub-continent on a religious basis. The struggle to establish a separate Moslem state reflected the uneven development of two national bourgeoisies (the Hindu and the Moslem). The fear of the Moslem feudal landlords and petty bourgeoisie that a united India would mean the hegemony of the Hindu bourgeoisie saw the creation of a freak state -- Pakistan -- which comprised two geographical entities separated from each other by 1,000 miles and having only one factor in common, the Moslem religion. The region of East Bengal contained the majority of the population (over 60%), but the two major props of the new state were confined to West Pakistan, namely, the Pakistan Army and the civil service. These two elements right from the very beginning guaranteed the dominance of the feudal landlords over the politics of the entire country. Thus the first two decades of Pakistan's existence saw a continuous intrigue becoming irresistible. The feudal politicians moved into the background and the Army seized direct control via the Ayub coup d'etat in October 1958. Thus majority rights were denied to the Bengali masses from the very start.
These rights did not entail political representation alone. Economically as well the eastern part of the country was ruled by the central government in West Pakistan. The departure of the Hindu entrepreneurs and "gombeenmen" to India in 1947 had created a vacuum in the East Bengali economy and this vacuum was filled, not by the Bengali petty bourgeoisie, but by non-Bengali business interests, predominantly from West Pakistan. This economic exploitation which began immediately after partition led to an annual extraction of 3,000 million rupees (£1 equals Rs.12) from East Bengal by West Pakistani capitalists. The bulk of foreign exchange earned by Pakistan came from jute, a commodity produced only in East Bengal, but these earnings were squandered in West Pakistan. No benefit accrued to the eastern part of the country at all. An interesting comparison can be made by examining the sums of money granted for development projects by the central government. Between 1948 and 1951 a sum of Rs. 1,130 million was sanctioned for development. Of this only 22.1% or Rs. 250 million went to East Pakistan. This gap continued to increase. In addition the large majority of what industrial enterprises were set up in East Bengal were dominated by West Pakistani capital.
East Pakistan, therefore, gradually became a neo-colony. Its raw material was used to develop Karachi and the Punjab and it was used as a market for dumping industrial commodities produced in West Pakistan; commodities which it could have obtained at half the price from nearby India if the central government had not disallowed all trade with New Delhi and Calcutta. The reasons behind the discrimination of East Pakistan were simple. The West Pakistani vested interests rightly feared that if a national bourgeoisie were allowed to develop in East Bengal, its economic strength added to its political power would make it a vital and dominating force in Pakistani politics.
They were, therefore, determined to prevent this from happening and thus, together with the economic and political discrimination inflicted on the Bengalis there was added a certain form of racial discrimination. Bengalis were not allowed any meaningful representation in either the armed forces or the civil service and the excuse was an old one inherited from the days of British imperialism: The Bengalis are an inferior race not capable of fighting as are the Punjabis —a martial race. These myths, invented by British imperialism because it did not trust the Bengalis politically, have been taken over in their entirety by the West Pakistani ruling class.
The cumulative effect of decades of oppression has now been seen by the entire world. Because of the massive pressure generated by the mass movements of 1968-'69 (which resulted in the overthrow of Field Marshal Ayub Khan), the Yahya Khan dictatorship was forced to make certain concessions, one of which was a general election based on adult franchise. The nationalist programme of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's Awami League, enshrined in the famous six-points, won 98% of the votes in East Bengal (total population: 75 million) and this gave the league a majority throughout the country. The West Pakistani ruling class correctly saw the verdict of the people as a threat to its class interests. A Bengali majority meant the beginning of the end of the business monopoly which the west had enjoyed and furthermore opened the possibilities of exercising civilian control over the enormous military expenditure. The Pakistani Army, as the main upholder of West Pakistani capitalism and feudalism, decided on a massacre in collaboration with the leader of the 'Radical' People's Party, Mr. Bhutto.
A pretence was made of negotiations and it was here that the limitations of the Awami League came out into the open. As a petty bourgeois party with a petty bourgeois programme it found itself in a pre-revolutionary situation. Its willingness to negotiate was resented by the masses who understood much more clearly than the Awami League leaders that Yahya was negotiating only to gain time in order to pour in troops from West Pakistan. Mujibur Rahman did not prepare either his party or the masses for an armed struggle, despite the fact that he controlled the entire country for a few weeks when a situation existed which can only be described as bourgeois dual power! The grim results of this failure are to be seen in the streets of Dacca and Chittagong; hundreds of thousands of Bengalis lie dead, massacred in cold blood by the invading army. The Left in East Pakistan was at a disadvantage from the start because it never understood the importance of the national question and because it failed to play a leading role in the anti-Ayub opposition because of the latter's "friendship" with China. As a result the leadership of the Bengali struggle passed over to Mujibur Rahman's Awami League, and though the Left made an about-turn it was done in a fragmented way and was too late to retrieve the situation. Today, however, the revolutionary Left can play a decisive role in the struggle, by organising both itself and its social base. The struggle to be successful will have to transcend its nationalist limitations.
The role of Bengal as a whole in the history of the Indian sub-continent has been such that it has given a political lead to the rest of the country. The old adage that, "What Bengal does today, India does tomorrow," has a certain relevance, which Mrs. Gandhi, the Indian Prime Minister, understands perfectly well. That is why she makes demagogic noises stressing her sympathy for the Bengali people. She is forced into such a posture to appease West Bengal, which is also on the boil.
An independent East Bengal or even the armed struggle designed to achieve it could have extremely serious repercussions for the Indian bourgeoisie as far as West Bengal is concerned. Already we have seen a one-day general strike in West Bengal in solidarity with the oppressed masses of East Bengal. The logic is very clear; the road has been opened to a united Bengali nation with a population of well over 100 million people. And few are in doubt that a united Bengal would be very rapidly confronted with the permanent revolutionary process. The non-existence of a bourgeoisie in the east combined with the weakness of a bourgeois State apparatus would seriously limit the options. And if one also takes into account that the Maoists and the Trotskyists of the Fourth International already control some "liberated areas" not far from the border, then the prospect of a Socialist Bengal becomes even clearer. Thus the perspective of Bengal as a red base preparing to take social revolution deep into the heart of India, becomes a spectre haunting the United States and its client regimes in Asia. Even as one writes one hears that the more far-sighted capitalists in West Pakistan are preparing to consider a confederation with Iran and Afghanistan. Thus a new geographical entity begins to take shape -- a rump of reaction in South Asia to form the "new frontier" of United States imperialism. But one can predict with a certain amount of confidence that even this State will not last long. The advancing Indo-Chinese revolution coupled with an armed struggle in India, would make it only a short-term possibility. History is moving extremely rapidly these days.