Enter Nurul Amin. This unscrupulous character, born on July 15, 1893 in the village of Shahbazpur in what was then Brahmanbaria District in the Bengal Presidency of the British colony of India, followed an upward path in his political career much like that of our unsung hero, Joginder Nath Mandal — all the way up from a member of the Mymensingh Local Board in 1929 to entering the Bengal Legislative Assembly in 1946.
That was the norm in the olden days. Of course, large landowners with enough captive votes of their serfs to make it directly to the local, district, state or central legislatures of India were spared the ordeal of canvassing, as is the case in Pakistan after six decades and more of nominal independence from the British colonial hold.
Anyway, all similarities between Mandal and Amin begin and end with the pattern of their political rise. Mandal was a noble soul (may the great being rest in peace) who dedicated his entire life to the amelioration of the most downtrodden classes — Muslims and Harijans, the maleechh (outer barbarians, out of the caste system) and the achhoot (untouchables), in the prevailing Brahmanic socio-political code in India — of not just his native state of Bengal but of the entire British India.
His democratic struggle was as much against the British colonial power as the mostly upper-class Hindu landlords. This latter lot had large estates in the impoverished riverine Bengal, where these Muslim and Harijan cultivators toiled to enrich the absentee Brahmin Thakurs who preferred to live in the luxury of Calcutta.
Getting back to this despicable fellow Amin, who was a wily, scheming and ruthless butcher. Sure enough, even as Mandal quit the government of Prime Minister Liaquat as a dejected man in October 1950, this characterless rogue rose to the exalted position of Pakistan’s vice president on December 22, 1971. He had duly ‘earned’ this unmatched honour in Pakistan’s history by occupying the country’s second highest position (under Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s presidency), though for a brief four months — an office especially crafted in the existing constitutional order to reward him for the ‘services’ rendered to the state over the preceding quarter century.
In a word, he had seen to it that the eastern wing of the ‘Islamic Republic’, as Pakistan came to be designated by the 1956 Constitution, courtesy of Liaquat, was rid of all ‘polluted’ non-Muslim elements through the final solution of death coupled with escape from death to India.
He had got on to the job with right earnest as soon as he became the chief minister of East Bengal in September 1948. All key decisions were then being taken by Liaquat Ali Khan, an emigrant ‘Nawabzada’, no less, from Karnal in the present-day Indian state of Haryana. It was politically expedient for Liaquat Ali Khan to force both Islam and Urdu down the throats of his adoptive homeland of Pakistan as only that could provide him with the basis for legitimising his rule as the prime minister.
Amin, as the chief minister of East Bengal, was more than willing to do Liaquat’s bidding, as his problem was the same as that of the prime minister. After Bengal had been divided by the departing British colonial power against the will of the people of the state, the Muslim-majority half of East Bengal had been so carved out as to render it a truncated political entity. Amin was fearful of the prospective reunification of East and West Bengal (by then a state in post-colonial India), as that would have deprived him of power.
His racist antecedents were no secret to the roughly one-quarter non-Muslim population of the then East Bengal and he wasted little time in starting the carnage of Bengali Hindus in his domain. He engineered widespread riots targeting the ‘impure’. Ironically, their womenfolk were considered pure enough by the valiant soldiers in the military to commit unspeakable excesses against them before putting them to death.
Mandal has thrown sufficient light on this nefarious scheme to prevent the reunification of Bengal put into play by the one ironically named Nurul Amin (literally meaning ‘Light of the Trustworthy’ — ‘the Trustworthy’ is one of Prophet Mohammad’s (PBUH) attributes). Come to think of it, some of the most vicious among the galaxy of the most exalted in Pakistan’s chequered history share this paradox of nomenclature.
Take ‘Ziaul Haq’, for instance, literally meaning ‘Beacon of the Truth’, and it is hard to conceive of a bigger compulsive liar. The abbreviation for his self-assumed title of chief martial law administrator, CMLA, gained currency in the changed but apt meaning of ‘cancel my last announcement’, given the consistent pattern of going back on his solemn pledges made to the nation throughout his 11-year-long illegitimate military rule (1977-1988).
And then there is Ghulam Mohammad (literally meaning ‘Slave of Prophet Mohammad’ (PBUH), the governor general of Pakistan (1951-1955), who, besides being a travesty of the name’s otherwise venerable connotation, was a slur on the sacred image of the greatest man in human history, peace be upon him.
Let us take a pause in the agonising narrative of naming names in Pakistan’s blighted past, for the list must include some more. Let us go directly to Mandal’s resignation letter:
“After Mr Nurul Amin had become the chief minister of East Bengal, I again took up the matter [of the agreed inclusion of two to three minority members in the East Bengal Cabinet] with him. He also followed the same old familiar tactics of evasion [as Prime Minister Liaquat himself]…
“I was then forced to come to the conclusion that neither you [Prime Minister Liaquat] nor Mr Nurul Amin had any intention to take any scheduled caste [Harijan] minister in the East Bengal cabinet.
“Apart from this, I was noticing that Mr Nurul Amin and some [Muslim] League leaders of East Bengal were trying to create disruption among the members of the Scheduled Caste Federation [the umbrella political organisation of Harijans in the subcontinent]. It appeared to me that my leadership and widespread popularity were considered ominous.
“My outspokenness, vigilance and sincere efforts to safeguard the interests of the minorities of Pakistan, in general, and of the scheduled caste, in particular, were considered a matter of annoyance to the East Bengal government and a few League leaders. Undaunted, I took my firm stand to safeguard the interests of the minorities of Pakistan.”
Grave indeed were his crimes in this ‘Land of the Pure’, ‘Pakistan’, in the literal sense. Let us all pause and shed a tear of remorse for the innocent blood of countless of our compatriots whose cardinal sin as ordained by the carpetbagger rulers from beyond this land was to stand up for human equality at birth: the sine qua non of Islam.
The journey of our rediscovery must continue, but perhaps another time. All that has been looked in the eye has left this writer for one beyond the capacity to move a single step forward into the shameful past.
(Concluded)
(The first part of this article appeared on May 13, 2011)
The writer is a senior journalist currently working as project consultant/editor at the Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad (ISSI). He can be reached at [email protected]