Ever since the verdict of a
death sentence to Delawar Hossain Sayedee and life imprisonment against Abdul Qadir Mullah, chief of Jamaat-e-Islami, for crimes against humanity committed during the civil war in 1971, Bangladesh has been embroiled in violent clashes in which more than 50 people have been killed. This turmoil comes in the background of innumerable general strikes and militant protests of the workers in the last few years. In the recent months scores of textile workers, mainly women, have been burnt in the factory fires in the garment industry igniting militant protests by workers.
In the 1971 war, after which an independent Bangladesh came into being, about three million were killed according to government reports. Tens of thousands of Bengali women were raped by the West Pakistani army, which was trying to crush a mass revolt in East Pakistan, as it was known at the time. In December, the Indian army invaded East Pakistan, and after a 13-day war, the Pakistani army surrendered and 93,000 personnel were taken as prisoners of war. This version of those turbulent events 42 years ago is the official line of the Indian and the Bangladeshi ruling classes and their intelligentsia. The Pakistani state version is based on the usual portraying of India as being the perpetrator of the conflict and the breakup of Pakistan.
However, both versions are distorted to serve the interests of the respective ruling elites. History has been skewed. The movement that erupted against the regime in the united Pakistan began not in East Pakistan but from Rawalpindi in West Pakistan when a student of the polytechnic college was killed by police firing on a protest demonstration of the students. This provoked a mass upheaval that spread throughout both wings of the country. It soon developed into a revolutionary class struggle as the proletarian vanguard entered the fray. In the East Pakistan, the main leader that emerged in this movement was Maulana Abdul Hamid Khan Bashani, a Maoist who was the leader of the National Awami Party. As the movement gained momentum, it began to threaten the state apparatus and the system. General Ayub Khan leaned on the Chinese and Bashani was instructed by Mao himself to back out. This abdication of Bashani who was proclaiming a socialist revolution was a severe setback for the class struggle.
In East Pakistan, Bengali masses were also the victims of a severe national oppression and the sentiments of a nationalist deprivation raged high. This led to the deviation of the struggle from class lines onto the nationalist plane. The imperialists and the Indian ruling classes heaved a sigh of relief, as they were terrified of the mighty wave of class struggle in the east spilling into West Bengal that was already in ferment. Such a development would have meant a revolutionary storm engulfing the whole of the South Asian subcontinent. This propelled Sheikh Mujib-ur- Rehman, a bourgeoisie demagogue, into the leadership of the nationalist struggle. He was a staunch aficionado of capitalism and had links with the Indian bourgeoisie. In a revealing interview with the AFP published in Le Monde, Paris on March 31,1971, Mujib complained, “Is the West Pakistan government not aware that I am the only one able to save East Pakistan from communism?”
The Indian army invaded East Bengal not to liberate it but to crush the soviets or the panchayats of the workers peasants and the youth that had sprung up in the areas liberated by the mass upheaval in the leadership of the JSD and other left organisations threatening the status quo. But what is also true is that in the atrocities and massacres of the Bengali masses committed by the Pakistan army, the vigilantes of the Jamaat-e- Islami organised in its armed wings — Al Badar and Al Shams — were accomplices and carried out vicious brutalities against innocent people. The deep involvement of the Jamaat in this ‘Operation Blitz’ of the Pakistan army is revealed in the book The Indo-Pak War by Major General Hakeem Arshad Qureshi, who was a battalion commander in Dinapur district of East Pakistan during the operation. He narrates: “Maulana Tufail Mohammad (Amir) of the Jamaat-e-Islami visited us after the military action…The Maulana was particularly concerned about the performance of the ‘razakaars’(volunteers) locally recruited and belonging to his party… He jokingly remarked that his party cadres had always come to the rescue of the Army in tough situations.”
There is no doubt that these leaders of the Jamaat-e-Islami being tried in the war crimes tribunal were involved in the heinous crimes against the Bengali masses in the civil war. But the question arises why these trials are being conducted 42 years later. And why is the Jamaat still a substantial political force in Bangladesh when its leaders played a treacherous role during its liberation struggle? Inspite of a secular constitution and demeanour of its mainstream leaders, the independence of Bangladesh has failed to relieve the masses from the deprivation, misery and poverty under a capitalist regime. Both the mainstream parties, the Awami league of Sheikh Hasina and the BNP of Khalida Zia, represent the interests of different factions of ruling classes that took control of the state and the economy after the formation of Bangladesh. The real motive of these trials at this stage is to subvert the rising wave of a renewed class struggle.
Experience of Bangladesh proves that any independence on a bourgeois basis cannot resolve the burning problems afflicting society due to capitalist exploitation and imperialist plunder. Fundamentalism breeds on this malaise that has set in due to the stagnation of the workers’ movement and the prevalent misery in society. Those tens of thousands protesting at the Shahbagh square are mainly petit bourgeoisie who are doing a catharsis of their frustrations from the burgeoning social and economic crisis that has now started to bite the middle classes. The Islamic fundamentalists ferociously belligerent for the utopia of Islamisation are from a similar class background with analogous frustrations. It is unfortunate that most of the left leadership in the name of secularism and democracy have abandoned the required necessity of a socioeconomic transformation for the emancipation of the Bengali masses. The youth and proletariat in Bangladesh have launched several struggles and fought courageous battles to overthrow this capitalist coercion. What they need is a revolutionary programme, party and leadership to achieve the real social and economic liberation they so earnestly seek.
The writer is the editor of Asian Marxist Review and International Secretary of Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign. He can be reached at [email protected]