Bangladesh’s History and Pakistan’s Prime Minister
Syed Badrul Ahsan
Pakistan’s army-installed Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif is a man who either does not know history or is deliberately engaged in pushing it under the rug. The other day in Pakistan, at a youth conference in Islamabad in the presence of army chief Asim Munir, he clearly took perverse pride in the fact that statues dedicated to the memory of Bangladesh’s founding father Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman had been brought down in Dhaka and elsewhere.
Sharif informed his audience that this was what was done to a man who had broken up Pakistan. He also noted in an oblique way that Bangabandhu had tried to nullify the infamous two-nation theory but that the civil disorder which had forced the removal of the Awami League government earlier this month proved that Jinnah’s prescription had not become extinct, that it was alive. Sharif’s remarks were unbecoming of a politician of his stature and a brazen interference in the internal affairs of a state with which his country enjoys diplomatic relations.
The Pakistani leader’s remarks call for an official protest by Bangladesh’s Foreign Office. The issue is not one of the kind of political change which has taken place in Dhaka. It is one of the leaders of a country which waged war against our people fifty-three years ago and ended up losing that war which is important in history.
Besides, Sharif was clearly playing truant with historical truth, concealing from the young people present before him the facts as they were behind the break-up of Pakistan in 1971. He did not mention that Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his party won the general elections of 1970, that the Pakistan army and the Pakistan People’s Party created a situation where power was not transferred to the Awami League, that genocide was unleashed in Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) by the Pakistan army.
Had he been a scholar of history or a politician willing to speak the truth, in the way the imprisoned Imran Khan did a few times before the army locked him away, Shehbaz Sharif could have refrained from bringing Bangladesh into his remarks. Was he trying to please General Asim Munir, who was sharing the stage with him? Or did he really think that simply because Bangabandhu’s statues had been pulled down and the museum that was at 32 Dhanmondi had been torched, Bangladesh’s people had obliterated all memories of their Father of the Nation, that Sheikh Mujibur Rahman had become a non-person?
That Pakistan’s military-dominated ruling circles have been cheered by what has been happening in Bangladesh since the fall of Sheikh Hasina’s government on 5 August is a reality which does not require much wisdom to be understood. Islamabad’s power circles seriously seem to think that Bangladesh has turned into a non-secular state, a nation with which they can now do happy business. It would not be out of place to note here that they might even begin to entertain thoughts of some kind of a return to camaraderie between Pakistan and Bangladesh in terms of the two-nation theory. If these thoughts are there, they are a sign of the poverty of imagination among Pakistan’s ruling elite regarding the ground realities in Bangladesh.
Here in Bangladesh, are we really surprised at Shehbaz Sharif’s comments on our history? Not many years ago, the government led by his brother Nawaz Sharif adopted a resolution in Pakistan’s national assembly condemning the war crimes trials in Bangladesh. That was unabashed interference in Dhaka’s internal affairs and sadly added new tension to the ties between the two countries. It should have been for the Nawaz Sharif government to stay away from making any comment on what had been happening in Bangladesh. But, again, it conveniently looked away from history, deliberately ignored the atrocities committed by its supporters, together with its soldiers, in what was an occupied Bangladesh in 1971.
Shehbaz Sharif did not enlighten those young people listening to him of the intrigue which went into a repudiation of the results of the December 1970 elections. He knew that Sheikh Mujibur Rahman had never stated anything against the two-nation theory but had only campaigned for the rights of the Bengalis in pre-1971 Pakistan.
He carefully shielded himself from informing those young men and women that the action taken against Bengalis by the army had led to a guerrilla war which brought Pakistan to its knees in Bangladesh. That the emergence of Bangladesh was an inevitable fact of history, a necessary correction of history, was conveniently not mentioned by the man whose rise to power has been made possible through a commandeering of the seats won by Imran Khan’s Tehrik-e-Insaf and keeping Khan in prison.
Again, are we surprised? Pakistan’s former army chief, General Qamar Bajwa, once made the laughable comment that the loss of East Pakistan was for his country a political defeat and not a military defeat. He did not say or would not say that it was both. And now go back to 15 August 1975, when within hours of the assassination of Bangabandhu and his family, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto cheerfully accorded recognition to what he thought had become the Islamic Republic of Bangladesh. Yes, a violent coup had taken place in Dhaka. But the country remained the People’s Republic as fashioned in the nine months of the War of Liberation.
Given Shehbaz Sharif’s remarks on the recent happenings in Bangladesh, it becomes important for the foreign policy establishment in Dhaka to rethink its Pakistan policy. For Pakistan to expect normal relations with Bangladesh and for its Prime Minister to commit outrage through misleading comments on the individual under whose leadership Bangladesh emerged as a nation-state are a contradiction. By now it should have been for Pakistan’s envoy in Dhaka to be called in for an explanation of Sharif’s comments and for a protest note to be handed over to him for onward passage to Islamabad. That has not happened, but national self-esteem demands that such a step be taken by the interim government.
Shehbaz Sharif and all those whose views of the rise of Bangladesh remain myopic and parochial would do well to note that for all the political upheavals which have taken place in Dhaka in the last five decades-plus, Bengalis know only too well that ties between their country and Pakistan will not move ahead unless Islamabad comes forth with a long-delayed apology over the genocide the Pakistan army committed in 1971. The wounds have not healed. Men like Shehbaz Sharif are keeping those wounds raw and festering.
Bangladesh remains a proud nation. It is unbowed as a society. It has come through a series of crises, and yet it has endured, has held its head high. That Bangladesh is the embodiment of the renaissance politics of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman is a truth which should dawn on the likes of those who today are in office but not in power in Islamabad. Shehbaz Sharif should take special note.
Syed Badrul Ahsan writes on politics, diplomacy and history