Internal Colonialism in Bangladesh

Internal Colonialism: Internal colonialism is a notion of structural political and economic inequalities between regions within a nation state. The term is used to describe the uneven effects of economic development on a regional basis, otherwise known as "uneven development", and to describe the exploitation of minority groups within a wider society. This is held to be similar to the relationship between metropole and colony, in colonialism proper.

1.2. The Bengali Ethnonationalist Movement and the Civil War in East Pakistan, 1952-1971

At the time of Independence, the State of Pakistan was composed of two wings, namely West and East Pakistan, separated by more than 1200 miles of Indian territory. Although the two wings were linked by religion, they differed strongly from an ethnic and linguistic point of view. Whereas East Pakistan was constituted of a homogeneous Bengali-speaking population, West Pakistan was divided between Punjabis, Pathans, Sindhis and Baluchis. Moreover, Bengalis formed the majority of the population, around 56%, all of them concentrated in East Pakistan. The Pakistani federal system was excessively centralized to the detriment of the provinces. Economic and political power was concentrated in the hands of a tiny elite from West Pakistan. Bengalis were hardly represented in the army and the bureaucracy. All the natural resources located in East Pakistan, such as jute for example, were exploited by the western wing and the wealth hence created was not redistributed to the eastern wing. The situation was felt by East Pakistanis as a form of internal colonization. In East Pakistan, it soon propelled a demand for more provincial autonomy which initially crystallized, around 1952, on the question of language, particularly the status of Bengali, which, despite being the most spoken language in the country, was not recognized as a national language besides Urdu.

During the next twenty years or so, the grievances of East Pakistanis never ceased to increase and their demands acquired somewhat secessionist overtones as expressed in the Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s Awami League’s Six-point program. The relation between the two wings really deteriorated when General Yahya Khan, who took over power from President/General Ayub Khan in 1969 following mass agitation against his regime, refused to acknowledge the results of the first free and fair December 1970 general elections he had himself masterminded. The Awami League (AL), an East Pakistani political party, won the election on the basis of its Six-point program in favor of full provincial autonomy as they managed to get 167 out of 169 seats in East Pakistan, hence securing an absolute majority in the National Legislative Assembly. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s Pakistan People Party (PPP) won 81 out of 144 West Pakistani seats. Following the results, General Yahya Khan announced on February 13, 1971, that the national Assembly was to meet on March 3, 1971, in Dhaka. However, as the Six-point program was unbearable for both General Yahya Khan and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, they strongly refused to negotiate with Mujibur Rahman, the leader of the Awami League and ought-to-be Prime Minister of Pakistan, and sent the army to repress any dissent, thus prompting a full-scale civil war with genocidal features in East Pakistan.

The assessment of the death toll and the qualification of the violence still remain, thirty-six years after the events, the object of a bitter controversy. The estimates of the death toll vary tremendously. Most of them oscillated between 300,000 (Sisson and Rose, 1990) and 3 millions (Muhit, 1992; Jahan, 1997), to what is added between 200,000 and 400,000 women raped (Brownmiller, 1975). According to the Bangladesh authorities, the Pakistan army was responsible for killing three million Bengalis and raping at least 200,000 East Pakistani women. The Martial Law administration put the death toll around 26,000 Bengalis and accused the Bengali insurgents of killing 100,000 non-Bengalis (Hamoodur Rahman Report, 1974). Both these propagandist estimations are obviously flawed respectively by excess and by default. The controversy over the death toll is due to the partisan character of the allegations made by the Bangladeshi and the Indian governments, on the one hand, and the Pakistani government, on the other. Besides, the press restrictions and the censorship during the events contributed to blur information. According to R.J. Rummel, the death toll would be approximately 1,500,000 Bengalis and 150,000 non-Bengalis, to what must be added 10,000,000 refugees who had fled to India (Rummel, 1994: 331). Regarding the number of women raped, there is also a polemic as some argued that the number of women raped should be counted in thousands and not in hundred thousands (Bose, 2007: 3864).

The nature of the violence is also the object of a controversy. Some refuse to qualify the military action as genocide (Bose, 2005), though some of them acknowledged 300,000 deaths (Sisson and Rose, 1990). Others claimed it was genocide and that 3 million were killed between March 1971 and December 1971 (Muhit, 1992; Jahan, 1997). Actually, two targets appear to have suffered from genocidal-featured violence as the aim was to cleanse the province from their presence. The first are the Urdu-speaking Biharis – Urdu-speaking Muslims from Bihar who migrated to East Pakistan at Partition – and it was perpetrated by the Mukti Bahini and Bengali armed mobs. The second are the Hindus targeted by the Pakistani army. Whether the Pakistani army is guilty or not of genocide against Bengalis remains unclear. Although Bengali civilians were straightforwardly and indiscriminately targeted, the basic aim did not seem to be their total eradication from East Pakistan.
The final and overall responsibility for the atrocities was attributed by the Hamoodur Commission to officers from the Pakistan army such as General Yahya Khan, Lt. Gen. Pirzada, Maj Gen. Umar, and Lt. Gen. Mitha, while the immediate responsibility for executing the plan fell on Lt. Gen. Tikka Khan and Lt. Gen. A.A.K. Niazi. The Pakistani army is accused:

of excessive use of force and fire power in Dhaka during the night of March 25 and 26, 1971, when the military operation ‘Searchlight’ was launched; of senseless and wanton arson and killings in the countryside during the course of the “sweeping operations” following the military action; of targeting intellectuals and professionals like doctors, engineers, etc., and burying them in mass graves not only during the early phases of the military action but also during the critical days of the Indo-Pakistani war in December 1971; of killing Bengali officers and men of the units of the East Bengal Regiment, East Pakistan Rifles, and the East Pakistan Police Force on pretence of quelling their rebellion and in the process of disarming them; of killing East Pakistani civilian officers, businessmen and industrialists; of raping of a large number of East Pakistani women by the officers and men of the Pakistan army as a deliberate act of revenge, retaliation and torture; and of deliberate killings of members of the Hindu minority (Hamoodur Rahman Report, 1974: 19). Besides the Pakistani army, other actors have also perpetrated various atrocities and killings, especially the Awami League-backed Bengali liberation army, the Mukhti Bahini, which targeted pro-Pakistan elements such as West Pakistanis, Biharis and also pro-Pakistan Bengalis.
1.2.1 The Language riots in East Pakistan, 1952

1952; January 26: The Basic Principle Committee of the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan recommended that Urdu should be the only State language, hence following the position of all the national leaders such as Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Liaquat Ali Khan and Khawja Nazimuddin since Independence. Two days later, students of Dhaka University held a protest meeting and demanded the resignation of Prime Minister Nazimuddin who, despite his own Bengali origin, refused to support the demand for Bengali as the second national language along with Urdu, and the State language of East Pakistan.

1952; January 30: Bengali students, politicians, artists and intellectuals launched the Bhasha Andolon, a language movement in favor of the recognition of Bengali as a national language. As a consequence, Dhaka was rocked with strikes, demonstrations and ultimately police-firings. The day after, an All-Party Committee of Action led by Maulana Abdul Hamid Khan Bhashani, leader of the National Awami Party, was constituted in order to direct the agitation that was being carried on in East Pakistan for the inclusion of Bengali as a State language. The committee announced a general demonstration to be staged on the February 21 and called for a complete hartal (general strike).

1952; February 21: While the whole province of East Pakistan was under complete general strike, the students of Dhaka University held a meeting at the Medical College hostel at noon. This happened despite the official ban on meetings and demonstrations in Dhaka, promulgated by the Government of Pakistan under section 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. Police intervened by using teargas and demonstrators answered by brickbats. At 4 pm, as the whole campus was a battleground between the police and the students, the police fired at the crowd killing four students. The day after, the streets of Dhaka were full of demonstrators. But on February 24, the army was given full authority to restore law and order and arrested nearly all the students and the political leaders (Rahman, 1997: 836; Sen Gupta, 2007: 176-178). Justice Ellis of the High Court of Judi Cature at Dhaka concluded in March 1952, that “the firing by the police was necessary; the force used by the police was justified in the circumstances of the case” (Report of the Enquiry into the Firing by the Police at Dhaka, February 21, 1952). This day is since then commemorated as “Shaheed (martyrs’) day” and observed as a provincial, then national, holiday.