The elections were to choose a national assembly that would write a new constitution for Pakistan. And because a small West Pakistani' clite of 20 families has ruled the two regions since independence, Mujib's bourgeois Awami League rode to ballot-box power on a demand for Hast Bengal autonomy. Had General Yahya convened the national assembly as scheduled on March 25, League members would have voted East Bengal a semi-sovereign status, allowing it to resume trade with India (suspended after the 1965 war) and to handle its own monetary affairs. Autonomy for the West Pakistani states of Pathan and Baluchistan would probably have followed leaving to the central government control over national defense and foreign policy.
Though there was probably little or no reason to suspect that the West Pakistani elite would give up their richest province without a fight, Mujibur gave his personal sanction to the post-election civil disobedience and work stoppages that protested what he called “the suppression of the majority”. IIis Awami League made no preparations for armed struggle while General Yahya hemmed and hawed about convening the national assembly, finally inviting Mujib to a meeting with West Pakistan winner Bhutto, whose bourgeois PPP was in no mood to accept Bengali autonomy. The meeting came to naught and on March 26 Yahya outlawed the Awami League and all political activity in Bengal. On March 27, Bangladesh clandestine radio declared, in the name of Mujibur, an independent Bangladesh (Bengali Nation), rallying his unarmed countrymen in East Bengal's streets.
Reportedly pressured by hawkish West Pakistani generals-almost all the officer corps and most of the soldiers are West Pakistani-Yahya ordered the 70,000 central government troops stationed in Bengal to crush the revolt. Fearful that a lengthy campaign would encourage outside intervention, probably from India, he is said to have given his regional commander, Tikka Khan, forty-eight hours to do the job. The Army's blitzkrieg began on March 25 late in the evening.
The Pakistani generals seem to have carefully selected certain groups of Bengalis for wholesale liquidation. Heading their lists were Awami league leaders, East Bengali professionals, and the university community. At the University of Dacca some five hundred students were murdered in a midnight raid by a tank battalion. “Outside the university buildings there was a fresh mass grave,” reported the April 2 Times of London. “Inside blood streamed from every room.”
Pakistani troops were no more gentle with the man in the street-or his wife and children. Mortars, tanks, and machine guns were used in the cities and larger towns. In the countryside, as refugees fled from their homes, the Pakistani air force used bombs, napalm, and strafing runs. Anyone wearing Bengali native dress seems to have been fair game.
The cities where probably hardest hit. There was a terrible massacre in the town.” one escaped British engineer described the port city of Chittagong. “If the men with guns could not find anyone in the streets, they threw mortar bombs through the windows of houses.”
In Dacca, troops sought out not only political leaders and students, but policemen and firemen as well. According to Sajahan Seraj, a student leader who escaped on foot to
