The army ordered a strict 24-hour curfew in Dacca, with violators shot on sight. But soon the Free Bengal Revolutionary Radio Centre, probably somewhere in Chittagong, crackled into life. Over the clandestine station, Mujib proclaimed the creation of the “sovereign independent Bengali nation.” and called on its people to “resist the enemy forces at all corner of Bangladesh". The defiant words, however, lacked military substance. At 1.30 a.m. the following day, soldiers seized the Sheikh in his home. Meanwhile, scattered rioting broke out in West Pakistan to protest the prospect of prolonged military rule.
The rupture in Pakistan stemmed from the country's first experiment with true democracy. After it was founded in 1947, Pakistan was ruled on the basis of a handpicked electorate; Martial Law was imposed after an outbreak of rioting in 1969. During those years, Pakistan was divided by more than geography. Physically and psychologically the 58 million tall, light-skinned people of the West identified with the Islamic peoples who inhabit the area of land stretching as far as Turkey. The smaller, darker East Pakistan seemed to belong to the world of South and South East Asia. More divisive yet was the fact that the westerners monopolised the government and the army had dominated the nation's commercial life. The East Pakistanis have over the years, earned the bulk of the country's foreign exchange with their jute exports, yet the majority of schools, roads, new factories and modern government buildings went up in the west.
Eager to relinquish power and return the country to civilian rule, Yahya called elections last December for a National Assembly to write a new constitution. Last Pakistanis gave Sheikh Mujib's Awami League 167 of the region's 169 scats and an overall majority in the combined nation's 313 seat assembly chamber. Mujib's platform called for a virtual dismantling of the central government, leaving it in charge of defense and diplomacy and giving the provinces total control of taxes, trade and foreign aid.
Determined to hold the country together, Yahya resisted Mujib's demands for autonomy. Postponing the Constituent Assembly, he flew to Dacca, and in eleven days of meeting with Mujib came almost within sight of a compromise agreement. Yahya, however, demanded that the leader of West Pakistan's majority party, ex-Foreign Minister 'Zulfiqar AU Bhutto, also be a party to the agreement. Bhutto insisted on heading the foreign ministry while Mujib maintained that with an overall majority, he had the right to from a government without Bhutto.
Mendicant Among Nations
If East Pakistan eventually takes its place in the world community as Bangladesh, it will have the world's eighth largest population and lowest per capita income ($ 50 a year). It will, inevitably, became a mendicant among nations, and the U.S. will face the need to increase the S 150 million a year in foreign aid that it now gives to the combined wings of the country. East Pakistan has little industry to speak of, and the world-demand for jute is gradually dropping. West Pakistan will also be left smaller and poorer, though it now has the beginning of an. industrial base, consisting primarily of textile mills.
