পাতা:বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্র (চতুর্দশ খণ্ড).pdf/৮০

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বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ চতুর্দশ খণ্ড
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 round. And with Mujib's fate, in doubt (he was, variously reported to be under army arrest or safe in hiding), East Pakistan's brief, fighting for independence was smashed for the moment at least. But the memory of that experience, the amazing unity of purpose that it forged among Bengalis will linger on, growing apace with the bitter resentment that must inevitably flow from the federal army's outright occupation of East Pakistan. For last month in Bangladesh the “Bengal Nation” as Mujib's supporters renamed East Pakistan, there occurred a strange and powerful awakening of a people who have been exploited, reviled, humiliated and cheated by the Punjabi minority since Pakistan was founded more than 23 years ago.

 In a sense, credit for this awakening must go to President Mohammad Yahya Khan, who' forced the showdown by canceling last month's scheduled opening of the newly elected National Assembly, in which Mujib's Awami League had won a majority. Seeing Yahya's sudden action as yet another Punjabi maneuver to deny East Pakistan's aspirations for greater' autonomy, Bengali nationalists clashed with federal troops in, the trappings 0 f an independent state. Overnight, the green and white flag of Pakistan seemed to disappear in Dacca, in its place rose a new Bengali flag, designed' by Dacca University students, a bottle-green banner bearing a red circle and, within the circle a yellow map of East Pakistan.

Compromise

 The nerve centre of East- Pakistan's adhoc government was Mujib's home where the pipe-smoking leader met with all comers in his sparsely furnished saloon. Ironically, as independence fever mounted throughout Bangladesh, it was Mujib who sought to moderate the passions. Aware that any unilateral declaration of independence would bring down the, wrath of the army, Mujib desperately sought a compromise that would give Benga!' the autonomy his people demanded while preserving, at least a semblance of 'Pakistani national unity as the army demanded. Though few people said so openly, Mujib was the last hope that Pakistan's two distant and disparate wings might achieve some kind of accommodation.

 What finally undid Mujib's efforts was the supercilious attitudes of the West Pakistanis, especially the Punjabis and Pathans who dominate the army and who have been nurtured on impassioned patriotism and cliches about the inferiority of Bengalis. To the West Pakistanis Mujib and the Awami League were in open rebellion, even though Mujib was. in fact, the leader of the nation's majority political party. What mattered above all to the westerners was the preservation of Pakistan's unity and integrity. There are, of course, valid arguments for keeping a nation united; it usually makes economic, diplomatic and military sense. But the enmity between Pakistan's two wings, separated by more than 1,000 miles of Indian territory, had become so virulent as to reduce such notions of unity to mere fiction.

Terror

 When the army decided to strike, it attacked without warning. Truckloads of troops spread out through Dacca under the cover of darkness with orders to use maximum force to stamp out all resistance. Houses were machine-gunned at random; tanks firing on the