Reverse Swing
Major riots broke out in East Pakistan because of the Tashkent accord between India and Pakistan in January 1966. Bengalis vehemently and vociferously protested the perceived sell-out of Pakistan’s interests to India after the 1965 war. Instead of returning to the cantonments from the borders on the signing of the Tashkent Declaration, troops (mainly from the East Bengal Regiment) were rushed in “aid of civil power” to many of the major cities of East Pakistan, Dhaka, Chittagong, Khulna, etc. Alpha Company 2E Bengal, then commanded by Maj (later Lt Gen, COAS Bangladesh Army and President of Bangladesh) H M Ershad, with 2/Lt (later Lt Gen, COAS Bangladesh Army) ASM Nasim as his Company Officer, was sent from Jessore Cantonment to Khulna. Detached from Bravo Company I was sent ahead with a wireless jeep to Khulna as Liaison Officer (LO) attached with Deputy Commissioner Khulna, Mr Mohammad Idris (Nasim’s father), (then) DIG (later IG) Police Mr AKM Habibur Rahman (father-in-law of my good friend Anwar Karim) was the Police Chief. Tense confrontations took place with unruly mobs all over the Province. It is an irony of fate that in comparison protests in West Pakistan over Tashkent were muted, if at all. It was only when the (then) Foreign Minister late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto left the Cabinet several months later that Tashkent was raised by him as political bogey.
Making the Federation Effective
The finest experiment in nationhood in its time came apart 24 years later in 1971, West Pakistan barely surviving as a truncated Pakistan. A myriad number of reasons turned this great adventure into a disaster, the major one was that the people of East Pakistan felt ignored and disparaged. During 1965 this isolation (“the defence of the East is in the West”), along with economic and political disparities and discrimination, perceived as well as real, became the bedrock for separatism. Economic reasons may have contributed heavily to bringing Pakistan down to its knees this time around, the overall political picture of inter-Provincial disharmony has assumed crisis proportions. When partners in any venture feel they are being shortchanged and their counterparts are insensitive to their needs, the process of dissolution of the union starts. In its own defence, the major partner then proceeds to blame the others for a lack of “patriotism”, “the last refuge of a scoundrel” (to quote Samuel Johnson).