Recalling Dhaka's fall

ON the 38th anniversary of the fall of Dhaka today, thoughts inevitably turn to the causes that led to the sad parting of the ways with our brothers from East Pakistan, now a friendly country Bangladesh; and to probing whether, following that shock separation, Pakistan's ruling circles learnt any lesson and endeavoured to avoid the follies that alienated the once ardent patriotic Pakistanis, forcing them to struggle for a state of their own. Looking back, it is absolutely clear why and how disaffection took root and spread in that province. No doubt, foreign powers, principally the Indians, encouraged and rendered active, crucial and material help to the separatist elements, but they could not have succeeded had the political and bureaucratic forces, both civilian and military, from the western wing, which ruled the roost, not provided them a fertile ground to exploit. At the base of Pakistani leaders' discriminatory attitude towards the eastern wing was sheer lust for power. As the politico-bureaucratic ruling classes squabbled over their share of power, even relegating as fundamental an issue as the framing of the country's Constitution to the backburner, they overlooked those essential factors that would keep the country, with different ethnic composition and separated by long distance, united. The main loser was East Pakistan. The 1958 coup staged by General Ayub Khan, who hailed from the western wing, and the subsequent events in the country provided the people of that province enough evidence that though they constituted majority of the country's population and by virtue of that ought to have had a greater share of power, they had little chance of getting their due right. And when they rebelled an unfortunate effort was made to ruthlessly suppress them with military force.