On March 29 in 1971 the curfew imposed on Dhaka on March 25 midnight was relaxed for a little longer period. It was apparently aimed at showing the world that Dhaka was returning to normal. By that time the bullet-ridden corpses were taken out from the burnt-out shanties. Fires were doused. But the flames of an armed struggle flared up, with Freedom Fighters organising the Liberation War. The death knell for Pakistan appears to have begun tolling.
There are some people who hesitate to recognise a liberation war that lasts for only nine months. As they view it, had the Bangladesh Liberation War been fought for a longer time, the country would have benefited in many respects. First, lots of filthy detritus created in different turns of the war could not have spoilt the fruits of the war in the later times. In fact, there would not be any scopes for the anti-liberation elements to remain active in the independent country, and, thus, engage in activities of sabotage to destabilise the post-war Bangladesh. For, the new sovereign nation would prove battle-hardened, truly patriotic and socio-politically committed. These people lament that a brief war can hardly achieve the cherished goal of a liberation war. Liberation or independence wars are normally set against the backdrop of a nation's prolonged subjugation by a superior power. That's why they need a considerably longer time to prepare and finally wage the war.
The other school opposes the former's observation. In times of war, liberation war and revolution, duration doesn't play any significant role. They could occur in a lightning speed and attain their long-targeted goal. But at the same time, some of them might drag on for years or for decades. Instances are plenty. While the Fanco-Prussian or Franco-German War lasted only one year, from 1870 to 1871 and the Boxer Rebellion in China from 1899 to 1901, some other wars have continued for long. Starting in 1955, the Vietnam War ended formally in 1975. It means the US-North Vietnamese war was fought for 20 long years and is considered one of the longer wars in the 20th century. However, the previous 19th century saw both the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815) and the Crimean War (1853-1856). These regional wars were fought besides the World War-I (1914-1918) and the World War-II (1939-1945). Ironically, the WW-II spawned scores of smaller and regional battles across the world. However, the most prominent of the fallout from the Second World War was the 44-year-long Cold War between the USA and the now-defunct Soviet Union. On the fringe of these big and mid-range wars, armed confrontations broke out in the Korean Peninsula (Korean War, 1950-1953) and in Nigeria (the failed Biafran independence war, 1967-1970).
Given this picture of the war scenario in the 19th and 20th centuries, the Bangladesh War of Independence can in no way be downplayed for its being fought conclusively for only 9 (nine) months. In fact, the seeds of the Bangladesh Independence Struggle were sown in the very month of August in 1947. According to historical documents, the fruitfulness of the creation of Pakistan was brought into question the day after the 14/15 August, 1947, midnight partition of the British-ruled colonial India. The then Awami Muslim League leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman is quoted to have told his party people about his disappointment at the concentration of power in the hands of the oligarchs in Punjab in West Pakistan. In his 'Unfinished Autobiography', Sheikh Mujib is shown as asking his party leaders and workers, then in Calcutta, to go to Dhaka and assess the whole process of the creation of Pakistan. Evidently, the young firebrand leader had no illusion about any great future regarding Pakistan. As befitting politicians with foresight, he could see in advance the phases of oppressive measures and deprivations that lay ahead for the Bengalees in East Bengal.
Coincidentally, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's misgivings about Bengalee repression had already been echoed in the words of Dhirendranath Dutta, from East Bengal, in the first session of the Pakistan constituent assembly. The session was convened in Karachi on August 11, 1947, on the eve of the August 14-15 Partition. The representative from East Bengal demanded quite assertively that Bangla be given the status of one of the state languages of Pakistan. Thus the cycle of discordance started moving to complete its cycle.
The developments that followed featuring East Bengal's growing disillusionment with Pakistani rulers based in West Pakistan are history. After Dhiren Dutta's placing of the demand in favour of Bangla as state language of Pakistan in its first constituent assembly session, developments took place in quick succession. It began with the watershed East Bengal visit by Pakistan's Governor General Mohammad Ali Jinnah and his public meeting at the then Race Course Ground (now Suhrawardy Udyan), followed by his convocation speech at Curzon Hall at the University of Dhaka. In both the meetings Jinnah arrogantly stuck to his stance: Urdu and Urdu shall be the state language of Pakistan and no other language. The speeches were met with vehement student protests.
That a pan-Indian leader like Jinnah was unaware of the fact that Bangla was the mother-tongue of over 95 per cent of people in East Bengal puzzled the nation. Many thought the 'feigned ignorance' was deliberate. Others alleged that Mohammad Ali Jinnah's position on Bangla had been prompted by an ulterior motive: Keeping the Bengalees dominated by the West Pakistan-based non-Bengalee rulers. Jinnah's hubris led to the 1952 Language Movement. It took only 17 years for the Language Movement to be snowballed into the 1969 mass upsurge against the autocratic rule of Ayub Khan, the president of Pakistan. Prior to this development, the 1954 victory of the opposition coalition comprising Huq-Bhashani-Suhrawardy leadership in the East Bengal Legislative Assembly election dominated the scene briefly. In 1969, student leaders spearheaded the mass movement. Following the release from jail of the ever-rebellious and the emerging supreme Bengalee leader of the time, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, then already known as Bangabandhu (Friend of Bengal), things began changing fast. The landslide victory of his pro-autonomy party Awami League charted out a turbulent path of the Bengalees to attain freedom from Pakistani clutches. In the meantime, the veritable declaration of independence by Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman at the mammoth March 7 meeting in Dhaka, the non-cooperation movement, the 9-month genocide on the Bengalees by the Pakistani occupation forces from the midnight of 25th March continued to take place one after another --- seemingly as per an invisible dictates of history. More historic developments had been in the offing. Those happened in the nine months and included the exodus of over 10 million persecuted Bengalees from East Pakistan, formation of the provisional government of Bangladesh, raising Freedom Fighters under a Commander-in-Chief, and the provisional government's efforts to earn recognition for Bangladesh.
Before the final victory of the joint command of the Bangladesh Freedom Fighters and the Indian Allied Forces over the Pakistani occupation army in Bangladesh on December 16, 1971, scores of other developments took place in the region. The United Nations witnessed bouts of diplomatic exercises over the creation of Bangladesh as an independent state, while the India-Pakistan face-off deteriorated into a war between the two countries coupled with the threatened mobilisation of the US Seventh Fleet in the Bay of Bengal. Although outwardly the Bangladesh War of Liberation lasted for mere nine months, it covers a time spanning 24 years. It witnessed dozens of episodes, heroes and villains, and countless savageries; and also martyrdoms. Thanks to their colossal contributions, a lot of the characters found their names written in history in golden letters. Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman outshines them all. These happenings could be viewed as part of a 24-year saga. Yet the fact that a mere nine-month war saw the birth of a nation should be credited with favourable circumstances shaped by capable players.
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