In April 1971, the struggle for Bangladesh's liberation assumed an organised, strategic shape. History has recorded the events, indeed the measures which were adopted by the political leadership, even as the Pakistan occupation army intensified its genocidal attacks on the Bengali population, to underline the nature of the movement for independence.
On 4 April, Tajuddin Ahmad, having made his way out of a Dhaka under military assault, met Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi for the first time to apprise her of all that had been happening in occupied Bangladesh since 25 March 1971. Besides Tajuddin, eminent Bengalis like Barrister Amir-Ul Islam, Professor Rehman Sobhan and Professor Anisur Rahman happened to be in Delhi at the time. Meanwhile, through various routes along the border between Bangladesh and India, political leaders as well as terrorised Bengalis kept up an exodus to India, adding to the urgency of the struggle.
A defining moment in the struggle came with the decision by K.M. Shehabuddin and Amjadul Haq, two young Bengali officers in the Pakistan High Commission in Delhi, on 6 April to publicly sever links with Pakistan and proclaim their allegiance to Bangladesh. At a time when the course of the movement was yet uncertain, since no formal steps had been taken by the Bengali political leadership on sketching a roadmap for the coming struggle, Shehabuddin and Haq bravely turned their backs on Pakistan despite recognising full well the uncertainty into which they had put themselves and their families.
In the same month, albeit after the Bangladesh provisional government had been formed in Meherpur, another young Bengali diplomat in the Pakistan foreign service, A.H. Mahmood Ali, then based in New York, defected and declared his allegiance to Bangladesh. Meanwhile, throughout April, Bengali intellectuals, civil servants, students, police and military officers in the service of the Pakistan government were making their way to India in droves in order to link up with the movement. Thousands of Bengali young men in Bangladesh's villages and towns marched from home, to be part of the Mukti Bahini.
On 5 April, the Pakistani media carried reports of the arrest in Dhaka of Dr Kamal Hossain, constitutional advisor to Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Hossain was subsequently flown to Pakistan, where he remained imprisoned till December and would return home to a free Bangladesh with the Father of the Nation.
In early April, the Pakistani military authorities released to the media a photograph of Bangabandhu under arrest, flanked by two policemen, at Karachi airport, where he had been flown before being placed in solitary confinement in Mianwali. It was the first indication that he was alive. After that photograph appeared, the world would not have any more glimpses of Bangabandhu until his appearance at a press conference at London's Claridges Hotel in January 1972 hours after his arrival from Pakistan, whose new leader Z.A. Bhutto had freed him from incarceration.
That the world was taking the Bangladesh crisis seriously was manifested in a letter by Soviet President Nikolai Podgorny to General Yahya Khan, urging him to go for a political solution to the conflict. The letter reached Yahya Khan in early April. Obviously, the Pakistani strongman did not appreciate the advice and reportedly sent an angry response to Podgorny. The Podgorny letter was, however, an early indication of how the Soviet Union would come to regard Bangladesh's war of liberation.
History as it was shaped in April 1971 was enriched by the Proclamation of Independence as drafted on 10 April. With Amir-Ul Islam being the driving force behind the formulation of the proclamation, the path was cleared for a de jure approach to the independence struggle to be made public. On the same day, Tajuddin Ahmad, who had meanwhile taken charge as Bangladesh's Prime Minister, spoke to his people on radio in what was a major step toward adding substance to the guerrilla war which lay ahead.
In the days after 10 April, Tajuddin Ahmad and Amir-Ul Islam, with assistance from the Indian government, went on an aerial trip along the border with Bangladesh trying to locate other senior leaders of the Awami League who would form part of what came to be known as the Mujibnagar government. It was an arduous search, but gradually Tajuddin's colleagues along with other Awami League politicians and activists fleeing the genocide came together, making it possible for a coordinated strategy to be worked out against Pakistan.
In occupied Bangladesh, General Tikka Khan, who had been wearing two hats --- as governor and martial law administrator of 'East Pakistan' --- gave up his role as martial law administrator to Lt Gen Amir Abdullah Khan Niazi, who had flown in from Rawalpindi to take over his new assignment. Tikka Khan would carry on as governor till 1 September, when he would be replaced by Dr A.M. Malek. Niazi would be fated to lead his army to surrender before a joint Indo-Bangladesh military command in December.
In April, with Pakistan's soldiers breaking down Bengali resistance throughout Bangladesh and extending their terror into the rural regions, Bengali collaborators of the army, all right-wing politicians, set about the task of forming so-called peace committees across the occupied country.
On 17 April, the very first Bengali government dedicated to establishing a sovereign Bengali nation-state was sworn in at Meherpur, Chuadanga. It was a seminal moment, with the elected leaders of the people, all of them close associates of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and holding the torch for him, vowing to liberate a subjugated people.
With an absent Bangabandhu, imprisoned in Pakistan, declared the President of the Republic, the government comprised Acting President Syed Nazrul Islam, Prime Minister Tajuddin Ahmad, Ministers M. Mansoor Ali, KhondokarMoshtaque Ahmed and A.H.M. Kamruzzaman and Colonel Mohammad Ataul Gani Osmany as Commander-in-Chief of the Liberation Forces.
The next day, 18 April, Hossain Ali, the Bengali diplomat serving as Pakistan's Deputy High Commissioner in Calcutta, went over to the Mujibnagar government, snapping all links with Pakistan. All Pakistani employees were evicted from the mission, which was swiftly seized by the Bengali staff there. The Bangladesh flag replaced the Pakistani flag. The mission would become a centre of Bengali administrative activities. At 8 Theatre Road in Calcutta would be located the political structure of the government.
The Mujibnagar government would go on to give shape to a civil administration responsible for formulating policy and prosecuting the war of liberation. The Mukti Bahini, encompassing eleven military sectors, would on the authority of the government conduct battlefield operations against the Pakistan occupation army.
April 1971 was a defining moment in national history. It was a time when a concretisation of the struggle was put in place and the nation, under the Mujibnagar leadership, went forth, holding the lamp of liberty through the darkness of the times, to achieve the goal of a sovereign democratic, socialist and secular Bangladesh.
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