When Pakistan's leaders displayed no sagacity

There are all the questions which once again rise to the surface all these decades after the shootings of 21 February 1952. These questions, or issues in the proper sense of the meaning, call for research not only in Bangladesh but also in Pakistan. Why Pakistan matters here has to do with the attitude of its leading political figures to the Bengali language question.

Begin with the demand, a polite suggestion indeed, by Dhirendranath Dutta in the Pakistan constituent assembly that the Bengali language be accorded formal recognition in the affairs of state given that Bengalis constituted 56 per cent of the country's population. It is notable that Dutta was supported by another Bengali lawmaker who too was a Hindu. On that day, 25 February 1948, not a single Muslim Bengali member in the constituent assembly rose in Dutta's defence.

Be that as it may, it should have been for Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan to acknowledge Dutta's suggestion with magnanimity. Liaquat, by the way, occupied a seat in the assembly from the East Bengal quota in view of the fact that all the seats earmarked for West Pakistan had been filled by other politicians. Liaquat ought to have demonstrated political grace when Dutta made his demand. He did not. Instead, he condemned Dutta's statement as a conspiracy against the integrity of the Pakistan state.

Liaquat Ali Khan's response to Dhirendranath Dutta's statement was the beginning of a narrative, of perceived conspiracy against Pakistan, which has continued to this day. The Prime Minister simply demonstrated an absence of political maturity in his dismissal of Dutta's statement in defence of the Bengali language. It was one of the earliest of signs of how poorly Bengalis would be treated as citizens of Pakistan.

When Dutta spoke in the constituent assembly, Mohammad Ali Jinnah was very much alive, functioning as Pakistan's first Governor General. There is no record of any statement made by him following the Dutta-Liaquat exchange in the assembly. Not until Jinnah travelled to Dhaka a month later, in March, did he voice his sentiments on the language question. One would have expected Jinnah, whose determination coupled with stubbornness brought about the creation of Pakistan in August 1947, to demonstrate sagacity as the founding father of the country.

Sagacity was missing when Jinnah spoke at Dhaka University's Curzon Hall and at the Race Course. At both places, he made it clear that only Urdu would be the language of the state. Like Liaquat, it did not occur to him that Pakistan's population comprised 56 per cent of its being Bengali-speaking people. It did not occur to him either that the students of Dhaka University and the vast crowd at the Race Course were all Bengalis and so were unwilling to take his statements without protest. He made matters worse when he informed the crowd at the Race Course that those demanding Bengali as the state language were playing into the hands of the country's enemies. The hint was directed at India.

Following the death of Jinnah in September 1948 and the assassination of Liaquat in October 1951, nothing was done to assuage the feelings of Bengalis on the language issue. That Urdu was to be the language of the state was a mantra Pakistan's leadership recited at every possible opportunity. Khwaja Nazimuddin, who took charge as Governor General after Jinnah's passing and then as Prime Minister after Liaquat's murder, came from the Nawab family of Dhaka. The family spoke Urdu, which was what Nazimuddin advocated for Pakistan in direct opposition to the realities in East Bengal.

Nazimuddin turned out to be a vocal defender of Urdu as Pakistan's state language. By early 1952, he adopted an adamant position on the language issue even as students in East Bengal were beginning to get restive on the matter. On 21 February 1952, when the students decided to violate Section 144 and go ahead with their demonstrations in support of Bengali, the state of Pakistan, in the shape of the provincial government in Dhaka, exercised no restraint at all. It has been argued that the Chief Secretary of the provincial government, Aziz Ahmed, ordered the police to shoot and that Chief Minister Nurul Amin had no knowledge of such an order being issued.

The shootings led to casualties the exact figure for which are yet to be ascertained all these years later. Nurul Amin, who did move for Bengali to be recognised as the state language, did not however permit a resolution condemning the killings of 21 February to be adopted by the provincial assembly. It was a blunt indication that the Pakistan state had embarked on a shoot-to-kill programme through the murder of the students. It was a policy that would continue to define the state till it collapsed in East Bengal in December 1971, when the People's Republic of Bangladesh emerged after a hard guerrilla war against Pakistan.

It would be pertinent to note that Aziz Ahmed later served as Pakistan's foreign secretary in the Ayub Khan regime and, under Z.A. Bhutto, was minister of state for foreign affairs. Dhirendranath Dutta was murdered by the Pakistan army in the early phase of its genocide in March 1971. Khwaja Nazimuddin, identifying himself with the political opposition in the 1960s, passed away in 1964. Nurul Amin, appointed Vice President of Pakistan by President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto after Pakistan's military defeat in Bangladesh in December, died in 1974.

Today, the question which continues to be raised, especially on Ekushey February, relates to why Pakistan's leadership was unable to demonstrate the sagacity and statesmanship so necessary when the language issue came up in the late 1940s and continued till the killings in Dhaka in 1952. The arrogance displayed by the leaders turned into a continuum --- through the times of Ghulam Mohammad, Iskandar Mirza, Ayub Khan and Yahya Khan. Jinnah and Liaquat and their fellow Muslim Leaguers cobbled Pakistan into statehood, but then lost their bearings.

No truth today can be bigger than this unassailable reality.

Syed Badrul Ahsan is a senior journalist and writer.

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