Week8 Jalal

 Tripartite talks between Yahya, Mujib and Bhutto.
The military had come into power using the threat of India as an excuse and would use the scarce
resources of Pakistan. When provinces would be neglected and would speak up against it, it would shut
down their rebellions and use the excuse of unity among Muslims as a way of keeping the nation united.
With some justification, non- Punjabi provinces came to perceive the use of Islam as a wily attempt by
the Punjabi- led military– bureaucratic combine to deprive them of a fair share of political and economic
power.
Bhutto played a very two-faced role as early on he wanted to cooperate with Mujib and discuss the 6
points but when he saw that the West Pakistanis, his party followers and Yahya Khan were against them
then he started to condemn the 6 points and claimed it would break the nation. Hence, Bhutto alongside
Yahya Khan was responsible for the breakup of Pakistan. This situation was very similar to 1947 except
that unlike the British the military still wanted to maintain its power and not give it all to civilians. The
military had preferred to use a policy of divide and rule rather similar to the colonizers.
Mujib-ur-Rehman and Awami League had put forward the 6 points and demanded that they should be
accepted which would allow the East Pakistan to have autonomy and made the center have very less
power and the that WP would assume the burden of most of the debt of the federal government. The
West Pakistani politicians didn’t want this to happen. The 6 points were:
-The Constitution should provide for a Federation of Pakistan in its true sense based on the Lahore
Resolution, and the parliamentary form of government with supremacy of a Legislature directly elected
on the basis of universal adult franchise.
-The federal government should deal with only two subjects: Defense and Foreign Affairs, and all other
residual subjects should be vested in the federating states.
-Two separate, but freely convertible currencies for the two wings should be introduced; or if this is not
feasible, there should be one currency for the whole country, but effective constitutional provisions
should be introduced to stop the flight of capital from East to West Pakistan. Furthermore, a separate
reserve bank should be established and separate fiscal and monetary policy be adopted for East
Pakistan.
-The power of taxation and revenue collection should be vested in the federating units and the federal
center would have no such power. The federation would be entitled to a share in the state taxes to meet
its expenditures.
-There should be two separate accounts for the foreign exchange earnings of the two wings; the foreign
exchange requirements of the federal government should be met by the two wings equally or in a ratio
to be fixed; indigenous products should move free of duty between the two wings, and the constitution
should empower the units to establish trade links with foreign countries.
-East Pakistan should have a separate military or paramilitary force, and Navy headquarters should be in
East Pakistan.
They wanted their own currencies:
1. Economic demands
2. Stop the flight of Capital from East to West
They wanted a separate army because:
3. He demanded a separate Military force. There was no representation of Bengalis in the Pak army. They
did not occupy higher positions
4. All military commands were based in WP
5. One prime reason→ during the war of 1965, east Pak was left strategically exposed
Why did he want a federation:
• Push the military out of politics otherwise Pak could not succeed
• Mujeeb was a die-hard Pakistani and campaigned with Fatima Jinnah too
In the 1970 elections, the Awami League won by a landslide in EP and in WP, PPP won but still had less %
then AL which meant AL would get the power. West Pakistanis feared that once AL got power, they
would take their revenge for the inequality EP had faced. Even though Mujib promised they wouldn’t
and that he was open to negotiating the 6 points, Yahya Khan delayed announcing meeting for National
Assembly. Mujib, Bhutto and Yahya had multiple talks with each other which were in hopes of outplaying
one another but they never came to a conclusion and eventually Yahya disbanded the civilian cabinet,
moving towards military action in EP. The military had exerted more force than was necessary in EP and
all talks that happened after March 5 1971 led to nothing. Then on March 26 1971 operation Searchlight
began.
Ayesha Jalal has a couple of pointers:
1. Centralized state → run by military dictator → always quelled protests
2. Autocratic policies were responsible for the breakup of Pakistan
3. Diversity was not the problem, how the state chooses to manage the diversity. It is how the state
chooses to manage it. Pak chose to deal with it in a more authoritarian way
4. There should have been a better distribution of resources
5. Unable to allocate financial resources, the federal unit of Pak was built on a very fragile branch
6. This was bound to happen
7. History is not dead: active suppression of critical viewing of 1971. Parallel with ethnic movements in
Pakistan today who are met with state violence even though the issues they face are the same as the
ones the Bengalis faced.

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 Tripartite talks between Yahya, Mujib and Bhutto.

They wanted their own currencies:

They wanted a separate army because:

4. All military commands were based in WP

Why did he want a federation:

Ayesha Jalal has a couple of pointers:

1. Centralized state → run by military dictator → always quelled protests

2. Autocratic policies were responsible for the breakup of Pakistan

4. There should have been a better distribution of resources

6. This was bound to happen

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