The New Nation - Internet Edition

Ameer Hamzah

I asked a varsity student what was the immediate cause of the war of independence? He could not give the appropriate answer. Not only he, most of the youths of our country are ignorant about it because there is no initiative by any quarter to make them informed thereof. It might be that the vested groups do not want to see the young generation conscious of their doings.

Through the general election held in 1971, the Pakistan Awami League President Sheikh Mujibur Rahman earned the legal and constitutional right to become the Prime Minister of Pakistan-a country of two component units viz. East Pakistan and West Pakistan. Again the latter was composed of four units viz. West Punjab, Sind, Beluchistan and North West Frontier Province.

However, the civil and the military bureaucrats as well as the political leaders from West Pakistan did not like a Bengali speaking Muslim to govern them. Though the Sheikh's 6-point was a shift from the students' left leaning 11-point, the capitalists and the feudal lords from West Pakistan vehemently opposed his right to become the Prime Minister of Pakistan. Under their pressure, General Yahia Khan postponed the National Assembly session scheduled for March 3 1971. It sparkled protests all over East Pakistan.

Had Sheikh Mujibur Rahman compromised with them, yet I doubt whether the leaders from West Pakistan would have agreed to see him as PM, no matter Pakistan broke into pieces or not.

History gives evidence that the Muslims of East Bengal, Sind, the West Punjab, NWFP and Beluchistan voted overwhelmingly for a separate homeland of their own. But sadly, the Muslim League leaders from West Pakistan captured the leadership though the party was first formed in Dhaka in 1906 and it were the Muslim leaders from East Bengal who made it possible by dint of their merit and efforts. And it was Sher-e-Bangla A.K.Fazlul Haque who first raised the proposal for a separate homeland for the Muslims of India living in areas where Pakistan and Bangladesh now exist. From that point, it was not a civil war but a war to recover out lost rights. The Quran says, "Neglect not your portion in the earth,"-28/78.

Will the present leaders of West Pakistan (now Pakistan) agree that Bangladesh and Pakistan will form a union in which the President, the Prime Minister with full executive power, the foreign and the finance ministers, the chiefs of Army, Navy and Air Force will be Bangladeshis? Will they pay the compensation worth billion of dollars of the damage caused to us from 1947 to 1971?

The fact is that Bangladeshis are a sovereign nation and they are determined to defend their liberty at any cost.