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Deposing of a dictator by Nurul Kabir

Published on : 16 July, 2020

Deposing of a dictator

by Nurul Kabir

THE magnificent mass uprising against the dictatorial regime of General Ayub Khan apparently had an abrupt beginning in both East and West Pakistan incidentally on the same day -

November 6, 1968 - but without any coordination between the movements of the two regions of Pakistan. While the movement began in the West with a politically unplanned and apparently apolitical protest of a few teenage students against an unjust piece of repressive police behaviour in Lahore, it started in the East understandably with a politically thought-out plan to put up organised public resistance against the repressive politico-military establishment with a view to establishing a truly democratic order. The beginning was apparently so humble that the government of Ayub Khan initially did not even think of taking them seriously, without realising that a couple of small sparks of protest here and there would soon turn into the wildfire of a massive people's uprising sealing his political fate forever.

However, describing the background of the great people's upsurge against the autocratic regime in 1969, Professor Abdul Halim, a Bengali researcher, writes: “The students and ordinary citizens clashed with the police in Rawalpindi over a trivial incident in early November 1968 that resulted in the death of a student in police firing, and subsequently a general strike was observed successfully at the call of the agitating students. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto (1928–1979) supported the protesting students, while his support enraged Ayub Khan and ordered Bhutto's arrest. The arrest contributed to popularising Bhutto, on the one hand, and spreading of the movement in every nook and corner of West Pakistan, on the other. […] Ayub Khan started losing public support in West Pakistan quickly. The movement in West Pakistan also influenced that of the East." (Abdul Halim, "Bangladesher Mukti Sangramer Itihas: 1966–1969" in Professor Salahuddin Ahmed and others (ed), Bangladesher Mukti Sangramer Itihas: 1947-1971, fifth print, Agamee Prakashani, Dhaka, 2013, p 164)
Haider Akbar Khan Rano, a prominent left-wing political activist of East Pakistan during the mass uprising of 1969, recollects: "The anti-Ayub movement began in West Pakistan in November 1969, when political situation in East Pakistan was relatively calm. But, eventually, the movement in the East generated a mass uprising against the autocratic regime in January 1969." (Haider Akbar Khan Rano, Shatabdi Periye, Tarafder Prakashani, Dhaka, 2005, p 171) Mohammad Farhad, then a prominent young leader of the pro-Moscow East Pakistan Communist Party, makes a similar observation about the background of the historic mass uprising. Farhad writes that ‘a vigorous student movement took a pervasive turn’ in West Pakistan in November 1968 ‘while the student movement in East Pakistan was yet to begin’. (Mohammad Farhad, Unasatturer Gana Abhyutthan, Jatiya Sahitya Prakasani, Dhaka, 1989, p 13)
Usually, it was always the student bodies, and that too those of the East, who came forward to put up the first resistance against any autocratic practice of the ruling classes of Pakistan since its birth in 1947. This time, while initiating the decisive struggle for democracy against Ayub’s autocratic regime, the student bodies of East Pakistan were taking a little time over formulating a comprehensive and common charter of demands incorporating the political, economic and cultural aspirations of the people, which they would successfully come up with in the first week of January 1969, and eventually play a decisive role in deposing Ayub's autocratic regime.

(Excerpt from https://www.newagebd.net/article/4356/deposing-of-a-dictator-revisiting-a-magnificent-mass-uprising-i)

1971 Deposing of a Dictator Nurul Kabir mass uprising Bangladesh East Pakistan