12:00 AM, September 26, 2014 / LAST MODIFIED: 01:53 AM, March 08, 2015
AYUB'S DIARIES
Ayub's Diaries
http://www.thedailystar.net/ayubs-diaries-43166
Azizul Jalil
Diaries of Field Marshal Ayub Khan 1966-1972 By Craig Baxter (Editor) The University Press Limited (UPL) Pp 599; 1590.00 BDT
What better source to understand the West Pakistani mindset about East Pakistan than to delve into the remarks in Diaries of Field Marshal Mohammad Ayub Khan, who ruled the country from 1958 to 1969? The diaries, published posthumously by the Oxford University Press in 2007, reveal his attitudes and thinking about Bengalis and the inter-wing issues. To him, East Pakistan's relatively slow rate of growth was because of lack of investment opportunities and availability of skilled labour and infrastructure. These were also the reasons why more foreign aid and investments went to West Pakistan.
As government officers in Rawalpindi and Islamabad in the mid-to- late nineteen-sixties, a few of us watched and experienced at close quarters how East Pakistan's reasonable demands were suppressed on one flimsy ground or the other, usually on the ground of lack of its absorptive capacity. In 1969, towards the last phase of united Pakistan, the fourth Five Year Plan (FYP) was drawn up by the Pakistan Planning Commission with a larger share of the allocations going to West Pakistan. Some of us, the Bengali CSP officers in the central economic ministries and the Planning Commission, lobbied the East Pakistani central ministers verbally and through written notes briefing them to speak out in the cabinet deliberations of the plan for a more equitable distribution of investment funds, if necessary by reducing West Pakistan's plan allocations. They were successful in blocking the approval of the draft plan.
However, in view of the general elections in late 1970 and the subsequent constitutional impasse, the plan discussions became moot. After the breakdown of the talks between the East Pakistan's leaders and the Yahya regime in March 1971, murderous oppression and killings started in East Pakistan, which completely alienated the Bengali population. As a result of the activities of the Bengali freedom fighters, the intervention of the Indian Army and world opinion, Bangladesh was born before the end of the year.
The implications of the 1965 Indo-Pak war, the Agartala conspiracy case against Sheikh Mujib (1967-69) and others, the fiery political agitations of 1969 and the results of the 1970 elections were not fully appreciated by the government in Pakistan. They, particularly the army junta, were oblivious of the mood of the people of East Pakistan, who though not yet necessarily desirous of complete separation from Pakistan, wanted full provincial autonomy and the dignity and power of the majority wing in the state of Pakistan under a loose confederation.
By this time, the Pakistani authorities may have written off East Pakistan from the state of Pakistan, particularly as they realised that East Pakistan's demands had to be fully conceded. It appears, however, that in some powerful section of the West Pakistani army there was still a belief that one last attempt at forcibly subjugating the Bengalis might be worthwhile. They did not take into account the will of the people, India's strength and extent to which it would get involved and the lack of determination of the US and the Chinese governments to intervene forcefully. They may have believed that Sheikh Mujib, who fought hard for the creation of Pakistan, would not in the end destroy Pakistan. Some of them even mistakenly believed that the prize of becoming the prime minister of Pakistan was great and Sheikh Mujib might in the end make some concessions in the Six-Points demands for the sake of keeping Pakistan together. From his diaries it seems Ayub also believed so.
Going back to the Ayub times, Zaker Hossain, then governor of East Pakistan, had in 1960 placed before Ayub the province's demands for economic resources. Ayub wondered if the governor had himself drafted those unacceptable proposals. The latter replied that it had come from the chief secretary (a West Pakistani CSP officer) who was present at the meeting. In late 1967, I had personally heard from Dr MN Huda, the then East Pakistan's Finance Minister, how Ayub rebuked him before others for merely pointing out that disparity between the East and West growth rates. Altaf Gauhar, when asked by Ayub to reply, said that the rate of growth in disparity had decreased but the overall disparity between the two wings had increased. It was a Machiavellian statement, commonly practiced by West Pakistani civilians to avoid more substantive actions. From Justice Ibrahim's (then the Central Law minister) diaries published in 2012 by the Academic Press, one sees how for making a constitutional proposal of autonomy for East Pakistan in the 1962 draft constitution, he was considered a secessionist by Ayub.
According to Ayub, even his East Pakistani ministers and other appointees, instead of pacifying their compatriots, were adding fuel to the fire and behaving in a disloyal manner. To him Monem Khan, the governor in 1962-1969, was good in this respect but had limitations as he did not understand economic development. We do not have to go back to Ayub's first book giving his ideas of governance in Pakistan titled " Friends not Masters" to understand what lowly opinion he held about Bengalis and East Pakistan, where he started his career in Pakistan as the GOC of 14th division in a Dhaka. It was full of derogatory and disparaging remarks. The best is to see how his thinking had developed on that subject in 1966 and following years as recorded by him in the diaries. From the beginning to the end, it is full of his pride and arrogance, his dislike of the politicians and their kind, and his requirement of absolute, ridiculous loyalty, from his appointees. Naturally, he kept on changing his ministers and high civil servants based on what he heard about their disloyalty or whenever he thought that they were not delivering to his satisfaction, while all the time harbouring in his mind highly biased views of the Bengalis.
Below I quote verbatim from Ayub Khan's Diaries.
During a visit to East Pakistan in Dec. 1966, Ayub praising his Law minister, Zafar, states: "The law minister has come under criticism by the section of Bengalis of secessionist and parochial tendencies for having dubbed such people as traitors and enemies of the country. I am glad he let them have it, as this is the sort of language in which they should be spoken to. The time for mincing words has gone.”
In May 1967, Ayub writes in his diary about the situation in East Pakistan:" They are consciously Hinduising the language and culture. Tagore has become their god. Everything has been Bengalised, even the plate numbers on vehicles are in Bengali. A man from West Pakistan feels like a foreigner in Dhaka. Consciously or unconsciously, they are moving towards separation and exposing themselves to absorption by Hinduism."
In August 1967, Ayub writes: "through emotional upsurge the East Pakistani had cut himself off from Urdu, the vehicle in which Muslim thought and philosophy is expressed. In consequence, he was now totally at sea, drifting. This will prove very dangerous for their future. Without meaning any unkindness, the fact of the matter is that a large majority of the Muslims in East Pakistan have an animist base which is a thick layer of Hinduism and top crust of Islam which is pierced by Hinduism from time to time."
In September 1967, Ayub tells Khwaja Shahabuddin:" God has been unkind to us in giving the sort of neighbours and compatriots we have. We could not think of a worst combination. If worse comes to the worst, we shall not hesitate to fight a relentless battle against the disruptionists in East Pakistan. Rivers of blood will flow if need be, unhappily. We will arise to save our crores of Muslims from Hindu slavery."
In December 1967, after attending a meeting in Dhaka of the Economic Council on the subject of growing disparity in GNP between the two wings, Ayub writes: "how do you deploy defence forces and split the central government to meet their needs of parity is not understood, and how will spending more money in the public sector do any good when the private sector, which produces goods and services, is not allowed to grow. East Pakistan was a bottomless pit. Both the centre and West Pakistan are suffering through trying to fill it."
In early 1968, on the subject of the reasons for lagging of the private sector in East Pakistan, Ayub wrote in his diary: "the real cause... was the antipathy and abhorrence of the government and people of East Pakistan to the intervention of West Pakistan and foreign capital, and through poor work performance and poor discipline... The whole object is to get whatever they can by blackmail. How long will this partnership last, I do not know."
Ayub Khan was quite right in wondering about the longevity of the union of East and West Pakistan. It did not last long-only about three more years of bloody conflicts till December 16, 1971. As amply demonstrated by the ignorant remarks of the Sandhurst trained Ayub, there was something fundamentally wrong in West Pakistani assessment of the Bengali faith and cultural tradition. They just did not get it and that was one of the reasons, along with economic disparity that led to the dissolution of Pakistan.
I actually meant "I see no reason 'not' to accept the offer..."
