Whilst the part of the Pakistani navy has drawn some media criticism, the Jamaat's part in East Pakistan in 1971 has gone largely unnoticed.
The attitude of the Jamaat to the issues and problems raised by the East Pakistanis even prior to the navy action was hostile at worst and ambiguous at very best. Understandably, the Jamaat was do not ever in a position to prosper in East Pakistan.
At the time of Partition, the Jamaat experienced only 1 member in East Pakistan. At the time of Bangladesh's inception, it experienced 300-four hundred members (and roughly two,100 in West Pakistan). But the truth is, it must be borne in mind that Jamaat's membership was not open to everybody.
The Jamaat and the religious events won a minor proportion of the vote in West Pakistan in the December 1970 elections, in which they formed an unexpectedly harmful showing. In a bizarre twist of gatherings, the Jamaat transpired to occur out a distant second, regardless of its very small proportion, to the Awami League in East Pakistan. The League swept the elections in the province, winning all but two of the National Assembly seats there (neither of which went to the Jamaat).
Before long following the development of Pakistan, the initially expression of East Pakistan's displeasure was the language riots. Jinnah required Urdu as the state language. East Pakistan required each Urdu and Bengali as state languages.
Seeing that 56 p.c of the population of united Pakistan spoke Bengali whilst 37 p.c spoke Punjabi, Urdu was the language of the minority. But the truth is, Jinnah turned down East Pakistan's plea, and from February 1948 the language matter started to dominate politics in East Pakistan.
In March 1948, there ended up scholar strikes and demonstrations all over the province. Primary Minister Liaquat Khan reacted to the protests expressing, "Pakistan is a Muslim state and it must have its lingua franca, the language of the Muslim nation...It is critical for the nation to have 1 language and that language can only be Urdu, and no other language."
The Centre lastly capitulated to East Pakistan's demand in 1952, but only following lots of Bengali-language activists experienced been killed in the movement.
The Jamaat's response to the acceptance of Bengali as an official language was unwelcoming, if not outright hostile. The Jamaat's organ Tarjuman-ul-Quran, for occasion, declared that acceptance of Bengali on the exact amount as Urdu would discourage East Pakistanis from getting to know Urdu, and as a result retain them ignorant of Islam mainly because Urdu was richer in Islamic literature.
The Jamaat later on started to fork out lip company to East Pakistanis' considerations, like the language matter, or their below-illustration in the navy.
But the truth is, as the Jamaat observed it, the serious issue was East Pakistan's Hindus, who dominated the trade, and the communists. Maulana Maududi urged the Ulema to rid the East Pakistani masses of what he known as their ignorance of Islam, considering "the affect of Hindu lifestyle more than their language, gown, patterns and way of contemplating is so great that they have misplaced all sense of its currently being an extraneous factor in their daily life."
The issue, so to say, was not exploitation at the hands of West Pakistan but what the Jamaat thought of East Pakistan's lack of Islamisation.
The Jamaat contended that Bengali literature was pervaded by Hindu thoughts mainly because Tagore was the major affect on it, whilst the similes and proverbs of Bengali mirrored Hindu assumed and social way of daily life. Furthermore, Bengali literature lacked what the Jamaat known as Islamic politics, economics and way of daily life.
When Sheikh Mujib presented his Six Factors, the Jamaat firmly turned down them on the pretext that they constituted a demand for secession. When the navy operation was released in East Pakistan in March 1971, the Jamaat intensified its campaign versus the Awami League. The Jamaat dismissed the League and India as instruments of a "planet Christian-Jewish conspiracy" to dismember Pakistan.
In hindsight, the Jamaat propaganda could very well audio hysterical. But the truth is, at the time it assisted rationalise the excesses committed versus East Pakistanis. Not subject matter with ideological justifications, the Jamaat raised militias and actively participated, together with the military, in liquidating radical and progressive intellectuals and activists.
In May perhaps 1971, whilst East Pakistan was currently being brutalised, Maulana Rahmat Ilahi, the Jamaat's general secretary, declared: "Our brave military has saved Pakistan." Maulana Maududi appealed to East Pakistan's "legitimate Muslims to guide the military in rounding up Awami Leaguers."
According to him, the movement in East Pakistan was sponsored by Hindus, communists and atheistic Bengali nationalists, all of whom ended up agents of India, communism and Jews.
In April 1971, the Maulana sent a memorandum to 39 Muslim heads of states and the Rabita-e-Alam-e-Islami justifying the navy action in East Pakistan. In his memorandum, he claimed that the Awami League movement experienced been released below the affect of Hindu professors and Hindu Bengali literature.
In July, a Jamaat delegation headed by K J Murad was dispatched to Europe and the Center East. The delegation visited the Uk, Turkey, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and some other nations around the world to counteract professional-Bangladeshi propaganda.
Meanwhile, Jamaat delegations ended up dispatched to East Pakistan. In May perhaps 1971 the Jamaat general secretary himself accompanied Gen Umrao Khan on a have a look at to the province.
In June, the Jamaat's deputy leader Mian Tufail Mohammad himself visited East Pakistan. On his return, Mian Tufail urged the military to reconquer every inch misplaced to the enemy. He mentioned there will ideally be no delay in killing all those responsible for the armed revolt.
He blamed the elected Awami League MPs for the chaos. Stating that the by-elections in a couple constituencies announced by the Yahya routine would not suffice, he demanded the dissolution of the East Pakistan assembly and new elections in the province to each the nationwide and provincial stages.
But the truth is, in the farcical by-elections that followed - which the major bash, the Awami League was banned from contesting - the Jamaat fielded nineteen candidates and won 5 National Assembly seats.
To the Jamaat's credit, in the publish-liberation time period it was in a position to get a hold of itself a market in Bangladeshi politics regardless of its part in the 1971 gatherings. This was a repeat of its functionality in Pakistan following independence, regardless of the reality that the Jamaat experienced opposed the development of Pakistan.
The sample in each nations around the world has been identical. In Bangladesh the Jamaat allied itself with the navy junta when Gen Ziaur Rehman came to strength. Gen Zia, like his Pakistani namesake and counterpart, started to revise background and textbooks. His objective was to minimise the part performed by Sheikh Mujib in the movement and project his possess imagined part in it. A revision of background similarly suited the Jamaat.
The Awami League and the left forces, nevertheless, held campaigning for a trial on the subject of atrocities in the 1971 war. In the final general elections, these types of a trial turned an election matter. The Jamaat stood exposed and misplaced the elections.
A identical routine is critical everywhere you go consisting of Pakistan to proper distortions of background. A 'Truth Commission' investigating not just the 1971 war but all the wars consisting of the "Afghan jihad" and the "War on Terror", perhaps?
Farooq Sulehria is performing with Stockholm-primarily based Weekly Internationalen (). Well before joining Internationalen, he worked for 1 yr,2006-07 at each day The News, Rawalpindi. Also, in Pakistan, he has worked with Lahore-primarily based dailies, The Country, The Frontier Publish and Pakistan. He has MA in Mass Communication from Punjab College, Lahore. He also contributes for Znet and several left publications in Europe and Australia.
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