A Vision of United India

Chapter 2

More problems with Pakistan The problem in East Pakistan

Some time in the year 1950, Hindus were being butchered in East Pakistan. Faced with this difficult situation, the Government of India was contemplating taking some strong steps to protect the Hindus. Sardar Patel was then Home Minister and he faced the biggest test of his statesmanship when thousands of Hindus were driven into East Bengal by Pakistan - a development, which took everyone by surprise and angered the whole nation. Till then, the eastern front had been, by and large, peaceful and free from any communal backlash. The Sardar was much perturbed by the unhelpful attitude of the Government of Pakistan, which did not desist, by word or deed, from spoiling relations between the Hindus and the Muslims. The Government of Pakistan's pronouncements and actions had a natural reaction in India; at the annual session of the Congress in December 1948 at Jaipur, Patel warned Pakistan that if she did not stop the influx of Hindu refugees into India, especially from East Bengal, "we would have no alternative

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left except to send out Muslims in equal numbers". It was a sort of ultimatum, a warning to Pakistan to conduct its affairs in a civilized manner.

As a result of the strong stand taken by the Sardar and just when it seemed that action was about to be taken, the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Liaquat Ali Khan, rushed to Delhi. Arriving in the first week of April 1950, he concluded what came to be known as the Nehru-Liaquat Pact, under which equality of citizenship to Hindus and Muslims alike in both dominions was reaffirmed and various other protective measures such as the constitution of minority commissions, better control and investigation into riots, and strict safeguarding of the rights and interests of minorities were guaranteed.

The two Prime Ministers met in Delhi on Apr. 2 1950, and discussed the matter in detail. The meeting lasted six days. On Apr 8, the two leaders signed an agreement, which was later entitled as the Liaquat-Nehru Pact. This pact provided a 'bill of rights' for the minorities of India and Pakistan. Its aim was to address the following three issues:

1 To alleviate the fears of the religious minorities on both sides.

2. To elevate communal peace.

3. To create an atmosphere in which the two countries could resolve their other differences.

Under the agreement, the governments of India and Pakistan solemnly agreed that each would ensure to the minorities throughout its territories, complete equality of citizenship, irrespective of religion; a full sense of security in respect of life, culture, property and personal honor.

It also guaranteed fundamental human rights of the minorities, such as freedom of movement, speech, occupation, and worship. The pact also provided for the minorities to participate in the public life of their country, to hold political or other offices and to serve in their country's civil and armed forces.

The Liaquat-Nehru Pact

The Liaquat-Nehru Pact provided for a mechanism to deal with oppressive elements with an iron hand. Both the governments decided to set up minority commissions in their countries with the aim of observing and reporting on the implementation of the pact, to ensure that no one breached the pact and to make recommendations to guarantee its enforcement. Both Minority Commissions were to be headed by a provincial minister and were to have Hindu and Muslim members among its ranks. India and Pakistan also agreed to include representatives of the minority community in the cabinet of the two Bengals, and decided to depute two central ministers, one from each government, to remain in the affected areas for such period as might be necessary. Both the leaders emphasized that the loyalty of the minorities should be reserved for the state in which they were living and that for the solution of their problems, they should look to the government of the country they were living in. This pact was broadly acknowledged as an optimistic beginning to the improvement of relations between India and Pakistan.

However, the Hindus in West Bengal were not satisfied with the pact; they seethed with anger. Two ministers in the Nehru Cabinet, Shyama Prasad Mukherjee and K.C.Neogy, resigned.

Sri Aurobindo's view of the pact

Let us now see the position taken by Sri Aurobindo on this issue.

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We quote in full this letter written to a disciple: "I am writing to explain the indications I had given of my view that a change has taken place in the situation owing to the Nehru-Liaquat Pact making the position I took in the letter to Dilip no longer quite valid and necessitated a halt for a reconsideration and decision of policy. I gather from what you have written that you are rather surprised by my view of things and think that there is no change in the situation; you seem to regard the Pact as a futile affair not likely to succeed or to make any change in the situation and foredoomed to speedy failure. I would like to know what are the grounds for this view if you really hold it. I am quite prepared to learn that the situation is quite different from what it seems to be, but that must be based on facts, and the facts published in the newspapers or claimed as true by the Congress leaders point in a different direction. There seems to be something, initially at least, like a radical change in the situation and I have to face it, look at the possible and probable consequences and decide what has to be done.

What was the situation when the Dilip letter was written and what is it today? At that time everything was pushed to a point at which war still seemed inevitable. The tension between Pakistan and India had grown more and more intolerable in every aspect, the massacres in East Bengal still seemed to make war inevitable and the Indian Government had just before Nehru's attempt to patch up a compromise made ready to march its army over the East Bengal borders once a few preliminaries had been arranged and war in Kashmir would have inevitably followed. America and Britain would not have been able to support Pakistan and, if our information is correct, had already intimated their inability to prevent the India Government from taking the only possible course open to it in face of the massacre. In the circumstances the end of Pakistan would have been the certain consequence of war. The object we had in view would have been within sight of achievement.

Now all this has changed. After the conclusion of the Pact, after its acceptance by the Congress Party and the Assembly and its initial success of organisation and implementation, its acceptance also in both Western and Eastern Pakistan, no outbreak of war can take place at least for some time to come, and, unless the Pact fails, it may not take place. That may mean in certain contingencies the indefinite perpetuation of the existence of Pakistan and the indefinite postponement of the prospect of any unification of India. I regard the fact as an exceedingly clever move of Liaquat Ali to fish his "nation" out of the desperate situation into which it had run itself and to secure its safe survival. I will not go elaborately into the reasons for my view and I am quite prepared for events breaking out which will alter the situation once more in an opposite sense. But I have to take things as they are or seem to be, weigh everything and estimate the position and make my decision, I will not say more in this letter, though I may have to say much hereafter. You should be able to understandfrom what I have written why I have reversed my course. Our central object and the real policy of the paper stands, but what steps have to be taken or can be taken in the new circumstances can only be seen in the light of future developments.

Meanwhile I await your answer with regard to the question I have put you. Afterwards I shall write again especially about the stand to be taken by Mother India".

Sri Aurobindo25

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Events in India

Immediately after attainment of Independence, India set up a Constituent Assembly with the intention of giving herself a constitution. This Constituent Assembly was neither elected by the people of India nor set up at their own initiative. It was set up under the terms of the British Cabinet Mission proposals. Its members were indirectly elected by the provincial assemblies that were themselves elected under the Government of India Act, 1935, on a highly restricted franchise covering hardly 11 per cent of the population of British India and surrogates, not of the people of the princely states, but of the princes. In that sense, the Constituent Assembly was not truly a representative body. It was rather an elitist body of the chosen few, not an assembly of people's representatives. This elitist body was made up of persons who were foreign-educated and western-oriented. And was that probably the reason why, speaking at the All India Congress Committee on Jul. 7, 1946, Jawaharlal Nehru had said: "I do think that some time or other in the future we may have to summon our own revolutionary Constituent Assembly"?

However, it might be, it was on Nov. 26, 1949, that the people of India gave to themselves the Constitution of the "Sovereign Democratic Republic of India". And it was on the Jan. 26, 1950, that the Constitution came into effect. This is what the preamble to the Constitution says:

WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC and to secure to all its citizens JUSTICE, social, economic and political;

LIBERTY of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship;

EQUALITY of status and of opportunity;

And to promote among them all

FRATERNITY assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity of the Nation

IN OUR CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY this twenty-sixth day of November 1949, do HEREBY ADOPT, ENACT AND GIVE TO OURSELVES THIS CONSTITUTION.

The Indian Government adopted the Parliamentary system and the first elections were held in 1952. Since then elections have been held more or less regularly every five years. During the first four decades or so after Independence, the direction of the government was to create a strong centralized state, which fought against external threats, suppressed regional autonomy, and controlled the commanding heights of the economy. That phase coincided with much uncertainty about the political future of the nation. However, the country has, over time, matured politically.

For all its failings, the democratic system has taken firm root. The decline of the Congress and the rise of regional and smaller national parties have brought in an era of coalition governments. Although it seemed at the beginning that these coalitions would be unsteady and problematic, time has shown not only continuity but also a relative stability. It is clear that no matter how many changes of government take place, the process of governance is not undermined.

Events in Pakistan

In Pakistan, events were moving fast and in a different direction. The founding father, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, was Pakistan's first governor-general. He was terminally ill at the time of Pakistan's independence, and died within a year. His deputy, Liaquat Ali Khan, the first prime minister, was assassinated three years later. Both believed that Pakistan needed a strong centre to survive as a nation state. This policy resulted in a

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strong reliance on the civil service that was dominated by West Pakistanis. Since 55% of Pakistanis lived in East Pakistan, under the democratic system, they would have come to dominate the national political decision making process, something that neither Jinnah nor Liaquat were willing to countenance. At the same time, they knew that dominance by an unrepresentative centre would inevitably provoke dissension from the regions. And inevitably, this denial of heterogeneity was slowly antagonizing the provinces in Pakistan. The result was that regional elites began to mobilize popular support for greater provincial autonomy. Thus, Centre-State relations became the principal focus for political conflict. This manifested itself at two levels: at a lower level, between Punjab, which was the dominant province, and the three smaller provinces in West Pakistan; and at a higher level, between West and East Pakistan.

An important point to note is that Jinnah's, and to an even greater extent, Liaquat's effectiveness was limited by the fact that they were immigrants from India. The fact that Jinnah had insisted on making Urdu the national language was resented by many ethnic groups, such as the Bengalis in East Pakistan, who had a pride in their language. Slowly and as a consequence of these problems, the Muslim League, which was Pakistan's ruling party, lost its way after achieving Pakistan. It did not possess the same grassroots organization as the Congress in India. The contrast with India is illustrative. Nehru, backed by a first-rate team and a solidly organized Congress, had almost two decades until his death in 1964, to guide and consolidate the new state. Liaquat did not see any urgency to hold elections at the national level or create a constitution, since he was concerned about the resulting dilution in the centre's authority. In January 1949, he used the services of Jinnah's successor as Governor-General, Khawaja Nazimuddin, to dissolve the Punjab legislature and take over the reins of power, thus setting a dangerous precedent. Soon after, Liaquat was assassinated.

Liaquat's assassination resulted in the transfer of effective control to leaders who were ex-civil servants. These leaders worked symbiotically with people who were politicians nominally, but were feudal lords and tribal leaders fundamentally. Quite naturally, they showed little interest in formulating policies that would bring prosperity to their electorate. Instead, they wished to perpetuate the authoritarian rule their forebears had exercised for centuries. The two ex-civil servants who dominated the national scene were Iskander Mirza who became the President, and Ghulam Mohammed who became the Governor General on Liaquat's death. Ghulam Mohammed connived with the army chief, General Ayub, to dismiss many elected officials including Prime Minister and former Governor-General, Khawaja Nazimuddin in 1953. The following year, he dismissed the entire Constituent Assembly. Even though India had formed its constitution in 1949, Pakistan was to remain without a constitution till 1956. During those years, it continued to be ruled under the Government of India Act of 1935 that Great Britain had designed to exercise imperial control over its Indian subjects. The 1956 constitution lasted only for two years, and was abrogated by the military coup of 1958. Ayub provided a new constitution in 1962, based on the presidential form of government.

Faced with widespread lawlessness and corruption, President Mirza declared martial law in 1958, and turned over power to General Ayub. Mirza blamed the imposition of martial law on "the political adventurers, the smugglers, the black marketers, the hoarders" who were flourishing "to the detriment of the masses and are getting richer by their nefarious practices". In his maiden speech, Ayub stated that he had been asked on numerous

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occasions by Governor-General Ghulam Mohammad to take over the country but had refrained from doing so because he had a faint hope that some politicians would rise to the occasion and lead the country to a better future.

It will be pertinent to note that Ayub's "coup d'etat in Pakistan was the most striking example of how an apolitical military could slowly be drawn into the political field due to the failure of the political leaders to run liberal democratic institutions. In 1958, Pakistan was in the grip of a serious economic crisis. The government treasury was empty. Smuggling, black-marketing and hoarding had penetrated deep into the economic life of Pakistan. There was widespread industrial unrest and strikes became common. The impotence of the political leadership and general corruption in the society as compared with the well integrated and disciplined organization of the armed forces and their role in the maintenance of law and order led to a perception amongst the higher military command that it was they who had to maintain law and order and keep the state intact.

Ayub therefore gave a firm warning to the disruptionists, political opportunists, smugglers, black marketers and other such social vermin, sharks and leeches to "turn over a new leaf and begin to behave, otherwise retribution will be swift and sure". Within a month, the martial law authorities seized as much smuggled goods and gold as the previous governments had seized in the past 11 years, and imposed price controls that brought about a fall in the prices of a number of basic commodities. These measures brought initial popularity to Ayub's regime. He institutionalised the process of economic planning. This led to rapid economic progress in the early sixties, but exacerbated inter-class inequities in the distribution of income. Surprisingly, this was by design, since the premise was that the road to eventual equality lay through initial inequalities. Ayub had implemented "trickle down economics" in Pakistan much before Ronald Reagan in the United States. A class of "robber barons" was created that resulted in the concentration of wealth in a handful of families. Forty-three families owned 75% of manufacturing assets and a similar percent of insurance assets. Only seven families owned commercial banks accounting for 92% of all domestic deposits. Ayub's family acquired about $20 million in assets. Military officers were given land in newly created "defence housing societies" at throwaway prices, and profited enormously by reselling it on the open market. Similarly, a large portion of the 2.5 million acres of land that was surrendered by the feudal lords through the Land Reforms of 1959 was given to military and civil officials. Retired military officers were given plum jobs in public and private sector corporations while others were absorbed into the central and provincial bureaucracies.

Faced with several internal problems, and in order to divert attention from what was going on in the country, Ayub Khan decided to confront India first with a problem in Kutch, and later in Kashmir.

The 1965 War

In August1965, another war took place. Again, it was the same operation; Pakistan Army regulars were sent into India in the garb of tribals and as the operation picked up gradually, by the end of August 1965, it became an open war.

According to a report in the US Library of Congress, the 1965 war was instigated by the Government of Pakistan through a militant movement on the border in an effort to topple the status quo on Kashmir and raise international intervention. "Pakistani forces did not find as much support among the Kashmiri population as they had hoped, but fighting spread by August, and a process of escalation culminated in a full-scale Indian offensive

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toward Lahore on September 6. Within a few days, the Indian army was in Lahore. Fighting continued until a UN-sponsored ceasefire took hold on September 23."

During the war, the Mother of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram sent an open message to the Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri. The message ran like this: "It is for the sake and the triumph of truth that India is fighting and must fight until India and Pakistan have once more become One because that is the truth of their being".

The question was asked that if the Security Council orders them to cease-fire, then? Mother said, "India must still fight. Otherwise she will have to do it all over again". Once again, the Government floundered, as we didn't have the will to go till the end. 27

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"Do you know the war is going on?"

"Yes Mother, every day I hear the news on the radio. Mother, who will win the war —India surely and not Pakistan."

She nodded and said: "India and Pakistan must become one. By the way, have you read the message I sent to the Prime Minister- Mr. Sastri?"

"No, Mother."

Then she herself went into her living room from her music room and fetched the message and gave it to me, asking me to read it there and then and keep it. I read as follows:

"If the Security Council orders them to cease fire, then?"

"India must still fight. Otherwise she will have to do it all over again..."

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Tashkent Declaration

The war was militarily inconclusive though it was quite clear then that had it continued, Pakistan would have been beaten back and the Kashmir dispute would have been resolved once for all. Instead, the Indian Prime Minister, Lal Bahadur Shastri, and the Pakistani General Ayub Khan met in Tashkent at the invitation of Russian Premier, Alexi Kosygin, and agreed to withdraw troops on both sides. The Tashkent Declaration committed both sides to resolving all differences peacefully and to desist from interfering in each other's internal affairs. Shastri died in Tashkent and not much work was done to carry forward the spirit of the declaration.