‘Divide Pakistan into two states’, Bhashani tells Yahya

March 9, 1971 was marked by more demonstrations of support for the non-violent non-cooperation movement of the Awami League. Throughout Bangladesh, people from all walks of life gathered in spontaneous expressions of support for the movement. Indeed, the general feeling was that Pakistan's eastern province was truly on its way to being an independent state. Bangabandhu's March 7 speech, while not exactly a declaration of independence, was nevertheless seen as a pointer to the road leading to national sovereignty.

The Awami League, now operating as the de facto government for Bangladesh, amended some of its earlier directives while at the same time issuing new ones. Essential public services were maintained and the relevant departments remained operative. Banks operated to deal with transactions. Government offices, however, together with other establishments continued to observe the general strike earlier called by Bangabandhu.

A significant development of the day was an address by Moulana Abdul Hamid Khan Bhashani at Paltan Maidan. In clear terms, he expressed his support for the on-going mass movement and demanded that General Yahya Khan declare the two wings of Pakistan independent of each other. In his words, it was only a matter of time before East Bengal would become a free country.

In West Pakistan, political quarters were yet in a crisis following Bangabandhu's March 7 address in Dhaka. The army, meanwhile, went on augmenting the number of soldiers in East Pakistan through transporting them along the long circuitous route between Karachi and Dhaka via Ceylon (today's Sri Lanka). For the regime, the demand by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman that it hand over power to the people's elected representatives placed it in a bind. Where previously the matter was one of negotiations leading to a transfer of power, now Mujib's condition that power be handed over first led to conditions where the junta found itself between a rock and a hard place. General Yahya Khan was not quite sure how to go about handling the situation. He huddled with his fellow officers, exploring the possibility of negotiations with Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. East Pakistan, after all, was now a place where the writ of the Pakistan government did not run.