Junta attempts to discredit struggle

On March 12, 1971, the Pakistan government resorted to crude attempts to discredit the Bengali movement. As Muhammad Habibur Rahman recalls in his diary of events, Bangladesher Tarikh, on this day in 1971 the regime announced the arrest of what it called Indians from among the protestors in East Pakistan. The motive was not lost on anyone: the regime had hit upon the idea that giving the Bengali nationalist movement the taint of being inspired by a hostile India or, more specifically, by the Hindu community that had never accepted the reality of partition in 1947, would be an effective way of discrediting Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his politics. Predictably, the propaganda did not wash with the Bengalis, who continued to pour out on to the streets of Dhaka and elsewhere in the province to swear fealty to their elected leader.

On the campus of Dhaka University, a deepening sense of militancy prevailed. Students marched in military formation, giving the clear impression that the Bengali nation was indeed preparing for what could turn out to be a war of attrition against Pakistan. Women prominent in their various fields — the noted poet Sufia Kamal was one — organized themselves into resistance groups and declared absolute support for and loyalty to Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and the Awami League leadership. Overall, the atmosphere was one of a province that was inexorably on its way to becoming a free country despite the fact that the Awami League and the regime were expected to engage in a dialogue on a resolution of the crisis sooner rather than later. The senior leadership of the Awami League took on all the characteristics of a government, in effect a war cabinet, entrusted with the responsibility of carrying the struggle through to a successful conclusion.

A foreign newsman asked Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman if he envisaged taking East Pakistan out of Pakistan and declaring it an independent state. Mujib's reply was ambiguous: "Independence? No, not yet." The subtlety said it all. For Bangabandhu, for the Bengali nation, freedom was only a matter of time.