The question of “what if” is sometimes scoffed at by historians because one has to rely a lot on conjecture to answer this instead of concrete facts. However, when it becomes a very popular question with the general public, it is reasonable for a historian to attempt it in order to further public enlightenment. Care has to be taken to bring as many relevant facts to the table as possible though.
I had written my book addressing a similarly problematic but popular question: How could the East Pakistan Fratricide of 1971 have been prevented? In the last chapter of that book, I mentioned that by the autumn of 1971, it had become crystal clear to every keen observer that the separation of Bangladesh had become inevitable. I had posited that it would have been better to surrender before Sheikh Mujib instead of India. That way, huge property damage to Bangladesh by the Indian occupation forces and the humiliating surrender of the Pak Army would have been protected and possibly a tenuous link between Pakistan and Bangladesh would also be salvaged.
Today, on the 53rd anniversary of the shameful surrender in Dhaka, I will try my hand at a different question. Let’s assume, just for argument’s sake, that India had remained out of the East Pakistan civil war/Bangladesh war of liberation and the Pak Army had successfully defeated the Bengali insurgency to keep East Pakistan within the country. Had that happened (with no other significant changes in the politics, economy, or society of both East and West Pakistan), would East Pakistan/Bangladesh have fared better?
First, I have to mention the fact that some Indian thinkers were opposed to Indian support for the Bangladeshi War of Liberation. Indian author Srinath Raghavan has mentioned in his book, “A Global History of the Creation of Bangladesh” that many influential figures including then Indian Foreign Secretary T. N. Kaul, Indian Ambassador to Pakistan B. Acharya, and Balraj Madhok of Jana Singh (the progenitor of BJP) supported this view. They told Miss Indira Gandhi that a weak East Pakistan was better than a potentially strong Bangladesh which could create serious trouble for India by encouraging separatism in the Eastern Indian states, chiefly West Bengal and parts of Assam. Miss Gandhi and most of her advisers rejected this hypothesis but their reason for rejection is probably more important than the rejection itself. They, like many of their West Pakistani counterparts, thought the Bangladeshis unable to create a viable state on their own. They were convinced that Bangladesh would be nothing more than a “basket case” and would remain completely dependent on India! D. P. Dhar, a close confidant of Indira Gandhi, had the gall to tell the exiled Bangladeshi leaders: “You just worry about cultivating rice. We will take care of the rest!”
So, Kaul and Acharya were overruled due to racist hubris on the part of the Indian leadership (composed mostly of North Indians) that a Punjabi and Pathan army was more dangerous to India (even if it were alienated from the Bengali masses) than the people of Bangladesh (dismissed as a null set by both West Pakistani and North Indian racists). Soon after the 1971 debacle, many civil and military “intellectuals” in what was left of Pakistan declared that East Pakistan was an economic baggage and that now Pakistan would prosper much faster.
Bangladesh’s beginnings weren’t auspicious. It was born in servitude as the Awami League under Sheikh Mujib was little more than an Indian stooge. It was also tyrannical, extremely incompetent, and unbelievably corrupt. For almost 4 years, Mujib-ur-Rahman misruled Bangladesh. The nascent nation’s sovereignty was compromised, it was ravaged by a robber elite, and paramilitaries like Rakhi Bahini committed massacres and ended up killing thousands (if not lakhs as mentioned by some anti-Awami League sources). When Bangladesh was facing devastating floods and famine, Sheikh Mujib was decorating his family with crowns of gold!
Mujib was eventually removed via a massacre as well. His successors were army generals who proceeded to rule Bangladesh in a way reminiscent of the Pakistani military dictators of the pre-1971 era. Bangladesh’s economic and social indicators remained pitiful. The country was indeed globally described as a “basket case” for the rest of the 20th century. While Pakistan’s own economic and social indicators experienced a comparative decline, especially in the 1990s, it managed to do much better than its former Eastern part. Many Pakistanis openly expressed the view that Bangladesh had made a grave mistake by choosing to secede.
However, the 21st century brought a quiet turnaround. The new generation of Bangladeshis began to build the industrial and IT sectors of the country. Initially the BNP and later the Awami League under Sheikh Mujib’s daughter Sheikh Hasina presided over a form of crony capitalism that made a few connected individuals very wealthy but also brought some economic power to many of the poor masses. The performance of the Bangladeshi middle managers was critical here. From the mid-2000s to 2024, Bangladesh has almost consistently maintained a healthy GDP growth rate. Social indicators like the HDI, literacy rate, and GDP (PPP) per capita also showed consistent improvement.
Pakistan, on the other hand, experienced a series of unmitigated disasters in the 21st century. First, it managed to embroil itself in the US war on terror and as a result became a site for an unending war on its own soil. The military’s dominant role in politics not only ensured an unstable polity, it also encouraged a captive and rentier economy in which only a few (linked to the military authorities or their cronies) could operate. Instead of industry and IT, Pakistan focused its crony capitalism on the unsustainable real estate sector that had little room for enterprising and talented youth. As a result, in contrast to Bangladesh where the youth could get jobs in the middle management of industries and the IT sector, the only viable option left for Pakistani talent was to move abroad and serve some other nation’s economy. The loss of enterprising and intelligent people meant that there were no young leaders anywhere to challenge the iron grip of the forces of crony capitalism and gangster politics. Today, while Pakistan is reeling under an illegitimate government, Bangladesh has broken the shackles of the Awami League after a revolution led by its youth. In Pakistan, however, the “leaders” leading protests for a “revolution” belong to the oppressor social class and are concerned with their own well-being above all else (and hence able to abandon their followers at the mere sniff of danger). Most of them merely desire their own re-entry into the corridors of power and are supremely uninterested in any structural changes that just might take Pakistan away from the death spiral it has been in for a few decades.
Now, in 2024, in order to answer the question at hand, we need to examine some key facts and figures. Bangladesh is ranked 129th globally in HDI (ahead of 134th ranked India) with a value of 0.670. Pakistan is ranked 164th with a value of 0.540 and has Sub-Saharan Africa for company. The literacy rate in Bangladesh is 75% whereas it is 62% in Pakistan. Pakistani exports in 2023-24 were valued at around 30 billion dollars whereas Bangladesh’s stood at around 56 billion dollars. When it comes to GDP (PPP) per capita, according to the IMF’s projections, Bangladesh is at the 126th spot whereas Pakistan is present at the 141st spot. Even more stark is the fact that Pakistan lags behind Bangladesh by about 30% in this key indicator of individual economic well-being. Let’s talk about geopolitics and foreign policy. Pakistan has become so dependent on US goodwill that its government even launched crackdowns on pro-Palestine and anti-genocide protests. In contrast, Bangladeshi people have been free to come out in multitudes on the streets of Bangladesh and express solidarity with the oppressed in Palestine. Bangladesh is now looking India in the eye and rejecting its hegemonic designs at a time when Pakistan’s all-powerful generals are advising the country to bow meekly before Indian hegemony (not to mention its occupation of Kashmir) as there isn’t enough money in the state’s coffers to fuel its battle tanks!
Some other factors need to be taken into account as well. Had Bangladesh remained East Pakistan after a brutal civil war, there would have been lasting acrimony between the Eastern and the Western wings of Pakistan. Energies that could have been spent constructively would have been spent in useless inter-wing bickering (this trend was also seen in the pre-1971 period and it had kept on increasing continuously every year). The Pakistani military, apprehensive of East Pakistan, would have treated it in a similar manner to Baluchistan where a perennial insurgency rages on and the common people continue to suffer at the hands of the state, the militants, the smugglers, and foreign agents. The Pakistani elite would have dragged East Pakistan with it into a rentier real estate economy and the so-called war on terror. East Pakistan, which lagged behind West Pakistan in all the aforementioned indicators before 1971, might well have fared even worse than West Pakistan in the 21st century.
In light of the above discussion, it is crystal clear that Bangladesh has fared much better than East Pakistan could ever have hoped for. The only lasting regret of 1971 for me, aside from an idealistic scenario (quite utopian when one considers the Pakistani elite destined to rule this country) in which both East and West Pakistan could have progressed with economic synergy and ideological conformity, is the fratricide. Had we parted without bloodshed, Bangladesh wouldn’t have suffered the destruction of almost all it had achieved in the Pakistan era (which was quite a lot given the fact that East Bengal had no industry in 1947, had very few schools and colleges, and was probably the most underdeveloped part of India in 1947). The Pak Army’s honor wouldn’t have been tarnished by the surrender. Thousands (if not lakhs) of Bengalis, Biharis, and West Pakistanis wouldn’t have been butchered. India wouldn’t have been given a victory on a silver platter. An enmity wouldn’t have developed between the brothers of both wings. But a drunkard in a uniform and two unscrupulous politicians ensured that the worst possible outcome would become reality.
In the end, I would just like to express my sincerest wish that may Bangladesh become ever stronger both geopolitically and economically. May Pakistan also somehow manage to extricate itself from its rapacious elite and embark on a path of honor and progress. Both Pakistan and Bangladesh are part of Iqbal’s dream of Pakistan: a country that would become the vanguard of global Islamic renaissance, a country that would be able to stand up for causes like Palestine, and a country that would challenge the exploitative world order and shake its very foundations by its righteous strength! More prosaically, I would love to see a synergy develop between Pakistan and Bangladesh on economic, social, and strategic levels. Recently, a suggestion was put forward by a Bangladeshi academic to develop nuclear cooperation between the two countries. I fully support this suggestion. In addition to it, people-to-people linkages must be restored and expanded as quickly as possible. The Bangladeshi revolution of 2024 is the opportunity of a century to banish the ghosts of 1971 forever and fashion a new era of fraternity and love. In his remarkable book “Witness to Surrender”, Siddiq Salik wrote that East and West Pakistan were like two souls in one body in 1970. I would give anything to see Pakistan and Bangladesh as one soul in two bodies. Given India’s malevolent intentions and increasing strength, this might be the only way to ensure the survival of both Pakistan and Bangladesh, and Iqbal’s dream!
