As a contemporary political commentator wrote (1966): The issue of regional autonomy is about as old as the politics of points in the sub-continent. Both are surely as old as and the latter evidently older than Pakistan. In the post-Pakistan period the two moved hand in hand. Demand for regional autonomy, more often especially in the context of East Pakistan, sometimes in relation both to East Pakistan and "neglected and backward areas of West Pakistan" was put forth in the manifestos of political parties, groups and platforms-single or combined.
"The Twenty-One Points" of the United Front was "a provincial programme." It had to be. A manifesto of the platform of combined parties in East Pakistan opposing the party in power in the 1954 provincial elections it had to be concerned with problems, issues and demands of the province. One among the twenty-one points was a demand for full provincial autonomy for East Pakistan.
Two years plus a decade after 1954 as the War (1965) and the Tashkent Declaration (1966) slipped in to the anteroom of Past from the Hall of the Present that one among twenty-one, the demand for East Pakistan's autonomy, became six in one. The man who has made possible that becoming is Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the President of East Pakistan Awami League.
In his six-points which demand among other things substantially more meaningful and formally wider economic powers for the regions (or 'states' as they are called in the Six-Point programme) and stronger therefore, more adequate, defence arrangements for the Eastern Wing, to be built up and taken care of mainly by the province (or 'state') itself. Never before has the demand for East Pakistan's autonomy been spelt out in so concrete a manner. East Pakistan's economic demands have never been fulfilled to any measure of satisfaction from the day Pakistan came into existence. Endeavours all through these years have improved matters only a little.
The seventeen day Indo-Pakistan war in September, 1965 when East Pakistan lay inadequately defended, cut off and isolated from West Pakistan as well as the rest of the world. The controllers of the country's destiny realised-(or at least they said that they had)-at long last that the theory that East Pakistan could be defended from West Pakistan was not after all as tenable as they thought.
In this immediate context came Sheikh Mujib's Six Points. In the explicit (in fact, constitutional) recognition of the fact of economic disparity and in the implicit admission of the fact of the inadequacy of the province's defence, by the government itself, the authors of the Six Points have found all it takes to put forward hopefully their electric programme for public consumption. Electric as the programme had been from its very inception it did not "electrify" the nation at the first contact.
"After the Indo-Pak war of 1965 and the Tashkent Declaration of 10th January, 1966 (established a more enduring peace between the combatants) ........ The Lahore Conference of opposition parties, (1966) was convened with a view to dissecting the "Tashkent Declaration" to condemn it and those who had signed it for Pakistan. It is hard to believe that Sheikh Mujib was not aware of this fact.
Yet, aware or not, he chose to disregard it and used the Lahore meeting as the forum for placing forth his Six-Points demand for the autonomy of East Pakistan. Not unexpectedly he succeeded in creating a stir of the first magnitude in the assembled opposition of the country in Lahore. It was claimed that they refused to accord Sheikh Mujib and his Six-Points a proper hearing. So the Awami League leader came back to his province where he made public his 'Six-Point proposals' for securing East Pakistan's autonomy".
"...It was not until March when the President Field Martial Ayub Khan took it upon himself to unleash a cataract of attack on the Six-Points that the province as well as the country really sat up and took note". As the ruler's attitude to the Six-Point programme hardened, Sheikh Mujib was arrested under the Defense of Pakistan Rules in early April, 1966. His admirers in a mammoth meeting at Narayangonj near Dhaka hailed him as the leader, not only of seven crore East Pakistanis but also of twelve crore Pakistanis.
In other words, Sheikh Mujib's Six-Points were deemed to be the key to the prosperity and strength not only of the majority but of all Pakistanis (Mizanur Rahman Shelley writing as Rafiq Rahbar, Pakistan the Second Republic Politics and Parties, Concept Publications, 1970, pp-109-113). What was there in the Six-Point programme that caused the Pakistani rulers to become so annoyed and full of wrath? One has to only look at the demands that the programme contained: "Demand was made for two separate currency systems for the two wings, separate banking reserve, and separate fiscal and monetary policies for East Bengal. It was further recommended that the power of taxation and revenue collection be vested in the federating units, with the central federal government receiving a fixed share of the state taxes for meeting its expenditures. The Six-Point Programme suggested that there should be two separate accounts for foreign exchange earnings for the two wings, under the respective control of each wing, the foreign exchange requirements of the federal government should be met by the two wings, either equally or in a ratio to be fixed. It was also suggested that the unit governments should be empowered to establish trade and commercial relations and set up trade missions in, and enter into agreements with, foreign countries.
The other three points suggested setting up a federation "on the basis of the Lahore Resolution," and a parliamentary government based on adult franchise, restricting the powers of the federal government to only two subjects - defense and foreign affairs - and the establishment of "a militia or para military force" for East Bengal.
The programme drew spontaneous and almost instant support from the literate Bengalis inside or outside the government. Its realization would mean the removal of the constricting presence of unequal and inequitable competition from their West Pakistani counterparts. It was, therefore, a sure winner in the contest for popularity among the rising Bengali middle classes, who, with justice, aspired to rise higher still. The Six-Points initially constituted an "elite programme" that was in form and intent a charter for the emancipation of the educated Bengali middle class from the strangling domination of the West Pakistani rulers.
Dr Mizanur Rahman Shelley, founder Chairman of Centre for Development Research (CDRB), and former technocrat Cabinet Minister of Bangladesh, died on August 12, 2019. He contributed his writeups to the Daily Observer which are being published regularly as "The Symphony of Our Times".
