Folks, sharing some thoughts on the recent developments in Bangladesh in the aftermath of killing of Osman Hadi.
Let’s see how it goes.
At the outset, I’ll share this tweet from almost exactly 1yr ago. Things happening almost exactly as mentioned
Moving ahead, let me introduce Osman Hadi to those who do not know him.
Here he is, yapping about Indian hegemony.
Do watch.
Mind you, this is not about celebrating his death.
But instead, this is to highlight the idiotic and utopian idea of Bangladesh being equal to India that he harboured .. something that is still being chanted by yahoos on the streets.
That said, I would take you back to the tweet quoted in the beginning of this blog post.
Hadi’s death is merely a trigger.
Even if it had been someone else in his place, there would still have been outrage and violence on streets of East Pakistan, regardless of the trigger event.
If you noticed me mentioning ‘East Pakistan’ instead of Bangladesh, kudos to you!
Let me explain why I refer to the current day neighbour as East Pakistan.
But that would need for us to go back to the breaking apart of erstwhile Eastern Wing of Pakistan in 1971.
Trigger for breakaway of East Pakistan in 1971 was incompatibility of Bengali identity of East Pakistan with the dominant Punjabi identity of West Pakistan. If you think current day Paakis are any less racist towards Bengalis, then you might be ‘pleasantly’ surprised with this 👇
That East Pakistan was NOT compatible with their Western masters was quite apparent as early as 1952 when the Language Riots broke out over imposition of Urdu upon East Pakistan.
21 Feb is still observed as Language Movement Day / Martyrs Day in Bangladesh : Bengali Language Movement
Then came the Bhola Cyclone of 1970 that killed nearly 500,000 East Pakistanis. To add insult to injury, the Central Govt in West Pakistan just brushed it aside and only offered token relief efforts in the days immediately succeeding it.
Why?
Because .. well .. Bengalis.
Period.
And then when the first and only truly free and fair elections happened in December 1970, Yahya Khan and Bhutto refused to honour the verdict that would have meant a Bengali Prime Minister for Pakistan, ie Mujibur Rehman. Heck, Bhutto even called them ‘Suar ke Bachche’ in a public rally in East Pakistan and cursed them to go to Jahannum!
Of course, he himself would soon reach there .. perhaps to prepare a welcome speech for them maybe?
Then came the events of 1971, commencing with Operation Searchlight wherein the Pakistan Army directly got involved in rape, genocide and targeted killings of Hindus in particular and Bengalis in general : Operation Searchlight
They raped, they killed and they burnt.
Just being a Bengali was enough of a crime, regardless of religion. Being a Hindu only added to the gravity of the crime.
Yes, those were their fellow citizens from the Eastern Wing.
A short documentary on the women that were raped and a memorial in Mujib Nagar to etch the atrocities suffered by the daughters, mothers and sisters of East Pakistan at the hands of their fellow citizens from West Pakistan Army was produced immediately after India created Bangladesh.
Throughout this orgy of rape and murder, the Jamaat ‘e Islami Pakistan was at the forefront with their brothers in West Pakistani Army. They fought tooth and nail to oppose the creation of Bangladesh in 1971, only to fail.
And then, in 1979, the Bangladeshi Govt of their military dictator Zia ur Rehman, Jamaat ‘e Islami was permitted to establish itself once again in the same country that it had fought tooth and nail to oppose the creation of!
What was happening was abundantly clear, esp with the benefit of hindsight as well as events in current day East Pakistan. The Bengali identity was slowly and surely subsumed by the religious identity on the basis of which India was partitioned in 1947.
In fact, Jamaat ‘e Islami was a part of the govt of Begum Khaleda Zia in 2001. Such was the turnaround, partly due to political expediency and partly also due to the growing radicalisation under the radar.
It is the same Jamaat ‘e Islami that was working furiously behind the scenes during the Aug 2024 ‘revolution’ & is working furiously today in forefront of the latest ‘revolution’.
Needless to say ISIS flags too have become part & parcel of this latest iteration of ‘revolution’.
And what is the currently popular opinion in today’s East Pakistan?
Well, they are blaming Sheikh Hasina.
Yes, more than 15 months after her ouster, the current NON-ELECTED govt of East Pakistan blames Awami League and Sheikh Hasina for their failure to ensure peace!
This only reinforces my belief that seeds of ‘revolution’ are mostly bitter!
Once the dust settles, u realize that while breaking apart a system was very easy, building it again actually takes a LOT of hard work .. something that you may not be capable of!
Dear Leader of current day East Pakistan, Nobel Laureate Yunus, who incidentally calls himself as the Chief Adviser to the Government of Bangladesh, has proved his incompetence to govern with a bang .. literally!
Of course, he never had the mandate to govern in the first place.
That is also why I feel that the supposed elections in East Pakistan that were to happen ‘very soon’, will not be happening at all .. atleast not in the near future.
Power without accountability is the best.
Yunus today .. perhaps a Military Dictator tomorrow?
Which brings me to the question of what happens next.
Well, in a nutshell, a LOT depends upon how Govt of India decides to act.
On that note, I agree with the yahoos of East Pakistan that it is a civilizational war. They have already chosen religion over their Bengali identity.
Now what remains to be seen is the response of the GOI.
Don’t get me wrong .. I know there are a LOT of other interested actors fuelling the fire in East Pakistan today. But the end aim for most of them is to have Indian attentions and resources diverted there, even if partly.
As @TrulyMonica mentioned in her tweet screenshotted above, the masks are well and truly off. Debating the reason for their animosity at this point in our history is moot. What needs to be seen is what do we do (or don’t do, for that matter).
So far, by NOT doing much since the Aug 2024 ‘revolution’, GOI has ended up giving enough rope to current rulers of East Pakistan to hang themselves, figuratively of course.
And then there is the dead body of the radical Osman Hadi buried six feet under with full State protocol.
Btw, THIS is how they treated the mortal remains of their own soldiers not so long ago.
Make of it whatever you will.
Bottomline is that East Pakistan has once again reared its ugly head on our eastern borders. The only consolation is that they don’t have nukes, thanks to 1971.
But they do dream of a nuke umbrella from their West Paaki brethren!
This is a retired Colonel of Bangladesh Army giving words to his wet dreams!
Of course, they are permitted to have their delusions.
But Indian Visa is something that they will surely and sorely miss, thanks to the violence directed at Indian diplomatic missions.
Just like last year, right after the ‘revolution’!
Whether they like it or not, survival of East Pakistan without India is virtually impossible, thanks to the curse of geography.
They still owe more than a billion dollars to Adani for the electricity, for one.
Not to mention the tonnes of other imports from India.
The only thing somewhat in favour of East Pakistan is their relatively large army that is still capable of restoring peace if push comes to a shove. And this is a military that has directly ruled East Pakistan after killing the Father of the Nation, Mujibur Rehman in 1975 itself.
But would they have the stomach for it?
Or for that matter the UNITY within their ranks for it?
What are the odds that the current generation of Brigadiers & Generals of Bangladesh Army MIGHT get inspired by the relatively recent Border Guard revolt of 2009 & join the other side?
Remember, they are already acting very coy with their West Pakistani brethren ever since the Aug 2024 ‘revolution’.
Might it be because some of them actually see them as their fathers? Especially those born in 1971-72?
What happens internally in East Pakistan now depends upon how the military acts, or chooses to look the other way. Yunus has unleashed a monster that he won’t be able to control for much longer, especially when IMO he doesn’t hold much power beyond being a figurehead ‘advisor’.
He will, in all probability, be the sacrificial pawn as a new regime assumes power in Dhaka within the next few months, perhaps even earlier.
And then the cycle of rhetoric and reality check and chaos will be unleashed all over again.
What happens next?
Well, for one, let this be YET ANOTHER lesson for the ‘liberals’, esp those within India.
Do go thru the three tweets quoted below, about how the sheep kept rooting for the wolf because he promised he had changed.
As far as India goes, the biggest concern currently should be yet another refugee influx in case situation in East Pakistan deteriorates further. Impact of such a chaos on the looming elections in West Bengal and Assam too cannot be emphasized enough.
But then, it was a similar refugee crisis that gave the pretext and justification for hacking off East Pakistan in the first place.
Thus, herein lies an opportunity as well.
Of course, the potential for exponential increase in chaos exists too.
But if the chaos can be contained within the current borders of East Pakistan, then I personally wouldn’t mind it very much.
This was tweeted just hours after the initial reports of ‘revolution’ / ‘coup’ in Bangladesh last year 👇
Once again, with the benefit of hindsight, one can say that one mistake that we committed in 1971 was in not retaining some territory from East Pakistan in order to overcome own geographical vulnerabilities.
Perhaps destiny is giving us another chance?
No wonder the yahoos in East Pakistan feel that it was they who defeated West Pakistan in 1971 and India unfairly took all credit and the 93,000 Brown Panted Ones. No wonder they think that they also can choke off India’s North-East with ease and capture Kolkata as well!
Btw, it is the same East Pakistan which covers broken railway tracks with jute bags and hopes for the best!
More power to them, I’d say!
Coming back to the issue at hand, India has been far too benevolent a neighbour to such people for far too long.
I have a hunch that this might be about to change soon.
Whether the first manifestation comes across East Pakistan or West, needs to be seen.
Committing Indian military along East Pakistan might give a breather to the Brown Panted Ones to the West, as also an opportunity to one again try and import some more Brahmos and other munitions from India free of cost.
Reeling as they are under grossly ‘unpredictable’ water inflows in Jhelum and Chenab, they might just try something under the (yet again) mistaken assumption that India will be restrained due to events in East Pakistan.
And what about East Pakistan, you asked?
Well they are still just as expendable for West Pakistan and their friends in the USA as they were in 1965 and 1971 Wars.
So long as West Pakistan lives, anything good or bad happening to East Pakistan is fine.
In any case, East Pakistanis are very confident that India will soon come begging to them because without their money, India cannot survive!
Of course all those lines of credit that GOI has extended to East Pakistan be damned!
This is NOT a joke, mind you!
All said and done, I don’t see any easy way out of this mess for India.
Sooner or later, we WILL see blood spilled – In our lands and beyond. Thankfully, Operation Sindoor saw mostly only Pakistani blood spilled, but don’t let that fool you.
The next round will be far bloodier.
Sooner or later, we will be left with no option but to bite the bullet. I say this as a lay person with access to only open source info. The Govt has access to not only far greater information but also far greater resources.
I shall wait to see what they do, or don’t do.
But when the dust settles, I would not only want to see atleast ‘some’ land getting added to the Union of India, but also atleast the East Pakistani Army cut down to a size of not more than 30,000.
So blinded are they in their hatred for imagined Indian hegemony that they even forget the brutal rapes that their ‘found-again’ best friends inflicted upon their mothers & grandmothers
We all know what happens to those who forget their own history, right?
Talking about history, I wrote this just a few days after the Aug 2024 ‘revolution’ in East Pakistan.
Slow and steady turn the wheels of history.
The lands of Mahishasur Mardini Mata demand more blood. That is the only way to cleanse this scourge, I’d say.
Osman Hadi was just an excuse.
I don’t care who killed him. For all we know, it was West Pakistan that got him killed just to sow chaos along India’s Eastern Borders.
Or just a jealous girlfriend.
And if it was Indian agencies, well, Boo .. Fucking .. Hoo to the bleeding hearts.
But regardless, fact remains that India continues to be a benevolent giant next door to most of its neighbours. It is in East Pakistan’s favour that things go back to as they were. Else, they might just unleash a genie that will eat them up and not even burp.
As far as West Pakistan goes, well, they have already had a taste of things throughout their history right from 27 Oct 1947 all the way till May 2025.
THAT is the reason why they are now looking to sacrifice East Pakistan all over again, just so that their part of Punjab is safe.
I don’t foresee Yunus in power beyond March 2026.
In any case, there will be no elections in East Pakistan in the foreseeable future. So whosoever comes to power next will do so either at the point of a gun or thru street power or both.
This will NOT end well for the country.
All I can say in the end is that history has indeed come a full circle for East and West Pakistan. But remember, it ended with a massive orgy or rapes and killings in East Pakistan and utter humiliation for West Pakistan.
Dare I say, it is headed much the same way all over again.
I will close this thread with my favourite phrase : ‘Brace Yourselves, Folks!’
The coming weeks & months won’t be easy.
Remember, Sagar Manthan threw up ‘Vish’ before ‘Amrit’ came by.
These days too are days of immense ‘Manthan’ the world over.
Let’s wait and watch how they go!!
In the end, I will just add the past few Blogs on East Pakistan that I wrote since Aug 2024.
On the Events Currently Underway in Bangladesh (As on 08 Aug 2024)
On the Events in Bangladesh (As on 26 Aug 2024)
On the Role of the Bangladesh Army in Recent Events
On the Current Situation in Bangladesh (As on 08 Dec 2024)
On the Current Situation in Bangladesh after Arakan Army capture of Muangdaw
That’s all, folks.
Thank you for your patience!
:FIN:
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