Rushbrook Williams (1890–1978)

L. Rushbrook Williams’ “The East Pakistan Tragedy”, a book about Bangladesh’s (i.e., East Pakistan’s) struggle for independence, was not at all what I was expecting when I first started reading it. Almost everything I have ever read about Bangladesh’s War of Independence in 1971 has repeated ad nauseam how the military junta in [West] Pakistan launched a brutal crackdown in Bangladesh, killing some 3,000,000 people. According to Williams, a British civil servant who had worked in the Indian subcontinent since 1914, and who travelled extensively throughout Pakistan, West and East, during the war, the complete opposite happened: the Awami League, under the militant Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and supported by Pakistan’s archenemy India, were the terrorist marauders that committed widespread destruction and ethnic cleansing of non-Bengalis, not the Pakistani military.

This makes the book very difficult to review objectively, at least without more research on the history of Bangladesh, as I feel it is impossible for me to place the book in the right historical and ideological context.

On the one hand, Williams’ offers compelling evidence, ranging from his own extensive observations of refugee camps, visits to West and East Pakistan throughout 1971, and his own personal talks with President Yahya Khan, business leaders, and other prominent figures, for his case that the mainstream, Western narrative about what happened in Bangladesh in 1971, was a propaganda coup by the Awami League and India.

Among Williams’ strongest points that I feel hold considerable validity are: 1.) India, Pakistan’s main rival, wanted (and no doubt still does) to see the breakup of Pakistan, thus India supported financially and militarily the Awami militants, closed its airspace to Pakistani aircraft, and spread false information to major international news outlets; and 2.), that, according to numerous economic statistics provided by Williams’, West Pakistan did not economically exploit East Pakistan for the benefit of West Pakistani capital, one of the Awami League’s strongest arguments in favor of secession.

On the other hand, Williams’ depiction of Pakistan’s then military leader, Yahya Khan, as an almost divine leader, wanting nothing more than to save his country from inevitable ruin, I find to be highly suspect. Williams’ comparison of the righteousness of Khan’s response to the secessionist movement in East Pakistan with Britain’s response to the conflict in Northern Ireland, and Nigeria’s response to the secession of Biafra, leads me to seriously question his whitewashing of West Pakistan’s role during the whole period under examination. No state that I am aware of – including Russia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Nigeria, Britain, Indonesia, Sudan, or even Canada for that matter during the FLQ Crisis – has ever responded to the secession of a part of its territory with such benevolence as Williams’ depiction of West Pakistan in its conflict with East Pakistan. A more interesting comparison Williams’ could have made is that between West Pakistan’s response to the conflict in East Pakistan with the ongoing secessionist movement in Balochistan. Since Pakistan’s independence in 1947, Balochi separatists have fought an increasingly brutal war for independence against Pakistan, including major outbreaks of violence in 1948, 1958–59, 1962–63 and 1973–77. The fact that Williams’, in arguing for the righteousness of West Pakistan’s cause in the conflict with East Pakistan, never once makes any reference to the independence movement in Baolchistan, I find highly suspect.

Despite its questionable historical accuracy, “The East Pakistan Tragedy” by L. Rushbrook Williams was offers an interesting insight into Bangladesh’s War of Independence.… (mehr)