Posthumous examination of a political party
Shahid Alam ploughs through a remarkable scholarly analysis
Flogging a dead horse might appear a pointless, not to say bizarre, exercise to many, unless that effort is expended towards explaining a momentous event in history. The emergence of Bangladesh as a sovereign independent nation-state is indubitably one such occurrence. The Muslim League (ML) is very much alive and kicking in its various factions in Pakistan, but it is, to all intents and purposes, at death's door in the land of its birth, Bangladesh. As a matter of fact, the party that was the political vehicle in the process of realizing Pakistan out of British India embarked on the road to its demise almost as soon as Pakistan came into being. A whole range of scholarly writings has explored a whole range of aspects that led to the League's debacle, and, undoubtedly, others will emerge in the future. Ahmed Kamal's State Against the Nation is among the more recent additions to this list. Kamal begins with a personal recollection that is reprised in far greater magnitude in the political culture of Bangladesh. "My early memory of cartoons and campaign- songs portraying Khwaja Nazimuddin, the Prime Minister of Pakistan, and the Muslim League, the ruling party, as corrupt and autocratic has proved to be lasting." What is that French saying, translated into English: the more things change, the more they remain the same? That childhood experience grew into a profound query that he posed to himself: "…how did the aspirations of the ordinary people --- their demand for a better distribution of land, food and water --- get entangled with the larger problems of nationalism, democracy, party-politics and state repression that shaped the nature of the state and politics in East Bengal?" His quest for an answer has led him to the following conclusion: "…the inherited colonial bureaucracy, unaccountable and non-transparent; and to a political party, unprepared and inadequate as a change agent. The party relied on the bureaucracy's wisdom for nation-building and surrendered its leadership to the functionaries of the state." The author concentrates on the bureaucratic angle as a key factor in the ML going downhill almost as soon as it had succeeded in achieving Pakistan. State Against the Nation, which studies Pakistan, particularly East Bengal, politics from 1947 to 1954, grew out of the author's PhD dissertation. He undertook the study out of "a feeling of dissatisfaction over the stagnation that seems to have set in in East Pakistan scholarship, especially since the emergence of Bangladesh." The author's view is that, in most scholarly discourses, the Language Movement, provincial autonomy, and decline in jute prices dominate over matters of politics in East Pakistan. He undertakes to show there were other factors that contributed as much to Bengali disenchantment with ML and, concomitantly, with the political framework of East Pakistan. Kamal locates the process of control over land, food and water as being instrumental in the evolution of an authoritarian system in East Pakistan (as well as the whole of Pakistan, but that aspect is very tangentially touched in a book that is devoted to East Pakistan) that "continually quashed" an "elementary popular urge towards participation in the political process." ML failed as a political party essentially because it was not a politically experienced organization that had been engaged in any "sustained, mass-based, anti-imperialist politics." This dearth in political experience often left the East Pakistan politicians dependent on the organized civilian relic of the British Indian colonial ruling instrument: the bureaucracy. "The result was a political culture where the bureaucracy emerged as the predominant and most enduring element." The citizenry's disillusionment with ML was manifested in the first general election held in East Pakistan on 8 March 1954, where ML was routed, winning just ten out of the 237 Muslim seats in the Provincial Assembly. "So what went wrong in 1954?" the author asks. "Why did the Muslim League completely eclipse as a political party?" After all, ML never regained its preeminence in the land of its birth after that disaster. Kamal's principal arguments are encapsulated in the introductory chapter; the individual chapters following, up to the Epilogue, which deals with a pithy and rather superficial account of the political experience of Bangladesh (it seems to have been included almost as an afterthought, as a concession to the situation in this country), elaborate on them. An interesting citation captures the frustration that concerned ML activists themselves felt about their party and its appalling governance. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and Naimuddin Ahmed had lamented in Durbhaga Jonosadharan: "When shall we get an ideal ruler like Hazrat Omar, when the era of the Four Caliphs will come back." They were pining for a system of just and honest administration, which the citizens had expected from a homeland that they had so ardently struggled to achieve. Kamal discusses at length the politics of food that contributed significantly to famine conditions prevailing in parts of East Bengal, the stupefying levy system that created more problems than solutions, the government's denial that famine existed in any part of the country (sound familiar?), the bureaucrats' high-handedness that exacerbated the problem, and the social class structure that was instrumental in giving rise to, and maintaining, it. The author often brings up the issue of a skewed class structure in not only having an impact on the price-induced famine, but also in the other areas of discussion, like the politics of scarcity, peasants and the agrarian question, water, and the police. In this context, his observation is worth noting: "In fact, whenever the private interests of elite groups and the community interests were at conflict, the state sided with the former." Simultaneously, as already stated, Kamal blames the bureaucracy for having contributed to the failure in the establishment of a healthy and vibrant political culture in the country, which had a direct impact, among other deleterious effects, on the ML's demise. His observations in one situation is worth quoting: "Ignoring the opinion of political activists and some experts that to tame the rivers, to construct embankments and drainage channels, to excavate the silted tanks and canals called for giant efforts of human labour, the Muslim League government unhesitatingly adopted a bureaucratic approach to water management." And, what was a crucial aspect of bureaucratic mentality? "In keeping with the tradition of his colonial training, he described the peasants as 'desperate' and 'dangerous' by nature." State Against the Nation, one feels, began with a bang in the initial couple of chapters, raising expectations of groundbreaking revelations and analyses pertaining to the decline of ML as a political force in East Pakistan. However, the explanatory chapters at times meander along at sluggish pace, where details of individual cases to prove a generalization have not been able to satisfactorily bring that feeling about, and the later efforts occasionally feel like they have ended in a whimper. Nonetheless, it is a book worth reading and cogitating over for the insights into the elitist politics of ML, quite divorced from the masses it should have served, and the various factors that led to its marginalization in the land of its birth. Kamal's assessment of the party as it hurtled towards destruction is significant: "Opportunism became the only means of advancing one's own political status, and the Muslim League began to develop a sycophantic political style."
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