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Sixty years after the successful general strike called by the Awami League in erstwhile East Pakistan on 7 June 1966, the moment is ripe for the Bengali nation to reconnect with its history, with the political heritage which forms the ethos of the land that emerged as the People’s Republic of Bangladesh in December 1971.
In June 2026, it is only proper that the Spirit of 1971 be reaffirmed and reasserted, given that the mob rule presided over and fanned by the Yunus interim regime between August 2024 and February 2026 went into the odious job of trying to undermine Bangladesh’s history. Today, when renewed moves are afoot towards a distortion of national history, it is time to recall the idea and the persuasive political force which underscored the struggle for Bengali rights in the state of Pakistan.
7 June 1966 was not a crossing of the Rubicon. But it was a message loud and clear for the Ayub Khan military junta based in Rawalpindi that the Bengalis of the country created on a communal basis in 1947 could not be taken for granted any more by the civil-military-feudal establishment in West Pakistan. The death of Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy in December 1963 was a moment of grief for those struggling for a restoration of democracy in Pakistan. At a larger level, though, it was an opportunity for Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, then aged forty-three and already a veteran political figure on an all-Pakistan basis, to take the Awami League out of the National Democratic Front, forged in 1962, and have the party branch out on its own.
Go back in time. On 5 February 1966, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, general secretary of the East Pakistan Awami League, revealed in Lahore a broad-ranging formula for regional autonomy. That formula was the Six Point plan, which in time would lead to a wider movement and eventually an armed struggle for East Pakistan’s emergence as the independent People’s Republic of Bangladesh. Note that Lahore was the same place where the All-India Muslim League had adopted what came to be known as the Pakistan Resolution on 23 March 1940. The irony was unmissable.
The announcement of the Six Points put Mujib and a large section of Bengali Awami Leaguers on a collision course with the All-Pakistan Awami League led by Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan. It also aroused the fury of Field Marshal Mohammad Ayub Khan, who openly threatened to use what he called the language of weapons against the proponents of the Six Points. In Ayub’s view, the plan would lead to Pakistan’s break-up with the secession of its eastern province from the rest of the country. Foreign Minister Z.A. Bhutto challenged Mujib to a public debate on the Six Points at Dhaka’s Paltan Maidan. Tajuddin Ahmad accepted the challenge on his leader’s behalf. In the event, Bhutto went silent and did not turn up for the debate in Dhaka.
The Six Points, which the East Pakistan Awami League formally adopted on 18 March 1966, were the following:
1. Pakistan will be a federation in the true sense on the basis of the Lahore Resolution of March 1940, with the form of government being parliamentary in nature and elected through universal adult franchise;
2. The federal government shall deal with only two subjects, namely, foreign affairs and defence, with all other subjects to be handled by the federating units;
3. Two separate but freely convertible currencies for the two wings of Pakistan may be introduced or a single currency be used, with guarantees that there will be no flight of capital from East to West Pakistan, the guarantees being in the form of a separate reserve bank for East Pakistan;
4. Powers of taxation and revenue collection shall vest in the federating units, with the federal government to be provided with its share of taxes through levies of a certain percentage from all state taxes;
5. There shall be two separate accounts for foreign exchange earnings for the two wings;
6. A separate paramilitary force shall be set up for East Pakistan.
Between March and early May, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his lieutenants Tajuddin Ahmad, Syed Nazrul Islam, M. Mansoor Ali and Khondokar Moshtaque Ahmed barnstormed the province to drum up support for the Six Points. Governor Abdul Monem Khan, a zealous Ayub loyalist, threatened the Awami League leaders with imprisonment. On 8 May that year, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was detained under the Defence of Pakistan Rules. Most of his colleagues were hauled away to prison as well, leaving the party in the hands of its acting president Syed Nazrul Islam and acting general secretary Mizanur Rahman Chowdhury, who at the time was a member of the Pakistan national assembly. An embattled Awami League called for a general strike (hartal) on 7 June 1966 to generate support for the Six Points and call for the release of its detained leaders.
Mizanur Rahman Chowdhury played a highly assertive role as he prepared the demoralized party for the strike. At the same time, he and other Awami League MNAs raised the issue of government repression in the national assembly, thereby giving the Six Points a countrywide dimension. The government, for its part, compelled newspapers in both East and West Pakistan to refrain from publishing any news of the hartal. The hartal was nevertheless observed in totality throughout East Pakistan, a fact borne out by the deaths of a number of individuals through police firing. The following day, 8 June, newspapers carried only the government version of the previous day’s happenings. And the version was to portray the ‘violence’ of Awami League supporters on the streets.
Following the hartal, the Awami League decided, formally on 23-24 July, to launch the second phase of the movement in August. It was at this point that Amena Begum, secretary of the women’s branch of the Awami League, came in. She launched the second phase at a public meeting on 17 August 1966 in Chittagong. In the same month, she and Syed Nazrul Islam embarked on a tour of the province as part of a campaign to popularize the Six Point programme.
Much water was to flow under the bridge following the 7 June hartal. The regime went no-holds-barred in its policy of repression against the Awami League. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was charged with the treason, along with thirty-four other Bengalis in the infamous Agartala Conspiracy Case and placed on trial before a special tribunal in Dhaka cantonment on 19 June 1968. A mass movement against the regime forced it to withdraw the case unconditionally on 22 February 1969. The following day, 23 February, the fiery student leader Tofail Ahmed, on behalf of a nation grateful for Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s uncompromising leadership, anointed him as Bangabandhu, friend of Bengal before a million-strong crowd at the Race Course in Dhaka.
Ayub Khan relinquished power on 25 March 1969 and was succeeded by General Yahya Khan, the commander-in-chief of the army. As Pakistan prepared for its first general election in 1970, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman informed the country that the election would be a referendum on the Six Points. On 7 December 1970, the Awami League led by Bangabandhu swept the polls, winning what eventually turned out to be 167 seats in a 313-seat national assembly.
The Bengali nation had travelled a long way from 7 June 1966. History was on an irreversible course, a journey which culminated in the emergence of a sovereign Bangladesh following a nine-month war with Pakistan.
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Syed Badrul Ahsan writes on
politics, diplomacy and history