however, much some voters may have been in favor of considerable decentralization.
Two courses were open, as a result of this polarization into essentially regional parties. Either the constitution-making body was to be rapidly installed with no guarantee that its debates might be able to reconcile the different and highly polarized P9ints of view, or preliminary negotiations were to be carried out, with the assistance of the Government, so that when the Assembly met it would do so on the basis of a very broad consensus on the most sensitive issues at stake
Pressure Tactics
The latter course was taken and might have led to the desired results if party discipline had been able to keep control at the street level
But in actual fact, by March 1971, particularly in the Eastern Wing, pressure tactics of extremists had degenerated into mob-rule, which the caretaker administration was reluctant to deal with in a headlong confrontation, no doubt for fear of jeopardizing the delicate negotiations which were taking place
Errors of judgment there may have been on all sides in this but it is extremely unlikely that these were sufficient to explain the uncompromising fanaticism with which a small activist pressure group in the East Wing suddenly emerged and threw away its pretence of loyalty to the State and respect for its founder, and thus deliberately went out of its way to first wound and then provoke the patriotic sentiments of those majorities in East Wing who had voted for Pakistan twenty years previously.
In describing this anti-State group as small, I must make clear that it was small in terms of the Muslim population of East Pakistan, but in absolute numbers the anti-State group was much larger
Prelude to “Reunion"
The reason for this is, of course, the fact that about 15 per cent of East Bengal is Hindu amounting to over ten million persons. They never voted for or supported the Pakistan movement prior to 1947, and I think it would be reasonable to assert that a very substantial number of these Hindus welcomed enthusiastically the idea of secession as a prelude to either reunion with their co-religionists in Hindu India, or the establishment of a united republic composed of both West and East Bengal in which, once more, the Hindu element would be dominant
Clearly this was more likely to be successful by working behind the critical moment. Even thereafter during the mob-rule of March, 1971, it was more to their interest to incite and then join in acts against non-Bengalis at the street-level, to try to create hostility between Bengali and non-Bengali which would be beyond hope of repair
By March 23rd, namely Republic Day, which should have been an occasion for an affirmation of common loyalty to common ideals, mob-rule manipulated by a small
