If anyone gains from the sorry split, it will be India, which would face a greatly weakened adversary. Mujib has indicated that he would like to establish friendly relations with New Delhi and. particularly, with the Hindu Bengalis just across the border. He does not share West Pakistan's hostility toward India over the disputed territory of Kashmir. West Pakistan left with a smaller economic base and without the East's foreign exchange earnings, could not easily maintain as strong an army as the one thoughtful Indians could not regard their neighbor's troubles with too much satisfaction. India itself is. by no means, immune to the centrifugal forces of tribalism and many of its people remember all too well Nehru's recurring nightmare; a subcontinent alternating between periods of political unity and bloody interludes of division and strife.
"Raise Your Hands And Join Me"
When West Pakistani soldiers arrested Sheikh Mujibur ("Mujib") Rahman last week, they gave him a chance to add to an unenviable record. Mujib has already spent more time in prison than any other major Pakistani politician; nine years and eight months.
What makes the Sheikh so unpopular with West Pakistanis is the fact that for more than 23 years he has been the leading advocate of Purbadesh (regional autonomy) for East Pakistan. In last December's elections, Purbadesh was Mujib's chief issue. After visiting the cyclone, devastated Ganges Delta region just before the general elections, he declared: “If the polls bring us frustration, we will owe it to the million who have died in the cyclone to make a supreme sacrifice of another million lives, if need be, so that can live as free people."
Grey-haired, stocky and tall for a Bengali (6ft.) the bespectacled Mujib always wears a loose while shirt with a black, sleeveless, vest like jacket. A moody man. he tends to scold Bengalis like so many children. He was born in the East Bengal village of Tongipara 51 years ago to a middle class landowner (his landlord status accounts for the title of Sheikh). Mujib studied liberal Arts at Calcutta's Islamia College and Law at Dacca University. He lives with his wife Fazilatunnesa, three sons and two daughters in a modest two-storey house in Dacca's well-to-do Dhanmondi section. Except for a brief stint as an insurance salesman, he has devoted most of his time to politics. First he opposed British rule in India. After the subcontinent's partition in 1947, he denounced West Pakistan's dominance of East Pakistan with every bit as much vehemence. “Brothers", he would say to his Bengali followers, “do you know that the streets of Karachi are paved with gold? Do you want to take back that gold? Then raise your hands and join me.” He was first jailed in 1948, when he demonstrated against Pakistan Founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah for proclaiming Urdu the new nation's lingua franca.
Yet he has remained, in many respects, a political moderate. He is a social democrat who favors nationalizing major industries, banks and insurance companies. In foreign exchange policy too, he follows a middle course. Where West Pakistan's Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto favors closer ties with China and the Soviet Union and is stridently anti-Indian, Mujib would like to trade with India and is regarded as moderately pro-Western.
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