The decline of the Muslim league and the ascendancy of the bureaucracy in East Pakistan 1947-54

Abstract

This thesis looks at the career of the Muslim League in East Pakistan from 14 August 1947, the day it assumed political power, to the election of 8 March 1954, when it was massively defeated by a newly-formed United Front. Exploring the decline of the popularity of the League is one objective of the thesis. In the process, it also seeks to explain the nature of 'politics' in East Pakistan. In particular, the emergence of a state bureaucracy with paternalistic and undemocratic tendencies, is documented and analysed. This is shown to be a lasting legacy of the British Raj and of Muslim League politics in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). The process through which the bureaucracy grew stronger by the day also entailed the growing alienation of the people from both the government and the ruling party, the League. Explaining this alienation is another concern of the thesis. These themes are highlighted in a series of chapters devoted to certain specific and important issues that the League government had to deal with during its stay in power: politics of food procurement and distribution, abolition of zamindari and other exploitative feudal relationships, the problem of controlling water resources in a flood-prone country, and finally, the relationship between the people and the regulative institutions of the state such as the police and its auxiliaries. An examination of these issues usefully complements what students of East Pakistan politics have (rather selectively) emphasised so far: the Language movement of the 1950s, the crisis of federalism and problems of jute marketing. An argument is eventually built up on the nature of the state and 'nationhood' in East Pakistan. The preponderance of the bureaucracy in the colonial style of government, the peculiar history of Muslim nationalism in the subcontinent, the lack, in the League's history, of a tradition of anti-imperialist struggle and ideology, and finally, the weak nature of the ML's organisation and mass base, are all seen as factors that contributed significantly to the growing 'undemocracy' of which both East Pakistan, and later Bangladesh, were unfortunate victims.