Ecologies of Emancipation: The Mukti Bahini, Rivers and the Unravelling of Pakistan
Peasant guerrillas from the Mukti Bahini used their intimate ecological knowledge of Bangladesh’s waterways to liberate the country.
Mukti Bahini fighters navigating the rivers during the 1971 war. Photo: Prothomalo
In Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, Saleem Sinai, the central protagonist, is thrown along with other Pakistani soldiers into the Bangladeshi countryside during the country’s 1971 Liberation War. Their task is to hunt down Bangladeshi rebels, but they find themselves immediately lost. Navigating the numerous waterways under the inhospitable conditions of the monsoon, they find nature attacking them, even driving them to madness.
Rushdie’s vivid description of the experiences of Pakistani soldiers during the war reflects remarkably the harsh ecological realities they faced while combating the guerrilla freedom fighters of Bangladesh.
Known as the Mukti Bahini, these freedom fighters fought the powerful Pakistani army. They were composed of two very distinct populations. The first were the urban elite, mainly members of the Awami League, who formed the higher ranks of the Mukti Bahini.
The second population consisted of rural peasants. Many were recruited and trained by the urban elites to become the Mukti Bahini’s front-line armed combatants. Having lived and worked their entire lives around Bangladesh’s dense network of estuaries and rivers, these peasants knew them well. They also knew the complicated maze of thick forests and swamps that surrounded these waterways, as well as any dead ends. The peasant guerrillas used this intimate ecological knowledge to ambush the Pakistani army in strategic locations, which eventually paved the way for the liberation struggle’s success.
In their struggle for freedom, the Mukti Bahini transformed this ecology into a space of emancipation – and a mystifying labyrinth for the Pakistani army.
Mukti Bahini fighters walking through heavy monsoon floods in 1971. Photo: Londoni.co
The Waterways
Two-thirds of Bangladesh falls within the Ganges Delta, the largest river delta in the world. The delta consists of stretches of swamps and forests, and a dense network of rivers and streams. Bangladesh in fact has more waterways than roads, which means that most of the population relies on this extensive river network to navigate their everyday lives. People use these waterways to travel home, to school, and to work.
A polygon map showing the extent and spread of the Ganges river delta in Bangladesh. Every red line is a waterway. As the figure shows, waterways create a very complex system that is extremely difficult to navigate for an outsider.
Various movies depicting the landscape of Bangladesh have shown how people’s mobility in the countryside is dependent on these waterways. In A. J. Kardar’s film Jago Hua Savera (1959), for instance, the waterways are only the way people can access markets. Sometimes the only thing connecting people living in rural areas to urban cities is a waterway. Boat ownership is therefore also central to mobility and securing a livelihood, which the film also conveys.
Films also show the complexity of navigating the river systems. In Tareque Masud’s Matir Moina (2002), for instance, we see how travelers needed to change from one boat to another, navigating between primary and secondary channels, in order to reach a designated point.
When 1971 war broke out and the Pakistani army began committing genocide against the Bangladeshi population, these waterways and the surrounding forests also became sites of relief for peasants fleeing the army’s violence.
However, peasants also used this space to fight back.
The Guerrillas
Because of their complexity, the waterways were useful for resistance. Peasants from the Mukti Bahini used their knowledge of the complex waterways to their strategic advantage in their struggle against Pakistani soldiers. This intimate knowledge was in fact crucial to their success in the 1971 war.
Mukti Bahini guerrillas attempt to cross a waterway. Photo: Raghu Rai via Daily Star
Guerrillas took advantage of all the potential the landscape had to offer. They used the waterways and surrounding forests to both evade the Pakistani army and to also launch surprise ambushes.
We see this very clearly in the Bangladeshi film Guerrilla (2011). Various scenes show the fighters using the forest cover for camouflage and then ambushing Pakistani posts with great efficiency, even stealing their weapons. Not only that, we also see how the Mukti Bahini used the waterways to transport arms and ammunition, and also blew up bridges to impede the advancing Pakistani army. The guerrillas even had a contingent of frogmen or armed swimmers, who used the waterways to ambush the enemy.
Popular narratives about the 1971 war have rarely paid attention to the role of ecology – and peasants’ intimate knowledge of it – in the making of Bangladesh. Peasants made an ecological landscape they knew and loved into a central vehicle for emancipation. More than the Bengali elites and their bourgeois knowledge, it was ordinary peasants and subaltern knowledge that liberated Bangladesh.
Moiz Abdul Majid has a degree in politics and is interested in issues and ideas around space.