On 17 March 1971, newspapers in West Pakistan came forth with rich tributes to Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman on his 51st birthday. It was understandable, for at that point General Yahya Khan, in what would turn out to be his last visit to East Pakistan, was in Dhaka to negotiate with Bangabandhu on the means by which the escalating political crisis in the country could be resolved. In hindsight, though, it is clear that Pakistan’s second military ruler and his team were in little mood to accommodate the Awami League’s demand for a transfer of power to the elected representatives of the people and were in fact buying time before they could unleash the Pakistan army on Bengalis on 25 March.

March 1971 remains a tragic tale of suffering for the people of Bangladesh. The genocide, euphemistically termed Operation Searchlight, would lead to conditions where Pakistan would eventually collapse in its eastern province. For Pakistan, despite ZA Bhutto’s unwise comment on his return to Karachi from Dhaka on 26 March --- "Thank God, Pakistan has been saved" --- the road to disaster had already been taken. General Yahya Khan’s speech late in the evening (he had stealthily made his way out of Dhaka the previous evening) pinning the blame on Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and the Awami League for the burgeoning crisis, was for political analysts a broad hint that Pakistan was speedily sliding to disaster.

That was March 1971. In the broad perspective of subcontinental history, though, the month of March occupies a particular niche. Too much has happened in March. Indeed, the events occurring in the month call for meaningful research in all the three countries which today are the results of the partition of India in August 1947. We begin with March 1940, when the All-India Muslim League adopted in Lahore what would come to be known as the Lahore Resolution. The demand was ominous: In an act of communal separatism, the League was calling for independent states for Muslims to be set up in the east and west of the country. The term was "states," which was conveniently and quietly changed to "state" in 1946. Mohammad Ali Jinnah glibly explained that "states" had been a typing error, that "state" was the proper term in the resolution. Hence the creation of a single Pakistan.

March would have more substance added to it in the years to follow. The road to India’s vivisection took a giant leap forward with the arrival of Lord Mountbatten as the last British Viceroy in March 1947. He was in Delhi on 22 March and swiftly set about drawing up plans for India to be granted independence, albeit through the creation of two sovereign states out of one.

Mountbatten, with an eye on history as the man presiding over the end of British colonialism in India, was in a rush. He first spoke of June 1948 as the time for the colonial power to leave India. He then brought the date forward to August 1947. It was a decision that would lead to the death of two million people and displace no fewer than fourteen million Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs. Mountbatten’s decision for the British to divide India and quit was an invitation to cataclysm. The cataclysm could not be held back.

Following the creation of Pakistan, March took on added significance. On 19 March 1948, Pakistan’s founder and first governor general Mohammad Ali Jinnah travelled to Dhaka, where he spoke at a public rally at the Race Course and at Dhaka University’s Curzon Hall. His focus was on Urdu being the state language of the new country. His insistence that Urdu be adopted did not go down well with Bengalis, who formed fifty-six per cent of Pakistan’s population. In March 1954, elections in East Bengal led to the rout of the Muslim League and the victory of the opposition Jukto (United) Front. Sher-e-Bangla Abul Kashem Fazlul Huq, who had in 1940 moved the Lahore Resolution, formed a new ministry. Within a couple of months, however, the ministry was dismissed under a law known as Section 92A.

In March 1956, almost nine years after its creation, Pakistan had a constitution adopted by its constituent assembly. Providing for a parliamentary form of government and with provincial governments in East and West Pakistan (the four provinces of the latter having been absorbed into a single entity), the constitution did not last more than two years. The assembly was dissolved and the constitution abrogated when President Iskandar Mirza and General Mohammad Ayub Khan, the army commander-in-chief, imposed martial law on the country on 7 October 1958. Mirza would be forced into exile twenty days later and Ayub would not lift martial law till 1962, at which point his regime decreed a non-democratic constitution for Pakistan.

Pakistan’s preoccupation with March would not end. In March 1969, Field Marshal Ayub Khan resigned after a decade in power in the face of violent public agitation against his regime in both wings of Pakistan. On 25 March, power passed into the hands of the army chief, General Yahya Khan, who quickly dissolved the national and provincial assemblies and abrogated the 1962 constitution. In December 1970, Yahya Khan presided over what is even today regarded as the fairest election to date in either Pakistan or Bangladesh. But the results were quickly repudiated by Yahya Khan and his fellow generals. The consequences were grave: atrocities committed by the army in East Pakistan led to the emergence of the sovereign state of Bangladesh in December 1971.

In March 1973, Bangladesh held its first general election after the emergence of the country. Bangabandhu led the Awami League to a landslide victory, though charges of the vote being rigged in certain constituencies were aired in the public domain. No credible opposition took shape in parliament. On 24 March 1982, General Hussein Muhammad Ershad, chief of staff of the Bangladesh army, overthrew the elected government of President Abdus Sattar in a coup and placed the country under martial law. Ershad would stay in power for nearly nine years till December 1990, when he would capitulate before a nationwide agitation calling for an end to his rule.

In March 1977, both India and Pakistan went for general elections. The Congress of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, who had imposed a state of emergency in India in June 1975, was roundly defeated by a coalition of the opposition headed by the veteran political leader Morarji Desai. In Pakistan, the Bhutto government decided to go for the first election in the country since 1970. The results opened the floodgates to disaster for the ruling Pakistan People’s Party, which was accused of heavily rigging the election, so much so that even Prime Minister Bhutto was surprised by the scale of the rigging. Rising political agitation led to the fall of the Bhutto government in an army coup d’etat in July of the year.

In March 1996, Khondokar Moshtaq Ahmed, who had presided over the violent coup which led to the assassination of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and most of his family, died of old age ailments, thus escaping prosecution for murder and violation of the constitution. In March 2002, General Tikka Khan, who had ordered the Pakistan army into action against Bengalis in March 1971, passed away.

Thus the chronicles of a month which has embedded itself in the history of the Indian subcontinent. Thus a need for researchers and scholars to enlighten the young all across Bangladesh, India and Pakistan on the incidents and events which have shaped politics, or undermined it, in the three countries.