Competing Ideologies and Disaster: East Pakistani Politics and the Cyclone of 1970

On 12th November 1970 the coastal districts of East Pakistan witnessed a devastating storm- wave which killed almost 300,000 people. Small islands were swept away and dead bodies of humans and cattle lay strewn across the battered landscape. Following the news of the devastation, journalists, students, artists, and political workers rushed to the affected area with basic supplies. Since the cyclone occurred just three weeks prior to the first general elections in Pakistan, it added a new dimension to the already simmering political crisis. The disaster drew leading politicians like Moulana Bhashani and Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and the party workers from different political parties including the banned Communist Party of Pakistan (CPP) to Bhola.  In the following days the Bhola Cyclone ceased to be a ‘natural’ disaster and became a political event in the reports published in the provincial newspapers like the Ittefaq, Pakistan Observer, Purbadesh and others. This paper explores these narratives.  To Bhashani, who refused to contest the elections, the catastrophe symbolized the proverbial last straw of an unfruitful liaison between the two provinces under the military administration. To Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s Awami League, the calamity gave impetus to its growing popularity among the classes and the masses of the eastern province. To the CPP student activists, the disaster was an unprecedented humanitarian crisis, which necessitated immediate measures like the distribution of relief rations to normalize the situation. Interviews of political actors at different levels demonstrated the ways in which the disaster mediated the political rhetoric and transcended ideological barriers. The cultural artefacts produced during the disaster including photographs, poems and sketches, too, were replete with political meanings. Through a close reading of these sources the paper seeks to examine the disaster’s role as a catalyst for transforming the popular political outlook.