By Irfan Chowdhury

Dr Asif Iqbal’s literary critique of 1960s East Pakistan offers a timeless warning on the perils of hollow development.

History is often written by the victors, but the nuances of a nation’s unravelling can also be captured by its novelists. The 1960s are sometimes remembered in official Pakistan historiography as a ‘golden age’. It was an era when two-winged Pakistan served as a poster child for global development, attracting the enthusiastic patronage of international institutions like the United Nations and Western powers keen on cementing Cold War allegiances. Yet, beneath this veneer of concrete progress and macroeconomic triumphalism, the foundations of the state were rotting.

In an insightful essay, Dr Asif Iqbal, formerly visiting professor of English at Oberlin College and now professor at BRAC University, analyses Shawkat Ali’s seminal literary trilogy—comprising the novellas Dhakkhinayoner Din, Kulay Kalsrot, and Purba Ratri Purba Din. Spanning the critical years of 1965 to 1969, Ali’s trilogy documents the sweeping socio-political transformations in East Pakistan. 

Why is an academic exploration of a half-century-old Bengali literary trilogy essential reading today? Because it dismantles the persistent, dangerous myth that autocratic modernisation, stripped of social equity and political enfranchisement, can yield lasting stability. It is a cautionary tale of crony capitalism, systemic misogyny, and the hollow promises of foreign aid that remains strikingly relevant to developing nations today.

To understand the essay’s importance, one must grasp the geopolitical architecture of the era it scrutinises. The Ayub Khan regime (1958-1969) was obsessed with development, viewing it as a crucial signal to Western powers that Pakistan was a reliable bulwark against Soviet influence. Its western aligned policies enabled large inflows of foreign aid and investment including construction of hydroelectric dams and reservoirs that had displaced thousands of poor inhabitants (in the eastern wing, in Kaptai, Chittagong many indigenous people). The state embraced a capitalist modernisation agenda heavily subsidised by American aid, dovetailing with the United Nation’s ‘Development Decade’. This influx of capital was designed not merely to build infrastructure, but to blunt radical politics and national liberation movements, ensuring American access to emerging global markets.

However, as Iqbal’s essay highlights, this top-down economic programme resulted in a staggering paradox. While rural public works programmes were heavily publicised to project an image of poverty alleviation, the reality was a massive surge in economic insecurity for the vast majority of the rural and urban working poor. The state’s answer to rising regional inequality between West and East Pakistan was simply to enforce more “development”. This is the central tragedy the essay brings to light: development was weaponised as a tool of regimentation, a bureaucratic bludgeon used to pacify a restless populace while enriching a select few.

The rot of crony capitalism

The essay’s brilliance lies in its granular analysis of how this macroeconomic policy infected the moral fabric of society. Through the character of Hasan, an ambitious opportunist who abandons a secure government job for the cut-throat world of contracting, we see the true face of Ayub Khan’s ‘Decade of Development’.

Hasan is the archetypal rent-seeker, a man who views the nation’s business-friendly climate purely as a ladder for social mobility. The essay points out how an older, more principled generation, represented by the patriarch Rashed Ahmed, watches in dismay as the country devolves into a “society of contractors,” where every sector is driven by a transactional, contractual attitude. Hasan’s ascent is not built on innovation or genuine value creation, but on the ruthless manipulation of an entrepreneur-friendly environment. He overrides regulations, bribes officials at American firms like Cohen Miller, and cynically leverages joint ventures with West Pakistani elites to monopolise rural development projects.

Through Hasan, the essay exposes the dark underbelly of international aid. It demonstrates how global development missions had been inevitably manipulated by predatory local elites. When Hasan secures lucrative contracts—such as a fifty-lakh-rupee highway project near Kaptai—through bribery and fraud, it becomes evident that the much-lauded economic boom was merely a state-sponsored plundering of public resources.

Gendered cost of ‘modernisation’

Perhaps the most crucial contribution of the essay is its intersectional lens, linking this predatory capitalism directly to the exploitation of women. It is a common misconception that economic liberalisation advances women’s rights. The essay shatters this illusion through the harrowing experiences of Rakhi, a young, educated woman struggling to navigate this new “modern” economy.

Despite the expanding educational opportunities in 1960s East Pakistan, the spoils of development bypassed women like Rakhi, flowing instead to unscrupulous men. Worse still, the corporate environment is revealed to be deeply toxic. Hasan, who loudly proclaims that his business ventures contribute to women’s empowerment, routinely used his female employees as pawns to secure contracts, pawning them off to predatory officials and business rivals. In one particularly grim instance, he forced his secretary to provide sexual favours to an American supervisor to win a project.

By foregrounding these atrocities, the essay illustrates that the capitalist modernisation of 1960s Pakistan did not dismantle patriarchy; it merely weaponised it. It turned women into currency in the backroom dealings of a corrupt contractor class. Rakhi’s eventual rebellion—rejecting the patriarchal confines of her marriage and the predatory commercial sphere to champion women’s education and align herself with political radicals—serves as a powerful narrative of emancipation. Her journey reminds us that true development cannot be measured in concrete poured or capital accumulated, but in the liberation of the marginalised.

Verdicts of the history

Finally, Iqbal’s essay is vital for its unvarnished look, through the trilogy, at the ideological vacuum that allowed crony capitalism to thrive. While the opportunistic businessmen gorged themselves, the political left was paralysed by factionalism. Characters like the idealistic communist Shezan and Rakhi’s late brother Moni represent a generation of youth who sought a genuine socio-economic liberation but found themselves trapped in endless bickering.

The essay deftly contextualises this struggle in the novel, noting how the communist movement in East Pakistan was weakened by internal splits between pro-Beijing and pro-Moscow factions, and outmanoeuvred by the rising tide of bourgeois nationalism championed by the bigger and popular party. Shezan’s tragic demise and his failure to ignite a cohesive revolution underscore the fatal inability of the left to present a united front against the military-bureaucratic establishment. Yet, it is his unwavering conviction that ultimately inspires Rakhi’s political awakening, culminating in her decision to raise his child amidst the rising agitations that would soon tear the country apart.

Ultimately, the trilogy is an autopsy of a failed state-building project. It demonstrates how Hasan’s corrupt business empire, built on the back of the regime’s development policies, collapses the moment the political façade crumbles under the weight of the Agartala Conspiracy Case. When his West Pakistani investors flee at the first sign of genuine political unrest, Hasan is left facing financial ruin, proving that economies built on cronyism and political disenfranchisement are inherently fragile.

Reading this essay reminds of a novelistic trilogy that is an exercise in historical hygiene. It scrubs away the nostalgia that often clings to autocratic regimes and their supposed economic miracles. By synthesising the politics of development, the violence of patriarchy, and the tragedy of fractured radicalism in Shawkat Ali’s trilogy, this text offers a class in postcolonial critique. It is a reminder to modern policymakers and international aid organisations: when “progress” is measured solely by geopolitical alignment and GDP, while ignoring the rights of women, the integrity of institutions, and the political will of the people, the resulting edifice is not a nation. It is merely a waiting room for a revolution.

Irfan Chowdhury is an opinion writer. Dr Asif Iqbal was a Visiting Professor of English at Oberlin College, Ohio and now teaches at BRAC University, Dhaka. 

Read Dr Iqbal’s full essay here.