‘Cyclone Not Above Politics’ : East Pakistan, disaster politics, and the 1970 Bhola Cyclone

Abstract On 12 November 1970, the Bhola Cyclone swept across the southern districts of East Pakistan, killing over 300,000 people. Small islands were swept away and dead bodies of humans and cattle lay strewn across the devastated landscape. Following the news of the destruction, journalists, students, artists, and political workers rushed to the affected area with basic relief supplies, without waiting for the Military Law Administration (MLA) to intervene. The cyclone's occurrence just three weeks prior to the first general elections in Pakistan added a new dimension to the already simmering political crisis. The extensive media coverage of the disaster brought the pitiful state of infrastructural development and lack of governance in East Pakistan under local and global scrutiny. The cyclone and the corresponding issues soon became embroiled within the larger political demand for regional autonomy. The MLA came under attack from sections of East Pakistan's politicians, press, and public, as well as international political actors, for its poor disaster governance. This article uses the Bhola Cyclone of 1970 as the lens to explore the complex interconnections between environmental disasters and a key issue of governance. While the Bhola Cyclone has been a subject of recent discussions, this article uses a disaster-politics analytical framework to understand the disaster's role in the subsequent political turbulence and the emergence of Bangladesh.


Introduction
There is a broad consensus in the academic literature that the  Bhola Cyclone 2 played some role in the political dynamics leading to the secession of East Pakistan in  and the creation of Bangladesh. 3 Scholars have argued that the event was at least partially responsible for the extent of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (SMR)'s Awami League (AL)'s landslide victory in the first democratic election in Pakistan, held just three weeks after the cyclone. The subsequent refusal of the West Pakistan-based military junta (MLA) to allow AL to form a government was one of the factors that led to the Bangladesh Liberation War of . 4 Prior to the cyclone, SMR and AL were expected to do well, but their margin of victory exceeded expectations. 5 While, undeniably, the disaster's occurrence close to Pakistan's first general elections increased its presence in the political arena, it is difficult to quantify the impact of the cyclone upon final vote totals.
Specific arguments about why the disaster factored into the political situation cite governor of East Pakistan, Vice-Admiral S. M. Ahsan's lack of judgement for the Pakistani army's delayed mobilization-a move that caused the MLA international embarrassment. 6 Others have argued from a developmentalist perspective that the military junta's reluctance to develop a comprehensive programme in East Pakistan for disaster mitigation and management-which could have lessened the loss caused by the cyclone-was a prime example of a pattern of 4 Muhammad Rizwan, 'The Elections : From Ballot to Nowhere', Asian Journal of Social Sciences & Humanities , no.  (November ), . The author's perspective is too simplistic. The cyclone cannot alone be responsible for effecting the Awami League's landslide victory. It followed a succession of events that made the political effects far-reaching. And this was a long-drawn-out process that had witnessed the gradual integration of different sections of East Pakistani society since the anti-Ayub movement in . With the masses mobilized, subsequent events including the cyclone became part of the nationalist struggle. The absence of the MLA's intervention after the cyclone was not a figment of the imagination. It was accepted by the president himself at the Dacca press conference. For more details on the president's press conference, see Sydney H. Schanberg, 'Yahya Concedes "Slips" in Relief but He Defends Government against Charges', Special to The New York Times,  November , http://search. proquest.com.libezproxy.syr.edu/hnpnewyorktimes/docview//CD EPQ/?accountid= [accessed  August ]. Naomi Hossain, 'The Bhola Cyclone, Nationalist Politics, and the Subsistence Crisis Contract in Bangladesh', Disasters , no.  (version of record online: April ), -. 5 Foreign and Commonwealth Office Documents (FCO) FCO /. 6 Major General (Retd.) Khadim Hussain Raja, A Stranger in My Own Country: East Pakistan, - (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ), pp. -. The author was the general officer commanding  Division in East Pakistan and blamed General Ahsan, East Pakistan's governor, and the bureaucrats for not seeking the Pakistani army's help after the cyclone. The military administration was left embarrassed as international attention mounted prior to its resource mobilization in the affected districts, as did the news of its delayed interventions. S R AVA N I B I S WA S A N D P AT R I C K D A LY  strategic long-term neglect of East Pakistan and justified the need for a political alternative more in tune with the needs of the people in East Pakistan. 7 Although the literature on the history of Bangladesh discusses the calamity and draws general inferences about the cyclone's role in the general elections and in East Pakistan's secession, most of this research lacks a formal framework for evaluating how much we should credit the  cyclone for the political turbulence and the secession that followed.
There has been extensive discussion by disaster scholars about the political impact of disasters and post-disaster responses, which provides a useful theoretical context for studying the political implications of the Bhola Cyclone. 8 It is widely accepted that disasters can serve as arenas for change. 9 Pre-disaster institutions, practices, and assumptions are challenged and post-disaster rebuilding provides tempting 'opportunities' to enact transformation as stakeholders push to use the rupture caused by the disaster and the resultant expenditures to rebuild to shape new post-disaster realities. 10   spaces for the emergence of new actors within the political sphere and the construction of new forms of social contracts. 11 Pelling and Dill propose several ways in which disasters can impact politics and provide a model for evaluating the impact of disasters upon political systems. 12 According to them, a disaster can be a 'critical juncture' where political change occurs through contestation and after a 'tipping point' has been reached. 13 In this view, ruptures caused by the disaster within the political and social spheres contribute to a distinctive break in the pre-disaster political trajectory, allowing the emergence of new political actors, forms of political rhetoric, and policies. This model results in a break and a major transformation of the pre-disaster political situation. Alternatively, they propose that disasters (and disaster management) can be used by governments and other actors to assert authority and reinforce the power and roles of the state. 14 Pelling and Dill refer to this as an 'accelerated status quo', in which 'change is path dependent and limited to a concentration or speeding up of pre-disaster trajectories which remain under the control of powerful elites both before and after an event'. 15 In this article, we use Pelling and Dill's framework 16 for analysing the relationship between disasters and political change to see whether we can more precisely determine the role that the Bhola Cyclone played in the creation of Bangladesh as an independent nation state. We test the hypothesis that the cyclone was a critical juncture that led to the creation of an independent Bangladesh.
To test this, we structure our analysis of historical data related to the cyclone and political context obtained from declassified administrative documents, internatonal and vernacular newspaper reports, and archival materials based upon Pelling and Dill's model. 17 Their model proposes a cycle that starts with the historical/political context prior to the disaster to show how a disaster fits within a longer trajectory of development and power dynamics. In the second section, we provide a demonstrates, the  Sichuan earthquake provided the opportunity for the Chinese Communist Party to introduce the state-development plan in the affected areas. 11 The classic work that introduced this subject is Anthony Oliver-Smith, The Martyred City: Death and Rebirth in the Andes (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, ).
S R AVA N I B I S WA S A N D P AT R I C K D A LY  detailed discussion about the main political actors, policies, and political discourse in East and West Pakistan before the cyclone to establish the pre-disaster political momentum and trajectory. Following a disaster, their model then sees the potential for change shaped by the 'increased attention on development failures and asymmetry in the social contract' that occurs after a disaster-meaning the extent to which authorities are seen as effectively (or not) managing the crisis. 18 In the third section, we discuss in detail how the MLA's preparation for and management of the cyclone fed into long-standing narratives of neglect toward East Pakistan and emphasized the asymmetry of the power dynamic between West and East Pakistan. Their model then assesses how state and non-state actors mobilize, respond to the disaster, and 'champion, direct, counter, or capture evolving critical discourses'. 19 This asks whether the post-disaster situation supports the consolidation of pre-disaster power or allows the empowerment and/or emergence of new political actors. In the fourth section, we map out how state and non-state actors in both West and East Pakistan mobilized and reacted to the  cyclone and show how prominent political actors seized on the disaster to emphasize political grievances. Pelling and Dill propose that the accumulation of the above factors can feed into a 'renegotiation of human security' during which discourse about preand post-disaster politics becomes institutionalized-potentially leading to different forms of technical, policy, and political change. 20 In our discussion, we return to the core question of whether the disaster led to a fundamental change (or renegotiation) in pre-disaster political dynamics and therefore can be credited as a critical juncture that triggered a major political transformation that reshaped South Asia.

Understanding the politics: the rise of Bengali nationalism
It is essential to acknowledge that the path to East Pakistan's secession from West Pakistan and Bangladesh's independence started long before the cyclone and was marred by tensions over a range of complex issues. The creation of a separatist Muslim nation of Pakistan was based on the principle of regional autonomy laid out in the Lahore Resolution of , referred to 18 Ibid., p. . 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid.  often cited as the driving force behind the realization of Bengali nationalism. It is informed by two broad trajectories-the inevitable and the disparity theses.
The proponents of the inevitable thesis emphasize that the unique geographical arrangement, linguistic and other cultural differences, and ethnic biases led to the final secession of East Pakistan. 26 On the surface, Islam was the predominant justification for creating a 'cohesive' Muslim nation, but shared faith failed to overcome the vast and administratively awkward geographic separation between West Pakistan and East Pakistan (positioned on either side of India) or the sociocultural and ethnic differences among its disparate citizens. 27 For the Muslim elite at the helm of power in West Pakistan, the vision of Pakistan represented 'safeguarding and strengthening' Islamic heritage. 28 Linguistic politics began to mar the relationship between the units starting less than a year after Pakistan's independence. Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah's decision in  to forcibly establish Urdu as the lingua franca of Pakistan and dismiss the demands of the eastern wing's students to recognize Bengali as a state language set in motion the discriminatory politics that culminated in the Language Movement of . 29 Bengali nationalism emerged in the s around the secular linguistic symbol but, as scholars underscore, this was 'a nationalist ideology without a mass movement'. 30 The disparity thesis drew attention to the uneven infrastructural development and also to the systematic exploitation of East Pakistan. 31 In  years of shared nationhood, the eastern province was systematically impoverished and economically stripped-effectively a 'colony' supplying  raw materials to West Pakistan and acting as a market for its finished products. 32 East Pakistan's jute-dependent economy received a setback due to the systematic reduction of jute prices and the exploitation of peasants at the hands of jotedars (landlords). 33 East Bengal became the chief supplier of raw materials to West Pakistan, which included timber, along with spices and other commodities. 34 Despite East Pakistan earning - per cent of Pakistan's foreign exchange through the export of raw and manufactured jute, the lion's share of the income was invested in West Pakistan projects. 35 The disparity between the economic growths in the two wings of Pakistan intensified during the for a comprehensive discussion of the economic disparity and systematic exploitation of East Pakistani economy. 35 Rahman Sobhan, 'The Problem of Regional Imbalance in the Economic Development of Pakistan', Asian Survey , no.  (), . 36 Ibid., pp. -. 37 Rounaq Jahan, 'Ten Years of Ayub Khan and the Problem of National Integration', Journal of Comparative Administration , no.  (November ), -. While redressal of economic disparity between the two units was a major goal for the military junta, the investment policies implemented were inadequate. In the following years, development was touted as an important factor towards consolidating its power. However, as Jahan pointed out, discontentment against the junta was palpable in East Pakistan in the form of the increasing number of riots. 38 Ibid., pp. -. The author refers to the Pakistan army in the period of - as being less national due to the absence of East Pakistan's regiments. She attributes this lack of representation to the factionalism perpetuated by the military regime.


The politics of exclusion and the economic inequality, along with the widening gap between Pakistani bureaucratic-military state and Bengali politics, made the situation worse. 39 In late , ten years after the military coup, President Ayub Khan's 'decade of development' 40 faced serious challenges on both domestic and international fronts. The Indo-Pakistan war of  escalated the crisis and discontent among people in both the provinces worsened against the state-controlled press, the uncertain economic conditions, corruption, and concentration of wealth in the hands of few. 41 In , led by students in both the provinces, a popular movement spread from Rawalpindi in West Pakistan to East Pakistan that was forced to 'adopt unconstitutional and revolutionary methods for correcting imbalance in the country's body politic'. 42 What had begun with demands for reforms escalated into a full-scale movement resulting in the end of the regime. 43 The subsequent abrogation of the Constitution adopted in , the dissolution of President Ayub Khan's basic democracy tenets, and imposition of martial law by General Yahya Khan indicated the weakened condition of the military establishment. 44 On  March , General Yahya Khan, the commander-in-chief of the army, took over and, on  November, the new MLA chief announced Pakistan's general elections would be held on  October  and that West Pakistan was to be 'dis-integrated' into separate provinces. 45 Prior to the Bhola Cyclone, the East Pakistan political landscape was largely shaped by two men:  ensure 'unity in diversity and union without over-centralization'. 51 This was seen as an important mechanism to end the political and economic exploitation of East Pakistan and to allow local control over economic development. Importantly, however, SMR's platform stopped short of calling for independence for East Pakistan.
The mass movement of  in East Pakistan was characterized as a 'moment of truth' in its ability to radicalize East Pakistani society under the aegis of able regional leaders, thus taking advantage of the political protest against the Ayub Khan regime. 52 Moulana Bhashani once again took to the streets, protested against the regime, and supported the historic Eleven Points demands put forward by the student protesters. 53 His time-tested protest strategies of gherao (forceful encirclement of officials) and hartal (strike) became popular methods of protest during the movement. His presence facilitated the incorporation and participation of peasants and industrial workers in the subsequent movements.
The elections were initially scheduled for  October , but the MLA postponed it to  December  because of heavy floods in July-August in East Pakistan. The government machinery, the MLA cited, which was to implement important functions prior to the elections, was engaged in relief work. 54 The MLA's decision to postpone elections from October to December without consulting the political parties was not met with opposition. 55 However, the AL leader issued a statement to foreground that the postponement 'would not affect his party's position', but warned against further attempts to disrupt elections. 56 While President Yahya Khan's military administration expressed a willingness to transfer power to a democratically elected government, in reality, it was less inclined to relinquish its control over politics. 57 57 Raghavan, , 'Preface'. The president could not believe the election outcome-the fact that Sheikh Mujibur Rahman won a landslide victory was unprecedented for the president.  it or not', 58 rumours suggested the president and his advisers were posed against it. 59 In a secret memorandum, dated  September , to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the defence adviser in the British High Commission at Rawalpindi expected the army 'to hold a position of decisive influence' as political violence escalated in the run-up to the elections. 60 In fact, it was widely held that 'any political party in power must have the full support of the Army or they [the army] will continue to run things themselves'. 61 At the time of the general elections of , SMR and the AL were posed as the popular choice to win and SMR was hailed covertly by both the United States of America and the United Kingdom as East Pakistan's undisputed political leader. The MLA too was acutely aware of his growing political clout in the eastern wing following his acquittal from the Agartala Conspiracy Case in  amidst overwhelming public protest. However, the MLA did not seem to accept the possibility that SMR could muster enough support to take control of the Pakistan government. 62 The stage was set for one of the parties to be proven wrong.
In the two decades leading up to the cyclone, the political relationship between West and East Pakistan was strained, with the majority Bengali-speaking population in East Pakistan frustrated by exploitation and neglect by the MLA, and demanding more autonomy over local affairs. The position of the West Pakistan elite, led by the MLA, is complicated and in some ways suffered from a major internal contradiction. There was clear rhetoric about democracy and allowing the elections to determine how power was shared between both units. However, it is clear that West Pakistan and the military would not accept any threats to the territorial integrity of Pakistan and had a limited appetite for genuine power sharing with East Pakistan. In , the political situation was tense, volatile, and highly uncertain. Then, three weeks before the election was scheduled to be held, the cyclone hit.

Attention to development failures and asymmetrical relations
As discussed in the previous section, many within East Pakistan had long been discontented by the imbalanced allocation of resources and the perception that West Pakistan neglected and exploited East Pakistan. In this section, we examine the MLA's actions prior to and immediately after the cyclone. We show that the MLA was widely criticized both in East Pakistan and internationally for its failure to adequately prepare for the cyclone (disaster mitigation), its reluctance to declare a national emergency, and its 'lack of urgency' in relief distribution (disaster management). We argue that this fell within a long pattern of neglect for East Pakistan and became a major source of frustration in East Pakistan after the cyclone that most likely factored into the emotions and politics surrounding the elections.

Existing protective measures
The Bhola Cyclone's massive casualty figure drew attention to the uneven state of infrastructure development in East Pakistan. In a relatively less destructive cyclone in  in East Pakistan, the military regime's active intervention led to the formulation of the Emergency Standing Orders in  and , respectively. 63 Issued by the Relief and Rehabilitation Department, these orders gave detailed directives to officers in charge at every level for relief distribution to minimize delay at such times of exigency. 64 After the  cyclone, Gordon Dunn, a specialist from the National Hurricane Center in Miami, was brought in to advise the government on cyclone-mitigation efforts and he identified a warning service in isolated areas as a difficult problem. 65 66 However, eye-witness accounts after the Bhola Cyclone reported the absence of cyclone shelters and in some cases pucca (concrete) houses of affluent villagers acted as impromptu shelters for the survivors. 67 The Cyclone Emergency Standing Orders assigned duties to officials within a strict hierarchy and specifically warned against entrusting disaster aid in the hands of private individuals. 68 In another official Cyclone Code released in July , emphasis was laid on the Meteorological Department's warning system and precautionary measures to be adopted by different departments and agencies to reduce time to distribute relief. 69 There is, however, no evidence to suggest any activity on the recommendations.
Heavy floods in July  exposed the ineffectiveness of the hyped Flood Action Plan (FAP) in East Pakistan. Flood control was a serious demand and featured prominently in the Eleven Points Program and the FAP received substantial media attention. In reality, as the  floods demonstrated, the project did not receive the allocated funds from the government and frustrations mounted over the 'paper promises and bureaucratic bungling'. 70 Even the international media were apprehensive of popular backlash against the MLA's repeated neglect of long-term disaster-mitigation interventions towards floods and cyclones. 71 In late October , following the heavy rains and cyclone that killed  station failed to record the cyclone even when it was close to the coast. 72 Newspapers like Pakistan Observer and Purbadesh insisted that the NESC (National Environmental Satellite Center) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Washington, DC warned the Pakistan government of the impending cyclone several days before the cyclone actually made its landfall in Bhola. 73 In East Pakistan, Muhammad Samiullah, director of the Pakistan Meteorological Department, claimed that the danger-level warning issued by the government was 'accurate'. 74 However, multiple sources reported that, prior to the Bhola Cyclone, Pakistan's Meteorological Department failed to issue adequate warnings as well as accurate danger-level signals to inhabitants in the coastal districts. In most cases, coastal residents were not informed of the impending danger and were unable to save their cattle. 75 Given the remote terrain and unavailability of a mass-communication medium, systematic evacuation was out of the question. 76 The department's delay in information dissemination perplexed the press and public, given its previous records. One such newspaper report observed several discrepancies in relation to the warning signals. It pointed out: People were not, as on previous occasions asked to take shelter in community centers, pucca [concrete] schools or other places comparatively safe. And that the Radio changed its traditional system and did not give the danger signal number that usually accompanies storm warnings and indicates how serious the storm is going to be. The usual procedure of announcing a warning by beat of drum in the cyclone zone was also not reportedly followed. 77 72 Purbadesh,  November , p. . 73 Pakistan Observer,  November . 74 'Weather Prophet Says Warning Was Accurate', The Pakistan Observer,  November . In late October , following the heavy rains and cyclone that killed  people in Dhaka and the coastal districts, Purbadesh had reported the damaged radar station at Patenga, Chittagong to caution the authorities. At the time of the Bhola Cyclone, the unrepaired weather station failed to record the cyclone even when it was close to the coast. Purbadesh,  November , p. . 75 Interview record of a male survivor in Bhola Sadar in March . 76 The inadequate number of cyclone shelters also exacerbated the problem. During the fieldwork in the district in , people claimed they did not leave their homes because of the misleading signals on the danger levels. 77 Choudhury, 'All Quiet on the Southern Front', p. .

Response and disaster management
Almost immediately after the cyclone, the MLA was strongly criticized for its perceived lack of urgency and response. On  November, two days after the cyclone, Bhashani urged the military regime to declare a state of emergency. 78 However, the military administration resisted, despite additional and repeated demands for a declaration of national emergency from sections of East Pakistani society and international parties. 79 This was followed by extensive criticism of the MLA's failure to provide emergency relief. Ten days after the cyclone, international aid workers reported that the government response in remote areas including Manpura, Hatiya, and Chittagong was 'still non-existent'. 80 Twelve days after the cyclone, published newspaper photographs and reports showed relief goods piled up at the Lahore airport awaiting distribution. 81 84 From newspaper reports and eye-witness accounts, it is clear that there were extensive delays in delivering relief and some disaster-affected areas did not receive any relief. There were instances of survivors protesting against the delayed disaster aid. 85 Staunch criticism on the military regime's mishandling of disaster aid also came from its political allies: the governments of the United States of America and the United Kingdom. 86 The classified correspondence among the various governmental aides in the Nixon administration and the United Kingdom's Foreign and Commonwealth Office substantiated the charges of neglect brought by East Pakistani political leaders, press, and the public. On several occasions, officials from the respective governments expressed indignation at the military administration's lack of transparency and accountability. The American consul general in Dhaka, Archer Blood, relief officer Eric Griffel, journalists Walter Sullivan and Sydney Schanberg, and others who witnessed the cyclone's devastation first-hand were appalled at the government's apathy. 87 The Pakistani military junta's lackadaisical approach frustrated high level officials like Henry Kissinger, who did not want the administration to be seen to be 'supporting a loser'. 88 The United Kingdom's Foreign and Commonwealth Office, too, felt frustrated with the Pakistani military regime's 'lack of urgency'. 89 To avoid political antagonisms, the US and UK government officials were compelled to turn a blind eye publicly to the MLA's disaster response. However, their confidential letters and reports belied their 'official' political correctness and reveal their discomfort with MLA's response to the cyclone.
To make matters worse for the junta, the international community's rapid mobilization of emergency humanitarian assistance made the MLA's muted response even more conspicuous. 90 On  November 84 Personal interview of former reporter from Sangbad in Bhola Sadar. Bhola Sadar, which is located in the northern part of the then-subdivision (Bhola became a fully fledged district in ), was comparatively less affected by the calamity. The morning after the calamity ( November ), on visiting the subdivisional office, the officer in charge requested him to organize a relief party to distribute aid among those stranded in adjoining villages. 85 91 To minimize the delay in relief reaching Dhaka, the shah ordered safe air passage between Tehran and Dacca. 92 Also, he pledged support until the survivors received adequate relief and were rehabilitated effectively. 93 A resolution for generous contributions for emergency relief for East Pakistan was passed by  countries in the UN General Assembly. The resolution compelled the General Assembly to declare the 'present contingency arrangements were inadequate for relief in calamities of major magnitude'. 94 A large international relief operation was undertaken and warships, helicopters, and aircraft were mobilized by the governments of the United States of America, the United Kingdom, West Germany, Belgium, Turkey, and Switzerland. 95 The aid collected by the Red Cross from  countries amounted to £,. 96 Aid was even offered by India, Pakistan's arch rival, but the junta refused to accept the  mobile hospitals for cyclone-affected districts. 97 Given the international response and expedited mobilization of disaster aid for the cyclone survivors, the military junta's approach towards the survivors in front of the international community was termed as 'gross neglect, callous inattention and utter indifference'. 98 Agencies like CARE (Cooperative for American Relief Everywhere) severed ties with the Pakistani government due to lack of coordination. 99 Soon, other international aid organizations followed suit. The Pakistan Red Cross Society and Save-the-Children stopped working with the military authorities and decided to function independently. 100 The failures of the MLA to effectively distribute relief were widely reported by local and international media. 101 Somewhat belatedly, the MLA took a series of measures to counter these charges of ineptitude. The president had visited East Pakistan on  November  on his way back from a state visit to China. 102 Although he stayed for a couple of days in Dhaka before reaching Rawalpindi on  November , his first visit was marred by controversy. East Pakistan's press and political parties termed this brief controversial visit as 'apathetic' 103 and a petition signed by  East Pakistani politicians was sent to the president to request his presence in the province at the time of the crisis. 104 The media reported his being in an inebriated state during the aerial survey. 105 General Yahya Khan visited Dhaka soon after and flew to the southern districts to oversee relief efforts and discuss rehabilitation measures.
In response to mounting pressures, the president made a second visit to East Pakistan on  November . At a press conference on  November, the president clarified the administration's position on several of the charges brought against the government's response to the cyclone. The MLA chief countered the charges of the delay in relief distribution. Yet, it was at this press conference that the president was forced to accept the 'slips' and 'mistakes' in the MLA's relief efforts after the disaster. 106 Responding to questions on SMR's demand for regional autonomy following the cyclone, the president stated his full support for maximum autonomy so that the people of the province had in effect 'full charge of their destiny, planning and utilization of its resources within the concept of Pakistan'. 107 Commenting on the East-West growing schism and the prospect of eventual secession, the president denied and dismissed these allegations as the normal emotional response of East Pakistanis. 108 Despite the president's repeated assurances of effective post-disaster interventions, areas in Bhola remained without food after  days and contaminated water made a cholera epidemic imminent. 109 In response to a question from a journalist on whether timely deployment of the Pakistani navy would have saved lives, the president once again denied allegations of ineptitude and stated: 'I hope they [Awami League] come to power and do better. I have tried to do my maximum.' 110

Mobilization of state and non-state actors
In stark contrast to the MLA's seemingly apathetic response, the Bhola Cyclone's devastation and death toll generated massive societal response from a wide range of stakeholders in East Pakistan. University students, journalists, political cadres, and members of civil society, including intellectuals and artists, rushed to the affected districts with basic relief and there were instances of protest against the delayed interventions. 111 Bhashani insisted that every East Pakistani should devote themselves to relief distribution. 112 Even before the military government had