With the assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and members of his family, and memories of the Bangladesh Awami League's (BAL) authoritarian rule still fresh, the party was rapidly unravelling. Several of its leaders had already defected to the government of Khondaker Moshtaque Ahmed.
The political order that had dominated Bangladesh since independence was collapsing from within.
Moshtaque was the titular head of government, but his authority was limited. Rumours circulated that the military officers involved in Mujib's assassination were exercising power from Bangabhaban, reducing the presidency to something approaching a constitutional façade.
Outside the corridors of power, the consequences of BAL's suppression of political opposition were becoming apparent. Years of arrests, intimidation and political violence had created a dangerous vacuum. No opposition party possessed the organisational strength, national reach or institutional credibility to assume power and restore stability. Even a coalition of the surviving political forces would probably have struggled to govern.
Bangladeshis were consequently left looking towards the military, the only organised institution with the command structure and coercive capacity to impose order.
As tensions escalated in cantonments and barracks across the country, the struggle for political leadership increasingly centred on Dhaka Cantonment. Whoever emerged victorious, secured the loyalty of the armed forces and convinced the public that he was independent of the BAL and its perceived pro-Indian orientation would be positioned to lead the country.
The tragic fall of Khaled Mosharraf had already demonstrated the limits of personal charisma, professional competence, integrity and good intentions.
Mosharraf was an accomplished soldier and a distinguished commander of the Liberation War. Yet his credentials could not protect him from the factional rivalries consuming the army. His family's perceived affiliation with the Awami League, many suspect, deepened distrust among soldiers and gave rival groups, including Colonel Abu Taher's followers, an opportunity to organise a countercoup.
Within hours, the commander whose guerrilla operations had once terrorised Pakistani forces found himself abandoned. His fate was sealed in the very city where he had helped wage Bangladesh's war of independence.
To borrow a contemporary popular-culture analogy, Dhaka Cantonment had become a WWE-style Royal Rumble, except that the combatants were armed with rifles, bayonets, grenades and tanks. Most Bangladeshis were spectators, waiting anxiously to discover who would emerge from the military struggle.
By late afternoon on November 7, the outcome was becoming clearer.
The soldiers had rallied behind Ziaur Rahman, one of the country's most decorated military officers, recognised for gallantry by both Pakistan and Bangladesh. In an almost Platonic sense, he appeared the most disinterested of the principal figures caught in the confrontation.
They had chosen Zia over Taher and his followers, rejecting a revolutionary programme that threatened to turn military hierarchy into a theatre of internecine violence.
To many soldiers, the decision was less ideological than existential. It was not necessarily a contest between Left and Right. They may simply have recognised that continued fighting within the ranks would destroy the Bangladesh Army itself.
Had Taher's programme proceeded unchecked, Bangladesh might have witnessed the dismantling of its conventional armed forces and their replacement by a revolutionary People's Liberation Army. The alternative could have been prolonged civil conflict, institutional fragmentation or years of political instability.
Understanding the nuance here matters because subsequent accounts of November 7 have often treated Taher primarily as a tragic revolutionary hero. The Awami League's cultural and intellectual establishment helped make his rehabilitation fashionable. His courage, personal integrity and wartime contributions were celebrated, sometimes without comparable scrutiny of his political objectives or the methods he advocated.
Yet admiration for Taher's bravery cannot settle the question of what he intended to accomplish by encouraging enlisted soldiers to rise against, and even kill, their commanding officers.
Bangladesh's subsequent history offers a disturbing illustration of the dangers inherent in such violence.
Nearly 34 years later, in February 2009, a mutiny at the Bangladesh Rifles headquarters in Pilkhana resulted in the killing of scores of army officers. The massacre exposed the vulnerability of military institutions when discipline collapses and armed personnel turn against their commanders.
The circumstances of 1975 and 2009 were different, and the two episodes should not be treated as identical. But Pilkhana demonstrated how quickly violence within a military institution can become catastrophic.
In the impoverished and politically unstable Bangladesh of 1975, a prolonged breakdown of military command might have produced consequences far beyond a single mutiny.
An army stripped of experienced officers would have struggled to confront armed insurgent groups, including forces associated with the Qaderia Bahini. Rival factions could have contested territory and authority, weakening the state's capacity to defend its sovereignty.
Such fragmentation might also have invited foreign military intervention, potentially culminating in the restoration of an Awami League government dependent on external support.
These were possibilities rather than predetermined outcomes. But they were risks that Bangladesh, already weakened by political assassination, economic distress and institutional collapse, could scarcely afford. In one way or another, the country escaped that immediate crisis.
Ziaur Rahman subsequently emerged as the nation's reluctant political saviour, consolidating authority and eventually establishing a new political order. His rise did not erase the violence or contradictions of November 1975, but it ended the immediate contest that threatened to consume the army.
Lawrence Lifschultz's writings and Shahaduzzaman's fiction helped return Taher to public memory, ensuring that his revolutionary ambitions and eventual execution remained subjects of political and historical debate. Yet the recovery of Taher's reputation should not obscure the consequences of his actions during that turbulent November week.
His courage deserves recognition. His intentions warrant examination. But his willingness to encourage violence within the armed forces remains difficult to defend.
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Nayel Rahman is a political analyst