History of East Pakistan

Post-partition difficulties , where majority of the Muslim population (green) concentrated in the western frontier part and eastern Bengali part of the empire. This was the basis which the state of Pakistan was formed in 1947.East Pakistan was the lone province in Pakistan where most of the Hindu minority was concentrated, where they constituted 25% of the population. 12 out of the 14 Hindu members of Pakistan's Constituent Assembly came from East Bengal. However, the 1950 East Bengal riots, often classified as a genocide, & the deliberate inactions of the new Governor General Khwaja Nazimuddin & Chief Minister Nurul Amin in quelling the riots, caused most of the Hindus of East Pakistan to migrate to India. The deadly anti-Hindu violence caused all 34 Hindu members of the East Bengal Legislative Assembly & 12 Hindu members of the Constituent Assembly to abandon their positions & migrate to India, with notable figures like Jogendranath Mandal, the Law Minister appointed by Jinnah, being among them. A peasant revolt also occurred in Rajshahi but was quickly suppressed. Bengali language movement for the honour of state language for Bengali One of the most divisive issues confronting Pakistan in its infancy was the question of what the official language of the new state was to be. Muhammad Ali Jinnah yielded to the demands of refugees from the Indian states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, who insisted that Urdu be Pakistan's official language, as the language's central role in assertion of Muslim identity had been solidified since the Hindi-Urdu controversy. Speakers of the languages of West Pakistan (Punjabi, Sindhi, Pashto, and Baluchi) were upset that their languages were given second-class status. In East Pakistan, the dissatisfaction quickly turned to violence. The Bengalis of East Pakistan constituted a majority (an estimated 54%) of Pakistan's entire population. Their language, Bengali, like Urdu, belongs to the Indo-Aryan language family, but the two languages have different scripts (Bengali being written in the Brahmic Bengali-Assamese script while Urdu using the Perso-Arabic Nastaliq script) and literary traditions. The unpopular proposal of Education Minister Fazlur Rahman of writing Bengali in the Nastaliq script as a compromise was seen as a step of Islamisation by the East Bengali masses. Nevertheless, adult education centres were opened in East Pakistan to train Bengalis into learning their mother tongue devoid of Sanskrit loanwords (which were condemned as kafir influence) & written in Nastaliq script. Jinnah visited East Pakistan on only one occasion after independence, shortly before his death in 1948. Jinnah's views were not accepted by most East Pakistanis. On 27 January 1952, Khwaja Nazimuddin unilaterally declared on his speech at Dhaka's Paltan Maidan that the government of Pakistan had decided to make Urdu as the sole national language & that in future the government would encourage the imposition of the Nastaliq script for writing Bengali. The speech, although delivered in Bengali, was reportedly written in the Nastaliq script, since Nazimuddin, being a scion of the Dhaka's Nawab family, couldn't read, write or speak Bengali. All of Nazimuddin's close confidants like the Chief Minister Nurul Amin, East Pakistan Muslim League general secretary Yusuf Ali Chowdhury & Chief Secretary Aziz Ahmed were shocked at this declaration. This sparked of widespread demonstrations in East Bengal. On February 21, 1952, a demonstration was carried out in Dhaka in which students demanded equal status for Bengali. The police reacted by firing on the crowd and killing many students, most of whom remain unidentified to this day (a memorial, the Shaheed Minar, was built later to commemorate the martyrs of the language movement). Two years after the incident, Bengali agitation effectively forced the National Assembly to designate "Urdu and Bengali and such other languages as may be declared" to be the official languages of Pakistan. out of 237 Muslim seats (total 309 seats) in East Bengal Legislative Assembly. The Muslim League had been overwhelmingly defeated in the 1954 provincial assembly elections by the United Front. Rejection of West Pakistan's dominance over East Pakistan and the desire for Bengali provincial autonomy were the main ingredients of the coalition's twenty-one-point platform. On April 3, 1954, Sher-e-Bangla A. K. Fazlul Huq formed a four-member United Front cabinet. The full cabinet was formed on 15 May. Huq took over as the Chief Minister of the province. But on 30 May 1954 the governor-general of Pakistan Ghulam Mohammad dismissed the United Front government, upon of accusations against A. K. Fazlul Huq of attempting secession. The East Pakistani election and the coalition's victory proved pyrrhic; Bengali factionalism surfaced soon after the election and the United Front fell apart. From 1954 to Ayub's assumption of power in 1958, the Krishak Sramik and the Awami League waged a ceaseless battle for control of East Pakistan's provincial government. ==1956–66==

1956: Constitution Prime Minister Choudhry induced the politicians to agree on a constitution in 1956. In order to establish a better balance between the west and east wings, the four provinces of West Pakistan were amalgamated into one administrative unit. The 1956 constitution made provisions for an Islamic state as embodied in its Directive of Principles of State Policy, which defined methods of promoting Islamic morality. The national parliament was to comprise one house of 300 members with equal representation from both the west and east wings. 1962: Constitution and education movement The new constitution promulgated by Ayub in March 1962 vested all executive authority of the republic in the president. As chief executive, the president could appoint ministers without approval by the legislature. There was no provision for a prime minister. There was a provision for a National Assembly and two provincial assemblies, whose members were to be chosen by the "Basic Democrats"—80,000 voters organized into a five-tier hierarchy, with each tier electing officials to the next tier. Pakistan was declared a republic (without being specifically an Islamic republic) but, in deference to the ulamas (religious scholars), the president was required to be a Muslim, and no law could be passed that was contrary to the tenets of Islam. The protest than turned violent in few days leading to use of force by law enforcements. 1964 Deadly campaigns of ethnic cleansing of Hindus broke out in East Pakistan in 1964 over fake news spread by the Ayub Khan regime that Indian forces had desecrated the Hazratbal shrine of Srinagar in the disputed state of Kashmir, stealing the enshrined relic of the Islamic prophet Muhammad's hair in process. This caused a large scale exodus of Hindus into India, which in turn sparked of retaliatory violence. Economic issues During the years between 1960 and 1965, the annual rate of growth of the gross domestic product per capita was 4.4% in West Pakistan versus just 2.6% in East Pakistan. Furthermore, Bengali politicians pushing for more autonomy complained that much of Pakistan's export earnings were generated in East Pakistan by the export of Bengali jute and tea. As late as 1960, approximately 70% of Pakistan's export earnings originated in the East Wing, although this percentage declined as international demand for jute dwindled. By the mid-1960s, the East Wing was accounting for less than 60% of the nation's export earnings, and by the time of Bangladesh's independence in 1971, this percentage had dipped below 50%. Mujib demanded in 1966 that separate foreign exchange accounts be kept and that separate trade offices be opened overseas. By the mid-1960s, West Pakistan was benefiting from Ayub's "Decade of Progress", with its successful "green revolution" in wheat, and from the expansion of markets for West Pakistani textiles, while the East Pakistani standard of living remained at an abysmally low level. Bengalis were also upset that West Pakistan, because it was the seat of government, was the major beneficiary of foreign aid. ==1966–71==

At a 1966 Lahore conference of both the eastern and the western chapters of the Awami League, Mujib announced his six-point political and economic program (on 5 February) for East Pakistani provincial autonomy. Mujib's six points ran directly counter to President Ayub's plan for greater national integration. Ayub's anxieties were shared by many West Pakistanis, who feared that Mujib's plan would divide Pakistan by encouraging ethnic and linguistic cleavages in West Pakistan, and would leave East Pakistan, with its Bengali ethnic and linguistic unity, by far the most populous and powerful of the federating units. Ayub interpreted Mujib's demands as tantamount to a call for independence. After pro-Mujib supporters rioted in a general strike in Dhaka, the government arrested Mujib in January 1968. Ayub suffered a number of setbacks in 1968. His health was poor, and he was almost assassinated at a ceremony marking ten years of his rule. Riots followed, and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was arrested as the instigator. At Dhaka a tribunal that inquired into the activities of the already-interned Mujib was arousing strong popular resentment against Ayub. A conference of opposition leaders and the cancellation of the state of emergency (in effect since 1965) came too late to conciliate the opposition. On February 21, 1969, Ayub announced that he would not run in the next presidential election in 1970. A state of near anarchy reigned with protests and strikes throughout the country. The police appeared helpless to control the mob violence, and the military stood aloof. At length, on March 25 Ayub resigned and handed over the administration to the commander in chief, General Agha Mohammad Yahya Khan. Once again the country was placed under martial law. campus during the mass protests and riots of 1969 General Yahya assumed the titles of Chief Martial Law Administrator and President. He announced that he considered himself to be a transitional leader whose task would be to restore order and to conduct free elections for a new constituent assembly, which would then draft a new constitution. He appointed a largely civilian cabinet in August 1969 in preparation for the election, which was scheduled to take place in December 1970. Yahya moved with dispatch to settle two contentious issues by decree: the unpopular "One Unit" of West Pakistan, which was created as a condition for the 1956 constitution, was ended; and East Pakistan was awarded 162 seats out of the 300-member National Assembly. On November 12, 1970, a cyclone devastated an area of almost of East Pakistan's mid-coastal lowlands and its outlying islands in the Bay of Bengal. As many as 250,000 lives were lost. Two days after the cyclone hit, Yahya arrived in Dhaka after a trip to Beijing, but he left a day later. His racist contempt towards Bengalis exposed by the seeming indifference to the plight of Bengali victims caused a great deal of animosity. Yahya Khan blamed the Indian government for refusing to allow Pakistani helicopters carrying relief materials to reach East Pakistan to fly over Indian airspace, which the Indian government denied. Opposition newspapers in Dhaka accused the Pakistani government of impeding the efforts of international relief agencies and of "gross neglect, callous inattention, and bitter indifference". Mujib, who had been released from prison, lamented that "West Pakistan has a bumper wheat crop, but the first shipment of food grain to reach us is from abroad" and "that the textile merchants have not given a yard of cloth for our shrouds". "We have a large army", Mujib continued, "but it is left to the British Marines to bury our dead". He added, "the feeling now pervades... every village, home, and slum that we must rule ourselves. We must make the decisions that matter. We will no longer suffer arbitrary rule by bureaucrats, capitalists, and feudal interests of West Pakistan." Yahya had announced plans for the December 7 national election, and urged voters to elect candidates who were committed to the integrity and unity of Pakistan. The elections were the first in the history of Pakistan in which voters were able to elect members of the National Assembly directly. In a convincing demonstration of Bengali dissatisfaction with the West Pakistani regime, the Awami League won all but two of the 169 seats allotted East Pakistan in the National Assembly. Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party came in a poor second nationally, winning 81 out of the 138 West Pakistani seats in the National Assembly. The Awami League's electoral victory promised it control of the government, with Mujib as the country's prime minister, but the inaugural assembly never met. The number of West Pakistani troops entering East Pakistan had increased sharply in the preceding weeks, climbing from a pre-crisis level of 25,000 to about 60,000, bringing the army close to a state of readiness. As tensions rose, however, Yahya continued negotiations with Mujib, flying to Dhaka in mid-March. Talks between Yahya and Mujib were joined by Bhutto but soon collapsed, and on March 23, Bengalis following Mujib's lead defiantly celebrated "Resistance Day" in East Pakistan instead of the traditional all-Pakistan "Republic Day". Yahya decided to "solve" the problem of East Pakistan by ordering extirmination of Bengalis. On the evening of March 25 he flew back to Islamabad. The military crackdown in East Pakistan began that same night. ==1971: liberation==

during the Bangladesh Liberation War On March 25, the Pakistan Army launched, Operation Searchlight, a genocidal crackdown which attempted to suppress Bengali nationalism. Within hours a wholesale attack had commenced in Dhaka, with the heaviest casualties concentrated on the University of Dhaka and the Hindu-inhabited areas of the old town. The Pakistan Army came with hitlists of Bengali intelligentsia (most of whom happened to be Hindus) and systematically killed several hundred Bengalis. Mujib was captured and flown to West Pakistan for incarceration. To conceal what they were doing, the Pakistan Army corralled the corps of foreign journalists at the International Hotel in Dhaka, seized their notes, and expelled them the next day. Simon Dring, a reporter for The Daily Telegraph who escaped the censor net, estimated that three battalions of troops—one armored, one artillery, and one infantry—had attacked the virtually defenseless city. Various informants, including missionaries and foreign journalists who clandestinely returned to East Pakistan during the war, estimated that by March 28 the loss of life reached 15,000. By the end of summer as many as 300,000 people were thought to have lost their lives. Anthony Mascarenhas in Bangladesh: A Legacy of Blood estimates that during the entire nine-month liberation struggle more than one million Bengalis may have died at the hands of the Pakistan Army. The West Pakistani press waged a vigorous but ultimately futile campaign to counteract newspaper and radio accounts of atrocities. One paper, the Morning News, even editorialized that the armed forces were saving East Pakistanis from eventual Hindu enslavement. The civil war was played down by the government-controlled press as a minor insurrection quickly being brought under control. After the tragic events of March, India became vocal in its condemnation of Pakistan. An immense flood of East Pakistani refugees, between 8 and 10 million according to various estimates, fled across the border into the Indian state of West Bengal. In April, an Indian parliamentary resolution demanded that Prime Minister Indira Gandhi supply aid to the rebels in East Pakistan. Mr. K.C. Pant, being the state minister for Home Affairs was assigned the responsibility of handling the situation of refugees in West Bengal. Upon Mr. Pant's recommendation She complied but declined to recognize the provisional government of independent Bangladesh. A propaganda war between Pakistan and India ensued in which Yahya threatened war against India if that country made an attempt to seize any part of Pakistan. Yahya also asserted that Pakistan could count on its American and Chinese friends. At the same time, Pakistan tried to ease the situation in the East Wing. Belatedly, it replaced Tikka, whose military tactics had caused such havoc and human loss of life, with the more restrained Lieutenant General A.A.K. Niazi. A moderate Bengali, Abdul Malik, was installed as the civilian governor of East Pakistan. These belated gestures of appeasement did not yield results or change world opinion. On December 4, 1971, the Indian Army, far superior in numbers and equipment to that of Pakistan, executed a three-pronged pincer movement on Dhaka launched from the Indian states of West Bengal, Assam, and Tripura, taking only 12 days to defeat the 90,000 Pakistani defenders. The Pakistan Army was weakened by having to operate so far away from its source of supply. The Indian Army, on the other hand, was aided by East Pakistan's Mukti Bahini (Liberation Force), the freedom fighters who managed to keep the Pakistan Army at bay in many areas. On 16 December 1971, the Pakistan army wing in East Pakistan led by Niazi surrendered and Bangladesh was liberated. This day is celebrated in Bangladesh as "Victory Day" with more emphasis than Independence Day (26 March 1971). ==See also==