Why East Pakistan Became Bangladesh (Part 2)
Part 1- Economic Exploitation of the East
The Final Part (Part 4): Military and Politics
In this series of posts, I will highlight just a few of the many reasons why East Pakistan seceded from Pakistan and became Bangladesh.
Part 2: Language and Culture
Pakistan was an anomaly when the nation was created. Two wings, East and West, divided by 1000 miles of Indian territory. Yet, it wasn't just the vast land that separated the two wings.
West Pakistan had 5 primary languages: Punjabi, Pashto, Sindhi, Balochi, Urdu. Yet none of them could be used by a West Pakistani to converse with a man from East Pakistan who spoke Bengali. West Pakistani culture was influenced by Arabic and Persian, while East Pakistan's Bengali culture had influences from Sanskrit and Hindi. Food, music, culture - everything was different. Yet, even modern India has sizable populations speaking over 150 languages, 22 of which are official. So what went wrong for Pakistan?
As a side note: In modern day Pakistan, Urdu is officially understood and spoken throughout Pakistan, despite being the mother tongue of only 8% of the population.
Islam and Religion
At the creation of Pakistan, the religion of Islam was used as a glue to hold such a diverse nation together. In fact, one of the architects of Pakistan was a Bengali man called A.K. Fazlul Hoque (also called Sher-e-Bangla, the Lion of Bengal). It was he who presented the Lahore Resolution in 1940 that ultimate resulted in the creation of Pakistan based on religious lines. Being Muslim, and Islam the religion, was to be the unifying factor of Pakistan.
Yet, even Islam was different in between the two wings. In 1947 the Bengali Muslims had identified themselves with Pakistan's Islamic project. Yet by the 1970s the people of East Pakistan had given priority to their Bengali ethnicity over their religious identity. Many Bengali Muslims strongly objected to the Islamist paradigm imposed by the Pakistani state in the interim years. The history of Islam in Bengal has been strongly influenced with Sufism - a much less extreme, more tolerant variety of Islam, which allowed for a strong connection with cultural heritage, language and ethnicity.
Cultural discrimination also prevailed, causing the eastern wing to forge a distinct political identity. There was a bias against Bengali culture in state media, such as a ban on broadcasts of the works of Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore. And then there was the Language Movement.
The Language Movement and the birth of Ekushey
In 1947, almost immediately after the birth of the nation, the government of Pakistan declared that "Urdu should be the sole state language".
At that time, only 7.2% of Pakistanis spoke Urdu, while 55.4% of Pakistanis spoke Bengali.
Immediate protests erupted in East Pakistan. At the height of civic unrest, Governor-General of Pakistan Muhammad Ali Jinnah arrived in Dhaka on 19 March 1948. On 21 March, at a civic reception at Racecourse Ground, he declared that "Urdu, and only Urdu" embodied the spirit of Muslim nations and would remain as the state language. West Pakistani politicians even suggested Bengali be written in the Arabic script.
The culmination of the protests led to the famous killing of students on Feb 21, 1952. Today that date is marked worldwide as International Mother Language Day. Finally in 1954 the government of Pakistan relented and declared that Bengali will also be a state official language of Pakistan, which finally came into place in 1956.
The Effect of the Divide
The almost ten year struggle by Bengali Pakistanis to have the right to speak, converse, teach, and obtain government services in their own language, in their OWN country, further highlighted the differences between the two Wings.
It heightened the sense of alienation and 'otherness'. It was not the final straw that broke the camel's back, but it was one of the many in a series of unfortunate events that ultimately led to civil war.
PS. Interesting trivia: the famous Pakistani patriotic songs Sohni Dharti Allah Rakhay, as well as Jeevay Jeevay Pakistan are composed and originally sung by Shahnaz Rahmatullah, a Bengali artist.
To be continued ...
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