Introduction
It is widely argued that the demand to partition British India found its initial political expression among North Indian Muslim elites and landlords whose influence was gradually waning.Footnote 1 The feeling of “being different” from “others”, in reality or politically constructed, fueled the idea of a nation and nationalism that gradually led to the demand for a separate territory for Indian Muslims. Among others, print media played an important role in the spread or construction of religious consciousness, strengthening the feeling of separatism and the demand for a separate land by a section of Indian Muslims.Footnote 2
Both imagination and consciousness, spread via printed materials and other means, could not have become a reality, however, without the efforts of the All-India Muslim League (AIML), which prepared a favorable political environment for Pakistan mainly from the 1930s onward. The AIML became a powerful political force under the leadership of Mohammad Ali Jinnah, a former member of the Indian National Congress (INC). In 1913, two Muslim leaders—Maulana Mohamed Ali and Syed Wazir Hassan—met Jinnah in England and asked him to join the AIML in order to help to make the league more progressive and align its policy with that of the INC. That year, Jinnah formally enrolled in the AIML, although he viewed the league as a “great communal organisation” that was becoming a “powerful factor for the birth of United India.”Footnote 3 Jinnah was responsible for the INC–AIML joint session and the Lucknow Pact of 1916. In 1920, for various reasons, Jinnah left the INC at the Nagpur session.Footnote 4 After his resignation, Jinnah spent time in Hampstead, but he also served as a Muslim member of the Bombay Central Legislative Assembly and attended its meetings. In 1929, Jinnah drafted the fourteen points for any constitutional reforms, which also constituted the AIML’s response to the Motilal Nehru Committee report on a constitutional proposal seeking a dominion status for India.Footnote 5 He again became fully active in Indian politics in the 1930s after returning from London.Footnote 6 Many scholars who emphasize “high politics” and the role of leadership argue that Jinnah singlehandedly secured Pakistan.Footnote 7 Jinnah and other AIML leaders fostered a sense of nation among the Muslim community, even though there were also Muslim leaders who opposed the AIML and critiqued the idea of Pakistan.Footnote 8
I argue that well before the Muslim elites, landlords and middle class from northern India began demanding a separate land, and Jinnah led a political fight for the partition of India, a separate land was “imagined” and “invented,”Footnote 9 though not in a sovereign modern nation-state sense, by Bengali Muslim peasants in colonial East Bengal. As subalterns, they could not speak explicitly, but they expressed their political feelings, whether overtly or latently, by extending support to any group taking stand against the one they saw as the “oppressor.”Footnote 10 In some cases, the class-cum-religious feeling against the “other,” as discussed below, was also articulated through violence. It was Muslim peasants who provided a support base for their middle-class and landlord co-religionists, helping them raise political demands.
However, such “invention” and “imagination” could not become a political reality without support from the North Indian and Punjabi Muslim landlords and masses. While explaining the role of Punjabi Muslims in the partition is beyond the scope of this paper, a brief history of Punjab in the 1940s is necessary to understand the prevailing situation at the time. The AIML found support among rural elites who had earlier supported the Unionist Party. Indeed, by early 1946, one-third of the Unionist Party’s landlord members had left to join the AIML.Footnote 11 The AIML also received strong support from revivalists Sajjda Nashins (spiritual heads of shrines, or khanaq) in rural areas.Footnote 12 The death of Mian Fazli Hussain in 1936, Sikander Hayat Khan in 1942, and Chhotu Ram in 1945 weakened the Unionist Party. While Khizir Hayat Tiwana was an effective leader, the prevailing political and social situation meant he could not curb the AIML’s growing influence or the spread of religious tensions in Punjab. Neither landlords nor Pirs deserted the Unionists until 1944. The failure of talks between Khizir and Jinnah provided an option to Punjabi Muslims, many of whom chose the AIML over the Unionists. Such a change was reflected in the AIML’s decisive victory in the 1946 elections. Unlike in 1937, when the AIML ran candidates for seven of the eighty-five Muslim seats and won only two, the AIML won seventy-five Muslim seats in 1946.Footnote 13 Still, the AIML had to sit in opposition, as it did not have a majority in the 175-member Punjab province legislature. The Unionists (twenty-one seats), under Khizir, formed a government with the help of the INC (fifty-one seats) and the Shiromani Akali Dal (twenty seats). In January 1947, Khizir Hayat banned the AIML National Guard and the Rashtriya Swyamsevak Sangh.Footnote 14 However, the government could not last long due to the communal and political situation in Punjab, and Khizir resigned on 2 March 1947. Sir Evan Jenkins, the Governor of Punjab at the time, took direct control of the province until the last days of united Punjab.
Unlike in Punjab, complicated class-religion-caste symbiotic ties, discrimination, and tensions had, for a long time, convinced some of the poor and a small section of the Muslim middle class and elites in Bengal that they were “different” people who needed a separate land. It was Salimullah Khan, Nawab of Dacca (or Dhaka), under whom the AIML was formed in 1906. Before the AIML, the Mohammedan Educational Conference, founded by Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, served as the political parliament of Indian Muslims. The AIML had three objectives: to promote loyalty towards the British colonial rulers among Muslims; to protect and advance the political rights of Indian Muslims; and to prevent the rise of hostility among the Mussalmans of India or towards other communities.Footnote 15
This article utilizes qualitative research methods in interpreting primary sources related to the partition of India, including Pakistan Constituent Assembly debates, published documents, and statements by prominent leaders from East and West Pakistan, as well as critical secondary sources such as books and journal articles. This article mainly argues that Bengali-speaking Muslims from East Bengal, not North Indian or Punjabi Muslims, were the first to “imagine” a separate territory in colonial India. Following on, the second argument is the stubbornness of the majoritarian group and leadership in West Pakistan in not recognizing, accepting, respecting, and accommodating a number of identity-based differences, constructed and developed a sense of a separate nation among East Pakistan’s Bengali-speaking population.Footnote 16 Bengali speakers’ self-identification as different people, their identification as such by West Pakistanis, and the serious economic grievances of East Pakistanis eventually led to civil war and the liberation of Bangladesh. The political events of the late 1950s onwards that added to grievances between East and West Pakistan and eventually led to Bangladesh’s liberation in 1971 are beyond the scope of this article, which primarily examines the period between 1947–1956 to support the above arguments.
Bengal and an “imagination” of Pakistan
In colonial India, secular and religious forms of nationalism ran in parallel. Bayly finds that the past was “invented” by the INC leaders, in that they summoned up the nation as a static, timeless ideal more or less equivalent to other national entities, inflected by little that is specifically Indian.Footnote 17 For Veer, Indian nationalism has been fed by the religious identification of people belonging to Hinduism, Islam, and other faiths since the 19th century.Footnote 18 The signs, symbols, and narration used to promote that form of nationalism were divisive. Anandmath (1882) by Bankimchandra Chatterjee, one of the initial writings on Indian nationalism, is one such example.Footnote 19 Anandmath mainly imagines a Hindu nation with no place for communities considered foreign, such as Muslims and Christians.Footnote 20 Even Sharat Chandra Chattopadhyay, another leading Bengali novelist, in an essay titled “Bartman Hindu-Mussalman Samaya” (Contemporary Hindu–Muslim Problems), believed that lack of “culture” accounts for “the brutality, barbarism and fanaticism” in Muslims.Footnote 21 On Hindus’ attitude towards Muslims in Bengal, Nirad C. Chaudhari (1897–1999), an eminent Indian writer, who was equally critical of Muslim communalism, wrote:
When we were very young, that is to say when the Swadeshi movement had not coloured our attitude to the Muslims, we presented four distinct aspects in our attitude towards them as it was shaped by tradition. In the first place, we felt a retrospective hostility towards the Muslims for their one-time domination of us, the Hindus; secondly, on the plane of thought we were utterly indifferent to the Muslims as an element in contemporary society; thirdly, we had friendliness for the Muslims of our own economic and social status with whom we came into personal contact; our fourth feeling was mixed concern and contempt for the Muslim peasant, whom we saw in the same light as we saw our low-caste Hindu tenants, or, in other words, as our livestock. Of these four modes of feeling the first was very positive and well-organized intellectually; the rest were mere habits, not possessing very deep roots.Footnote 22
How Hindus looked at and treated Muslims as a polluted “other” alienated a large section of poor Muslims in colonial India.Footnote 23 Writing in Indian Opinion on 4 November 1905, Mohandas Gandhi cited a cablegram that later appeared in a newspaper, stating that around 20,000 Muslims had gathered in Dhaka in support of the partition of Bengal.Footnote 24 On the class character of the Swadeshi movement (1905–11), Sarkar argues: “despite much talk about the need for mass awakening, the Swadeshi movement of 1905–8 seldom got beyond the confines of Hindu upper caste bhadralok groups —students, journalists, teachers, doctors, and lawyers who very often had a link with rentier interests in land in the form of zamindari or intermediate tenure-holding.”Footnote 25 In the Swadeshi and anti-Bengal division movement, Muslims also restrained themselves because of the prevalent use of Hindu symbols, such as the Shivaji festival, Ganesh puja, etc., by the movement’s Hindu leaders to unite people. The use of religious slogans also caused communal violence in parts of the province, such as that which occurred at Jamalpur in 1907.Footnote 26 Besides feeling alienated, many Muslims, particularly from East Bengal, were lured by the colonialist promise to make Bengal better “governed” by reducing the administrative burden on Calcutta and expanding state operations in the province’s deltaic hinterland. The British also argued that the division was an attempt to strengthen administration in the hinterland, increase tax collection and resource extraction, enforce law and order, and improve infrastructure in the relatively “backward” Bengal delta.Footnote 27 The colonial rulers discussed their plan to develop Dhaka and Chittagong as important centers of the region through such a partition.Footnote 28
The division of Bengal in 1905 found support among a section of Bengali Muslims in East Bengal. The British colonial government argued that an area of about 189,000 square miles and a population of 78.5 million had become ungovernable.Footnote 29 However, the real objective behind the decision was to weaken the tenuous unity between Hindus and Muslims during the ongoing Swadeshi movement.Footnote 30 The INC opposed the division of Bengal in a resolution at its Banaras session in 1905, stating:
That this Congress records its earnest and emphatic protest against the repressive measures which have been adopted by the authorities in Bengal after the people there had been compelled to resort to the boycott of foreign goods as a last protest and perhaps the only constitutional and effective means left to them of drawing the attention of the British public to the action of the Government of India in persisting in their determination to partition Bengal in utter disregard of the universal prayers and protest of the people.Footnote 31
The AIML resolution, on the other hand, extended support to the division of Bengal, stating:
[It is] resolved that this meeting, in view of the clear interest of the Musalmas of Eastern Bengal, considers that the partition is sure to prove beneficial to the Mohameddan community which constitutes the vast majority of that Province and that all such methods of agitation as boycotting should be strongly condemned and discouraged.Footnote 32
However, due to the strong INC-led protest against the partition of Bengal, the British government finally annulled its decision in 1911. On this annulment, the AIML resolution read: “The All-India Muslim League places on record a deep sense of regret and disappointment at the annulment of the partition of Bengal in utter disregard of Muslim feeling, and trusts that the Government will take early steps to safeguard Muslim interests in the Presidency of Bengal.”Footnote 33 There were also some prominent Muslims, mainly linked with the INC, such as Khwaja Atiqullah, Abdur Rasul, and others, who opposed the division of Bengal.
At that time, colonial Bengal was also witnessing an Islamization from both below and above. The Faraizi religious identity, mixed with the class-based demands of peasants, was primarily structured to reform Muslim society, but gradually came to concern itself with social inequality and the economic plight of the peasants and artisans of colonial Bengal.Footnote 34 The movement was founded by Haji Shariatullah around 1830, following his return from Mecca in 1818, where he received a religious education. Soon after its formation, the Faraizi movement became prominent in East Bengal in the 1820s and 1830s. Faraizism was a Hanafi-identified Islamic reformist movement that emphasized a strict following of religious obligations, and its slogan, langal jar, jami tar (“the land belongs to the tiller”), attracted Muslim peasants.Footnote 35 Faraizism attacked Muslim saint veneration along with levies “that zamindars (mostly, but not exclusively, Hindu) periodically demanded from their tenants to finance ceremonies and festivals that were either overtly Hindu or that Faraizis identified as un-Islamic.”Footnote 36 In 1840, under the leadership Muhsin al-Din Ahmad, alias Dudu Miyan, son and successor of Shariatullah, Faraizism turned into a full-fledged agrarian movement, with those following Dudu Miyan numbering between 80,000–300,000.Footnote 37 Dudu Miyan was succeeded by his son Noa Miyan, under whom Faraizism grew even further. After Noa Miyan’s death, the Farazi movement declined. In 1905, when Bengal was partitioned, a Faraiz faction joined the newly formed AIML.Footnote 38 Under the influence of revivalist Islamic groups, local religious leaders raised the banner of Islam and heightened the sense of Islamic identity among the Muslim peasants.Footnote 39 Both peasants and large sections of the Muslim middle class and intelligentsia were influenced by Islamization in Bengal and AIML politics. Sections of the Muslim population objected to the Gandhi topi or the use of Sree as a prefix before a Muslim name, instead of janab, which was considered anti-Islamic.Footnote 40
About the prevailing communal situation in colonial Bengal, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who led the liberation movement in East Pakistan, wrote that “local Hindus held my own family in high esteem. And yet when I went to visit some of my Hindu friends, they wouldn’t invite me into their houses because their families feared I would pollute them.”Footnote 41 This was not the case with all households, as Mujib notes, but this sort of behavior certainly pitted Bengali Muslims against Hindus.Footnote 42 Further, due to its dominant position in many parts of Bengal, the Bengali identity was affixed to Hindus. A Hindu-dominant area in Bengal was called Bangali-pada (the Bengali quarter), while a predominantly Muslim quarter was called Muslaman-pada.Footnote 43
In the late 1940s, Hindu–Muslim tensions escalated in colonial Bengal, resulting in riots in Calcutta in 1946. In the “Great Calcutta killing” between 5,000–10,000 people were killed and around 15,000 injured between 16–19 August 1946. Unhappy with the British Cabinet Mission’s proposed plan for the formation of an interim government composed of representatives from the INC, AIML, and others, in which the INC was given one more seat than AIML, the league adopted a resolution rejecting the plan, calling on Muslims across India to observe a Direct Action Day in protest on 16 August. Jinnah called for peaceful demonstrations across the country on Direct Action Day, but the situation turned violent in Calcutta following a speech by H.S. Suharwardhy.Footnote 44 There is no transcript of what Suharwardhy said in his speech, but many Muslims claimed that he told them to go and celebrate Ramadan, while Hindus maintained that he hinted to the Muslim crowd to inflict violence.Footnote 45 Like many inter group riots during 1947, there were examples of Hindu–Muslim solidarity during the “Great Calcutta killing,” when people from one community saved the lives of people belonging to a different religion. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding father of Bangladesh, who was a young AIML activist in 1946, wrote:
Of the many calls we had received in the Muslim League office, many were from Hindus. They had stowed away their Muslim friends and acquaintances and had called for them to be rescued since they would be killed along with the Muslims they had hidden in their homes if they were found out.Footnote 46
Nevertheless, Mujib’s role during the Calcutta killing had been questioned by many. He was a member of the AIML, as a student of Islamia College( now Maulana Azad College) and living in its Baker hostel actively participated in the Direct Action Day related political activities. He was also very close to Suharwardhy.Footnote 47 A few months later, communal riots began on 10 October 1946 in the Noakhali and Tippera districts of East Bengal, which continued sporadically until December 1946. This communal violence is largely seen as spillover from the Calcutta killings; vengeance for the killing of Muslims in Calcutta.Footnote 48 The effect of the Calcutta killings was felt in other parts of India, such as Bihar, the United Province, and also in cities near Delhi, such as Garhmukteshwar, where communal riots occurred as revenge.Footnote 49
After the communal riots, on 20 June 1947, after the 3 June independence plan announced by British Prime Minister Clement Attlee, members of the Bengal Assembly met for the first time in a joint meeting, where it was decided by a vote of 126 to 90 that the province, if it remained united, should join the new Constituent Assembly of Pakistan following the partition of India. Then, at a separate meeting, members of the West Bengal Assembly decided by a vote of 58 to 21 that the province should join the existing Constituent Bengal Assembly of India. It was also decided, by a vote of 105 to 34, that in the event of partition, East Bengal would amalgamate with Sylhet and join Pakistan.Footnote 50 Consequently, Bengal was divided. The Bengal Border Commission awarded 28,033 square miles with a population of 21.19 million people, of which nearly 5.3 million (or 29%) were Muslim, to West Bengal. East Bengal (Pakistan) had 49,000 square miles and a population of 39.11 million, of whom 29.1% (11.4 million) were Hindu.Footnote 51 The population belonging to the “other” religious group did not fully settle in their adopted countries, as, in the early years of partition, both Hindus and Muslims continued to cross the India–Pakistan border because of communal riots in their adopted lands.Footnote 52
In addition to Hindus and Muslims, the Hindu Scheduled Castes were an important part of the socioeconomic and political life of colonial Bengal. The Namasudras, earlier called Chandals, mainly lived in the low-lying swamp areas of East Bengal, particularly in Bakarganj, Faridpur, Jessore, Khulna, Dacca, and Mymensigh.Footnote 53 The Namasudras transformed their economic, social, and political status. During the early days of the Swadeshi movement, the Namasudras remained aligned with the Muslim peasants due to shared exploitative relations with upper caste Hindu landlords and remained loyal to the British. Nationalist leaders secured support from some Namasudras by visiting their areas.Footnote 54 Ties between Hindu Namasudras and Muslims were complicated, as discussed below, with the two also engaging in communal riots against each other. Besides the Namasudras, there were many other Scheduled Castes, Backward Castes, and Tribes in colonial Bengal, who had complicated sociopolitical and economic relationships with the so-called upper castes, landlords, British, Muslims, and political parties.Footnote 55
Jogendra Nath Mandal, a Namasudra, collaborated with B.R. Ambedkar to establish the Bengal branch of the Scheduled Caste Federation. Mandal was against the partition of Bengal, but many other Scheduled Caste (SC) leaders did not agree to him. Consequently, when the partition of Bengal was put to a vote in the assembly, only five of the thirty SC members voted against the province’s partition.Footnote 56 Mandal also believed that if a referendum were held in Calcutta, the SC vote would be decisive in determining whether the city would become part of East Pakistan. However, there were indications that this would not happen, as the SC did not hold decisive numbers. Besides, during the Calcutta riots in 1946, the SCs also experienced fatalities due to being Hindu.Footnote 57 Mandal, along with his supporters, went to Pakistan, where he became the country’s first Law and Labor Minister. In Pakistan, Mandal raised the issue of SCs in a different way than other Hindu politicians, who largely belonged to the Pakistan National Congress.Footnote 58 At that time, the Pakistani government under Liaquat Ali Khan had questions about Mandal’s loyalties to the new state. Asif finds that a tranche of telegrams from 1950 marked “secret” between the Pakistan’s Prime Minister’s Office, the Governor’s Office in Dhaka, and the Pakistan Foreign Service Office in Calcutta show that the foreign service had been spying on Mandal, keeping an eye on his movements between Calcutta and Dhaka.Footnote 59 Finally, citing conditions of the SCs and Hindu minorities in Pakistan in the post-Jinnah years, Mandal resigned from his office in 1950.Footnote 60 After his resignation, Mandal returned to India as a broken man. In 1968, he died in North 24 Parganas in West Bengal.
Class-religion complexity in colonial Bengal
The anti-colonial leadership raised the issues of people’s exploitation and the draining of India’s wealth in their fight against colonialism. In India, Dadabhai Naoroji, an Indian nationalist, was one of the first leaders to argue that the draining of India’s wealth made England rich and contributed to poverty in the colonial country.Footnote 61 The colonial economic structure created significant economic disparities and inequality in India.
In Bengal, Lord Cornwallis introduced Permanent Settlement in 1793, creating a rigid hierarchy in economic and social ties. Under this, there were some important points: the state’s ownership of land was abandoned and proprietorship was conferred on some people, while the cultivating class was to be protected by the landlords and revenues were payable annually in certain instalments.Footnote 62 Permanent Settlement, however, could not bring advantage to landlords, mainly because the payment was higher than what they previously paid to the earlier state, which was “ ill-supported” and “ disorganized.” There was also a stringent law of sale in the event of default on rent payments.Footnote 63 For example, in this hereditary rights-based system, if a peasant was unable to pay the fixed annual tax, set at a ratio of 89% for the government and 11% for the landlord on the designated day, either whole or part of the land was auctioned off.Footnote 64 The British gave preference to Hindus because they snatched Bengal from the Muslim Nawab and were wary of the displaced Muslim aristocracy. This situation favored Hindu bankers and traders close to the East India Company.Footnote 65
Colonial East Bengal, comprising the Dacca and Chittagong divisions and the Rajshahi, Pabna, and Bogra districts, had historically witnessed antagonistic relations between landlords and tenants. Not all tenants were cultivating peasants. Many held land as occupancy tenants but sublet to other subtenants at higher rents and inferior rights. Until the 1920s, there was less inequality in land distribution among the raiyat peasantry than in other parts of Bengal. The proportion of landless laborers in the rural workforce was also lowest in East Bengal.Footnote 66 More than the economic conditions, it was the cultural perception of the landlord-tenant divide that created the Hindu–Muslim divide. Most landlords were Hindus, while many Muslims, though they had let out much of their land, were culturally part of the peasant community. Landlord dominance was culturally articulated in terms of upper caste Hindu superiority over a predominantly Muslim or lower caste Hindu peasantry.Footnote 67
The class discontent of Muslim peasants in the anti-landlord movement found its articulation in the form of communalism, targeting Hindu landlords and identifying along religious lines.Footnote 68 In his study of the Kishoreganj (Mymensigh district) riot of 1930, Bose argues that communal clashes in rural East Bengal, mainly from 1930 onwards, were a result of a breakdown in Muslim peasants’ “symbiotic economic relationship with the Hindu talukdar [hereditary aristocrat or landholder responsible for collecting revenue] and mahajan [moneylender].”Footnote 69 During the 1930–31 Bengal riots, a communal leaflet, Nawab Sahaber Subichar, claiming that Salimullah Khan, a British sycophant, had taken over major parts of Bengal was distributed, and Muslims apparently believed that no one would be arrested if Hindu houses were looted and burned in the thirteen districts under him.Footnote 70 In Kishoreganj, Muslim looters and rioters heard that the British had given “Swaraj” to them.Footnote 71 However, due to economic discontent, Muslim rioters in Kishoreganj did not even spare the richer sections of their own community. Das finds that “at least one Muslim talukdar and eight moneylenders had their houses looted and money-bonds taken away.”Footnote 72
In other cases, the class clash took a religious direction. For instance, in October 1907, after a clash with police, the Bhadralok were beaten and their property looted by, as an unofficial report said, low-class and caste mehtars, dhangars, sweepers, etc. Nationalists blamed Muslim communalists for instigating the attack. Then, in 1908, in Telak village near Khulna town, Namasudra Muslims joined to challenge Brahmin control over the local Kali festival. However, three years later, Namasudras and Muslims along the Jessore–Khulna border were involved in riots and looting, affecting eighteen villages.Footnote 73 Over time, class solidarity turned into religious difference. Further, the Tebhaga (third-part) movement organized by Moulavi Nousher Ali in Narail, Jessore, in 1924–25, under which the bargadars (share croppers) demanded a two-thirds share instead of half from landlords, was dubbed by the INC as communal. The bargadars were largely belonged to Muslim religion and Hindu Namasudras, while the many of the caste Hindus were Jotedars (rich peasants).Footnote 74
In Bengal, resistance had a long history in peasant movements, including the Fakir and Sanyasi rebellion (1763–1800), the Chuar revolt (1799), the Wahabi uprising (1821–31), the Farazi uprising (1838–47), the Santhal rebellion (1855–56), the revolt of the indigo cultivators of Bengal (1859–1860), and the Sandwip, Rangpur, and Pabna uprisings of the 19th century.Footnote 75 The Labour Swaraj Party of the Indian National Congress—founded by Kutubuddin Ahmed, Muzaffar Ahmed, Kazi Nazrul Islam, Shamsuddin Hossain, and others in 1925—was one of the early organizations to address the peasants’ cause.Footnote 76 In 1928, a number of peasant organizations existed in Bengal, such as Nikhil Bangiya Praza Samity, Bengal Krishok and Ryot Sabha, Central Raiyat Association, the Malda Ryot Association, Malda Krishak and Raiyat Sabha, Dinajpur Praja Samity, Rangpur Praja Samity, and others. By 1932, tenant associations had been formed, and tenant unrest became intense in Nadia, Barisal, Bankura, Hooghly, Midnapur, Noakhali, and Tipperah.Footnote 77
Taking up the population’s economic cause, the Praja, or tenants’ movement, began in Bengal in the 1920s. In 1914, the Karamchari Praja Conference was held in Jamalpur, Mymensingh, and attended by many, including Fazlul Huq, who had served as the president of the AIML and proposed the Pakistan Resolution in 1940. In 1929, the All-Bengal Praja Samiti was formed.Footnote 78 In 1936, the Krishak Praja Party (KPP) was formed. The KPP talked about the rights of tenants and “the abolition of zamindari without compensation.”Footnote 79 In the 1937 elections, the INC won sixty seats, the AIML won forty, independent Muslims won forty-one, the KPP won thirty-five, Europeans won twenty-five, the Independent Scheduled Caste group won twenty-three, and Independent Caste Hindus won fourteen. A coalition government was formed between the AIML, KPP, and independents.Footnote 80 Huq did little to fulfil his promises, however, instead appointing three zamindars to his cabinet, including Srish Chandra Nandi, Prasanna Deb Raikut, and Sir Khwaja Nazimuddin.Footnote 81
The AIML’s strong performance in the 1937 elections and emergence as an important player in Bengal’s politics are attributed to the party’s contact with the masses in 1936–37. On 31 October 1936, the AIML mouthpiece, Dainik Azad, was first published, with Maulana Akram Khan as editor.Footnote 82 The AIML gained a foothold, in particular, in rural Bengal. The Pakistan slogan found support from Fazlul Huq in his first ministry. Hindu Mahasabha’s activities in rural areas also helped the AIML consolidate support among Muslims.Footnote 83 The AIML–KPP coalition disagreed over many issues, however, including in July 1940, when Fazlul Huq joined Sikander Hyat Khan, the Punjab Premier, in informal talks with INC leaders in New Delhi to discuss the communal problem. Jinnah issued a statement reprimanding them, saying the two leaders had no authority to discuss the Hindu–Muslim settlement with the INC.Footnote 84 Jinnah also called for disciplinary action against Huq for not consulting the AIML leadership about joining the Defence Council on the invitation of Viceroy Alexander Linlithgow. Linlithgow’s invitation to Muslim leaders to join the council tested Jinnah’s authority. Jinnah directed the AIML’s Working Committee to pass a resolution asking the league to resign from the council.Footnote 85 Both Siknadar Hyat Khan and Huq resigned. Further, in 1941, Huq resigned from the AIML, writing a stinging letter against Jinnah’s authoritarian working style and condemning Jinnah for his tendency toward centralization, arguing that his government was free to make decisions for the province. Huq later retracted his steps, but his relationship with Bengal League members remained strained.Footnote 86
Jinnah–Huq tensions led to the government’s fall in 1941. After the fall, Fazlul Huq accepted the leadership of the Progressive Coalition Party and formed another coalition government in December 1941, with the support of the Forward Bloc, the Hindu Mahasabha, and members of the Independent Scheduled Castes. This political development led to Jinnah expelling Huq from the AIML.Footnote 87 The coalition could not last longer because of differences between Shyama Prasad Mukherjee and Fazlul Huq. The two leaders had also been unable to handle the communal pressure from their members. It is also argued that Bengal Governor John Herbert used the conflict to engineer the collapse of the government. Mukherjee resigned in November 1942, and a few months later, in April 1943, Huq’s resignation letter was accepted, leading to the fall of his second ministry.Footnote 88
Notably, in 1943-44, Bengal faced the worst famine in which several people died and many were affected. The famine situation was, however, politically exploited by the Hindu and Muslim communalists to further their causes. Both sides accused the other religious group of getting preferential treatment by the British administration. The communalisation of whatever little relief people were getting by the British administration added to the communal problem in Bengal.Footnote 89 On 24 April 1943, the AIML ministry was formed under Khwaja Nazimuddin, which included Hindu Caste members and members of the Scheduled Caste, but the majority were Muslim AIML followers. However, the ministry lost a snap vote in 1945.Footnote 90 In the 1946 elections, the AIML employed populist slogans such as “The Land Belongs to the Tiller” and “Abolish Zamindari.”Footnote 91 As a result, the AIML won 113 of 119 Muslim seats in Bengal.Footnote 92 The INC, too, had a socialist vision. In his speech in Saidabad in the United Province, Nehru stated that the INC-led Swaraj government would be
the government of the people and for the people. In such a state, the chosen representatives of the people, not a handful of capitalists or zamindars, will be in charge of the government machinery. Any man can approach them and express his grievances… There is no communalism in the question of abolishing the zamindari system. It will benefit Hindu and Muslim kisans alike.Footnote 93
The INC won eighty-six seats in Bengal and an AIML government under Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy was formed. Peasants’ economic conditions in Bengal led to the Tebhaga movement for about six months, from September 1946 to March 1947, across the nineteen major districts of undivided Bengal. The second phase of this movement in 1948–49 was confined to the four districts of West Bengal: 24 Parganas, Midnapore, Howrah, and Hooghly.Footnote 94
Imagining a Bengali territory
A nation needs a political territory first imagined by its leaders, intellectuals, or even common people. During the colonial years, in his speech at the AIML session in 1930 at Allahabad (now Prayagraj), Muhammad Iqbal elaborated his territorial vision:
The Muslim demand for the creation of a Muslim India within India is, therefore, perfectly justified… I would like to see the Punjab, North West Frontier Province, Sind and Baluchistan amalgamated into a single state… formation of a consolidated North-West Muslim state appears to me to be the final destiny of the Muslims at least of North West India.Footnote 95
Three years later, Choudhary Rahmat Ali—a law student at Cambridge University—coined the term “Pakistan,” a land of the pure, and co-authored a pamphlet entitled Now or Never; Are We to Live or Perish Forever. The pamphlet was signed by Choudhary Rahmat Ali, Mohammad Aslam Khan Khattak, Sheikh Mohammad Sadiq Sahibzada, and Inayat Ullah Khan (of Charsaddah), and called for “a separate Muslim Federation” of predominantly Muslim units: Punjab, the North West Frontier Province (Afghan Province), Kashmir, Sind(h), and Baluchistan.Footnote 96 Many other imaginations followed.Footnote 97
Kokab and Hussain observe that the idea of being different and separatism existed for a long time in Bengal.Footnote 98 In most of the cases asking for a separate land for Muslims Bengal was imagined as a different territory. First, in Rahmat Ali’s vision, Bengal, Pakistan, and Usmanistan (the Nizam of Hyderabad’s territory) were to be three independent states. Second, El Hamza, a Muslim writer, conceived of Muslim states in the northwest and northeast of India. Third, Jamil-ud-Din Ahmed, a member of the AIML and lecturer at Aligarh University, also considered recognizing two independent Muslim states in the northwestern and northeastern regions of colonial India. Fourth, Syed Zafarul Hasan and Afzal Qadri supported the division of British India into three independent sovereign states: two Muslim states of northwest India and Bengal, and one Hindu state.Footnote 99 Fifth, in 1939, Nawab Shah Nawaz of Mamdot, President of the Punjab AIML, had a vision for the division of India that involved setting up a confederation by dividing India into five federations: North West, Muslim Bengal, Hindu India, the Rajistan (Rajputana or Rajasthan) states, and Deccan.Footnote 100 Finally, on 4 February 1940, the AIML Working Committee, on the Jinnah’s recommendation, decided to enact Muslim zones separating them from India.Footnote 101 Even the Pakistan Resolution proposed by A.K. Fazlul Huq, the then head of Bengal, in March 1940 at the AIML’s session in Lahore called for “states.” A provision in the resolution—also called the Lahore Resolution—read as follows:
Resolved that it is the considered view of this session of the All-India Muslim League that no constitutional plan would be workable in this country or acceptable to Muslims unless it is designed on the following basic principle, namely, that geographically contiguous units are demarcated into regions which should be so constituted, with such territorial readjustments as may be necessary, that the areas in which the Muslims are numerically in a majority, as in the North-Western and Eastern Zones of India, should be grouped to constitute “Independent States” in which the constituent units shall be autonomous and sovereign.Footnote 102
In the next AIML session in 1941 in Madras (now Chennai), Resolution Number 2 was adopted, stating the following:
The establishment of completely Independent States formed by demarcating geographically contiguous units into regions which shal1 be so constituted, with such territorial readjustments as may be necessary, that the areas in which the Musalmans are numerically in a majority, as in the North Western and Eastern zones of India, shall be grouped together to constitute Independent States as Muslim Free National Homelands in which the constituent units shall be autonomous and sovereign.Footnote 103
It took six years for the AIML, in the Delhi Resolution of 1946, to change “Independent States” to “Independent State.” As the 1946 Delhi Resolution outlined:
Whereas the Muslims are convinced that with a view to save Muslim India from the domination of the Hindus and in order to afford them full scope to develop themselves according to their genius, it is necessary to constitute a sovereign independent state comprising Bengal and Assam in the north-east zone and the Punjab, North-West Frontier Province, Sindh and Baluchistan in the north-west zone.Footnote 104
Ahmad argued that Hussain Shaheed Suhrawardy was not opposed to the idea of a separate homeland but favored a formula in which Muslim-majority provinces would have sovereign choice over their future constitution and maintain ties with neighbors.Footnote 105 In 1946, when “Independent State” replaced “Independent States,” Abul Hashim, an AIML leader from Bengal, pleaded for the creation of a Bengali state.Footnote 106
In the late 1940s, there was a short-lived vision for a United Bengal comprising people of all religions living in the territory. United Bengal would have included the districts of Manbhum, Singhbhum, and Purnea from then Bihar and the Surma Valley of Assam.Footnote 107 In June 1947, an anonymous draft proposal was prepared for United Bengal, which stated: “Bengali Muslims, Hindus, Christians and Buddhists have a common mother tongue and are bound together by racial, social, cultural, economic and other ties, and a Free and United Bengal, where they can fully co-operate with one another, is essential for their social, economic and political progress.”Footnote 108 Jinnah supported United Bengal, mainly, to halt the province’s partition, stating: “What is the use of Bengal without Calcutta?”Footnote 109 On Calcutta, an “Immediate Secret” telegram from Walter Christie, a civil service officer, to George Abell, private secretary to Viceroy Louis Mountbatten, on 26 April 1947, mentions an agreement between the Indian and Pakistani constituent assemblies that “Calcutta shall be administered by a Council consisting of an equal number of persons elected by each Constituent Assembly, under a Chairman elected by the Council itself.”Footnote 110 There was also a plan floated under which an entirely separate “Calcutta Free City” was proposed, which would allow East and West Bengal to continue their economic relationship.Footnote 111 In a secret telegram to Governor of Bengal Sir Frederick Burrows on 28 April 1947, Mountbatten wrote:
I do not like the idea of a free city. It goes against all the principles on which the rest of the plan is based, it leaves Calcutta cut off from Muslim Bengal, it will not be acceptable to the Hindus, and I do not see how we can enforce it or prevent a fight for the city next year. Besides which it is not for me to make Pakistan into a sensible scheme. I want it to be seen for what it is, while giving the Muslims everything to which they are entitled, and every chance to work out their own salvation.Footnote 112
H.S. Suharwardhy also supported the idea of a separate Bengal dominion. As an “Immediate Secret” telegram from Mountbatten to Burrows on 1 June read:
It looks as if the Congress were determined to oppose any move towards an independent but united Bengal… [asking for Burrows views on this, Mountbatten continues] Suhrawardy would like Calcutta to be declared a free city or at any rate under joint control for the interim period whilst partition is being worked out, to avoid bloodshed and in the hopes of better sense prevailing later.Footnote 113
Unlike the INC Party’s Central Committee, some members of the Bengal Provincial Congress, such as Kiran Shankar Roy and Sarat Bose, favored a United Bengal. Viceroy’s report of 5 June 1947 notes that Kiran Shankar Roy was unable to persuade the High Command to allow Bengal to vote for independence.Footnote 114 On 9 June 1947, in a letter to Jinnah, Sarat Chandra Bose wrote that Jinnah should instruct the AIML members of the Bengal Legislative Assembly to vote in favor of neither the Hindustan nor the Pakistan Constituent Assembly, making it clear “that they are in favour of Bengal having a Constituent Assembly of her own.”Footnote 115 At the meeting, the members of the two parts of the Bengal legislative assembly sat separately while the letter was read: “to vote whether or not the province should be partitioned, to vote solidly against partition.”Footnote 116
The idea of United Bengal lasted for only a short time, and Bengal was partitioned. There were many reasons for the failure of the plan, such as opposition from Hindu businessmen, the INC leadership,Footnote 117 and, above all, the communal division in the minds of the Bengali population. When it was decided that East Bengal would become part of Pakistan, Mountbatten raised the question about the unity of the West and East wings of Pakistan for a long time due to the incompatible ties between them.Footnote 118 Soon after partition, for various reasons, unease spread in East Pakistan, leading it to seek a separate political identity. The language issue, discussed below, created a political wedge between the East and West Pakistan, making people realize that, despite belonging to the same religion, they were different.
Language: imagining the self and others
Acknowledging the importance of language, Benedict Anderson wrote: “What the eye is to the lover-that particular, ordinary eye he or she is born with-language-whatever language history has made, encountered at mother’s knee and parted with only at the grave, pasts are restored, fellowships are imagined, and futures dreamed.”Footnote 119 J.G. Herder is one of the early advocates of the importance of language in nation-making. For Herder, a nation constitutes “common traditions, an enduring way of life, and a collective memory that is ultimately grounded in a particular language.”Footnote 120
In most of the multi-linguistic countries, the majority or dominant group always makes attempts to redefine or suppress the linguistic identity of minorities or non-dominant groups.Footnote 121 An excuse or political reason given by the imposers is that a common language is necessary to the making of a nation. Foucault saw such imposition in terms of relationships between the powerful and powerless groups.Footnote 122 For him, language has a symbolic value, as imposition makes the dominant group establish and enjoy power over the relatively powerless or weaker groups. This is the most common phenomenon in postcolonial states, where many disputes based on primordial identities remain unresolved. However, most such impositions have been resisted because, as Paul Brass observes, people speaking a similar language are emotionally linked with their language and fellow speakers.Footnote 123
In East Pakistan, language had been a highly sensitive issue since the colonial era. Bose’s work shows that the rise of print media in colonial Bengal helped Bengali Muslim intellectuals create a distinct religious, regional, and linguistic identity that differed from both mainstream Urdu Muslim and Hindu Bengali culture.Footnote 124 As Bose observes, these intellectuals produced such an identity through writings in journals and also in the mofussil. The Bengali Muslim Sahitya Samaj was the first literary society for Bengali Muslims.Footnote 125 In the early post-partition days, the language movement developed a Bengali nationalist discourse, forging a link between all sections of society to counter the hegemony of West Pakistani elites.Footnote 126 An early encounter between the leaders of East and West Pakistan shifted the focus to national language issues. According to the 1951 census, of the 8.8 million literates, 6.4 million were Muslim; and of those 6.4 million, only 3.3 million could read the Quran. It was also recorded that only 1% of East Pakistani Muslims could speak Urdu. The record on Urdu-speaking may not be correct, as people’s responses could have been influenced by the ongoing language tensions.Footnote 127 Urdu was not welcomed by Bengali-speaking East Pakistanis.
The language “controversy” began after the first meeting of the National Education Conference in November 1947, when the issue of the medium of instruction arose. The Bengali representative objected to Urdu, meaning the conference only “recommended” Urdu as the national language of Pakistan and left the decision on the medium of instruction to the provinces’ discretion.Footnote 128 Since the colonial years, Urdu had been recognized by the AIML as a “Muslim” language.Footnote 129 Interestingly, some of the early prominent supporters of the Bengali language were Hindu members of the Constituent Assembly representing the eastern wing of Pakistan.
In 1948, Dhirendranath Datta from East Pakistan and a member of the Pakistan National Congress, moved an amendment on the Rules of Procedure, stating “That in sub-rule (1) of rule 29, after the word ‘English’ in line 2, the words ‘or Bengalee’, be inserted.”Footnote 130 On the issue of the Bengalee or Bengali language, Datta said:
I know, Sir, that Bengalee is a Provincial language, but, so far our State is concerned, it is the language of the majority of the people of the State…it is the language of the majority of the people of the State…Out of six crores and ninety lakhs of people inhabiting this State, 4 crores and 40 lakhs of people speak the Bengalee language. So Sir, what should be the State language of the State? The State language of the State should be the language which is of majority of the people of the State, and for that Sir, I consider that Bengalee is a lingua franca of our State.Footnote 131
Datta got support from Prem Hari Barma from East Pakistan, who said: “Sir, this amendment does not seek to oust English or Urdu altogether but it seeks only to have Bengalee as one of the media spoken in the Assembly by the Members of the Assembly.”Footnote 132 Then, Bhupendra Kumar Datta pointed out the disadvantage East Pakistan faced, stating: “The Bengalee people are put to a disadvantage in every manner. The capital of the State is far removed from the place where the majority of the people dwell and then this language bar is put against the majority of the common people of the State.”Footnote 133
Disagreeing with the members on the language matter, Liaquat Ali Khan, then Prime Minister of Pakistan, said,
I wish the Hon’ble member had not moved his amendment and tried to create misunderstanding between the different parts of Pakistan. …He should realise that Pakistan has been created because of the demand of a hundred million Muslims in this sub-continent and the language of a hundred million Muslims is Urdu and, therefore, it is wrong for him now to try and create the situation that as the majority of the people of Pakistan belongs to one part of Pakistan, therefore the language which is spoken there should become the State language of Pakistan…We do recognise the importance of Bengalee… it would be wrong for anyone to thrust any other language on the people of a province which is not their mother tongue, but, at the same time, we must have a State language—the language which would be used between the different parts of Pakistan for inter-provincial communications. …Urdu can be the only language which can keep the people of East Bengal or Eastern Zone and the people of Western Zone joined together.Footnote 134
Bhupendra Kumar Datta argued that Urdu was not the language of any of the Pakistani provinces: “But here we are adopting Urdu. Urdu is not the language of any of the Provinces constituting the Dominion of Pakistan…We are merely pressing it to be only one of the three languages and I hope there would be no objection or opposition from any section of the House.”Footnote 135 The proponents of Urdu found English as a national language to be a “necessary evil.” As Ghazanfar Ali Khan said:
There is only one State and there shall be one language, the State language and that is Urdu. We have put English language there because it is a necessary evil and we must carry on with it for few years more but we will get rid of it as quickly as possible.Footnote 136
The linking of language with religion was not welcomed by a few members of the Constituent Assembly. As Sris Chandra Chattopadhyaya from East Bengal highlighted: “it pains me to hear the Hon’ble the Laeder of the House when he says that Pakistan is a Muslim State. So long my idea was that Pakistan is the people’s State and it belongs to the Muslims as well as to the non Muslims.”Footnote 137
The language issue was further inflamed by Jinnah’s position. Speaking at Dacca (Dhaka) University convocation on 24 March 1948, Jinnah noted:
For official use in this Province, the people of the Province can choose any language they wish…. There can, however, be only one lingua franca, that is, the language for inter-communication between the various provinces of the State, and that language should be Urdu and cannot be any other. The State language, therefore, must obviously be Urdu, a language that has been nurtured by a hundred million Muslims of this sub-continent, a language understood throughout the length and breadth of Pakistan and above all, a language which, more than any other provincial language, embodies the best that is in Islamic culture and Muslim tradition and is nearest to the language used in other Islamic countries.Footnote 138
There was a disturbance at the convocation when Jinnah declared Urdu as the national language. It is believed that this speech painted an inaccurate picture of existing language-related tensions. Jinnah was, it seems, advised that the two-languages demand was nothing more than a conspiracy of disgruntled AIML leaders, Hindus, communists, and anti-Pakistan elements sitting in Calcutta.Footnote 139
On the language issue, pamphlets and opinion pieces advocating Bengali’s national language status were published in East Pakistan. Pakistan Tamaddun Majlish published a booklet on 15 September 1947 entitled Rastro Bhasha Bangla Na Urdu? (What is the State Language, Bangla or Urdu?).Footnote 140 There was a protest in East Pakistan in 1948, which was silenced after Jinnah, in his above statement, clarified that the province’s language would be Bengali while the national language would be Urdu. The second phase of protest over language issue, however, erupted in East Bengal between 1949–1951, when the movement sustained in a non-receptive political environment. The last phase was from 1952, when the movement became strong.Footnote 141 To settle the matter, the East Bengal Language Committee was formed in 1949 under Maulana Akram Khan, which produced a report that was only published in 1958. The Urdu–Bengali dispute reignited when Liaquat Ali Khan’s successor, Khwaja Nazimuddin, in his speech at Paltan Maidan in Dhaka, declared, “Urdu will be the only state language of Pakistan.”Footnote 142 Shorbodolio Kendrio Rashtrobhasha Kormi Porishod (All-Party State Language Action Committee) was formed, which called for an all-out protest on 21 February, including strikes and rallies. On 21 February 1952, five students and about 29 other protestors were killed and many injured during a protest in Dhaka. The killing led to widespread protests in East Pakistan. At that time, the Pakistan Constituent Assembly also discussed the possibility of having Arabic or Urdu and Bengali written in the Arabic script as the state’s language. In the Constituent Assembly, in October 1953, Zaheeruddin Moazeem Hossein Chowdhury, popularly known as Lalmia, from East Bengal said,
To my mind it is Arabic alone which should be made our State language…It is the Arabic language alone which, next to the factor of ideology, would procure for us a solidarity of not only the Muslims of this land but of other Muslim countries as well…However, if that be not acceptable immediately at this stage, the next best course left, would be to compromise the demands of the two respective wings by accepting Urdu and Bengali—both written in Arabic script—as the two State languages of Pakistan.Footnote 143
Syed Abdul Basher Mahmud Hussain from East Bengal was also in support of making Arabic the state language of Pakistan.Footnote 144 Finally, the language issue was settled on 7 May 1954, when the Constituent Assembly resolved to grant official status to the Bengali language. Bengali was adopted as an official language of Pakistan along with Urdu in Article 214 (1) of the first constitution of Pakistan, enacted on 29 February 1956, which stated: “The State languages of Pakistan shall be Urdu and Bengali.”Footnote 145
The 1954 also witnessed an important political development in East Pakistan, when the United Front (UF) formed the government, de-rooting the AIML government. In that election, of the total 309 seats, the AIML won 9, the United Front and its allies won 291, and other parties won 9. The UF alliance comprised the Awami League, Krishak Shramik Party, Nizam-E-Islami Party, Youth League, Gantantrik Dal, and the Communist Party.Footnote 146 The UF government in East Bengal created some tensions between Bengali- and non-Bengali-speaking Muslim populations in the province. The Fazlul Huq-led UF government sought provincial autonomy, with only defense, currency, and foreign affairs vested in the center.Footnote 147 As discussed above, in 1941, Huq had a conflict with Jinnah over provincial autonomy and the AIML’s centralizing tendencies. During his visit to West Bengal, in a speech on 4 May 1954, Huq reiterated:
It is important that the people from the two Bengals should realise the fundamental fact that in order to live happily, they must render mutual assistance to each other. Politicians had partitioned territories, but the common mass should ensure that everybody lived peacefully. Language proved to be the most unifying factor in history, and the people of the two Bengals, bound together by a common language, should forget political divisions and feel themselves to be one.Footnote 148
During that period, there were reports of many non-Bengalis employed in East Pakistan submitting their resignation and preparing to move out of the province, while the Bengali-speaking population was looking to take control of the province and jobs. The prevailing situation created tensions between the Bengali- and non-Bengali-speaking populations, providing a background for violence. For instance, in the paper mill constructed along the Karnafuli River in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, the workers tore the body of a non-Bengali manager to pieces. In that riot, thirteen other people were killed. Then, a disturbance occurred at the Adamjee Jute Mills between Bengali and non-Bengali workers. In that violence, 500 deaths were officially reported, but the real number was much higher.Footnote 149 Uddin, however, finds that the workers’ riots were more complicated than a simple Bengali/non-Bengali fight, inflamed by rising Bengali provincialism in East Pakistan. It was a story of postcolonial labor formation, the relationship between state-led industrialization and refugee rehabilitation, and the estrangement between employers and workers over control of the workplace and country.Footnote 150 Fazlul Huq’s politics, “belligerent statements,” and increasing tensions between Bengalis and non-Bengalis in East Pakistan led to the dismissal of the government and imposition of governor’s rule under General Iskander Mirza.Footnote 151 In June 1955, Abu Hossain Sarkar led government failed to control the Awami League’s protests for the incorporation of “21 points programme,” sketched during the 1954 elections, in the country’s constitution. The 21 points demand mainly called on for placing only three subjects under the central government: foreign affairs, defense, and currency. In one of the political agitations, Maulana Bhashani, popular leader from the East Pakistan, was reported to have even threatened secession.Footnote 152 Under such social, political, and cultural circumstances, as Ali Riaz observes, the idea of a “Bengali nation” became a “fact of life” from the 1960s.Footnote 153 The Bengalis in East Pakistan felt their Bengaliness and Bengali cultural identity were under threat from West Pakistani officials’ diktat. The cultural movement of the 1950s and early 1960s developed a culture of “resistance” among Bengali speakers in East Pakistan.Footnote 154
There was a major issue of social mixing between people from the two wings due to “differences.” On the matter, Ayub Khan wrote,
East Bengalis, who constitute the bulk of the population, probably belong to the very original Indian races...they have been and still are under considerable Hindu cultural and linguistic influence. As such they have all inhibitions of down-trodden races and have not yet found it possible to adjust psychologically to the requirements of the new-born freedom.Footnote 155
Khan also mentioned the fact that there was “very little social contact between East and West Pakistanis. The average West Pakistani found himself isolated and tended to form a group of his own.”Footnote 156
The economic situation in Eastern Pakistan
When Pakistan was born, questions about its economic viability arose. The Pakistani leadership was aware that the areas forming Pakistan were both industrially and commercially less developed.Footnote 157 As Jinnah said,
because Punjab is a bankrupt province, Sindh is a bankrupt province, Balochistan is zero, the North-West Frontier Province is a bankrupt province and therefore it is not a practical scheme. Why not? …Why do you bother about this? If the worse comes to the worst, like a sensible man we will cut our coat according to our cloth.Footnote 158
In 1947, Pakistan inherited only 9% of the total industrial establishment of British India, and its industrial workforce was around half a million out of a total population of 75 million across both wings.Footnote 159 Due to partition, the bulk of British India’s resources and industries, along with its major port cities, Mumbai (Bombay) and Calcutta (now Kolkata), went to India. The two wings had administrative problems because they were separated by about 1,500 kilometers, with India in the middle. In fact, the situation was such that in the eastern wing, in August 1947, the new East Pakistan government had to be housed in a college for girls (Eden College in Dhaka), with improvised bamboo sheds added for greater accommodation.Footnote 160 At that time, Pakistan received only one member of the former Indian civil service from the region, while six others were promoted from the provincial civil service. The general officer commanding East Bengal, who arrived in East Pakistan in January 1948, did not even have maps of the region.Footnote 161
The administration-related problems added to the economic situation. Due to partition, the regional economy comprising Assam, East Bengal, and West Bengal was amputated.Footnote 162 East Bengal/Pakistan received more than 75% of the total jute-growing areas, but no mills, while India had 106 mills, most of which were located near Calcutta, Howrah, Hooghly, and some in 24 Parganas. At that time, Calcutta was the only port through which Bengal’s jute was exported. Partition disrupted the arrival of jute, as Bengal received only two-thirds of its normal volume, affecting the mills. Five jute mills in West Bengal closed and the price of jute fiber (Jat variety of jute) that was selling at about 16 Rupees per maund (1 maund = 37.32 kilograms) in 1945–46, cost 29 per maund in 1946–47 and 42.5 in 1947–48.Footnote 163 To ease the tensions, the two countries engaged in jute diplomacy, discussing the matter during the inter-dominion meetings in Calcutta and Karachi in 1948.Footnote 164 However, the issue could not be resolved. At that time, India devalued its currency. Addressing the issue of devaluation, Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru said:
owing to increasing trade deficit with dollar countries and the depreciation of her gold and dollar reserves, Great Britain would have to take some such action to redress the position…we have to take this new circumstances of the devaluation of the pound into account. The sterling area is important to us in our international economic relations. A great part of our international trade is with this area.Footnote 165
The rupee was devalued against gold and dollars by 30.5%, effective from 19 September 1949.Footnote 166 Except for Switzerland, Pakistan, and Italy, most other countries not associated with the Soviet Union’s economy followed suit. Due to the rupee’s devaluation and its differences in exchange value, Pakistan raised the price of jute, which India refused to pay. India stopped the supply of coal on which East Pakistan largely depended. The jute-coal crisis also led to tension between Namasudras and Muslims in 1949–50 in Kalshira village in the Khulna district of East Pakistan. The riots spread across the province. To end their trade deadlock, the two sides signed an agreement on 21 April 1950, “providing for a balanced exchange of commodities.”Footnote 167 By the end of the 1950s, the world began looking for an alternative to jute.Footnote 168 Similarly, due to partition, the cotton growers of Western Pakistan, who produced about half the subcontinent’s total crops, were cut off from the Indian mills and markets.Footnote 169
According to Pakistan’s first census in 1951, the country had 78 million inhabitants, of whom 44 million (55%) lived in East Pakistan.Footnote 170 In economic terms, annual growth rose from 3.2% in the late 1950s to 7.2% in the early 1960s in West Pakistan. In East Pakistan, the figures were 1.7% and 5.2% respectively.Footnote 171 Agriculture and services contributed around 70% and 10% respectively to East Bengal’s GDP, with the figures for West Pakistan at 54% and 17% respectively.Footnote 172 Most of the companies were in West Pakistan, and policymaking favored the region because of its institutional dominance. Even foreign aid distribution through agencies such as the Pakistan Industrial Development Corporation, the Pakistan Industrial Credit and Investment Corporation, and the Industrial Development Bank was disproportionate, with 77% allocated to West Pakistan and only 23% to East Pakistan.Footnote 173 Nurul Amin, Chief Minister of East Pakistan (1948–1954), stated that whatever East Pakistan earned was spent by West Pakistan.Footnote 174 In the early 1950s, Pakistan faced a drought that caused a food shortage.Footnote 175 At that time, Pakistan imported food crops. In the late 1950s, the military government introduced the Comila Model, which included family-planning programs, irrigation and electrification schemes, credit facilities, women’s training, and programs for storing, processing, and marketing agricultural produce. In the 1950s, exploitable quantities of natural gas were also found in Comila and Sylhet.Footnote 176 Still, problems could not be addressed.
The Bengali leadership highlighted the economic disparity, and it became a key point of inter-provincial tension in the 1960s. In fact, East Pakistan was a separate economy and treated as a “semi-colony” for the West Pakistani elites who controlled the state machinery.Footnote 177 A considerable number of industries in East Pakistan were also financed and controlled by the West Pakistani capital. East Pakistan served as a market for West Pakistan’s manufactured goods, while its raw materials were primarily used to develop Karachi and Punjab.Footnote 178
West Pakistani elites’ behavior towards East Pakistan was a reason for the latter’s economic conditions. However, privileged Bengali speakers in rural areas also created an unequal economic and class situation. For instance, under the East Bengal State Acquisition and Tenancy Act of 1950, zamindari rights and privileges were enjoyed by many intermediaries, and those below them were eliminated. Landholders became tenants under the government. The act also imposed a ceiling of about thirteen hectares of land per family.Footnote 179 As about 75% of the land belonged to Hindu landlords, which became free due to their migration, many powerful Muslim families, circumventing the tenancy act, grabbed these lands and registered in the name of dependents to avoid the ceiling-related law. The act denied sharecroppers any land rights and equated them with wage laborers. This situation disappointed many who had trusted the Pakistan experiment, believing in a utopia in which they would receive land in the new country. In 1960, it is estimated that around 20% of the rural population had no access to land, and most of the landholdings were small: around 50% of all farms were smaller than one hectare and nearly 90% were smaller than three hectares.Footnote 180
Conclusion
Nation and nationalism, particularly in postcolonial states with multiple identities, have been politically constructed and reconstructed by elites. In South Asia, religion has been a strong binding force among people of the same faith. However, over time, other differences have become stronger than religion. In colonial Bengal, the Hindu signs and symbols used in the anti-colonial movement proved divisive rather than attractive to large swathes of Muslims in the fight against British imperialism. The class-cum-communal tensions between landlords and peasants in East Bengal fed the Pakistan movement. Contrary to what the INC leadership claimed, the INC had a mass base within West Bengal’s Hindu landlords, while the Muslim peasants largely backed the KPP and AIML. However, none of the three parties ever supported sharecroppers and agricultural laborers against rich farmers.Footnote 181
After partition, Pakistani leadership started looking at religions, particularly Hindus and Muslims, as different communities rather than two separate nations. In his presidential address to Pakistan’s Constituent Assembly in Karachi on 11 August 1947, Jinnah said: “…in the course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the state.”Footnote 182 Then, in a speech in Pakistan’s Constituent Assembly, H.S. Suharwardy stated:
… all of us residing within Pakistan as its citizens and subjects are one nation, namely, Pakistani Nation, irrespective of the provinces or the regions from which we come; irrespective of the origin, of our race, and tribe; irrespective of the religion, caste or creed. We are one State and we are one people.Footnote 183
However, soon after partition, differences emerged between Muslims of East and West Pakistan. These differences, along with a list of grievances, accumulated over the years, effectively fuelled the political movement for Bangladesh’s independence, which was eventually achieved in 1971.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Professor Ian Talbot and Farooq Sulehria for their erudite comments on the initial draft of this article. I also thank the peer reviewers for their suggestions for further improvements.
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