Pakistan_ A Hard Country - Anatol Lieven [35]
A combination of this religious fervour with Jinnah’s original plan to balance against the Hindus in an Indian confederation was responsible for the most disastrous aspect of the new Pakistan, namely the uniting of West Pakistan (the present Pakistan) with Muslim East Bengal. This union made absolutely no geographical, historical, economic or strategic sense, and was bound to collapse sooner or later. Apart from anything else, East Pakistan was indefensible in the face of serious Indian attack, as the war of 1971 proved.
The union of West and East Pakistan was dictated in the first instance by the need to keep all Muslims together so as to form the largest possible block against the Hindus within an Indian confederation. Thereafter, the quite different idea of independent Pakistan as the homeland of all the Muslims of South Asia, and the source of their safety and progress, meant that enormous political and emotional capital was invested in trying to maintain Pakistan as one state – when two friendly allied states would have made so much more sense.
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s the need to balance, conciliate or suppress the Bengalis of East Pakistan exerted a malign influence on Pakistan’s development. The first protests in the East were in defence of the Bengali language, and in opposition to the extension of Urdu as the state language. From there, opposition turned into demands for greater autonomy, and finally into a programme of de facto separation.
The fact that East Pakistan, though much smaller geographically and economically, held a small majority of Pakistan’s population helped make democracy impossible, as it would have implied a Bengali domination which most of the West Pakistanis simply would not accept. This contributed to the breakdown of Pakistani democracy in the 1950s, and the military coup by General Ayub Khan in 1958. Ayub then tried to prevent Bengali domination by abolishing the provinces of West Pakistan and lumping them together in ‘one unit’, alongside the other ‘unit’ of East Pakistan. This in turn greatly increased local discontent in West Pakistan.
Ayub’s successor, General Yahya Khan (who took power in 1969), reduced tension in West Pakistan by abolishing ‘one unit’ and restoring the provinces, but failed altogether to conciliate East Pakistan. The West Pakistani establishment – including Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, founder of the Pakistani People’s Party (PPP) – were prepared to accept neither a loose confederation with East Pakistan, nor the democratic domination of the Bengali majority in a united Pakistan.
During the years of protest against Ayub’s rule, Sheikh Mujib-ur-Rehman had emerged as leader of the Awami League, representing Muslim Bengali nationalism. Mujib’s ‘Six Point’ programme was a return to the original platform of the Muslim League in British India, demanding maximum autonomy for East Pakistan and reducing Pakistan to a loose confederation. Bengali radicalism had been increased by repeated clashes in East Pakistan between demonstrators and troops, and a catastrophic cyclone in November 1970 in which up to 1 million people died and the government was accused of negligence.
In the December 1970 national elections, the Awami League won 160 out of 162 seats in East Pakistan, and an absolute majority in the national parliament. The PPP won 81 seats out of 138 in West Pakistan. Mujib therefore demanded the right to form the national government, with confederation the inevitable result. This was acceptable neither to Yahya Khan and the army, nor to the Punjabi elites, nor to Bhutto, who