Jinnah Lives
The origins of the Partition of India are enormously controversial and heavily disputed; nevertheless, in 1946, the leader of the Muslim League Muhammad Ali Jinnah brazenly declared, "We will either have a divided India or a destroyed India", and the following year, both occurred. A line was drawn carving out Pakistan from India by a man who knew little of the ground situation, and even if he did there was no clean way to draw such a line with Hindus and Sikhs on one side and Muslims on the other. The result proved to be horrific. Mass rioting broke out, and Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh religious fanatics saw a clear opportunity to create a pure society through ethnic cleansing. Hindus and Sikhs on Pakistan's side of the border, and Muslims on India's side, fled onto trains to the other side, as they realized the only alternative was to be slaughtered. Entire peoples were created, such as the Punjabis of Delhi and the Mohajirs of Karachi. The result was massive amounts of destruction, and both India and Pakistan were left broken societies, left to make the long road to recovery. There are many who say they have yet to recover; there are still others who say they never will.
Pakistan was, further, left with the issue of being divided into two halves, one western and one eastern. The western half, centred around Urdu-Punjabi culture and dominant within the Muslim League, and the eastern half, centred around Bengali culture and having a majority of the population. In the western half, virtually all Hindus and Sikhs fled to India; the eastern half, even with mass flight, was 18% Hindu. This political division very quickly made itself known on the national level, when Bengalis who made up a majority of the state advocated parity between Bengali and Urdu. This quickly irked Jinnah, who himself abandoned his native Gujarati for Urdu and believed Bengalis should accept Urdu hegemony. In a speech given in Dhaka on April 21, 1948, where in addition to declaring Partition exclusively featured anti-Muslim violence, accusing his opponents of being communists, and declaring every Muslim should join the Muslim League, he declared that Pakistan's national language ought to be only Urdu and tarred those who said otherwise as enemies of Pakistan. This brazen statement was met with horror by Bengali society at large, causing agitations, all the while Jinnah refused attempts to enact any sort of compromise. Ultimately, with the constitution yet to be written, these protests dissipated.
At the same time, Islam was quickly framed as the founding principle of the nation. In a speech to the Karachi Bar Association on January 25, 1948, Jinnah declared that the issue of the constitution was resolved 1,300 years ago and it would be framed on the basis of sharia. Furthermore, he set up a Department of Islamic Reconstruction led by Muhammad Asad (formerly Leopold Weiss), and he requested assistance from Hassan al-Banna, the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, on writing a constitution to frame Pakistan's government as purely Islamic. At the same time, Jinnah spurned Islamic doctrine. He drank wine, ate pork sausages, and had a large collection of Saville Row suits. How could he justify such an asymmetry? Fundamentally, it was because to him Islam did not necessarily denote a religion; instead, it denoted a Perso-Arabic culture which, in the subcontinent, involved Urdu. That Bengalis do not fit such a culture and instead are "culturally Hindu", was the principal reason behind Bengali tensions.
The project of the writing of the constitution proved difficult. As Governor-General, Jinnah could not directly affect affairs of the Constituent Assembly despite his immense cult of personality, and thus instead it proved enormously inept. After India promulgated a constitution in 1949 to come in effect the next year, Jinnah realized there was a need to expedite the writing of the constitution. Using both his cult of personality and his power as Governor-General, he organized a special committee consisting of yes-men who write his desired constitution. According to this, Pakistan was to feature a very strong presidency - with few doubting who the president would be - and a very weak parliament. With Jinnah having a very low opinion of politicians other than him, the prime minister was to be abolished and instead the cabinet would be responsible to the president. Furthermore, the provincial governments were to include very weak powers, and the Bengali language was not to be official. Though this was met with an uproar, Jinnah successfully got this constitution passed in late 1951.
The result was rioting in East Bengal. It took a wave of suppression and mass arrests to end this, and this necessitated delaying elections. But at the same time, Jinnah came to realize some sort of compromise was necessary. And so, he declared that, within East Bengal, Bengali would have constitutionally-recognize provincial status, and that on the national level, an appropriately "Islamized" Bengali written with Perso-Arabic script would be a secondary language of business. Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, who broke away from the Muslim League and formed the Awami League over Jinnah's emphasis on Islam in state, quickly emerged as the leader of this Bengali regionalism.
In 1953, Pakistan faced yet another issue when Acting President Jinnah received a petition advocating the marginalization of members of the Ahmadi sect of Islam. This, Jinnah refused, and the result was mass rioting across Punjab. Jinnah denounced this publicly, declaring Ahmadi fellow Muslims who ought to be treated as such. However, few of the rioters agreed with this - indeed, that was why they were rioting - and so it continued. It took Jinnah declaring martial law to end these protests.
Finally, by 1954, a presidential election could be held. It quickly turned into a contest between Jinnah of the Muslim League and Suhrawardy of the Awami League. That Suhrawardy received endorsements from Hindu groups led his party to be nicknamed the "Hindu League", and the perception of his party being that of Hindus and "cultural Hindus" led him to be regarded as the candidate of Hindus. At the same time, Jinnah's extreme popularity in west Pakistan meant most saw his victory as self-evident. If there was evidence there was less popularity in East Bengal, it could be easily disregarded. For indeed, who would vote out the founder of the nation?
The results of the election showed that many would.
Across western Pakistan, for lack of any real competitor Jinnah won by massive margins, in some subdistricts by 90%+ margins; only in Balochistan did Suhrawardy make up a notable margin. In Kalat and some areas of the North-West Frontier Province, where due to rebellion elections were tough to hold, some fraud occurred, but for the most part this was a fair margin, representative of the intense reverence of Pakistanis towards Jinnah as well as the lack of political organization outside the Muslim League. In East Bengal, the story could not be any more different. It was not only Hindus who voted for Suhrawardy; it was a majority of Bengalis. But this majority was nowhere near the majorities Jinnah won by in west Pakistan, and there were enough Biharis in East Bengal and (at this juncture) pro-Jinnah Bengalis that despite East Bengal making up a majority of Pakistan's population, Jinnah won. But the margin was nowhere near what people thought, and it showed that Jinnah's status was far more insecure than commonly believed.
In the coming years, this proved a powerful driver for the adjustment of electoral laws and democratic backsliding; if even with Jinnah at the nation's head the Bengalis could come within spitting distance at taking the presidency, it was revealing of Bengalis having too much potential power. This displayed itself very quickly in the parliamentary elections in the coming weeks, where East Bengal was made to use proportional representation which no other part of Pakistan used. In the following years the Muslim League was entrenched as Pakistan's vanguard party. Though this all ensured that the Muslim League got to continue leading the nation, it also led many Bengalis to wonder if, indeed, being part of Pakistan was really a good thing....
Pakistan was, further, left with the issue of being divided into two halves, one western and one eastern. The western half, centred around Urdu-Punjabi culture and dominant within the Muslim League, and the eastern half, centred around Bengali culture and having a majority of the population. In the western half, virtually all Hindus and Sikhs fled to India; the eastern half, even with mass flight, was 18% Hindu. This political division very quickly made itself known on the national level, when Bengalis who made up a majority of the state advocated parity between Bengali and Urdu. This quickly irked Jinnah, who himself abandoned his native Gujarati for Urdu and believed Bengalis should accept Urdu hegemony. In a speech given in Dhaka on April 21, 1948, where in addition to declaring Partition exclusively featured anti-Muslim violence, accusing his opponents of being communists, and declaring every Muslim should join the Muslim League, he declared that Pakistan's national language ought to be only Urdu and tarred those who said otherwise as enemies of Pakistan. This brazen statement was met with horror by Bengali society at large, causing agitations, all the while Jinnah refused attempts to enact any sort of compromise. Ultimately, with the constitution yet to be written, these protests dissipated.
At the same time, Islam was quickly framed as the founding principle of the nation. In a speech to the Karachi Bar Association on January 25, 1948, Jinnah declared that the issue of the constitution was resolved 1,300 years ago and it would be framed on the basis of sharia. Furthermore, he set up a Department of Islamic Reconstruction led by Muhammad Asad (formerly Leopold Weiss), and he requested assistance from Hassan al-Banna, the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, on writing a constitution to frame Pakistan's government as purely Islamic. At the same time, Jinnah spurned Islamic doctrine. He drank wine, ate pork sausages, and had a large collection of Saville Row suits. How could he justify such an asymmetry? Fundamentally, it was because to him Islam did not necessarily denote a religion; instead, it denoted a Perso-Arabic culture which, in the subcontinent, involved Urdu. That Bengalis do not fit such a culture and instead are "culturally Hindu", was the principal reason behind Bengali tensions.
The project of the writing of the constitution proved difficult. As Governor-General, Jinnah could not directly affect affairs of the Constituent Assembly despite his immense cult of personality, and thus instead it proved enormously inept. After India promulgated a constitution in 1949 to come in effect the next year, Jinnah realized there was a need to expedite the writing of the constitution. Using both his cult of personality and his power as Governor-General, he organized a special committee consisting of yes-men who write his desired constitution. According to this, Pakistan was to feature a very strong presidency - with few doubting who the president would be - and a very weak parliament. With Jinnah having a very low opinion of politicians other than him, the prime minister was to be abolished and instead the cabinet would be responsible to the president. Furthermore, the provincial governments were to include very weak powers, and the Bengali language was not to be official. Though this was met with an uproar, Jinnah successfully got this constitution passed in late 1951.
The result was rioting in East Bengal. It took a wave of suppression and mass arrests to end this, and this necessitated delaying elections. But at the same time, Jinnah came to realize some sort of compromise was necessary. And so, he declared that, within East Bengal, Bengali would have constitutionally-recognize provincial status, and that on the national level, an appropriately "Islamized" Bengali written with Perso-Arabic script would be a secondary language of business. Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, who broke away from the Muslim League and formed the Awami League over Jinnah's emphasis on Islam in state, quickly emerged as the leader of this Bengali regionalism.
In 1953, Pakistan faced yet another issue when Acting President Jinnah received a petition advocating the marginalization of members of the Ahmadi sect of Islam. This, Jinnah refused, and the result was mass rioting across Punjab. Jinnah denounced this publicly, declaring Ahmadi fellow Muslims who ought to be treated as such. However, few of the rioters agreed with this - indeed, that was why they were rioting - and so it continued. It took Jinnah declaring martial law to end these protests.
Finally, by 1954, a presidential election could be held. It quickly turned into a contest between Jinnah of the Muslim League and Suhrawardy of the Awami League. That Suhrawardy received endorsements from Hindu groups led his party to be nicknamed the "Hindu League", and the perception of his party being that of Hindus and "cultural Hindus" led him to be regarded as the candidate of Hindus. At the same time, Jinnah's extreme popularity in west Pakistan meant most saw his victory as self-evident. If there was evidence there was less popularity in East Bengal, it could be easily disregarded. For indeed, who would vote out the founder of the nation?
The results of the election showed that many would.
Across western Pakistan, for lack of any real competitor Jinnah won by massive margins, in some subdistricts by 90%+ margins; only in Balochistan did Suhrawardy make up a notable margin. In Kalat and some areas of the North-West Frontier Province, where due to rebellion elections were tough to hold, some fraud occurred, but for the most part this was a fair margin, representative of the intense reverence of Pakistanis towards Jinnah as well as the lack of political organization outside the Muslim League. In East Bengal, the story could not be any more different. It was not only Hindus who voted for Suhrawardy; it was a majority of Bengalis. But this majority was nowhere near the majorities Jinnah won by in west Pakistan, and there were enough Biharis in East Bengal and (at this juncture) pro-Jinnah Bengalis that despite East Bengal making up a majority of Pakistan's population, Jinnah won. But the margin was nowhere near what people thought, and it showed that Jinnah's status was far more insecure than commonly believed.
In the coming years, this proved a powerful driver for the adjustment of electoral laws and democratic backsliding; if even with Jinnah at the nation's head the Bengalis could come within spitting distance at taking the presidency, it was revealing of Bengalis having too much potential power. This displayed itself very quickly in the parliamentary elections in the coming weeks, where East Bengal was made to use proportional representation which no other part of Pakistan used. In the following years the Muslim League was entrenched as Pakistan's vanguard party. Though this all ensured that the Muslim League got to continue leading the nation, it also led many Bengalis to wonder if, indeed, being part of Pakistan was really a good thing....