Pakistan, at independence in 1947, included Bangladesh despite it being entirely disconnected from the rest of Pakistan by India, a country which was (and is) hostile to Pakistani interests. Despite the western half being richer and more powerful, the eastern Bengali half had the majority of people - 44 million in a country of 69 million. Almost immediately after independence, Muhammad Ali Jinnah decreed that Urdu and strictly Urdu was to be the national language of the country despite it only being commonly spoken in the western half, something which led the Bengali population led by numerous Bengali politicians to initiate a campaign of intense activism. Protests, however, were suppressed and Bengali leaders even including A.K. Fazlul Huq, the "Lion of Bengal", were injured or arrested. Tensions were further inflamed when Jinnah claimed that the language issue was caused by a "fifth column" and that Urdu embodied Islam and Pakistan and attacked those who disagreed with him as enemies of the nation. With Jinnah's death in 1948, this issue fell in importance until in 1952 the governor-general defended the Urdu-only policy. The result was protests, which were immediately clamped upon by Pakistan which banned all political gatherings in East Pakistan. This resulted in further protest, and the Language Movement climaxed with the killing of student demonstrators. Divisions between the two halves of Pakistan were highlighted. In 1954, Bengali autonomists won a sweeping landslide in East Bengal provincial elections. Furthermore, in 1956, the constitution was amended to give Bengali co-official status and Pakistan was divided into two semi-autonomous units - East and West Pakistan.
However, a military coup in 1958 overthrew the Pakistani government and the new President (who hailed from West Pakistan), Ayub Khan, clamped down on the Bengali language and ignored the Bengali population. While he successfully promoted his own Pashtun ethnic group, he did the opposite to Bengalis. Federal spending was focused on West Pakistan to the detriment of the East. In Ayub Khan's memoirs, he wrote: "When thinking of the problems of East Pakistan, one cannot help feeling that[Muslim Bengalis'] urge to isolate themselves from West Pakistan and revert to Hindu language and culture is close to the fact that they have no culture and language of their own, nor have they been able to assimilate the culture of the Muslims of the sub-continent, by turning their back on Urdu". In effect, East Pakistan was a colony of West Pakistan, led by a man who hated everything Bengali, and this was despite the fact that East Pakistan had more people than West. In the 1964 presidential election, Bengali politicians broadly supported Jinnah's sister Fatima along with a motley coalition of (ironically) Islamists, democrats, and other opponents of Ayub Khan. However, the electoral college system used to elect the president meant that Ayub Khan easily rigged the election against Fatima. In 1966, Mujibur Rahman, the main East Pakistani politician, created the Six Point movement, with the following:
Could Pakistan have been kept together? My thoughts are that it would require extensive autonomy between the two halves of Pakistan, as the Six Points state. It would keep Pakistan from being a Bengali state as many West Pakistanis feared while also keeping West Pakistan from dominating the East. On the other hand, it may be closer than the Six Points (which would turn Pakistan into an entity weaker than the EU) and a military coup would likely result if such autonomy was instituted though I imagine East Pakistan having its own military as well as being the navy's headquarters would make TTL's Bangladesh Liberation War a considerably less brutal affair. It does make me wonder if military involvement in the Pakistani government needs to be reduced, though that requires a POD before the Constitutional Coup in 1953 when military pressure induced the governor-general to replace the prime minister. It would be optimal to have Bengali as an official Pakistani language from independence thus avoiding the Language Movement, though considering how even Jinnah himself was opposed to this, perhaps that's impossible.
However, a military coup in 1958 overthrew the Pakistani government and the new President (who hailed from West Pakistan), Ayub Khan, clamped down on the Bengali language and ignored the Bengali population. While he successfully promoted his own Pashtun ethnic group, he did the opposite to Bengalis. Federal spending was focused on West Pakistan to the detriment of the East. In Ayub Khan's memoirs, he wrote: "When thinking of the problems of East Pakistan, one cannot help feeling that[Muslim Bengalis'] urge to isolate themselves from West Pakistan and revert to Hindu language and culture is close to the fact that they have no culture and language of their own, nor have they been able to assimilate the culture of the Muslims of the sub-continent, by turning their back on Urdu". In effect, East Pakistan was a colony of West Pakistan, led by a man who hated everything Bengali, and this was despite the fact that East Pakistan had more people than West. In the 1964 presidential election, Bengali politicians broadly supported Jinnah's sister Fatima along with a motley coalition of (ironically) Islamists, democrats, and other opponents of Ayub Khan. However, the electoral college system used to elect the president meant that Ayub Khan easily rigged the election against Fatima. In 1966, Mujibur Rahman, the main East Pakistani politician, created the Six Point movement, with the following:
- Pakistan should be a true federation with a supreme parliament with universal suffrage
- The federal government should only be concerned with defence and foreign affairs, with all other matters vested in the subdivisions
- Two separate but convertible currencies should be used by the two wings of Pakistan, or if not possible some action should be taken to prevent the flight of capital from East to West
- Taxation should be the duty of the federal units
- There should be two separate foreign exchange accounts with the units being free to pursue their own trade links with countries
- East Pakistan should have its own military force and the navy headquarters should be in East Pakistan.
Could Pakistan have been kept together? My thoughts are that it would require extensive autonomy between the two halves of Pakistan, as the Six Points state. It would keep Pakistan from being a Bengali state as many West Pakistanis feared while also keeping West Pakistan from dominating the East. On the other hand, it may be closer than the Six Points (which would turn Pakistan into an entity weaker than the EU) and a military coup would likely result if such autonomy was instituted though I imagine East Pakistan having its own military as well as being the navy's headquarters would make TTL's Bangladesh Liberation War a considerably less brutal affair. It does make me wonder if military involvement in the Pakistani government needs to be reduced, though that requires a POD before the Constitutional Coup in 1953 when military pressure induced the governor-general to replace the prime minister. It would be optimal to have Bengali as an official Pakistani language from independence thus avoiding the Language Movement, though considering how even Jinnah himself was opposed to this, perhaps that's impossible.
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