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Abstract
The historic partition of Bengal in 1947 caused a shift in the composition of the Muslim and Hindu political elite who were now geographically bounded into two separate newly formed provincial states of East Pakistan and West Bengal. The aim of this article is to explore the transformation in elite conceptions of identity in East Pakistan from the post-1947 era until the creation of Bangladesh in 1971. The prevalence of two new competing elites created a great dichotomy in the way identity was conceived. The change of these elite groups fundamentally altered the view of identity that was articulated during this period.
Notes
1. The terms of the 1947 partition were first formulated by Sir Cyril Radcliffe. He established the borderline for India and Pakistan. East Pakistan was created from the former province of East Bengal.
2. Mohammed Ali Jinnah (1876–1948) was the leader of the All India Muslim League and leader of the Pakistan movement in the period before independence. He became the first Governor-General of Pakistan in 1947.
3. Mohammad Ali Jinnah was born in 1876 in Wazir Mansion, Karachi. In 1896 he joined the Indian National Congress. Jinnah avoided joining the All India Muslim League in 1906, but eventually he joined in 1913 and became president at the 1916 session in Lucknow.
4. Liaquat Ali Khan was born to a Madal Pathan family in 1896. He graduated in 1918 from the Muslim Aligarh Oriental College. In 1921 he obtained a law degree from Oxford and was called to the Bar at Inner Temple in 1922. In 1923 he joined the Muslim League. After independence, he became prime minster. Following Jinnah's death he took over the leadership of Pakistan until his assassination in 1951. The reasons for his assassination remain obscure.
5. Iskander Mirza was born in 1899 into a feudal family of Bengal. In 1918 he was sent to Sandhurst for his army training. In 1926 he left the army and joined the Indian Political Service and was posted to the North West Frontier Province. In May 1954 he was appointed Governor of East Bengal. Although Mirza was born in Bengal, he joined the ranks of the West Pakistani elite by serving under various central government ministries. In 1955 he was elected president by the Constituent Assembly. Following Mohammed Ayub Khan's assumption of power, Mirza was forced to leave the country.
6. Chaudhuri Muhammad Ali was born in 1905 at Jalandhar, Punjab. He was educated at the University of Punjab and attained his MSc in 1927. With the establishment of Pakistan, he became secretary general of the new government. He was appointed prime minister in 1955 by Iskander Mirza.
7. Mohammed Ayub Khan was born in Hazara in the North West Frontier Province. He attended Sandhurst for his military training, and reached the top ranks of the army. He belonged to the military strata of West Pakistani society. Khan governed Pakistan under martial law after taking over power in 1958. From 1958 until 1969, he was both a military leader and president of Pakistan. Not only was he chief martial law administrator, but commander-in-chief of the army and president of Pakistan. During the 1960s he introduced an electoral system where selected individuals from the civil service and police were permitted to vote in elections. This is referred to in textbooks as the system of ‘basic democrats’. Ayub Khan believed that this policy would foster a loyal following, yet, he remained an unpopular figure. He resigned in March 1969 when General Yahya Khan became president.
8. The Awami League was established in June 1949 from a left-wing break-away branch of the Pakistan Muslim League (re-formed after 1947 from the original All India Muslim League). The Awami League was set by up by Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy and Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
9. The Pakistan Muslim League was renamed following partition.
10. Pakistan's first National Assembly was based upon the legislative assembly that was elected in the 1945–1946 elections.
11. In 1953 the United Front was formed, which included various political parties from East Pakistan. This coalition contested the elections and won a majority in the following year. Subsequently, a government was established by the United Front coalition.
12. Mohammed Ali Jinnah became the first president of Pakistan in 1947.
13. The two-nation theory postulated that there were two parallel cultural streams – one Muslim the other Hindu – in India with divergent religions, traditions and social orders that hardly ever interacted. This idea was developed to suggest that a separate Muslim nation preceded the existence of Pakistan.
14. The spelling of ‘Parsees’ was originally given in Jinnah's speech. This term refers to the community known as ‘Parsis’.
15. This was not an isolated phenomenon. Even after the creation of Bangladesh, religion was used by the ruling elite to justify their position in power. They resurrected the position of Islam in order to attain political legitimacy. Successive political leaders, including Major-General Ziaur Rahman and Lieutenant-General Hussain Muhammad Ershad, used religion as their authority was weak and under dispute from political parties who opposed their governments (Murshid, 1989, pp. 216–22). Therefore, by using religion all three governments hoped to secure political power. However, this revealed that they were in fact vulnerable and attracted widespread hostility from both opposition elites and from society at large.
16. This spelling of ‘Quran’ appears in the original.
17. Sen (1987, pp. 137–44) has suggested that the spilt in the United Front government was over the question of the electoral system.
18. According to Murshid, the vernacular intelligentsia was drawn from members of the Bengal Muslim elite, which included political activists, especially politicians and leaders, as well as university and college teachers and professors from East Pakistan (Murshid, 1995, pp. 245–50).
19. The spelling of ‘Koran’ is given in Murshid (1995).
20. ‘Sunnah’ means the precedents set by the Prophet Muhammad.
21. These pre-election speeches took place in autumn 1970, before the general elections in December 1970.
22. From the Constitution of the People's Republic of Bangladesh (authorised English translation), passed by the Constituent Assembly of Bangladesh on 4 November 1972.
23. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's speeches were translated into English from Bengali and appeared in O'Connell (1976).
24. ‘Mussalmans’ appears in O'Connell's (1976) translation. The term is used to refer to ‘Muslims’.
25. Chandhuri Mohammed Ali became Prime Minister of Pakistan in 1956 following the introduction of the 1956 Constitution.
26. Previously West Pakistan was comprised of the five provinces of Punjab, Sindh, North West Frontier Province, Baluchistan and Kashmir.
27. This spelling appeared in Suhrawardy's memoirs in Talukdar (1987).
28. This spelling appeared in Ayub Khan's memoirs in Khan (1967).
29. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman used this slogan in a number of speeches throughout this period. Translated from Bengali to English it is: ‘Victory Bengal’ ‘Long live the Friend of Bengal (Sheikh Mujibur Rahman)’ ‘Your country, my country – Bangladesh.’