Sarmila Bose,
(Hurst, 2011).
The creation of Bangladesh was a missed opportunity for India to reverse the British partition of Bengal. It was an error of judgement due to India’s tendency to think in terms of how to damage Pakistan, rather than what might benefit India.
At the end of the 1971 war, Pakistan was in disarray and the Indian army was in control of the territory of East Pakistan. Had Indira Gandhi annexed it as the new state of East Bengal within the Union of India and offered Sheikh Mujib the chief ministership, evidence suggests he would have accepted. He had few options. India has responded with an iron fist to any secessionist tendencies within the boundaries it was bequeathed by the British, holding large swathes of territory under military occupation, without Constitutional protections. By 1975 Indira Gandhi had annexed Sikkim and broken the ‘Lion of Kashmir’, Sheikh Abdullah, who agreed to be chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir.
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Getting to know Pakistani history better Staff Report
Imran Ali
This comprehensive survey of British rule in the Punjab demonstrates that colonial policy-making led to many of the socio-economic and political problems currently plaguing Pakistan and Indian Punjab. Subordinating development goals to its political and military imperatives, the colonial state co-operated with the dominant social classes, the members of which became the major beneficiaries of agricultural colonization. Even while the rulers tried to use the vast resources of the Punjab to advance imperial purposes, they were themselves being used by their collaborators to advance implacable private interests. Such processes effectively retarded both nationalism and social change and resulted in the continued backwardness of the region even after the departure of the British.
Chitral News Shandur confusion: Map will be corrected says minister NBP Chitral gets ATM facility installed at last Kalash summer festival ‘Uchal’ to be held from 22 August
Remembering East Pakistan
.. By Lt Gen (rtd) Raza Muhammad Khan
TO usher in democracy, Pakistan permitted the Awami League (AL) of Mujib to contest elections in Dec 1970, on the basis of his Six Points, four of which were unmistakably secessionist. It won an absolute majority of 160 NA seats, all from East Pakistan (EP), including many through intimidation, while Bhutto’s PPP won only 81 seats, in West Pakistan. Mujib claimed formation of the government, but the Six Points were a hindrance in his way. The government endeavoured to convince Bhutto and Mujib to work out a power sharing formula, within a united Pakistan, but in vain. Fearing the consequences of the AL’s majority and the ramification of the Six Points, Bhutto sought postponement of the NA session and famously threatened to “break