Deep resentment and its after effects
The loathing of the Bengali from Sir Syed Ahmed Khan to Jinnah and thereafter
It is 51 years this week, since the Bangladesh war of independence, a war fought between Pakistani forces and those of India and Mukti Bahini (Bangladeshi forces) coupled with their civilian resistance.
Recently, I read ‘Stranger in my own country’, a memoir by Pakistani Major General Khadim Hussain Raja who served in East Pakistan (formerly East Bengal, now Bangladesh) during the turbulent times of the early 1970s leading up to the war with India. You can read the book by downloading various formats here. This is the description of the man, though you would not know it from the memoir;
Maj Gen Raja was in charge of military operation of March 25, 1971. Other generals were present in Dhaka along with Yahya Khan, and secretly departed on the evening of March 25, 1971, that fateful day after fixing the deadline for the military action. Lt Gen Tikka Khan, Maj Gen Rao Farman Ali and Maj Gen Khadim Hussain Raja were associated with the planning of the military action. Eventually their action bloodied the capital city Dhaka with the blood of thousands of residents including students, military and police personnel, politician and the general mass.1
The general trend of his writing is one of grievance, that the East Pakistani narrative about economic exploitation is all false, and that the West Pakistanis (mostly Punjabis or UP-born) were trying their best. Here’s his first impression of Dhaka.
Soon after our arrival in Dhaka, I was taken aback by the chasm that was apparent between the two wings of a united Pakistan. The Bengalis in East Pakistan were openly critical of the West Pakistanis in general and of the Punjabis, in particular. The majority of Bengalis held the Biharis in equal contempt. They were looked upon as foreign usurpers who had forged ahead of the locals in every competitive field of human endeavour. We were told that while referring to West Pakistanis and the immigrants from Bihar, who had arrived post-partition, the average Bengali used derogatory words like ‘shala Punjabi’ and ‘shala Bihari’ The reaction against Urdu was so strong that only Bengali language signboards were allowed to be displayed in East Pakistan. Signboards in both Urdu and English were either taken down or destroyed. Throughout the province, there was an atmosphere of tension which reflected the unhappiness of the average Bengali with the West Pakistanis. This anti-West Pakistan feeling was evinced even by the Bengali shopkeepers who would pay scant attention to a West Pakistani customer. They were not even interested in earning money from West Pakistani customers. In fact, they deliberately ignored and slighted them, and gave preference to Bengali customers. The environment was so strikingly unfriendly that | felt like a stranger in my own country, and totally unwelcome as a West Pakistani.
How Major General Raja ever made that rank, is beyond me. For more details of that period, including the debauchery and genocidal tendencies of the Pakistani army leadership, read the leaked Hamoodur Commission Report (details of the commission here). 2
We need to look back at the history of East Bengal’s contribution to the making of the nation. This was the result of the 1946 provincial elections in India. East Bengal literally made Pakistan a reality, ably aided by the ‘Butcher of Bengal’ Hussyn Shaheed Suhrawardy. 3
(Aside: It is interesting to note how powerful Badshah Khan was, that the NWFP got 50% more Congress votes than the Muslim League despite it being almost a 100% Muslim majority province.)
Following this, instead of Bengali becoming a/the lingua franca of Pakistan, Urdu was deemed to be it, despite the fact that only a small percentage of the newly formed Pakistan spoke Urdu.
On 15 September 1947, they published a popular booklet called “Pakistaner Rashtro Bhasha Bangla na Urdu?” (Is Pakistan’s State Language Bengali or is it Urdu?) in which they outlined demands for Bengali to become an official language of Pakistan recognizing it as a language of education, court communication, and office communication, and an accepted language of the Central government along with Urdu.4
and
Because only 7 percent of the Pakistani population spoke Urdu (emphasis mine), and 56 percent spoke Bengali, students, intellectuals, many political representatives, and many East Pakistani citizens declared that it deserved to be an official language of Pakistan along with Urdu.
but Jinnah nixed it in his own classically contradictory manner.
About language I have already said, this is in order to create disruption among the Musalmans. Your Prime Minister has rightIy pointed this out in a recent statement, and I am glad that his government have decided to put down firmly any attempt to disturb the peace of this province by political saboteurs or their agents. Whether Bengali should be the official language of this province is a matter for the elected representatives of the people of this province to decide. I have no doubt that this question should be decided solely in accordance with the wishes of the inhabitants of this province at the appropriate time. Let me tell you in clearest language that there is no truth [in rumors] that your normal life is to be touched or disturbed, so far as your Bengali language is concerned. But ultimately it is for you, the people of this province, to decide what should be the language of your province.
But let me make it clear to you that the state language of Pakistan is going to be Urdu and no other language. Anyone who tries to mislead [you] is merely the enemy of Pakistan. Without one state language, no nation can remain tied up solidly together and function. Look at the history of other countries. There[fore] so far as the state language is concerned, Pakistan's language should be Urdu; but, as I have said, it will come in time.5
The hostile reception to this speech can still be felt years later, such as this article in the Dhaka Tribune written in 2020.
Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s visit to East Bengal, with his pronouncements on the language question, considerably diminished his hitherto solid reputation as a unifying force for the people of Pakistan. A sense of alienation between him and the Bangalis set in immediately with his departure for Karachi. Jinnah’s intransigence on the position of the Bangali language, however, emboldened Chief Minister Khwaja Nazimuddin to an extent that had earlier not been noticed.
This arrogant behavior continued with the West Pakistani state’s rent-seeking attitude towards East Pakistan, the worst example of which was the financing of its new capital through tax contributions and business revenue from East Pakistani efforts.
Billions of rupees were spent to build the city of Islamabad and thousands of federal government employees were shifted 1,500 kilometres away first to Rawalpindi as an interim capital and then to Islamabad. The shift in capital cities left the Bengali population of East Pakistan embittered and resentful. They often remarked that they could “feel the smell of jute from the roads and buildings of Islamabad” because they claimed that the city was built with their resources.6
This step-motherly treatment of the Bengali population goes back to the very idea of a Muslim-state which was driven by what can be called the equivalent of the lost-cause of the Mughals. Sir Syed Ahmed Khan founder of the Aligarh Muslim University and the intellectual brain behind what eventually became Iqbal’s long whingeing victimhood narrative, and then Jinnah’s, was most disturbed by the fact that the virile Rajput and Mughal would be ruled by the educated effeminate Bengali. In his framing, Sir Syed Ahmed Khan didn't want Muslims to be overcome by - according to his framing - educated and powerful Bengali untermenschen who would perform better in competitive exams. In a speech at Meerut in 1888, Sir Syed said some rather nasty things about Bengalis.
(8) When examinations held in England result in the appointment of people of low birth, such people are of “no benefit,” while “those of high family honor the Ra'ises and treat them well, and impress upon people's hearts an image of the honor of the English people [inglish qaum] and the justice of the British Government, and are of benefit to the coun- try and the Government.” But at least England is so far from us that we don't know the family backgrounds of the officers who come here. Whereas the “noble communities [sharīf qaum] of Hindustan will not like it for a Hindustani of low rank, with whose roots and background they are acquainted, to be the master of their lives and property. (Cheers.)”7
and
10) Competitive examinations would result in government by Bengalis. “All the communities [qaum], not just Musalmans but all the Hindus of this region [mulk], the honored Rajahs and brave Rajputs too who remember their ancestors' swords, will see as their ruler one Bengali, who upon seeing a knife would drop down beneath a chair.” To endure the rule of Bengalis would be “to suffer shoe-beatings.”
and
(12) If electors were chosen through a property qualification, the Bengalis would entirely dominate the Council, and other, more martial communities would become restive.
and
(17) The Government is wrong to distrust us Muslims, but such distrust is understand-able, for we are a martial community. “We are those who for six or seven hundred years ruled over Hindustan. (Cheers.) We are those from whose hands the Government snatched [chhīnnā] the country.... We neither eat fish, nor fear that if we eat with knife and fork we might cut our fingers. (Cheers.).”8
and so on.
His follow up speech in Meerut in 1888 is even worse. Firstly, the association of the language/culture with religion, and then the arrogance with which their aspirations are assumed to have synergy with that of his tribe.
As regards Bengal, there is, as far as I am aware, in Lower Bengal a much larger proportion of Mahomedans than Bengalis. And if you take the population of the whole of Bengal, nearly half are Mahomedans and something over half are Bengalis. Those Mahomedans are quite unaware of what sort of thing the National Congress is. No Mahomedan Raïs of Bengal took part in it, and the ordinary Bengalis who live in the districts are also as ignorant of it as the Mahomedans. In Bengal the Mahomedan population is so great that if the aspirations of those Bengalis who are making so loud an agitation be fulfilled, it will be extremely difficult for the Bengalis to remain in peace even in Bengal. These proposals of the Congress are extremely inexpedient for the country, which is inhabited by two different nations — who drink from the same well, breathe the air of the same city, and depend on each other for its life. To create animosity between them is good neither for peace, nor for the country, nor for the town.9
In other words, clearly, the resentment of the Bengali eventually led to the formation of Pakistan (though it was not the only cause), the negation of the aspiration of the Bengali (the East Bengali to be specific) and then the ruthless exploitation and genocide by the “virile” West Pakistanis led to the formation of Bangladesh.
That attitude still continues today.
For example, even though, I used to love the comedy of Umer Sharif (with caveats) and that of Moin Akhtar in general, but this one by the former, and the one below by the latter? Deep cringe.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khadim_Hussain_Raja
http://www.bangla2000.com/bangladesh/independence-war/report-hamoodur-rahman/default.shtm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1946_Indian_provincial_elections
https://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/content/pakistanis-demand-their-government-recognize-bengali-official-language-1947-1952
http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00islamlinks/txt_jinnah_dacca_1948.html
https://tribune.com.pk/story/2328196/the-price-of-shifting-capital-from-karachi
http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00islamlinks/txt_sir_sayyid_lucknow_1887.html
http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00islamlinks/txt_sir_sayyid_lucknow_1887.html
http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00islamlinks/txt_sir_sayyid_meerut_1888.html