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Bangladesh: Difference between revisions
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Bangladesh (Harrison wrote it separately since that was how it was spelt at the time, but it’s only one word) can be seen as the [[Woobie]] of the region and rightly so, having endured some of the worst stuff nature and humanity has to throw to us.
Initially part of India, it was partitioned along with the northwestern provinces of British India to become Pakistan because of religious differences with the rest of the subcontinent. Bangladesh became East Pakistan, separated geographically from West Pakistan by… all of India. This awkward federation was off to a bad start from the beginning when West Pakistan imposed Urdu as the only official language of Pakistan, which irked the Bengali-speaking population of East Pakistan, who were also the most populous ethnic group of all within the two Pakistans. Not only that, but all the political, martial, and economic power was located in West Pakistan, leaving the eastern part powerless and relatively expendable, as was made clear in 1965 when Pakistan's then-dictator, Field Marshal Ayub Khan, declared that "the best defense of East Pakistan laid in West Pakistan".
Obviously that didn’t do too well with the Bengalis of East Pakistan and they began demanding their autonomy by requesting that Pakistan become a loose confederation rather than the unitary republic that it was at the time. After a great deal of negotiation, this was agreed to and in 1970, the general elections showed that the pro-Bengali Awami League had won. The West Pakistanis did not accept the result however and soon the Awami League leader, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, was arrested. To make things worse, [[Crapsack World|a typhoon hit the country around the same time]]. Angered by the political betrayal as well as the incompetant job of the central government to give relief to the province (hundreds of thousands died from the hurricane), the Bengalis declared themselves independent. In retaliation, West Pakistan cracked down on East Pakistan and began the execution of intellectuals and minorities. The Bengalis fled in terror into the neighboring Indian province of West Bengal. India, which feared having its lands adjacent to East Pakistan overrun with East Pakistanis, as well as for humanitarian and strategic reasons, began to intervene, eventually leading to the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 and the liberation of Bangladesh.
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:Useful Notes/Asia]]▼
[[Category:Bangladesh]]
[[Category:Useful Notes]]
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