Improbable Wedding
Even in less troubled times. Pakistanis were prone to observe that the only bonds between the diverse and distant wings of their Moslem nation were the Islamic faith and Pakistan International Airlines. Sharing neither borders nor cultures, separated by 1,100 miles of Indian territory. Pakistan is an improbable wedding of the Middle East and Southeast Asia. The tall, light skinned Punjab is, Pathans, Baluchis and Sindhis of West Pakistan are descendants of the Aryans who swept into the sub-continent in the second millennium B.C. East Pakistan's slight, dark Bengalis are more closely related to the Dravidian people they subjugated. The Westerners, who eat wheat and meat, speak Urdu, which is written in' Arabic but is a synthesis of Persian and Hindi. The Easterners eat rice and fish, and speak Bengali, a singsong language of Indo-Aryan origin.
The East “also has a much larger Hindu minority than the West. 10 million out of a population of 78 million compared with 800,000 Hindus out of a population of 58 million in the West. In British India days, the present West Pakistan formed the frontier of the empire, and the British trained the energetic Punjabis and Pathans as soldiers. They scorn the lungi, a southeast Asian-style sarong worn by the Bengalis “In the East,” a West Pakistani saying has it. “the men wear the skirts and the women the pants. In the West, things are as they should be".
Twenty Families
The West Pakistanis were also determined to “wear the pants” as far as running the country was concerned. Once, the Bengalis were proud to belong to Pakistan (an Urdu word meaning “land of the pure"). Like the Moslems from the West, they had been resentful of the dominance of the more numerous Hindus in India before partition. In 1940, Pakistan's founding father. Mohammad Ali Jinnah, called for a separate Islamic state. India hoped to prevent the split, but in self-determination ejections in 1947 five predominantly Moslem provinces including East Bengal, voted” to break away. The result was a geographical curiosity and, as it sadly proved, a political absurdity.
Instead of bringing peace, independence and prosperity, partition brought horrible massacres, with Hindus killing Moslems and Moslems killing Hindus. Shortly before his assassination in 1948, Mahatma Gandhi undertook what proved to be his last fast to halt the bloodshed. “All the quarrels of the Hindus and the Mohammedans,” he said, “have arisen from each wanting to force the other to his view".
From the beginning the East got the short end of the bargain in Pakistan. Though it has only one-sixth of the country's total land area, the East contains well over half the population (about 136 million), and in early years contributed as much as 70% of foreign- exchange earnings. But West Pakistan regularly devours three-quarters of all foreign aid and 60% of export earnings. With the Punjabi-Pathan elite in control for two decades. Last Pakistan has been left a deprived agricultural backwater. Before the civil war, Bengalis held only 15% of government jobs and accounted for only 5% of the 275,000 man army. Twenty multimillionaire families, nearly all from the West, still control a shockingly disproportionate amount of the country's industry wealth (by an official study.
