fighters (the British excluded them from the 'martial races' and recruited only a regiment of Sappers and Miners); resenting this, they are prone to demonstrative acts of heroism. They are skilful and inventive' but not systematic at work. West Pakistanis are the opposite of all this, and the absurd state of Pakistan is something like a forced union of Britain and Italy, with France in between.
"Pakistan is a Moslem nation, but history qualifies this too, Being a Moslem in the West is partly a racial inheritance, deriving from settlement by people of Iranian and Afghan origin. Conversion to Islam in Bengal was an opting out of the caste system by the poor. Moslem or not, Bengalis still felt passionately Bengali, so much so that they protested furiously when, in 1905, Lord Curzon tried to divide the province into East and West Bengal; it was one of the rare occasions when a Viceroy had to renounce a pet project. That Bengal was thus partitioned in 1947, with British rule ending, is a wry historical irony.
"Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, was an upper-class Bombay Moslem anglicized in his habits and not very religious, just as Carson was an upper-class Dublin Protestant. Power in the new state was monopolized by landowners and Sandhursttype generals, all from West Pakistan, with no background in the fight against imperialism. This, in addition to the theocratic basis of Pakistan, was what Indians like Nehru so disliked about them.
"From the outset, they had no more intention of creating a democracy then had the similar oligarchy in Northern Ireland. True, the Bengalis were fellow Moslems and had no yearnings to reunite with India (though they wanted neighborly relations and lacked interest in the Kashmir vendetta). The point was that they were unreliable chaps, outside the closer circle. Top jobs in the civil service and the police went to men from the West." Economic development, not very impressive anywhere, favored the already wealthier western provinces. Attempts to right the balance were frustrated, when government was not openly dictatorial, by a limited franchise (80,000 citizens in a population of 100 million could vote for the presidency) and a judicious mixture of intimidation and bribery. 1 happened to be in East Pakistan when Ayub Khan was getting himself re-elected in 1965. An American friend used to exclaim “There's a voter' whenever we saw a man inexpertly riding a new Honda.
"When real elections came. Sheikh Mujib's Awami League won a victory in the East comparable only to Sinn Fein's sweep in 1918. The difference was that he was demanding only 'home rule'. He was aware both of the appalling consequences of an armed clash and of the hard row that an independent Bangladesh would have to hoe even if it could be achieved, given its wretched poverty. Popular feeling and Yahya Khans stubbornness drove him, in the moment of crisis, to claim independence. I suspect that one could listen to an interesting debate if one could be a mouse under a table in Washington. There would be advocates of the oligarchy as the 'safe men", the counterparts of similar regimes endorsed from Greece to Brazil. There might be voices arguing that Bengal can't be held down and that Mujib-a popular leader but no revolutionary-is the best insurance against less controllable forces.
