When Pakistan came into existence on 14 August 1947, it was divided into two major regions. East Pakistan and West Pakistan. In terms of population, East Pakistan, which is now Bangladesh, was ahead of West Pakistan. But in terms of power and development, West Pakistan was ahead. Jinnah lived here. Whatever may be the story of Bangladesh’s separation from Pakistan, its script was written on the basis of language.
In fact, 56 percent of the country’s population lived in East Pakistan, which spoke Bengali. The people here wanted that the official language of Pakistan should be Bengali along with Urdu. But Jinnah and the people of West Pakistan did not approve of this.
One mistake of Jinnah and Pakistan broke up
Dutch professor William von Schindel, who researched the history of Bangladesh, writes in his book ‘A History of Bangladesh’ that soon after the creation of Pakistan, the dominance of the people of North India started to emerge. This was from the parliament to language. Schindel writes that language became the first reason for the dispute between East and West Pakistan. Actually, the people of West Pakistan believed that the Bengali language was influenced by Hindus, due to which they were not ready to adopt or give importance to it. A glimpse of this was seen in 1948.
In February 1948, when a Bengali member of the Pakistan Assembly proposed that apart from Urdu, Bengali should also be used in the assembly, Jinnah got angry. The then PM of Pakistan Mohammad Ali Jinnah said in the Parliament that Pakistan was formed on the demand of crores of Muslims of the subcontinent and the language of Muslims is Urdu. Because of this, it is necessary that Pakistan should have a common language which can only be Urdu.
Movement for language
Jinnah did not only put forward his point in the Parliament of Pakistan. Rather, when he went on a tour of East Pakistan, there too he said clearly that Pakistan has and will have only one language and that is Urdu. The people of East Pakistan did not agree with this, gradually this fire grew and the students started a movement for the language. Many students lost their lives in this movement and then the spark of independence of East Pakistan became a torch. The fire of this torch and the support of India gave East Pakistan the form of a new country ‘Bangladesh’ in 1971.
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