Partition of India: Why was Bangladesh (East Pakistan) not given independence in the first place, and what role the the British play in the whole story?

by t0rnap0rt

Partition of India is very bloody, so is Pakistan's suppression of East Pakistan. Here comes the questions:

  1. Why was Bangladesh given to Pakistan in the first place? Didn't the British know in the beginning that Pakistan could not rule it properly (owing to ethnic and geographic problems)?
  2. What was Britain's role and goal in the Partition? The British knew India could not be kept as imperial possession anyway, so what interest did they want to secure in this partition? Was it their major goal to avoid ethnic and religious wars (which seemed inevitable despite best efforts)?
WarFyre

Please note: for the purpose of this answer EP = East Pakistan WP = West Pakistan Pakistan = whole of Pakistan pre 1972

  1. EP (during British India) stood at the frontline for the creation of Pakistan. Hussein Suhawardy was one the prominent leaders of the Muslim league and attached himself to Jinnah in the letters demand for a Muslim state. It wasn’t obvious that Pakistan would be unable to rule EP from the very beginning, or at least no more obvious than whether India or Pakistan would be able to rule themselves at all in the first place. The differences between EP and WP arose much later although Jinnah had sowed the seed for such differences as soon as the partition occurred by declaring Urdu as the national language completely ignoring the Bengalis of EP who were 55% of the population and had Bengali as their mother tongue. Despite having majority of the population EP was extremely poor and WP did little to help it, instead diverting their resources for their gain. Eventually, more than two decades of military rule after partition, when the very first elections were announced, they were won by Sheikh Mujib, a Bengali from EP. Pakistan establishment rejected the elections, arrested Mujib and this sparked a revolution in EP. WP unleashed a genocide in EP to crush the rebellion. They fought back, India intervened and supported the cause and finally Bangladesh was born.

  2. So the British always wanted a united India because they wanted India to be a part of the commonwealth so the Indian army that they had raised could continue to fight their wars in the future. The British (and the rest of the West) was suspicious of Soviet expansion and felt that’s why they believed that a united India would be better equipped to fight this expansion. However seeing Nehru (freedom fighter and first Pm of India) and his party predominantly being a of the socialist and anti imperialist ideology, they realised that this would not be possible so they decided to shield India by an Islamic arch to prevent communism from infiltrating which they believed was likely considering the inequalities in India and the ideological leanings of its leaders.

Sources

  1. The Great Game - Peter Hopkirk

  2. Pakistan a Garrison State - Prof Ishtiaq Ahmed

  3. The Blood Telegram - Gary J Bass