The Background

In 1947, when the federal state of Pakistan emerged, it faced a unique and difficult dilemma. More than 1000 miles of Indian territory separated its two wings - East and West Pakistan.

First, the Eastern wing was ethnically and linguistically more homogenous than the West. While the Bangalees in the East valued their distinctive ethnic,

Making and Unmaking the Constitution of Bangladesh 365 linguistic and cultural identity over their religious divisions (Hindu and Muslims), the Punjabis, Sindhis, Baluch, Pushtuns, and Muhajirs (migrated Muslims from India) in the West prioritised their Islamic brotherhood over all other consid­erations. Understandably, the need for prioritising linguistic and cultural homogeneity over religious division was more acute in the East than in the West. In the Eastern wing, the non-Muslim population was 23 per cent, while in the West, it was only three per cent.^[1332] The West Pakistani ruling elites' unmindfulness of this reality prompted them to try building a national identity based on an arti­ficial Islamic brotherhood imposed upon such diversified groups of people with diverse languages, cultures, and value systems. While political constitutionalism based on respect for diversity, provincial autonomy, and decentralisation could have provided a workable framework of constitutional relations between the two wings, the West Pakistani political elites expressed their desire to suppress the Bangalees and make them ‘pure Muslims'^[1333] instead.

Second, months into the independence, in September 1947, the central government of Pakistan issued currency notes, coins, money orders and postcards in English and Urdu and ignored Bangla - the mother tongue of the East, which comprised 56 per cent of Pakistan's total population.

Third, while the agricultural peasants constituted the domineering political mass in the East, the landlords of large feudal estates emerged as the most power­ful political actors in the West.^[1335] Prominent political leaders in the East hailed mostly from the working class with leftist indoctrination and a substantial number of college-educated middle-class progressives.^[1336] On the other hand, the West Pakistani political leadership comprised the landed elites and powerful bureaucrats from the civil-military establishment. Merely three years into the independence from Britain, the East Pakistani Provincial legislature passed a landmark Bill called the East Bengal State Land Acquisition and Tenancy Act of 1950. It sought to abol­ish the British colonial Government's permanent land settlement system for the landed aristocrats (Zamindars), put a ceiling on the maximum amount of land an individual could privately own (at around 33 acres per head), and nationalise the

excess lands in the state's favour. Some argue that this single piece of legislation would ring alarm bells among the West Pakistani ruling elites and determine the future course of (non)relation between the two political wings.^[1337]

Fourth, after around 18 years of misgovernance, the capture of state institutions by the civil-military bureaucracies and denial of rightful political representation for the East, Pakistan fell into direct military rule in 1958.^[1338] Since then, it could not recover from the clutch of the military's unconstitutional interferences into poli­tics until a bloody war for Bangladesh's independence broke out in 1971.^[1339] The war seemed an inevitable materialisation of a forecast made by a mid-level intelligence officer of the Pakistan Intelligence Bureau (IB) in 1961:

The people in this province (the East) will not be satisfied unless the constitution ensures them, in reality, equal and effective participation in the management of the affairs of the country, an equal share of development resources and, in particular, full control over the administration of this province.

After a nine-month-long bloody war for independence, East Pakistan became Bangladesh on 16 December 1971.^[1341] Constitution-making for the new state started as early as January 1972.

III.