Muslims split off from India to form Pakistan because they were worried that they would be discriminated against by the Hindu majority. This caused more problems than it solved, after Pakistan was formed, Pakistan fell into civil war. At the end of the civil war, 90000 Pakistani soldiers surrendered and East Pakistan became Bangladesh.
One of the biggest ironies of Muslims splitting away from India to escape possible future injustice was that the Muslim government in West Pakistan inflicted their own injustices upon the Muslims and the Hindu minorities in East Pakistan.
Reasons for the 1971 civil war in Pakistan/ Bangladesh Liberation War/ Indo-Pakistani War:
1) West Pakistan (now just Pakistan) hogged a lot of the resources and money, obviously leaving East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) with a smaller share. Double the Pakistani rupees were spent on West Pakistan than on East Pakistan, you can imagine how the Bengali speaking population in East Pakistan felt about this.
Click on the image below to view the difference between how much was spent on West and East Pakistan 2) In 1948, Ali Jinnah declared that Urdu was to be the only language in all of Pakistan, the problem with this is that not everybody spoke Urdu, in East Pakistan, the Bengalis spoke Bengali, why should they give up their language? Several students who protested against this were shot in a police crackdown in 1952.
3) In 1970, Sheikh Mujibur Rahaman of the East Pakistani Bengali party, the Awami League, won the Pakistani national elections in a landslide victory, but Zulfikur Ali Bhutto refused to allow Rahman become the prime minister of Pakistan. Bhutto suggested that Pakistan should have 2 prime ministers after Rahman won, that caused outrage throughout East Pakistan because of such a silly and undemocratic idea, imagine Britain with 2 prime ministers?
4) In 1971, West Pakistan carried out operation searchlight to suppress the Bengali nationalist movement, in this operation, West Pakistan targeted all opposition, and murdered innocent Bengali professors and students in the students halls in East Pakistan. It's now clear how many innocent people were murdered by the Pakistani army, figures are as low as 35,000 and as high as 3,000,000. Even 35,000, the lowest estimate given by the English, is such a high number.
India's involvement in the warPrime Minister of India, Indira Ghandi showed full support for the independence of Bangladesh. In September, propaganda, most likely from the West Pakistani government, was spread throughout West Pakistan, stickers saying
"Crush India" was put on the rear windows of many cars in Pakistan. In November Pakistanis in West Pakistan marched out onto the streets calling for the Pakistani army to
"Crush India". India was worried by this, so they mobilised on the borders of East Pakistan where the West Pakistani army was carrying out their atrocities. On the 3rd of December, the Pakistani Air Force took part in Operation Chengiz Khan and struck 11 Indian airfields, this pre-emptive attack was inspired by Israel's tactic in the 6 day war where Israel struck Egyptian airfields in Operation Focus or the
"Sinai Air Strike". Only 1 Indian died and 1 light aircraft was destroyed in Pakistan's surprise attack, India did not respond to this very well, this was an act of war against India. Indian troops advanced into East Pakistan and battled with the West Pakistani soldiers, in 2 weeks 90,000 Pakistani soldiers surrendered on the 16th of December 1971 and were handed over to the Indian troops.
The undemocratic approach of West Pakistan when an East Pakistani Bengali won the elections in 1970 fuelled the anger of East Pakistanis, and Operation Searchlight in 1971 sparked the civil war.
At the end of 1971 Bangladesh Liberation war where East Pakistan became Bangladesh, 90,000 Pakistani soldiers surrendered to Bengali fighters and were handed over to the Indian forces.
Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the leader of the Bengali East Pakistani party, the Awami League, which won the Pakistani elections in a landslide victoryThe troop movements of the Indian, Bengali (Mukti Bahini) and Pakistani armies shortly before Pakistan's surrenderThe Pakistani general, A. A. K. Niazi (not Nazi), signing the instrument of surrendererPakistani soldiers laying down their weapons after 90000 surrendered in Dhaka, BangladeshWarning: graphic content
Warning: graphic contentThe Blood TelegramArcher Blood, the US general consul in East Pakistan, stood up against US foreign policy by speaking out against America's support of West Pakistan in the brutal civil war by sending a telegram to Nixon administration, Nixon ignored the telegram.
Extract from the Blood telegram:
"Our government has failed to denounce the suppression of democracy. Our government has failed to denounce atrocities. Our government has failed to take forceful measures to protect its citizens while at the same time bending over backwards to placate the West Pak[istan] dominated government and to lessen any deservedly negative international public relations impact against them. Our government has evidenced what many will consider moral bankruptcy,(...) But we have chosen not to intervene, even morally, on the grounds that the Awami conflict, in which unfortunately the overworked term genocide is applicable, is purely an internal matter of a sovereign state. Private Americans have expressed disgust. We, as professional civil servants, express our dissent with current policy and fervently hope that our true and lasting interests here can be defined and our policies redirected."SummaryI believe the split up of India was a disaster and a tragedy which resulted in a genocide and 4 wars ( in 1947, 1965, 1971 and 1999) between Pakistan and India, one of the wars starting out as an internal conflict in Pakistan between East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) and West Pakistan (now Pakistan), a united East and West Pakistan was doomed to fail from the beginning.
To this day the 3 independent nations, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh have a complex relationship. Pakistan and India are still wary of each other, the last conflict between the two nations was in 1999, and tensions still remain over Kashmir. Pakistan is still psychologically hurt by the surrender of 90,000 Pakistani soldiers in 1971 and refuses to apologise to Bangladesh for Pakistan's war crimes, so relations between Bangladesh and Pakistan aren't exactly warm.Would any of these events have happened had India not split up into Pakistan and Bangladesh as we know it today?