Vinod Raut

We need to engage in honest introspection about Pakistan's history. Many commentators trace the country's political troubles to Ayub Khan, others to Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Yet the conflict between central government and provinces or regions dates back to the very founding of Pakistan in 1947. The princely state of Kalat, whose ruler asserted its independence in August 1947, acceded to Pakistan in March 1948 under circumstances that remain contested. Some historians maintain that the accession was secured through coercion rather than freely negotiated consent. On 22 August 1947, just eight days after independence, Governor-General Muhammad Ali Jinnah dismissed the elected Congress-affiliated government of Dr Khan Sahib in the North-West Frontier Province (now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa), despite its majority in the provincial assembly. It was replaced by a Muslim League ministry headed by Abdul Qayyum Khan. In Sindh, Muhammad Ayub Khuhro, who had become chief minister shortly before independence and continued in office thereafter, was dismissed on 26 April 1948. The central government's subsequent decision to separate Karachi from Sindh and place it under federal administration, formalised in July 1948, provoked strong opposition from Sindh's political leadership and provincial legislature. Karachi had already been designated Pakistan's capital in 1947; the controversy in 1948 concerned its separation from Sindh and transfer to federal control. The alienation of East Bengal began equally early. In February 1948, Dhirendranath Datta, a Bengali member of Pakistan's Constituent Assembly, proposed that Bengali be recognised alongside Urdu and English for use in the Assembly, pointing out that Bengali was the language of the majority of Pakistan's population. Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan opposed the proposal, which was rejected. The following month, during his visit to Dhaka, Jinnah declared that Urdu alone would be Pakistan's state language. Addressing a public gathering on 21 March 1948, he warned: "If anyone tries to mislead you in this regard, he is really the enemy of Pakistan." These were not isolated episodes. Within the first year of independence, the central government had dismissed elected provincial ministries, overridden provincial objections, contested the autonomy of a princely state and rejected the linguistic aspirations of the country's demographic majority. The tensions between centralisation, representative government and provincial rights were therefore embedded in Pakistan's political order long before its first military coup in 1958. Very few writers in Pakistan get this right.