By I. A. Rehman
The first critical issue faced by Pakistan, even before the clerics’ volte face in claiming parentage of the state whose idea they had maliciously denounced and stubbornly opposed, was the Bengali citizens’ assertion of their linguistic and cultural identity. The matter was messed up thoroughly and one thing led to another. The gulf between the two wings grew wider as the state’s federal premises were consistently repudiated and the democratic rights of the majority population were arrogantly rejected. Eventually East Bengal was forced out of the Pakistan state, but the contradiction between the imperatives of the federation and the rulers’ preference for despotic centralism (not even benevolent centralism) has remained unresolved.
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