Musharraf on the left and Akbar Bugti on the right

The rallying cry for the Indian Muslim during freedom movement was the establishment of a separate state based on Islamic rules and ideals, however, this somewhat faded away soon after the partition giving rise to inter-provincial and inter-ethnic conflicts. Pakistan has then passed through many such types of conflicts over the years but the very first conflict that Pakistan experienced was controversy over the national language in 1948.

When Urdu, spoken by less than 7% people, was adopted as the national language of Pakistan in 1948, students of Dacca University started a mass agitation movement against it. Protestors clashed with the state apparatus resulting in disturbed law and order situation. Noticing this turmoil, our beloved Quaid himself visited Decca and had a conversation with them, resulting in the diffusion of the situation. This diffusion of the situation, for the time being, was only due to the great leadership of Jinnah but re-emerged again after his death due to various reasons. In 1954, Prime Minister of Pakistan emerged the four provinces of the present day Pakistan into a single entity, One Unit, to centralize the administration to improve contacts within East and West Pakistan.

This further destabilized the already fragile situation in East Pakistan with mass protests taking place against the government of Pakistan. Bengali Scholars were of the view that the sole purpose of the formation of One Unit is to counterbalance the ethnic domination of the East Pakistanis.

In 1956, the Government of Pakistan accepted the proposal of declaring Bengali as the official language along with Urdu after massive protests in East Pakistan. This settled the language issue once and for all but the regime of Ayub Khan was more biased towards East Pakistan than West Pakistan, which started a new controversy. Amid public pressure, he handed over the power control to his second in command, General Yahya Khan, who held fair and transparent elections in East Pakistan. This election of 1970 resulted in a landslide win of Awami League in East Pakistan with 160 seats. PPP proved to be the major power-broker in West Pakistan with 81 seats.

The establishment of West Pakistan and Bhutto refused to accept Sheikh Mujib as the Prime Minister of Pakistan, who had all the legal rights to be the prime minister. This further worsened the already tense situations between the two wings of the state, resulting in the liberation war and independence of Bangladesh.

After the separation of Bangladesh from Pakistan, agitation movements also started to take place in Sind and Balochistan. Sindhi nationalists took to the streets and demanded more provincial autonomy and rights. GM Syed was instrumental in that movement of the so-called “Sindhu-Desh”. Apart from Sindh, the ethnic rebellion took place against the state in Balochistan after the dismissal of the nationalist government by Bhutto, which was quelled through military means. Again in the 2000s, we are seeing a civil war like situation in Balochistan with Nationalist Sardars fighting against the state of Pakistan. The so-called Pakhtoonistan slogan of some nationalist leaders was also echoed by the enemy media but soon died out.

In the above passage, we discussed the uprising of Bengalis on the basis of ethnicity for their rights but we need to introspect that what prompted them to do so. When we peep in our own collars the reasons are quite clear which I will list here.


• Economic inequality
• Marginalisation of Bengal and other provinces in terms of representation in government
• Hold of Political Elite
• Centralization of System
• Military operations
• Underdevelopment of Bengal and smaller provinces
• Subversive activities of foreign powers
• Human rights violations on large scale

It’s now for us to decide whether we want to bring all the ethnicities on one platform by following the Islamic model of Medina of a pluralistic democracy or whether we want to exclude the less-represented ethnicities from the corridors of power. The sane voice will be to provide them equal opportunities in a democratic setup by preserving their culture, traditions, and language.