WASHINGTON – Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s 78th death anniversary was recently observed at the National Press Club in Dhaka under the banner “An Architect Remembered.” That conference mushroomed into social-media posts by Gen Z, whose Pyrrhic victory led to the fall of the Sheikh Hasina government, resulting in a quest for parallel historical narratives.
If the events that have unfolded since the fateful August of 2024 are any indication, in the zeal to dismantle the symbols and legacy of at least last 100 year history of Bangladesh, there is a serious risk of misreading history itself—erasing the very foundational truths that gave birth to Bangladesh.
To understand why invoking Jinnah as an “architect” in Dhaka is fundamentally contradictory to Bangladesh’s historical evolution, one must trace the ideological line that connects early Pakistani statecraft directly to the tragedy of 1971.
Seven months after Pakistan was carved out of British India, Governor-General Jinnah arrived in Dhaka in March 1948. Of the two speeches he delivered to an adoring crowd, both addressed the state language issue.
Both were consequential, but the first one, delivered at the Racecourse Maidan, set the tone for inter-ethnic relations among the multilingual constituent provinces of Pakistan. His speech was not a faux pas, but a deliberately thought-out political stance.
“Whether Bengali should be the official language of this province is a matter for the elected representatives of the people of this province to decide,” he said during his speech at the Racecourse Maidan.
And then he emphasized, in no uncertain terms:
“But let me make it clear to you that the state language of Pakistan is going to be Urdu and no other language.”
If that was not divisive enough, the statement that followed defined the relationship between the two wings of Pakistan, separated not only by 1,000 miles of Indian territory but also by language, culture, history, and habits.
“Anyone who tries to mislead you is merely the enemy of Pakistan. Without one state language, no nation can remain tied up solidly together and function.”
It was not only Jinnah’s unambiguous assertion that Urdu would be the sole state language that was telling, but also his branding of anyone who held a different opinion as an “enemy of Pakistan.”
From its inception, Pakistan was ruled by British-loyal, Urdu-speaking Muslim bureaucrats who migrated from Delhi. Together with the armed forces, constituted mostly of Punjabis and Pakhtuns, they ruled during the first decade of Pakistan, using civilian political leadership as a garb.
Jinnah had very little understanding of Bengali culture and history. Like the upper-caste Hindus of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, he viewed Bengali history and culture as being made up exclusively of Bengali Hindus. To him, Bengali Muslims were a backwater of history.
To understand Jinnah, it is essential to understand his political affiliations. Jinnah had an affinity for nawabs of all denominations and was at odds with populist leaders such as Sikandar Hayat Khan of Punjab, as well as Sher-e-Bangla A. K. Fazlul Huq and H. S. Suhrawardy of Bengal.
By the time the language issue came to light, he was quite unaccustomed to the fact that Bengali Hindus and Muslims did not divide literary figures such as Rabindranath Tagore and Kazi Nazrul Islam along communal lines. To him, there was no distinct Bengali cultural history to reckon with.
It was Jinnah’s “enemy of Pakistan” statement that reverberated throughout Pakistan’s history, particularly whenever the majority Bengalis demanded equal political, linguistic, or economic rights.
This dismissal evolved into institutionalized racism under Pakistan’s first military dictator, General Ayub Khan. In his 1967 political autobiography, ‘Friends Not Masters’, Ayub explicitly articulated the ruling elite’s deeply ingrained condescension toward Bengalis:
“East Bengalis, who constitute the bulk of the population, probably belong to the very original Indian races. It would be no exaggeration to say that up to the creation of Pakistan, they had not known any real freedom or sovereignty. They have been in turn ruled either by the caste Hindus, Moghuls, Pathans, or the British. In addition, they have been and still are under considerable Hindu cultural and linguistic influence. As such, they have all the inhibitions of downtrodden races and have not yet found it possible to adjust psychologically to the requirements of newborn freedom. Their popular complexes, exclusiveness, suspicion, and a sort of defensive aggressiveness probably emerge from this historical background.”
Absurdity of Ayub’s ideological leanings towards race relations were further delineated through his derogatory statements about the Bengali majority of the very country he was leading as its President:
“Their hot and humid climate puts them at a physical disadvantage, and the marshy nature of the terrain, with poor communications, makes them exclusive, mother-attached, and inward-looking. No wonder they are secretive, unsocial, and unpredictable.”
This passage is especially striking because Ayub Khan explicitly contrasts East and West Pakistan immediately afterward, he describes West Pakistanis as, “…probably the greatest mixture of races found anywhere in the world.”
This was the mindset that the ruling elite of Pakistan, from the military to the intelligentsia, carried into their treatment of Bengalis.
Moreover, the Bengali language evolved from Sanskrit, as did many other languages of the Indian subcontinent. The ruling elite of Pakistan, like Ayub’s narration confirms, never failed to associate Bengali with Hinduism, given Sanskrit’s significance as the language of Hindu scriptures. Consequently, Bengali culture was often viewed as an extension of Hinduism, while Bengalis in East Pakistan were regarded with suspicion—as pro-Hindu, pro-Indian, and, therefore, as “enemies of Pakistan.”
First came the language issue; then came the question of race. By the late 1960s, Bengalis in East Pakistan were increasingly being disparaged by sections of the ruling elite as “Kala admi,” an abomination meaning “dark-skinned people.”
In Nazi propaganda during the 1930s, the concept that German Jews “are not like us” was encapsulated by the core ideological phrase “Sie sind nicht von unserer Art” (or Artfremd), literally translating to “They are not of our kind.” This concept served as the foundation for the eventual persecution of Jewish citizens that led to the Holocaust.
Much like the Holocaust, it was the sentiment of racial superiority among West Pakistanis that led to and rationalized the Bengali genocide of 1971.
Jinnah was certainly not directly involved in the 1971 genocide, for he was long dead by then, nevertheless he set the precedent of suppressing the Bengali voice as equal citizens. Ayub Khan was likewise not directly responsible for the genocide, but his rhetoric helped formalize a racial hierarchy that portrayed Bengalis as inherently inferior. It was that ideological combination of Jinnah and Ayub that was ultimately carried out against Bengalis in 1971, resulting in three million deaths and hundreds of thousands of rapes.
Any political upheaval can lead to a re-examination of a nation’s past. But a generation that fails to fathom its own roots will surely engage in historical discourse without connecting the lines that are so essential to defining history.
Examining the history of Bangladesh through a narrow lens is not an act of revolution—it is a betrayal of the structural history that brought the nation into existence.
A confused generation in today’s Bangladesh is lost in the wilderness of narrative building, unable to connect the very events that can help shape their identity.
Rana Hassan Mahmud
Rana Hassan Mahmud is Executive Director, Center for USA-Bangladesh Relations.
- Rana Hassan Mahmud#molongui-disabled-link
- Rana Hassan Mahmud#molongui-disabled-link
- Rana Hassan Mahmud#molongui-disabled-link
- Rana Hassan Mahmud#molongui-disabled-link
