Probing early Pakistan: East Bengal politicians and their exchanges with Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan, 1947–51

Abstract

This article builds on the correspondence of the prime minister of Pakistan with five political figures from East Bengal who flourished between 1947 and 1951. These were Khwaja Nazimuddin and his brother Shahabuddin, Fazlur Rahman, Nurul Amin and Jogendranath Mandal. Their exchanges with Prime minister Liaquat Ali Khan—at the head of the central government in Karachi—provide a portentous pre-history of the future engagements between the two wings and their states and societies in the lead-up to the birth of Bangladesh in 1971. The fragments of these exchanges presented here are an attempt to provide a glimpse into Bengali politicians’ manifold activities in Pakistan, which revolved around the minority and refugee question, religious orientation of education, non-devaluation and its impact on trade, a range of administrative issues and party politics. Drawing upon their letters in the Liaquat Ali Khan papers, this article deploys these five themes as entry-points into East–West exchanges before and beneath the conventional coordinates of linguistic provincialism (1948–52), economic instigation (1954–66) and democratic desires (1966–71).