The Federal Cabinet of Pakistan and Politics of East Bengal/Pakistan1 , 1947-1958

Abstract

It is general perception in Pakistan that only few individuals such as governor general, president and military chiefs played important role in the policy-formulation process. This article is an attempt to review the existing perception and brings to light the fact that the institution of federal cabinet always played its role, minor or greater, in respects especially in dealing with the issues, politics and provincial governments of East Pakistan. Besides dealing with the performance of the Cabinet with regard to defence of East Pakistan, language crisis and electorate issue, the role of the cabinet in dealing with the politics and political forces of East Pakistan has also been analyzed. The most important aspect of the article is the newly declassified cabinet record which has been used extensively. This record brings such facts to light which had not been touched by the historians of Pakistan yet. I. INTRODUCTION This article examines the role of the Federal Cabinet of Pakistan in dealing with the politics and the issues, raised in East Bengal (later called East Pakistan) from 1947 to 1958. The article seeks how Federal Cabinet intervened the provincial political matters on different occasions, how delaying tactics were used to solve East Bengal"s problems, how the policies of West Pakistan based Governor-Generals, prime ministers and the influential ministers created sense of alienation among East Bengalis. Long discussions were held in the meetings of the Cabinet on East Pakistan"s issues including language crisis, defense of East Pakistan, representation in the national legislature, electorate issue and various political problems including installment of Abu Husain Sarkar"s government in place of Awami League 2 "s government, which held majority and was led by Hussain Shaheed Suhrawardy, passing the budgets, imposing Governor"s rule in East Bengal, release/detention of political prisoners, appointment of Governors etc. The Cabinet took decisions on some important but controversial bills, passed by the East Bengal/East Pakistan"s legislature, statements issued by some chief ministers of East Bengal etc. The Federal Cabinet and sometimes Governor General later President had upper hand in power politics of ex-province of Pakistan in place of the local political forces. The extra involvement of federal Cabinet in the provincial matters resulted in chaos and provincial political situation gradually went from bad to worst. During Muslim League"s Cabinet regime (1947-1954), the Federal Cabinet always tried to impose its decisions on the provincial government of East Bengal. If any policy like joint electorates was considered as an anti-Muslim League policy, reverse action was taken. On the other side, Governor General was more powerful to deal with the Provincial issues during absence of representative Cabinet i.e. Cabinet of All Talents. 3 The situation reached at its climax during coalition Cabinet"s regime from 1955 to 1958. This article has been produced mostly on the basis of primary source material includin...

Linguistic Background of Regionalism in Pakistan and its Impediments to National Security Qazi Tariq Ali PhD Law Research scholar Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto University of Law Karachi tariq4882@gmail.com Shamim K Hashmi Professor, Shaheed Zulfiqar

“…It was during the initial 11 years since the inception of the country that seven Prime Ministers with eight cabinets, one after the other, took over. The main cause of this instability was the growing sense of regionalism (Kiran, 2020).…”

“…On the other side, Ghulam Mohammad, Zafrullah Khan, Iskandar Mirza, and Ayub Khan, of the Punjabi faction, were pro-America and wanted Pakistan to join defense pacts with the USA. The Punjabi faction ousted Nazimuddin from the Government also the defense pacts with the USA were signed (Kiran, 2020).…”

“…The Chief Minister of Punjab tried to fail the government of the Bengali Prime Minister by supporting the agitations by giving subsidies to the media for promoting his cause. Ultimately Nazimuddin's government was dismissed by Malik Ghulam Mohammad and the East Pakistanis were very unhappy with this (Kiran, 2020). Suhrawardy's cabinet was another example of regional biases.…”