Bangladesh and After

T HE STRUGGLE for Bangladesh and the successful establishment of this eighth largest state in the world community have certain features of longterm significance in international relations. The consequences of its establishment are also instructive in many respects to the conduct of international relations in the present age. The struggle for Bangladesh dramatically exposed the inherent fallacy of the so-called two-nation theory (that the Hindus and Moslems of undivided India were two different nations), on the implicit acceptance of which the partition of India took place on I5 August I947. The establishment of Bangladesh (which has the second largest number of Moslems) out of the old Pakistan and its recognition as a state by a large number of other states of the world community, signifies, one hopes, the virtual negation of this theory which has done nothing but harm to the former two divided states of the old India and to their peoples. With this development, coming after the remaining of the (largely Moslem) State of Jammu and Kashmir within the Indian Union (which has a predominantly Hindu population), the two-nation theory is now consigned into the limbo of history. It is significant that the newly-established state of Bangladesh should claim secularism as an important basis of the state, as has been the case in respect of India ever since independence. In other words, two states carved out of the pre-i947 India, consisting of over 6oo million population (550 million in India and 75 million in Bangladesh), as against the 55 million people of the old Pakistan (also carved out of the old India and still claiming Islam as the basis of its nationhood) have rejected the idea that mere religious affiliation justified nationhood for a people. In consequence, two of the states created out of the old India, as well as the many other nations who have recognized the state of Bangladesh, have in effect put their seal of approval to the view that Pakistanization is as bad a concept in international relations as Balkanization was in the Nineteenth Century and the middle of the Twentieth. Even though the three states of India, Bangladesh and Pakistan will not conceivably reintegrate themselves into the former undivided India (to enable one to say that the theory has been finally buried), there seems a reasonable chance that all the three will co-operate with one another for mutual benefit, thereby mitigating the harm done to their people by the three-fold political division of an ancient country

Political science · Bangladesh Politics, Society, and Development · Politics and Conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Middle East · South Asian Studies and Conflicts