IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/indeco/v60y2023i1p37-58.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

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

Author

Listed:
  • Rakesh Ankit

    (Loughborough University, England)

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).

Suggested Citation

  • Rakesh Ankit, 2023. "Probing early Pakistan: East Bengal politicians and their exchanges with Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan, 1947–51," The Indian Economic & Social History Review, , vol. 60(1), pages 37-58, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:indeco:v:60:y:2023:i:1:p:37-58
    DOI: 10.1177/00194646221148690
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00194646221148690
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/00194646221148690?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:indeco:v:60:y:2023:i:1:p:37-58. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.