West Pakistan
West Pakistan was the western province of Pakistan between 1955 and 1970, covering the territory of present-day Pakistan. Its land borders were with Afghanistan, India and Iran, with a maritime border with Oman in the Gulf of Oman in the Arabian Sea.
Following its independence from British rule, the new Dominion of Pakistan comprised two non-contiguous regions, with East and West Pakistan geographically separated from each other by India. The western wing of Pakistan comprised three governor's provinces, one chief commissioner's province along with the Baluchistan States Union, several independent princely states, the Karachi Federal Capital Territory, and the autonomous tribal areas adjoining the North-West Frontier Province. The eastern wing of the new country—known as East Pakistan—comprised the single province of East Bengal.
West Pakistan was the politically dominant division of the Pakistani union, despite East Pakistan making up more than half of its population. The eastern wing also had a disproportionately small number of seats in the Constituent Assembly. This administrative inequality between the two wings, coupled with the major geographical distance between them, was believed to be delaying the adoption of a constitution for Pakistan. To aid in diminishing the differences between the two regions, the Pakistani government decided to reorganize the country into two distinct provinces under the One Unit policy announced by then Pakistani Prime Minister Chaudhry Muhammad Ali on 22 November 1954.
In 1970, the President of Pakistan General Yahya Khan enacted a series of territorial, constitutional and military reforms. These established the provincial assemblies, state parliament, as well as the current provisional borders of Pakistan's four official provinces. On 1July 1970, West Pakistan was abolished under the Legal Framework Order of 1970, which dissolved the One Unit policy and restored the four provinces. This order had no effect on East Pakistan, which retained the geopolitical position established in 1955. The following year saw a major war erupt between West Pakistan and Bengali nationalists in East Pakistan with their own guerrilla military. After a full-scale military intervention by India in support of the Bengali freedom fighters and after subsequent defeat of Pakistan military, the province of East Pakistan seceded from its union with the Islamic Republic of Pakistan as the new People's Republic of Bangladesh.
Political history
Independence after British colonial period
At the time of the state establishment in 1947, the founding fathers of Pakistan participated in the Boundary Commission conference. Headed by Cyril Radcliffe, the commission was tasked with negotiating the arrangement, area division, and future political set up of Pakistan and India.Pakistan was formed from two distinct areas, separated by of India. The western state was composed of three Governor's provinces, one Chief Commissioner's province, the Baluchistan States Union, several other princely states, the Federal Capital Territory and the tribal areas. The eastern wing of the new country – East Pakistan – formed the single province of East Bengal, including the former Assam district of Sylhet and the Hill Tracts.
West Pakistan experienced great problems related to the divisions, including ethnic and racial friction, lack of knowledge, and uncertainty of where to demarcate the permanent borders. East Pakistan, Balochistan, and the North-West Frontier Province experienced little difficulty, but Southern Pakistani Punjab faced considerable problems that had to be fixed. Former East Punjab was integrated with the Indian administration and millions of Punjabi Muslims were expelled to be replaced by a Sikh and Hindu population and vice versa. The communal violence spread to all over the Indian subcontinent. Economic rehabilitation efforts needing the attention of Pakistan's founding fathers further escalated the problems.
The division also divided the natural resources, industries, economic infrastructure, manpower, and military might, with India as the larger share owner. India retained 345 million in population to Pakistan's 35 million. Land area was divided as 78% to India and 22% to Pakistan. Military forces were divided up with a ratio of 64% for India and 36% for Pakistan. Most of the military assets – such as weapons depots and military bases – were located inside India; facilities in Pakistan were mostly obsolete, and they had a dangerously low ammunition reserve of only one week. Four divisions were raised in West Pakistan, whilst one division was raised in East Pakistan.
Parliamentary democracy
From the time of its establishment, the State of Pakistan had the vision of a federal parliamentary democratic republic form of government. With the founding fathers remaining in West Pakistan, Liaquat Ali Khan was appointed the country's first prime minister, with Mohammad Ali Jinnah as Governor-General. West Pakistan claimed the exclusive mandate over all of Pakistan, with the majority of the Pakistan Movement's leading figures in West Pakistan. In 1949, the Constituent Assembly passed the Objectives Resolution and the Annex to the Constitution of Pakistan, paving the road to a Westernized federal parliamentary republic. The work on parliamentary reforms was constituted by the constituent assembly the year after, in 1950.The western section of Pakistan dominated the politics of the new country. Although East Pakistan had over half of the population, it had a disproportionately small number of seats in the Constituent Assembly. This inequality of the two wings and the geographical distance between them was believed to be holding up the adoption of a new constitution. To diminish the differences between the two regions, the government decided to reorganise the country into two distinct provinces.
Under the One Unit policy announced by Prime Minister Muhammad Ali Bogra on 22 November 1954, the four provinces and territories of western Pakistan were integrated into one unit to mirror the single province in the east. The state of West Pakistan was established by the merger of the provinces, states, and tribal areas of West Pakistan. The province was composed of twelve divisions and the provincial capital was established at Karachi. Later the state capital moved to Lahore, and it was finally established in Islamabad in 1965. The province of East Bengal was renamed East Pakistan with the provincial state capital at Dhaka.
Clashes between West Pakistan and East Pakistan soon erupted, further destabilising the entire country. The two states had different political ideologies and different lingual cultural aspect. West Pakistan had been founded on the main basis of a parliamentary democracy, with Islam as its state religion. In contrast, East Pakistan had been a socialist state since the 1954 elections, with state secularism proclaimed. West Pakistan sided with the United States and her NATO allies, whilst East Pakistan remained sympathetic to the Soviet Union and her Eastern Bloc. Pakistan's 1956 constitution validated the parliamentary form of government, with Islam as state religion and Urdu, English and Bengali as state languages. The 1956 constitution also established the Parliament of Pakistan as well as the Supreme Court of Pakistan.
Ethnic and religious violence in Lahore, which began in 1953, spread all over the country. Muhammad Ali Bogra, prime minister of Pakistan, declared martial law in Lahore to curb the violence. This inter-communal violence soon spread to India, and a regional conflict put West Pakistan and India in a war-threatening situation. The prime ministers of Pakistan and India held an emergency meeting in Lahore.
Military dictatorships
From 1947 to 1959, the government was only partially stable. Seven prime ministers, four governors-general, and one president were forcefully removed either by constitutional coup or by military coup. The One Unit program was met with harsh opposition, civil unrest, and political disturbance. Support for the Muslim League and Pakistan Socialist Party in the upcoming elections threatened Pakistan's technocracy. The Muslim League and Socialist Party gained momentum after the League's defeat in the 1954 elections, and the Socialist Party were challenging for the constituencies of the President Iskandar Mirza's Republican Party. Relations with the United States deteriorated, with the US assessing that democracy in both states was failing.A US-backed military coup d'état was launched in 1958 by the Pakistan Army command. The Urdu-speaking class and the Bengali nation were forcefully removed from the affairs of West Pakistan. With the imposition of martial law led by then-Army Commander-in-Chief General Ayub Khan, the state capital was moved from Karachi to Army General Combatant Headquarters at Rawalpindi in 1959, whilst the federal legislature was moved to Dacca. In 1963, Rawalpindi had become in effect a federal capital; a new city was planned and constructed, finally completing in 1965. In 1965, the state capital was finally re-located in Islamabad.
Dissolution in 1970
On contrary perception, the provinces did not benefit from economic progress, but the One Unit program strengthened the central government. In West Pakistan, the four provinces also struggled hard for the abolition of One Unit which caused injustices to them as it was imposed on them.The provisional powerful committees pressured the central government through the means of civil disobedience, violence on street, raising slogans against the martial law, and attacks on government machines such as police forces. For several weeks, the four provinces worked together and guided the "One Unit Dissolution Committee", towards resolving all outstanding issues in time set by the Yahya government. Finally, the committee's plan went into effect on 1 July 1970, when West Pakistan's "One Unit" was dissolved, and all power was transferred to the provinces of Balochistan, the North West Frontier Province, Punjab and Sindh.
In the 1970 general elections, the Bengali Awami League under Mujibur Rahman won an overall majority of seats in Parliament and all but 2 of the 162 seats allocated to East Pakistan. The Awami League advocated greater autonomy for East Pakistan but the military government did not permit Mujib-ur-Rahman to form a government.
East Pakistan became the independent state of Bangladesh on 16 December 1971. The term West Pakistan became redundant.