Why 1971 Was Inevitable: A Simple Structural Explanation
1971 did not fall from the sky. It was not an emotional outburst, nor the result of sudden hatred. It was the predictable outcome of long-term political, economic, and institutional discrimination embedded in the Pakistani state. To understand 1971, one must first understand the logic of Pakistan’s creation. The Lahore Resolution and Its Distortion The 1940 Lahore Resolution, proposed by A.K. Fazlul Huq of Bengal, spoke of “Independent States” in the Muslim-majority regions of north-western and eastern India. The wording was deliberately plural and ambiguous. It allowed the possibility of autonomous, self-governing Muslim regions, not a highly centralized state. However, under Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s insistence on the Two-Nation Theory and through the hurried Radcliffe partition, this ambiguity was resolved in favor of a single, centralized Pakistan—geographically split into two wings separated by more than a thousand miles of hostile territory. Assam, which could have naturally al...