Communism and Regional Politics in East Pakistan

Abstract

When India became independent in 1947 one of the strongest bases of the Communist Party of India (CPI) was the Province of Bengal.' While the boundaries of Bengal had undergone a number of shifts prior to 1947 the Bengali-speakers in British India had remained subject to a common provincial administration for all but six of the almost 200 years of British rule.2 Because of the partition of 1947, however, the major (predominantly Muslim) portion of Bengal came to be included in East Pakistan, while the remaining (predominantly Hindu) portion remained within the Indian Union. Each of the members of the Communist Party of India who had worked in the united Province of Bengal then had to make a choice between citizenship in Pakistan or in India. Membership figures available from Communist leaders in both India and Pakistan indicate that the majority of the Bengali Communists opted for Pakistan rather than India in 1947. According to Muzaffar Ahmad, one of the founder-members of the Communist movement in Bengal, the CPI had a membership of almost 20,000 in Bengal in 1947, the majority of which went over to East Bengal in Pakistan after partitions But despite its relative membership advantage at the time of partition, the Communist movement in East Pakistan has never received the same attention from scholars that has been given to the party in West Bengal. Indeed, one searches in vain for even an introductory article on the nature of the Communist movement in Pakistan. The absence of any discussion of the Pakistan Communist movement in the literature can be traced to two principal sources. First, the Pakistan