Bangladesh Becomes Independent

The 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War emerged from deep systemic inequalities between the two geographically separated wings of Pakistan. Created in August 1947 by the partition of British India, Pakistan comprised West Pakistan and East Pakistan, separated by over a thousand miles of Indian territory. Despite Bengali speakers in the eastern wing making up over 56 percent of the national population, political authority, military leadership, and budgetary resources remained heavily concentrated in the west. Grievances deepened when federal authorities tried to impose Urdu as the sole state language, ignoring Bengali and sparking the Language Movement, which culminated in police killing student protesters in Dhaka on 21 February 1952.

Tensions reached an open constitutional crisis following the national elections of December 1970. The Awami League, led by East Pakistani politician Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, secured a landslide victory by winning 167 of the 169 seats allotted to the eastern province, which delivered an absolute majority in Pakistan's 313-seat National Assembly. West Pakistani political leaders, notably Zulfikar Ali Bhutto of the Pakistan People's Party, refused to let Rahman form a government, advocating instead for divided leadership between the wings. Discontent in the east had already escalated after the central government's sluggish response to the catastrophic Bhola cyclone of November 1970, which killed an estimated 300,000 people and prompted widespread accusations of neglect.