Road to Bangladesh

West Pakistan and East Pakistan were never meant to be together as one country. They only had one thing in common and that is their religion. First, they were a thousand miles apart with a huge country in between. Next, the people of Pakistan were ethnically different as well. West Pakistanis were usually taller and had lighter skin whereas East Pakistanis were shorter with darker skin. They did not even speak the same language: West Pakistanis spoke Urdu but East Pakistanis spoke Bengali. Nevertheless, they were lumped together as one country after Partition. As Lord Mountbatten prophesized, that within twenty-five years, these two regions would wage war against each other and finally split. In 1971, with the help of India, East Pakistan successfully seceded from Pakistan and formally became the country known today as Bangladesh.…