By Asha'ar Rehman: Dawn Op-ed August 9, 2011
THE wish has been expressed, the slogans raised. The people have set off on the road to a new province, which will take some travelling and entail quite a lot of discomfort, not to speak of the pain of those who must view this as a parting.
All historical tours of Pakistan must begin in India. Indian examples abound in all our discussions. It is no surprise then that the new province debate is in part sustained by how the Indians divided their provinces. They divided them in the wake of Partition, chastened by Partition. It was in a way logical for the people of India to demarcate the boundaries when a partition had just happened.
The movements for division — or as it were, a coming together of small British-period states — on a linguistic basis was strong even in the early 1950s, and following the creation of a Telugu-speaking Andhra Pradesh just six years after Partition, a number of new states emerged on the Indian map in 1956. The principles set and constitutional cover given, it later led to the creation of more states. Pakistan, meanwhile, decided to go its own way in nation-building.
Religion was a given, and it used Urdu, in the name of unity of the people who lived in its five provinces. East Pakistan was told by none other than the Quaid himself that Urdu
