ABSTRACT
A swath cutting across the north-western border of India, Pakistan is a recent artefact with a short and tumultuous history. It was hastily created in 1947 by combining together provinces and parts of the Punjab and Bengal with a Muslim majority. For the first twenty-four years, it was a freak state made up of two wings separated by around 1,000 miles of hostile India, which were as distant culturally as they were physically. Bar religion, East Pakistan had little in common with West Pakistan. Driven by a mixture of a distinct ethnic identity and a heavyhanded military rule from the Western wing, East Pakistan prised itself loose in 1971 to become an independent state. The addition of the third successor state to British India put an end to the territorial oddity, which Lord Mountbatten (the last Viceroy of India) had referred to as ‘moth-eaten’.
