HONG KONG -- Tonight marks the 30th anniversary of the beginning of one of the most traumatic Asian events in recent times: the blood-soaked birth of Bangladesh. Bangladeshi voices will be raised to remind the world of what was an enormous crime against humanity. But they may not tell the full story. Bengalis were not the only victims.
This grim episode was the consequence of another great Asian trauma, the partition of India in 1947.
The Pakistan that came into being on Aug. 14, 1947, consisted of two wings, separated by nearly 1,600 km of Indian territory. In West Pakistan there were four provinces: Punjab, Sindh, Baluchistan and the Northwest Frontier Province. In East Pakistan, there was basically one province, the eastern part of Bengal.