East Pakistan

So see a few things that happened after that.

The crackdown in Bangladesh or East Pakistan then took place on 25th of March, 1971.

RAW had been active before that.

Long before that, 30th January 1971, that's almost two months before the Pakistani army brutal crackdown in Dhaka in Bangladesh and those massive killings that they started.

The rest of the international news was hardly more reassuring.

The Vietnam War continued, there had been an attempted coup in Guinea, West Africa, and there was the aftermath of a devastating cyclone causing chaos in East Pakistan, later to become Bangladesh.

Pope Paul VI also narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in Manila by the Bolivian artist Benjamin Mendoza.

At home, decimalisation was approaching and bringing fears about rising prices.

There were some notes on that already.

The war would result from an attempt by the Indian communists to seize East Pakistan.

The trouble was that he so seldom remembered an exact date.

His memory of the year of Khalid's assassination was an exception.

They seem to be convinced that I have.

There would be an Eastern-inspired uprising in Azerbaijan by the middle of the next year before autumn.

The Indian communists would make their fatal attempt to seize East Pakistan.

The Thirty Days War would be the immediate result.

Apartheid came to an end.

I went to a place called East Pakistan when India was divided into India and Pakistan.

There was West Pakistan and there was East Pakistan.

And there was a bit of trouble in East Pakistan.

And the office, I was a foreign correspondent at the time, the office said, would I? pop over to East Pakistan and do whatever.

And I did.

And the first morning I was there, the first night I was there, I checked in with my friend and crew to the holiday inn in Dhaka.

I had faced danger so many times, and for so long that I had become somewhat phlegmatic.

Chapter 56 Return from Exile My first stop was in Dhaka, East Pakistan, now called Bangladesh.

The airport was crowded and the plane took on more passengers.

It seemed dangerously overloaded to me.

It's located along the border of which African country, which itself used to be called Tanganyika? And that's spelled T-A-N-G-A-N-Y-I-K-A.

Number four, what country, which is also the title of a now viral song, was formerly known as East Pakistan before becoming independent in 1971? "You never take me to East Pakistan" doesn't have the same ring to it, does it? Number four, what country, which is also the title of a now viral song, was formerly known as East Pakistan before becoming independent in 1971? "You never take me to East Pakistan" doesn't have the same ring to it, does it? Number five, President Trump's name was added to the name of what performing arts center in Washington, DC in 2025, but removed by court order in June 2026? Number five, President Trump's name was added to the name of what performing arts center in Washington, DC in 2025, but removed by court order in June 2026? We'll be right back with the answers to the hard round.

Yeah.

And we are back with the answers to the hard round.

The name Tanzania is actually a combination of Tanganyika and Zanzibar.

The two territories united in 1964 to create the country we know today as Tanzania.

Number four, what country, which is also the title of a now viral song, was formerly known as East Pakistan before becoming independent in 1971? Bangladesh.

"You never take me to Bangladesh" is how the song goes.

So the political structure was weak.

And on top of that, you had this constant worry of how to negotiate between East Pakistan, where the population or the numbers made it bigger than the population in West Pakistan.

For example, the fear much later, when elections took place in 1971, the fear was that based on numbers, East Pakistan would make it sufficiently big to capture the government in Pakistan.

And so you have a power center where the power elite sits in West Pakistan and constantly, I mean, Pakistan's first constitution in 1956, second constitution in 1962, which was made under you.

you see it kind of wrestling with the problem of how do you balance between the eastern wing and the western wing.