Take Murshidabad: It was Muslim-majority. It was culturally connected to Bengal’s Islamic history. They even raised the Pakistani flag on Aug 15th, 1947.

Then boom—two days later it was Indian. Why? Because if Murshidabad went to East Pakistan and Khulna (which bordered it) stayed in India, it’d create a bizarre enclave. So, they flipped it. Murshidabad to India, Khulna to Pakistan.

Khulna was Hindu-majority too. The twist? A significant chunk of those Hindus were Dalits (Namashudras) who had sided with the Muslim League during Partition. Their leader, Jogendranath Mondal, even became Pakistan’s first law minister.

Now to Chattogram (Chittagong): Strategically priceless (had the only major port in East Bengal). Significant Hindu population and even 97% non-Muslim Chittagong Hill Tracts. Didn't matter. Port > People. Radcliffe gave it to East Pakistan for strategic continuity and economic survival.

So yeah—Partition wasn’t purely about where Muslims or Hindus lived. It was about rivers, roads, ports, and political deals. Borders were drawn like it was a bizarre mix of Monopoly and Minesweeper, and we're still living with the aftershocks.

Supporting links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radcliffe_Line https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jogendra_Nath_Mandal

Wang Xiaohe has been one of the most successful coaches in the history of the Pakistan national football team, and arguably the most successful so far.

First arriving through Chinese foreign aid before the 1989 South Asian Games, he guided Pakistan to the gold medal that year, the country’s first major official international football title in decades since the 1952 Quadrangular Tournament.

He later became associated with Pakistan Army FC and returned to coach Pakistan again in 2003. Under his leadership, Pakistan’s U23 side won another South Asian Games gold medal in 2004, after the tournament had switched to an under-23 format.

During his career, Wang also coached in China with teams such as Bayi Football Team and Xi’an Anxinyuan, while remaining closely connected to football in Pakistan for many years.

One aspect of pre-1947 history that doesn’t get discussed much is the stance of Jamaat-e-Islami regarding the creation of Pakistan.

The organization was founded in 1941 by Abul A'la Maududi. During the final years of the subcontinent, when the demand for Pakistan was gaining momentum under Muhammad Ali Jinnah and the All-India Muslim League, Maududi and Jamaat-e-Islami openly criticized the idea of a separate Muslim nation-state.

Their main argument was ideological: Maududi rejected nationalism, even Muslim nationalism, as un-Islamic. Because of this, he opposed the division of subcontinent into separate nations , including Pakistan. In his writings and speeches at the time, he also criticized the Muslim League’s leadership, arguing that they were not working toward a truly Islamic system but rather a secular nation under the banner of Muslim identity.

As a result, Jamaat-e-Islami did not support the Pakistan Movement and, stood in opposition to it during a crucial period when many Muslims in the subcontinent were mobilizing for a separate homeland.

Critics argue that this position placed Jamaat on the wrong side of a defining historical moment. While they may not have had the power to “stop” the creation of Pakistan, their ideological campaign clearly rejected the movement that ultimately led to its formation.

What makes this more controversial is what happened after pakistan was created in 1947, Jamaat accepted the new state and became politically active within it. The organization began advocating for the Islamization of Pakistan’s laws and constitution, positioning itself as a key voice in defining the country’s Islamic identity.

This shift raises some difficult questions:

• If Pakistan was initially seen as an un-Islamic project, what changed after 1947?
• Was this a adjustment to political identity, or a contradiction in principle?
• How should we evaluate groups that opposed the creation of a state but later became influential within it?

To be fair, Jamaat-e-Islami’s opposition was rooted in a broader ideological vision rather than simple hostility to Muslims having a state. However, the fact remains that they opposed the Pakistan Movement at a time when it was shaping the future of millions.

This part of history is complex, but it’s worth discussing openly rather than ignoring it.

Pashtun Population Breakdown

• Combined Punjab Province and NWFP: 716,090 Pashtuns / 4.1% of total
• NWFP: 579,164 Pashtuns / 33.7% of total
  • Peshawar District: 241,684 Pashtuns / 46.2% of total
  • Bannu District: 119,168 Pashtuns / 41.4% of total
  • Kohat District: 102,431 Pashtuns / 70.4% of total
  • Hazara District: 67,790 Pashtuns / 18.5% of total
  • Dera Ismail Khan District: 48,091 Pashtuns / 12.2% of total
• Punjab Province: 136,926 Pashtuns / 0.9% of total
  • Rawalpindi District: 29,115 Pashtuns / 4.1% of total
  • Delhi District: 15,776 Pashtuns / 2.6% of total
  • Lahore District: 9,607 Pashtuns / 1.2% of total
  • Gurdaspur District: 8,420 Pashtuns / 1.3% of total
  • Ambala District: 7,377 Pashtuns / 0.7% of total
  • Hoshiarpur District: 7,073 Pashtuns / 0.8% of total
  • Karnal District: 5,718 Pashtuns / 0.9% of total
  • Rohtak District: 5,521 Pashtuns / 1.0% of total
  • Amritsar District: 5,292 Pashtuns / 0.5% of total
  • Jalandhar District: 4,717 Pashtuns / 0.6% of total
  • Gujranwala District: 4,421 Pashtuns / 0.8% of total
  • Multan District: 3,845 Pashtuns / 0.8% of total
  • Gurgaon District: 3,694 Pashtuns / 0.5% of total
  • Ludhiana District: 3,355 Pashtuns / 0.6% of total
  • Sialkot District: 3,079 Pashtuns / 0.3% of total
  • Dera Ghazi Khan District: 3,011 Pashtuns / 1.0% of total
  • Shahpur District: 2,626 Pashtuns / 0.7% of total
  • Jhelum District: 2,620 Pashtuns / 0.5% of total
  • Firozpur District: 2,340 Pashtuns / 0.4% of total
  • Hisar District: 1,995 Pashtuns / 0.4% of total
  • Muzaffargarh District: 1,868 Pashtuns / 0.6% of total
  • Gujrat District: 1,652 Pashtuns / 0.3% of total
  • Sirsa District: 1,076 Pashtuns / 0.5% of total
  • Montgomery District: 1,002 Pashtuns / 0.3% of total
  • Jhang District: 877 Pashtuns / 0.3% of total
  • Kangra District: 695 Pashtuns / 0.1% of total
  • Shimla District: 154 Pashtuns / 0.5% of total

Baloch Population Breakdown

• Combined Punjab Province and NWFP: 235,123 Balochs / 1.3% of total
• Punjab Province: 199,634 Balochs / 1.3% of total
  • Dera Ghazi Khan District: 92,590 Balochs / 30.0% of total
  • Muzaffargarh District: 41,737 Balochs / 14.1% of total
  • Multan District: 12,544 Balochs / 2.7% of total
  • Jhang District: 11,352 Balochs / 3.3% of total
  • Montgomery District: 8,001 Balochs / 2.2% of total
  • Shahpur District: 6,724 Balochs / 1.8% of total
  • Gujranwala District: 5,965 Balochs / 1.1% of total
  • Lahore District: 4,527 Balochs / 0.6% of total
  • Jhelum District: 2,511 Balochs / 0.5% of total
  • Rohtak District: 2,225 Balochs / 0.4% of total
  • Gurgaon District: 2,160 Balochs / 0.3% of total
  • Firozpur District: 1,840 Balochs / 0.3% of total
  • Delhi District: 1,726 Balochs / 0.3% of total
  • Sirsa District: 1,325 Balochs / 0.6% of total
  • Gujrat District: 751 Balochs / 0.1% of total
  • Ambala District: 714 Balochs / 0.1% of total
  • Hisar District: 712 Balochs / 0.1% of total
  • Karnal District: 496 Balochs / 0.1% of total
  • Jalandhar District: 436 Balochs / 0.1% of total
  • Sialkot District: 301 Balochs
  • Amritsar District: 295 Balochs
  • Ludhiana District: 257 Balochs
  • Hoshiarpur District: 145 Balochs
  • Rawalpindi District: 135 Balochs
  • Gurdaspur District: 115 Balochs
  • Kangra District: 50 Balochs
• NWFP: 35,489 Balochs / 2.1% of total
  • Dera Ismail Khan District: 34,703 Balochs / 8.8% of total
  • Bannu District: 460 Balochs / 0.2% of total
  • Kohat District: 201 Balochs
  • Peshawar District: 125 Balochs

Kashmiri Population Breakdown

• Combined Punjab Province and NWFP: 230,853 Kashmiris / 1.3% of total
• Punjab Province: 207,246 Kashmiris / 1.3% of total
  • Gujrat District: 37,709 Kashmiris / 6.1% of total
  • Amritsar District: 37,456 Kashmiris / 3.5% of total
  • Sialkot District: 35,384 Kashmiris / 3.5% of total
  • Gujranwala District: 28,118 Kashmiris / 5.1% of total
  • Rawalpindi District: 21,691 Kashmiris / 3.0% of total
  • Jhelum District: 10,851 Kashmiris / 2.2% of total
  • Lahore District: 10,808 Kashmiris / 1.4% of total
  • Gurdaspur District: 9,060 Kashmiris / 1.4% of total
  • Kangra District: 5,761 Kashmiris / 0.8% of total
  • Ludhiana District: 5,549 Kashmiris / 1.0% of total
  • Jalandhar District: 1,954 Kashmiris / 0.2% of total
  • Firozpur District: 1,604 Kashmiris / 0.3% of total
  • Hoshiarpur District: 889 Kashmiris / 0.1% of total
  • Shimla District: 324 Kashmiris / 1.0% of total
  • Ambala District: 39 Kashmiris
  • Shahpur District: 19 Kashmiris
  • Multan District: 14 Kashmiris
  • Delhi District: 7 Kashmiris
  • Karnal District: 5 Kashmiris
  • Montgomery District: 4 Kashmiris
• NWFP: 23,607 Kashmiris / 1.4% of total
  • Hazara District: 12,238 Kashmiris / 3.3% of total
  • Peshawar District: 11,334 Kashmiris / 2.2% of total
  • Kohat District: 35 Kashmiris

Note

• The 1868 Census only enumerated British administered districts. All Princely States within Punjab/NWFP were not enumerated.

Source

• Report on the census of the Punjab taken on 10th January, 1868.

The photograph captures something specific about the mood (smiles) of September 1965 a country of just from its independence 18 years suddenly at full-scale war with a neighbour seven times its size, and the men going forward to fight were doing it with grins on their faces.

The 1965 war began on the night of 6 September 1965, when India launched a three-pronged offensive across the international border into Pakistani Punjab aiming for Lahore, Sialkot, and Kasur.

The plan was reportedly to capture Lahore by breakfast. Indian forces crossed the BRB Canal and reached the outskirts of the city. They never got further.

What followed was 17 days of some of the largest tank battles since the Second World War, the Battle of Chawinda in the Sialkot sector saw over 600 tanks engaged, making it one of the biggest armoured clashes of the post-WWII era.

The Battle of Asal Uttar in the Khem Karan sector saw Pakistani forces hold against superior numbers. The Pakistan Air Force flying largely American F-86 Sabres against a numerically superior Indian Air Force, established remarkable parity in the air pilots like MM Alam and Sarfraz Rafiqui and Sajjad Haider became national legends.

The men in this jeep, kit on their backs and rifles between their knees, were part of the infantry surge that held the line at the Lahore and Sialkot fronts. The dust on their faces is from the roads of central Punjab, somewhere between cantonment and forward position.

The war ended in a UN-brokered ceasefire on 23 September 1965 and was formally settled by the Tashkent Declaration in January 1966.

Both sides claimed victory the territorial map ended up roughly where it had started. But for Pakistan, 1965 became a foundational national memory the year a young state stood its ground against an army many times its size.

Photo was taken from PakDef.info archives.

This bearded face flanked by floral rosettes is a piece of Gandharan art. The unique sculptural tradition that flourished in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and northern Punjab, Pakistan between roughly the 1st and 5th centuries CE.

The reason it looks European is no mystery. For over 600 years, Greek artistic technique was continuously practised in this region.

In 327 to 325 BCE, Alexander the Great crossed the Hindu Kush and campaigned through Gandhara. After his death in 323 BCE, Greek influence stayed put. His general Seleucus founded the Seleucid Empire, and the Indo (Indus) Greek Kingdoms (c. 200 BCE – 10 CE) followed. Greek-descended kings ruling cities like Sirkap at Taxila.

Minting coins with Greek inscriptions, and patronizing Buddhism. King Menander I, known in Pali sources as Milinda, engaged in famous philosophical dialogues with Buddhist monks, preserved in the text Milindapanha.

By the time the Kushan Empire, a Buddhist and zoroastrian power, rose in the 1st century CE, greek artistic technique had been practised in Gandhara for 300 years. The Kushans inherited that tradition and applied it to a new subject. The Buddha.

The sculpture shows the hallmarks of late Hellenistic technique.

Naturalistic facial modelling. Brow, nose, and beard in deep three-dimensional relief. Wavy, voluminous hair. A convention inherited from Greek depictions of figures like Zeus and Poseidon.

Floral rosettes flanking the face. A Greco-Roman architectural motif adapted by Gandharan workshops in Ancient Pakistan.

This was likely part of a frieze or cornice on a Buddhist stupa or monastic complex. Possibly an Atlas figure or mythological mask. Decorative elements borrowed from Greek architecture and placed on Buddhist religious buildings.

Gandharan art was the first tradition in history to depict the Buddha in human form. Before Gandhara, the Buddha was represented only by symbols. A footprint. A tree. An empty throne. The earliest standing Buddha statues came out of workshops in Taxila, Peshawar, Swat, and Charsadda. All from Ancient Pakistan.

When Buddhism spread along the Silk Road into Central Asia, China, Korea, and Japan, the Buddha image travelled with it.

Every later Buddha statue across East Asia. The Bamiyan Buddhas, the Longmen Grottoes, the Great Buddha at Kamakura. All of them descend stylistically from these Pakistani originals.

>The image of the Buddha as developed in Gandhara became the prototype for the representation of the Master throughout the entire Buddhist world.

— Rowland, The Art and Architecture (Pelican, 1953)

This weathered face is a small fragment of one of the most extraordinary cultural fusions in human history. It happened inside Pakistan and shaped the visual imagination of half the world.

Choudhary Rehmat Ali made extensive plans for the partition of Pakistan and published numerous books and pamphlets for his cause. Theyve been notoriously hard to find (especially the post pakistan ones like "Pakistan or Pastan" or "The great Betrayal") with some languishing in cambridge archives (frost files box), and have been persecuted by the pakgov, much like how ch rehmat alis belongings were confiscated and he was exiled from pak and died alone and homeless in cambridge with even his grave funded by cambridge, but ive managed to acquire many physical copies of them and will make soft copies available soon

When archaeologists first started piecing together the indus valley civilization in the 1920s, they were looking at something nobody knew existed.

John marshall's 1924 announcement in the illustrated london news declaring that a civilization equal in age to sumer and egypt had been discovered in South East Asia, sent a shockwave through the academic world. Until that moment the consensus held that south asian civilization began with the aryans and the vedas. marshall's discovery pushed the timeline back by more than a thousand years and relocated the cradle of the subcontinent to the banks of a single river system.

That river system is the indus and it flows through pakistan.

This map shows the settlements at the civilization's peak, around 2600 to 1900 BCE.

The dots cluster heavily in the indus basin. sindh, punjab, balochistan, khyber pakhtunkhwa.

❚ The two great cities

Both of the civilization's largest cities sit inside modern pakistan.

mohenjo-daro in larkana district, sindh, covered roughly 250 hectares at its peak with a population estimated between 35,000 and 60,000.

Its planned grid streets, covered drainage system, and the great bath are unmatched in the bronze age world.

harappa in sahiwal district, punjab is slightly smaller but home to the largest worker quarters and grain storage facilities yet found from the era.

The third great city, ganweriwala, sits in cholistan in southern punjab discovered by the pakistani archaeologist Dr. Rafique Mughal during his cholistan survey in the 1970s it has barely been excavated. And yet even from surface surveys it appears to be roughly the same size as mohenjo-daro itself.

As Dr. Mughal wrote in his landmark 1997 work:

>The Cholistan desert holds one of the densest concentrations of Harappan settlements anywhere in the Greater Indus region the equivalent of an entire lost province of the civilization.

Mughal, Ancient Cholistan: Archaeology and Architecture (1997)

❚ The Deep Roots

The story doesn't start with the cities. It starts thousands of years earlier at mehrgarh in balochistan.

The small neolithic farming village whose discovery in 1974 by the french archaeologist jean-françois jarrige rewrote the prehistory of south asia.

mehrgarh's earliest layers date to around 7000 BCE that's older than sumer, unification of Egypt or stonehenge.

At mehrgarh archaeologists found the earliest evidence in south asia of wheat and barley cultivation domesticated cattle sheep and goats mud-brick architecture pottery and figurines and dentistry drilled molars from around 7000 to 5500 BCE.

The earliest known examples in human history.

mehrgarh shows an unbroken cultural continuity from neolithic farming villages in balochistan through to the great urban cities of the mature harappan period.

The american archaeologist jonathan mark kenoyer, who has spent over 40 years working at harappa alongside pakistani scholars..

>The Indus Civilization developed indigenously from local Neolithic and Chalcolithic cultures of the Greater Indus Valley. It was not the result of migration or external influence. The roots are in Mehrgarh and the surrounding regional cultures.

The branches reached east and west. But the tree itself grew here.

The indus is not just where the civilization happened to settle It is the reason the civilization existed.

The annual flooding of the indus deposited fertile silt across thousands of square kilometres, allowing the agricultural surplus that made urban life possible the river also served as a highway. connecting mohenjo-daro in the south to harappa in the north, and linking the inland cities to the coastal port of sutkagan dor on the makran coast in balochistan from there indus traders crossed the arabian sea to mesopotamia.

The five tributaries of the indus give punjab its name. Sanskrit panca-ap, five waters. The jhelum, chenab, ravi, sutlej, and beas. Look at any settlement map of the indus valley civilization and you'll see the dots tracing exactly these rivers cuz that's where the civilization lived where the water was the cities were.

The map shows what mesopotamian cuneiform tablets tell us about bronze age trade routes across the arabian sea.

Three names appear repeatedly in sumerian and akkadian texts...

dilmun ( bahrain), magan (oman), and Meluhha (Pakistan)

Meluhha is almost certainly the indus valley civilization. Based in Ancient Pakistan. The identification rests on multiple lines of evidence. the geographic direction described in the texts, the products attributed to meluhha, and the physical indus artifacts excavated across mesopotamia.

Sumerian records describe meluhhan merchants importing carnelian beads, lapis lazuli, ivory, ebony and other exotic hardwoods, peacocks, and possibly cotton.

Products that match precisely what indus archaeologists find at sites like mohenjo-daro, harappa and the coastal port of sutkagan-dor on the makran coast in balochistan.

Long carnelian beads from the indus were so prized in mesopotamia they ended up buried in the royal tombs of ur alongside the elite dead.

A famous cuneiform tablet from the reign of sargon of akkad (c. 2334 to 2279 BCE) boasts that ships from meluhha, magan, and dilmun docked at the quay of his capital.

There's even a tablet recording an akkadian-meluhhan translator.

A professional interpreter for indus traders. meaning the volume of trade was high enough to need a dedicated bilingual specialist.

Meluhhan settlers appear to have lived permanently in mesopotamian cities. A village near lagash was called meluhha. possibly a merchant colony. Indus-style weights, square stamp seals with the unique indus script, and etched carnelian beads have been found at ur, susa, kish, nippur, and beyond.

The indus people were running organized deep-water trade across the arabian sea while sumerian scribes were still refining cuneiform.

Their ships likely sailed from lothal next to Pakistani border (gujarat) coastal ports, hugging the coastline through magan then crossing to mesopotamia. Some routes may have reached as far as the maldives, east africa, and the bay of bengal. though those connections are still being studied.

These notes were issued by the State Bank of Pakistan when the country was still split across two wings West and East Pakistan (modern Bangladesh).

The denomination and bank name appear in both Urdu and Bengali the two major languages of the united Pakistan.

Bengali speakers made up roughly 55% of the country's population, and after the Language Movement of 1952, Bengali was recognized as a co-official language in 1956. These bilingual notes are a direct legacy of that struggle.

When East Pakistan became Bangladesh following the Liberation War of 1971, the new country immediately began issuing its own currency the Bangladeshi Taka through the newly established Bangladesh Bank.

Pakistani notes were withdrawn from circulation in the east, and Pakistan's State Bank phased out the bilingual design, retaining Urdu and English from that point onward.