The Making of the Centralization Process in the Early Years of Pakistan An Appraisal

Abstract

Given the pluralistic nature of Pakistan society, a genuine federal form of government
would have nurtured and cemented the national integration between people of diverse regions
and cultures of Pakistan. Instead of recognizing geographic, ethnic and linguistic diversities of
various distinct cultural regions, the Central Government had made the determination to impose
“uniformity” through the use of various nefarious policies and devious instruments of centralization.
The provincial Governments were dwarfed and clobbered by the Central Government of Pakistan.
The subsequent regimes had essentially continued to employ the instruments of centralization. The
purpose of this article is to assess the nature, the extent and the process of centralization and the
pattern of interaction between the Center and Provinces. The failure of national integration in
Pakistan was an epic failure of the centralizing features of the governance structures of the new
nation of Pakistan. The relevance of such a reappraisal is more poignant in an era when the history
of the making of Bangladesh’s long struggle for freedom and independence from the ignominious
colonial domination of Pakistan is being systematically distorted and marginalized.