James Baquet As previously mentioned, Bangladesh was once known as “East Pakistan.” The part we call “Pakistan” today was then “West Pakistan.” But a mere decade before my birth, even West Pakistan did not exist. That area was, and had been, part of the Indian cultural sphere for centuries. It was also home to many ancient high cultures, including Gandhara, which was visited by the Chinese Buddhist chroniclers Faxian (5th century), Song Yun (6th century), and — preeminently — Xuanzang (7th century). That culture is long extinct, though tantalizing traces remain in the form of Greco-Buddhist art. The modern country of Pakistan resulted from a partition of India along religious lines, effected politically — though not without bloodshed — in 1947, at the same time as India. It provided self-determination for the Muslims of the subcontinent, and caused what has been called “the largest mass migration in human history.” In a few months’ time, approximately 6.5 million Muslims moved from India to West Pakistan, while 4.7 million Hindus and Sikhs moved to India. At the same time, 2.6 million Muslims moved from India into what is now Bangladesh, and 0.7 million non-Muslims moved the other way. Pakistan is today the world’s fifth-most populous country, with at least 210 million people. Its area ranks No. 33. India stands to its east and south; Iran to the west; Afghanistan, which also shared the Gandharan culture, and where the Bamiyan Buddhas once stood, to the northwest; and China to the northeast. Afghanistan’s narrow Wakhan Corridor separates it from Tajikistan by just a few kilometers in the northwest, and it fronts on the Arabian Sea and Gulf of Oman to the southwest. There’s an interesting story behind Pakistan’s name. In Urdu and Persian, “pak” means “pure.” “Stan” (as in many nearby country’s names) means “place.” (This is cognate to English “stand” and “station.”) The name was coined as “Pakstan” in 1933 (the “i” was added later to ease pronunciation). The activist Choudhry Rahmat Ali created it as an acronym for five regions: Punjab, Afghania, Kashmir, Sindh and Baluchistan (the latter using the last four letters). Vocabulary: Which words above mean: 1. Greek 2. ones who write histories 3. period of 10 years 4. raising one’s interest 5. coming from the same form 6. violence 7. no longer in existence 8. area of influence 9. in first place 10. movement of groups of people or animals | 