PAKISTAN. - I. GEOGRAPHY. - A federal state established on 15 Aug. 1947, formally associated with the British Commonwealth. It comprises two separate territories: West P. (795,000 sq. km.; 35 million inhabitants; 44 per sq. km.), including the former (British) units of West Punjab, Sind, the North-West Frontier Province and Baluchistan; and East P., which is 1,500 km away to the E. (140,000 sq. km.; 45 million inhabitants; 322 per sq. km.), comprising East Bengal and the district of Sylhet. The attribution to P. (or to the Indian Union) of Kashmir (219,000 sq. km.; 5 million inhabitants; 24 per sq. km.) is still undecided; its population is predominantly Muslim, while the ruling dynasty is Hindu. With 935,000 sq. km. of area and over 80 million inhabitants, of whom 42 million are in East P., P. is thus the largest and most populous Muslim state in the world; the percentage of Muslims there is about 3/4 (over 2/3 of the living Muslims of the former Indian Empire). Catholics number 225,000. The possible annexation of Kashmir would further strengthen the Muslim character of the state; its proportions would rise to 1.15 million sq. km. with over 85 million inhabitants (74 per sq. km., as against 110-120 in the Indian Union).
P. is essentially an agricultural country, but with solid industrial possibilities, which the separation from India and political independence will not fail to develop. In East P., which lies in a typically monsoonal zone, rice, tea and jute are chiefly cultivated: indeed, for the last of these products P. enjoys a world primacy. In West P., with a semi-arid climate, gigantic irrigation works are being built: in addition to cereals (wheat, barley), cotton is cultivated there above all, and recently rice as well. Considerable quantities of other products (oil seeds, sesame, flax, rapeseed, castor and above all tobacco and sugar cane) complete the already varied picture of Pakistani agriculture. Forests are few. The inventory of mineral resources is continually increasing, of which coal (340,000 tons in 1949), petroleum (118,000 tons), rock salt and chromite are already exploited. Hydroelectric possibilities are also notable.
The division of the former Indian Empire left P. only a very small part of the pre-existing industrial equipment (for example, the greatest center of jute manufacturing, Calcutta, is outside P.), but for food processing as much as for textiles or mechanical industries, large plants have already been set up, especially in West P.
Trade has already assumed considerable proportions, tending to free itself from the traditional dependence on the mother country. The two main ports are: in West P. Karachi (1.2 million inhabitants), which is also the capital of the state, and Chittagong (125,000 inhabitants) in East P. There are also about fifteen population centers with more than 100,000 inhabitants: Lahore (in Punjab) has about 1 million, and over 1/2 million Dacca (Bengal); Haiderabad (Sind) and Rawalpindi (Punjab) over 300,000.
Bibliography3 works
Giuseppe Caraci
II. HISTORY
Until 1947 the history of P. is the history of India (v.); it may be recalled, as regards the immediate antecedents of the new state formation, that into the movement for the autonomy and then for the independence of India, led since 1885 by the Indian National Congress party, there was inserted, in 1906, that of the All India Muslim League as the first symptom of the separate aspirations of the Muslims. Until 1932 Hindus and Muslims acted together in their common demands; in 1932 a P. National Movement arose, later absorbed by the Muslim League demanding an autonomous Muslim state; it resisted the project of a federal state of India contemplated by the Constitution of 1935, which came into force in 1937; in 1940 the head of the Muslim League in a speech at Lahore set out in precise terms the demand for a Muslim state. After the Second World War the negotiations with the British authorities effectively led to the formation of the two new Dominions of India and P. The proclamation of P., with its capital at Karachi, took place on 15 Aug. 1947.
Pending the Constitution, which is still being drafted, the president of the Constituent Assembly of P. is head of state. The first president of the Constituent Assembly was Mohammed 'Alī Ginnāh (Jinnah), born at Karachi in 1876 and from 1937 head of the Muslim League. He died on 11 Sept. 1948; he was succeeded by Tamīz ad-Dīn Ḥān. The general lines of the new Constitution so far set out in the debates of the Constituent Assembly (among other things in a speech
(by courtesy of Dr. Gaetano Ballardini)
PAKISTAN - Large panel in majolica painted with leaves and flowers in white on a turquoise and blue background, donated by the Government of P. to the Museum of Ceramics in Faenza.
speech by Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan at the beginning of 1949) lead one to foresee that P. will be a federal state on a democratic republican basis; Islam will be the religion of the State and the laws will be drafted according to Islamic principles. The official language is currently English, but there are proposals to replace it with Urdu (the lingua franca of the Muslims of India) and with Arabic (the language of religious instruction in Muslim countries).
P. is divided into two territories, western and eastern, separated by about two thousand kilometers of Indian territory; this situation weakens its statal cohesion also because between the two enormously distant parts there are very marked ethnic differences. In its three years of existence P. has had to overcome serious economic difficulties, also in connection with the movement of millions of people from one side to the other as a consequence of the 1947 partition. In foreign policy P. acts in agreement with Great Britain, seeking to make the most of collaboration with the other Islamic States. Relations with neighboring India have been and remain difficult; the most arduous question remains that of Kashmir, whose government adhered in 1947 to the Indian Union, while part of the population, mostly Muslim, rose up under a free government (Azad Kashmir Government) with the help of P. The situation repeatedly threatened to degenerate into open war between P. and India. The mediation of the United Nations led to an armistice between the parties, but has not yet succeeded in defining the procedures for a plebiscite. The latest proposal made by Sir Owen Dixon in 1950 that the plebiscite take place under the authority of United Nations officials, with temporary suspension of the authority of the current governments of the two contested zones, failed because of India's opposition.
Divergences also exist with Afghanistan over frontier questions, with the Afghan side supporting the aspirations of the Pathāns, who would like autonomy for their territory.
Ettore Rossi
III. EVANGELIZATION
In eastern P., formerly eastern Bengal, toward the end of the 16th century there were Jesuits, Dominicans and Augustinians to exercise first of all the ministry among the Portuguese in the various trading posts and among those charged with services at the court of the Great Mogul. The Augustinians in particular founded various parishes in eastern Bengal which remained entrusted to their care until the 19th century, under the bishop of St. Thomas of Meliapore; and also in Dacca, Chittagong, Dania, etc.
After the reorganization of the missions of India in the 19th century, eastern Bengal from 1850 constituted an apostolic vicariate, entrusted to the Congregation of the Holy Cross; from 1876 to 1886 it was served by the Cassinese Benedictines of the Anglo-Belgian Congregation. In 1884 it was declared definitively exempt from the jurisdiction of the archdiocese of Goa, and only a few parishes remained under the jurisdiction of the diocese of St. Thomas of Meliapore until the convention between the Holy See and Portugal of 1929. In 1886, with the erection of the ecclesiastical hierarchy in India, eastern Bengal was elevated to a diocese, called Dacca in 1887. From Dacca the diocese of Chittagong was separated in 1927, also entrusted to the Congregation of the Holy Cross. In the northern part of eastern P., in Dinajpur, the mission was begun in 1855 by the Lombard Seminary for Foreign Missions. From 1870 it formed part of the apostolic prefecture of central Bengal, erected as a diocese in 1886 under the name of Krishnagar in 1887, from which in 1927 Dinajpur was separated as an independent diocese, entrusted to the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions of Milan. Because of the creation of the new State of P., the territory of the dioceses of Chittagong and Dinajpur came to be divided between India and the new State, so that on 14 and 15 July 1950 the territory of the two dioceses was reduced to the zone belonging to eastern P. At the same time, on 15 July 1950, Dacca was elevated to a metropolitan archdiocese with the suffragans of Chittagong, Dinajpur and the new diocese of Jessore.
In western P., in the part of the Panjab, the first missionaries of the Society of Jesus reached the court of Akbar in Lahore in 1591, but they were expelled from it in 1614. The year 1624 marked a revival of the mission, which, however, could not sustain itself. The few faithful were subsequently visited occasionally from Agra and Delhi. During and after the occupation of the Panjab by the English, the Capuchins founded churches in various localities, among them Lahore, Multan, Rawalpindi. In 1880 the apostolic vicariate of Panjab was erected, then elevated to a diocese in 1886 under the name of Lahore. In 1887 the apostolic prefecture of Kafiristan and Kashmir was detached, entrusted to the missionaries of the Society of St. Joseph of Mill Hill, elevated to a diocese in 1947 under the name of Rawalpindi. From the diocese of Lahore the apostolic prefecture of Multan was detached in 1936, entrusted to the Dominicans, elevated to a diocese in 1939. In the other part of western P., in Sind and Baluchistan, there were at the beginning of the 17th century some Carmelites and Augustinians, who, however, on account of persecutions, around 1672, had to cease their activity. After the occupation of Sind by the English the Carmelites returned there. In Baluchistan the Fathers of Mill Hill founded a station at the end of the 19th century. Both the Carmelites and the Fathers of Mill Hill gave way to the Jesuits, the territory forming part of the diocese of Bombay. In 1935 the Dutch Franciscans took over the mission of Sind and Baluchistan, elevated in 1948 to a diocese under the name of Karachi. In 1950 Karachi became an archdiocese with the suffragans of Lahore, Multan and Rawalpindi; at the same time the archbishop of Karachi was appointed apostolic delegate for P. and in 1951 became apostolic inter-nuncio to the government.
In P. the Catholic Church, with about 225,000 members out of about 80 million inhabitants, constitutes an almost imperceptible minority. Socially too the Christians find themselves in scarcely advantageous conditions, being for the most part Chouhara in the Panjab or Santals in Bengal. The Catholic mission seeks contact with the Mohammedans by means of schools and charitable works; there exist above all hospitals of the "Catholic Medical Missionaries" and of the "Medical Missions Sisters" at Rawalpindi and Karachi. Despite the smallness of their number the Christians enjoy the necessary freedoms both for schools and for works on the part of the government. - See pl. XXXIX.
