Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah

Recording of the Quaid-e-Azam's Speech at a public meeting in Chittagong, in March 1948. Get this widget | Track details | eSnips Social DNA

Speech at a public meeting attended by over three lakhs of people at Dhaka on March 21, 1948. Asalam-o-Alaikum! I am grateful to the people of this province and, through you Mr. Chairman of the Reception Committee, to the people of Dhaka, for the great welcome that they have accorded to me. I need hardly say that it gives me the greatest pleasure to visit East Bengal. East Bengal is the most important component of Pakistan, inhabited as it is by the largest single bloc of Muslims in the world. I have been anxious to pay this province an early visit, but unfortunately, other matters of greater importance had so far prevented me from doing so. About some of these important matters, you doubtless know. You know, for instance, of the cataclysm that shook the Punjab immediately after partition, and of the millions of Muslims who in consequence were uprooted from their homes in East Punjab, Delhi and neighboring districts and had to be protected, sheltered and fed pending rehabilitation in W

Speech at the Ceremonial Army Parade at Kurmitolla Airport on 20th March, 1948. Officers and Men, I thank you for the honor you have done me in giving me the salute.I shall always remember this opportunity that has been afforded to me You know that Pakistan had to start from scratch. East Bengal is one of its most powerful components and you have got now an opportunity which you have not had for, may I say, two centuries or more. Bengal generally, in which of course, East Bengal was included where happens to be the largest Muslim population, was considered as negligible in quality and quantity, for military purposes. The martial spirit of Bengal is historically known, and specially the part the Muslims played in the history of the past Bengal. That martial spirit, like many other great qualities was oppressed, suppressed and the martial spirit was dead –with a sort of damper put on –and in Bengal we got to a point when as I said Bengal did not count for military purposes. Now, in