Wrapped in Urdu to Bangla

It was pretty much obvious by July 1947, a month before the partition of India, that even as some well-known Muslim intellectuals went around suggesting that Urdu be the lingua franca of Pakistan, there were on the other side of the fence leading Bangalee scholars who believed tha Bangla should be the language of the state.
The Bangalees of eastern Bengal would, after all, constitute the largest component of the overall population of Pakistan. Dr Muhammad Shahidullah argued in an article in the daily Azad, published from Calcutta, that adopting Urdu as the only state language of Pakistan would undermine the Bangalees.
The argument in favour of Bangla really took off when Abdul Haq made it clear in articles in June and July 1947 that Bangla ought to be Pakistan's state language. In June 1947, the Abul Mansur Ahmed-edited weekly Millat in an editorial adopted a similar position. Likewise, quite a few other periodicals and daily newspapers articulated the idea, on the basis of the probable composition of the Pakistani state, that Bangla take pride of place as the language of the state. And that was not all. In the election manifesto of the Muslim League in 1946, Abul Hashim placed the case for Bangla in unequivocal terms. Similar was the position of the Gono Azadi League in July 1947.
The establishment of Pakistan on August 14, 1947 saw the swift rise of arguments in favour of Urdu and Bangla, depending on the ethnicity of those engaged in the debate, as the lingua franca of the state.
Aaj subh-e sadiq-e Dhaka'r hawai adda-e Pakistan-er ujir-e-khajana tashreef enechhen (this morning Pakistan's finance minister arrived at Dhaka airport). Notice the way it should have been in Bangla proper: aaj shokale Pakistan-er ortho montri Dhaka biman bondor-e eshe pouchechhen.
Many were the ways in which Bangla was beginning to be undermined. But while it is true that a concerted effort was on to get Bangla out of the way in favour of Urdu, there were the brave Bangalee voices who did not flinch from speaking for their people in places where they were certain to be heard. The Pakistan Constituent Assembly met for the first time after partition in Karachi on February 23, 1948. The deliberations of the House were, under the rules, to be conducted in Urdu and English.
On the day, Dhirendranath Dutta rose in the House to demand that Bangla be included as the third language of the House considering the fact that Bangalees constituted 44 million of Pakistan's population of 69 million. The suggestion was swiftly shot down by Pakistan's Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan, who defended Urdu as a language that could keep Pakistan united as a state.