That short-sighted man choose to decline because it wouldn't work; Because had there not been profound fault lines between Muslims and Non-Muslims millions would not have butchered each other in '47 and millions would not have immigrated to their countries of choice either ! The fact that they did and many died is testament to how communally charged the environment had become ! As an ethnic Kashmiri who has relatives on the other-side of the LOC I do have more than just a passing acquaintance with what happened to the 'Sole Muslim Majority' State in the Union of India...have you ? And even if one were to consider that it was a blunder to part company with India; you got your Independence in '71 why didn't you merge back in ? Surely your West Bengali Brethren would have accepted you with open arms and the Indian citizens at large would have been overjoyed to see a once parting brother return...so why didn't you ?
As for the under-representation and exploitation ! Yes...you were under-represented I believe the reasons for that were less malicious intent on our part and more an absence of any influx into Bengal ! One of the reasons why we parted company with India was because the Hindus had been smart enough to take up on the British offer and progress almost in every field whereas the Muslims by contrast, despite the lamentations of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, had failed to do so and it regressed even further after Urdu was replaced by English as the Official Language. Consequently when the Partition happened most of the businesses, the bureaucracy and academia was in the hands of the Hindus and when many of them left so was a vacuum created in our country; in West-Pakistan that vacuum was filled with the influx of the educated Mohajir Community who not only provided invaluable presence to fill that vacuum but reinvigorated the economy. Unfortunately East-Pakistan wasn't home to nearly enough Mohajir as we were hence the lack of representation over the years ! By some estimates the Mohajir comprised as much as 83% of all entrepreneurs in West Pakistan ! In an attempt to address this disparity Ayub Khan under his 5 year plan first introduced the quota system where 40% of all seats would be reserved for Bengalis in East Pakistan whereas 20% would be on merit and later in '67 this was revised to 60% reservation by also adding the 20% merit based seats to it as well ! Unfortunately it ran into a lot of trouble and didn't work as well as it should have but it managed to increase the representation of ethnic Bengalis in the army exponentially ! Bengalis who hadn't played a role in the British Indian Army since the 1857 revolt where the Bengal Regiment revolted the British started recruiting heavily the Punjabis and the Pukhtoons from amongst the Muslims ! So naturally it took time for the Bengalis to have any significant presence in the Armed Forces; according to the book Pakistan: failure of national integration by Rounaq Jahan as a result of these policies the once virtually none representation in the Army grew to 5% in case of Commission Officers, 8% for NCOs and 8& for JCOs ! In the Airforce it was much better at 17% for the COs, 14% for the Warrant Officers and 29% for Other Ranks whilst in the Navy it followed a nearly similar pattern as in the Airforce but with a little higher representation for Seamen at 30% but a much lower 5% at the Branch Officer level ! Certainly nothing to boast about but when nearly your entire army consisted of Pukhtoons and Punjabis Muslims who had decided to join the Pakistan Army once they were discharged from the British Indian Army it was bound to take time. The statistics for the Civil Servants are even worse for the reasons I mentioned before and all of the major industries were in West-Pakistan whereas East-Pakistan had to sent its jute to West-Pakistan's mills to be processed because every mill was in West-Bengal ! But even if one were to assume that West-Pakistani's were racists then tell me were the 4 PMs including Suhrawardy simply 'Poster Boys' ? Why didn't they address these issues when they were Bengalis and were elected from Bengal ? In the 7 years that they ruled out of an 11 year democratic rule....why didn't they do anything about any of this ? Could it be that they were working towards that just as all of them were but the combination of most Businessmen migrating to India, next to no natural resources in East-Pakistan, not a single industrial unit or a mill in East-Pakistan and no educated class immigrating to East-Pakistan to fill the vacuum created huge problems ?
As for the Urdu Language - He did that because it was our lingua-franca; it wasn't a language that the majority in West-Pakistan spoke - We spoke Punjabi and yet we accepted it ! So did the Baloch, the Sindhis, the Pukhtoons, the Kashmiris, the Hindkoans, the Baltis and numerous other ethnicities all over Pakistan....why did the Bengalis object when we didn't ? Why didn't you guys see the wisdom of the decision ? The Urdu language was not associated per se with any community but was spoken and understood by almost every community and consequently many, over the years, adopted it as their mother-tongue and came to be known as the Biharis, the Bijnauris or as we call them - the Urdu Speakers ! It was our Lingua-Franca - Our Common Tongue ! What else was supposed to be our 'National Language' - English...? And I quoted the Bengali because it was he who initiated the crack-down so its comical indeed !