When you think of the Pakistan Movement, what comes to mind is a group of Muslims looking to carve out their own religious state. A nationalist revolution, perhaps.While these aspects were certainly part of the equation, reducing the movement to just a religious or nationalistic event is like calling an iceberg an ice cube. You’re only seeing the tip of the story.Let’s be clear: the Pakistan Movement in East Bengal was different. It was a classic case of what Marxists would call “class struggle” – a battle between the oppressed and the elite, with religion merely being the banner under which the disenfranchised rallied.It wasn’t, as is often assumed, a simple religious dispute. Rather, it was a complex cocktail of caste, class, colonial exploitation and socio-economic discontent that turned what could have been an academic discussion on Marxist theory into a real-world struggle for a new social and economic order.Picture this: you’re a peasant in East Bengal under British colonial rule, working tirelessly on land you don’t own, with little hope of ever seeing the fruits of your labour.Enter the zamindars – feudal lords who have more in common with Shakespearean villains than benevolent rulers. They sit atop a deeply exploitative economic system, getting rich off the hard labour of those at the bottom, while British colonial policies do little but line their own pockets.For the peasants, it wasn’t just about religion or national identity – it was about the daily grind of economic survival. The feudal system in East Bengal was not just about land ownership but was intimately tied to the colonial state’s economic policies, which kept the peasantry in a perpetual state of servitude. These peasants weren’t just toiling for their landlords; they were also victims of the imperial machinery.Karl Marx would describe this as a “superstructure” – a society built on exploitation, where religion, culture and even politics serve to maintain the material conditions of the powerful.Now, Islam entered the scene long ago, not as a purely spiritual force, but portraying itself as a social equaliser. For East Bengal’s Dalits, who were systematically oppressed by the Hindu caste system, Islam offered a break from centuries of subjugation. The Islamic promise of equality – all men being equal before God – must have seemed like a divine escape from the rigid and discriminatory caste system that relegated them to the bottom of the social hierarchy.To these Dalits, Islam was more than just a religion; it was a revolutionary ideology, a ticket out of the misery of caste oppression.The Dalits weren’t just converting for spiritual salvation – they were, perhaps unknowingly, partaking in a larger socio-political struggle for equality. For them, Islam represented a better deal than the caste-based social contract that had kept them in perpetual poverty and discrimination.Jogen Mandal, a key figure in the socio-political landscape of East Bengal during the Pakistan Movement, epitomises the intersection of caste oppression and class struggle. As a Dalit leader, Mandal’s life and work offer a crucial lens through which we can examine the role of the lower castes in the larger political upheaval.A former landless peasant and an ardent advocate for Dalit rights, Mandal became a symbol of resistance against both Hindu caste hierarchy and Muslim feudal oppression. His decision to support the Pakistan Movement was not driven by religious zeal but by a genuine hope that a new political order could address the systemic inequality that had plagued his community for centuries.Mandal’s actions were deeply rooted in the Marxist notion of class struggle, where the oppressed sought liberation not merely through religious or nationalistic ideals but through structural and socio-economic change.His political journey highlights how the promise of a new state resonated with those whose suffering had more to do with their social status than their religious identity. While religion played a central role in mobilising the masses, let’s not get carried away and ignore the undercurrent of class struggle that ran through the movement. For many, the call for Pakistan wasn’t just about Islam as a religious identity; it was a rallying cry for the oppressed classes seeking liberation from both colonial and feudal domination.This is where the movement gets a bit tricky. If you ask any Marxist theorist, they’ll tell you that nationalism, when it’s framed as a religious movement, tends to disguise deeper socio-economic issues. In a typical Marxist view, the elites who spearheaded the Pakistan Movement were themselves products of the colonial system – and once they gained power, they had every incentive to maintain the same exploitative structures, albeit with a new flag and a new narrative.Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno from the Frankfurt School would likely suggest that nationalism here served as an ideological tool – a way to keep the masses distracted while the elites consolidated their power.Let’s not beat around the bush: the elites hijacked the movement, plain and simple. Once Pakistan was born, the hopes of the oppressed were dashed against the cold stone of elitism.The class struggle that underpinned the Pakistan Movement did not end with the creation of Pakistan. The movement’s promises of economic justice and social equality remained largely unfulfilled as the new state consolidated the power of the elites.What had started as a revolutionary movement for social and economic justice turned into a run-of-the-mill elite power-grab, leaving the peasants and Dalits with nothing more than a new set of rulers.In this sense, Pakistan’s founding could be seen as a textbook example of Antonio Gramsci’s notion of “hegemony” – where the elite take control of the state, co-opt the very struggles of the oppressed and reframe them in a way that serves their own interests.Gramsci would argue that the elite used religion and nationalism as a way to “manufacture consent” among the masses, convincing them that their material needs were being met, even though nothing had really changed.The peasantry and Dalits, desperate for any form of liberation, were left cheering for a new flag – one that still flew over the same old exploitation.Let’s take a moment for some dark irony. The new Pakistan was supposed to be a haven of justice, equality and social reform, but in many ways, it replicated the very social and economic injustices that had plagued Bengal under British colonial rule.For the average peasant, there was little difference between the zamindars of old and the new political elite. The economic order that had once been colonial was now local, but it still meant poverty, exploitation and a lack of access to power.Partha Chatterjee reminds us that nationalism, particularly in colonial contexts, is always shaped by the material conditions of the oppressed classes. Chatterjee argues that the nationalist project is always entangled with class struggles – and in the case of Pakistan, the very classes that had fought for the new state were often sidelined by the new political elites who had co-opted their struggles.In the end, the Pakistan Movement wasn’t just about religion, and it certainly wasn’t just about nationalism. It was about social justice, equality and the relentless battle between the oppressed and the elite.The oppressed didn’t get the country they hoped for, but they did get a valuable lesson: that religion, ideology and nationalism could be useful tools for the elite to maintain power – but the real struggle was, and always will be, over material resources and social structures.This realisation has led to the birth of Bangladesh, a country that is struggling to solve the old problem of class.Ahmede Hussain is a Bangladeshi writer and journalist. He’s just finished writing his novel on Bangladesh’s Liberation War. He tweets @ahmedehussain.