Pakistan and Bangladesh emerged as a single country after the partition of India following independence in 1947. Partition was an attempt to split the subcontinent along religious lines, with East and West Pakistan predominantly Muslim and India predominantly Hindu. Given that religion was the rationale for the creation of these states, Islam might have been expected to play a major role in politics and economic policy, but in reality the influences on policymaking were more complex. www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctt1g0b1nc