Amazing colour footage of UK - Pakistan relations at their best

[Braveheart]

Came across this Amazing colour footage from the British Film Institute reporting the Queen's visit to Pakistan in 1961 and President Ayub Khan's visit to the UK a few years later.
How things have changed.
Will we ever have the same Mutual Honour and respect ever again?

Queen Elizabeth II in Pakistan (1961) | BFI National Archive

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Britain Welcomes the President of Pakistan (1966) | BFI National Archive

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[Afzal_K]

Thus every Pakistani poltcian has found some type o& refuge there lmao

 

[KB]

How things have changed.
Will we ever have the same Mutual Honour and respect ever again?

We probably need some context here. When looking at the relationship between Britain on one hand and Pakistan and India on the other, in the first two decades after independence, we must consider how freedom was achieved. Imperial 'endings' shaped what was to come after the moment of independence. It was through a 'transfer of power’ rather than revolution that Britain relinquished control. In the end, Britain was not violently ejected. Consequently, there were many continuities across the 1947 'divide' between imperial and independent India and Pakistan, for instance in the ethos and structure of government, and how the Civil Service operated.

In addition many of the early leaders in India and Pakistan were products of the colonial era. Nehru had once even reportedly said that he was the last Englishman to rule India. Ayub Khan was Sandhurst trained and spoke with a ‘clipped English accent’. Both men even shared some of colonial stereotypes sometimes categorising elements of the population as lazy, parochial and lacking commitment to the greater good. Nehru as patrician and Ayub Khan as the paternalist, like their colonial predecessors, both thought they knew what was best for the ‘commoner’.

It is not that surprising that both were quite at home in British company. Yet, beneath the surface the relationship between Britain and the South Asian states was changing. Britain was a declining power on world stage. A new generation of leaders were also emerging that did not have the same sense of affinity with Britain. In India during the 1960s, there was a campaign to remove English as an official language; English street names were blacked out by some activists; there were calls to bring down effigies of prominent colonial figures. In Pakistan, from 1954 onwards, it was the US that became firmly Pakistan’s main Western ally, indeed in Ayub Khan’s phrase in 1961, “the most allied ally.” For Zulfikar Ali Bhutto writing in 1969, “Britain’s place is in Europe and the sooner Britain finds it the better it will be for Europe and for world peace.” Eventually in Pakistan as well, some of the symbols that signified a colonial imprint were removed - Montgomery and Lyallpur were renamed Sahiwal and Faisalabad in 1967 and 1977 respectively for example.