Jinnah did not budge on Bangla

On the evening of March 24, the very day on which Jinnah spoke at the Dhaka University convocation, Pakistan's founder met the leaders of the of the Action Committee. The meeting did not go well as Jinnah refused to see the students' point of view over the language question. He even committed the outrage of asking the young men if Bengal could point to any instances of great literature and aesthetics in the Bangla language. Some of those on the Action Committee team, particularly Oli Ahad and Abdur Rahman Chowdhury, did not mince words in informing Jinnah that he had limited knowledge about the culture of the Bangalis. For his part, the governor general thought the students were being led astray by the enemies of Pakistan.
On the eve of his return to Karachi on 28 March, Jinnah spoke to the people of East Bengal over radio. Amazingly, he only repeated what he had earlier stated at the Race Course and the convocation. His speech was rather long, the focal point being his emphasis on the need for unity and discipline among all the units of the state of Pakistan. He did not let the opportunity go by for proffering some advice to Bangali students who, he suggested, should take what he called the right course to the future.
Mohammad Ali Jinnah's visit to East Bengal, with his pronouncements on the language question, considerably diminished his hitherto solid reputation as a unifying force for the people of Pakistan. A sense of alienation between him and the Bangalis set in immediately with his departure for Karachi. Jinnah's intransigence on the position of Bangla, however, emboldened Chief Minister Khwaja Nazimuddin to an extent that had earlier not been noticed. On April 6, contrary to his earlier promise of having the East Bengal Legislative Assembly pass a resolution calling for Bangla to be accepted as a state language for Pakistan, he only moved a resolution to the effect that Bangla be made the official language of East Bengal and that Bangla be the medium of instruction at all levels of education in Pakistan's majority province.
Jinnah died on September 11 1948. His loyal follower, Khwaja Nazimuddin, chief minister of East Bengal, succeeded him as Pakistan's second governor general.