Bangladesh did not exist as a distinct geographic and ethnic unity until independence. The region had been a part of &lt;a href="History%20of%20Bengal"&gt;Bangla, Bengali: বাংলা/বঙ্গ&lt;/a&gt;, whose history dates back to four millennia, and during the British period it formed the Bengal province, the eastern part of the British Indian Empire, which was dominated by the British rulers and Hindu professional, commercial, and landed elites. After the establishment of Pakistan in 1947, present-day Bangladesh came under the hegemony of the non-Bengali Muslim elites of the West Wing of Pakistan. The establishment of Bangladesh, therefore, implied the formation of both a new nation and a new social order.