HISTORY is fickle. A human contrivance, it draws its
importance from the mortal human beings who want so much to
understand the nature of their existence, their purposes in a span of limited
time, and their connections with a buried past and a never realized future.
History is meaningless in the absence of human industry, but it is
more a reflection of the human mind than the material world of lifeforms.
Life in all its aspects would continue without history, but human life loses
its substance without the signposts that mark the trail of human evolution
and adaptation. The stages of history describe the increments of human
experience on an ever shrinking earth, but it is the individual actors of
historic legend that continue to fascinate and provoke interest long after
they have past from the world of the living. History, after all, is a
summing up; it is the interpreted record of particular events, fashioned by
observers who may or may not be intimate with their subject, who may or
may not be participants in the life experience they describe, who may or
may not be able to distance themselves from the story they choose to tell.
That there can never be true history, that is, that no historian can ever
reveal more than a glimpse into the past, explains why history is forever citize
being written and rewritten.
The volumes that address a particular moment, an event, a
personality, address the human yearning for explanation long after the
moment the event, the personality have passed from the scene. Ultimately,
history is the cumulative record, a glance back to where we were before
we arrived at where we are. And tomorrow the glance back will be to
today, and so it will be tomorrow, and in all tomorrows.
THE ELEMENTS OF THE PAKISTAN PARADIGM
By what standard does one judge the political history of Pakistan
in the twentieth century? Fifty years is but a moment in the time of states
or is it? The Soviet Union was one of the two most prominent of the
world’s states when Pakistan achieved independence but fifty years later it
is hardly more than a memory, a virtual footnote to history. Read in such ,fifty years is not a flash of light or the blink of an eye. Fifty years
of human events cannot be passed over so casually that we fail to grasp the
gation state. And perhaps that is one key to the conundrum that draws our
xeaning of the life experience and its manifestation in the contemporary
attention.
The world of the twenty-first century will be ever more so the
world of nation-states. By contrast, when the twentieth century began,
pation states were few in number, and except for the United States, the
earth was blanketed by empires and their colonies. Empires had their roots
in traditions and conventions that described defined status and purpose,
and the systems they imposed were not very far from the lifeways of the
colonial people they victimized. Alien rule was rule from a point beyond
the reach of the colonized, but nonetheless it was predictable, and readily
grasped by those long versed in superior-inferior relationships. Empires
enjoyed exceptional staying power, in major part because the many who
suffered the rule of the few acknowledged the uneven juxtaposition of the
other’s strength and their weakness. Moreover, time was measured
differently in that now distant age.
The lifetime of imperial states was read not in years and months
and days, but in dynasties and epochs, and little if any significance was
given to periods connecting generations to one another.
Nation-states are the inevitable result of collapsed empires.
Nation-states were spawned in the popular revolutions that challenged and
defeated aristocratic and alien rule. Nation states are vehicles for the
realization of mass politics. Self government, the inherent right of a
citizenry to choose their leaders, to demand their accountability, and to
establish the limits of their prerogatives, lies at the heart of the process
defined as constitutinalism. Limited powers, contractual responsibilities,
and fundamental guarantees, frame the relationship between the governors
and the governed.
Moreover, law undergirds the functions of the nation state. No
one is above the law, and ignorance of the law is no excuse for breaking
it. But as law applies to all and justice is deemed to be blind, the
procedures where by law is defined and imposed are given as much weight
as the law itself. Due process is what ensures that the law will be fair and
equitable, that it will not be used arbitrarily, and that the individuals rights
are paramount.
The nation-state is all these things and more. It is
safeguarding of its weakest members, the sanctity of the pluralist
community, and above all, it is the creation of a civil society. The world of empires has become the world of nation-states, but whereas the form
were practical undertakings and relatively simple to comprehend, the la
are more abstract, theoretical, and burdened by complexity, Nation-
are idealized not realized political expressions, and few sy
contemporary nation-states conform to the expectations of tr
proponents. Becoming a nation-state and being a nation-state are so
similar occurrences, Moreover, the spread of the nation state to CVERY
sector of the nation-state to every sector of the planet reveals more dys
its appeal than its fruition, Nation-states, therefore, remain goals that may
never be reached. Like democracy itself, the nation-state is more a ques
than a reality.
How then is one to think of Pakistan as a nation-state? Pakistan
was removed from the womb of one of the most successful impe
systems in human experience, but it began its life in an ambiance totally
out of phase with its incubation. Born from an imperial mother, Pakistan
was not genetically structured for the world of republics and federations
that dominated the thinking of the post World War II era. A clone of a ye
untested species, its surrogate birth provided little if any nurturing, and
virtually no guidance. Given existence as a nation-state, Pakistan was from
the beginning the antithesis of such expression. The embryonic origins of
the new entity were rooted in Islamic tradition, but no other sovereign
Muslim dominant state of that period, save perhaps the Republic of
Turkey, centered its performance on nation building. The other self
governing and quasi self governing Muslim states of the immediate post
World War II condition were replications of older monarchical models and
their performance offered nothing the way of advice or example to
fledgling Pakistan. More significant, however, Pakistan was the product of
a multiple birth. Connected to its I sibling during the sequence of
gestation, the separation of the two abstractions was manifested in a
transfer of power that conferred individual identities, but failed to ensure
the positive interaction of the two offspring.
Pakistan was the consequence of a colonial dispensation made
possible by two World Wars and the resolute members of a Muslim
League movement who, having failed to receive adequate assurance from
the majority community that their commingling was a feasible option,
insisted on the right to determine an individual future. The actual division
of the Subcontinent, however, was the work of the retreating imperial
mentor, and its less than evenhanded treatment of the partition
arrangements, instead of ameliorating the transition, exaggerated the fears
and intensified the bitterness of those who would be forever unreconciled
to the proceedings. Pakistan was as inchoate as it was complex. formed two territorial segments that were separated from one another by vast
nes, the units were even more distant from one another in culture
history. Except for their shared religious experience, the two
graphic regions that became Pakistan in August, 1947, had few assets
with which to bridge their great divide.
More demanding of attention at the time, however, was the issue
Kashmir. A natural extension of the northern areas of the new Pakistan,
y the withdrawing British Raj can explain why the territory was left in
ch an ambiguous state. But Britain has long since disclaimed any
responsibility for the Kashmir conflict that consumed Pakistani and Indian
forces in the days immediately following their attainment of independence.
Kashmir was not another colonial dispensation, but rather an imperial
confirmation. The inclination of the colonial Raj to restore the powers
extracted earlier from the Indian princes made greater sense than the
exercise of creating two dominions, albeit two nation-states. And although
the former colonial authority would have been content with an independent
kingdom in the mountain state, they also made certain the region would
remain, outside the Pakistan camp if the Hindu monarch was unable to
perpetuate his rule.
But while India and Pakistan clashed over Kashmir, there were no
conflicts between the two states when communal violence took its heavy
toll in Pakistan and India proper. The slaughter of the innocent on both
sides of the great divide set in train a mass exodus from both India and
Pakistan. But the plight of the hapless millions from central India and
northeastern Pakistan did not spark the same military reaction that
occurred in Kashmir. The fact that Kashmir became a matter of cross
border interest, while the sufferings of millions of refugees were perceived
domestic problems, illustrates the State’s centric character of the new
political entities. Territorial, not human, questions drew the attention of
the new governments. Thus, when limited strategic interests, not
collective, regional concerns, established the limits of cooperation and
accommodation, the two nation-states were predestined to emphasize the
negative features of their relationship.
These early developments influenced Pakistan’s, political
behaviour and the country never escaped the legacy of its colonial past.
Had Pakistan chosen monarchy instead of the inclusive nation-state, it
appropriate choice. Had the predominantly would have been a more
I would have been more in keeping with the nation’s exclusive self image.
Muslim nation chosen theocracy in fashioning its political system, that too
The Muslim League leaders, however, the persons most responsible for
the creation of Pakistan, rejected the distant as well as the most recen past, Democracy, not autocracy, was the tenor of the post World War II
period, and nations justified their demand for self determination in the
firm belief that the opportunity for self government demanded
the popular masses. By the same token, English schooled Muslim
distinguishing between the power of the colonial few and the aspirations of
Leaguers gave substance to the Muslim dream of a reconstituted political
order within the Subcontinent, but few among them entertained a system
of government that measured up to fundamentalist demands,
Pakistan, therefore, was conceived and given substance as a
secular state, guided by parliamentary practices, and conversant with the
rule of man made law. Muhammad Ali Jinnah articulated this choice of
political experience, but the historic record reveals even his closest
associates, in spite of their intimacy and genuine commitment, never, fully
grasped his full intention. Jinnah created Pakistan, but he did not
transform it into a nation-state,
The Pakistan idea and the Pakistan reality could never be
reconciled. The idea was a dream sequence in which the Muslims of South
Asia would find satisfaction and fulfillment in a secular, democratio
experience. The reality was the full awareness that Pakistan would be
carved out of regions that were then, and for centuries had been, Muslim
dominant, and in a form, were already self governing. The people who
were transformed into Pakistanis in 1947, did not experience their
liberation, but rather their entrapment. While the more independent
peoples of the northwestern regions of the subcontinent were motivated to
hasten the departure of the Europeans, Pakistan was the consequence o a
legal act, not a battlefield victory. Moreover, legal authority was
conferred upon those who were not and had never been rulers. Because
they were made the recipients of the “legitimate” symbols of power did
not mean their legitimacy superseded that of long established local
authorities. Kinship, tribal, filial and landed interests wove the fabric of
traditional leadership and governance in the different regions of western
Pakistan, and from their perspective one alien intruder had replaced
another.
In the eastern territory, the conditions were different, but the
inevitable outcome was not dissimilar. In East Bengal a small urban
intelligentsia and Muslim commercial class assumed the principal
leadership roles following the flight of the Hindu landlords to India. The
Muslim League, which had its origin in Dacca, became the vehicle of their
expression and the mechanism of their authority, but here too the
monopolizes of power were forced to test their credentials against those spoke for the vast majority that inhabited the province’s rural
Considering the dissatisfaction pervading the lands of western
Subcontinent’s Muslim population, the war in Kashmir was transformed
Pakistan in making the Muslim League the sole agent of the
a rallying cry for the party and its followers. And although Kashmir
consolidation of the nation. The Muslims of western Pakistan were
was never liberated, it nevertheless provided a justification for the
galvanized by the Kashmir struggle. The mountain state was made
synonymous with the Pakistan nation, and although Pakistan addressed its
essential unity, it could never be whole is the absence of Kashmir.
Pakistan, in effect, remained an ongoing quest.
Thus the meaning of Pakistan was altered at the moment of
independence by the Kashmir dispute. With attention riveted on the
northern most region of the Subcontinent, the secular conception of
Pakistan was sacrificed for another representing its spiritual raison d’etre.
This reversal in fortunes and direction was unintended by Pakistan’s
founding fathers, and especially by Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Not only did
Pakistan acquire a natural and permanent enemy in its rival sibling, the
confrontation between the two offspring elevated Muslim Hindu
differences, and given the stirring of high emotions, the way was opened
for those opposed to the secular state to enter the political arena.
“Islam in danger” was the popular strategy motivating the
Pakistan movement, and the unresolved contest with India over Kashmir
guaranteed the perpetuation of that fear. Pakistan’s leaders emerged from
the periphery to question the hegemonic role of those at the centre, and
neither the periphery nor the centre could avoid the challenge made
manifest by Hindu India’s insistence on dominating Kashmir. In the
psyche of the Muslim Pakistani was the strengthened belief that their tryst
with destiny was somehow a contemporary version of the biblical story
that pitted Cain against Abel.
Jinnah’s death so soon after the transfer of power collapsed the
Muslim League centre, and opened the floodgates to the many lesser
actors on the fringe of the party or totally outside it. Jinnah, not the
Muslim League, represented Pakistan, Jinnah, not the Muslim League
created Pakistan. In the absence of the Great Leader, Jinnah’s disciples
were either powerless or persuaded not to press the goals that he had
envisaged for the new nation. The Muslim League sought to redefine itself
in the years that followed and indeed the Objectives Resolution was
I supposed to frame the future Pakistan. But the difficulty encountered in attempting to do justice to the nation-state, while at the same time
honouring the Pakistani citizen’s commitment to his religious tradition,
intensified the controversy between those inclined to separate religion
from politics, and those who believed the two were inextricably
intertwined. The more sophisticated members of the Muslim League,
therefore, were encouraged to entertain the views of their more tradition-
oriented members, and the latter also opened the path for the country’s
religious leaders to enter the debate.
The strenuous efforts and the time consumed in the attempt to
draft a suitable and proper constitution describe the shift of power from
the centre to the periphery, and the emergence of leaders with
questionable political credentials. The more conservative and orthodox
leaders, in spite of their limited constituencies, had accrued the leverage
needed to influence the decision that denied a cardinal feature of the
nation-state, i.e. that sovereignty must reside in the people. Instead, there
was a reaffirmation of faith that sovereignty belonged to God alone, and
that mortal men merely held it as a trust. Clearly, this orthodox
conception of sovereignty meant Pakistan could not be a nation-state, nor
would it be one that limited the powers of government. Indeed this
interpretation made it virtually impossible for Pakistanis to choose their
leaders, let alone restrict their powers. the Muslim League definition of
sovereignty in effect assured the perpetuation of the Subcontinent’s
authoritarian experience. Sovereignty, that is the supreme power over
subjects and citizens, remained a monopoly of entrenched authority.
constitution writing, therefore, became a surrealistic experience, wherein
the traditional sources of power and privilege endeavoured to produce a
document that enhanced, rather than diminished, their prerogatives.
More significant, vice-regalsim was sustained. And with it
personality politics took precedence over institution building. In the
absence of a viable political centre, the competition between the provinces
was exaggerated, and although the Kashmir question continued to flue
Muslim sentiment, no leader emerged to remind the nation that Punjabis
and Bengalis were also brothers. Instead, inter provincial and west east
controversy was allowed to swirl around the matter of separate or joi
electorates, a meaningless conflict in the after math of independence, but
never the less a potent issue for those searching for the lost legitimacy of
the Muslim League. The struggle between the centre and the periphery,
and between the major provinces, made a mockery of Muslim League
claims and actions. and no longer standing for anything, the party that had
received the tran fer of power was easily maneuvered to the sidelines by
the permanent services. dramatized by the loss of East Pakistan, meant the country’s political
Pakistan’s failure in contemporary nation-building, tragically
experiment would remain suspended in time. Pakistan would be sustained
in the condition of a classic administrative state.
Pakistanis deserve better a people of significant accomplishment
and promise, the Pakistan nation has passed from crisis to crisis and been
subjected to horrors that a proud and honorable people should ever be
exposed to. The problem for Pakistanis appears not to be in their stars, but
in their ill defined presence as a nation-state. The people of Pakistan cry
out for honesty and integrity, but those crises have never been answered
affirmatively,
remains divided between the educated few and the illiterate masses. The
nor are they likely to be answered so long as the population
vast majority of Pakistanis are a gullible congeries of factions, clans, and
tribes, and their manipulation by traditional, as well as contemporary,
powbrokers remains the central focus of the political experience. The
pleas of the educated few for more balanced government, for a share of
the decision making process, do not go unnoticed, but they are no match
for the machinations of entrenched elites.
Educated Pakistanis must confront the realities of their world.
The country is not a nation-state and it will be some decades yet before
such a goal is brought within reach. Too much time has been lost and too
many resources squandered in the attempt to fashion a nation-state from
the social milieu that makes up the country. Better it would be if the more
sophisticated members of the Pakistan experience acknowledged that Ayub
Khan may not have had it right, but that his reaching out to the faceless
masses was not an idle gesture. Government clearly is not the answer
when it comes to bridging the great divide between the modern and the
traditional folk who populate this state. If Pakistan is to survive and
flourish, and there is every indication of the resiliency of this country,
will be because the different worlds of Pakistan will draw closer together.
Before Pakistan can achieve coherency, before it can assume the role of a
tation-state, it will have to construct a civil society. The absence of such a
condition, and it is a condition, not a structure, can only perpetuate the
rmoil that government is unable to address.
Vice regalism can preserve Pakistan, but it will not sustain it.
Government will remain intimidating, but it will also be a weak
Bovernment, one that cannot address the fundamental needs of Pakistani
ociety. Pakistanis must reach out to one another, interact with each other,
ted assist one another in meeting the demands of the modern world. The
Armed Forces are not the answer to the Pakistan dilemma. Nuclear
eapons may deter Pakistan’s aggressive neighbour, but it cannot provide it the nation with the guidance it requires in bridging complex social and
psychological differences. Pakistanis will succeed in their quest to create a
sectarian and regional distinctions and begin to see the merit in their
haven for the Muslims of South Asia only when they transcend their
Islamic diversity, Pakistan will survive only if the people who inhabit
there region believe they are a community, that in spite of their peculiar
diversity, they are, after all, one people.
