This article is part of a series titled “Is there a way forward for Pakistan?” Read more about the series here.
In the 76th year of Pakistan as a Muslim-majority state, confined since 1971 to the former West Pakistan when its eastern wing seceded to become Bangladesh, all indicators of economic, political and social development indicate negative trends. Scores for India from which it separated in 1947 and Bangladesh which separated from it in 1971 for such indicators are significantly better.
Pakistan’s ruling class, the power elite, the establishment or the deep state — whatever description one chooses to describe it — is notoriously and proverbially corrupt, inept, irresponsible and uncaring. Economically and financially, Pakistan is for all practical purposes a bankrupt state heavily under debt to foreign institutions and states. Its ability to borrow loans has reached a point of saturation. China’s CEPC project in Pakistan which was to be the panacea to overcome chronic electricity deficit, build roads and developmental infrastructure and generate new employment opportunities, is in the doldrums.
Business and trade are in a very bad shape. Industrial growth and development have stagnated. Pakistan remains largely an exporter of raw materials and semi-finished goods. Once the granary of India, exporting wheat from Punjab to other parts of the subcontinent Pakistan now suffers acute shortage of food and vegetable and galloping inflation has caused a price hike of essential commodities pushing more and more people towards poverty. Notwithstanding the mounting difficulties of the people, the Pakistani ruling class remains oblivious to the suffering of the people.
Politically, Pakistan has failed to establish civilian supremacy. Although a constitution from 1973 is in place upholding fundamental rights and other liberal values, several Islamic features and commitments hedge in those rights. Overall, Pakistan’s representative and democratic institutions lack credibility because elections have not been institutionalized and it is the military or rather the Pakistan Army which calls the shots. Its major political parties are either dynastic preserves or dominated by cult leaders. Mass media churns out biased reports and programmes.
The English-language press generally reflects a rational-liberal mode of thinking the much bigger Urdu-language press is prone to sensationalism. For a long time, extremist ideas and movements promoting militant Islam have had a free hand with proclivity towards violence including mob attacks on non-Muslims, atypical sects and free thinkers.
Socially, Pakistan remains the most conservative society in the subcontinent. Vain attempts to Islamize Pakistan have generated intolerant attitudes which are invariably hostile towards women and religious minorities. The annual reports of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan report heinous crimes committed against women and non-Muslims. The lack of an effective family planning and birth control policy has meant that Pakistan’s population growth rate remains the highest when compared to India and Bangladesh.
Equally, literacy rates lag behind India and Bangladesh and especially those of females. Some 35 million children are out of school and 45 million are estimated to be suffering from chronic malnutrition. Pakistan’s higher educational institutions are woefully inadequate in encouraging independent and critical thinking or in instilling scientific curiosity. The compulsory teaching of Islam in the schools and colleges has meant extra burden on students without such knowledge having any meaningful relevance for their careers and employment opportunities. Moreover, the teaching of Islam does not exempt non-Muslim pupils. Overall, the educational system inculcates prejudices against non-Muslims. Externally, India is especially described as the enemy of Pakistan and Muslims. Pakistan is generally portrayed as the citadel and bastion of Islam. The Pakistan military is celebrated as a garrison state ready to defend its territories, Islam and Muslims from external and internal enemies and fake stories of military victories during wars with India are taught in the educational institutions.
Attempts to Islamize Pakistan have generated intolerant attitudes which are invariably hostile towards women and religious minorities.
Most of Pakistan’s current ills are rooted in the ideologization of politics. A state driven by ideology invariably operates at the cost of national interest. It leads to the obfuscation of the objective reality which in turn results in flawed policies. Rational self-interest whether of the individual or a state must be based on a careful examination of the objective reality and the options available to deal with it. It requires flexibility and pragmatism and the rule of law.
Pakistan’s confessional ideology has proved to be dysfunctional
Winning Pakistan in the name of a confessional ideology which dichotomized Hindus and Muslims as two discrete, hostile but homogeneous nations was undoubtedly the masterstroke upon which the founder of Pakistan, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, won the case of Pakistan. However, it was a misleading depiction of Hindus and Muslims. The fact was that both Hindus and Muslims were deeply divided from within. Caste divisions among Hindus were notorious but the Muslims were equally deeply divided because of sectarian and sub-sectarian differences in belief and doctrine. Moreover, both Hindu and Muslim communities were amorphous entities comprising millions of people dispersed all over the Indian subcontinent. Ethnicity, language and other particularistic identities and local associations played a major role in defining their day-to-day lives.
At any rate, Pakistan came into being in a most violent and bloody manner with more than a million Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs killed in heinous communal conflicts and 14-15 million of them crossing the border between India and Pakistan. Yet, millions of Muslims were left behind in India while a much smaller Hindu minority stayed on in Pakistan (since 1971 confined to West Pakistan).
Another of Jinnah’s masterstrokes was to evade describing what sort of state Pakistan would be. In his hundreds of speeches, statements and messages can be found those which describe future Pakistan as a Muslim democracy, others which portray it as an ideal Islamic state inspired and informed by Islamic law and the praxis of state from pristine 7th Century Islam and one solitary state made on 11 August 1947 where he waxed eloquence about Hindus and Muslims being equal citizens of Pakistan.
In his later public speeches, he returned to the organic connection between Islam and Pakistan but insisted such a connection meant both democracy and ideal protection of minorities. However, regarding centre-province relations, Jinnah, who before Pakistan came into being,was a champion of decentralization, became a vehement opponent of what he decried as parochialism and provincialism, emphasizing that Muslims were a nation of faith while regionalism was a tool of the enemies of Pakistan.
Most of Pakistan’s current ills are rooted in the ideologization of politics. A state driven by ideology invariably operates at the cost of national interest. It leads to the obfuscation of the objective reality which in turn results in flawed policies.
In an interview given to the former foreign minister of Pakistan Sahibzada Yaqub Ali Khan and Syed Ahsan, his military and naval who wanted to know why no progress on the constitution was being made and why India was moving fast to frame one for itself Jinnah admitted candidly that he had been making contradictory pledges to different schools of thought among Muslims. Therefore, he had reposed the duty of framing of the constitution of Pakistan to the Pakistan Constituent Assembly.
The first move on the constitution was made on 7 March 1949 when Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan moved the Objectives Resolution. It called for Pakistan to be an ideal Muslim democracy upholding the sovereignty of God. He reiterated that Pakistan will be a modern democracy in which fundamental rights will be enjoyed in accordance with the lofty standards of Islam. What such rhetoric meant concretely for constitution and law-making was not spelled out. While the few Hindu members of the Constituent Assembly invoked Jinnah’s 11 August 1947 speech to plead for a secular Pakistan, the Muslim members who spoke in support of the resolution unanimously underscored that Jinnah had ad infinitum described Pakistan as a state for Muslims and where Islam will be the main source for constitution and law making, but assured the Hindus that would not mean a theocracy but a spiritual democracy fair to all.
What followed thereafter were protracted deliberations on the democratic and Islamic character of Pakistan. The constitutions of 1956, 1962 and 1973 contained familiar civil, political, social and cultural rights but hegded them in by Islamic limits! The current constitution of 1973 added more Islamic features. Not only the president but also the prime minister was to be Muslims. In 1974, the Pakistan Parliament unanimously declared Ahmadis as non-Muslims because they did not believe that Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) was the last of the prophets sent by God. Under General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, Hudood and blasphemy laws and several misogynist laws and practices were introduced. They brutalized sensibilities and encouraged a mob mentality preying on those suspected of disrespect to pure and true Islam. Some 96 people have thus far been killed by frenzied mobs and among them have been Christians, Hindus, Ahmadis and even free-thinking Muslims of Sunni origin.
The introduction of zakat tax by Zia was rejected by the Shia minority which agitated for exemption from it because they were not willing to pay it to a Sunni state. In the 1990s,a proxy war was fought on Pakistani soil between Shia Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia through their sectarian affiliates in the form of armed militias. The terrorism which followed claimed hundreds of lives, but the upper hand belonged to the Sunni extremists who not only formed a majority of 85 per cent but were supported by state agencies. The gruesome assassinations of the Governor of Punjab Salman Taseer and of the Federal Minister of Minority Affairs Shahbaz Bhatti in 2011 are cases of terrorist attacks on high profile individuals, but the extremists have not even spared foreigners working in Pakistan. All this is verifiable from the Pakistani press and annual reports of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.
In short, Pakistan is a state whose ideology has taken upon itself the responsibility not only to perform the three main functions all states are expected to perform: protect its population from external aggression, punish crime and provide conditions to produce the material goods needed to sustain and reproduce society, but also to ensure that its policies pave the way for the salvation of true believers. It is a pre-modern ideology harking back to a golden past oblivious to the objective reality of diversity of beliefs within Muslims and between Muslims and non-Muslims. Such developments have placed Pakistan high on the list of countries where extensive, systematic violation of human rights of people take place
Using Urdu to eradicate regional identities has provoked separatist reactions
Closely related to Islam as the basis of nation and nationalism is the problem that Urdu is declared the language of Muslims and therefore a core element in the Pakistan ideology. Its roots go back to the polemics between the Indian National Congress which wanted Hindustani to be the national language of a united India with two official scripts, Devanagari and Urdu-Persian and all provinces having the right to use in their province their mother-tongues for government communications and education. This was rejected by the Muslim League; it insisted that Urdu was the mother tongue exclusively of Muslims. This was not true because not only Muslims but also Hindus and Sikhs were literate in Urdu. But Jinnah insisted on communalizing the language issue.
After Pakistan came into being the state was hellbent on establishing a nation which not only shared one faith but also spoke and wrote one language. The fact was that in 1947 Pakistan contained five major indigenous language groups: nBengalis, Punjabis, Sindhis, Pakhtuns and Baloch and several smaller groups such as Brauhi speakers in Balochistan, Saraiki speakers in southern Punjab and lower Sindh and some even smaller groups. The Urdu-speakers who migrated to Pakistan in 1947 from North India and Hyderabad State formed less than 4 percent of total population. That percentage has increased to 7 percent after East Pakistan broke away from Pakistan to become Bangladesh in 1947.
The imposition of Urdu on Bengalis was one major reason why they were disillusioned with Pakistan. Unlike Punjabis and to some extent educated Sindhis, Pakhtuns and even Baloch were conversant in Urdu but not Bengalis. The language issue in Bengal was the beginning of Bengali resentment against the West Pakistani establishment which they accused of exploiting the resources and income of East Pakistan to finance the development of West Pakistan. Cumulative grievances of the Bengalis finally culminated in the breakup of Pakistan in 1971.
In post-1971 Pakistan, the language question continues to produce resentment in Sindh, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan. There is no doubt that using Urdu as the medium of education has made it the link language between the four provinces of Pakistan, but the suppression of regional languages and cultures alienates the dominated minorities from the Punjabi dominated Pakistan government. It can be pointed out that by using Islam and Urdu as ideological tools in 1955 the four provinces of West Pakistan were amalgamated under the One-Unit scheme into the single province of West Pakistan. Such forced amalgamation was never accepted by the dominated provinces and in 1969 the One-Unit was dissolved and Punjab, Sindh, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan became separate provinces.
Such a tendency resulted in protests from the provinces and was a major contributing factor to bitter relations between the centre and the provinces. However, protracted negotiations finally forced the hand of the central government, and the 18th Amendment was agreed whereby many of the powers were handed over to the provinces and their share of the national budget and resources increased to 53 per cent to the provinces and the rest to the centre. Even after the agreement, calls are being given to regain the powers by the centre because of external and internal threats to Pakistani unity.
India-centric and Kashmir-fixated foreign policy has ruined Pakistan
The third pillar on which the Pakistan ideology rests is the belief that India has never accepted the creation of Pakistan and is constantly conspiring to undo Pakistan. From 1937 onward, Jinnah began warning that in a united India Islam will be annihilated and Muslims obliterated and therefore the creation of Pakistan was a matter of life-and-death for Muslims. Ironically, he was willing to leave 2 crore Muslims in India to be sacrificed and smashed to liberate 7 crores from the yoke of Hindu rule. In any case, bitter conflicts over the share of the colonial kitty and conflicting claims to territory degenerated into zero-sum games between them at international forums.
In any case, neither Jinnah nor Liaquat Ali Khan put any high premium on democratic procedures. After their deaths, a serious dearth of civilian leadership paved the way for the civil servants to call the shots, and they in turn were superseded by the most powerful institution in Pakistan, the Pakistan Army. In any case, conflicting claims over Kashmir resulted in the first India-Pakistan war of 1947-48 which left the former princely state divided between the two rivals. Having co-opted itself into Western military alliances, Pakistan received advanced military hardware and initiated military actions which resulted in the second war with India in 1965. Again in 1971, Pakistan went to war with India and after both rivals had acquired nuclear weapons in 1998, a mini-war at Kargil took place. The arms race between them has meant scarce national resources being directed towards wasteful projects to purchase and produce advanced weapons. Moreover, after the so-called Afghan jihad, Pakistan became the base from which so-called non-state actors such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jash-e-Muhammad, Harkat-ul-Mujahideen and several other organizations carried out terrorist attacks in the Indian-administered Kashmir as well as major Indian cities.
Pakistan also became the epicenter of extremism and terrorism where Pakistani and foreign warriors were trained to attack targets in the West. All such vainglory misadventures have earned Pakistan the unenviable reputation of a rogue state.
Umma internationalism has only won Pakistan Brownie points
One can mention that championing Islamic/Muslim causes is part of the overall Islamic ideology although when it comes to China and its ill-treatment of the Uighur Muslim minority reported by the United Nations and other international human and minorities organizations Pakistan maintains a complete silence. In fact, atheistic China is Pakistan’s closest friend and benefactor.
Already, we have paid a very heavy price in getting involved in the so-called Afghan jihad and in propping up the Taliban movement in Afghanistan which is again now wreaking havoc in Pakistan.
Conclusion
Unless Pakistan can extricate itself from such an ideology, its democratic credentials will always be questioned. One way to retain Islam as a moral reference for good and responsible governance is to bring all mosques directly under the state and make the clerics state employees who can lead prayers according to their sectarian and sub-sectarian rituals, but they should be strictly forbidden to take part in politics. The Friday sermon should be prepared by the state in which social service, tolerance, cleanliness, birth control and other such subjects should be emphasized.
One way to retain Islam as a moral reference for good and responsible governance is to bring all mosques directly under the state
More importantly, the educational system must be freed from the stranglehold of ideology. There is ample material available showing that instead of encouraging rational, scientific, independent and creative thinking the textbooks disseminate prejudices against non-Muslims especially Hindus and India. Such an educational system fails to equip students with positive attitudes and stands no chance of competing with other societies in the production of knowledge.
Moreover, Pakistan must accept the multi-linguistic and multicultural nature of Pakistani society and new provinces can be created to reflect the diversity of cultures and identities of the Pakistani people. Forced assimilation will never work. On the other hand, if equitable relations with the provinces are established then Urdu will naturally be the language which will integrate them and while regional cultures and identities can flourish as well.
It is imperative that seeking confrontation with India will always require increasing investments in the arms race. Pakistan is already financially and economically ruined. Knowing fully that the Kashmir dispute cannot be resolved through war and invoking UN resolutions on Kashmir is a huge waste of time Pakistan can accept the Line of Control the international border between India and Pakistan but with the proviso that both states would guarantee maximum autonomy to the Kashmiri people including free movement of Kashmiris across the border.
Trade between India and Pakistan can bring great benefit to both countries but especially Pakistan. If India and China trade can increase from 100 billion USD per annum to 139 USD per annum and China and the US can manage to continue trading at a very high level despite the rising tensions between them there is no reason Pakistan and India should not do so. Restoration of trade relations with India could prove to be the stimulus it needs to start growing again.
We need to concentrate our attention on improving the dismal life conditions of the vast majority of Pakistani people instead of hypocritically championing perceived Islamophobic causes and supporting extremist movements in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the world.
In short, Pakistan must learn to function internally and externally in compliance with the prevailing norms of legitimate government, respecting the rule of law internally and internationally as well as its obligations in the external domain.
The writer is Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Stockholm University; Honorary Senior Fellow, Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore. He can be reached at: billumian@gmail.com
