In July 1947 Muhammad Ali Jinnah, called Quaid-e Azam (the Great Leader), the undisputed leader of the movement that had led to the creation of Pakistan, was invited by the members of the Muslim League branch in London to address them in celebration of the achievement of Pakistan. He had to decline, but he reminded them that there still remained the far greater task “of constructing and building up Pakistan, which will require every ounce of our energy; but by the grace of God we shall build up this new greatest Muslim sovereign state in the world with complete unity, discipline and faith.”1 The readings in this chapter, under the general rubric of the struggle for national identity, are intended to show the enormity of that task.
Pakistan was made up of two areas, referred to as “wings,” which were separated by a thousand miles of unfriendly India, in every way a more powerful nation. Partition meant the division of the provinces of Punjab and Bengal, which had been reasonably distinct political entities within both the British and the Mughal empires; the former, Punjab, had even been independent under Ranjit Singh from 1799 to 1849, until the British conquered it. The new provinces of West Punjab and East Bengal (later West Pakistan and East Pakistan) went to Pakistan, and East Punjab and West Bengal went to India. The new provinces were divided from their old territorial and cultural origins by boundary lines decided by the Border Commission based on census data showing the religious adherence of the populations of contiguous districts in Punjab and Bengal, although in most areas there was a mixture of religions. Some attention was paid to the canals and rivers and transportation systems that determined the economies of the regions, but the true meaning of Partition was that inevitably the social and economic relations of the two areas were disrupted. In human terms, it meant millions of refugees fleeing from one new nation to the other, with massacres, rapes, and looting. India and Pakistan were not at war; instead, both sides tried desperately to contain the violence. What is astonishing is the extent to which, during the last six months of 1947, they gradually succeeded. What did not end, in either India or Pakistan, was historical memory, which, as the French essayist Paul Valéry put it, is the most dangerous product of the human intellect, for “it causes dreams, it intoxicates whole peoples, gives them false memories, … keeps their old wounds open, … and makes nations bitter.”2
In 2007, as Pakistan celebrated its sixtieth anniversary, some commentators praised the country for its economic progress and its support of several excellent institutions of higher learning. Others saw Pakistan as a failed state on the brink of economic chaos, a nuclear threat to the world, a terrorist state, and a captive of Islamic fundamentalists, failing in its promise to support the American-led coalition in its war against terrorism.3 A common explanation of the fate of Pakistan, in contrast to that of India, is that Pakistan was committed by its origins to an Islamic religious ideology unsuited to the modern world. An opposite explanation is that Pakistan deserted the imperatives of Islam that justified its creation, in order to follow the false idols of Western society. A third account of the decay of the country alleges that it has been betrayed by its military and political classes, who continue to engage in brutal struggles for power. Still another account blames Pakistan’s civil and military rulers for tying themselves to the United States, thereby becoming a tool of American imperialism.
An obvious difficulty was that the new state had to achieve the very different goals of the very diverse peoples who became its citizens either through the drawing of artificial boundary lines or through migration from India at the time of Partition. The contradictory expectations of different regional and social groups have been a constant feature of Pakistan’s history, as was illustrated most powerfully by the secession of its eastern wing to become Bangladesh in 1971. There have also been uprisings in Baluchistan; ethnic protests in Sindh and NWFP; difficulties in bringing the tribal areas, situated on the Pakistan–Afghanistan border, into the national mainstream; and the dispute with India over Kashmir. On quite another level, there were the expectations of the Westernized elites for a modern, democratic society. Although twenty-first-century Pakistan is a Muslim-majority country, with 97 percent of its population practicing some form of Islam, religious factionalism and competition, extending even to persecution, have long caused social division: Among Muslims, Shias (5–20 percent) and Ahmadis (2.3 percent)—who were declared non-Muslim in 1974—experience sporadic persecution from Sunnis; and Christians (1.6 percent), Hindus (1.6 percent), and various other tiny communities, such as Baha’is, Sikhs, and Parsis, also complain of being targeted in a state that does not adequately protect their religious freedoms.
The selections in chapters 4, 5, 6, and 7 show that Muslim leaders had enunciated the need for political arrangements that would permit Indian Muslims to develop, as Muhammad Iqbal put it, “on the lines of their own culture and traditions.”4 The future of Islam as a cultural force in India depended upon the autonomy of the regions in the subcontinent where Muslims were in a majority. Jinnah restated this attitude in his negotiations on behalf of the Muslim League with the British and the Indian National Congress in 1946–1947.
Looking back over the history of Pakistan since 1947, as reflected in academic studies, journalism, official reports, and the speeches and writings of political leaders, we can see that while a multitude of issues have concerned the people of Pakistan, there are six that have dominated public discussion of domestic and foreign policies. They are as follows:
• The attempt to define an Islamic state in modern constitutional and legal forms that would reflect the principles and teachings of Islam, while accepting modern notions of nation-state, democracy, constitutionalism, and civil and political rights;
• The commitment to democratic processes through constitutional rule, political parties, and electoral procedures;
• The rise of military authoritarianism and its impact on the political process;
• The implementation of social legislation in the context of Islamic precepts, with particular attention to education and the status of women;
• The attempts to expand foreign policy options by assigning importance to relations with China, the United States, and other Muslim countries, including the question of how to cope with the security pressures caused by troubled relations with India; and
• The shaping of an economic policy that would put Pakistan on a sound financial basis, promote economic development with social justice, and reduce dependence on external loans.
Selections relating to these themes will be found in the contexts of the political structures of the different periods outlined below because, for good or ill, almost all developments in Pakistan have been dominated by politics. Selections in all periods illustrate the dilemmas, frustrations, and responses to problems that have characterized Pakistan’s society as its leaders have tried to create a framework to accommodate its inheritances from the past and the demands of the present. The periods, and their characteristic political structure, are as follows:
1947–1957: Parliamentary democracy and Islamic identity
1958–1971: The hegemony of the military
1972–1977: Civilian rule by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto: Democracy and Islamic socialism
1977–1988: Military rule by General Zia ul-Haq (1977–1985), civilianization of military rule (1985–1988), and the use of the state machinery to promote Islamic orthodoxy and militancy
1988–1999: Civilian rule under Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif
1999–2008: Military rule by General Pervez Musharraf (1999–2002) and civilianization of his military rule by restoration of the amended constitution and elections (2002–2008)
2008: General elections and restoration of civilian democratic rule.
While politics has absorbed the energies of the elites to an extraordinary extent, Pakistan continued to generate a lively poetic tradition and has embraced such artifacts of modernity as television, radio, and cinema, although they have suffered from government censorship and criticism from Islamic groups. The gradual expansion of private-sector media, especially television, from 2002 onward, has had a significant impact on politics and society, facilitating more open debates on contentious social, political, and economic issues.
We begin this chapter with the writings of Pakistan’s most famous poet, Faiz Ahmad Faiz (1911–1984), whose poetry refracts the problems of his time with an intense humanitarian passion. Many of the themes, successes, and challenges of Pakistan’s history are adumbrated in his justly popular poems.
Faiz Ahmad Faiz was influenced, as were many Indian intellectuals of his generation, by Marxism; he was a member of the Progressive Writers Association, which included many of the best-known writers of the time. Marxism was a liberating force that enabled writers to cross both religious and political boundaries. Faiz studied and taught in Lahore, the political and intellectual capital of Punjab, so that when Partition came he was already a citizen of Pakistan, not a muhajir, or refugee, from the Indian side of the border. As editor of the Pakistan Times of Lahore, he was known for his radical opinions and involvement in social action, and in 1953 he was sentenced to four years in prison for alleged involvement in what was known as the Rawalpindi Conspiracy, a plot to overthrow the government. His prison experience is often reflected in his early poetry.
Much of his poetry is about human love, but it is all infused with a compassion for the poor and a hatred of political tyranny. It is also marked by that common theme of the Indo-Islamic poetic tradition: the pain of separation and the lack of fulfillment. In Faiz, as in other Pakistani writers, the pain of separation results both from the remembered past and from the sense that the dream of Pakistan has not been fulfilled. The translations are by his friend V. G. Kiernan, also a man of the left.
Expressions of Faiz’s social passion are present in all his writing, even in a love poem such as the one from which this excerpt is taken; in it he speaks of what he has learned from lost love.
THE RIVALS
What I lost in this love, what I learned …
If I were to explain to anyone except you I would not be able to explain.
I learned helplessness, I learned protection of the poor;
I learned the meaning of despair and frustration, of suffering and pain,
I learned to understand the afflictions of the downtrodden,
I learned the meaning of chill sighs, of livid faces.
[Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Poems by Faiz, trans. V. G. Kiernan (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000), 73.]
The following short poem, written in about 1943, before Independence, combines both human love and his dream of a Pakistan free from foreign rule and indigenous tyranny.
A FEW DAYS MORE, MY DEAR!
A few days more, my dear, only a few days.
We are compelled to draw breath in the shadows of tyranny;
For a while longer let us bear oppression, and quiver, and weep:
It is our ancestors’ legacy. We are blameless;
On our body is the fetter, on our feelings are chains,
Our thoughts are captive, our speech is censored;
It is our courage that even so we go on living.
Is life some beggar’s dress, on which
Every hour patches of pain are fixed?
But now the days of tyranny are few;
Be patient for a moment, for the days of complaining are few.
[Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Poems by Faiz, 78.]
“Dawn of Freedom” is one of Faiz’s most famous poems; it expresses the disillusionment he and many felt as they began to realize that the Pakistan they had hoped for was not the one that they had achieved.
DAWN OF FREEDOM (AUGUST 1947)
This stain-covered daybreak, this night-bitten dawn,
This is not that dawn of which there was expectation;
This is not that dawn with longing for which
The friends set out, (convinced) that somewhere there would be met with,
In the desert of the sky, the final destination of the stars,
Somewhere there would be the shore of the sluggish wave of night,
Somewhere would go and halt the boat of the grief of pain.
By the mysterious highroads of youthful blood.
When friends set out, how many hands were laid on our skirts;
From impatient sleeping-chambers of the dwellings of beauty
Arms kept crying out, bodies kept calling;
But very dear was the passion for the face of dawn,
Very close the robe of the sylphs of light:
The longing was very buoyant, the weariness was very slight.
—It is heard that the separation of darkness and light has been fully completed,
It is heard that the union of goal and step has been fully completed;
The manners of the people of suffering (leaders) have changed very much,
Joy of union is lawful, anguish for separation forbidden.
The fire of the liver, the tumult of the eye, burning of the heart,
—There is no effect on any of them of (this) cure for separation.
Whence came that morning breeze, where has it gone?
The lamp beside the road has still no knowledge of it;
In the heaviness of night there has still come no lessening,
The hour of the deliverance of eye and heart has not arrived.
Come, come on, for that goal has still not arrived.
[Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Poems by Faiz, 123.]
In the next brief poem, Faiz asserts the poet’s social responsibility.
TABLET AND PEN
I will go on cherishing the tablet and the pen,
I will go on writing down what passes over the heart,
I will go on collecting the attributes of the grief of love,
I will go on pouring bounty on the desolation of the age.
Yes, the bitterness of the times will grow still greater;
Yes, the tyrants will go on practicing tyranny;
This bitterness is accepted, this tyranny is endurable to me,
While there is breath I will go on with the healing of pain.
[Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Poems by Faiz, 129.]
Memories of Faiz’s experiences in prison permeated his early poetry.
DAYBREAK IN PRISON
Memories of prison, with the familiar theme of separation.
In the prison yard the golden faces of comrades,
Shining out from the surface of darkness grew little by little;
The dew of sleep had washed away from these faces
Grief for country, pain of separation from the face of the beloved.
[Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Poems by Faiz, 195.]
Pakistan’s first Constituent Assembly was established by dividing up the membership of the Constituent Assembly of British India that had been indirectly elected in July 1946. The members from the areas that constituted Pakistan were made members of Pakistan’s Constituent Assembly, including several Hindus of the Congress Party from East Pakistan. Some new members were later added. It was to this body, with Jinnah as governor-general, that power was transferred by the British on August 15, 1947. It was both a constitution-making body and a federal legislature.
At the time of Independence, Pakistan faced the task of setting up a central government at Karachi, its first capital. This was not easy: the administration of the provinces that joined Pakistan had hitherto been linked with the central government in Delhi, and hence required reorientation. A new provincial government was established in Dhaka for East Bengal, hitherto administered from Calcutta as part of Bengal. There were serious shortages of experienced civil servants and military officers. Pakistan retained British civil servants and military officers for a longer time than did India.
Although most members of the Constituent Assembly agreed that Islam should hold a place of special importance in Pakistan, there was little agreement on Islam’s operational relationship with the state, or about the kind of political institutions and processes that should be established. Some held that the principles of Islam should be applied in strict accordance with the Sharia, the traditional basis of Islamic law. A large number of Islamic scholars and parties held this view, and wanted Pakistan to become a strict and conservative Islamic state. Others argued for a blending of democracy with the teachings of Islam, rather than a rigid enforcement of classical Islamic laws and traditions. They talked of the need for flexibility, so as to be able to adjust to the needs of contemporary society. This group included many of the best-known leaders in Pakistan, such as Jinnah, the governor-general, and Liaquat Ali Khan, the first prime minister.
In the first decade of independence, a number of factors hindered the political development of the new state and delayed constitution-making. The first major issue that distorted Pakistani politics was its troubled relations with India—especially, the invasion by Pakistani armed groups of Jammu and Kashmir in September–October 1947. Jammu and Kashmir was a very large princely state, contiguous with Pakistan, and it had a notoriously discriminatory Hindu ruler, Maharaja Hari Singh, who reigned over a Muslim-majority population. Singh did not initially join either India or Pakistan. Under pressure from invading tribesmen and other armed groups from Pakistan, however, he opted to join India, whose troops landed in Srinagar, the capital city, and quickly contained the incursions. Singh’s decision to join India was legal, but it defied the logic of Partition, which called for boundaries based on religion. A war broke out between India and Pakistan in 1948; it was brought to an end through a ceasefire brokered by the United Nations Security Council in January 1949. Under the ceasefire terms, the territory captured by Pakistani irregulars and the army stayed with Pakistan. It was named Azad Kashmir by Pakistan. Bilateral talks between India and Pakistan, and diplomatic efforts by the United Nations Security Council, could not resolve the Kashmir problem, which has continued to be a dangerously inflammable area of tension up to the present.
A second major factor undermining the stability of the new state was the crisis of leadership after the deaths of Jinnah (September 1948) and Liaquat Ali Khan (October 1951). The leaders who succeeded Jinnah in the early years lacked his stature, and were unable effectively to promote unity and harmony. With the death of Liaquat Ali Khan, the rise to power of local and regional leaders fragmented national politics.
Third, the Muslim League, the party of independence, failed to transform itself from a nationalist movement to a nationwide political party that inspired confidence among the people. Organizationally weak and internally divided, the Muslim League lost momentum, and a host of other parties appeared that could not provide effective direction because they suffered from the same weak leadership and provincial vision that afflicted the Muslim League.
Fourth, political polarization and conflict intensified as the political leaders from East Pakistan demanded greater provincial autonomy, and wanted Bengali to be recognized as one of the national languages. This demand for provincial autonomy was pressed by leaders from Sindh and NWFP as well. Language riots broke out in East Pakistan in February 1952, and various opposition political parties joined together as the “United Front” and defeated the Muslim League in the East Pakistan Provincial Assembly elections in 1954. In 1954 the Constituent Assembly recognized Bengali and Urdu as the national languages of Pakistan.
Fifth, the Punjab witnessed violent riots in 1953 against the Ahmadiyya community, a cohesive, modernist sect regarded as heretical by many orthodox Muslims. They are also known as Qadiyanis, since they trace their origin to Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1835–1908) of Qadian in the Indian Punjab. The situation worsened to such an extent that for the first time in the country’s short history, martial law was imposed in 1953 to protect civilians in Lahore and some other cities of the Punjab.
The first attempt to dismantle the democratic process was made by Ghulam Muhammad, who had assumed the office of governor-general in 1951. In strengthening his position, he exploited conflicts among political leaders, and removed and installed prime ministers at will. Aware that the Constituent Assembly was attempting to strip him of his extraordinary powers by finalizing a draft constitution for the country, on October 24, 1954, Ghulam Muhammad dissolved the Constituent Assembly and removed Prime Minister Mohammad Ali Bogra. No political party resisted the governor-general’s action.
Allen McGrath quotes the governor-general’s proclamation in his book The Destruction of Pakistan’s Democracy: “The Governor-General, having considered the political crisis with which the country is faced, has with deep regret come to the conclusion that the constitutional machinery has broken down. He therefore has decided to declare a state of emergency throughout Pakistan. The Constituent Assembly at present has lost the confidence of the people and can no longer function. The ultimate authority vests in the people who will decide all issues, including constitutional issues, through their representatives who are to be elected; fresh elections will be held as early as possible.”5
He reappointed Bogra as prime minister and nominated members of his cabinet. The army chief, General Ayub Khan, was appointed defense minister, while retaining the command of the armed forces. This endorsement by the army of Ghulam Muhammad’s authoritarian governance and dissolution of the Constituent Assembly was a clear manifestation of the army’s growing clout in politics.
A new Constituent Assembly was indirectly elected by the provincial assemblies in June–July 1955; in early 1956 it successfully framed a constitution. This 1956 Constitution, which came into effect on March 23, 1956, designated Pakistan as an Islamic Republic with a parliamentary system of government, a directly elected national assembly with universal adult franchise, and a guarantee of fundamental rights. It provided that “sovereignty over the entire universe belongs to God Almighty alone.” It also stated that no law would be enacted that violated the teachings and principles of Islam. These provisions were also included in the later constitutions, those of 1962 and 1973.
The introduction of the Constitution neither changed policy nor improved politics. Divided political leaders and weak political parties under pressure from ethnic, regional, and religious activists could not provide coherent and stable governance.
Pakistan’s troubled democratic and constitutional rule came to an end on October 7, 1958, when President Iskander Mirza abrogated the 1956 Constitution, imposed martial law, and appointed the army chief, General Ayub Khan, as the “Chief Martial Law Administrator.” We return to these events later in the chapter.
The following four excerpts show divergent visions of Pakistan, and especially of its relationship with Islam. These perspectives are still part of the political discourse in Pakistan in the twenty-first century.
The following statement is from a speech Jinnah made on August 11, 1947, to the Constituent Assembly. With its strong and clear insistence that Pakistan would be a modern, democratic state that guaranteed equal freedom for all religions, it provides a striking prologue to the long debate on the place of Islam. As a true liberal who believed that by having regional autonomy Muslims could escape the iron box of permanent minority status and hence enjoy the privileges of rights-bearing individuals, Jinnah averred that in Pakistan the role of Islam would be no different from that of other religions. He expressed essentially the same idea in the following year, when he told a gathering of bureaucrats that the Constitution must be based on the fundamental principles of democracy—not bureaucracy or autocracy or dictatorship.6 Jinnah died in September 1948, before he had an opportunity to give constitutional form to his ideas.
I cordially thank you, with the utmost sincerity, for the honour you have conferred upon me—the greatest honour that is possible for this Sovereign Assembly to confer—by electing me as your first President. I also thank those leaders who have spoken in appreciation of my services and their personal references to me. I sincerely hope that with your support and your co-operation we shall make this Constituent Assembly an example to the world. The Constituent Assembly has got two main functions to perform. The first is the very onerous and responsible task of framing our future Constitution of Pakistan and the second of functioning as a full and complete Sovereign body as the Federal Legislature of Pakistan. We have to do the best we can in adopting a provisional constitution for the Federal Legislature of Pakistan. You know really that not only we ourselves are wondering but, I think, the whole world is wondering at this unprecedented cyclonic revolution which has brought about the plan of creating and establishing two independent Sovereign Dominions in this sub-continent. As it is, it has been unprecedented; there is no parallel in the history of the world. This mighty sub-continent with all kinds of inhabitants has been brought under a plan which is titanic, unknown, unparalleled. And what is very important with regard to it is that we have achieved it peacefully and by means of an evolution of the greatest possible character.
Dealing with our first function in this Assembly, I cannot make any well-considered pronouncement at this moment, but I shall say a few things as they occur to me. The first—and the foremost thing that I would like to emphasize is this—remember that you are now a Sovereign Legislative body and you have got all the powers. It, therefore, places on you the gravest responsibility as to how you should take your decisions. The first observation that I would like to make is this: You will no doubt agree with me that the first duty of a Government is to maintain law and order, so that the life, property and religious beliefs of its subjects are fully protected by the State. …
I know there are people who do not quite agree with the division of India and the partition of the Punjab and Bengal. Much has been said against it, but now that it has been accepted, it is the duty of every one of us to loyally abide by it and honourably act according to the agreement which is now final and binding on all. But you must remember, as I have said, that this mighty revolution that has taken place is unprecedented. One can quite understand the feeling that exists between the two communities wherever one community is in majority and the other is in minority. But the question is, whether it was possible or practicable to act otherwise than what has been done. A division had to take place. On both sides, in Hindustan and Pakistan, there are sections of people who may not agree with it, who may not like it, but in my judgment there was no other solution and I am sure future history will record its verdict in favor of it. And what is more it will be proved by actual experience as we go on that that was the only solution of India’s constitutional problem. Any idea of a United India could never have worked and in my judgment it would have led us to terrific disaster. May be that view is correct; may be it is not; that remains to be seen. All the same, in this division it was impossible to avoid the question of minorities being in one Dominion or the other. Now that was unavoidable. There is no other solution. Now what shall we do? Now, if we want to make this great State of Pakistan happy and prosperous we should wholly and solely concentrate on the well-being of the people, and especially of the masses and the poor. If you will work in co-operation, forgetting the past, burying the hatchet you are bound to succeed. If you change your past and work together in a spirit that every one of you, no matter to what community he belongs, no matter what relations he had with you in the past, no matter what is his color, caste or creed, is first, second, and last a citizen of this State with equal rights, privileges and obligations, there will be no end to the progress you will make.
I cannot emphasize it too much. We should begin to work in that spirit and in course of time all these angularities of the majority and minority communities, the Hindu community and the Muslim community—because even as regards Muslims you have Pathans, Punjabis, Shias, Sunnis and so on and among the Hindus you have Brahmans, Vaishnavas, Khatris, also Bengalees, Madrasis, and so on will vanish. Indeed if you ask me this has been the biggest hindrance in the way of India to attain the freedom and independence and but for this we would have been free peoples long ago. No power can hold another nation, and specially a nation of 400 million souls in subjection; nobody could have conquered you, and even if it had happened, nobody could have continued its hold on you for any length of time but for this. Therefore, we must learn a lesson from this. You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other places of worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed—that has nothing to do with the business of the State. As you know, history shows that in England conditions, some time ago, were much worse than those prevailing in India today. The Roman Catholics and the Protestants persecuted each other. Even now there are some States in existence where there are discriminations made and bars imposed against a particular class. Thank God, we are not starting in those days. We are starting in the days when there is no discrimination, no distinction between one community and another, no discrimination between one caste or creed and another. We are starting with this fundamental principle that we are all citizens and equal citizens of one State. The people of England in course of time had to face the realities of the situation and had to discharge the responsibilities and burdens placed upon them by the government of their country and they went through that fire step by step. Today, you might say with justice that Roman Catholics and Protestants do not exist; what exists now is that every man is a citizen, an equal citizen of Great Britain and they are all members of the Nation.
Now, I think we should keep that in front of us as our ideal and you will find that in course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the State.
Well, gentlemen, I do not wish to take up any more of your time and thank you again for the honour you have done to me. I shall always be guided by the principles of justice and fair-play without any, as is put in the political language, prejudice or ill-will, in other words, partiality or favouritism. My guiding principle will be justice and complete impartiality, and I am sure that with your support and co-operation, I can look forward to Pakistan becoming one of the greatest Nations of the world.
[Excerpts from Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Speeches as Governor-General of Pakistan, 1947–48 (Karachi: Pakistan Publications, n.d.), 6–9.]
On the death of Jinnah, Liaquat Ali Khan (1895–1951) continued as prime minister but became the effective head of the government, although the office of president was held by Khwaja Nazimuddin of East Pakistan. A representative of the wealthy, Westernized, liberal group, Liaquat seemed to share Jinnah’s vision of Pakistan as a modern nation-state with democratic political institutions, but he laid much more stress on religion as a belief system than did Jinnah. Liaquat took a formal step toward making a constitution when he moved the Objectives Resolution in March 1949.
In subsequent months, the constitutional debates revealed the deep divisions that existed in the country. The leaders of the Islamic parties wanted a stronger assertion that Pakistan was an Islamic state, with priority given to Islamic law. The representatives of East Bengal, in language that foreshadowed the later secessionist movement, argued for more autonomy for the two wings of the country, East Pakistan and West Pakistan. Liaquat was assassinated in 1951; because no one knew who was responsible, there was widespread suspicion against many groups and individuals.
The following selection is what is known as the Objectives Resolution, which was proposed by Liaquat on March 7, 1949, and adopted by the Constituent Assembly that month. Although Liaquat stressed the democratic ideals of the Objectives Resolution, it should be noted that the constitution was not to be neutral toward all religions: Islam was to be the guiding, principal force in Pakistan’s political life, however this might be organized. Despite many constitutional changes through the years, there has been no essential deviation from the general direction marked out in the Objectives Resolution.
I beg to move the following Objectives Resolution embodying the main principles on which the constitution of Pakistan is to be based:
In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful;
WHEREAS sovereignty over the entire universe belongs to God Almighty alone and the authority which He has delegated to the State of Pakistan through its people for being exercised within the limits prescribed by Him is a sacred trust;
This Constituent Assembly representing the people of Pakistan resolves to frame a constitution for the sovereign independent State of Pakistan;
WHEREIN the State shall exercise its powers and authority through the chosen representatives of the people;
WHEREIN the principles of democracy, freedom, equality, tolerance, and social justice, as enunciated by Islam, shall be fully observed;
WHEREIN the Muslims shall be enabled to order their lives in the individual and collective spheres in accord with the teachings and requirements of Islam as set out in the Holy Quran and the Sunnah;7
WHEREIN adequate provision shall be made for the minorities freely to profess and practice their religions and develop their cultures;
WHEREBY the territories now included in or in accession with Pakistan and such other territories as may hereafter be included in or accede to Pakistan shall form a Federation wherein the units will be autonomous with such boundaries and limitations on their powers and authority as may be prescribed;
WHEREIN shall be guaranteed fundamental rights including equality of status, of opportunity, and before law, social, economic, and political justice and freedom of thought, expression, belief, faith, worship and association, subject to law and public morality;
WHEREIN adequate provision shall be made to safeguard the legitimate interests of minorities and backward and depressed classes;
WHEREIN the independence of the judiciary shall be fully secured;
WHEREIN the integrity of the territories of the Federation, its independence and all its rights including its sovereign rights on land, sea and air shall be safeguarded;
So that the people of Pakistan may prosper and attain their rightful and honored place amongst the nations of the world and make their full contribution towards international peace and progress and happiness of humanity.
I consider this to be a most important occasion in the life of this country, next in importance only to the achievement of independence, because by achieving independence we only won an opportunity of building up a country and its polity in accordance with our ideals. … Pakistan was founded because the Muslims of this subcontinent wanted to build up their lives in accordance with the teachings and traditions of Islam, because they wanted to demonstrate to the world that Islam provides a panacea to the many diseases which have crept into the life of humanity today. … We, as Pakistanis, are not ashamed of the fact that we are overwhelmingly Muslims and we believe that it is by adhering to our faith and ideals that we can make a genuine contribution to the welfare of the world. Therefore, Sir, you would notice that the Preamble of the Resolution deals with a frank and unequivocal recognition of the fact that all authority must be subservient to God. It is quite true that this is in direct contradiction to the Machiavellian ideas regarding a polity where spiritual and ethical values should play no part in the governance of the people and, therefore, it is also perhaps a little out of fashion to remind ourselves of the fact that the State should be an instrument of beneficence and not of evil. But we, the people of Pakistan, have the courage to believe firmly that all authority should be exercised in accordance with the standards laid down by Islam so that it may not be misused. All authority is a sacred trust, entrusted to us by God for the purpose of being exercised in the service of man, so that it does not become an agency for tyranny or selfishness. … Islam does not recognize either priesthood or any sacerdotal authority; and, therefore, the question of a theocracy simply does not arise in Islam. If there are any who still use the word theocracy in the same breath as the polity of Pakistan, they are either laboring under a grave misapprehension, or indulging in mischievous propaganda.
You would notice that the Objectives Resolution lays emphasis on the principles of democracy, freedom, equality, tolerance, and social justice, and further defines them by saying that these principles should be observed in the constitution as they have been enunciated by Islam. It has been necessary to qualify these terms because they are generally used in a loose sense. For instance, the Western Powers and Soviet Russia alike claim that their systems are based upon democracy, and, yet, it is common knowledge that their polities are inherently different. … When we use the word democracy in the Islamic sense, it pervades all aspects of our life; it relates to our system of government and to our society with equal validity, because one of the greatest contributions of Islam has been the idea of the equality of all men. Islam recognizes no distinctions based upon race, color, or birth. Even in the days of its decadence, Islamic society has been remarkably free from the prejudices which vitiated human relations in many other parts of the world. … Similarly, we have a great record in tolerance, for under no system of government, even in the Middle Ages, have the minorities received, the same consideration and freedom as they did in Muslim countries.
[From The Constituent Assembly of Pakistan Debates, 1st to 16th sessions (Karachi: Government of Pakistan Press, 1947–54), 5(1): 1–7.
The government set up a commission in 1953, under the chairmanship of Justice Munir of the Punjab Supreme Court, to inquire into the causes of the anti-Ahmadiyya riots; the result was what became known as the Munir Report, which had important implications that went beyond that specific brief. It attempted to answer two fundamental questions: What is the nature of an Islamic state? And who is a Muslim? The report criticized the elected politicians for not having taken timely action against rioters, and pressed the religious leaders and the politicians to define what they meant by an “Islamic state.” The report’s conclusion—that such a state is impossible in the modern world—was rejected, of course, by orthodox groups, but it is important for emphasizing the problems inherent in having a religious ideology dominant in a modern state.
It has been repeatedly said before us that implicit in the demand for Pakistan was the demand for an Islamic State. Some speeches of important leaders who were striving for Pakistan undoubtedly lend themselves to this construction. These leaders while referring to an Islamic State or to a State governed by Islamic laws perhaps had in their minds the pattern of a legal structure based on or mixed up with Islamic dogma, personal law, ethics and institutions. No one who has given serious thought to the introduction of a religious State in Pakistan has failed to notice the tremendous difficulties with which any such scheme must be confronted. … The Quaid-i-Azam [M. A. Jinnah] said that the new State would be a modern democratic State, with sovereignty resting in the people and the members of the new nation having equal rights of citizenship regardless of their religion, caste or creed. …
The Quaid-i-Azam was the founder of Pakistan and the occasion on which he thus spoke was the first landmark in the history of Pakistan. The speech was intended both for his own people, including non-Muslims, and the world, and its object was to define as clearly as possible the ideal to the attainment of which the new State was to devote all its energies. There are repeated references in this speech to the bitterness of the past and an appeal to forget and change the past and to bury the hatchet. The future subject of the State is to be a citizen with equal rights, privileges and obligations, irrespective of colour, caste, creed or community. …
We asked the ulama whether this conception of a State was acceptable to them and every one of them replied in an unhesitating negative. … If Maulana Amin Ahsan Islahi’s8 evidence correctly represents the view of Jamaat-i-Islami, a State based on [Jinnah’s] idea is the creature of the devil, and he is confirmed in this by several writings of his chief, Maulana Abul Ala Maudoodi, the founder of the jamẚaat. None of the ulama can tolerate a State which is based on nationalism and all that it implies: with them millat [religious community or nation] and all that it connotes can alone be the determining factor in State activity.
What is then the Islamic State of which everybody talks but nobody thinks? Before we seek to discover an answer to this question, we must have a clear conception of the scope and function of the State.
The ulama were divided in their opinions when they were asked to cite some precedent of an Islamic State in Muslim history. … Most of them, however, relied on the form of Government during the Islamic Republic from 632 to 661 A.D., a period of less than thirty years. …
Since the basis of Islamic law is the principle of inerrancy of revelation and of the Holy Prophet, the law to be found in the Quran and the sunna is above all man-made laws, and in case of conflict between the two, the latest, irrespective of its nature, must yield to the former. Thus, provided there be a rule in the Quran or the sunna on a matter which according to our conceptions falls within the region of Constitutional Law or International Law, the rule must be given effect to unless that rule itself permits a departure from it. …
The Objectives Resolution rightly recognised this position when it recited that all sovereignty rests with God Almighty alone. But the authors of that Resolution misused the words “sovereign” and “democracy” when they recited that the Constitution to be framed was for a sovereign State in which principles of democracy as enunciated by Islam shall be fully observed. … When it is said that a country is sovereign, the implication is that its people or any other group of persons in it are entitled to conduct the affairs of that country in any way they like and untrammeled by any considerations except those of expediency and policy. An Islamic State, however, cannot in this sense be sovereign, because it will not be competent to abrogate, repeal or do away with any law in the Quran or the sunna. Absolute restriction on the legislative power of a State is a restriction on the sovereignty of the people of that State and if the origin of this restriction lies elsewhere than in the will of the people, then to the extent of that restriction the sovereignty of the State and its people is necessarily taken away. … If the power of the people in the framing of the Constitution or in the framing of the laws or in the sphere of executive action is subject to certain immutable rules, it cannot be said that they can pass any law that they like, or, in the exercise of executive functions, do whatever they like. Indeed if the legislature in an Islamic State is a sort of ijmāʿ [consensus of Islamic scholars], the masses are expressly disqualified from taking part in it because ijmāʿ-i-ummat in Islamic jurisprudence is restricted to ulama and mujahid s of acknowledged status and does not at all extend, as in democracy, to the populace.
Pakistan is being taken by the common man to be an Islamic State, though it is not. This belief has been encouraged by the ceaseless clamour for Islam and Islamic State that is being heard from all quarters since the establishment of Pakistan. The phantom of an Islamic State has haunted the Musalman throughout the ages and is a result of the memory of the glorious past when Islam, rising like a storm from the least expected quarter of the world—[the] wilds of Arabia—instantly enveloped the world, pulling down from their high pedestal gods who had ruled over man since the creation, uprooting centuries-old institutions and superstitions and supplanting all civilisations that had been built on an enslaved humanity. What is 125 years in human history, nay in the history of a people, and yet during this brief period Islam spread from the Indus to the Atlantic and Spain, and from the borders of China to Egypt, and the sons of the desert installed themselves in all old centres of civilisation—in Ctesiphon, Damascus, Alexandria, India and all places associated with the names of the Sumerian and the Assyrian civilisations. …
It is this brilliant achievement of the Arabian nomads, the like of which the world had never seen before, that makes the Musalman of today live in the past and yearn for the return of the glory that was Islam. He finds himself standing on the crossroads, wrapped in the mantle of the past and with the dead weight of centuries on his back, frustrated and bewildered and hesitant to turn one corner or the other. The freshness and the simplicity of the faith, which gave determination to his mind and spring to his muscle, is now denied to him. He has neither the means nor the ability to conquer and there are no countries to conquer. Little does he understand that the forces, which are pitted against him, are entirely different from those against which early Islam had to fight, and that on the clues given by his own ancestors [the] human mind has achieved results which he cannot understand. He therefore finds himself in a state of helplessness, waiting for some one to come and help him out of this morass of uncertainty and confusion. And he will go on waiting like this without anything happening. Nothing but a bold re-orientation of Islam to separate the vital from the lifeless can preserve it as a World Idea and convert the Musalman into a citizen of the present and the future world from the archaic incongruity that he is today.
It is this lack of bold and clear thinking, the inability to understand and take decisions which has brought about in Pakistan a confusion which will persist and repeatedly create situations of the kind we have been inquiring into until our leaders have a clear conception of the goal and of the means to reach it. … The sublime faith called Islam will live even if our leaders are not there to enforce it. It lives in the individual, in his soul and outlook, in all his relations with God and men, from the cradle to the grave, and our politicians should understand that if Divine commands cannot make or keep a man a Musalman, their statutes will not.
[From Report of the Court of Inquiry Constituted Under Punjab Act II to Inquire Into the Punjab Disturbances of 1953 (Lahore: Government Printing Press, 1954), 201, 203, 210, 231–232.]
Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi (1903–1979) [also spelled Maudoodi], founder in India of the influential organization Jamaat-e Islami (Islamic Association), was the most vigorous and persuasive spokesman for the campaign to make Pakistan into an Islamic state. He made his reputation in India with the journal he started in 1933, Tarjumān ul-Qurān (Exegesis of the Quran), which deeply influenced Muslim thought in India after Partition. He first opposed the pre-Independence separatist movement for Pakistan on the grounds that nationalism was based on Western, not Islamic, values. He went to Pakistan after Partition, however, where his organization, the Jamaat-e Islami, campaigned for an Islamic constitution. He gained wide support among college students and government and factory workers, particularly after 1979, when his message of jihadist Islam dovetailed with American and Saudi support for the resistance against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. His ideas also permeate later attempts, including those by General Zia, to make Pakistan a genuine Islamic state.
SPEECH AT LAW COLLEGE, LAHORE JANUARY 6, 1948
[ISLAM AND THE IMPACT OF THE WEST]
Commencing with stagnation in the domains of knowledge and learning, research and discovery, and thought and culture, [the degeneration of the Muslims] finally culminated in our political breakdown, making many a Muslim country the slave of non-Muslim imperialist powers. Political slavery gave birth to an inferiority complex and the resultant intellectual serfdom, which eventually swept the entire Muslim world off its feet, so much so that even those Muslim countries which were able to retain their political freedom could not escape its evil influences. The ultimate consequence of this evil situation was that when Muslims woke up again to the call of progress, they were incapable of looking at things except through the colored glasses of Western thought. Nothing which was not Western could inspire confidence in them. Indeed, the adoption of Western culture and civilization and aping the West even in the most personal things became their craze. Eventually, they succumbed totally to the slavery of the West.
This trend towards Westernism was also the result of the disappointment which came from the side of the Muslim religious leaders. Being themselves the victims of the widespread degeneration that had engulfed the entire Muslim world, they were incapable of initiating any constructive movement or taking any revolutionary step which could combat the evils afflicting Muslim society. Quite naturally, this disappointment turned the discontented Muslims towards that system of life which had the glamour of being successful in the modern world. Thus they adopted modern thought and the new culture of the West and blindly aped Western morals and manners. Slowly but surely the religious leaders were pushed into the background and were replaced, as regards power and control over the people, by men bereft of all knowledge of their religion and imbued only with the spirit of modern thought and Western ideals. That is why we find that many a Muslim country has, in the recent past, either completely abrogated the Islamic law or confined its operation to the domain of purely personal matters—a position conferred on the non-Muslims in a truly Islamic state.
In all Muslim countries suffering from foreign domination, the leadership of political and cultural movements fell into the hands of those who were shorn of all Islamic background. They adopted the creed of “Nationalism,” directed their efforts towards the cause of national independence and prosperity along secular lines, and tried to copy step by step the advanced nations of our age. So, if these gentlemen are vexed with the demand for Islamic constitution and Islamic laws, it is just natural for them. It is also natural for them to sidetrack or suppress the issue, as they are ignorant even of the A. B. C. of the Islamic Shar
ah. Their education and intellectual development has alienated them so completely from the spirit and the structure of Islamic ideology that it is at least for the moment impossible for them to understand such demands.
As regards the Muslim religious leadership, it fares in no way better, because our religious institutions are tied up to the intellectual atmosphere of eight centuries ago, as a consequence of which they have not been able to produce such leaders of Islamic thought and action as could be capable of administering the affairs of a modern state in the light of Islamic principles. This is, indeed, a very real obstacle facing the Islamic countries in their march towards the goal of Islamic revolution.
This is the situation obtaining throughout the Muslim world and impeding the path of the establishment of [an] Islamic constitution. The case of Pakistan is not, however, the same as that of other Muslim countries, certain similarities of situation notwithstanding. This is so because it has been achieved exclusively with the object of becoming the homeland of Islam. For the last ten years, we have been ceaselessly fighting for the recognition of the fact that we are a separate nation by virtue of our adherence to Islam. We have been proclaiming from house-tops that we have a distinct culture of our own, and that we possess a world view, an outlook on life, and a code of living fundamentally different from those of non-Muslims. We have all along been demanding a separate homeland for the purpose of translating into practice the ideals envisaged by Islam, and, at last, after a long and arduous struggle, in which we sustained a heavy loss of life and property and suffered deep humiliation in respect of the honor and chastity of a large number of our womenfolk, we have succeeded in attaining our cherished goal—this country of Pakistan. If, now, after all these precious sacrifices, we fail to achieve the real and ultimate objective of making Islam a practical, constitutional reality which inspired us to fight for Pakistan, our entire struggle becomes futile and all our sacrifices meaningless.
Indeed, if a secular and Godless, instead of Islamic, constitution was to be introduced and if the British Criminal Procedure Code had to be enforced instead of the Islamic Sharah what was the sense in all this struggle for a separate Muslim homeland? We could have had it without that. Similarly, if we simply intended to implement any socialist program, we could have achieved it in collaboration with the Communist and Socialist parties of India without plunging the nation into this great blood-bath and mighty ordeal.
The fact is that we are already committed before God and man and at the altar of History about the promulgation of [an] Islamic constitution and no going back on our words is possible. Whatever the hurdles and however great they are, we have to continue our march towards our goal of a full-fledged Islamic State in Pakistan.
[ISLAMIC LAW IS PART OF A TOTAL WAY OF LIFE]
Islam signifies the entire scheme of life and not any isolated part or parts thereof. Consequently, neither can it be appropriate to view the different parts of the Sharah, Islamic Law, in isolation from one another and without regard to the whole, nor will it be of any use to take any particular part and bracket it with any other “ism.” The Sharah can function smoothly and can demonstrate its efficacy only if the entire system of life is practised in accordance with it and not otherwise.
Many of the present-day misunderstandings about the Shariʿah owe themselves to this faulty attitude in judging its worth, namely, forming opinions about its different aspects separately. Some injunctions of it are isolated from the main body of Islamic Laws and then they are considered in the perspective of modern civilization, or they are viewed as if they were something completely self-contained. Thus, people take just one injunction of the Sharah at random, which becomes maimed after its removal from the context, and then view it in the context of some modern legal system, and criticize it on the score of its incongruity with present-day conceptions. But they fail to realise that it was never meant to be isolated like that for it forms an organic part of a distinct and self-contained system of life.
A few provisions of the Islamic Penal Code are, in particular, contemptuously jeered at. But those who do so do not realize that those provisions are to be viewed with the background of the whole Islamic system of life covering the economic, social, political and educational spheres of activity. If all these departments are not working, then those isolated provisions of our Penal Code can certainly work no miracles.
As we all know, Islam imposes the penalty of cutting off the hands for the commitment of theft. But this injunction is meant to be promulgated in a full-fledged Islamic State wherein the wealthy pay Zakat to the state and the state provides for the basic necessities of the needy and the destitute; wherein every township is enjoined to play host to visitors at its own expense for a minimum period of three days; wherein all citizens are provided with equal privileges and opportunities to seek economic livelihood; wherein monopolistic tendencies are discouraged; wherein people are God-fearing and seek His pleasure with devotion; wherein the virtues of generosity, helping the poor, treating the sick, providing the needy are in the air to the extent that even a small boy is made to realize that he is not a true Muslim if he allows his neighbour to sleep hungry while he has taken his meal. In other words, it is not meant for the present-day society where you cannot get a single penny without having to pay interest; where in place of Baitul Mal [charitable help] there are implacable moneylenders and banks which, instead of providing relief and succour to the poor and the needy, treat them with callous disregard, heartless refusal and brutal contempt: where the guiding motto is: “Everybody for himself and devil take the hindmost”; where there are great privileges for the privileged ones while others are deprived even of their legitimate rights; where the economic system, propelled by greed and piloted by exploitation, only leads to the enrichment of the few at the cost of crushing poverty and intolerable misery of the many, and where the political system serves only to prop up injustice, class-privileges and distressing economic disparities. Under such conditions, it is doubtful if theft should be penalised at all, not to speak of cutting off the thief’s hands! For, in effect, to punish theft so severely would amount to protecting the wealth acquired illegitimately and unscrupulously by a few blood-suckers.
On the other hand, Islam aims at creating conditions under which none is compelled by the force of circumstances to steal. For, in the Islamic social order, apart from the voluntary help provided by individuals, the state guarantees the basic necessities of life to all. But, after providing all that, Islam enjoins a severe and exemplary punishment for those who commit theft, as their action shows that they are unfit to live in such a just, generous and healthy society and would cause greater harm to it, if left unchecked.
Similar is the case of the punishment for adultery and fornication. Islam prescribes a hundred stripes for the unmarried and stoning to death for the married partners in the crime. But, of course, it applies to a society wherein every trace of suggestiveness has been destroyed, where mixed gatherings of men and women have been prohibited, where public appearance of painted and pampered women is completely non-existent, where marriage has been made easy, where virtue, piety and charity are current coins and where the remembrance of God and the hereafter is kept ever fresh in men’s minds and hearts. These punishments are not meant for that filthy society wherein sexual excitement is rampant, wherein nude pictures, obscene books and vulgar songs have become common recreations; wherein sexual perversions have taken hold of the cinema and all other places of amusement, wherein mixed, semi-nude parties are considered the acme of social progress and wherein economic conditions and social customs have made marriage extremely difficult.
We have now arrived at a stage where it is fairly clear that what we term as Islamic Law in the technical sense is only a part of a complete scheme of life and does not have any independent existence in isolation from that scheme. It can neither be understood nor enforced separately. To enforce it separately would, in fact, be against the intention of the Law-Giver. What is required of us is to translate into practice the entire Islamic programme of life and not merely a fragment of it. Then and then alone can the legal aspects be properly implemented.
This scheme of the Shariʿah is, however, divided into many parts. There are aspects of it which do not need any external force for their enforcement; they are and can be enforced only by the ever-awake conscience kindled by his faith in a Muslim. There are other parts which are enforced by Islam’s programme of education, training of man’s character and the purification of his heart and his morals. To enforce certain other parts, Islam resorts to the use of the force of public opinion: the general will and pressure of the society. There are still other parts which have been sanctified by the traditions and the conventions of Muslim society. A very large part of the Islamic system of law, however, needs for its enforcement, in all its details, the coercive power and authority of the state. Political power is essential for protecting the Islamic system of life from deterioration and perversion, for the eradication of vice and the establishment of virtue and, finally, for the enforcement of all those laws that require the sanction of the state and the judiciary for their operation.
[ISLAMIC LAW AND SOCIAL CHANGE]
The first objection that is raised is that because the Islamic laws were framed thirteen centuries ago in the light of the requirements of a primitive society, they cannot be of any use for a modern state of our days.
I doubt very much whether people who take this stand are conversant even with the elementary knowledge of the Islamic law. In all probability, they have heard from somewhere that the fundamentals of the Islamic law were enunciated more than thirteen hundred years ago, and they have assumed that this law has remained static since then and has failed to respond to the requirements of changing conditions of human life. On this misconception they have further assumed that the Islamic law will be unsuited to the needs of the present-day society and will clog the wheels of progress. These critics fail to realize, however, that the laws propounded thirteen and a half centuries ago, did not remain in a vacuum; they formed part and parcel of the life of Muslim society and brought into being a state which was run in the light of these laws. This naturally provided an opportunity of evolution to Islamic law from the earliest days, as it had to be applied to day-to-day matters through the process of Taʾwil, Qiyas, Ijtihad, and Istihsan.9
Very soon after its inception, Islam began to hold sway over nearly half the civilized world stretching from the Pacific to the Atlantic and, during the following twelve hundred years, the Islamic Law continued to administer the affairs of all Muslim states. This process of the evolution of Islamic law, therefore, did not stop for a moment up to the beginning of the nineteenth century, because it had to meet the challenge of the ever-changing circumstances and face countless problems confronting different countries in different stages of history. Even in our Indo-Pakistan subcontinent, the Islamic civil and penal codes were in vogue up to the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Thus, it is only for the last one hundred years that the Islamic law remained inoperative and suffered stagnation. But, firstly, this period does not form a big gap and we can easily make up for the loss with some amount of strenuous effort; secondly, we possess full records of the development of our jurisprudence, century by century, and there can be absolutely no ground for frustration or despondency, and our path of legal progress is thus already illumined.
Once we have grasped the fundamental principles and the basic facts concerning the evolution of the Islamic system of law, we cannot remain in doubt that this law shall be as responsive to the urges of a progressive society in the present and the future as it has been in the past. Only those who suffer from ignorance can fall a prey to such nonsense, while those who have a grasp of Islam and the Islamic law are aware of its potentialities of progress, and those who possess even a cursory knowledge of the history of its development can never suspect it of being an antiquated or stagnant system of life which cannot keep pace with the march of history.
[From Maudoodi, Islamic Law and Constitution (Lahore: Herald Press, 1954), 14–17, 27–31, 38–39.]
SPEECH AT LAW COLLEGE, LAHORE FEBRUARY 19, 1948
If we really wish to see our Islamic ideals translated into reality, we should not overlook the natural law that all stable changes in the collective life of a people come about gradually. The more sudden a change, the more short-lived it is. For a permanent change it is necessary that it should be free from extremist bias and unbalanced approach.
The best example of this gradual change is the revolution brought about by the Holy Prophet (peace be on him) in Arabia. One who is acquainted even superficially with the history of the Prophet’s achievements knows that he did not enforce the entire body of Islamic laws with one stroke. Instead, the society was prepared gradually for their enforcement. The Prophet (peace be on him) uprooted the practices of the “Age of Ignorance” one by one and substituted for them new, moderate principles of human conduct. He started his efforts for reformation by inculcating belief in the fundamentals of Islam, viz., the unity of God, the Life Hereafter and the Institution of Prophethood and by inducing the people to live a life of righteousness and piety. Those who accepted this message were trained by him to believe in and practice the Islamic Way of Life. When this was achieved to a considerable degree, the Prophet went a step further and established an Islamic State in Medina with the sole object of making the social life of the country conform to the Islamic pattern. …
Coming to our own times and our own country, Pakistan, if we wish to promulgate Islamic Law here, it would mean nothing less than the demolition of the entire structure built by your British masters and the erection of a new one in its place. It is obvious that this cannot be achieved by just an official proclamation or a parliamentary bill, because it is a stupendous task and demands a good deal of hard and systematic work on the basis of an all-embracing program. For instance, we need a thorough reorientation of our educational system. At present, we find two kinds of educational institutions running simultaneously in our country, namely, the old, religious madrasahs and the modern, secular universities and colleges. None of them can produce people needed to run a modern Islamic State. The old-fashioned schools are steeped in conservatism to such an extent that they have lost all touch with the modern world. Their education has been disconnected from the practical problems of life and has thus become barren and lifeless. It cannot, therefore, produce people who might be able to serve, for instance, as judges and magistrates of a progressive modern state. As for our modern, secular institutions, they produce people who are ignorant of even a rudimentary knowledge of Islam and its laws. Moreover, we can hardly find such persons among those whose mentality has not been affected by the poisonous content and the thoroughly materialistic bias of modern, secular education.
There is yet another difficulty. The Islamic law has not been in force for the last century or so. Consequently our legal code has become stagnant and has lagged behind the march of time, while our urgent need is to bring it abreast of the latest developments of the modern age. Obviously, this would require a considerable amount of hard work.
There is, however, an even bigger hurdle. Living as slaves of an alien power and deprived of the Islamic influence for a long time, the pattern of our moral, cultural, social, economic and political life has undergone a radical change, and is today far removed from Islamic ideals. Under such circumstances it cannot be fruitful, even if it were possible, to change the legal structure of the country all at once, because then the general pattern of life and the legal structure will be poles apart, and the legal change will have to suffer the fate of a sapling planted in an uncongenial soil and facing hostile weather. It is, therefore, inevitable that the required reform should be gradual and the changes in the laws should be effected in such a manner as to balance favorably the change in the moral, educational, social, cultural and political life of the nation.
[From Maudoodi, Islamic Law and Constitution, 48–49, 51–52.]
The next readings provide a counterpoint to the Indian view of the Kashmir dispute, as given above in chapter 8. As in India, the first decade of Pakistan’s history as an independent nation was affected at almost every level by the dispute over the state of Jammu and Kashmir.
The first interpretation presented below comes from Chaudhri Muhammad Ali (1905–1980), who was a high-ranking civil servant in the financial department of the government of India before 1947. He worked on the first Pakistan budget and other financial matters until he was appointed prime minister, holding the office in 1955–1956.
His discussion of the origins of the Kashmir dispute is less emotion-laden than most contemporary accounts of this extremely complicated and controversial issue.
The Muslim League’s attitude to the question of Kashmir’s accession was stated by the Quaid-i-Azam in a talk with a delegation of the Jammu and Kashmir Muslim Conference workers in July, 1947. In the course of his talk he remarked: “I have already made it clear more than once that the Indian States are free to join either the Pakistan Constituent Assembly or the Hindustan Constituent Assembly or remain independent. I have no doubt that they, the Maharaja and the Kashmir Government, will give the closest attention and consideration to this matter and realise the interest not only of the ruler but also of his people.” Actually he was convinced that a dispassionate consideration of the relevant facts of population and geography, the economic and cultural ties, and even the Maharaja’s dynastic interest, would inevitably point toward accession with Pakistan.
During this time the Pakistan government had its hands full; it had to deal with the task of establishing a new administration, the ordeal in the Punjab, and the mass migration that was under way. The people of Pakistan felt the most lively sympathy with their brethren in Jammu and Kashmir. The tragedy being enacted there appeared as part of a vast conspiracy to overwhelm Pakistan at its birth. As hundreds of thousands of Muslim refugees from Jammu and Kashmir moved into the neighboring areas of Pakistan, a new and grave threat to Pakistan took shape. … The Pakistan army authorities were greatly concerned as soldiers, who had been on leave to their homes in Poonch, reported that Muslim villagers there were being attacked by [Kashmir] state troops. Vigorous protests to the Maharaja’s government were made. But instead of putting its own house in order, the state government accused Pakistan of having deliberately cut off supplies of food, gas, and other essential commodities. There was no truth in these allegations. The movement and feeding of millions of refugees had put the utmost strain upon supplies and rail and road communications in the Punjab. If shortages occurred in the state, it was due to the wholly exceptional circumstances produced by the greatest migration in history. …
About this time, unknown to the Pakistan government, a storm was brewing in the tribal areas. News of atrocities committed by the Maharaja’s government on the Muslims of Kashmir had reached tribal areas from refugees and ex-soldiers from Poonch, who had gone there to purchase arms. Massacre of Muslims in East Punjab had already inflamed the feelings of the tribesmen. Now they felt a call for jihad, or holy war, in Kashmir. On October 21, Liaquat Ali Khan told me in a state of unusual excitement that a tribal lashkar [army], some thousands strong, was on the way to Kashmir. I asked him if he had informed the Quaid-i-Azam and he said, not yet, he had just received the report. There was nothing the Pakistan government could do about it. An attempt to prevent the tribesmen from performing what they conceived to be a religious duty would have set the whole frontier ablaze. The Pakistan army was neither fully organized nor adequately equipped. …
I had a long discussion with [Nehru] and came away convinced that Nehru was resolved to hold Kashmir by force and had no intention of allowing the people of Kashmir the right to determine their future. My argument that a fair solution of the Kashmir dispute was the best guarantee of friendly relations between India and Pakistan, and was, therefore, in the best interests of both countries, left him cold. He talked only in terms of power politics, and said again and again that in matters of state no sovereign independent power could be trusted. If Pakistan had to be, it must never have the strength to be a possible threat to India. I pointed out that Kashmir’s accession to Pakistan could not pose a threat to India because of the mountainous barrier between Kashmir and India. On the other hand, India would, by occupying Kashmir, be commanding the heights of Pakistan and controlling its life-line of rivers flowing from Kashmir. I found no trace in him of those sentiments of attachment to Kashmir with which he is often credited by virtue of his family’s origins in Kashmir. The fact that in a prolonged struggle over Kashmir its people would be the worst sufferers did not move him in the least.
On January 1, 1948, the Government of India appealed to the Security Council to ask Pakistan to prevent its personnel, civil and military, from participating or assisting in the invasion of Jammu and Kashmir, … to call upon other Pakistan nationals to desist from taking any part in the fighting in the state, and to deny to the invaders access to its territory, supplies, and other aid. The Government of India also stated that after the restoration of normal conditions the people of Kashmir would be free to decide their future by a plebiscite under international auspices.
Pakistan lodged a counter complaint setting forth the attempts made by India to destroy Pakistan; the genocide of Muslims in East Punjab, Delhi, and other places in India, the forcible occupation of Junagadh [a princely state in present-day Gujarat that had wished to accede to Pakistan but was occupied and claimed by India], and the action taken by India to secure the accession of Kashmir by fraud and violence. The Security Council was requested by Pakistan to bring about a just and fair settlement of these disputes. For Kashmir, the request was for cessation of fighting, the withdrawal of all outsiders whether belonging to India or Pakistan, the return of Kashmir refugees, the establishment of an impartial administration, and the holding of a plebiscite “to ascertain the free and unfettered will of the people of Jammu and Kashmir as to whether the State shall accede to Pakistan or to India.”
[Chaudhri Muhammad Ali, The Emergence of Pakistan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967), 287, 288–300.]
Liaquat Ali Khan provides the official Pakistani narrative of how a section of the Muslims revolted against the ruler of Kashmir; Kashmiris, he maintains, were fighting not only for their freedom but also for their existence.
I am speaking to you tonight from my sick-bed. I wish to talk to you about Kashmir, because the affairs of Kashmir have reached a critical phase and have now assumed international importance and because I know that Kashmir is uppermost in your mind as it is in mine.
In the exhilaration of self-styled gallantry and valour, some erstwhile sympathisers of the oppressed people of Kashmir seem to have forgotten the history of this beautiful land. Let us, therefore, briefly recall it for their benefit.
This piece of God’s earth along with the human beings inhabiting its hills and valleys, was, under the infamous Amritsar Treaty, sold by the British to a Dogra chieftain for the paltry sum of Rs. 75,00,000. The present Maharaja inherits the people of Kashmir as though they were so much cattle.
During the past 100 years of Dogra rule, this highly gifted and most attractive race of Kashmiris has been dragged down to the lowest depths of misery. In recent years, they have made many attempts to fight for their freedom. Time and again they have been thwarted but time and again they have risen to defy tyranny.
The fight is not yet at an end. But I would like my listeners to know that today the people of Kashmir are fighting not only for their freedom but also for their very existence, for their misfortunes have, in recent months, taken on a darker shade. They have been caught in the meshes of a widespread plan of the extermination of Muslims. This plan has succeeded in Alwar, in Bharatpur, in Patiala, in Faridkot, and in Kapurthala. And all these you will note are States that have acceded to the Indian Union.
In the beginning of October, news of the bestial deeds perpetrated on the innocent people of Kashmir began to trickle through. In a short time, the trickle became a torrent. Burning villages could be seen from the Murree hills. Thousands of terror-stricken refugees poured into Pakistan.
It was at this stage that the people of Kashmir in sheer desperation turned on their oppressors. Kashmiris, and specially the inhabitants of Poonch, have many relatives in Hazara and in the West Punjab. Consequently feelings in certain parts of Pakistan rose very high and some people from the N.W.F.P. and the Tribal Areas, stirred by the atrocities in Kashmir, rushed to the aid of their brethren.
It is the oppressed, enslaved and entrapped people of Kashmir struggling for their freedom (and now for their lives) and their sympathisers, whom the Indian Government is helping to wipe out. The declared object of the Indian Government is to strengthen the Maharaja’s hands. How blood-stained these hands are is quite well-known to the leaders of India, even though they may choose to forget this fact now. …
For the choice before [the Kashmiris] now is freedom or death. If the plans of their enemies succeed, they will be exterminated, as Muslims in various other parts of India have been exterminated. It is presumably after such extermination that the Indian Government proposed a referendum should be held. What use is a referendum after the voters have been driven away from their homes, or silenced in death? The world knows how we have consistently and repeatedly tried to reach a better understanding with the Kashmir Government. The Kashmir Government has ignored or rejected all these approaches.
[Liaquat Ali Khan, “Freedom or Death: Choice Before Kashmiri Muslims.” Radio address on Nov. 4, 1947, in Speeches and Statements of Quaid-i-Millat Liaquat Ali Khan, 1941–51, ed. M. Rafique Afzal(Lahore: Research Society of Pakistan, University of the Punjab, 1967), 131–136.]
On January 1, 1948, India formally charged Pakistan with invading its territory in Jammu and Kashmir. The response, a firm denial of India’s allegations, was given by Sir Muhammad Zafrulla Khan, Pakistan’s foreign minister. He argued that insofar as there was any truth in Indian charges of incursions from the Pakistan side, such sorties had been made by tribesmen maddened by the suffering imposed on their Muslim brothers and sisters by Indian troops. Pakistan, unlike India, was not claiming territory, he insisted; it was trying to defend Muslims caught in India.
The specific charges which the India Government have brought against Pakistan are:
(a) That the invaders are allowed transit across Pakistan territory; (b) That they are allowed to use Pakistan territory as a base of operations; (c) That they include Pakistan nationals; (d) That they draw much of their military equipment, transport and supplies (including petrol) from Pakistan; and (e) That Pakistan officers are training, guiding and otherwise helping them.
The Pakistan Government emphatically deny that they are giving aid and assistance to the so-called invaders or have committed any act of aggression against India. On the contrary and solely with the object of maintaining friendly relations between the two Dominions, the Pakistan Government have continued to do all in their power to discourage the tribal movement by all means short of war. This has caused bitter resentment throughout the country, but despite a very serious risk of large-scale internal disturbances the Pakistan Government have not deviated from this policy. … It may be that a certain number of independent tribesmen and persons from Pakistan are helping the Azad Kashmir Government in their struggle for liberty as volunteers, but it is wrong to say that Pakistan territory is being used as base of military operations. It is also incorrect that the Pakistan Government are supplying military equipment, transport and supplies to the invaders or that Pakistan officers are training, guiding and otherwise helping them.
For some time past, a situation has existed between the Dominion of India and the Dominion of Pakistan which has given rise to disputes that are likely to endanger the maintenance of international peace and security. Under Article 35 of the Charter of the United Nations, the Government of Pakistan hereby bring to the attention of the Security Council the existence of these disputes and request the Security Council to adopt appropriate measures for the settlement of these disputes and the restoration of friendly relations between the two countries. …
It has been announced by the Government of India that it is their intention after restoring “order” in the State to carry out a plebiscite to ascertain the wishes of the people in the matter of the accession of the State to India or to Pakistan. Anybody having the most superficial knowledge of the conditions that have prevailed in the State during the last 100 years would not hesitate to affirm that a plebiscite held while the Sikh and Hindu armed bands and the forces of the Union of India are in occupation of the State, and are carrying on their activities there, would be no more than a farce. A free plebiscite can be held only when all those who have during the last few months entered the State territory from outside, whether members of the Armed Forces or private, have been cleared out of the State, and peaceful conditions have been restored under a responsible, representative and impartial administration. Even then care must be taken that all those that have been forced or compelled to leave the State since the middle of August 1947 are restored to their homes, as it is apprehended that in the Jammu province and elsewhere whole areas have been cleared of their Muslim population. …
India obtained the accession of the State of Jammu and Kashmir by fraud and violence, and … large-scale massacre, looting and atrocities on the Muslims of Jammu and Kashmir State have been perpetrated by the Armed Forces of the Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir and the Indian Union and by the non-Muslim subjects of the Maharaja and of the Indian Union. …
In conclusion, the Pakistan Government wish to assure the Security Council and the Government of India of their earnest desire to live on terms of friendship with India and to place the relations between the two countries on the most cordial, co-operative and friendly basis. The disputes to which the attention of the Security Council has been drawn in this document are all interrelated and are specific manifestations of the spirit that is poisoning the relationship between the two countries. The restoration of this relationship to a healthy and munificent state depends entirely upon a just and fair settlement of every one of these disputes being simultaneously achieved, Pakistan hopes and trusts that this will be secured as speedily as possible through the Security Council.
[Statement of Sir Mohammad Zafrulla Khan to the UN Security Council,
Jan. 15, 1948, in The Kashmir Question: Documents of the
Foreign Relations of Pakistan, ed. K. Sarwar Hasan and Zubeida Hasan
(Karachi: Pakistan Institute of International Affairs, 1966), 115, 116, 120, 121–122, 124.]
As detailed in chapter 8 (Resolution adopted by the Security Council, April 21, 1948), the Security Council’s response to India’s request for action to settle the Kashmir dispute was embodied in a resolution urging that a plebiscite be held in Jammu and Kashmir, to permit the people to decide whether they wanted to join India or Pakistan; independence was not an option. Pakistan maintained that it had accepted the Security Council resolution, but that India had backed out of its earlier agreement to do so.
In the following section, when Sir Zafrulla Khan speaks of India’s claim that certain changes had taken place that prevented the implementation of the agreement on a plebiscite, he is referring to the Indian argument that Pakistan’s military alliance with the United States had changed the contours of power in South Asia.
Why is it alleged [by India] that the resolutions are no longer operative and that the plebiscite is no longer in order? I will comment briefly on some of the grounds. Firstly, it was stated that India had never agreed to the plebiscite. This again is manifestly contrary to the record. … Secondly, it has been stated [by India] that the resolutions have become inoperative because Pakistan has not complied with its obligation to withdraw its troops completely from the Azad Kashmir territories. … Now, the question of what the obligation undertaken by Pakistan and when it was to come into operation is in dispute between the two parties. … Thirdly, it is said [by India] that inasmuch as a long time has elapsed since the resolutions were accepted, their implementation is no long feasible. There the important question that arises is: Who is responsible for the long time that has elapsed without implementation? … Surely India could not then take advantage of its own default by saying that, since it has succeeded so long in blocking the implementation of the resolutions. … Fourthly, it is stated that certain changes have taken place that therefore the resolutions cannot be implemented. That, again, will depend on what type of changes have taken place. … Fifthly, it said that the … people of Kashmir have already expressed their wishes three times, during elections, with regard to the accession. …
[Statement of Sir Zafrulla Khan in the Security Council, June 22, 1962, in Hasan and Hasan, eds., The Kashmir Question, 376, 377, 378.]
A crucial development during these years was Pakistan’s decision in 1954 to join military alliances with the United States at both bilateral and multilateral levels. The Americans were interested in having Pakistan as an ally in the Cold War context, in order to counter what they described as the Communist threat from the Soviet Union. But Pakistan viewed this relationship, especially its provision of military assistance and training, as one that would strengthen Pakistan against India.
From the Pakistani side, Governor-General Ghulam Muhammad, Prime Minister Muhammad Ali Bogra, and army chief General Ayub Khan were keen to develop close diplomatic, economic, and military ties with the United States. The American officials found Pakistani leadership forthcoming, and in fact eager for stronger ties with the United States. Indeed, during his visit to Pakistan in 1953, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles was delighted by the cooperative disposition of Pakistan’s leadership, when it came to resisting communism. He was tremendously impressed by the martial and religious qualities of Pakistanis, and especially by General Ayub Khan. In contrast, Prime Minster Nehru of India was described as an utterly impractical statesman.10 This was the beginning of Pakistan’s long and fateful dependence on the United States, and of India’s parallel estrangement. Letters from the United States ambassadors in Pakistan to Washington reflect uneasiness at Pakistan’s continuing demand for financial help. But the overall assessment was that the alliance with Pakistan was a tolerable risk, one that the United States could take. Even then, however, there were Pakistanis who thought it was not a tolerable risk for Pakistan.
There were several ups and downs in the United States–Pakistan relations in the subsequent years. Both developed complaints against each other, often doubting each other’s commitment to friendship. The United States imposed its first arms embargo on Pakistan in September 1965, after India and Pakistan went to war. This embargo was eased later on, but Pakistan received only a small quantity of arms during the period 1967–1971. The US imposed another arms embargo in December 1971 when a new war broke out between Pakistan and India. The embargo was gradually eased through 1975, but no military assistance was provided to Pakistan; Pakistan could buy some small weapons on cash payment. Relations further deteriorated when the United States stopped all economic assistance and military sales to Pakistan in April 1979 for the reason that Pakistan was building a nuclear weapons program—a program that had begun in earnest in Pakistan under the leadership of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in the mid-1970s. This embargo was lifted in 1980 after Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan. The United States and Pakistan joined together to build Islamic-Afghan resistance to the Soviet military presence in Afghanistan. Pakistani territory was used to train and arm the Afghan mujāhidīn (fighters for a righteous cause) to fight the Soviets. It was in this period that Islamic militancy was promoted in Pakistan and Afghanistan by Pakistan and the United States.
The United States left the region after the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan. In October 1990 the United States invoked its law that disallowed any aid to a country that worked on a nuclear weapons program, thereby cutting off all economic and military assistance and military sales to Pakistan. This embargo lasted for eleven years. It was lifted after the terrorist attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001, because Pakistani support was needed to dislodge the Taliban and al-Qaeda militants based in Afghanistan. From 2002 onward Pakistan and the United States cooperated extensively on counterterrorism in the region. The US began providing economic assistance directly and through international financial institutions. Military assistance and sales were also resumed. The United States declared that it would provide economic assistance to Pakistan on a long-term basis and help to build its military and paramilitary to fight terrorism. The partnership between the two countries, however, has been and remains fraught, with the United States alleging that Pakistan is not doing enough to fight terrorism in its territory, and Pakistan claiming that the United States interferes with its sovereignty.
At the start of the formal Pakistani–American military relationship, Ambassador Horace Hildreth, appointed by American president Dwight Eisenhower, wrote the following letter from Karachi on July 10, 1954.
In making the final decision as to how far the United States is prepared to underwrite Pakistan, the political, economic, and military factors must be considered together. Each is of great importance and each is inextricably linked with the other two. Previous decisions to assist Pakistan, whether by wheat, techniques, or arms, have been predicated on a belief in the survival of Pakistan and in its potential development as a firm member of the free world. (Probably the decision to give military aid was both hastened and influenced by the public statements of Mr. Nehru which made a refusal difficult for self-respecting sovereign nations.) The Embassy sees no reason to alter this judgment. It does, however, urge that as by each step we become more involved with the destinies of Pakistan, we analyze our objectives and our possible ultimate goals. We furthermore believe that if we increase our investment in Pakistan substantially we would be justified in putting more pressure on the [Government of Pakistan] to be more realistic in their own economic thinking and action. In order to become too strong too quickly, Pakistan is trying to move too fast and present us with the bill therefore. On the other hand, the present strongly pro-American administration puts great pressure on us for immediate economic help in order to protect its political prestige. In view of the lack of any signs of other political leaders, or knowledge of their sympathies if they should appear, the prestige of the current administration is a real asset to the best interests of the United States Government.
In raising the basic questions discussed in this dispatch, the Embassy is fully aware that they cannot be answered quickly. In fact, time and experience may be necessary before even tentative answers can be formulated. Nevertheless for the long pull it is believed that the importance of the questions is sufficient for them to be considered by the Policy Planning Staff and finally by the National Security Council.
Insofar as it is possible, the United States should be able to envisage what is to be expected of Pakistan. The Embassy believes Pakistan to be a tolerable risk. However, we believe our investment should be scrutinized with unrelenting care. Prospects of returns must be compared with those expected from India and from Pakistan’s Middle Eastern neighbors. American influence in Pakistan is increasing through decisions already taken. With influence comes responsibility. As we prepare to assist Pakistan to meet a critical economic emergency—and the Embassy recommends that we do give some assistance—let us carefully appraise what we can and should do in Pakistan over a several-year period.
[Letter of H. Hildreth, US Ambassador to Pakistan, in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954, vol. 11: Africa and South Asia (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1988), vol. 11, pt. 2, 1854–1855.]
The final step in the ongoing process of dismantling democracy came on October 7, 1958, when President Iskander Mirza abrogated the 1956 Constitution and declared martial law, on the grounds that the country’s politicians were incapable of maintaining law and order. His announcement cited violence inside the East Pakistan provincial assembly as evidence of the degeneration of the political process, and he criticized the assemblymen for their ruthless struggle for power and their exploitation of Islam.11 Mirza appointed army chief General Ayub Khan as “Chief Martial Law Administrator,” but Mirza himself did not last long. On October 27, 1958, Ayub Khan forced him to resign and exiled him to London. Ayub Khan also assumed the presidency.
Ayub Khan ruled the country under martial law from October 1958 to June 1962, when he imposed a presidential constitution, held nonparty indirect elections for the parliament, and civilianized his military rule by co-opting a section of the political elite. This civilianized military rule lasted until March 1969.
Ayub Khan’s military takeover marked the beginning of the political dominance of the military that manifested itself in several forms over the years, ranging from direct military rule, through generals ruling in civilian garb with a constitution, to generals maintaining a strong influence over policy-making, even when civilians were supposedly ruling the country. In his autobiography, a narrative condensed in 1965 from transcripts of spoken answers to interviewers’ questions, Ayub Khan provided detailed explanations of why the military decided to step into the political domain. He described his military coup as a revolution.
I am receiving very depressing reports [towards the end of August 1958] about economic distress, maladministration through political interference, frustration and complete loss of faith by the people in political leadership inclusive of the President. The general belief is that none of these men have any honesty of purpose, integrity or patriotism, to root out evils of the country which will require drastic action. The general belief is emerging that even I and the army are failing to do our duty by not saving the people from these tyrants. This dangerous belief is obviously based on the ignorance of the functions of the army, but when people become desperate they are apt to seek escape through any means. I wonder if they realize that if it was not for my keeping aloof from politics they would not have had this army and if this type of army was not there they would have lost their independence by now. …
The hour had struck. The moment so long delayed had finally arrived. The responsibility could no longer be put off. It was the 4th of October 1958, and as I settled down in my railway saloon I knew that an era was coming to an end. I was going to Karachi where an agonizingly prolonged political farce was drawing to a close. A few days earlier President Iskander Mirza had conveyed to me that the whole situation was becoming intolerable and that he had decided to act.
For years we had all hoped that the political leaders of the country would wake up to their grave responsibilities. Among them were patriotic men, men of talent and ability, some close associates of the Quaid-e-Azam who had guided the struggle for Pakistan with great vision, statesmanship, and unfaltering fervour and determination. Later they had seen the cool, courageous, and tenacious manner in which Liaquat Ali Khan was trying to steer the ship of state through turbulent water. Each for a time managed to grab the central trapeze caught in the beams of giant arc-lights, but the next moment hurtled down into a dark net of intrigue and incompetence.
I arrived in Karachi on 5 October. Yahya, Hamid, and one or two other officers had preceded me. I went to see General Iskander Mirza [the President]. He was sitting on the lawn, brooding, bitter and desperate. I asked him, have you made up your mind, sir. Yes, he replied. Do you think it is absolutely necessary? It is absolutely necessary, I said firmly. My reaction was that it was very unfortunate that such a desperate stage had been reached, necessitating drastic action. And it was not pleasant to get involved in it, but there was no escape. It was the last bid to save the country.
From that time onwards emotions had no place in the proceedings. Now that this job had to be done it must be done properly. A simple plan was formulated and put into operation. I advised General Iskander Mirza: “You had better inform your Prime Minister about the situation.” He thought it was unnecessary, as he had no doubt about the legality of his action. I said: “I want two things from you in writing: one, that I will administer Martial Law; and the other, a letter to the Prime Minister that you have taken this decision, that the government has been dissolved, that you have abrogated the Constitution and declared Martial Law, and that you have appointed me to administer the Martial Law.”
Revolutions take long and painstaking preparation, detailed planning, clandestine meetings, and country-wide movement of troops. In our case there was very little preparation. It was handled as a military operation. … The immediate objective was to rehabilitate the civil and constitutional organs of the State. They had become ineffective and oppressive through misuse and exploitation and needed the protection of Martial Law to recover their original sense of purpose so as to be able to operate within a constitutional framework.
Among the long-term objectives of the revolution was the introduction of major reforms designed to remove the confusion and imbalance in the social and economic life of the country. These reforms were to culminate in the introduction of a proper Constitution and restoration of constitutional life.
[Mohammad Ayub Khan, Friends, Not Masters: A Political Autobiography (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), 68, 70–72, 77.]
Ayub Khan came into conflict with the conservative religious forces led by Maulana Maududi and his political party, the Jamaat-e Islami, when he promulgated family laws (see the selection below) that were intended, among other purposes, to give greater protection to women in divorce and inheritance proceedings. His government also launched a large-scale family-planning program. These measures were attacked by Islamic groups as un-Islamic.
In the following excerpt from his autobiography, Ayub summed up what may be called the modernist view of the role of the religious authorities in national life.
My task, as I saw it, was to set up institutions which should enable the people of Pakistan to develop their material, moral, and intellectual resources and capacities to the maximum extent. The essential prerequisite of this task was to analyse the national problems objectively. I could not convince myself that we had become a nation in the real sense of the word; the whole spectacle was one of disunity and disintegration. We were divided in two halves, each half dominated by a distinct linguistic and cultural pattern. The geographical distance between the two halves was in itself a divisive factor which could be exploited to create all kinds of doubts and suspicions among the people. We had inherited a deep antagonism which separated the people in the countryside from the urban classes. The latter represented a small minority in the total population, but it was a vocal minority and the people in the villages suffered from a sense of domination and exploitation by the elite of the towns. Then there were the regional identities, which often asserted themselves to the exclusion of the national identity. … But more than anything else it was the irreconcilable nature of the forces of science and reason and the forces of dogmatism and revivalism which was operating against the unification of the people. … In more precise terms the essential conflict was between the ulema and the educated classes. All that was material, temporal and secular was identified with the educated and all that was religious and spiritual became the monopoly of the ulema. …
How were these conflicts to be reconciled? Islam visualizes life as a unity and the Islamic code represents a complete cultural whole. … A man at home, at work, or at prayer is guided by the same code of behavior. … All this was true. But the picture of our society as I saw it, did not conform to this. In practice our life was broken up into two distinct spheres and in each sphere we followed a different set of principles. How were we to get out of this morass and adopt a unified approach to life? … We were fortunate to have a religion which could serve as a vehicle of progress. But superstition and ritualism had given us a fatalistic outlook which was completely contrary to the teachings and message of Islam. Muslim society could not move forward unless Islam was relieved of all the inhibiting and alien influences which had distorted its real character. …
There was universal agreement that the country should have a democratic constitution and a constitution which should enable the Community to organize itself according to the essential principles of Islam and to develop and progress with the times. … The question arose as to how the Community should discern and define the principles of Islam. There was no ready answer to this. No precedent of an Islamic Constitution was available. The Holy Qurʾan contained the principles of guidance but did not prescribe a detailed Constitution for running a country. … The conclusion was inescapable that Islam had not prescribed any particular pattern of government but had left it to the Community to evolve its own pattern to suit its circumstances provided that the principles of the Qur4an and the Sunnah were observed. … It was clear to me that Pakistan must work out its own system of application of the principles of Islam in its conditions. It was equally clear to me that this exercise must be conducted within the accepted democratic norms of which the most important is the participation of the people in the affairs of the State. The right of the people as a whole to organize and run their affairs could not be curtailed or compromised in any manner. … I knew that the ulema would not be satisfied with this arrangement. They claimed the exclusive right to interpret and decide matters pertaining to Islam. While they maintained the claim, they refrained from producing any detailed Constitutional document, knowing that such an attempt would only expose their internal differences. …
The history of the ulema in this subcontinent has been one of perpetual conflict with the educated classes. The conflict came to a head during the struggle for Pakistan. … Now, I do not suggest that those among the ulema who opposed the creation of Pakistan were all men of easy conscience. Among them were people of ability and conviction, but there were also those who thought that Pakistan might mean the end of their authority. The best among them argued that the Indian freedom movement would be retarded if Hindus and Muslims did not act in union. Some also felt that Pakistan was essentially a territorial concept and thus alien to the philosophy of Islamic brotherhood, which was universal in character. Both these arguments were the result of confused thinking and revealed a lamentable ignorance of the problems which the Muslims of the subcontinent were facing. … [But] the opposition offered by some of the ulema was not wholly the result of confused thinking or lack of awareness of the problems of the Muslims. Behind it was the consciousness of power. … The ulema knew that the leadership of the Muslims in the subcontinent was gradually passing to the modern educated classes who had found an eloquent and powerful spokesman in the Quaid-e-Azam. … It was this new leadership that the ulema dreaded and against which they aligned themselves with the Indian National Congress. …
Pakistan was the greatest defeat of the nationalist ulema. But they are a tenacious tribe and power is an irresistible drug. Soon after the establishment of Pakistan this type of ulema reorganised its forces. Now that Pakistan had been established, these people asked, who, indeed, except the ulema, could decide how the new Muslim state should be run. Some of the nationalist ulema decided to stay in India; others hastened to Pakistan to lend a helping hand. If they had not been able to save the Muslims from Pakistan, they must now save Pakistan from the Muslims. Among the migrants was Maulana Abul Ala Maudoodi, head of the Jamẚat-e-Islami party, who had been bitterly opposed to Pakistan. He sought refuge there and forthwith launched a campaign for the Muslimization of the hapless people of Pakistan. This venerable gentleman was appalled by what he saw in Pakistan: an un-Islamic country, an un-Islamic government, and an un-Islamic people! How could any genuine Muslim owe allegiance to such a government! So he set about the task of convincing the people of their inadequacies, their failings, and their general un-worthiness.
All this was really a facade. The true intention was to re-establish the supremacy of the ulema and to reassert their right to lead the community. … The political ulema had two courses open to them: either to re-examine their own position and to revise their attitudes so that the people might be able to gain from their knowledge in dealing with their problems; or to demolish the position of the educated classes in the eyes of the God-fearing but uneducated masses. Not unnaturally, they adopted the latter course. A society which had just emerged from a century of foreign domination and was faced with the practical problems of building a new country suffered from many defects and weaknesses. The ulema concentrated on these. … They succeeded in converting an optimistic and enthusiastic people into a cynical and frustrated community. The ulema claimed that they knew all the answers and could easily solve all the problems of the country but that they were helpless as the country was in the control of the modern educated classes who had disowned Islam and taken to Western ways. Since no leadership could provide an immediate solution to all the problems of the community, the ulema were able to build up a large following for their point of view.
It is in this context that the demand for an Islamic Constitution was so ardently advocated by the ulema. Since no one had defined the fundamental elements of an Islamic Constitution, no Constitution could be called Islamic unless it received the blessings of all the ulema. The only way of having an Islamic Constitution was to hand over the country to the ulema.
[Ayub Khan, Friends, Not Masters, 194–201.]
East Pakistan contained the majority of Pakistan’s population, but the state power was concentrated in West Pakistan, which exercised political and economic dominance over the eastern wing, causing alienation and discontent. The political and societal elite from East Pakistan complained of the domineering and unfair role of the West Pakistan political elite, and of the partisanship of state institutions like the bureaucracy and the military. The reasons for this alienation are traced in chapter 10. The grievances of East Pakistan manifested themselves in the 1954 provincial elections, when the ruling Muslim League lost badly to the United Front, a coalition of several East Pakistani political parties, parties that sought autonomy and greater power-sharing.
In 1966 the leader of the Awami League, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, formulated a six-point charter of demands—for a federal Pakistan with a parliamentary form of government in which all powers other than defense and foreign affairs would be left to the federating states; for an end to the draining of capital from East to West; for separate taxation, revenue, and foreign exchange earnings in East and West; and for a militia or para-military force for East Pakistan. These demands became central to future visions of an independent East Pakistan.
When street agitation paralyzed Ayub Khan’s government, he resigned and handed over power to the army chief, General Yahya Khan, on March 25, 1969; Yahya Khan then abrogated the Constitution and imposed martial law. His military regime held general elections in December 1970. The Awami League, led by Mujibur Rahman, won 160 out of 162 general seats allocated to East Pakistan. It did not put up any candidate in West Pakistan, where the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto won 81 out of 138 general seats allocated to West Pakistan.
The election results entitled Mujibur Rahman to become prime minister, but the negotiations for the transfer of power between the military regime and the Awami League failed: the military regime and most West Pakistani political leaders thought that Mujibur Rahman was committed to the separation of East Pakistan. The military regime decided on March 25, 1971, to crush East Pakistan’s demands by resorting to a ruthless military crackdown. India entered the war on the side of the separatists, with the results that on December 16, 1971, Pakistan lost the India–Pakistan War, and the separatists in East Pakistan succeeded in establishing Bangladesh as an independent state. The military regime of Yahya Khan collapsed, and power was handed over to a civilian leader, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, on December 20.
The three selections that follow—one by a politician in Pakistan, another by a Pakistani civil servant in Dhaka, and a third by a Pakistani writer—show the complexity of the feelings about East Pakistan among West Pakistanis at the time of the breakup of the two wings.
The following selection, written and published in September 1971—three months before West Pakistan lost East Pakistan—gives Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s perspective on the negotiations between the military government and the Awami League. Bhutto (1928–1979) was foreign minister under Ayub Khan from 1962 to 1966. In 1967 Bhutto left Ayub’s cabinet and founded the pro-democratic Pakistan People’s Party, which eventually came to power when Yahya Khan resigned after the defeat of Pakistan and the loss of Bangladesh.
The [Six Point] formula taken as a whole was a veiled charter for a confederation which contained the genesis of constitutional secession. Six Points envisaged a Central Government bereft of all powers except in the matter of Defence and Foreign Affairs, the latter being limited by the exclusion of foreign trade and aid. All other subjects including currency and taxation were to be within the jurisdiction of the provinces. This was indeed a unique constitutional proposal. Such a Central Government, divested of any real authority, would have become completely helpless amid the clamour of five warring provinces each asserting its own brand of sub-nationalism and each torn in different directions by foreign powers.
Foreign policy, particularly in the Third World, is generally concerned with economic development and international trade and aid. Thus, under the Six Point formula a large part of foreign affairs would be excluded from the competence of the Central Government, leaving war and confrontation as the only major matters of concern to it. … With the Central Government reduced to a nullity, and with the bisection of foreign affairs, a death-blow would have been dealt to Pakistan’s international relations, and particularly her outstanding disputes with India. Defence affairs are in turn closely associated with foreign policy. Without full control over foreign policy, the Central Government would not be in a position to determine and implement an effective defence policy. …
With … the genuine grievances of East Pakistan to play upon, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman unleashed hatred against West Pakistan. He blamed West Pakistan for everything. Although he called himself a socialist, instead of attacking the system of capitalism, he attacked the people of West Pakistan. … The Bengali leader raised the emotions of his people to a frenzied pitch. … Our opponents tried to distort [the] truth by saying that we were denying the Awami League, the majority party, its right to rule the country. This is not correct. The majority party had the right to rule the country if it accepted one standard for the whole country, but not near-independence for East Pakistan together with its control of the Central Government to the exclusion of the wishes of the majority of the West Wing.
[Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, The Great Tragedy (Karachi: Pakistan People’s Party, 1971), 11, 12, 14, 19.]
Hasan Zaheer joined the Civil Service of Pakistan in 1954, and served in various districts and in the secretariat under the government of the former East Pakistan from 1956 to 1962. In May 1971 he was posted to Dhaka again and was there at the time of the Pakistani army’s surrender. His memoirs give a fresh, on-the-ground perspective on the fighting in East Pakistan from a West Pakistani army man who had had a long career of involvement in the East; they also describe the West Pakistanis’ near-total lack of understanding of the situation in East Pakistan.
This selection has been taken from Zaheer’s description of the last three weeks before Pakistan’s surrender to India.
In the middle of November [1971], I had come to Islamabad during the Eid holidays, and arranged some meetings to extend the stay on official business. In spite of the fact that the situation in all respects was the worst that the country had ever been placed in, the regime was exuding confidence. The line in the official media was the same that was being repeated for the last seven months: the overwhelming majority of Bengalis were for united Pakistan, stories of atrocities were fabrications of India and the foreign correspondents, and that any attack on East Pakistan would mean an all-out Indo-Pakistan war. The independent Press was still more hawkish and it even accused the television and radio of not projecting the ideological-cum-patriotic theme enough to boost the morale of the people. As I moved round the military and civilian circles of Rawalpindi and Islamabad, I became certain that war with India was imminent. There was consensus among the vocal and influential classes that this was the only solution to the crisis. Everyone was expecting substantial gains on the western front which would counterbalance the Indian military moves in the east; East Pakistan would be defended on the plains of the Punjab. This was the doctrine on which the entire defence structure of Pakistan was built and which the people had been led to believe for the last twenty-five years. But in the general enthusiasm for victories in the west, although no one was thinking specifically of its separation, East Pakistan vaguely figured as a side issue; the psyche was to retrieve the fruits of victory of which the nation was deprived by Ayub’s cease-fire in the 1965 war. …
This exuberant saber-rattling was in stark contrast to the bleak life in East Pakistan. The army there had moved out to the borders, and the guerrillas had a free run of Dhaka except during the few daylight hours. Those of us who had been witnessing the gradual demoralization and fatigue of the army, and the increasing boldness of the insurgents over the last seven months had no illusions about the capabilities of the armed forces to hold East Pakistan. In private conversation, the army officers serving there agreed with this assessment. In West Pakistan, few in the higher civil service, or for that matter in the army high command, had an idea of the ground conditions in the East; few of them cared to visit it after March, from the President [Yahya Khan] downward, and those who did, believed war a desirable solution. My colleagues were imbued with the spirit of the times. They showed concern about our plight and safety in Dhaka, were extra polite, and invited me to dinners, but for all their light-heartedness I might have been an alien from a distant land. …
I managed to get a seat for Dhaka on the night of 30 November and 1 December. These were grave times. East Pakistan was far off, surrounded by the sea or the enemy, and it was not easy to get out from it. The fragile air link could snap at any time. The final moment of farewell to my wife and daughter was not easy. I kissed them, and hurried into the darkness toward the plane. It would be more than two years before we met again. Many others went through the same agonies of pointless calls of duty “to serve” the people who did not want “outsiders” in their country. …
The Governor [of East Pakistan] on the morning of 14 December [when the fall of Dhaka was imminent] directed in writing that the group of West Pakistan civil servants should seek refuge in the neutral zone. Farman Ali called the representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross and asked them to allow us to shift to the hotel. They went back and an hour later, presumably after checking up with the mukti bahini [East Pakistani freedom-fighters] or the Indians, rang back to invite us to the neutral zone. So we packed up and once more moved out in a small procession and reached the Inter-Continental [Hotel] at about 12 noon. …
Soon after we left the Governor House, it was strafed by the IAF [Indian Air Force] while a cabinet meeting was going on. There was nothing left of the government, the administration, or the army now in Dhaka. The Governor had been trying to talk to Yahya who did not take the call. During all the days since the start of the war, the President had never once spoken to his representative in Dhaka. In the afternoon the Governor resigned, and he and the Chief Secretary also shifted to the hotel. This was the end of the 24-year old East Pakistan government.
[Hasan Zaheer, The Separation of East Pakistan: The Rise and Realization of Bengali Muslim Nationalism (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1994), 357–359, 404–405.]
Asif Farrukhi (b. 1959), a physician by training, is also a writer, editor, and translator who lives in Karachi. Since 1998 he has written a number of short story collections, several in English, and he also translates world literature into Urdu.
The story chosen below depicts the impact on children in West Pakistan of the antagonisms between the eastern and western wings in 1971.
The clamour doesn’t cease, not even for a moment, as they leave one by one. They just put their things together and leave. No one says goodbye, no one says anything. They don’t say anything either. There is no sound of books being shut loudly, desks banging, feet scraping, the sort of commotion that arises as soon as the bell for half-time sounds. No, there is none of that. Soundlessly, wordlessly, they vanish. One by one, and in the rows of faces there come to be blank spaces where once they had been.
It strikes you out of the blue: Arre, so and so used to be here. … You know … what’s his name. And so and so … Arre bhai, where did they all go? They have left a void which isn’t apparent at first glance.
But no one asks this question. There is such a din as it is.
“Here we are ready and waiting to go.” The school band is practicing this song with full fervour. It is not the school anthem. You are confused and your heart is sinking. It’s all gone wrong. If only this was a bad dream. But how can it be? The finger is pointing at you. Even if you sank under the weight of shame and regret, even then the ground wouldn’t open and swallow you up. At the immigration counter the stern features of the official who scrutinizes the documents start looking familiar. And in the blink of an eye he starts shouting in Mrs. Cunningham’s booming voice: “Hurry up! Come on! Next! Who’s next?”
You know who’s next. It’s you. Now you can’t get away. You drag yourself forward as if your very life is ebbing away. You are dying; your eyes can’t focus, cold sweat pours down the back of your next and numbs your body. …
“Zamir! Zamir! What’s got into you?” The hands that shake you awake belong to Samina. It takes a few seconds to realise that you are at home, in your own bed. That you are not clutching that old school desk, quaking with fear at Mrs. Cunningham’s scolding, reliving that far away moment that has been recurring in your dreams for many days.
Had it not been for the Maths period, I would perhaps never have known that they were any different from us. They would have been just like the other boys. Except that they were darker and their teeth gleamed when they laughed. In fact, all the boys were different—their faces, their school bags, the way they came to school, their mothers and fathers were all different. When Maqsood got down from his sparkling jeep, his khaki-clad driver would come up to the classroom with his bag and thermos and salute smartly. Abrar usually came by bus to Empress Market. Books in hand, unencumbered to an enviable extent (for us) by a bag, he would turn up at school smiling, whistling, strolling here and there. Ahmed Ali’s father was away somewhere, while Yamin’s father was dead. Yes, differences there were many.
The bell would ring and it would be time for lessons. Mrs. Cunningham would come in and ask us to open our books. Rashid would open his mouth wide whenever he took the name of the lesson, “Airamathik,” while Bosco would enunciate with great style: “Vithmathik.” We were learning that we should write the name of this subject as: “Mathematics” in our copy books. Because now, along with arithmetic, it also included algebra and geometry. We had moved up a class now.
Moving up a class was such a nuisance. It meant an increasing in schoolwork. Sometimes, I would get fed up and ask myself: What’s going to happen in the future? It’s getting more and more difficult: problems of addition, lowest common denominator, highest common factor, unitary method, fractions. … It seems as though it wasn’t sums but something else altogether, a fearful dream. I didn’t quite understand it all, sitting in the classroom, lost in my own thoughts. When Mrs. Cunningham pounced on me, I would come to with a start and, looking across at Abdul Batin sitting at the desk in front of me, begin to copy down from his book. Abdul Batin would surreptitiously explain to me and help me to copy but he always laughed at me. (Whenever he laughed, his white teeth gleamed against his brown skin.) He was always the first to finish the class work and take it up to Mrs. Cunningham to be checked. Putting a star on the page she would proudly announce to the whole class: “For him it is Math-e-magic!”
If it wasn’t magic then what else was it? It was very puzzling. I even asked my father. “These people eat fish. That’s what makes them so brainy,” he used to say. …
Of course, I knew who they were. Just as we all knew who everyone in the class was. But that this would make a difference was something I could not have imagined before that day. It was a bad day and there were many bad days like that. Ammi had reduced my TV watching time. There were now different kinds of songs on the TV: “Keep the candles burning / For this house bears a thousand burdens / This house is after all your own,” and other stuff like that. But why keep the candles burning? Would there be no electricity in the house? And what’s happened that one has to tell everyone that it is one’s own? I couldn’t understand. It was bothering me more than ever. Was arithmetic not enough that algebra had also started confusing us from this term? Abdul Batin’s book would remain open with the same generosity but on top of that he would explain secret things to me too.
One day he let me into his secret: the secret of Math-e-Magic. Leading me into a corner of the classroom in a voice barely above a whisper, he said: “There is a golden rule. Just learn that and you won’t have any problem for the rest of your life.”
“What’s that?” My curiosity was increasing.
“BODMAS,” he replied.
“What?” I was dumbfounded.
“Yes, BODMAS. My Daddy says get this by heart, then you’ll never make mistakes in algebra. Bracket, of, division, multiplication, addition, subtraction. Abbreviate these: BODMAS!”
I nodded, as though I had just received the key to a treasure chest. Thanking him, I returned to my desk, so as to note it down in my exercise book at once. Maqsood was standing there. He looked at me and made a face. Without lowering his voice, he said: “He’s a traitor. Stop being friends with him.”
Understanding a little bit but not fully, I laughed, “Why, what’s up? Who do you mean?”
But Maqsood walked off without bothering to reply. I looked towards Abdul Batin, hoping he hadn’t heard. But he had his head down and was still solving problems. My heart missed a beat. Something was about to happen. I could sense it but couldn’t say what.
I was in such a muddle that the following day I couldn’t even remember BODMAS until the end of class. Mrs. Cunningham gave me detention again at halftime. All the others had gone out. I was still at my desk trying to solve the problems. The desk in front was empty. Mrs. Cunningham had spread the Morning News out in front and was trying to do the Get-A-Word. Suddenly there was a noise outside the classroom. I peeped out of the window. A large number of boys from the class had gathered there. I shot out like an arrow and joined them.
My classmates had formed a circle and in the middle of it was Abdul Batin. “He’s a traitor,” Maqsood said to me. “He is our enemy. My father and his friends say that all of them are the same. They don’t observe the blackout. They go out on to the roof tops at night and make signals to the enemy planes with their torches.”
I stared at Abdul Batin. He looked even darker, and there was no smile on his face.
“Traitor! Traitor”! the boys were chanting. Masqood would utter one word and all of them would repeat it. “Bengali Babu came …” It had become a refrain. “Bengali Babu came / Brought a stolen hen.” Everyone was clapping in time with the tune. “Hen used her claws / Bengali Babu’s bald.”
At that there would be the stinging sound of slaps raining down on Abdul Batin’s head and from which he could not shield himself with his hands.
“Bengali Babu came … you also say it,” Maqsood egged me on. Then he stopped. Abdul Batin’s pants had become even wetter than his face.
“Shame, shame! Chee, chee! Shame, shame!” Maqsood was shouting and all the boys were clapping. We were moving around in a circle and Abdul Batin was standing in the middle.
“What nonsense … !” Mrs. Cunningham’s voice stopped us in our tracks. “You gaddhas, you kuttas, you ulloos,” she was yelling in her own inimitable way. But the tears were streaming down, and her face was even wetter than Abdul Batin’s pants.
From that day on Abdul Batin never came to school again. Later someone said that he had gone away with his parents because their country had separated from ours.
I still remember BODMAS, although it is of little use to me today. But there is one thing I don’t understand. The whole class got detention and Mrs. Cunningham also complained to Father Pinto. He spent a long time explaining to us lovingly, scolding us, threatening us, he even made us apologize. Why then do I suddenly feel uneasy? As though I was sitting at that very same desk and Mrs. Cunningham was about to call out in punishment: “Next!” Is it now my turn?
I am sitting at that desk, my stomach churning with fear. And I will continue to cower there until my turn does come.
[Asif Farrukhi, “Expelled,” trans. Durdana Soomro, in Niaz Zaman and Asif Farrukhi, ed., Fault Lines: Stories of 1971 (Dhaka: University Press, 2008), 133–138.]
Internationally, the loss of East Pakistan coincided with the Middle East oil boom, and Pakistani leaders took advantage of this new change in the balance of world economic power to shift their orientation toward the Middle East, and away from subcontinental politics, where Pakistan’s claims—on East Pakistan, on Kashmir—were being challenged. From this period also dates Pakistan’s turn to China, in an effort to counter India’s increasing ties to the Soviet Union.
Domestically, as the new prime minister of Pakistan, Bhutto declared it his intention to restore a sense of national identity and self-confidence to the shattered country, in the aftermath of the separation of Bangladesh. With the support of the opposition, he formulated a new “1973 constitution”; like the previous two constitutions, this new one assigned sovereignty to God, and maintained that no law would conflict with the teachings and principles of Islam. While recognizing Islam as the state religion, the Constitution established a parliamentary system of government, with the prime minister as the chief executive and the president in a ceremonial role.
On the whole, however, Bhutto’s government did not press very vigorously for the Islamization of Pakistan—although, bowing to pressure from Islamic religious leaders, he did amend the Constitution to declare the Ahmadiyya community non-Muslim. He emphasized socialist economic policies. Ten industries were nationalized: iron and steel, basic metal, heavy engineering, heavy electrical, motor vehicles, tractor plants, heavy and basic chemicals, cement, petrochemicals, and gas and oil refineries. Banks and private sector educational institutions were also nationalized. Land reforms were introduced in 1972 and 1977. These policies irked Islamic groups and the big businesses that suffered as a result of nationalization.
The selection below illustrates the nature of the appeal of Bhutto and his political party, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), founded in 1967, with its socialist manifesto that paid due homage to the humanism and egalitarianism of Islam. The PPP emphasized that its aim was to serve the people by alleviating their poverty, by asserting Pakistan’s independence, and by making the country strong, including the development of nuclear power as a protection against India. Like Indira Gandhi, who was known for her populist slogan “Garibi Hatāo!”(“Abolish Poverty!”), Bhutto’s “Roti, Kapra, aur Makan!”(“Food, Clothing, and Shelter!”) endeared him to many in Pakistan. He is also reported to have said, “If India builds the bomb, we will eat grass or leaves, even go hungry, but we will get one of our own.”12
The following speech was delivered at Jinnah Park, Peshawar, on January 18, 1970.
What a disgrace it is that Pakistan which is the largest Islamic country has not been able to have a workable constitution during the last 22 years. Our first and foremost duty is to frame a constitution and I promise you that we shall fully co-operate in the framing of a constitution within 120 days. We shall work day and night and put in our best efforts to formulate a workable constitution. A constitution is the fundamental law of the land. It will be our endeavour to strengthen the country through democracy. We do not want that democracy should ever be endangered again. …
At the same time we believe that unless the economic system is changed no constitution or democracy can help the country. For us this is a fundamental question. We want to banish poverty and misery from the country. … Our only difference with the other leaders is that they support the capitalists. They believe in retaining this system which has sucked the blood of the people. When we say that we want to change this system it is said that Islam is in danger. How can Islam be in danger in Pakistan? This is a Muslim country and we are all Muslims. I say Islam can never be in danger. Islam is an eternal religion. It can never be in danger. It is not Islam which is in danger; it is the rich people who are in danger. …
My dear friends, the fact is that without the progress of the people there can be no progress in Pakistan. There can be no prosperity if the people are hungry. Under these circumstances Pakistan can never progress. We want to establish equality in accordance with our religion. Equality is absolutely in keeping with our religion, just as democracy is in accordance with Islam. All these leaders want democracy and we accept that Islam contains the principles of democracy. At the same time the parliamentary system of England is nowhere mentioned in the Hadith or the Quran. This system has been given to us by the British. They fought against the Muslims and enslaved the Islamic countries, not only in the subcontinent but also in the Middle East. If the parliamentary system which we have inherited from the British, who ruled over us and exploited us, is acceptable, why is the equality of Islam not acceptable to these gentlemen? …
Quaid-i-Azam upheld Islamic Socialism. He supported it before and after the establishment of Pakistan. Our opponents cannot deny that. That is why they opposed the Quaid-i-Azam because he wanted “Islamic socialism,” because there was to be equality in Pakistan and these people did not want equality.
[Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Marching Towards Democracy: A Collection of Articles, Statements, and Speeches, ed. Hamid Jalal and Khalid Hasan (Rawalpindi: Pakistan Publication, 1973), 17–18, 19.]
One of the cornerstones of Bhutto’s attack on Ayub Khan, and his rationale for the nationalization of banks and industries, was the assertion by Mahbub ul-Haq (1934–1998), a noted Pakistani economist and in 1968 the chief economist of the Planning Commission, that just twenty-two families owned 66 percent of the industrial wealth of the country, and controlled 87 percent of the country’s banking and insurance assets. The formula “22 families” has become broadly understood and used in Pakistan.
In the essay that follows, written for the London Times on March 22, 1973, five years after his initial claim made such an impact, Huq reflects on his usage of the term.
Five years ago I made a speech alleging that 22 industrial family groups had come to dominate the economic and financial life of Pakistan and that they controlled about two-thirds of industrial assets, 80 per cent of banking and 79 percent insurance.
At that time, Pakistan was still living through a period of great euphoria. President Ayub was completing his tenth term in office and the country was cheerfully celebrating his first decade of development. Pakistan had undoubtedly done extremely well economically under President Ayub’s pragmatic leadership and almost all key economic indicators pointed to a fast rate of expansion. The growth rate in the gross national product had been nearly 6 per cent a year for a decade and a healthy export performance of 8 per cent a year had defied many predictions.
However, some of us who were living closely with the economic management of the country had already begun to develop our doubts about the long-term viability of such a pattern of growth. While the world was still applauding Pakistan as a model of development—since outside donors always need some success stories for their own comfort—we were getting quite concerned that all was not well with the distribution of benefits of growth.
Some of the indices were fairly disturbing. The real disparity in the per capita incomes of East and West Pakistan had more than doubled during this decade even though we were reluctant to admit it publicly. The real wages of the industrial workers, concentrated in a few key urban areas, had been reduced by about a third by a combination of inflation and weak bargaining power of the unions. Personal income inequalities had increased substantially.
It was evident that most people had remained unaffected by the forces of economic change since the development had fast become warped in favour of a privileged minority.
One can best illustrate this imbalance by looking at the distribution of certain public and private services. From 1958 to 1968 Pakistan imported or domestically assembled private cars worth $300 million while spending only $20 million on buses. During the same period, about 80 per cent to 90 per cent of private construction can only be described as luxury housing.
It was in these circumstances that I tried to focus national attention on justice in the distribution of wealth in the midst of celebration over a rapid rate of growth. I say this with no desire for self-vindication because I recall how painful a decision it was. I was chief economist of the National Planning Commission and much of what I had to say was an indictment of the economic policies of the Government during a period in which I was intimately associated with planned development.
It was little surprise to me that the mention of 22 families in that atmosphere was treated as a bombshell, both by a stunned Government and by the private sector in Pakistan. It is most annoying to question success right in the midst of it. What surprises me, however, is that in the past five years there has been so little analysis of the basic issues inherent in Pakistan’s industrial and economic situation and so little action despite all the hysteria about the 22 families. This has been disappointing because references to 22 families should only be treated as symbolic of the basic problems of income distribution and social justice in Pakistan.
A myth has spread by now that the 22 families own all the wealth in Pakistan. This is simply not true. The problem must be viewed in its proper perspective. The modern industrial sector was, at most, 10 per cent of the national product of Pakistan in 1968 (including East Pakistan) and now is about 15 per cent of the national product of West Pakistan. Even if the 22 families control two-thirds of the industrial assets in the modern sector—and the word is control, not own—it still represents a rather limited control over total wealth in Pakistan.
The distinction, unfortunately, was lost in the heated discussions of the past five years. What is more, it was not so much the concentration of income and wealth in the hands of a few industrial family groups which raised fundamental questions of policy. Such a concentration was probably inevitable in the initial stages of development and to give them their due, the early entrepreneurs did an excellent job of rapid industrialization. What gave us real cause for anxiety was the growing collusion between industrial and financial interests so that a few family groups had come to acquire control over basic economic decision making.
For all practical purposes, the 22 families had become by 1968 both the planning commission and the ministry of finance for the private sector. They preempted most investment permits, import licenses, foreign credits and government patronage because they controlled or influenced most of the decision-making forums handing out such permissions. They had virtually established a stranglehold on the system and were in a position to keep out any new entrepreneurs.
The 22 families were a by-product of government policies and a primitive capitalistic system. The Government did not have the courage to change the company law of 1913 under which the industrial sector of Pakistan was still being governed in 1968. This antiquated framework of capitalism permitted the industrial sector to have managing agencies, cartels, trusts and all other anti-social practices aimed at cheating both the consumer and the Government. The latter became both a conscious and unconscious ally of the private industrialists by giving them generous protection, excessive tax concessions, explicit and hidden subsidies, and representation on many decision making forums.
If we are to evaluate properly the role of the 22 families in Pakistan, we must see it in the perspective of the capitalist system that the country has evolved over time. In blunt terms, Pakistan’s capitalist system is still one of the most primitive in the world. Under it economic feudalism prevails. A handful of people, whether landlords or industrialists or bureaucrats, make all the basic decisions and the system often works simply because there is an alliance between various vested interests.
Unfortunately, most of the criticism of the 22 families in the past five years has been directed to individual family groups rather than to the reform of the basic framework of capitalism. The present Government has introduced some limited reforms by abolishing the managing agency system and introducing a more progressive labour policy as well as by taking away management though not ownership, of certain key industries. However, these are rather small patches on a thoroughly rotten fabric of a primitive and feudal economic system. What is required is a fairly drastic surgery if a move towards a more enlightened and socially responsible capitalism is to be made.
Pakistan badly needs to broaden the base of its economic and political power to evolve a development strategy that reaches out to the bulk of the population; and to innovate a new lifestyle which is more consistent with its own poverty and its stage of development. This is not going to be easy because in the past, modernization was foisted on a basically feudal structure in which political participation was often denied, growth of responsible institutions stifled and free speech curbed, and where all economic and political power gravitated towards a small minority.
There is not much that can be done to save development from being warped in favour of a few in a system like this unless the basic premises of the system are changed. The new constituency of peasants, labour and students that President Bhutto hopes to fashion has still not taken shape. Unless there is such a new constituency, unless the existing power structure is drastically shaken, there is not much of a mandate or instrument available for radical change.
The slogan of 22 families, therefore, has been rather overdone in Pakistan and taken too literally. At times, it has become a convenient camouflage for action against a few individual industrialists rather than reforming the economic, as well as social and political institutions. This is sad because the 22 families are a symptom, not a cause. The basic problem is not the 22 families, individually or collectively, but the system that created them. And it is time that Pakistan looked to the basic causes of its problems and not merely to the symptoms.
In addition to his economic populism, Bhutto’s criticism of Pakistan’s dependence on the United States, and his argument that American policy was to bring Pakistan under Indian hegemony, also contributed to his popular appeal. Anti-Americanism was strong despite all the military aid that the United States had given to Pakistan.
The United States’ position is fairly clear. What it is after is in its highest global interest and to that extent understandable. The fact that Pakistan has to pay a high price is relevant only to the people of Pakistan. It would be better to face the ordeal dispassionately rather than with a torrent of protest, which subsides without any corresponding benefit to the national cause. This is not the first crisis in Pakistan’s relations with the United States. The pattern has been fairly evident for quite some time. Each successive action the United States has taken has been for the attainment of fixed objectives. Each crisis has been followed by voluble press comments and a spate of statements, which are afterwards relegated to the archives. This strategy could be described as a Please Punch approach, a method to confuse the leadership of Pakistan and weaken the resolve of its people against an overall compromise.
An action is taken to move Pakistan towards global alignment, which occasions loud but ineffectual protests. Then an economic carrot is dangled in front of the Pakistan Government to persuade its official spokesmen to return to their desks. The inducement has taken many forms: the supply of food under PL-480, on conditions varying with the requirements of United States’ diplomacy; project and commodity aid, determined separately and collectively in Consortium meetings held twice a year by the World Bank; project aid outside the consortium, as in support of the Indus Basin Treaty and salinity and water-logging projects; support for the Pakistani rupee; and the utilization of counterpart funds for rural development and other similar projects. Again, after a decent lapse of time, comes another punch prompting protests which are soothed by further economic palliatives; and so the caravan moves towards its destination. This pattern of action began in November 1959, when there was a border skirmish between India and China on the heights of the Ladakh plateau. …
With the change of the United States’ attitude, neutrality and non-alignment, once denounced by Dulles as immoral, began to gain respectability. The world was reminded of India’s importance, of the vastness of her territory, and the significance of her large population. There were pressing reasons why she should be made a show-piece of democracy in Asia. In 1961 disproportionate economic assistance was allocated to non-aligned India in preference to aligned Pakistan. … The next painful punch came during the Sino-Indian border clash of 1962, when the United States seized the opportunity to pour in massive military assistance to India in contravention of its commitments to Pakistan. Subsequently, a long-term military assistance commitment was made in 1964 to non-aligned, neutral India to the peril of aligned Pakistan, in violation of a prior commitment. In short, the sub-continent’s frantic arms race was introduced and encouraged by the United States. …
In our neo-colonial times, methods of coercion are more refined, as India and Pakistan have not been alone in discovering. Some countries have been able to resist submission to the hegemony of Global Powers, others have not. We in Pakistan, however, are concerned with our own situation. Our dependence on the United States in the military field has been total and not inconsiderable in economic and food requirements. …
It might be said that the extension of America’s influence in our sub-continent is rather different from the concessions given to the European trading communities, and there are indeed differences; but why should one see less danger in today’s foreign military base than in the peaceful trading stations of the past? Those peaceful trading stations turned out to be bridgeheads for conquest.
[Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, The Myth of Independence (Lahore: Oxford University Press, 1969), 85–89.]
After a coup, Bhutto was arrested by the military government of General Zia ul-Haq in 1977 on the charge of conspiring to kill an opposition leader. In a trial widely viewed as unfair—and despite international calls for clemency—he was given the death sentence by the Lahore High Court and the Supreme Court. Zia’s military government carried out the death sentence on April 4, 1979.
While in prison Bhutto wrote a remarkable book on his career and fate. Published in India, the book refutes the charges made against him. The military government denied the authenticity of the book, but it is generally accepted as Bhutto’s work.
Since 18th March 1978, I have spent twenty-two to twenty-three hours out of the twenty-four in a congested and suffocating death cell. I have been hemmed in by its sordidness and stink throughout the heat and the rain of the long hot summer. The light is poor. My eye sight has worsened. My health has been shattered. I have been in solitary confinement for almost a year, but my morale is high because I am not made of the wood which burns easily. Through sheer will-power, in conditions that are adverse in the extreme, I have written this rejoinder.
It is said that some good comes out of the worst of evils. The good that might come out of this evil document is that perhaps the confusion over scurrilous publicity and the right of public trial will be removed once and for all. When I protested on the conversion of my trial for murder from open proceedings into an in camera trial for my defence, somehow I could not make clear to the Judges the difference between publicity and justice. I was demanding a public trial because the concept of justice is inextricably intertwined with an open trial. The political and legal struggle for an open trial, especially if it involves capital punishment, is writ large in golden letters.
Forget the fact that I have been the President and Prime Minister of Pakistan. Forget the fact that I am the leader of the premier party of this country. Forget all these things. But I am a citizen of this country, and I am facing a murder trial. Even the ordinary citizen—and I consider myself one—is not denied justice.
I was not a practising lawyer. From 9th January 1978, I was not being defended by lawyers. I had not heard the prosecution witnesses during my long illness and absence from the court. I had been insulted and humiliated by the court during the open trial for three months. The prosecution case had received the full blast of publicity. The trial had been converted into a secret conclave. The dice was completely loaded against me. But with all those harrowing handicaps, when I sought to address the closed court in defence of my life, I was not permitted because I wanted to hear the Prosecution before replying as a layman, without legal notes, without the aid of law books and legal rulings.
It is wrong to state that I did not try to co-operate with the trial bench. Nothing short of my life was at stake. I had sense enough to extend co-operation and courtesy to those who would tell me that I should hang until I am dead. But the trial bench wanted me to prostrate myself before it. This is why I had to tell the bench that I would not crawl and cringe before it. A Muslim can only prostrate himself before his Creator. But the bench, in particular the Chief Justice, was always rude, abrasive and insulting to me. In striking contrast, the Chief Justice was kindness itself to the confessing co-accused. He smiled at them. He enjoyed their rustic sense of humour at my expense. He was patient with them in a fatherly fashion. He would translate the questions in Urdu and Punjabi for them whenever he thought that they were not able to follow the English. The taunts, the frowns and shouts were reserved only for me. I was favoured with the commands to “shut up, get up” and “take this man away until he regains his senses.” In these circumstances, to talk of co-operation is to ask for the patience of a saint.
[Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, “The Death Cell and History,” in If I Am Assassinated (New Delhi: Vikas, 1979), 194–195.]
During this period Pakistan was ruled by the army chief, General Zia ul-Haq (1977–1988), who dislodged Bhutto’s civilian government on July 5, 1977, and ruled under martial law until December 30, 1985. He civilianized his military rule by restoring the Constitution (with changes to strengthen his position), held carefully regulated nonparty elections, and co-opted a section of the political elite. He ruled under civilian dispensation until August 17, 1988, when he died in an air crash. The civilianization of his military rule did not shift his power base; he continued to hold the office of army chief, and to derive his primary support from the army.
Zia ul-Haq used the state apparatus to enforce Islam on conservative and orthodox lines. This was done partly because of his own religious convictions, and partly as a matter of political expediency. This policy enabled him to cultivate Islamic groups and parties to legitimize his rule, and undercut the opposition by major political parties like the PPP and others. His identification with highly conservative and orthodox Islamic groups increased as Pakistan engaged in building up Afghan-Islamic resistance with the help of the United States and conservative Arab states like Saudi Arabia, in order to challenge the Soviet troop presence in Afghanistan during the years 1979 to 1989. This policy helped the Zia regime to obtain diplomatic acceptance at the international level, and it obtained economic and military assistance from the United States and other sources.
Six aspects of Zia’s policy of implementation of Islam are noteworthy: First, Islamic “Shariat” benches were established at the provincial high court level in 1979. One year later, a Federal Shariat Court replaced various Shariat benches. A Shariat Appellate Bench was set up in the Supreme Court. Some of the judges for these courts/benches were Islamic scholars. Second, five laws were introduced in 1979 requiring the imposition of Islamic punishment for certain crimes. These laws were collectively called the Hudood Ordinances (see below), and were objected to by women’s groups as being discriminatory against women. Other laws also viewed as discriminatory included a Punishment and Compensation law, proposed in 1982, and the Law of Evidence, of 1984. Third, interest-free banking was gradually introduced. A compulsory Islamic tax called “Zakat” was imposed on bank savings accounts and other investments at the rate of 2.5 percent per annum. Fourth, school and college courses were revised to accommodate orthodox Islamic teachings and a nationalistic ideology of Pakistan. Generous funding was made available for religious education. Fifth, Islamic codes were strictly imposed on social life, including Islam-oriented censorship of cinema, television, and other cultural and literary activities. Sixth, Islamic militancy was promoted as an instrument of foreign policy in Afghanistan. This strengthened Islamic orthodoxy, sectarianism, and militant groups in Pakistan.
The following excerpt is from General Zia’s inaugural address to the Eighth Session of the Federal Council of Pakistan in 1983, after he had been in power for six years. The speech reflects his satisfaction that the country was peaceful. It is also shows his personal religious beliefs, his reasons for attempting to enforce Islamic law, and his vision of democracy.
I have to compliment everybody for the prevalence of an atmosphere of amity and moderation. But it is an irony and a point to ponder as to why this observation should be made about our country. This is being mentioned regarding the Islamic Republic of Pakistan which we know as the citadel of Islam and a country created in the name of Islam and where for the last nearly seven years we have embarked upon a process of Islamisation. We have unitedly tried to establish Islam as a way of life. Therefore it is axiomatic that in our country religious unity should be a fact of life. We, in our country should be united like a phalanx, more so in the matter of religion so that outsiders should know that this country is so galvanised and united that no wedge can be driven and no cracks and fissures can be created. Please ponder over the fact that Pakistan has been achieved in the name of Islam. Islam enjoins upon its followers unity and brotherhood. Islam is a religion of peace. As the head of this Islamic country I want the people to know that complete peace and harmony prevailed during the recent [holy day] and that this should become a pattern for us in future. The demand of the time is that we should only concentrate on the measures for Islamising and for consolidating the country.
Islam stands for peace and preaches peace. Islam lays down clear principles for politics and statecraft. Politics is not a forbidden fruit. Politics with altruistic objectives is a prayer. Through such sanctified politics one can serve both religion and mundane interests. What place do the political parties have in an Islamic polity is a question which should be answered by the religious scholars. However on this question I will speak later. But I entreat everyone with all humility that Islam enjoins upon all its followers to forge unity and remain steadfast on the path of Allah. Islam expects of us that we will not fritter away our energies through divisive ways. Within the Islamic polity there is hardly any scope for creating divisions in the name of politics. I fail to understand how formation of parties propagating an ideology other than Islam, can be permitted in an Islamic country.
You may create a platform in the name of Islam, Quran and Sunnah. But how is it permissible to form a party which should open its door only to such people who subscribe to a particular ideology (other then Islam). You may invoke Allah and His Prophet and spread the Message of God. You may undertake to serve the people. All this activity will be naturally legitimate. But in my opinion the country cannot brook the formation of parties and groups in the name of politics which instead of galvanising the Muslims should impair and undermine their unity.
To my thinking such negative attitude is antagonistic to the spirit of Islam as well as contrary to the democratic forms. In Islamic polity there is hardly any place for opposition for the sake of opposition. Islam is the path of golden mean and reason.
[General Zia-ul-Haq, Islam Stands for Unity and Brotherhood (Islamabad: Government of Pakistan, 1983), 5–6.]
The women’s rights movement in Pakistan can be traced back to the early years of Independence, and since 1947 the issues felt to be most pressing, in addition to the tactics and reactions thereto, have depended partly on the types of government in power. The following five selections offer legal, polemical, descriptive, and poetic windows into women’s rights and concerns in the contexts of state policy, religion, and society.
In the 1960s Pakistan, along with Tunisia, was regarded as a great exemplar of progressive modernity, as can be seen in the Muslim Family Laws Ordinance of 1961, the outcome of the report prepared by the Commission on Marriage and Family Law in 1955. This report, headed by Justice Abdur Rasheed, attempted to liberalize family law somewhat, and to safeguard the rights of women. For instance, while the commission did not outlaw either unilateral and arbitrary divorce by the husband or polygamy, it did mandate the oversight of an Arbitration Council, and the agreement of current wives in the case of a husband’s remarriage. This report was passionately denounced by some Islamic clerics for what was perceived as an “anti-Islamic” character, but General Ayub Khan passed several of the report’s recommendations into law in 1961. It has never been revoked.
Of its thirteen sections, numbers 5–9 are selected below.
5. REGISTRATION OF MARRIAGE
(1) Every marriage solemnized under Muslim Law shall be registered in accordance with the provisions of this Ordinance.
(2) For the purpose of registration of marriage under this Ordinance, the Union Council shall grant licenses to one or more persons, to be called Nikah Registrars, but in no case shall more than one Nikah Registrar be licensed for any one Ward.
(3) Every marriage not solemnized by the Nikah Registrar shall, for the purpose of registration under this Ordinance be reported to him by the person who has solemnized such marriage.
(4) Whoever contravenes the provisions of sub-section (3) shall be punishable with simple imprisonment for a term which may extend to three months, or with fine which may extend to one thousand rupees, or with both.
(5) The form of nikahnama [marriage contract], the registers to be maintained by Nikah Registrars, the records to be preserved by Union Councils, the manner in which marriage shall be registered and copies of nikhanama shall be supplied to parties, and the fees to be charged thereof, shall be such as may be prescribed.
(6) Any person may, on payment of the prescribed fee, if any, inspect at the office of the Union Council the record preserved under sub-section (5), or obtain a copy of any entry therein.
6. POLYGAMY
(1) No man, during the subsistence of an existing marriage, shall except with the previous permission in writing of the Arbitration Council, contract another marriage, nor shall any such marriage contracted without such permission be registered under this Ordinance.
(2) An application for permission under sub-section (1) shall be submitted to the Chairman in the prescribed manner together with the prescribed fee, and shall state reasons for the proposed marriage, and whether the consent of existing wife or wives has been obtained thereto.
(3) On receipt of the application under sub-section (3), Chairman shall ask the applicant and his existing wife or wives each to nominate a representative, and the Arbitration Council so constituted may, if satisfied that the proposed marriage is necessary and just, grant, subject to such condition if any, as may be deemed fit, the permission applied for.
(4) In deciding the application the Arbitration Council shall record its reasons for the decision and any party may, in the prescribed manner, within the prescribed period, and on payment of the prescribed fee, prefer an application for revision, to the Collector concerned and his decision shall be final and shall not be called in question in any Court.
(5) Any man who contracts another marriage without the permission of the Arbitration Council shall,
(a) pay immediately the entire amount of the dower whether prompt or deferred, due to the existing wife or wives, which amount, if not so paid, shall be recoverable as arrears of land revenue; and
(b) on conviction upon complaint be punishable with the simple imprisonment which may extend to one year, or with fine which may extend to five thousand rupees, or with both.
7. TALAQ
(1) Any man who wishes to divorce his wife shall, as soon as may be after the pronouncement of talaq [“I divorce you”—the formula of repudiation] in any form whatsoever, give the chairman a notice in writing of his having done so, and shall supply a copy thereof to the wife.
(2) Whoever, contravenes the provisions of sub-section (1) shall be punishable with simple imprisonment for a term which may extend to one year, or with fine which may extend to five thousand rupees, or with both.
(3) Save as provided in sub-section (5) talaq, unless revoked earlier, expressly or otherwise, shall not be effective until the expiration of ninety days from day on which notice under sub-section (1) is delivered to the Chairman.
(4) Within thirty days of the receipt of notice under Sub-section (1), the Chairman shall constitute an Arbitration Council for the purpose of bringing about a reconciliation between the parties, and the Arbitration Council shall take all steps necessary to bring about such reconciliation.
(5) If the wife be pregnant at the time talaq is pronounced, talaq shall not be effective until the period mentioned in sub-section (3) or the pregnancy, whichever later, ends.
(6) Nothing shall debar a wife whose marriage has been terminated by talaq effective under this section from remarrying the same husband, without an intervening marriage with a third person, unless such termination is for the third time so effective.
8. DISSOLUTION OF MARRIAGE OTHERWISE THAN BY TALAQ
Where the right to divorce has been duly delegated to the wife and she wishes to exercise that right, or where any of the parties to a marriage wishes to dissolve the marriage otherwise than by talaq the provisions of section (7) shall, mutatis mutandis and so far as applicable, apply.
(1) If any husband fails to maintain his wife adequately, or where there are more wives than one, fails to maintain them equitably, the wife, or all or any of the wives, may in addition to seeking any other legal remedy available apply to the Chairman who shall constitute an Arbitration Council to determine the matter, and the Arbitration Council may issue a certificate specifying the amount which shall be paid as maintenance by the husband.
(2) A husband or wife may, in the prescribed manner, within the prescribed period, and on payment of the prescribed fee, prefer an application for revision of the certificate, to the Collector concerned and his decision shall be final and shall not be called in question in any Court.
(3) Any amount payable under sub-section (1) or (2) if, not paid in the due time, shall be recoverable as arrears of land revenue.
The women’s movement in Pakistan became more active and assertive during the days of General Zia ul-Haq, who attempted to legitimize his rule by building support among conservative and orthodox Islamic groups. Since these policies tended to reduce the rights of women and their role in society, women’s movements proliferated. Later, a number of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) also came forward to advance the cause of women’s rights and their place in the state system and society.
As evident in the selection below, by Asma Jahangir and Hina Gilani, the Hudood Ordinances and other measures adopted by the Zia government in the 1980s have been widely criticized as contentious and harmful to women’s rights. In response to calls for their repeal or amendment, in 2006 the Women’s Protection Bill—crafted by former attorney general Makhdoom Ali Khan and the chairman of the Council of Islamic Ideology, Muhammad Khalid Masud—was passed. This new bill brings rape under the Pakistan Penal Code, which is based on civil, not Sharia, law. This means that adultery and nonmarital consensual sex are still offenses, but now judges can try rape cases in criminal rather than Islamic courts, thus doing away with the need for the four witnesses and allowing convictions to be made on the basis of forensic and circumstantial evidence. Punishments for convicted extramarital sex (fornication) are now more lenient (imprisonment of up to five years and a fine of Rs. 10,000), and perpetrators of rape are punishable with ten to tweny-five years of imprisonment, or with death if the crime is particularly execrable. Adultery, however, remains under the jurisdiction of the Hudood Ordinances and is punishable with death by stoning.
Asma Jilani Jahangir (b. 1952) and her sister Hina Jilani (b. 1953) are human rights lawyer-activists who work in Pakistan to prevent the persecution of religious minorities, the abuse of women, and the exploitation of children. In 1980 they helped found the Women’s Action Forum (WAF), whose mandate was to fight discriminatory legislation, such as the Proposed Law of Evidence, through which the value of a woman’s testimony was reduced to half that of a man’s, and the Hudood Ordinances, through which victims of rape had to prove their innocence (through the marshaling of four male witnesses to the rape) or else face punishment themselves. In 1986 Jahangir and Jilani set up a legal aid center in Lahore; in 1991 they established a shelter for women. Both sisters are founding members of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.
The first laws introduced by Ziaul Haq in the process of Islamisation were the Hudood Ordinances. These laws remain controversial to this day. While many agree that the laws are far from perfect, few are willing to ask for their total repeal. …
The Hudood laws, promulgated in 1979 and enforced in 1980, are a collection of five criminal laws, collectively known as the Hudood Ordinances. The Offences against Property Ordinance deals with the crime of theft and armed robbery. The Offence of Zina Ordinance relates to the crime of rape, abduction, adultery and fornication. The word Zina covers adultery as well as fornication. The Offence of Qazf Ordinance relates to a false accusation of Zina. The Prohibition Order prohibits use of alcohol and narcotics. The last is the Execution of Punishment of Whipping Ordinance, which prescribes the mode of whipping for those convicted under the Hudood Ordinances.
The Hudood laws apply to Muslim and non-Muslim Pakistanis. Certain provisions of Hudood relating to prohibition of alcohol extend to non-Muslim foreigners as well.
Ostensibly, the Hudood Ordinances were promulgated to bring the criminal legal system of Pakistan in conformity with the injunctions of Islam. Hence, the forms of punishments recognised by Muslim jurists are introduced in the Ordinances. Two levels of punishment and, correspondingly, two separate sets of rules of evidence are prescribed. The first level or category is the one called the Hadd which literally means the “limit” and the other Tazir, which means “to punish.” Hadd punishments are definitely fixed leaving no room for the judge to take account of mitigating or extenuating circumstances of the crime. Hadd for theft is amputation of a hand; for armed robbery it is amputation of a foot, or thirty whippings or death penalty according to specific circumstances enumerated in the law. For rape or Zina committed by adult married Muslims Hadd punishment is stoning to death; for adult non-Muslims and adult single Muslims it is 100 lashes. Hadd for committing Qazf and for drinking of alcohol (for Muslims alone) is eighty stripes. Tazir is simply a fall-back position from Hadd. For instance, lack of evidence for Hadd does not exonerate the accused of the criminal liability. The accused is still liable for Tazir. …
As long as Hadd remains a punishment, its application cannot be ruled out. It will be a hanging sword for those who remain ignorant of the law or are unable to get proper legal assistance. Even if it is not executed, a mere threat of its application can psychologically cripple anybody. Further, the Hadd sentences may be passed more frequently if political power is captured by fundamentalists. On the other hand, its abolition will be a clear message that the Pakistani society is largely averse to barbaric forms of punishment. Its reintroduction will not be easy.
Another example is the unacceptability of a female’s evidence in awarding Hadd, particularly in rape, where the victim’s own evidence has no value. A gang of men can thus rape all the residents of a women’s hostel, but lack of ocular evidence of four Muslim males will rule out the imposition of a Hadd punishment. Rules of evidence for Hadd are illogical. Testimony of a Muslim female is totally unacceptable. Testimony of non-Muslims is allowed only where the accused is himself a non-Muslim. Non-Muslims should hope and pray for a non-Muslim to steal from them.
[Asma Jahangir and Hina Jilani, The Hudood Ordinances: A Divine Sanction? (Lahore: Rotas, 1990), 18, 23–24, 47, 49.]
The following two selections focus on contradictions in the status of women in Pakistan by highlighting the fact that some women have held important positions in the state system while the majority suffer from hardships and deprivations.
The first selection is by Farida Shaheed, a sociologist and women’s rights activist, also a founding member of WAF, who in 2009 was named director of research at Shirkat Gah–Women’s Resource Centre.
Pakistani women present a series of contrasts and paradoxes. Women have served as ambassadors since the 1950s; a woman has been elected Prime Minister, not once but twice; we have women pilots and bankers and chartered accountants, as well as internationally known human rights activists and artistes; the first woman to head a United Nations agency was a Pakistani (Nafisa Sadik who headed the UNFPA). Yet, in 2003, the statistical profile of Pakistani women is distressing. Only one out of three women and girls above 12 years entered the 21st century able to read and write. This means two out of every three women need another person’s help for even the simplest tasks; reading a road sign to know where they are; filling out government forms to get an ID card or register as voters; understanding written instructions for administering medicine and warnings on pesticides. Every twenty minutes, one woman dies in childbirth, and related complications. … Though women directly contribute to household income in rural areas where they work in the fields and look after livestock as well as in urban areas, few receive [cash] in hand, fewer still are counted as employed so that Pakistan’s female labor force participation rate is one of the lowest in the world. … Then there are negative social customs and practices widespread enough for the Pakistan Commission on the Status of Women to comment in 1985 that “Women in general are dehumanized and exercise little control over either themselves or on affairs affecting their well being. They are treated as possessions rather than as self-reliant self-regulating humans. They are bought and sold, beaten and mutilated, even killed with impunity and social approval. They are dispossessed and disinherited in spite of legal safeguards. The vast majority are made to work for as long as sixteen to eighteen hours a day, without any payment, while the Quran even provides for the husband to pay the wife for nursing her own infant. Their status is based mostly on local customs.”
[Farida Shaheed, “The Empowerment of Women: Pakistan’s Paradoxical Record,” in Abbas Rashid, ed., Pakistan: Perspectives on State and Society (Lahore: SAHE, 2004), 201–202.]
This second selection is by Tahmina Rashid, a Pakistani scholar based in Australia, whose work focuses on rural women in the Punjab, Pakistan.
Pakistan provided constitutional guarantee to women in all fields, including the political and economic rights enjoyed by men. However, in the absence of supportive informal moral codes and more formal structures, mere constitutional equality could not guarantee genuine legal, social, political and economic equality. Even if desired, the welfare of women could not become a priority due to strained resources and other compulsions which forced women to occupy a secondary category in the state hierarchy established by the policy makers. The meagre concessions given to women in Pakistan were in effect, confined to the elite while the underprivileged were denied rights on the basis of class as well as gender.
Throughout the history of Pakistan, regardless of their class, women were exploited in the name of custom and tradition, as well as religion. … In Pakistan, women’s issues are generally interpreted and analysed either in the context of Islam or in relation to the state; and identities like class and location, and modes of female agency, have also been understood in relation to these categories. Recently, feminists have begun to attract academic inquiry in a broader context. Such views arise from a variety of stimuli, including a visible religious factor aided by the presence of powerful ecclesiastic groups, often enjoying official patronage and magnified in the past, especially during the regime of Zia-ul-Haq. Women belonging to the religious right, such as Jamaat-e-Islami and Deobandi activism in Pakistan, are disdainful of the idea of feminism in all its manifestations. In their opinion … Islam has already bestowed sufficient rights upon women and it is only necessary to implement these rights in a comprehensive Islamic setting.
[Tahmina Rashid, Contested Representation: Punjabi Women in Feminist Debate in Pakistan (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2006), 122–123.]
Kishwar Naheed (b. 1940) and Fahmida Riaz (b. 1946) are well-known feminist Pakistani poets, both of whom migrated from India to Pakistan after Partition and Independence, and espouse leftist, liberal causes. Riaz spent seven years in India after the threat of imprisonment in Pakistan for her views; disillusioned by the rise of Hindu nationalism, she returned to Pakistan on the eve of Benazir Bhutto’s wedding, in 1987. In powerful writing that evokes the pathos of women’s situations and struggles, Riaz and Naheed depict both the changes wrought in domestic life over the past six to seven decades in Pakistan, and the ways in which male dominance still remains a challenge for Pakistani women.
In the poems selected for inclusion here, both poets write as if from a mother to her daughter.
INSIGHT
We grew up inside a cabin
Whose crooked walls were carved
Into a thousand angles;
Whose rafters bent low, like
My mother’s back
Whose door would hardly open or close
Without sesame oil;
And whose gates mirrored a thousand openings.
Yet the cabin,
Too small even to house the wind,
Housed our growth.
Our mother would bake bread, one child
In her stomach, one lounging in her lap.
No complaint fell from her lips.
I myself am a mother
But my darling ones
Were nurtured in the warmth of a nurse’s lap.
My life is easy, ordering
Breakfast from the bakery, all my needs
From the bazaar.
I know
If, like my mother’s, my back were bent
No one would help,
No one would recite prayers at the shrine of a mother’s love.
All relations are bound by interest:
A mother’s love and affection are nothing;
Your love and my love is Nothing.
[Kishwar Naheed, “Insight,” from M. A. R. Habib, ed., An Anthology of Modern Urdu Poetry (New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2003), 175–177.]
LULLABY
…
I remember that night
When you were born
That night was very dark
Labor tormented with pain
But upon hearing your cry a candlewick was set to light
Your beautiful beautiful limbs
Fresh, fresh, healthy and prospering,
Dearest can’t manage to kiss you
Dearest from shaking and shivering
I know a wolf is stood on my doorway
Drinking my blood, consuming my youth
Wolf nourished by money
One who rules the world
Cursing us from age to age
Because of whom in this world
Thinking is considered a crime
To love—a major sin
He has tasted the blood of a human spirit
Now watching your every move
Dearest cannot sleep at night
Dearest I am constantly awake
Dearest borne of my womb listen
This world is one of injustice
What skills can I teach you?
Women who came and went
Embroidering sprigs on net upon net
Filling platter upon platter
Which the world ate
Today every kitchen is empty
What can I show you
What skill can I teach you!
Whenever I take you in my arms
I hear the call of time
I hear great battlecries
I hear the call to war
I hear this again and again
Your skill is “bravery”!
Listen my dear little one
This earth, this sky
All the grandeur of peace
The markets full of grain
Until that is … ours
We cannot live in peace
Not supported by anyone
There is no other solution
Do not fear the wolf
Dear heart! Fight with conviction
Do not even despair
I will teach you bravery
Turn you into a lioness
Fear will not lurk near you
Listen my dear new little one
You will not be alone
Your friends will be by your side
Your companions, your friends
Will be with you at every step
Many hands will be held together
This is my wish.
[Fahmida Riaz, “Lullaby,” in Amina Yaqin, “Issues of Translation: Three Contemporary Urdu Poems,” SOAS Literary Review, Internet publication (1999).]
The death of General Zia ul-Haq in an air crash in August 1988 ushered in an era of political civilian-elected governance. However, the military top brass exercised influence on key policy issues from the sidelines. There were four elected governments—two each formed by Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif—and three interim governments for holding general elections. Four general elections were held during this period—in 1988, 1990, 1993, and 1997. No civilian government completed the full term of five years.
Benazir Bhutto (1953–2007), head of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), assumed the office of prime minister in December 1988, to become the first woman prime minister in an Islamic state. Her government was dismissed in August 1990 by the president, with the support of the army chief. Nawaz Sharif (b. 1949), of the Pakistan Muslim League (PML), became prime minister in October 1990, and his government was removed by the president in April 1993, although the Supreme Court restored it in May. As the conflict between the president and Nawaz Sharif intensified, the army chief forced both to resign in July 1993. After the elections, Benazir Bhutto returned to power in October 1993, but she was dismissed from office in November 1996 by the president, with the blessings of the army chief. Nawaz Sharif was reelected in February 1997. His government was dislodged in a coup led by General Pervez Musharraf in October 1999.
The following excerpt from Benazir Bhutto’s book provides her narrative of the problems she faced on the way to becoming prime minister in December 1988. Note that her government saw no change in the status of women, and she seems to have forgotten her own father’s role in the increasing Islamization of the state; she places the responsibility solely in Zia’s hands.
The alliance between elements of the Pakistani military and religious political parties began before the Zia years but reached its zenith under his dictatorship. … Zia’s death and the end of the Afghan war coincided; both threatened the ISI [Inter-Services Intelligence]–Jamaat lock on political power in Pakistan. This power arrangement was cemented under the formation of the Pakistan Muslim League. The party was composed of political leaders groomed and funded by the ISI, which functioned in tandem with the Jamaat-i-Islami. … The intelligence agencies assembled a coalition of seven Islamist parties around the Pakistan Muslim League to run against the Pakistan Peoples Party in the [1988] National Assembly elections. This ISI-created political chimera was called the Islami Jamhoori Ittehad (IJI) (Islamic Democratic Alliance). …
Having failed to stop the PPP from winning a parliamentary majority, the ISI now began plotting to dismember the PPP. Makhdoom Amin Fahim of the PPP was met by General Hamid Gul, the head of the ISI. Makhdoom was asked to defect and told that if he could bring ten members of parliament with him, he would be made prime minister of Pakistan. He refused.
Despite the two-to-one victory of the PPP over the IJI for the National Assembly, President Ghulam Ishaq Khan defied the parliamentary norm of inviting the leader of the winning party in a parliamentary democracy to form a government. Instead he called different leaders to see if he could cobble together a coalition government with the support of small parties and independents. But since the PPP had an outright majority, he could not. After dillydallying with coalition building for fifteen days, he was forced to call on me to form the government. However, during this critical fifteen-day lapse, the enemies of democracy contrived an outcome in the powerful Punjabi Provincial Assembly that manipulated the vote to allow for an ISI-IJI majority (Nawaz Sharif, a Zia protégé with Islamist leanings, was made the chief minister). Despite all the odds, on December 2, 1988, I was sworn in as the democratically elected prime minister of Pakistan, the first woman in history elected to head an Islamic state. This was the moment of democracy, the moment to honor all who had come before, who had given their lives or been tortured and lashed and exiled while fighting for freedom.
[Benazir Bhutto, Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy, and the West (London: Simon and Schuster, 2008), 194, 195, 197–198.]
India’s decision to explode five nuclear devices on May 11 and 13, 1998 (see chapter 8), confronted Pakistan with a choice: should it conduct similar tests to demonstrate its nuclear weapon capability, or hold back? There was intense discussion and debate among Pakistan’s civilian leaders, military top brass, and citizens in general, on how to respond to the Indian nuclear explosion. This debate ended with a consensus in favor of immediate nuclear testing. On May 28 and 30, 1998, Pakistan tested six nuclear devices. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif announced on May 28 that Pakistan had also completed successful nuclear tests.
My dear countrymen: Peace be unto you. … Today, God the great has bestowed us with the courage and determination to make a decision to take a defensive step. … Today we have fully settled the account of the nuclear tests conducted by India recently and have carried out five successful nuclear tests. … Sanctions will be imposed. Hard and difficult times will come. … By the grace of God, our troops are imbued with the spirit of faith in God and are ready to face the enemy. … Our nuclear scientists and technicians too, by the grace of God, are endowed with divine capabilities. … We had deprived ourselves of our self-reliance by seeking loans from others. Now we will not look at any outsider. … We will depend on our own strength and will seek help only from God.
Pakistan’s civilian democracy (1988–1999) came to an end when the army dislodged Nawaz Sharif’s government and assumed power on October 12, 1999. This was Pakistan’s fourth military takeover; it lasted until General Pervez Musharraf civilianized his rule in October–November 2002.
On October 12, 1999, army chief General Pervez Musharraf was flying back from Colombo, Sri Lanka, to Karachi. Before his aircraft landed, the then–prime minister Nawaz Sharif removed him from the command of the army and appointed his own preferred general to this position. The pilot of the aircraft carrying Pervez Musharraf was directed by Pakistan’s Civil Aviation Authority not to land in Karachi. On learning of this, the Army Corps Commander, in Karachi, used his troops to take control of the airport, making it possible for Musharraf’s aircraft to land there. Meanwhile other top brass in Rawalpindi arrested Nawaz Sharif and dismissed his government. General Musharraf then took over as the chief executive and suspended the Constitution.
Nawaz Sharif was put on trial and convicted in 2000 for “hijacking” the aircraft carrying General Musharraf and other passengers. In December 2000, under an arrangement with the government of Saudi Arabia, President Pervez Musharraf remitted Nawaz Sharif’s sentence and allowed him to leave for Saudi Arabia, where he was supposed to stay for ten years.
General Pervez Musharraf civilianized his military rule by taking measured steps on the pattern of General Zia ul-Haq and Field Marshal Ayub Khan. These steps were a referendum for getting himself elected president for five years (April 2002); changes in the Constitution to strengthen his role as the president (August); carefully managed general elections (October); co-optation of a section of the political elite, and installation of a pliant prime minister (November); and full restoration of the Constitution (February 2003).
In October 2007 Musharraf got himself reelected for a second term despite a countrywide protest against him that was sparked by his attempt to remove Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, chief justice of the Supreme Court, in March 2007. His political situation became more precarious when lawyers and others continued the agitation, and especially once Benazir Bhutto (October 2007) and Nawaz Sharif (November 2007) had both returned to Pakistan. Musharraf attempted to restore his political fortune by suspending the Constitution, imposing a state of emergency, and removing more than sixty judges of the High and Supreme Courts, including the chief justice. However, this only triggered more protests. He restored the Constitution on December 15, 2007, by making unilateral changes in it which were rejected by all political parties. In the February 2008 general elections, his loyalist party, the Pakistan Muslim League–Quaid-i-Azam (PML-Q), in power since 2002, lost badly, and two of his main rival parties—the PPP and the Pakistan Muslim League–Nawaz (PML-N)—emerged as the two leading political parties.
In his English-language autobiography In the Line of Fire, General Pervez Musharraf explains the political and economic situation at the time of the takeover, and outlines the goals of his military government.
I have no hesitation in admitting that initially I was quite overawed by what I had gotten into. My special worry was my utter lack of knowledge of economics and finance. I decided to learn on the job through anyone and everyone by asking questions unabashedly. In any case what I soon realized was that none of this was rocket science. Every educated, sensitive Pakistani was well aware of the country’s problems. It did not take me long to identify the maladies and work out remedies.
Our economy was shattered, and we were on the verge of bankruptcy. For years, our leaders had avoided any institutional checks and had misgoverned the nation with impunity. Corruption and nepotism were all too common. All government institutions and organizations and public-sector corporations had fallen prey to the most blatant corruption, facilitated at the highest levels of government, through the appointment of inept managers and directors. Corruption had permeated effectively down from the top. …
Financial corruption aside, the government was rife with nepotism and incompetence. There was no strategic direction coming from the top. Nowhere, in any ministry, institution, organization, or department, did I see any clear vision or strategy. Pakistan was like a rudderless ship floundering in high seas, with no destination, led by inept captains whose only talent lay in plunder. … All social indicators—health, education, income—were shamefully low and were continually deteriorating. Between 1988–1999 absolute poverty—people who earn $1 per day or less—had risen alarmingly, from 18 percent to 34 percent. …
I took over in extremely unusual circumstances, not of my making. It is unbelievable and indeed unfortunate that the few at the helm of affairs in the last government were intriguing to destroy the last institution of stability left in Pakistan by creating dissension in the ranks of the armed forces of Pakistan. And who would believe that the chief of the army staff, having represented Pakistan in Sri Lanka, upon his return was denied landing in his own country and instead circumstances were created which would have forced our plane to either land in India or crash. …
I set myself a seven-point agenda. Some of these points, by their very nature, required so much time to implement that I knew that the best I could do was to start the process and take it to a stage where it could not be reversed. Those seven points were: (1) rebuild national confidence and morale. (2) Strengthen the federation, remove inter-provincial disharmony, and restore national cohesion. (3) Revive the economy and restore investors’ confidence. (4) Ensure law and order and dispense speedy justice. (5) Depoliticize state institutions. (6) Devolve power down to the gross roots. (7) Ensure swift accountability.
[Pervez Musharraf, In the Line of Fire: A Memoir (London: Simon and Schuster, 2006), 146, 148–150.]
Religious extremism and terrorism have emerged as the most serious challenge to the state and the international system, in the aftermath of the events of September 11, 2001. General Pervez Musharraf described this as the symbiosis of religion and terror, a symbiosis that caused his regime its greatest political challenge. For he was forced to respond both to the United States, which wanted him to stand with the West against terrorists, and to some important groups in Pakistan that approved both of the Taliban, a nationalist group focused on Afghan goals, and of the transnational al-Qaeda, with its commitment to international jihad. Musharraf certainly believed that Islam was a necessary component of a good society in Pakistan. What troubled him was that in Pakistan Islam and violence had coalesced in a way that threatened the country’s peace and stability. His regime unfortunately took little advantage of the opportunity provided by the infusion of American money following 9/11—Pakistan experienced no real economic gains, nor did it show improvements in social justice.
Several times in the quiet of the night, sitting alone in my study, I have pondered over what has happened to Pakistan. What has caused the deterioration our national fabric? We were once a perfectly normal, religiously harmonious society, with only occasional tension between the Sunni and Shia sects of our religion. How did we reach the present-day epidemic of terrorism and extremism?
The trauma started in 1979 with the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union. … We suddenly realized that we were faced with a two-front threat—India from the east and the Soviet Union and its Afghan puppet from the west. The nation and the military were in a quandary. Fortunately for us, the West, led by the United States after the election of Ronald Reagan, considered Afghanistan an important arena in which to check the Soviet ambitions. A jihad [just war] was launched in Afghanistan, with Pakistan as the inevitable conduit. Afghan warlords and their militias were armed and financed to fight the Soviets. Alongside 20,000 to 30,000 mujahideen from all over the Islamic world, students from some seminaries [madrasahs] were encouraged, armed, financed and trained. Before 1979, our madrasahs were quite limited and their activities were insignificant. The Afghan war brought them into the forefront, urged on by President Zia ul-Haq who vigorously propounded the cause of jihad against the Soviet occupation [of Afghanistan].
The entire decade of the 1980s saw religious extremism rise, encouraged by Zia. It is undeniable that the hard-line mullahs of the Frontier province were the obvious partners of this jihad. … Zia for his own personal and political reasons embraced the hard-line religious lobby as his constituency throughout Pakistan and well beyond, to the exclusion of the huge majority of moderate Pakistanis. Fighting the infidel Soviet Army became a holy cause to the jihadis, and countless Pakistani men signed up.
This jihad continued for ten years, until the Soviets were defeated in 1989. They withdrew in a hurry, leaving behind an enormous arsenal of heavy weapons that included tanks guns and even aircraft, with abundant stocks of ammunition. The United States and Europe were also quick to abandon the area, as the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet threat diminished. The sudden vacuum in Afghanistan led first to the toppling of the puppet government that had been installed by the Soviet Union, and then to mayhem and bloodletting among warlords, jostling for power.
The effect of this upheaval was threefold. First, it brought 4 million refugees into Pakistan. Second, it sparked the emergence of the Taliban. Third, it led to the coalescing of the international mujahideen into al Qaeda.
Then came 9/11. Even before Secretary of State Colin Powell called me to ask for help, even before President Bush announced in a public speech that all nations were either “with us or against us,” I knew that Pakistan was at a cross-road. Here was an opportunity for us to get rid of [religious] terrorism in our midst in our own national interest. … Yet after the United State’s angry invasion of Afghanistan and the continuing turbulence there, many al Qaeda operatives shifted to the cities and western mountains of Pakistan. Our situation … had worsened.
As if this were not enough, the struggle for freedom that erupted in India-held Kashmir in 1989 had a major impact on Pakistani society. … The Indian law enforcement agencies were ruthless in crushing the movement for freedom. … The Pakistani people are emotionally and sentimentally attached to their Kashmiri brethren. Dozens of support groups sprang up all over the country, prepared to join the jihad against the Indian army.
For twenty-six years now on our western borders, and for sixteen years to our east in Kashmir, we have been in turmoil. A culture of militancy, weapons, and drugs now flourishes in Pakistan. A deadly al Qaeda network entrenched itself in our major cities and the mountains of our tribal agencies on our western border with Afghanistan. A culture of targeted killings, explosives, car bomb and suicide attacks took root. …
At our core, the people of Pakistan are religious and moderate. Pakistan is an Islamic state created for the Muslims of the subcontinent. Only a small fringe of the population is extremist. This fringe holds rigid, orthodox, even obscurantist and intolerant views about religion. A problem arises when it wants to impose its rigid, dogmatic views on others. …
The vast mass of less literate poor people of Pakistan liv[e] largely in rural areas and semiurban areas. They too are moderates who adhere to a philosophy of “live and let live” … but because of their illiteracy, poverty and desperation, the extremists try to recruit them and often succeed. …
However, there are extremists in our midst who are neither poor nor uneducated. What moulds them? I believe it is their revulsion at the sheer pathos of the Muslim condition: the political injustices, societal deprivation, and alienation that reduced many Muslims to marginalization and exploitation. This accounts for the likes of Osama bin Laden. …
Our experience has taught us that foreigners in al Qaeda have almost invariably masterminded terrorist attacks in Pakistan. The planners penetrate into bands of religious extremist organizations or they indoctrinate groups of selected fanatics. … Such attackers are mere pawns. They are not always religiously motivated, yet this is how terrorism in Pakistan has been mixed with religion. …
Ultimate success will only come when the roots that cause terrorism are destroyed; that is, when injustices against Muslims are removed. This lies in the hands of the West, particularly America. Dealing with extremism requires prudence.
[Musharraf, In the Line of Fire, 274–276, 277–278, 280.]
Predating General Musharraf’s presidency, but continuing through it and beyond, is the recognition of a crisis in education. In Pakistan there is a unanimous opinion that education plays a critical role in building a viable economy, as the key to scientific and technological advancement and human capital formation. However, education has remained neglected. The quality of education has generally declined in state-managed educational institutions at all levels, mainly because of a paucity of financial resources, a lack of facilities, a shortage of qualified teachers, and an overall neglect of education on the part of the state and society.
Public expenditure on education as a percentage of Pakistan’s GDP is very low. The official data showed the education–GDP ratio as 2 percent in 2009. In that same year the literacy rate of those aged ten or above was 69 percent for males and 45 percent for females.
Private-sector educational institutions from primary school–level to university claim to offer better-quality education. However, high tuition fees and related expenses make it extremely difficult for the majority of people to send their children to these institutions.
The following selection by Shahid Javed Burki (b. 1938) outlines the major causes of the decline of education in Pakistan. Burki is a former federal finance minister of Pakistan who served at the World Bank for twenty-five years and is the author of many books and articles on Pakistan.
The Pakistani educational system collapsed slowly; at times its progressive deterioration was not even noticed by the people who later were to be most seriously affected by it. The collapse occurred for basically four reasons. The first jolt was given in the early 1970s by the government headed by Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Bhutto decided to nationalize private schools, in particular those run by various Christian missionary orders. His motive was simple. He was of the view that private school encouraged elitism in the society whereas he wanted equality and equal opportunity for all.
Bhutto was also responsible for delivering the system the second shock, and this time the motive was political expediency. His rise to political power was viewed with great apprehension by the religious forces in the country. They considered the socialism Bhutto espoused as “godless” and were determined to prevent him and the Pakistan People’s Party founded by him from gaining ground. The two sides—Bhutto and the Islamists—chose to use the college and university campuses to fight the battle for the control of the political mind in the country. Both sought to mobilize the student population by establishing student organizations representative of their different points of view. …
The third development to turn the system of education dysfunctional occurred in the 1980s when a coalition led by the United States and including Pakistan and Saudi Arabia decided to use the seminaries as training grounds for the mujahideen who were being instructed to battle the Soviet Union’s troops occupying Afghanistan. There was an unspoken understanding about their respective roles among these three partners. … Pakistan was able to further its influence in Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia was able to introduce its extremely conservative interpretation of Islam into a large Muslim country that had hitherto subscribed to a relatively liberal, accommodating, assimilative form of the religion.
The fourth unhappy development to affect the sector of education was the political confusion that prevailed in the country for more than a decade, from the time of the death of President Zia-ul-Haq in August 1988 to the return of the military under General Pervez Musharraf in October 1999. In this period four elected governments and three interim administrations governed the country. Preoccupied with prolonging their stay [in office], the elected governments paid little attention to economic development in general and social development in particular. Under the watch of these administrations, public sector education deteriorated significantly.
[Shahid Javed Burki, “Educating the Pakistani Masses,” in Robert M. Hathaway, ed., Education Reform in Pakistan: Building for the Future (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 2005), 22–23.]
Mahbub ul-Haq (quoted above on the “Twenty-Two Families”)—one of Pakistan’s best-known economists and a former federal finance minister—contributed to the development of the United Nations Human Development Index (HDI) along with Amartya Sen, quoted in chapter 8. Mahbub ul-Haq frequently stressed the connection between poverty, ill-health, lack of education, and failed economic development. This perspective is reflected in the reports on education prepared by the government of Pakistan. In 2011 the government-established Pakistan Education Task Force reported that at least seven million children were not in primary school and that 10 percent of the world’s primary school–age children who do not attend school live in Pakistan.
Some of these reports and policies have been examined by two authors who have held influential positions in the educational establishment: Usman Ali Isani, a senior Pakistani bureaucrat and educationist, currently serving as vice chancellor for Iqra University, Islamabad; and Latif Virk, a sociologist at the National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences. Their analysis of the reports shows the continuing emphasis on three issues in education at all levels: an inculcation of the centrality of Islam; a concern for national unity; and a recognition that education is fundamental for economic prosperity. Despite these high goals and repeated promises, they maintain that education has remained neglected and the declared goals have not been achieved.
In 1947, at the First Educational Conference, the educational philosophy incorporated both the fundamentals of Islamic tradition and modern science and technology but did not elaborate much on the purpose of education. The Commission on National Education in 1959, however, carried out a comprehensive analysis of the educational philosophy. Among other issues the Commission identified the following purposes of education. … Education should provide opportunity for the development of skills of the people, training of a leadership group and promotion of vocational abilities; all of which are essential for the creation of a progressive and democratic society. … Education must play a fundamental part in the preservation of the ideals which led to the creation of Pakistan, strengthening the concept of it as a united nation, and striving to preserve the Islamic way of life; and education should inculcate in the people the Islamic principles of truth, justice, benevolence and universal brotherhood. With regard to Islam, the following paragraph of the Report is significant: Islam teaches honesty in thought, in deed, and in purpose. It lays emphasis on social justice and active participation in the removal of distress and poverty. In short, it seeks the identity of those who know, with those who do not know; of those who have, with those who do not have; of those who are powerful, with those who have no power. … Education is a public investment and this should be used [as] a vehicle for creating a welfare state. …
The purposes of higher education are multi-dimensional and may be termed as personal, social, economic, and cultural. In the context of Pakistan, it has ideological meanings attached to its purposes as well. Pakistan as an ideological state cannot ignore its ideological moorings [and] the needs of modern society for building a competitive nation whose individuals are scientifically trained persons. … Thus the purpose of higher education must be: a) the inculcation of Islamic theology and moral values; b) preservation of our religious and cultural heritage; and c) equip the individuals with the latest knowledge and technology. … Education and particularly higher education cannot be divorced from its milieu and social context. …
At the beginning of the 21st century, where there is so much growth of knowledge no nation can be content without higher education. … The global truth that higher education is a matter of long-term survival has not yet been honoured in Pakistan.
[U. A. G. Isani and Mohammad Latif Virk, Higher Education in Pakistan: A Historical and Futuristic Perspective (Islamabad: National Book Foundation, 2005), 12, 18–19.]
