What happened to Jinnah’s Pakistan?

Private view : Friday Times: April 27-3 May, 2007 | Vol. XIX, No. 10
What happened to Jinnah’s Pakistan?
Khalid Hasan

Iqbal would have been pleased with Ilhan Niaz’s book, An Inquiry into the Culture of Power of the Subcontinent , because it was he who prayed for the young to teach the old, which is what Niaz, a young teacher of history at the Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, has done. I am afraid, however, that those who have the most to learn from his book are the very ones who will not read it. I sometimes think if organising a survey of all “stakeholders” – Gen. Musharraf’s favourite phrase – in Pakistan with only one question to be answered. Which was the last book you read? The answer sheets should be easy to tabulate because so distant would the memory of the last book read be, that they would not remember its name. Our ruling class contains more ignoramuses and mountebanks than a colony of half-wits.

Niaz begins his survey of the culture of power and governance in Pakistan since 1947 with an excerpt from the Quaid-i-Azam’s August 11, 1947 speech, “The first and the foremost thing that I would like to emphasise is this – remember that you are now a sovereign legislative body and you have got all the powers. It, therefore, places on you the greatest responsibility as to how you should take your decisions. 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.” Niaz writes, “The tone and content of Jinnah’s speeches and statements are rational, substantially reflect his grounding in liberal political thought and practice, and, in dealing with real problems confronted by the state, are refreshingly un-ideocratic.”

The Quaid hoped that Pakistan would establish the supremacy of Parliament and protect the permanent institutions of state from the arbitrariness of the government. A state of laws could only survive if it refrained from identifying its authority with divine sanction or ideological certainties. Niaz attributes the passing of the Objectives Resolution in March 1949 to Muslim League leaders’ lack of a base in West Pakistan, pressure from the ulema, the language controversy in East Bengal and a tense international climate.

The Jamaat-i-Islami, which ironically jumped on the “jihad” bandwagon in Kashmir four decades later, was the same party whose leader declared after the uprising in Kashmir that this war in Kashmir was not a “jihad.” In February 1949, the party held a large rally in Dhaka where it demanded the establishment of an “Islamic state” in Pakistan because it did not consider Pakistan an Islamic state nor did it take its leaders to be proper Muslims. In its eyes, the Quaid-i-Azam himself was an “infidel.” What a pity and a shame that this very party, these very forces that had fought tooth and nail to block the founding of the state of Pakistan became its ideological mentors. The so-far-unexplained phrase “ideology of Pakistan” was first bandied around by Yahya’s Islamist Minister of Information, Nawazada Sher Ali Khan “Napoleon.” I am willing to be corrected, but as far as I know, leaders of the Jamaat have studiously avoided visiting the Quaid-i-Azam’s mausoleum to say a prayer for him, although if there is one Muslim who must have been shown straight into heaven, it would have had to be Muhammad Ali Jinnah (Akbar Ahmed’s deplorable film notwithstanding, where the Quaid is made to answer for his actions with Shashi Kapoor “Fatso” playing God’s deputy.)

Niaz points out that a comparison of the Quaid’s August 11 speech with the Objectives Resolution will show that the latter represents a major step in the direction of the traditionalist vision of Pakistan. Liaquat Ali Khan’s “reiteration of the standard apology that Islam, in theory, does not have a priesthood and so cannot lead to theocracy did little to assuage the fears of minorities that the Objectives Resolution had opened the door to theocratisation of the state.” He quotes East Pakistani member of the Constituent Assembly, Chandra Chattopadhya, who warned, “The State must respect all religions; no smiling face for one and askance look at the other. The State religion is a dangerous principle. Previous instances are sufficient to warn us not to repeat the blunder. . . What I hear in this Resolution is not the voice of the great creator of Pakistan, the Quaid-i-Azam, but of the ulemas of the land . . . This resolution in its present form epitomises that spirit of reaction . . . But I feel it is useless bewailing before you, it is useless reasoning with you. You show yourselves incapable of the humility that either victory or religion ought to generate. I wish you saw reason.” They did not, and it has been one long slide downhill since.

One of Niaz’s best shots he takes at Zia-ul-Haq and the manner in which he tried to impose what he thought was Islam as if it were not a religion but one of his martial law regulations. We live with the consequences of what he wrought. The poison crop that he sowed is now blooming. According to the author, “General Zia’s eleven years in power witnessed the Pakistani State undertake a deliberate policy of medievalism.” And what about Gen. Musharraf, who has now been in power for seven and a half years and plans to hang in there, by hook or by crook – mostly the latter – for another five and a half (Guinness Book, please note). Niaz writes that since Musharraf’s takeover, “an uneasy calm punctuated by intensifying breakdowns of order, has fallen over Pakistan. The ability of the state to perform its core functions continues to deteriorate.” He notes that the district administration has been thrown into chaos by the NRB (thank you Daniyal Aziz “Gorbachev”) and the “colonisation of the civil administration by the military is now generating immense resentment.”

Niaz writes, “The Centre has repeatedly attempted to govern Pakistan as if it were a unitary quasi-imperial state and identified criticism of federal policies with treason.” While the Quaid is honoured on Pakistan’s bank notes and his picture is on every wall (and even behind military rulers when they address “the nation” on national hookup), everything that he advocated and stood for is violated. Writes Niaz, “No political speech, or college debate competition is considered complete unless it contains ample references to Jinnah and expresses contrition for having failed to live up to his example. And yet, Jinnah’s vision of a Pakistani state of laws governed by a sovereign parliament in a manner consistent with British state morality is as, if not more, distant today than it was when Pakistan’s founder addressed the first Constituent Assembly on August 11, 1947.”

And therein lies Pakistan’s tragedy.