After Partition, why did one sibling stay on the democratic course and the other got off track?
Since independence, India has remained a democracy, albeit with an interregnum during which civil rights were suspended. But even then, the military did not seize the reins of power. Why?
Aqil Shah addresses this mystery in a recent paper in ‘Commonwealth and Comparative Politics’. He finds that two factors prevented a military takeover in India during Indira Gandhi’s Emergency Rule. “First, institutionalised mechanisms of civilian control, forged during the critical juncture following independence, insulated the military from politics and the politicians from the military despite the weakening of the political system under which these were created. Second, military internalisation of the norm civilian supremacy, continually reinforced via professional socialisation processes, acted as an internal barrier to military role expansion.”
In the same 70 years since independence, Pakistan has oscillated between civil and military rule. Unsurprisingly, this pattern has drawn much scholarly commentary from Hasan Askari-Rizvi, Ayesha Jalal, Ayesha Siddiqa, Ishtiaq Ahmed, Aqil Shah, Brian Cloughley and Stephen Cohen to name a few. The most recent work is by Ejaz Hussain who applies ‘agency theory’ to discuss the issue.
When plotted on a time line, Pakistan’s oscillations between civil and military rule resemble a stylised ‘sine wave.’
The first dip into military rule lasted from 1958 to 1969, and even though “Basic Democracy” was instituted through elections in 1964, the army remained in charge. The 1965 war and the subsequent economic slowdown, led to a popular revolt which only prompted in-house change in 1969. One military regime replaced another.
The second dip, from 1969 to 1971, promised to bring ‘true’ democracy to the country. Parliamentary elections were held but their results were not honoured. The military regime, unable to understand politics, plunged Pakistan first into a civil war and then into a war with India, resulting in the separation of East Pakistan.
India was fortunate in that its founder, Jawaharlal Nehru, lived long enough to nurture political institutions that created a strong foundation for democratic governance even after he was gone
The third dip took place in 1977 when the democratically elected ruler, whose authoritarian style was not suited to building civilian institutions, and who was widely accused of having rigged general elections, was overthrown in a coup. The then army chief, General Ziaul Haq, said he would conduct free and fair elections in 90 days. Years later, he reluctantly introduced ‘guided democracy’. Military rule lasted until 1988, when the army chief, along with the top brass, perished in a plane crash.
The fourth dip took place in 1999, after the then prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, dismissed the army chief, General Pervez Musharraf. The vindictive army chief ruled for seven years. Fearful that he would be dismissed by the Supreme Court for continuing as president while wearing the army uniform, he fired the chief justice, Iftikhar Chaudhry, and declared an emergency. A lawyer’s protest movement, and his mishandling of the Lal Masjid situation, forced the general to step down in 2008.
Since then Pakistan has been under civil rule. But it is widely believed that the civilians have been made to surrender defence and foreign affairs to the security establishment. We may be at the cusp of a fifth dip.
In his book ‘India, Pakistan and Democracy’, Columbia University’s Philip Oldenburg has addresses the issue of divergent paths toward democracy taken by Pakistan and India.
Both were part of British India. They shared a common history, a common language, a common cuisine, a love for cricket, and were at similar level of economic development at birth. Additionally, their armies were part of the British Indian Army.
So why did one sibling stay on the democratic rails and other fell off? That is the enigma Oldenburg tackles head-on. He says that India was fortunate in that its founder, Jawaharlal Nehru, lived long enough to nurture the political institutions that created a strong foundation for democratic governance even after he was gone. Thus, the Indian army, despite all the threats to national security that arose over the years, and despite its wars with China and Pakistan and several counterinsurgencies, never intervened in the governance of the country, despite being twice as large as its Pakistani counterpart.
Oldenburg says that Pakistan was less fortunate in that its founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, died within a year of independence and Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan was assassinated three years later.
Oldenburg points out that Jinnah had an authoritarian streak. Unlike Nehru, he adopted the title of Governor General and took executive seniority over the prime minister’s office. Among other acts, Jinnah opted for Urdu as national language despite widespread opposition against the decision in East Pakistan. Nor is it clear that Liaquat had the temperament to accept the checks and balances that are the sine qua non of the democratic process.
It did not help that neither of the two had a political base in Pakistan. The civilian leaders who followed them were unable to show good results, leading to the first military takeover in 1958.
Furthermore, as the smaller of the two siblings, Pakistan felt incomplete without the princely state of Kashmir. Its desire to wrest the Muslim-majority state led to debilitating conflict with India, and the resulting Indophobia gave the army an upper hand in national governance.
Oldenburg argues that Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had a unique opportunity to turn things around when he took over as the civilian ruler in late December 1971. But the populist leader, who won by championing ‘Islamic Socialism’, was not mature enough to tolerate any opposition, either inside the party or outside the party: “A more democratically minded …Bhutto…would have used Parliament and the courts to bring the bureaucracy and the military under …control. A very public commission of inquiry into the causes of the tragedy of 1971 could have been part of that.” He did none of that.
Since 1977 the security establishment has retained primacy in decision making related to national security, despite its proven failures in domestic governance. Millions of civilians, especially in the upper middle class, regard it as the lesser of the two evils.
Then there is the issue of religion. It permeates the politics of Pakistan more so than in India. India, despite its significant turn to the right under Narendra Modi, does not bill itself a Hindu Republic, unlike Pakistan, which bills itself as an Islamic Republic. With every passing year, the voices of the zealots in Pakistan have become increasingly strident and the hate crimes increasingly horrific. Oldenburg cites Pervez Hoodbhoy who wrote back in 2008, “A stern, unyielding version of Islam … is replacing the kinder, gentler Islam.”
While Oldenburg does not think that Pakistan will ever be taken over by the Taliban, his book does not give the reader a warm and fuzzy feeling that Pakistan, any time soon, will turn into a genuine democracy.
In the seven years that have elapsed since Oldenburg’s book was published, not much has changed in terms of the civil-military equation. Once again, millions of Pakistanis are blaming civilian rulers and accepting the viewpoint that civilian rule is corrupt. The nation seems to be on the cusp of a fifth dip.
The author has written, Rethinking the National Security of Pakistan. He is available at [email protected]
Published in Daily Times, October 25th 2017.