Daily Times

There is still no consensus on what it means to be a Pakistani. If proof was needed of this proposition, the recent dharna drove home the point. Why is that the case? Farzana Shaikh’s ‘Making Sense of Pakistan,’ published in 2009, tackles the difficult question.

Shaikh, an associate fellow in the Asia Program of Chatham House in London, was born and raised in Karachi. She holds a doctorate from Columbia University and has been a visitor at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University.

She asserts that even before its birth, the identity of Pakistan was subject to two conflicting interpretations. One was a communal interpretation which argued that Muslims in British India constituted a different nation from Hindus. The problem was that Muslims were scattered throughout India and did not live in a geographically contiguous area. So any attempt to move them into a single country would leave millions behind in a Hindu-dominated India and force millions of others to migrate to Muslim-majority areas.

The second was a religious interpretation which argued that Muslims were a separate nation by virtue of their Islamic identity. That raised some troubling questions, such as whose interpretation of Islam should be used to define Muslimness and how would one deal with non-Muslims.

Her book traces the historical evolution of these dual identities to the writings of many scholars and leaders such as Sir Syed Ahmad Khan. Then it turns to a discussion of Iqbal. She suggests that he may only have wanted to create a state in the northwestern regions of India, which corresponds to the current boundaries of Pakistan, not the two-wing state that was created by Jinnah in 1947. And she says Iqbal may have had the Islamic interpretation in mind.

Jinnah had a secular and nationalist vision that was devoid of theology, but his “attempt to recast Indian Muslims as a nation solely on the basis of religious affiliation was clearly fraught with contradictions.” She goes on to say: “While much has been made of Jinnah’s famous declaration of August 11th declaration, it failed to dilute the force of the decisive rhetoric he had helped nurture in the decade leading up to the creation of Pakistan.”

The book traces the historical evolution of dual identities to the writings of many scholars and leaders such as Syed Ahmad Khan. Then it turns to a discussion of Iqbal. Shaikh suggests that he may only have wanted to create a state in the northwestern regions of India, which corresponds to the current boundaries of Pakistan, not the two-wing state that was created by Jinnah in 1947

The birth of the new state three days later was very painful, with millions dislocated and hundreds of millions dead, injured and traumatized. It did not help that the very notion of what it meant to be a Pakistani was suffused with contradictions: “Pakistan was in trouble from the start.”

Problems multiplied as Jinnah imposed Urdu as the national language on Bengali-speaking East Pakistanis and as Pakistan went to war in Kashmir, laying the foundations for permanent enmity with India, making the army the final arbiter in the affairs of the country.

The problems continued after Jinnah’s death. “In March 1949, Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan declared that the state will create such conditions as are conducive to the building of a truly Islamic society.” It took Pakistan almost a decade to pass a constitution, and among other things, it declared that the country was an Islamic Republic. While that name continues to this day, the constitution only lasted two years.

Field Marshal Ayub Khan subscribed to the communalist vision, and “was more effective than most in riding the crest of Islamist opposition.” Unfortunately, he blundered into war with India, which he failed to win, and that led to his downfall.

‘What will determine Pakistan’s ability as a nation-state is not so much greater certainty or a stronger sense of consensus. Rather, it will depend on the nature of the consensus itself’

General Yahya Khan held the fairest general elections in the country’s history but did not like the results. When he refused to hand over power to the party that had won the elections, he plunged the country into a civil war which led to the creation of Bangladesh, which undeniably “marked the end of the less than plausible two nation theory.”

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, despite his talk of Islamic Socialism, was not a particularly religious man. He was caught off-guard by Islamist parties who asked him to prove his Islamic credentials. Sensing a revolt, he passed a legislation that declared that the Ahmadis were not Muslims and imposed other religious sanctions. He also promised to make the army the “finest fighting force in Asia” and began Pakistan’s nuclear program to maintain an upper-hand against arch-rival India. All this did was consolidate the army’s grip on power. Bhutto won the re-election but the results were contested by the opposition, leading to a popular uprising, and his removal by his hand-picked army chief.

General Zia blamed the loss of East Pakistan on the country’s lack of adherence to the precepts of Islam. That struck a chord with millions in the Islamic Republic and kept him in power. When the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan, unable to fight the Pakistan-aided Mujahideen, the dominance of religion in Pakistan was sealed.

Years later, General Musharraf promised to bring “enlightened moderation” to the country. But, as Shaikh argues, that was just talk. He did little to dampen the power of the religious right.

On the back cover of Shaikh’s book, experts are quoted as saying that Pakistan is “the most dangerous place in the world,” “far too little understood for a country of such global strategic importance,” characterized “by problems of failed governance, regionalism, sectarianism, and social polarization,” and “one of the most complicated countries on earth.”

Sadly, the analysis in her book seems to validate several if not all of these statements. Shaikh says that the political discourse in Pakistan has been “sacralized” at a high cost; the definition of a Pakistani is now conditional on the person being not just a Muslim but a true Muslim. She adds a sobering note: “History, politics and geostrategic compulsions have all conspired to hasten the decline of Pakistan and deepen its uncertainty as a nation.”

Title: Making Sense of Pakistan
Columbia/Hurst Series
Author: Farzana Shaikh
Publisher: Columbia University Press, 2009
Length: 288 pages

The narration in the book is compelling and consistent with the thesis offered by other scholars. But the book is long on analysis and short on solution. The book offers a glimmer of hope when it says, “There is strong pressure on Pakistan to reorient itself away from the perennial stance of confrontation with India.” It concludes ominously: “What will determine Pakistan’s ability as a nation-state is not so much greater certainty or a stronger sense of consensus. Rather, it will depend on the nature of the consensus itself.”

However, eight years after its publication, the role of religion in the state has not diminished. Anti-Indianism is as strong as ever. And the deep state continues to call the shots. It has successfully removed a thrice-elected prime minster from office on a technicality, while releasing from prison a religious fundamentalist who is widely believed to have been the man behind the bombings in Mumbai. Unsurprisingly, General Musharraf, sitting in exile in Dubai, has declared his support for the man and his fundamentalist religious party.

Jinnah had a secular and nationalist vision that was devoid of theology, but his “attempt to recast Indian Muslims as a nation solely on the basis of religious affiliation was clearly fraught with contradictions. The birth of the new state was very painful, with millions dislocated and hundreds of millions dead, injured and traumatized. It did not help that the very notion of what it meant to be a Pakistani was suffused with contradictions

Pakistan is at a cross roads. Will it evolve into a pluralistic and democratic society or cling to religious orthodoxy mixed with military dominance? Seventy years on, it has still not made the obvious choice. It is a choice between prosperity over penury, an easy choice, not a hard choice.

The writer is the author of ‘Rethinking the National Security of Pakistan.’ He can be reached at ahmadfaruqui@gmail.com

Published in Daily Times, December 5^th 2017.