Daily Times

Ayesha Jalal teaches History at Tufts University in the US and has by far written the most readable account of how Pakistan was created and evolved in the decades that followed.

Jalal points out that Pakistan was beset with a confusion of purpose since its inception. Six years before the country was born, M. A. Jinnah had averred: “Pakistan has been there for centuries. It is there today, and it will remain till the end of the world.” But if Pakistan already existed, and would always be there, what was the reason for engaging in protracted negotiations with Lord Mountbatten and the Congress?

Jinnah saw no inconsistency in making an apparently separatist claim to territories in the northwest and northeast of India while at the same time vowing never to let Muslim minorities elsewhere in the subcontinent be “vassalized” by the Hindu majority. Jinnah also believed that once Pakistan was created, Hindus and Muslims would learn to “live as good neighbors.” Sadly, his forecasts were not destined to come to pass.

Survival has come at the cost of weakening democracy. Not only have the civil and human rights of its citizenry been trampled upon, half of the country has seceded after a bloody civil war

Jinnah was ambivalent about the link between Muslim identity and territorial sovereignty and that ambivalence still pervades his creation, 70 years on.

Mountbatten gave Jinnah a Pakistan that was devoid of the non-Muslim districts of Punjab and Bengal, with no corridor linking them, all of which Jinnah had insisted upon. Indeed, he had quipped that “Bengal without Calcutta was like asking a man to live without a heart.”

There were going to be almost as many Muslims inside India as in this “moth-eaten” Pakistan, “compounding the problems confronting Pakistan’s quest for identity that was both Islamic and national.” Jalal goes on to say that Jinnah’s quest for a Muslim homeland, despite the superficial parallels, “was fundamentally different from the Zionist movement for a Jewish homeland.” There was no sacred temple on a hill “that beckoned the faithful.”

Prior to Jinnah, Iqbal had propounded his vision for a Muslim homeland that focused only on northwestern India. Rahmat Ali had named it “Pakistan.” Ali also wanted to create several other Muslim homelands all over India, including “Bangistan.” Creation of all these Muslim homelands was dismissed as “a dangerous student fantasy” by many Indian Muslim politicians.

A year before the formation of the Congress, Jinnah had said that Hindus and Muslims were words only “of religious significance.” Politically Hindus, Muslims and Christians “who live in this country constitute one nation.”

Jalal says that Jinnah’s need to invoke the idea of Muslim distinctiveness was also based on political opposition to the Congress and not grounded in religion. Jinnah said: “We are not enemies of the Congress. If we must have a separate State, that will not mean we shall have nothing to do with each other. Both Hindus and Muslims will be happy when Pakistan is established.” This was another forecast that did not come to pass.

In Pakistan, the military turned the civil bureaucracy into a junior partner. Jalal says that ‘The conversion of Pakistan into a state of martial rule was not preordained. The military’s rise to dominance as early as the 1950’s can be understood only in the context of the … Cold War’

On Pakistan’s creation, Jinnah declared: “Pakistan is now a sovereign State, absolute and unfettered, and the Government of Pakistan is in the hands of the people.” But in just a few years it became very clear that Pakistan would ultimately be ruled less “by ideology than by an institution.”

This institution provides the title of a book by Peter Feaver, Armed Servants. In Pakistan, the armed servants turned the civil servants into a junior partner. Jalal says: “The conversion of Pakistan into a state of martial rule was not preordained. The military’s rise to dominance as early as the 1950’s can be understood only in the context of the … Cold War.”

While India with far greater social diversities was able to “lay the foundations of a constitutional democracy, Pakistan turned into “a sprawling military barrack.”

Born into poverty with a per capita income 40% lower than that of India, Pakistan’s land mass was 23% of India’s, its population was 18% of India’s and its industrial production just 10%.

Sadly, it did not matter whether civilians were at the helm or the military, “an inclination to amass power was an occupational hazard of ruling Pakistan.” The rivalry with India continued unabated, with Kashmir being the flash point for several wars except for the calamitous one that came in 1971.

The per capita income of West Pakistan was 10% higher than that of East Pakistan at independence. By the late 1960s, “the western wing had stolen the march,” and the gap had risen to an unsustainable 40%.

The pinnacle of Indo-Pakistan rivalry reached in May 1998 when India exploded five nuclear bombs and Pakistan responded with six. A triumphant Nawaz Sharif declared: “Today we have settled the score with India… Unfazed by the chorus of international condemnation and the shattering blow to the livelihoods of many of his compatriots.” He “gloated in the glory” of being the prime minister of the world’s only nuclear-armed Muslim state.

Jalal takes a guardedly positive view of the future. “For all its litany of woes, Pakistan is not going to disappear from the map of the world.” Today, the military cannot exercise power without accommodating the political process. And disenchantment with religious extremism is finding expression through a variety of means such as poetry, music and the arts

Little did he know that he would be overthrown by his army chief in less than two years. The contradictions between Musharraf’s reformist objectives and his simultaneous promise to restore ‘true democracy’ were “irresolvable.” Jalal adds that the failure that “rankled most in the minds of moderate opinion was Musharraf’s inability to restore Pakistan’s image in the international community.” But this “required a complete strategic rethinking of the national security paradigm” which the military was not inclined to do.

Contrary to the doom and gloom predictions that attended its birth, Pakistan has not disappeared from the map. But it is not the Pakistan that Jinnah had created. Survival has come at the cost of weakening democracy. Not only have the civil and human rights of its citizenry been trampled upon, half of the country has seceded after a bloody civil war.

Jalal takes a guardedly positive view of the future. “For all its litany of woes, Pakistan is not going to disappear from the map of the world.” Today, the military cannot exercise power without accommodating the political process. And disenchantment with religious extremism is finding expression through a variety of means such as poetry, music and the arts.

But being a realist, she notes: “The battle for the soul of Pakistan does not yet have a clear winner.” As seen during the recent dharna, the army continues to shape foreign and defense policies and has the ultimate say in internal security matters.

The book is short on details on the multiple wars that Pakistan has fought with India. It closes with a challenge: Will Pakistanis be able to live with the shortcomings of their chosen representatives without losing faith in the democratic process? If not, they should prepare themselves for another bout of military rule.

Jalal is not afraid to shatter shibboleths about the country’s creation or what has caused it all too often to go off the rails. In some cases, she is expressing her personal opinion as opposed to proven facts, of which there are never enough in history. This has riled some academics but made for a more interesting book. The book is a must-read for all those who want to understand the complex history of Pakistan and its likely future evolution.

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 27^th 2017.