Since the departure of its founders early in its history, the oligarchs have been running the show in Pakistan. Initially it was the civil servants. Then came the feudal lords. And eventually the generals. Over time, the weight shifted away from the civil servants and the feudal lords to the generals. They called the shots, not just on the battlefield but also in the domestic political arena.
The thought that the country they were creating would one day be governed by the oligarchs had never entered the minds of the founders. So how did it come to pass?
The Quaid-e-Azam, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, led the freedom movement against the British. Many would say Jinnahsingle-handedly willed the nation state of Pakistan into existence. At independence in 1947, he decided to adopt the titular position of governor-general but everyone knew that executive power resided in him. This was quite unlike the situation in India (or in Westminster) where executive power resided in the prime minister. Perhaps Jinnah thought that a sterner hand to govern was needed in Pakistan, given its multiple challenges. Sadly, Jinnah had died of lung cancer within a year of taking office. He was eulogized by The Times (of London) as a “legend in his lifetime.” UCLA’s Stanley Wolpert in his all-encompassing biography of the man called him “the greatest barrister among his peers on the subcontinent.”
Mahatama Gandhi, doing his best to prevent the partition of India, had suggested that Jinnah be made prime minister of a united India. Gandhi knew that the only person the Muslims respected and trusted was Jinnah. It was felt that only “Jinnah-a man of total integrity, who couldn’t be bought, sold, or pandered with-could keep the Muslim population from agitating.” Jinnah’s deputy, Liaquat Ali Khan, the first prime minister, was given the honorific of Quaid-e-Millat, Tragically, he was assassinated three years later. An aristocrat by birth, he died with only a balance of fifty pounds in his checking account. These two leaders were men of integrity, incorruptible to the bone, revered by a grateful nation. As time would show, their early loss would take a heavy toll on the nation’s body politic.
In post-colonial Pakistan, the oligarchy came together to determine the parameters within which political and economic changes were to occur. The resulting political instability produced seven prime ministers in eleven years, of whom one only stayed in power for two months
Both believed Pakistan needed a strong center to survive as a nation state. They were conscious of the narrow resource base that Pakistan had inherited at the time of its creation. This consciousness had a decisive impact on the dialectic between state formation and political processes. It resulted in a strong reliance on the civil service, which was dominated by West Pakistanis. Since more than half of Pakistanis lived in East Pakistan, under any type of democratic set-up they would have come to dominate the national political decision making process. Neither Jinnah nor Liaquat were willing to countenance the dominance of their creation by the Bengalis in the East. Jinnah’s, and to an even greater extent, Liaquat’s effectiveness was hampered by the fact that they were immigrants from India. The fact that Jinnah had insisted on making Urdu the national language was resented by many ethnic groups who took pride in their language. The Muslim League lost its way once the two Quaids had departed. Unlike the Congress Party in India, it had never been a grassroots organization. Its credibility revolved around its top two leaders. The contrast in the political evolution of the two countries was striking. Nehru, backed by a first-rate team and a solidly organized Congress, had almost two decades until his death in 1964 to guide and consolidate the new state of India.
Liaquat did not see an urgency for holding elections at the national level or creating a constitution, since he was concerned about the resulting dilution in the center’s authority. In January 1949, he used the services of Jinnah’s successor as Governor-General, Khawaja Nazimuddin, to dissolve the Punjab legislature and take over the reins of power, setting a dangerous precedent.
Liaquat’s assassination in 1951 resulted in the transfer of effective control to leaders who were ex-civil servants. These leaders worked symbiotically with people who were politicians nominally, but feudal lords and tribal leaders fundamentally. Not surprisingly, they showed little interest in undertaking policies that would bring prosperity to their electorate because that would have meant a wealth transfer away from them. Instead, they wished to perpetuate the authoritarian rule their forbearers had exercised over their serfs for centuries. Thus it was that early in its life, power in Pakistan transferred to the oligarchs. Was this foreordained?
The two ex-civil servants who dominated the national scene were Ghulam Mohammed and Major General Iskander Mirza. On Liaquat’s death, Ghulam Mohammed became Pakistan’s Governor-General. He connived with the army chief, General Ayub, to dismiss many elected officials including Prime Minister and former Governor-General Khawaja Nazimuddin in 1953. The following year, he dismissed the entire Constituent Assembly. Even though India had formed its constitution in 1949, Pakistan was to remain without one until 1956.
During those years, it continued to be ruled anachronistically under the Government of India Act of 1935, designed by Great Britain to exercise imperial control over its Indian subjects. The 1956 constitution converted Pakistan into an “IslamicRepublic,” and Iskander Mirza became the president. This constitution only lasted for two years, and was abrogated by the military coup of 1958. Ayub provided a new constitution in 1962, based on the presidential form of government. His handpicked successor, General Yahya Khan, suspended this constitution in 1969. Pakistan did not get a constitution on the Westminster style of governance that Jinnah had envisaged until 1973, more than a quarter century after its independence.
The dominance of the feudal lords continued. In the mid-seventies, two thirds of the leaders of the ruling People’s Party were either landlords or tribal chiefs as were 157 of the 238 members of the National Assembly in 1985. Together, the landed aristocracy and the civil service constituted an oligarchy whose policies exacerbated inter-class and inter-regional economic inequalities.
Within a few years of independence, this oligarchy expanded to include the military. Under the British Raj, the bureaucracy and the military had served as the “steel frame” that held India together. In post-colonial Pakistan, they came together to determine the parameters within which political and economic changes were to occur. The resulting political instability produced seven prime ministers in eleven years, of whom one only stayed in power for two months.
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