Daily Times

Pakistan was created by the collective effort of all who believed in liberty. From within the community those who opposed it were either the ones like Abul Kalam Azad who believed that equity for Muslims was possible in a united India or the mullahs belonging to Majlis-e-Ahrar. They and their sympathisers were in opposition to the ideals of the All India Muslim League, which was closer to the fundamentals of Islam due to its moderate and humane policies. An independent Pakistan was a deathblow to their philosophy. The independent nation was on course to become a leader of the modern Muslim world as it was created as a result of a democratic process and was ready to adopt for itself a legal framework that would have given freedom to all its subjects.

In his speech to the Constituent Assembly on August 11, 1947, the Quaid said: “…You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place or worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion, caste, or creed that has nothing to do with the business of the State…Now I think we should keep that in front of us as our ideal and you will find that in the course of time, Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense…”

Unfortunately for the nation, the Quaid was seriously ill and before the nation could realise his dream of making a constitution in harmony with his vision, he died. This was the time for the rejected lot of the pseudo-religious leaders led by the Wahabi-Deobandi alliance, who represented a small section of the general Muslim population, to try to wrestle the leadership of the nation from the moderate Muslim League. It was too early to directly challenge and overthrow a party that had brought independence for the people so they cleverly tried and succeeded in having passed the cleverly worded ‘Objectives Resolution’ from the Constituent Assembly that did not have the Quaid to guide it. As time was to tell, that was to have a deep impact later. Emboldened by this success, they used the then chief minister of Punjab who had a point to settle with the then foreign minister, who hailed from Punjab; the Quaid had appointed him despite him belonging to a minority religious group. The unsuspecting chief minister played into their hands and allowed the mullahs to divide society along religious lines. This was the unmaking of the Pakistan the Quaid had believed in. They succeeded in orchestrating a violent protest movement against the minority religious group, demanding such measures that were unthinkable in the lifetime of the Quaid.

Though General Azam Khan’s martial law bottled the genie for the moment, it was to rise again once again two decades later. In 1973, the nation had just completed the Herculean task of agreeing on a constitution that had eluded it since decades. The country had succeeded in agreeing to create the legal framework for an environment free from oppression and state interference in their matters of faith. Then disaster struck and the oil embargo enforced in the post Arab-Israel war made some Arab states that had hidden leadership aspirations realise that they could achieve the same with their oil wealth. The hold of the Saudi dynasty on the Muslim holy places had always made the family aspire for political supremacy in the Muslim world. The newfound tool of oil wealth was the turning point in the history of the dynasty that allowed it to dream of the realisation of its longstanding desire. Thus began the Saudi push to influence the less fortunate Islamic countries with their oil wealth.

Sustained influence required the presence of a sizable number of indigenous sympathisers who could be motivated and used to increase the sphere of influence. Pakistan, a country just rising from the dismemberment debacle and economically very weak, and with a sizable number of people belonging to the Deobandi school of thought who already had an alliance with the Salafi/Wahabi religious leaders, was the most obvious target. The Wahabi doctrine by its teachings and practice does not tolerate dissent as is evident from the state of other schools of thought in its country of origin. What stood in their way here was the constitution of the country that protected the rights of all faiths and did not allow the clergy any influence on the personal religious affairs of the people. For the Saudi scheme to succeed the situation required a fundamental change whereby the hurdle could be overcome. In the prime minister of Pakistan who was elected on the slogan of Socialism, they found the most unlikely ally.

The 1974 OIC Summit in Lahore provided the opportunity to King Faisal to influence the then leader of Pakistan. Any direct demand from a foreign power to change the very basis of the constitution would have had a rebuff from even the weakest of the local leaders. Therefore, in exchange for financial and other unspecified assistance, the Saudis planned a master act by obliquely requiring action against a community that was not liked by the majority as a result of a targeted hate campaign over decades. While on the surface, action against a religious minority was not of any great significance to others, the Saudis knew it would lead to a fundamental change in the character of the nation and would be the harbinger of the modification that was necessary for their design to succeed.

(To be continued)

The writer can be reached at thelogicalguy@yahoo.com