On 14 August, the common populace of Pakistan celebrated the 78th birthday of their beloved land with traditional fervour. The elite and ruling class, blending their claims of patriotism with somewhat hollow commitments to the ideals of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, pledged loyalty to the country he bequeathed to us. They have been doing this rhetorically every year since August 1947. Being only two years younger than Pakistan, I have grown up with it, and I know the truth of their commitment to this land. While reckoning that this land gave me everything from shelter to education, career and a good life, I owe a profound gratitude to Muhammad Ali Jinnah.
Mr. Jinnah spent his whole life fighting a pitched battle to secure the future of the Indian Muslims. He fought this battle at three fronts: He locked horns with the British administration to drive home the truth of his political stance; he thwarted the National Congress’s tough resistance to his demand for a Constitutional system in which the Muslims would feel politically and economically secure; he silenced Indian Muslim nationalists calling in question his political agenda and successfully rallied the despairing Muslims around his struggle for a separate homeland in Muslim majority regions.
Mr. Jinnah spent his whole life fighting a pitched battle to secure the future of the Indian Muslims.
This hard struggle had, indeed, consumed his life. He lived hardly a year in his dreamland, for which he had staked his personal and family life, comfort, career, health, wealth and property. A giant of a political leader with an indomitable will and determination. A well-known theocrat had tauntingly stated that Jinnah was making Pakistan with a bunch of sham leaders. I wonder how pathetically prophetic he was. Truth filters out of falsehood and deception. It is agonising to recollect what his successors did with this country.
The rose petals sprinkled over his grave were still fresh that the direction of the country was changed by adopting the Objectives Resolution as the Preamble of the Constitution yet to be framed to the greatest peril of Jinnah’s ideals as enunciated by him in his address to the Constituent Assembly on 11 August to see his Pakistan joining the comity of nations as a secular, progressive and modern state. This was the beginning of the agony of Pakistan. Later, they had the audacity to censor and distort his historic speech.
Since my conscious age, I have been travelling along with my land from disillusionment to hope. This has been an agonising journey wading through stinking puddles of treachery, betrayal and deception. What we didn’t do with this country all these years, drifting from one system of governance to another – from federal to a quasi-unitary country, from parliamentary form to presidential rule, and back to parliamentary governance. Our Presidents – both civilian and military – from 1977 to 2008 were vested with executive powers. They dismissed elected Prime Ministers and National Assemblies at the drop of a hat. We have unsuccessfully tried all kinds of political administrations, from semi-elected to authoritarian, military dictatorship, and martial law, but political stability has eluded us. Our travel from August 1947 to this day has ended at Form 47 and hybrid governance.
We have turned over all stones to disappoint the people of Jinnah’s dreamland during all these 78 years. The Constitution, framed by a bureaucrat-turned politician, Chaudhry Muhammad Ali and enforced in 1956, was abrogated by a military dictator in October 1958. We witnessed the abrogation of the 1962 Constitution in March 1969by another military dictator. The first ever general elections on an adult franchise basis held in the country in December 1970, resulted in the dismemberment of Jinnah’s Pakistan. Since we didn’t trust Bengalis in state affairs, we refused to hand over power to the Awami League, which had emerged with an overwhelming majority. The violent civil strife that ensued metastasised into Bangladesh, leaving us with a truncated, smaller part.
We did not learn a lesson from the historic humiliation and disgrace, and continued with our political and economic blunders. We hanged the elected Prime Minister in April 1979 after a mock judicial trial.
Federations prosper within a constitutional political system underscored by provincial autonomy, representative governance, just and fair distribution of political powers and economic and financial resources. We didn’t have any enduring political stability in the new Pakistan, even after the secession of the bad and nagging Bengalis. The outcome of the successive eleven general elections held in the country from 1970 to 2024 has been rejected by the mainstream political parties, blaming each other for collusion with the establishment in rigging elections and acquiring power. The anomalous and lopsided political and bureaucratic systems enforced in the country place the bigger province of Punjab in a dominant position to exploit the resources of the smaller federal units. This has been at the heart of the political controversy and polarisation in the Federation.
The performance of the ruling elite, both in executive and opposition, has never been above board or geared to the public good. The civilians have shown no qualms in filling up their coffers when in power. We have witnessed paupers turn into billionaires. State Institutions, including bureaucracy, have been politicised and reduced to cesspools of inefficiency and corruption. The National Accountability Bureau could investigate cases of corruption over and above Rs . 500million. Some 70 per cent of our people are deprived of their basic constitutional rights to education, health, and clean drinking water, protection of life and honour.
We continue our travel from disillusionment to hope on the 78th birthday of Pakistan.
The author was a member of the Foreign Service of Pakistan and he has authored two books.