From Jinnah to Benazir and After
Fifty-seven years ago on March 23, ( 1940 ), a Muslim rally in the historic city of Lahore overwhelmingly endorsed a resolution stipulating the formation of a sovereign entity comprising Muslim majority provinces in British India. The motion had been moved by the All-India Muslim League, a party of Muslim modernists led by Jinnah (1876-1948 ), a London-trained barrister and one of the leading political voices in the sub-continent. To Jinnah and other Leaguers, the Indian National Congress, the India-wide political party founded in ( 1885 ), despite its avowed aims to serve supra-communal interests had been unable to attract Muslims. The League, itself founded in ( 1906 ), aimed at safeguarding the Muslim communitarian interests, while to Mahatma Gandhi and Pandit Nehru it had come to serve merely communalist ideology. Jinnah, an avowed secularist, considered Indian political struggle for de-colonisation in the ( 1930s ) and ( 1940s ) to be an international problem and refused to accept any solution to the constitutional impasse that reduced it to a mere Raj versus Congress equation.
Jinnah considered Indian Muslims, compared with other communities, to be extremely underprivileged, urgently needing a tangible political dispensation in the form of a sovereign state so as to engineer an uplift. His was the Muslim nationalism rather than being Islamic — a thin, yet specific line differentiating a general cultural reality from a theocratic specificity. Jinnah's claim to establish territorial state and stipulating Muslim characteristics, yet disallowing theocracy, was hotly contested both by the ulema (religious scholars) and the regionalist ethnic elite. But his vision of a Pakistan as a superordinate identity providing an honest mediation amongst various feuding religious/sectarian and regionalist/localist affiliations turned out to be a sensible and the best possible stratagem. Jinnah foresaw the existence of plural religious communities in the young republics of India and Pakistan as the most significant guarantee for it peaceful, forward looking sub-continent.
By ( 1947 ), Jinnah, an ailing man and already quite senior in age, had to suffer an immediate setback that definitely must have left him a broken man. The trans-border migrations and accompanying ethnic cleansing in ( 1947 ) fuelled the inter-communal and inter-state tensions which, all of a sudden, overwhelmed the forces of sanity across the region. On the eve of Independence, Jinnah, in his landmark speech of August 11, (1947 ), quite candidly observed: "You are free, you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or other places of worship in this state of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed – that has nothing to do with the business of the State.” Despite the communal riots, to the founder of the country, this creed was to anchor the official policies.
He had never exploited religious sentiments to further any parochial or personal cause, and used Islam in a cultural and symbolic sense to forge solidarity amongst the disparate Muslim communities and had been rebuked by ulema, who named him as the Kafir-i-Azam (the great infidel) instead of his more popular tile of the Quaid-i-Azam (the great leader). Jinnah's vision of a democratic, tolerant, plural and egalitarian Pakistan was dashed down soon after his death, when the oligarchies led by the bureaucrats and generals took over the new state and began using Islam so as to earn legitimacy for their non-representative regimes. The ulema became the unofficial Ayatollahs for various regimes which inherently abhorred constitutionalism, decentralisation and accountability. In addition, the very ethno-centricism of such regimes, despite their modernist postulations, betrayed their national objectives.
From Ghulam Mohammad, a bureaucrat-turned executive, to his long line of successors, and from Generals Iskander Mirza to Ayub Khan and Zia-ul-Haq, democratic and pluralist forces were either simply suppressed or surpassed with religious symbols providing the convenient legitimising ideology. Even a populist leader like Zulfikar Ali Bhutto occasionally capitulated religious pressures to exact political support. During Zia's regime, exploitation of religious ideology, both for domestic and external purposes, cost Pakistan immensely. The suppression of normal democratic processes only multiplied acute dissension's within the society and state. Other than ethnic conflict, Shia-Sunni feuds have claimed numerous innocent lives whereas politicians, while mired in sleaze and unchecked corruption, could not establish clean and efficient administration. The country, in a drift, has kept accumulating massive foreign debts, with life for an ordinary Pakistani becoming almost unbearable.
The country's obsolete institutions allow only the landed elite to monopolise its assemblies, whereas the ad hoc decisions are made by the generals and bureaucrats. Curiously, the society has been ready for radical and overdue reforms, while the state keeps insisting on status quo and that is why elections have more often failed to bring in some fresh blood. Jinnah's Pakistan of parliamentary democracy exists only in ideals. Undoubtedly, for Benazir Bhutto and her predecessor (and successor, Nawaz Sharif) it was a stupendous job to retrieve democratic and tolerant values from a chaotic and fractious legacy, but that is what leadership is all about. Ecologically, culturally, linguistically, demographically and politically, Pakistan is a well-defined polity, though it does have its own share of acute ideological and ethnic problems.
It is located in an arc of crises and especially in the light of unresolved problem over Kashmir with India and a constantly volatile Afghanistan, the country is awash with guns and drugs. Yet every sensible Pakistani desires a peaceful co-existence, a just system and a tolerant society. Pakistanis have struggled hard against odds and have been given a rough deal mostly by their own leaders, who have lacked both vision and courage, though the country has always welcomed political processes rather than authoritarianism and has persistently voted for moderate and mundane forces, rejecting religious extremists. A vital leadership proves itself only by rising to the challenges of nation-building and time may run out for politicians as the forces of militarism and fundamentalism may sweep the country.
Malady will not simply go away by just holding meaningless elections and by merely wasting public funds and resources on ostentatious regalia. Pakistan does need a transparent and responsible government that may come about only through internal stability, consolidation of democracy and an accountable system. Religious freedom, democracy and tolerance as promised and visualised by the founders of the country need to be implemented and the country is definitely ready for that. While the policy-makers, police and administrative machinery may be corrupt and inept, efforts for a cleaner and decentralised civil administration must be given priority. Similarly, the religious and ethnic leaders have to be freined in' through negotiations and by non-partisan and hold cooptive initiatives. The mafia gangs, loan/tax defaulters and similar other criminals — disallowing any personal/ political favour – must not be left at large.
Similarly, there is greater need to initiate overdue dialogue with India in the spirit of regional co-operation to redirect the scarce funds towards development schemes addressed at a vast youthful expectant society. These are the tasks which would not only put Pakistan on its right Jinnahist tracks but would also elevate present leaders as the pioneers for a more democratic, just and forward-looking Pakistan.
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