The Politics of Agitation
The October 27 dharna in front of Parliament by the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) was intended, according to the JI's own pronouncements, to be the final siege, not to be lifted until the government fell. In the event, the JI cadres failed to reach the objective in sufficient numbers on the appointed day because of the stringent measures taken by the government. The break through the police lines the next day failed to achieve the critical mass which would have made it an immovable object or an irresistible force. Some analysts are wont to ascribe the October 28 sit-in in front of Parliament by some 2,000 JI cadres as achieved, partly at least, because of a wink and a nod from the authorities, perhaps as a face-saving device for the JI to 'withdraw. The government seems to have been keen, after the event, to leave room for the JI to retreat while licking its wounds. Qazi Hussain Ahmad was released soon after his arrest, ostensibly for health reasons, but also perhaps out of a desire on the part of the government to avoid further provoking the overheated militants of the JI.
This was not the first manifestation of the JI's desire to see the back of this government. Nor, if Qazi Sahib is to be believed, is to be the last. The JI has announced a programme of continuous protest throughout the country until the government calls it a day. The question before us is to assess how far the JI's ambitions are likely to be fulfilled. As a build-up to the ‘final assault on the citadel of power in the capital, the JI had already tested the waters in Rawalpindi and Lahore. In Rawalpindi, its procession was stopped at Liaquat Bagh and three JI cadres were killed as a result of cold blooded firing by the police. The deaths, however, failed to arouse the kind of general response amongst the public which the JI may have hoped for. In Lahore, its student wing, the Islami Jamiat-i-Tuleba, launched a 'Save Education campaign with a rally which sought to march to the Governor's House but on being stopped by the police and asked to send a delegation instead, tried to break through the barriers. A fight with the police naturally ensued, with the unequal odds in favour of the law enforcers persuading the rally participants to scatter through different areas of the city centre and carry their 'protest with them.
Both instances must have persuaded the administration that whatever the public assurances of the JI leadership that it intended nothing more sinister than a peaceful march on Parliament and a sit-in, a right they insisted lay within the parameters of a democratic order and which view the Lahore High Court upheld, if sufficient number of JUI activists came within hailing distance of the Parliament building, things could get out of hand. Therefore, the government pulled out all the stops. It virtually cut off the capital from the rest of the country, thereby making the task of the JI to bring its cadres in sufficient numbers into the capital almost an impossibility. There has been adverse comment in the Press about the extraordinary measures taken by the government to prevent the JI achieving its ‘goal. The Jamaat-i-Islami boasts one of the most disciplined cadre-based parties in the country.
Its difficulty over the 50 years of Pakistan's existence has been how to translate that internal discipline into broader support from the general public. In the first 23 years of Pakistan's existence, no party was able to test its popularity through the existence of the will of the people since genuinely free and fair elections, and which were accepted by all as such, were not held until the mass movement of 196869 had swept the Ayub dictatorship away and its successor, the Yahya military regime, saw the first free and fair elections in Pakistan's history as a surrender to the inevitable in the face of an unprecedented mass upsurge. In that election (whose results were aborted through the crisis in East Pakistan, civil war and the emergence of Bangladesh), as in very exercise of the free will of the electorate since, the Jamat has not been able to win more than three seats in the National Assembly. In other words, the theologically rigorous, practically highly disciplined character of the Jamaat has not translated well into votes at the hustings. For long years the Jamaat had convinced itself that this was no great liability. And the pretorian and authoritarian dispensations in our past lent weight to the view that in Pakistan, at least, change could only come through a radical upsurge.
Because of a complex of factors, historical, cultural, political, economic and social, the hopes of the JI never achieved fulfilment. A new generation of leadership of the Jamaat, personified by its firebrand chief Qazi Hussain Ahmad, reviewed its previous stance to some extent. Without abandoning the logic of using both parliamentary and extra-parliamentary methods of struggle, the Jamaat under its new leader went 'populisť. Qazi Hussain Ahmad decided to take up popular causes. It is a different matter that the Jamaat came to the idea of mass mobilisation as the way forward for their aims at a stage in history which has some peculiar features unhelpful for the purpose. The early years of Pakistan's history were characterised by some strange phenomena.
Among others was the strange twist whereby the Jamaat, and its founder, Maulana Abul Ala Maudoodi, had overcome their opposition to the idea of Pakistan to lay claim to being the true, and even exclusive representatives of the Spirit and philosophy of the new state. While Maulana Maudoodi's historical "opposition to Mr. Jinnah's purposes may be charitably ascribed to a genuine difference of opinion on what was best for the Muslims of undivided India (as Professor Khursheed Ahmed of the Jamaat attempted so eloquently to explicate in the Senate the other day), what is inexplicable is how the Jamaat came to appropriate, the name of Islam, what later came to be called the ideology of Pakistan which was initially anathema to the pan-Islamic views of Maulana Maudoodi. mainstream This turn did the Jamaat the favour of attempting to insert itself into the of political life in the new state. It intelligently used its organisational strengths over the years to build constituencies in the trade unions and student bodies throughout the country. Its efforts best succeeded in Punjab.
In the 1970s, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's short-sighted apprehension of a threat from the left which had helped fuel and organise the mass movement on whose shoulders he finally rose to power, persuaded him to turn a blind eye, and even in certain instances, encourage the Jamaat-led students and trade unions to crush the left. Those very students belonging to the Islami Jamiat-i-Tuleba who marched on the Mall, Lahore the other day to Save Education may be surprised to learn of the 'contribution of some of their leaders to destroying the academic atmosphere of some of the premier institutions of higher learning in the country. The Jamaat did take advantage of the chink opened up for it by ZAB. By 1977, when Bhutto was ovrethrown by Ziaul Haq, the Jamaat was poised to take advantage of the situation by initially joining the regime, and later enjoying its patronage. However, the ungrateful electorate of Pakistan failed to reward the Jamaat for its efforts in the 1988 elections or thereafter.
Proof of this assertion is the fact the following Qazi Hussain's resignation from the Senate, ostensibly because he wanted to call down the wrath of God on the ‘garbage' that according to him fills the Assemblies, but according to some cynics because he did not envisage any possibility of being re-elected once his mandate expired next March, there were only three Jamaat members of the National Assembly available to resign in line with their leader's directive. Senator Khursheed Ahmed has preferred to cling to his seat, regardless of his party's or his leader's strategy. Electoral success has eluded the Jamaat. Populist rhetoric and attempts at mass mobilisation have yet to bear dividends. The Jamaat's strategic options are narrowing, particularly at a point in time when the patronage of Western cold war warriors against Godless communism is no longer available with the same generosity. The Jamaat has had to fall back on its own resources.
What the Jamaat therefore is trying to gain from the current agitation against the government is to create sufficient pressure and destabilisation that the 'powers that be are compelled to dismiss this government and bring in an interim arrangement in which the Jamaat may feel it has a chance of sharing power. To aspire to, and struggle for political power on the basis of a manifesto and programme is the inherent right of every political party, provided it is within the constitutional and democratic parameters which today govern our polity. If the Jamaat were to adhere to these parameters despite the odds against its acceptance electorally by large numbers of the electorate, there could not conceivably be any objection.
But if the Jamaat has become one more entrant to the camp of those seeking a truncation of democracy and worse, even a suspension of the Constitution so that their ambitions may be satisfied, no matter what it costs the country, then one must respectfully differ with Qazi Hussain Ahmed and his party. Democracy is important for Pakistan not because of any abstract political principles alone. It is crucial because of our anti-democratic and authoritarian past and the cost that past has extracted in terms of the consolidation of state and society on agreed, consensual foundations. Pakistan needs continuity of the political process and institutionalisation of democratic governance and change. Let us not, in blind opposition to the government of the day, throw the baby of democracy out with the bathwater of muck and corruption which has sullied us all.
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