The dead weight of the past
Rashed Rahman
The dead weight of the past impinges on the present and,
indeed, the future. This wisdom applies to Pakistan too. On the 71st
anniversary of Independence today, it is difficult to cleave through the
confusion, cacophony, and multiple narratives that fill the air without understanding
how we got here.
Pakistan came into being on August 14, 1947 amidst the
tragedy of Partition, accompanied as it was by communal bloodletting and the
greatest migration of human beings in history. Given the acrimony preceding
that historic day during the independence struggle between the Pakistan Muslim
League (PML) led by Mohammad Ali Jinnah and the Congress Party, India exhibited
its hostility to the new state by withholding Pakistan’s share of the pool of
assets to be divided between the two countries.
The Kashmir conflict soon followed, and proved to be the
most intractable issue between Pakistan and India till the present day. The
conflict in large part defined, and continues to dominate, the relationship
between the two neighbours. Arguably, the atmosphere of crisis engendered by
this early conflict paved the way for the emergence of a national security
state in Pakistan, dominated directly or indirectly by the military.
Internally, the issue of the integration of Balochistan into
the new state against the aspirations of Baloch nationalists to be treated as a
treaty state and allowed the option of independence produced the first Baloch
nationalist rebellion in 1948 when the province was allegedly included
forcibly. Short-lived as that first rebellion was, it set the tone for the
troubled relationship between Balochistan and the Centre, a divide that
continues to this day when the fifth insurgency since Independence rages in the
province.
After Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s demise in 1948, the
country was roiled by issues pertaining to the legitimising philosophy of the
new state, reflected in its Constitution, the federal structure, and democracy.
The last remains an unresolved issue to this day. The first blow against what
the Quaid wished for was delivered by the Objectives Resolution adopted by the
Constituent Assembly.
A Constitution took nine years in the making because the
powers-that-be were fearful of a permanent Bengali majority in East Pakistan.
They got around that in the 1956 Constitution by violating the democratic
principle of one man one vote in favour of parity of representation in
parliament between the two wings. Practically, this had the effect of depreciating
the vote of the East Pakistani citizen. In addition, One Unit abolished the
historically evolved provinces of West Pakistan to ‘balance’ the weight of the
two wings. This sparked off renewed nationalist agitation and guerrilla war in
Balochistan, and nationalist resentment and agitation in Sindh and NWFP (the
then name of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa).
The seeds therefore of long term conflict between the
disadvantaged provinces and the Centre (with the Punjabi elite siding with the
latter) were sowed in Pakistan’s early years and continue to bedevil the
federation to this day.
Externally, Pakistan soon aligned itself with the US-led
west’s crusade against Communism, rendering Pakistan the west’s ‘most allied
ally’ because of its joining two defence pacts, Cento and Seato, to ostensibly
halt the march of communist revolution in the region. This was accompanied from
1951 onwards by an unremitting attack on the Pakistani Left, starting from the
Rawalpindi Conspiracy Case that led to the 1954 banning of the Communist Party.
Leftists then sought shelter under the umbrella of a nationalist-Leftist
combine reflected in the formation of the National Awami Party (NAP).
The attack on the Left further deepened the climate of
reducing democracy to a show window in hock to powerful vested interests
amongst the social elite and powerful state institutions inherited from the
colonial state, principally the military and bureaucracy. Since the 1958
military coup and imposition of martial law, the political struggle in Pakistan
has perpetually revolved around democracy versus dictatorship, with the latter
holding sway directly or indirectly and gutting in the process all freedoms,
including freedom of expression, association, and democratic governance. The
civil-military divide till today owes its origins to these early battles.
The people of Pakistan did not give up their struggle for
democratic and other rights. In 1968-69, the whole country rose against the
decade-old Ayub dictatorship and forced the usurper to retire. But he left only
after handing over power to the military under Yahya Khan once again. Another
martial law was imposed. Despite its draconian measures to quell the agitation,
the Yahya regime had to make concessions to the rebellious mood of the people.
It abolished the hated One Unit, restored one man one vote, and called general
elections in 1970. In the context of the controversy surrounding the 2018
polls, it needs to be stated that the 1970 elections are universally
acknowledged to be the freest and fairest in our history. However, the results
of the 1970 elections, in which Sheikh Mujibur Rehman (recently released after
the Agartala Conspiracy Case was withdrawn against him) led his Awami League to
victory through an overwhelming sweep of the seats in East Pakistan, which gave
him a simple majority in parliament. The refusal of the Yahya regime, aided and
abetted by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and others in West Pakistan, to accept the
result ended in a military crackdown in East Pakistan, civil war amidst
accusations of a massacre in the east wing, and eventually the breaking away of
East Pakistan with Indian military intervention to emerge as independent
Bangladesh.
Jinnah’s Pakistan was dead. Bhutto, brought to power in the
remaining Pakistan by the military to handle the mess, promised a ‘new’
Pakistan (shades of today’s ‘naya’ Pakistan). Bhutto started off reasonably
well, negotiating the Simla Accord with India to bring back 90,000 prisoners of
war, agreeing a consensus 1972 Interim Constitution with the Opposition, and
carrying through his party’s programme of nationalising the commanding heights
of the economy and land reform. By the time the 1973 Constitution was adopted
(not unanimously as is now the received wisdom since Balochistan’s
representatives did not sign on to it), the very forces (especially the Left)
that had propelled Bhutto to power from the grassroots, were now attacked by
the regime. The working class was physically assaulted in Karachi in 1972,
Balochistan was subjected to a huge military operation after the dismissal of
the Sardar Attaullah Mengal ministry in 1973, and the land reforms were quietly
reversed in practice in favour of the landowning class by 1975. Bhutto’s
promise of a ‘new’ (democratic, progressive) Pakistan thereby soon foundered,
rendering him and his government helpless against the opposition’s countrywide
agitation against the rigged 1977 elections. The military intervened through a
coup again, ushering in the long night of the Ziaul Haq dictatorship whose
malign influence dogs our footsteps even today. In the process, Bhutto was
hanged in a dubious judicial process, thereby embittering the PPP and large
segments of the population. Zia made peace with the Baloch nationalist
resistance that had been mounted since 1973 against the military operation in
order to free his hands to deal with Bhutto and the PPP.
The death of Zia ushered in the democracy of the 1990s
decade, characterised by the ‘blood feud’ between the PPP and the Zia-created
PML (by now PML-N), played out by both sides toppling the other’s governments
through the help of the military. Those musical chairs ended with Musharraf’s
1999 coup, after which Nawaz Sharif (forcibly) and Benazir Bhutto
(self-imposed) found themselves in exile. Musharraf shot himself in the foot in
2007 because of his actions against the judiciary, resulting in his departure
and the restoration of democracy in 2008. We are witnessing the peculiar hybrid
democracy spawned since then despite the third transition through the ballot
box in one of the most controversial elections in our history in 2018.
This brief and all too inadequate survey of the past
highlights at least four issues that need to be resolved to escape the dead
weight of the past. These are: parliamentary, civilian supremacy in a genuine
democracy; federation issues pertaining to the rights of the three smaller (in
population) provinces; peace with our neighbours and an independent foreign
policy in a rapidly changing and shifting global power play; and last but not
least, a tilt towards implementing the rights and aspirations of the poor and marginalised.
Without resolving these challenges, Pakistan will remain mired in the legacy of
the past and run the risk of failing as a state.
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