The National Question in Pakistan
Rashed Rahman
February 5 for many years now is commemorated in Pakistan as
Kashmir Solidarity Day. Rallies, marches, protests and discussions ensue on the
right of self-determination for the long suffering people of Kashmir, as
(partially) enshrined in the UN resolutions on the issue. However, when it comes
to the internal problems in Pakistan on this right, or even the grievances and
political, economic, social and other rights for nationalities alienated from
the state on this basis, blinkers tend to descend over our collective eyes and
rational discussion becomes virtually impossible, if not dangerous.
There is a need to understand the National Question in its
historical context generally, and in relation to Pakistan’s experience in
particular. Modern nationalism is a byproduct of the emergence of capitalism,
initially in Europe, later globally. The identification of discrete ethnic
groups having common origins, territory, history and culture as nations in
their own right owed much to the desire of the capitalist class (bourgeoisie)
of such groups to have control of the market on territory identified as the
location of the particular ethnic group. In some instances, this nation-state
formation proceeded peacefully, in many others through wars and conflicts with
adjoining states or even internal conflicts before nation-states were
consolidated in Europe. To prevent further conflict and wars, the Treaty of
Westphalia in 1648 set the seal on the boundaries of the emergent nation-states
in Europe.
The new system of capitalism proved the most dynamic in
history till then and capital accumulation soon reached a point of where
capital burst the relatively recently established national boundaries and
spread to the rest of the world through colonial conquest and occupation in the
rest of the world. In the Americas, southern Africa, Australia and New Zealand
it took the form of settler colonialism. The successor European populations of
these areas are the heirs of that initial settlers’ series of waves. In the
rest of the world, colonialism remained an occupying power, extracting raw
materials and supplanting local manufactures and products with the output of
its own factories, thereby ruining the economies and lives of millions of
‘natives’.
When the wave of independence movements in the colonies
after World War II eventually ended in the dismantling of the colonial system,
the newly emerged independent states in these erstwhile colonies saw the light
of freedom in states amongst whom many were not ethnically homogeneous. More
often than not, a particular ethnic group dominated the power structures in the
newly freed states, with considerable minority ethnic groups or nationalities contained
within their borders. That multi-ethnic, multi-national construct fed into many
internal conflicts and wars as these new states struggled to define and
consolidate their national political structures.
In Pakistan too the postcolonial state inherited from
British colonialism betrayed certain peculiarities that became the basis of
conflict and civil wars in our 70-year-old history. The legacy of the British
consisted in the over-determination and excessive power of state institutions
the colonialists created and nurtured for the purpose of keeping the ‘restive
natives’ quiescent. Two state institutions stood out in this regard: the
military and the bureaucracy. In Pakistan’s case, because of historical
peculiarities rooted in the colonialists’ concerns to keep control of the
conquered peoples through loyalists, these two state institutions were largely,
in fact overwhelmingly drawn from one province, Punjab. They were also
inheritors and carriers forward of the mindset in which they had been nurtured
of treating the citizenry as people to be kept under their control. After the
first military coup by General Ayub, the bureaucracy steadily and incrementally
lost ground to the military. This trend has reached its apogee by now.
Pakistan emerged on the map as a state made up of a mosaic
of disparate and discrete ethnic groups and nationalities with aspirations to
have their identities and rights duly recognized and respected in the new
independent state dispensation. However, this became the source of much
conflict inn our history, conflicts not reconciled even today. The basic reason
for these conflicts was the clash between the aspirations of the constituent
units of the new state (barring Punjab, ‘privileged’ by the composition of the
military and ruling elite) and the overarching ideological straitjacket of one
nation based on a common religion into which the ruling elite has tried to
force the Pakistani polity.
Balochistan’s accession to Pakistan against its desire for
independence or at the very least maximum autonomy became the first such
conflict at the very birth of the new state. East Pakistan followed soon after
in 1948 over the national language issue, which fed into and fuelled other
political, economic and social grievances. The first has spawned repeated
nationalist insurgencies in the face of the state’s failure to accommodate, to
the extent possible, these grievances and aspirations. The current nationalist
insurgency is the fifth in the last 70 years. The second ended in the breakaway
of half the country, a majority of the population of undivided Pakistan, and
the embitterment of relations with Bangladesh after a brutal military crackdown,
civil war and finally Indian military intervention in 1971.
The loss of half the country should have been a moment for
retrospection and the learning of lessons. Instead, the ‘episode’ of East
Pakistan/Bangladesh was brushed under the carpet, ensuring no lessons were drawn
or learnt. This inevitably resulted in a repetition of the same strong arm
policy of quelling sub-nationalist aspirations by liberal use of the knout and
bayonet. The 2010 18th Amendment was a major step towards the
constitutional devolution of powers to the provinces. Unfortunately, many of
its provisions have still to be implemented in practice by the provinces.
The autonomy accorded to the provinces by the 18th
Amendment does not, even conceptually, mean that all the conflicts amongst the
provinces and the Centre have been resolved. The simmering nationalist
insurgency in Balochistan, the aspirations for just treatment of the Sindhi
nationalists, and the continuing, albeit admittedly much weakened, ambitions of
Pashtun nationalists point to this truth.
Pakistan’s minority nationalities’ struggles for autonomy
and rights have remained part of the general struggle for a democratic order.
The present faux democracy we have has served to muffle, if not silence, these
voices. However, states that ignore such simmering discontents run grave risks,
as 1971 proved. It is still not too late to revisit the national project by
embracing the discontented nationalities, deal with their historically received
and current grievances and consolidate Pakistan as a genuinely equal and just
federal state in a democratic framework that not only helps resolve old
conflicts but ensures these become a thing of the past. Complacency and
indifference to these issues could one day come back to haunt the state and
create an even bigger cataclysm than 1971.
rashed-rahman.blogspot.com
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