The democratic project
Rashed Rahman
Why is it that even after 70 years of its existence,
Pakistan can only be described as a democratic state and society with
difficulty, if at all? The main reasons should be sought in the legacy of the
independence struggle and partition, the overweening role of state institutions
such as the military and bureaucracy, and the mindset of our political class.
The independence struggle against British colonialism
degenerated into a communal slugfest between the two main religious groups in
undivided India – Muslims and Hindus. While the former community had by 1947,
and particularly after the communal bloodletting accompanying partition,
internalised the Muslim identity, the latter maintained a formal secularism
punctuated by communal riots until the BJP rose to power and in its present
avatar under Modi, is attempting to ‘Hinduise’ India.
In both cases, voices and forces of dissent from the
received legacy were loud and clear. In India, it was the Congress Party, the
Left, and to some extent the regional parties that rose to prominence later
that led the fight to retain the secular principles enshrined in their
Constitution, and continue to do so even today. In Pakistan, dissenting voices
arose from the smaller provinces of West Pakistan and from the Bengali majority
in East Pakistan. These struggles too are far from over.
In post-colonial Pakistan, the overdetermined colonial
construct around the state institutions that constituted the ‘steel frame’ of
the British Empire in South Asia – the military and bureaucracy – exercised an
overweening influence in national affairs. As for the political class, it
proved insecure, exclusionary, influenced profoundly by the communal strife
accompanying partition, and motivated by considerations that militated against
democracy in the true sense. Soon after independence, our political class
abandoned/rejected Jinnah’s desire for a secular state as envisioned in his
August 11, 1947 speech to the Constituent Assembly on the eve of the handover of
power. That speech was suppressed for many years and proved in any case too
little, too late after the genie of religion-tinged politics had been unleashed
during the independence struggle. The political class took nine years to
deliberate and finally adopt a Constitution in 1956 that reflected the turn
towards religion as the legitimising principle of the state and undermined
democracy by introducing One Unit in West Pakistan and parity between the two
wings. This negated the democratic principle of one man, one vote, motivated by
the West Pakistani political, bureaucratic and military elite’s paranoia
regarding a threatened permanent East Pakistani Bengali majority.
Ironically, the Bengali Muslims remained in the forefront of
the struggle for Pakistan, whose other centres were areas such as UP and Bihar
that remained in India after partition. The areas comprising West Pakistan were
latecomers (if at all) to the moveable feast at the new state’s table. The
history of the country between 1956 and 1969 can therefore be characterised by
the defining struggles against One Unit (some of them armed) and parity, i.e.
the twin pillars on which the state’s construct rested. In 1968-69, Ayub Khan’s
dictatorship faced a countrywide agitation and revolt that eventually saw him
depart in favour of a fresh martial law imposed by his army chief, General
Yahya. Repressive as this regime was to quell the popular ‘rebellion’, it also
realized there was no way forward except to undo the main causes of the
grievances against the top down imposed structure of the state. Hence One Unit
was repealed and one man, one vote conceded for the elections called for 1970.
That election reflected the volcanic lava that had been accumulating under the
surface in reaction to the dictatorial structures of the state and polity.
Suffice it to say in summary that Yahya’s refusal to accept the mandate of the
Awami League led by Sheikh Mujibur Rehman (albeit confined to an overwhelming
sweep in East Pakistan that gave it a majority), and the collaboration of an ambitious
and reared-under-dictatorship Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who had a majority in West
Pakistan, scuttled any chances of a democratic turn and eventually led to the
bloody breaking away of East Pakistan to reinvent itself as Bangladesh.
After the 1971 debacle, no accounting for the disaster took
place, and the whole episode was swept under the carpet. The three or four
generations since have amongst them many, especially young people, who are
either unaware of the once existence of an Eastern wing, or know precious
little about the circumstances surrounding its parting of the ways. This was
done to spare the military, bureaucracy and collaborationist political leaders
embarrassing blushes had the true facts seen the light of day.
Bhutto was installed in power by a post-Yahya military junta
in what remained of Jinnah’s Pakistan. He consolidated his power, carried out
radical reforms (not all good), annoyed thereby the capitalist and large
landowning classes, and failing to carry through the logic of his populist
politics, was overthrown and hanged as the dastardly revenge of the propertied
against him and the ‘upstart’ poor who had dared challenge them under the
illusions fostered by Bhutto’s populist rhetoric.
Then descended the dark night of the General Ziaul Haq era,
whose hangover afflicts us to this day. Promoting religiosity and
fundamentalism not only helped Zia suppress any hankerings for democracy, it
enabled him to prolong his tenure when the Afghan war fell like a ripe and
fortuitous fruit in his lap. In all these periods of non-democratic and
dictatorial rule, the west led by the US supported and consolidated these
tendencies (in return, at least initially, for Pakistan joining anti-communist
pacts such as CENTO and SEATO).
The post-Zia ‘democratic’ interregnum of 1988-99 saw no
government complete its tenure, with Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif engaged in
the game of musical chairs until General Pervez Musharraf turned off the music.
His regime murdered Nawab Akbar Bugti, Benazir Bhutto and others to signal the
drawing of a black curtain once again upon the realm. The hopes and aspirations
accompanying the restoration of elected civilian governments in 2008 stand
dashed against the malign manoeuvrings of the ‘establishment’, the suppression
of dissent and criticism (ironically in an era of supposed freedom of the media
and expression), and the showcasing of elected governments while retaining
important policy areas such as defence, foreign policy and internal security to
itself, de facto if not de jure.
This lengthy digression into our history is necessary to
discern the pattern that emerges. Initially unabashedly military-bureaucratic
dictatorships, later powerless elected civilian governments, this minuet sees
the establishment raising to the heights chosen political leaders, inevitably
falling out with them over the exercise of real power, and then pinning their
own creatures against the wall until they feel compelled to cry out and raise
the banner of ‘rebellion’. The only difference now is that the latest recipient
of such ‘honour’ is for the first time a Punjabi (not from one of the virtual
‘colonies’ called smaller provinces). That has set a new dynamic in motion.
However this struggle pans out, it is unlikely Pakistan will ever be exactly
the same again.
The time, effort, sweat and blood that has been expended on
the democratic project over the last 70 years offered the mirage of space for
raising the grievances and aspirations of the deprived, marginalised, oppressed
and exploited. Even if that has come to pass to some extent, the second half of
the argument for democracy, that it could be the harbinger of a transcendence
of the ‘limits’ of parliamentary democracy in favour of a radical change that
empowers and places at the centre as the object of history the people, has yet
to break through the dark clouds lowering once again on our political
firmament.
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