Pakistan in Crisis

Ashok Kapur

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9781134989768
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

With these questions in mind Professor Kapur charts the continuous power struggles of Pakistan's ruling elites. Using a historical and comparative approach he shows how the search for democracy and national identity has been hindered by army intervention, political intrigue and the failure of Islam to unite the various ethnic factions. While pessimistic about the chances for democracy in Pakistan, he hopes that the democratic pluralism and broad-based political activity emerging in much of Eastern Europe and the Third World will inspire ordinary Pakistanis to transform their country into a nation, in spirit as well as in name.

1
Elements in the making of Pakistan’s political system, 1947–58

INTRODUCTION

This chapter sketches the formative phase of Pakistani politics. The contention is that despite the historic weaknesses of Pakistani political institutions a structure of power relations emerged during this period. The ‘system’ was governed by British and Pakistani political traditions. Its internal power relations had dual roots. Its Pakistani roots revealed the primacy of paternalistic and autocratic ways of Pakistani political and economic elites. The British roots of the post-1947 Pakistani system revealed the primacy of the British-trained Pakistani civil service. After 1947 it emerged as the steel frame of the Pakistani government administration, and it played a prominent role in Pakistani political life. In what became Pakistan after 1947, the British India government had relied on its civil servants and its military officers to administer the forward areas by administrative means. The civil service avoided mass politics and it divided mass movements by manipulating key political personalities or local notables. The local allies of British authority acted in a paternalistic and an autocratic manner. They had not been groomed in the nursery of democracy and in the ideals of individual freedom, liberty and nationalism. This tradition continued to dominate the Pakistani political system after 1947. Such a political system was not unified by high ideals or national, political or moral purposes which enjoyed widespread legitimacy. In these circumstances Pakistani political personalities acted with a view to aggrandize personal power. Factional fights were used to gain power with the aid of domestic and foreign alliances.¹ The habit of relying on mass politics did not exist.² Independent Pakistan’s main political party, the Muslim League, never led or participated in mass movements prior to 1947 as did the Indian National Congress Party. Instead, there were horizontal and vertical cleavages in Pakistani politics and society at the time of independence and these revealed the limits as well the opportunities. They revealed the system boundaries in which the political elites functioned to organize the power structure and political relations.

The contention is that a political system emerged in the first phase of independent Pakistan’s history, even though at the time its political life was unstable. The political infrastructure was weak and colonial in its organization and purpose. Pakistani legislative and judicial organs were weak compared to the strength of its civil and military bureaucracies at the time. The political life centred on personality and factional fights. The political system did not enjoy legitimacy within and outside Pakistan. Its political base was narrow and it was not popular. Moreover, the political base in this period was not strong. This is clear from the frequent changes in the leadership of successive Pakistani governments prior to the takeover by the Pakistani military in 1958. A sign of the weakness and narrowness of Pakistan’s political infrastructure at the time was its vulnerability to intervention. The Pakistani Army, and the civil service continually acted against Pakistani politicians.

The political portrait of the time revealed a fluid centre of power that was populated with astute and ambitious leaders who sought power (strength) and authority (respect and legitimacy) in Pakistan and among Pakistan’s foreign friends. The arena of Pakistani politics at the time (1947–58) consisted of weak political institutions, disorganized peripheries, and multiple vetoes at the ‘centre’ and in the ‘peripheries’. At the time the structure of political power in Pakistan was not one of a strong alliance between the Pakistani civil service, the Pakistani Army, Pakistani business and Pakistan’s Islamic groups. Rather, temporary and unstable coalitions between civil servants and politicians marred and dominated the Pakistani political landscape. The civil service—Pakistani Army alliance started to take shape in 1951. It crystallized in 1954³ when the Pakistani Army became a full partner in the ruling Pakistani oligarchy. I call this period the formative one because the civil service-Pakistani Army alliance which was to dominate Pakistani politics in subsequent eras (1958–69 under General, later Field Marshal, M.Ayub Khan; 1969–71 under General Yahya Khan; 1977–88 under M.Zia-ul-Haq) crystallized in this phase. This period reveals the origins of the Pakistani Army’s political role. Table 1.1 shows the interests and pattern of intervention by the Pakistani Army in the country’s politics in the early 1950s.

This period is important because Pakistan’s civil and military bureaucracies formed a political alliance, and power was forcibly transferred from the hands of Pakistani politicians to its administrators who emerged as the guardians of Pakistan’s external and internal security. This period is also important because political power was transferred from the hands of Indian Muslims (Mohajirs who moved to Pakistan from India in 1947) represented by M.A.Jinnah and Liaquat Ali Khan into indigenous Pakistani (especially Punjabi) hands.⁴

Table 1.1 The Pakistani Army (General Ayub Khan) as decision-maker

Despite the difficulties in achieving a measure of stability in Pakistani political life during this period, the civil-military bureaucratic oligarchy was able to keep Pakistan together, to give Pakistani economic life some shape and hope, to give a systemic direction to Pakistani foreign relations, to curb the politicians, and above all to stay in power. In this period the military-bureaucratic coalition consolidated its power within Pakistan and shaped its alliance with the US government. The latter became the security partner of both the civil-military bureaucracy and Pakistan.

Such changes were short-term gains in terms of management of immediate problems. But at the same time, the outlook and the actions of the power groups in this period created the foundations of subsequent crisis in Pakistani political system. Thus it is important to address the following questions. Who were the key players and what were the internal power relations in Pakistan? What were the motives, interests and political ideas which informed the political actions of the key players? What were their methods of action or strategies of intervention in domestic and external affairs? What were the relevant domestic and external circumstances in which they acted? What kinds of immediate crises did they manage and what kinds of systemic and image crises did they create by their actions?

The successive crises in Pakistani politics had their origins in the mental outlook and approach to politics of Pakistan’s founder M.A. Jinnah. Jinnah is often portrayed as a secular man, a kindred spirit. This picture is misleading. He was the father of Pakistan as well as the father of Pakistani authoritarianism. Jinnah recognized from the beginning of Pakistani independence that Pakistan’s problem was internal, not external. As Jalal point out: ‘He knew better than anyone else that the greatest threat to Pakistan’s survival would be internal not external.’⁵ The internal problem lay in the demands of different regional and ethnic groups for political and economic power. Rather than address these fundamental issues (which have bedevilled Pakistani politics since 1947) and to find constitutional and political arrangements to accommodate these demands and to share power, Jinnah’s approach to politics evaded the issue. He embraced a system of centralized or authoritarian powers in his own hands; his framework was presidential or imperial.⁶ There was a touch of secularism in Jinnah’s speeches in 1947 but this gave way to a recognition of the utility of Islam in Pakistani politics as a cement against internal divisions.⁷ There were two Jinnah’s in play in Pakistani politics:

1. If you change your past and work together with a spirit that everyone of you, no matter what is his colour, caste or creed, is first, second, and last a citizen of this State with equal rights, privileges and obligations, there will be no end to the progress you will make… We should begin to work in that spirit and in [the] course of time all these angularities of the majority and minority communities, the Hindu community and the Muslim community—because even as regards Muslims you have Pathans, Punjabis, Shias, Sunnis, and so on, and among the Hindus you have Brahmins, Vaishnavas, Khatris, also Bengalees, Madrasis, and so on—will vanish… You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any 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.
   (11 August 1947)
2. On the other hand, Jinnah took a dim view of political parties and politicians in Pakistan. He argued, along with Liaquat Ali Khan, that Pakistan could not afford the luxury of an opposition in politics.⁸ Jinnah rejected a political system that reflected the principles of constitutional checks and balances as a basis of political development. Instead, he recognized the central place of the bureaucracy in the administrative, political and economic life of Pakistan. And he recognized the utility of Islam. According to Venkataramani,

have you forgotten the lesson that was taught to us thirteen hundred years ago? Who were the original inhabitants of Bengal—not those who are now living. So what is the use of saying ‘we are Bengalis, Sindhis, or Pathans, or Punjabis’. No, we are Muslims. Islam has taught us this, and I think you will agree with me that whatever else you may be and whatever you are, you are a Muslim. If I may point out, you are all outsiders here.

(21 March 1948)

The final component in Jinnah’s thinking was the search for a dependable foreign patron with money who could assume the mantle of patronage of the Muslim League which the British had worn since the 1930s. According to Venkataramani,

on 1 May Mohammed Ali Jinnah, Leader of the Muslim League, received two American visitors at his Bombay residence. They were Raymond A.Hare, Head of the Division of South Asian Affairs, Department of State, and Thomas E.Weil, Second Secretary of the US Embassy in India. Jinnah asserted that under no circumstances would he accept the concept of an Indian Union since the Muslim League was determined to establish Pakistan. He sought to impress on his visitors that the emergence of an independent, sovereign Pakistan would be in consonance with American interests. Pakistan would be a Muslim country, Muslim countries would stand together against Russian aggression. In that endeavour they would look to the United States for assistance, he added. Jinnah coupled the danger of ‘Russian aggression’ with another menace that Muslim nations might confront. That was ‘Hindu imperialism’. The establishment of Pakistan was essential to prevent the expansion of Hindu imperialism into the Middle East, he emphasised.⁹

In sum, Jinnah was ambivalent about the role of Islam in state affairs, but his conception of Pakistani politics centred on a political system that revolved around Jinnah and the Pakistani bureaucracy.¹⁰ During Jinnah’s lifetime a Jinnah-mullah’s alliance was not the centrepiece of Jinnah’s political model¹¹ as it was to become under General M.Zia-ul-Haq (1977–88). Jinnah’s views nevertheless revealed an anti-democratic basis and an anti- Islamic fundamentalist vision of Pakistani politics.

Jinnah’s mental outlook recognized that internal ethnic and regional cleavages and divisive strains threatened Pakistan. Like many political practitioners his choices were: (1) do nothing and face the prospect of an internal civil war; (2) engage in domestic economic and political reform, and share power by broadening the political and social base of political participation so that competing domestic interests are accommodated; (3) or turn the population’s attention to foreign threats and to create a preoccupation with military balances. Jinnah chose the third option when the internal problems ideally required the second choice.

If the premise is sound that problems of internally divided societies require more democracy rather than less, then Jinnah’s approach was wrong-headed. This was so because Jinnah and the civil servants dominated the political process of Pakistan during 1947–8. Jinnah lived briefly after Pakistan became independent but he, the civil servants, and Liaquat Ali Khan (who was assassinated in 1951) established the Pakistani approach to politics. Between August 1947 and October 1951 the Pakistani Army was not the key player in the political process. At the time the combination of Jinnah, Liaquat Ali Khan, and the civil service first discredited Pakistani politicians on the grounds that they were incompetent and corrupt.¹² (The Army critique of politicians came later.) The origins of this crisis in Pakistan was not the result of the ‘tradition versus modernity’ argument that divided Pakistani Islamic ideology.¹³ Rather the origins lay in Jinnah’s, and the civil services’ mental outlook, life experiences and personal interests which favoured elite rule with a narrow political base. This required an authoritarian approach. Here the emphasis was on charismatic political leadership, administrative rule, secretive actions, determination to control minority demands and the importance of ‘law and order’ rather than political development.¹⁴

This was the outlook of the Jinnah-Liaquat Ali Khan-bureaucratic alliance that dominated Pakistan’s political affairs (1947–51). The internal strains in Pakistani politics and society could not be settled because there was no legitimate mechanism to articulate and accommodate internal pressures. Jinnah and his cohorts shifted the attention of Pakistani elites and masses to the external realm by making the India-Pakistan and Pakistan-USSR fights the centre-piece of Pakistani foreign and military affairs and its domestic politics. This strategy and ruse created a false expectation among Pakistanis about Pakistan’s military strength, its Islamic convictions and its moral superiority. It bought time for the dominant elements and enabled them to consolidate their hold over Pakistani political processes. When internal strains threatened the ‘integrity of Pakistan’ the psychological orientation of Pakistani politics under Jinnah and his cohorts was to express the problem differently: as one of Indian and Soviet threats to Pakistan’s territorial integrity. Here Jinnah’s mental outlook, the self-interest of the bureaucracy, and intrigue by key members of this bureaucracy (especially Ghulam Mohammed and Iskander Mirza) reinforced the Pakistani tradition of authoritarianism. The shift from authoritarianism by the Jinnah-Liaquat Ali Khan regime to authoritarianism under Ayub Khan (1958–69), Yahya Khan (1969–71) and Zia-ul-Haq (1977–88) is to be seen as a change of cast but not a change of basic approach of successive Pakistani elites. Even the elected government of Z.A.Bhutto (1972–7) matched Pakistani elites’ devotion to authoritarianism. Bhutto’s political style had a populist appeal but once in power he conducted Pakistan’s affairs in an imperialist manner.

TURNING POINTS IN THE FIRST PHASE

In the formative phase of Pakistan’s political history there are several watersheds. These occur between August 1947 (when Jinnah led Pakistan into independence) and October 1958 (when General Ayub Khan organized a peaceful military coup). A turning point is a major event with major consequences. It changes internal power relations and it reveals driving elements in a political system. It is a dividing line or milestone in a country’s development.

Jinnah’s takeover of power in Pakistan, 1947–8

The fourteenth of August 1947 represented the transfer of political, military and constitutional authority from British India government to two dominions, India and Pakistan. The period 14 August 1947 to 11 September 1948 (when Jinnah died) is important for a number of reasons. First, it saw the beginning of a viceregal regime in Pakistan. The foundation of a series of executive-dominated presidential systems of government in Pakistan was laid by Jinnah. Secondly, it marked the beginning of the internal, intra-elite intrigu...