From Jinnah to Jamali

When people try to analyze the problems of Pakistan as a society, the issue of leadership or its lack usually captures their imaginations as the basis of all that is wrong with the country. The reference more often than not is made to Mr. Jinnah who is supposed to have single-handedly carved out and wrested the Islamic Republic of Pakistan from the clutches of the British and the ‘Hindus’. This debate, in spite of regularly going into a rhetorical hyperbole, seldom goes beyond post dinner conversations that range from debating the validity of the Big Bang hypothesis to the latest trends in men’s neckties and everything in between.

On the other hand, those amongst us who claim the banner of intellectualism, tend to limit their analysis to flowery laments written in the best of English prose, drawing comparisons between the Pakistani leaders and the excellent performance of similarly named counterparts in the developed world. The need however is to understand the crisis of leadership in Pakistan and related problems in a manner that could contribute in the process of their rectification. In my previous article (which incidentally was also my first at Chowk.com), I submitted an analysis of the socio-political institutions in Pakistan. In what follows I will continue on the same lines to probe into the historical causes of our leadership crisis—defined as a situation wherein more problems are created than it is possible to solve.

Leaders and managers of a social order come from the ruling class. A social order is the name of a particular set of relations between a ruling class and a class of producers whom the former rule. The nature of this social order is in turn determined by the production relations that are established as a logical concomitant of the means of production employed during the production process. “A hand-mill gives you society with a feudal lord; a steam-mill society with the industrial capitalist” (Karl Marx—The Misery of Philosophy).

History tells us that the nature of relations between the ruling and the ruled classes has always been conflicting. However, due to the symbiotic process of social existence, the two classes, in spite of having an antagonistic relationship with each other, necessarily develop an organic basis of interaction founded upon mutual dependence for economic production. It is on the basis of the need to fulfil the requirements of this mutual dependence that the highly complex codes of social ethos and culture emerge to identify and fix the duties of the rulers and the workers.

No matter how exploitative this social set-up and class structure may be, it cannot go below a certain threshold of exploitation beyond which the basic relationship of mutual dependence is threatened. A feudal lord had to leave enough grain for the peasantry to live through the year to till and sow the crops for the next year. Similarly, with industrial means of production the code of mutual dependence took the form of an unsaid covenant between the capitalists and the industrial workers.

The fundamental anomaly related to the absence of genuine leadership in Pakistan is the non-existence of a code of mutual dependence between the rulers and the ruled. The rulers do not perceive/need the workers as the main source of production—value addition—and profit generation. As I wrote in my previous article, their primary dependence has been on factors exogenous to the production process: fraudulent usurpation of evacuee property; illicit use of governmental clout; foreign aid, loans & remittances of expatriate workers; wealth amassed from manufacturing & selling narcotics, and so forth.

The seeds of this anomaly were sown with the disintegration of the Moghal Empire in India followed by the process of colonization at the hand of the British. It was during this period that the code of mutual dependence that had evolved over centuries between the local feudals and their subjects broke down. After the Battle of Plassey in 1757, the British started taking control of the Indian princely states and completed this process during the bloody aftermath of the Sepoy Mutiny in 1857. The princes who opposed the British were defeated (annihilated to be exact) and those who were on the colonizers’ side were made to break the centuries’ old codes of mutual coexistence between them (the Rajas) and their subjects (the Praja).

The year 1857 had twofold importance in Indian history. One, after having crushed the most effective military uprising against them since Tipu Sultan, the British stamped their mastery over the whole of India. Two, the rule of East India Company was replaced by a colonial administration of the British Crown headed by a Viceroy (literally translated as the sub-king). Before 1857 the highest British office in India was the Governor General who, although a representative of the British Crown, used to be an employee of the East India Company—the single most powerful administrative force in India at that time. The Company was a joint stock private concern listed on the London Stock Exchange. The main purpose of which was to give its shareholders a reasonable return for their investment, which they did at an average of 10.5% over many decades. So one can very well imagine the kind of people and loyalties the Company promoted to achieve its commercial goals.

The advent of the British in India, unlike the previous invading forces, was an encounter of two fundamentally different civilizations, i.e., the crumbling edifice of Indian feudalism and the emerging new civilization wrought by the Industrial Revolution taking place in Europe. Drawing upon their experience of previous invasions, the Indian princes accepted the British as a military and administrative power replacing the Moghals as new overlords of India. The British, however, had their own imperial agenda that was rooted first in ensuring favourable terms of trade with the colonies and later using them as cheap sources of raw materials and as markets for their finished products. That is why despite British presence on the subcontinent for over two hundred years, India never became native for them as it did for the Afghan and Moghal kings. It always remained a Jewel in the Crown.

Moreover, in some areas of India, where they dug irrigation canals to cultivate areas that had hitherto been pastoral hinterlands, the British created a new generation of feudal families from amongst the tribal chiefs most loyal to them. This proved to be a highly tumultuous break in the historical development of the social fabric of Punjab. The pre-British southern and western Punjab, home to most of these nouveau feudals, was a land where for centuries the principal means of livelihood had been animal herding supported marginally by subsistence level agriculture along the banks of five rivers from which the province derives its name. With canals came large-scale agriculture and a colonial administrative machinery that were totally alien to these areas. Within a period of less than one generation, people who were living a life of pastoral slumber came directly in contact with the dynamics of one of the most powerful forces of social upheaval in human history, i.e., industrial imperialism. This led to further alienation of the people from their rulers.

As a part of their imperialistic policies, the social order introduced in India by the British, particularly after 1857, necessarily needed a local leadership that could advance their colonial agenda. Instead of being stewards of the code of mutual dependence with their subjects, they became guardians of an alliance struck with the British based on colonial exploitation. Thus enabling the Crown to reap the fruits of local production process customised to the needs of British businessmen rather than what the locals aspired for. And needless to say the landowning feudals were not alone in their collusion with the British; just as significant was the role of an urban professional class, educated in institutions that were founded upon Lord McCauley’s doctrine of creating a new breed of Indians that were local only in the colour of their skins. These professionals formed the middle tier of the colonial administration—be they lawyers or judges, civil servants or army officers, and so forth.

Due to the unsettled social, political and economic conditions of pre-colonial India, its colonization proved to be unique in the whole of the British colonial empire. The British rulers were welcomed with open arms. Not only did they bring law and order but ‘instant’ prosperity too for those who collaborated with them. Thereby creating a whole ethos wherein the principal measure of one’s nobility (without exception whether you were from amongst the rural landowners, traders/industrialists or educated urban middleclass) came to be gauged in terms of how strong one’s connections were with the Commissioner, Deputy Commissioner, or the Magistrate.

The culture of a nation (a complex structure of unsaid dos and don’ts) is determined by their emotive sensitivities and intellectual development at a given stage in history. The form of social order and its institutions are a reflection of this culture. Pre-British India was on a declining path vis-à-vis these factors. Hence conditions were ripe for the invaders to encourage and establish a culture of collaboration. And they were greatly helped in this process by people who willingly forsake the responsibility of leadership in favour of the colonists who represented a culture on ascendancy.

Individuals and groups who eventually became the leaders of Pakistan—be they the land-owning agriculturists or the captains of industry—were a product of this declining culture. That is why when the onus of responsibility fell into their laps (as opposed to their shoulders) in 1947, they were found totally unprepared. Tracing the quality curve of leadership from Jinnah to Jamali, not many impartial eyebrows will be raised if one were to say that things have gone from bad to worse. The so-called independence that we got in 1947 proved to be a mere change of government—the colonial masters handed over the government to their subjects who continued to be loyal to them even after becoming rulers of an independent state.

In fact what we fondly like to recall as the movement for independence was nothing more than a struggle for transfer of power from the British to the locals. Ironically, India and Pakistan were declared independent states through an ‘act of the British Parliament’. Passed on July 18, 1947, the act not only demarcated the boundaries of the two countries but also laid down conditions on the manner in which they were supposed to run the affairs of these ‘independent’ states. Mr. Jinnah took oath as the first Governor General expressing his loyalties to King George VI as his sovereign. Lord Mountbatten remained Governor General of India for a year or so after 15th August 1947.

Although intoxicated at the thought of sitting in the same seats of authority as their colonial masters, the leaders of the newly created state of Pakistan did not know what to do with authority which could only have been legitimised through responsibility as the other side of the same coin. They soon began to look for new masters. And the global geopolitical scenario after World War II was ideal for them to once again become toadies of a foreign master who could ensure their economic, political and geographical security.

The security pact signed by Pakistan’s first Prime Minister with the United States in 1951, billed for the domestic audience as a great achievement of foreign policy, has to this day served as a benchmark for assessing the success of leadership in Pakistan. The recent debate between pro and anti government camps about the outcome and rewards announced by the United States in return for Pakistan’s role in war against terrorism is a glaring example of extreme intellectual myopia and moral bankruptcy of our leaders.

Our history since 1947 has been a continuation of the colonial legacy of disinterest in the development of a locally responsible culture (institutions and leadership being its part and parcel). Pakistan is not a failed state; the magnitude of our failure is much bigger than that. Pakistan is the name of a bankrupt culture that has been rotting since the fall of the Moghal Empire. Had our leaders an inkling of responsibility towards the land and people they governed, we would have been much better than we are. According to a World Bank report, if Pakistan “had invested all the official development assistance from 1960 to 1998 at a real rate of 6%, it would have a stock of assets equal to $239 billion in 1998, many times the current external debt”.

No country should be allowed to exist as we have up to now. Acting as a regional goon of Western powers, so far we have obtained a lease of life in the form of loans and aid packages. The dismal decade of 1990s bears positive testimony to this dark reality. As soon as the Western aid conduit dried up as a result of US sanctions under the Pressler Amendment, the already disintegrating façade of the Pakistani state began to crumble. By another stroke of luck, due to the post 9/11 reversal in US policies, Pakistan has been provided another life saving injection. At present our leaders are high on post-injection rushes of euphoria, but the interval between the shot and the hangover is not going to be very long this time.

Leaders and leadership (quality and institution, both) do not develop in a vacuum. An obsolete culture cannot produce genuine, progressive leaders. Ours is not a case of a need for good governance by good intentioned, honest individuals. Such is the operational strength of the existing rotten culture that sooner or later in spite of their good intentions they are led down the same path they set out to correct. Before we can move on to the stage of good governance we have to pay a collective debt of accountability for the past three hundred years of our history. What we need is a cultural renaissance based on re-establishing the long severed organic relation with our land and our people. Those who perceive their welfare to be with maintaining the status quo are not going to start this process. Only the sensitive among us, who feel emotive repugnance towards our existing cultural pothole will initiate it. Let this be a debt we owe to our future generations and the price that we have to pay for having deeper sensitivities and better understanding.