Lessons from Constitutional History

AkhiaN waalio akhaiN bari na`amat haiN.

Laholwila quwwat

I think Pakistanis should stop debating endlessly their past. It is very rare to see at Chowk or in Pakistani newspapers an article that says, okay, where do we go from here? How do we ensure that elected leaders push legislation through that would make Pakistan a better country for ordinary people? How do we reform the judiciary and the education system? How do we make the government of Pakistan accountable and transparent? How do we make the military mind its own business of defending the borders and not always trying to save the country from its unruly leaders? How do we make the military accountable to the elected PM and not vice versa? How do we slow the population growth? How in the world the country is going to feed all those mouths and provide jobs?

It’s futile to focus just on past and not the future. One does not see the Americans, or in fact any other country, endlessly debating their past, that Thomas Jefferson, in spite of his brilliance, owned slaves and had black mistresses whom he abused, that when America was created those who were not White did not even matter and were not part of the nation building. What matters to America today is the present and the future direction of the country, the sins of its fathers and a lot of its wrongs lie in the history books and are not the obsession of the policy making of today. It`s true that you learn from the past, but the focus is the future. A smart country knows that if you do not prepare for the future today, there will be no future.

And it’s pretty bad that the author of this article did not even bother to check the spelling errors before submitting this essay to Chowk, even the title has an error!

totally agree with ``urstruly`` on this.........i dont understand what kind of attemp writer is making to prove Mr Jinnah as some sort of dictator....how can one see resemblance in dismissal of Dr Khan`s NWFP Govt for non alliance with Pakistan although through refrendum it was decided that NWFP will join pakistan in very first week of creation of Pakistan with the dismisal of Khwaja Nazimudin`s Govt by disgrace like Ghulam Muhammad.............may be legally it can be prove as same thing but its a very foolish attemp to criticise Mr Jinnah on these basis.

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Ref 12-Head #4

[I am used to reading such crap about Jinnah s life in Indian paper & i can understand there moribund sickeming obsession with corpses of Jinnah for he put there tail on fire & sent Indian pirouetting real good right or wrong as soon as they gave him the Excuse for one!!!!]

No. The Indians, AS USUAL, are right: on Jinnah, on Pakistan, on the Two Nation Theory, and yes, even on the Partition. After all, it was Sardar Patel who said it is better to amputate the diseased limb than live with it. We all can see from the current elections in Pakistan what state of necrosis the diseased limb has reached.

[There is no use of your opinion insignificant as it is & some more than 60 yrs too late of use .]

Again you are wrong. You are about 1400 years too late, not just 60.

[Maybe i might not have votedfor Jinnah then but no body asked me either.]

You probably would have voted for Maulana Maudoodi in the very first election in Pakistan. You probably are looking up to the Islamic Republic of Iran as THE model state.

The real question that you avoid answering is: have you stopped beating your wife with the stick whose specifications are spelled out in Al-Kitab?

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Re harimau:

the two nation theory is as much of a myth as the glory of indian secularism. as 70,000 dead kashmiris, 3,000 dead sikhs and 2,000 dead gujratis graphically testify. if i was i woman, i would prefer to be beaten by a stick rather than being burnt alive with my dead husband.

So, the error in title was fixed after I pointed it out! Okay...!!!...Oh, well...!!!

i found that the article provided interesting and not generally acknowledged facts about pakistans legal and constitutional (as opposed to straight political) history. it made an important point about one of pakistans most `sacred cows`. jinnah might have been, as nawaid said, ``some sort of dictator``. he appointing himself as governor general (essentially the post of vice-roy, re-packaged for de-colonisation consumption) instead of mountbatten continuing the position till an independent constitution was framed (as was expected). thus, he gave himself all the powers that should have legally or rightly belonged to the parliament (or constituent assembly) and the prime minister.

the issue with the NWFP government was that it was a congress government which did not oppose joining pakistan outright but asserted its rights to maintain its democratically elected government in the province. further, jinnah used arbitrary emergency powers to dismiss khuros government (the then cheif minister of sindh). the dismissal was over khuros long standing dispute with hidayatullah (the then governor of sindh) as the former was a big advocate of land reform and peasant rights while the latter was a major spokesmen for the waderas. in this way it was ensured that, in fact, conventional and not constitutional politics would dominate sindhi and national political life.

i dont quite understand the issue which nawaid takes up with the article but godot definitely makes a very intelligent one. we must look to the future. however, this has to be done with a thorough historical analysis. the political situation in paksitan has historical roots which must be analysed. even today, jeffersons writings and recorded speeches form important parts of debates over US constitutional interpretations and his ambivalent attitude towards slaves (he was against them in principle but not in practice, a conflict he tried to resolve by keeping his slaves mostly locked up out of sight in the cellar) still crop up in contemporary academic debates about race relations and identity politics. only when historical problems are understood and brought into the popular conciosness will popular solutions be devised to them. the resistance to the presentation of facts about jinnah and his role in pakistans sad constitutional history, as well as the general ignorance of these facts is testimony to the fact that the article might be too late but is still a welcome start.

for these reasons, i appreciated the article as it presented its factual analysis in a largely objective manner. if jinnah appears to be a de facto dictator with a view to the facts then it says more about us than about the author. if the shoe fits...but that is a seperate debate altogether and was not what, i believe, the article primarily adressed.

finally, being a stranger to these discussions, the `debate` between tipu and faisaluno is ridiculous (at least to someone not aware of the background) and displays a general tendency to argue gross generalisations rather than actual factual positions.

faisluno...I agree, except just wanted to correct that actually in 1984, well over 40,000 sikhs (many organizations quote upto 250,000 killed in a decade) were killed in the Dehli riots, in Punjab during operation bluestar and in dissapearances, fake encounters until the early nineties.

Even though Amnesty were not allowed into Punjab to investigate properly, many reports were still pieced together. RAM NARAYAN KUMAR, HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST: has proven thousands of illegal cremations were carried out by corrupt police officers in a planned and systematic, uniform operation as late as 1994. To date no one has been brought to justice for these crimes against humanity.

http://www.sikhnet.com/sikhnet/discussion.nsf/All+by+Date/1A1A4DC6B5C5555B87256C2500007F90?OpenDocument

http://www.dalitstan.org/journal/rights/104/260595.html

Ref punjaban #9

[faisluno...I agree, except just wanted to correct that actually in 1984, well over 40,000 sikhs (many organizations quote upto 250,000 killed in a decade) were killed in the Dehli riots, in Punjab during operation bluestar and in dissapearances, fake encounters until the early nineties.]

More than 600,000 people died in the US Civil War and that too out of a population that was not quite 60 million.

Khalistan and demands for an independent Kashmir or Nagaland will be suppressed no matter what the cost.

So, shut up and stop shedding crocodile tears for Sikhs. Shed some tears for Bangladeshis first.

[http://www.sikhnet.com/sikhnet/discussion.nsf/All+by+Date/
1A1A4DC6B5C5555B87256C2500007F90?OpenDocument

http://www.dalitstan.org/journal/rights/104/260595.html]

I am surprised you didn`t give the URL for the Kashmir Freedom Council.

You are a disgrace to the women of Pakistan. Thank God for such sensible people as anNy, Semipreciousme and a host of other Pak women who are well-read and who have not swallowed the propaganda of the Pak Army or Yasser Latif Hamdani.

reference to harimau:

when ll b the time when Indian will accept pakistan as a state, Dear,Akhand Bharat dream should be over by now , as u r very sensible person plz concentrate much on the acts of BJP and ppl like Lal Baig Advani , Ball Thakuray etc as they r damaging India`s image of world largest democratic country,rather then wasting immense amount of time on criticising , paksitan`s demoractic system, pakistan army, General Musharf and Mr Jinnah etc. These things are way out of uor leauge.

We Pakistani ppl are fully aware that what a mess Paksitan is as a country now, but still 98% of paksitani ppl believe that Two nation theory is still applicable and how much dictator Mr Jinnah was he took the right decision that time

Harimau,

a disgrace to the women of Pakistan? Interesting! Since I have never set foot in Pakistan. Then crocodile tears for Sikhs, I am Sikh my friend, and lost a few friends to violence after `84, none of whom were involved in any fight for freedom, although those who wish for that have every right to their opinion, just as Pakistani`s had when they fought for Pakistan.

re shibil #10:

Thomas Jefferson did not keep his slaves locked up in a cellar. According to several of his biographies, he was a model slave-owner(sounds like an oxymoron I know). Jefferson spent quite a bit of time in France around the time of the French revolution and upon his return to Virginia there are accounts of him being carried on his shoulders to his home by overjoyous slaves.

Your point about him being still relevant in political and constitutional debates is a good one. Just wanted to keep the record straight.

later
-sac

my bad about how jefferson felt about his slaves. i stand corrected.

the debate here seems to have been sidetracked and the original thread forgotten. its quite telling though that we (referring to the pakistanis here, and not our indian bretheren) instantly tend to foget our own historical and political blights and problems and jump on the gun shooting criticisms at india and indians (some valid, others not so) instead. indians, by the looks of it, enjoy doing the same.

i dont particularly see a cause of argument here. the short of it is that both india and paksitan have horrendous human rights records and have been responsible for massacres of its own citizens. the indian state has slaughtered muslims in kashmir, and the much publicized riots of bombay, gujarat and a number of others. the reasons have been political, as gujarat is the last big state which still has a bjp government. india has persecuted, incarcerated, tortured and killed thousands of sikhs in punjab, as well as others in nagaland and even tamil nadu.

pakistan has similarly persecuted and killed thousands of ahmedis in and since the 1950`s, tens of thousands of baluch in the rebelions of the 1950`s and 1970`s, around 200,000 bangladeshi`s in the 1970`s, thousands of muhajirs in the 1980`s under zia and thousands since, and of course, our military advenures in kashmir, as well as our military backed militants, have also cost thousands of kashmiri lives.

we should shed tears for all of them (it is quite true that when we mention bangladesh, we mention our military failiures and indian intervention rather than our humanitarian failiures and crimes. pakistanis have been largely silent about bangladesh since 1971. our previous ambassador to bagladesh was sent back because he spoke in favour of the genocide. it has only been musharraf who apologised very recently for bangladesh, because of certain political pressures). interesting that our perceptions are so molded by the official lines which both india and pakistan toe, that is, whenever there are domestic problmes there is heavy fighting in kashmir. similar arguments or conflicts here about adopting holier than thou positions doesnt take away that both states have cost the peoples of the many nations living within this geographical area dearly.

like all the lives lost in the subcontinent because off and since partition, partition itself is also a historical fact. personally, i feel that india has long since accepted partition and pakistan as a state (whatever other problems india might have, i will not be vane enough to address them here). pakistan now has to move on and stop defining its identity and politics, especially its foreign policy, in oppositional terms to india. if we, as pakistanis fail to achieve this level of mental and intellectual independence from india then that is what might be the final nail in the coffin of the 2 nation theory.

Shibil,

those were wise words , a victim is a victim is a victim, whether he be a Sikh in Punjab, an Ahmadi in Pakistan, a Bangladeshi, a Muslim in Gujrat or a Hindu living under Moghal oppression a few centuries ago. My heart cries for them all, and I would like to think that if Sikhs ever perpetrated that kind of oppression on any people, I would speak out just as loudly. We all need to learn to put humanity before nationality, and religious fervour, and speak out equally against all human rights atrocities, regardless of whether they occur at home, next door, or abroad.