Feroz R Khan May 10, 1999

Tags: Justice , Law , Policy , Minorities , Development , Constitution , Government , Democracy , India , Pakistan , Jinnah

href="/tag/identity">identity. Over fifty-two years have slipped by since Pakistan threw off the yoke of colonialism and imprinted its existence in the linear progression of history. Pakistan, as its raison d’ être, was founded as a homeland for the Muslims of India where they could exercise their own sense of identity; culturally, religiously and politically. In a political sense, Pakistan was heralded as a secular state by its founding father, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, and its political institutions were supposed be based on the western notions of a parliamentary democracy. Unfortunately, for Pakistan, Jinnah died while the young nation was still suffering from its birth pangs and by a cruel trick of faith Pakistan lost the one guiding light, which could have charted its future away from the shoals of chaos and onto the broad sunlit uplands of political prosperity. Immediately following Jinnah’s death, the young nation was plunged into a crisis as various political groups questioned its sense of identity and tried to fashion a constitution that could mirror what Pakistan, as a nation, was supposed to embody.

This political waltz, under which each political party tried to shape the political identity of Pakistan as an avenue to political power, fragmented the polity of Pakistan along ethnic and religious lines. These two expressions of Pakistani political visagé become over a period of time the dominant idioms, which influenced the Pakistani political character. Since then, Pakistan has flirted with different and various forms of government often in conjunction with each other; democracy, military, theocracy, timocracy and occasionally, simple bureaucracy. In each instance of governance, regardless of the type of government imposed, Pakistan was never able to clearly spell out what it wished to accomplish and seemed incapable of expressing any coherent foresight as to what its political identity should be. For a better part of its history Pakistan has stumbled in this self-created political fog and as a nation seems confused as to what really constitutes a Pakistani political identity.

To be able to fully understand the dilemma, which confronts Pakistan in deciding this issue, it is incumbent to ask some basic questions. In reality, Pakistan as nation is still caught in a time warp, because it is still trying to answer, fifty-two years after the fact, the question of what really is Pakistan and what does, in a political sense, Pakistan mean to Pakistanis themselves. This question is, in a critical sense, one of the bigger problems which faces Pakistani political identity and its lack of an effective resolution is the sotto voce reason for the majority of the problems which presently plague Pakistan. As mentioned earlier, Pakistan was created as a theocratic state for the Muslims of India, but was also intended to be a secular state with all the trappings of a modern democracy. Therein lies the contradiction of Pakistan as a modern nation-state. Before Pakistan and its successive generation of governments can cope with its myriad problems, they need to discuss and settle this issue once and for all. This is the most basic problem, which ails the development of Pakistan as a modern state. A lack of settlement on this question hinders all efforts towards a national consensus on what constitutes a Pakistani political character, and it is a confusion which seems to linger in the minds of Pakistanis themselves as to if Pakistan is an Islamic theocracy or a moderate Muslim secular state.

The reality of Pakistan, ignored by its governments throughout its history, is that Pakistan, as a nation-state does not have a political identity outside of Islam. The underlying tragedy of the Pakistani experience is that that it has no common sense of a political identity other than Islam, which as a concept is the only tie that seems to bind Pakistan together as a nation and a political concept. In a more endemic sense, the idea that Pakistan was created as a home for the Indian Muslims, while harboring non-Muslim groups within its borders, seemed to invalidate the idea of Pakistan as Muslim, if not a Islamic state. In the immediate post-partition reality Pakistan was confronted with this question; how to secure the rights of its non-Muslim population in a state which was expressively created to be Muslim-Islamic in its orientations. A question that it has so far failed to rationalize. Pakistan, if it wants survive as a nation, must immediately answer the question whether it is a Muslim-Islamic state or a modern secular democracy as foreseen and postulated by Jinnah.

Recently, there have been indications that Pakistan is moving towards an Islamic style of government. Pakistani legislature has passed a number of legislative measures that have decreed that its intention is to base its form of government on an Islamic system. There is absolutely nothing wrong with such a policy, but extreme consideration should be given as to what sort of Islamic government it wants to practice. There is an old Latin legal maxim, which states quite simply that, “extreme laws make for extreme injustice”. Currently, as the interpretation of Islamic law stands in Pakistan, it is a highly repressive if not an extremely regressive law in its intentions. Whatever Islamic legal principle Pakistan deems to rule itself with, it will have to consider the viewpoints of its minority citizens before such a law can be passed. Any such law, should it be passed, can only be passed with an explicit sense of a political compromise, which guarantees the political rights of its minority populations with an Islamic theocracy.

On the other hand, if Pakistan becomes a Islamic theocratic state without defining the rights of its minorities, it still would not have answered the question on how best to fashion a political system which can dispense equal justice to all concerned. Pakistani politicians have to be very careful in treading this path, making Pakistan a theocratic state, because the creation of such a state risks the political alienation of its minority groups. There is a very high degree of probability that such a political alienation will, and can, mutate into an expression of a political resentment, which would in turn create a political climate that could be politically and religiously volatile. The most logical source for such sense of resentment, against the Pakistani government, would be ironically a revival of the very same arguments, which the Muslims of India used to justify their demands for Pakistan, and why they could not exist under a Hindu dominated nation. The minorities of Pakistan, in this case, would be justified to ask for conditional rights of self-autonomy, in order to secure their own religious and cultural identities, within an Islamic Pakistan. The government of Pakistan has to address these concerns, before implementing Islamic rule in Pakistan. A failure to deal with these issues will create a simmering discontent that could flare up unexpectedly in the future and thus, continually pose a serious obstacle to the government’s attempts to preserve the unity of the country.

Furthermore, such a situation would not be conducive towards the long term political prosperity or security of the country either. Democracy, in its most literal sense, is the tyranny of the majority over the minority and the only reason democracy thrives, as a political system, is because of its ability to incorporate the minority perspectives on various issues. The reality of the Pakistani situation and its experience on the question of Islamic governance, and other issues, is that of forcing fait accomplis instead of seeking compromises and in the process, of isolating contrary political opinions into a series of entrenched political positions against the majority’s perspectives. However, given the Pakistani government’s kleptomania to steal political power for itself and decide outstanding issues, which concern Pakistan through a series of fiats, there is every indication that it would resist to compromise its pursuit of an Islamic identity for Pakistan with its minority groups’ interests. The Pakistani government’s inability to compromise with its various minority groups, on religious questions, stems from its own lack of comprehension as to the religious reality which exists within Pakistan. Given the fact that the majority of the Pakistani population adheres to and accepts Islam as a principle faith, Pakistan is in toto a Muslim-Islamic country. Hence, its constitution should not be amended, and its law altered to impose a Muslim-Islamic identity, because that only fosters a sense of alienation in its minorities by implicitly suggesting to them that their political rights will always be considered as subservient to the interests of Islam. The only reason that could suggest this self-destructive policy of the Pakistani governments to use the rallying cry of Islam would be an attempt to reinforce and enshrine, legally and constitutionally, its own doubts about the validity of a theocracy in Pakistan. Through the use such a pretext, of an Islamic identity, the real intention of the government seems to be to mask its own power and use a theocratic argument to deny the equal sharing of political power with other interests in the country.

This historically has been and continues to be Pakistan’s political Achilles’ Heel and what the French wistfully refer to as, “le mal du politiqué”- a political sickness. There exists an insidious sense of flawed logic in the mindset of Pakistani politicians, which seeks to, at the cost of everything else, to consolidate and centralize power within a single entity known as the federal government. The Pakistani government’s approach, in the case of instituting an Islamic government, is reinforced by the same mitigating factors, which rationalizes all its other options and that is to increase its power base at the expense of other political groups in the country. It is for this very reason that the introduction of Islamic government in Pakistan will fail as a political institution. This is a likely scenario, because the primary reason, as evidenced by the government’s intentions, is not to usher in an Islamic utopia in Pakistan, but to use mantle of Islam to merely silence all of its political detractors. Even if the government in Pakistan manages to pass its Islamic laws and succeeds in instituting an Islamic system in Pakistan, it will be resisted by opposition groups and the vocalization of their opposition, to Islamic rule, will indelibly cast doubts on the validity of such a form of government. There is no secret in the reason why the government is eager to push for an Islamic system in Pakistan. It has absolutely nothing to do with the government’s commitment to the principles of Islamic government, but is intended to create a political fora in which it would be easy to dispel political criticism of the government’s own policies.

The unwillingness of the governments, in Pakistan, to share power is the greatest single detriment to the strategic viability of Pakistan and no political philosophy, secular or theocratic, can alter that reality, which happens to be the primary cause of all the political resentment in Pakistan today. It is this historic habit of the government to jealously guard its power and refuse compromises on its ability to wield that power, which coalesces a political opinion that seeks to question the very credibility of the government’s word and reasons for instituting any policy in Pakistan. The institution of a theocracy, in Pakistan, and the overall success or failure of it does not rest on a slew of legislative bills passed mandating an Islamic government, but on the perception of the government’s intent and its political credibility to institute a policy. The governments in Pakistan do not enjoy a high level of trust as far as its actions are concerned and thus, its motives will always be questioned as to the ulterior reasons for its policy choices. This lack of credibility has the potential to be a far greater threat to the government’s plan to introduce Islamic government in Pakistan than a lack of favorable parliamentary majority. This would encourage a perception of political cynicism, because even though its intentions might be honorable, its past conduct would raise some serious doubts on the nature of its partiality in favoring a said policy. Thus, in a more distinct sense, this lack of a political credibility undermines the government’s efforts towards an Islamic form of government in Pakistan. Furthermore, this lack of credibility, in a political confluence with Pakistani minority political rights, will be a crucial reason which suggests that a theocratic system of government in Pakistan is not a realistic or a viable political solution to Pakistan’s needs as a culturally, religiously and ethnically pluralistic society.

This does not necessarily imply that Pakistan will favor recourse to a more secular form of government in which power is diffused to the periphery, the provinces, instead of being retained by the center. Even if Pakistan translates its political philosophy into a secular reality, it will have no positive results on the over-all scheme of things unless it changes its policies of hoarding power and centralizing it at the cost of the periphery. Given its founding ideology, suggesting that Pakistan was to be the homeland for the Muslims of India, it can not be anything else, but be a theocratic state. To do otherwise would be suggesting that its ideology, its raison d’être, was flawed from the very beginning. This is the dilemma which Pakistan, as a nation, must face and decide upon, which to a large extent will determine its political viability. As suggested earlier in the article, Pakistan’s attempts to be a theocratic state will fail, because its idea of its theocracy, Islam, is based on a rather punitive version of Islam as a political idea. Hence, the implementation of such an idea will be resisted, thus creating more problems instead of solving them. Pakistan under no circumstances, even though it would be beneficial to its long-term political survival, can not opt for a secular form of government. Such an option, even though it exists, is extremely verboten, because that would be a tacit admission that it has failed to rationalize its founding principle and, in a strict political sense, has failed to live to its promise as a nation-state.

Secularism, in Pakistan, does offer a chance of political viability and through secular sharing of power, instead of on religious-ethnic delineations, Pakistan can offer itself an opportunity to rescue its policy from the quagmire it presently finds itself mired in. However, to legitimize this choice would be a denial of all that Pakistan has stood for and has justified for the last fifty-two years of its existence. The only viable option for Pakistan is to turn to a secular form of government. That is easier said than done, because it would be akin to an open realization that its leadership, in going against Jinnah’s idea of secularism, have for the last fifty-two odd years been co-conspirators in the systematic destruction of Pakistan as a polity. For the last half a century of its existence, Pakistan has been struggling to define its identity as an Islamic state and all of its actions since then have been undertaken in lieu of this objective. Should Pakistan suddenly change its mind and decide upon the secularization of its politics, it would in fact be admitting that its polices for the last fifty-two years were wrong and that there is no future for Pakistan as theocratic state, but only as a secular state. This realization would be against all that Pakistan has claimed for itself as a nation and such a political realization will be never be seriously considered, because in a more meaningful sense it ordains the reality that Pakistan has failed to rationalize and justify the reasons for its existence.

Consequently, even though such an admission would help to lessen the political headaches crippling Pakistani political thought and discourse, it would be a moot point, because the Pakistani political leadership does not possess the political will to admit that its actions were wrong. Instead, the Pakistani leadership will continue to employ discredited policies and autocratic approaches to solving Pakistan’s problems and in doing so, they will be compounding the problems of Pakistan into a situational nightmare. Instead of admitting the truth that theocracy has failed Pakistan as a political raison d’ état, the government of Pakistan is determined to make it succeed at the cost of risking its own internal political cohesion as a nation-state.

Thus, the only avenue of political redemption left for Pakistan is to de-construct the last fifty-two years of its existence and admit the harsh truth that as a nation, in a religious, cultural, political, and a philosophical sense, its has been a dismal failure. Pakistani government and its leadership must openly acknowledge the reality that Pakistan can not exist as theocracy given its own internal contradictions. They must also accept the irony that secularism, as a political idea, in Pakistan would be untenable, because it would be a manifestation of the truth that Pakistan’s ideal, as a theocratic homeland for the Muslims of India, was flawed and ill conceived as a political reality. The only option left open to the Pakistani politicians, its government and its political leadership is admit to this reality and to stop using discredited and dysfunctional policies of the past to remedy a future, which can not reconciled with its present situational realities. Only by admitting the mistakes of the past can Pakistan hope to chart a new prosperous future for its continued existence. Therefore, the most fundamental question that needs to be answered is if whether the Pakistan political leadership has the political courage to do what is necessary to save Pakistan. This is the Gordian Knot of Pakistani politics, which must be cut if Pakistan is to have any chance of a future as a country in the next millennium.