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The author has rightly emphasised that the military junta and
bureaucracy have dominated Pakistan’s politics and
administration for about 38 years (except from 1947 to 1958 and
from 1971 to 1977). Even during the spells of democratic rule,
feudal lords ruled the roost to the utter disregard of the
common people’s needs and aspirations. The author has also
focused the reader’s attention on how the catchy but lethal
slogan of jehad and gun culture and the resultant
militancy both in Kashmir and Afghanistan were used by Pakistan’s
short-sighted and selfish rulers to divert the people’s
attention from the real problems of poverty, hunger, ignorance
and illiteracy.
Obsessed with
hostility towards India, Pakistan has been spending abnormally
huge amounts on its defence. It showed no sign of curtailment
even when it was receiving free military hardware from the US
from 1954 onwards.
The encouragement
given to the rabid and fanatical fundamentalists, particularly
the mullahs, has led to a frightening escalation of ethnic
conflicts such as Shia-Sunni sectarian clashes which take a
heavy toll of life in Pakistani towns and cities every year.
These fatal clashes have increased since the time of Zulfikar
Ali Bhutto who, instead of curbing fundamentalism, bowed before
this hydra-headed monster by declaring the Ahmadiyas (or the
Qadianis) as non-Muslims and Kafirs. Zia further fanned the
fires of this fundamentalism by boosting the madarsa-culture.
All this was in
fact the negation of the thinking and ideology of Mohammad Ali
Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan. The Pakistan’s Quaid-e-Azam
was not a truly religious man at heart. His right hand man in
his struggle for the attainment of Pakistan was Sir Mohammad
Zafrullah Khan, a known Ahmadiya, who was Pakistan’s first
Foreign Minister. He later died as a sad and frustrated man in
Lahore at the ripe old age of 94. It is indeed sad that this
glaring fact of Jinnah’s ideology and his getting the
whole-hearted support of the Ahmadiyas in his struggle for the
attainment of Pakistan has not found any mention in the book.
Even the name and contributions of Zafrullah Khan have not been
considered worth mentioning by the author. Zafrullah Khan and
his community’s fate in the Islamic republic of Pakistan is a
pointer to the cancer of fundamentalism that has eaten into the
vitals of Pakistan.
The author says
that at the time of its creation, Pakistan had no well-developed
party organisation. Though the Muslim League was there, no
regular elections were held to its various bodies and offices.
Whereas the Indian National Congress functioned as a democratic
organisation, duly electing its president every year, the
All-India Muslim League did nothing of this kind, as Mohammad
Ali Jinnah remained its permanent president for 15 years. No
other leader in the party could ever question his decisions even
if they defied reason, logic or propriety. With this convention
to inspire those who donned his mantle, it is too much to expect
that democratic traditions would take roots in Pakistan. Jinnah
ruled the Muslim League (and consequently his Muslim nation)
like a dictator for 15 long years. Military Generals later ruled
Pakistan for a much longer period without holding any credible
elections. They got their cue from their Quaid-e-Azam. This
tradition of Pakistan’s polity (Muslim League’s polity
before Partition) should also have been highlighted by the
author. On the whole, the book makes interesting reading.
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THE
title of the book Contemporary Pakistan is slightly
misleading, because the author does not confine herself to
presenting a picture of the present-day Pakistan. The book, on the
contrary, gives us an analytical study of the social, political and
ethnic problems plaguing this Islamic country since its inception in
1947. Based on the two-nation theory and the false and tenuous
premise that religion alone was sufficient to bind together people
of different linguistic, cultural and ethnic backgrounds and
affinities, Pakistan has throughout over 55 years precariously
floated on stormy waters. Its survival as a unified state (even
after the loss of East Bengal) is an enigma.
