Pakistan and Democracy

Pakistan and Democracy

Lamenting the absence of Democracy in Pakistan, with out discussing the underlying causes thereof, has attained the rank of a favorite pastime of the so-called liberal-progressives. I call it a pastime advisedly, as they do not bother to take any effective action to restore even the sorry façade of Pakistan And Democracy Democratic dispensation that the country suffered under for a few years between periods of naked military dictatorship.
Some Indians and people of the west of the same persuasion, pitch in too. Some of the latter have their own, not always sympathetic, motives or agenda.
Leaving aside the armchair politicians, and their protagonists of the West, one has to ponder over the all too obvious question. Why Democracy has taken root, flourished and civilian authority has reigned supreme, in India.
In fact, the only section of the Indian populace envious of their Pakistani counter parts are the Army officers. In Pakistan a retired Brigadier has, usually, an ostentatiously luxurious home in a city and a farmhouse nearby. He can afford to send his children to the UK and the USA for education. An Indian retired brigadier, on the other hand, has to make do on his not very generous pension, and has to live in a tiny house, which he had had to scrimp, save and take loans to build. This I know of personal knowledge.
Not too long ago a retired three star General, no less, of the Indian army- a Hindu at that- told me ruefully that had he been prescient, he would have opted for the Pakistan army!!
Both the countries attained independence at the same time. Leaders of both countries professed faith in democratic dispensation. Jinnah the supreme leader of Pakistan even declared his intention to separate religion from the state.
Some have presented Jinnah’s early death as the reason for the failure of Democracy to take root in the country. If that rationale were to be accepted, that the integrity of national institutions depended on one man, it would cast doubt on the logic of the very creation of the country, and would not be very flattering to the far sightedness, skill and political acumen of the leader ship, Jinnah included.
Fundamentalists since the days of Zia, have no doubt, played the role of a handmaiden to the military regimes, including the current one in Pakistan. But they, having by and large opposed the Pakistan movement, stood thoroughly discredited at the time of the creation of the country. Even in later years, the GOP was able to crush the Mullahs who had risen in a virtual insurgency on the highly emotive issue of the status of Qadianis in Islam. Till much later obscurantist political parties were hard put to get even one member elected to the National or Provincial assemblies.
It is only since the advent of Musharraf’s regime which admittedly is the weakest military dispensation in Pakistan to date, and it is the weakness rather than the much bally-hoed liberal trend that makes it so tolerant of a fairly independent press, that the fundamentalist grouping have managed to win a substantial number of electoral contests. So we cannot lay the blame of non-viability of representative Government at the doorstep of fundamentalism or that of the much contentious topic that Islam and western style democracy are contradiction in terms.
Let us go back in history and see if we can glean any insight into the widely divergent paths in virtually all aspects of life, that India and Pakistan took post independence,
Muslims won control of the larger part of India and ruled it for a thousand years. They co-opted the amenable section of the erstwhile rulers. Together, with the King at the head of the system, they formed the ruling feudal class. Hindus feudals were a shade lower in the pecking order, but constituted a substantial portion of the army. Hindu trading class constituted the bulk of the administrative and financial services. Always conscious of their comparatively precarious status, they endeavored to excel in liberal education.
Muslims confident of their standing largely kept to the martial arts. Later on, once they had stabilized their rule, they indulged in poetry, philosophy, and architecture. They built palaces, mausoleums, gardens and roads. But the artisans and engineers were mostly Hindu. They, of course, never stooped to financial management. This characteristic is true of all feudal classes. British aristocracy looked down upon the trades people, while taking loans from them, for living it up.
It was all form, with little substance. The super structure came tumbling down, at the first whiff of adverse wind. A handful of Europeans were easily able to overcome the Empire that had lasted centuries.
Muslims descended into national depression. Crushed by an acute sense of inferiority, they groaned under the burden of self-doubt, they harkened back to “fundamentals” and forsook the exhortations of their religion to seek knowledge, branding the enlightened reformers as heretics- much like they do now.
Hindus had simply exchanged one class of overlords with another. The latter, having wrested power from the hands of Muslims, favored the former, who took full advantage of the changing fortunes, and pursued western education vigorously, while not ignoring their hereditary proclivity for trade, commerce and finance. From the status of rough parity with the Muslims, they forged ahead, leaving the hapless, directionless and poorly focused erstwhile rulers decades behind in all fields of human endeavor.
Times were changing. Nationalism had been born. It was a bye product of the industrial revolution-though there were other subsidiary factors too-with entrepreneurs vying for the raw material not ready to hand in their own countries, and giving an enormous boost to the emerging Capital. Aspirations to self-government held sway over the hearts and minds of the educated class. In literacy Hindus out numbered their Muslims peers by roughly a proportion of twenty to one, though in population the ratio was four to one.
The Indian Capital was, inevitably, overwhelmingly Hindu. Led by the elite newly educated in western mores, they started clamoring for a level playing field in matters of markets for their products. This naturally led to the demand of control over their own affairs, culminating in the demand for independence. Indian National congress, curiously enough, was formed by an Indophile Englishman . The idea was of only to produce a comprador class, certainly not to promote the cause of independence.
The British, past masters at protecting their flank, started a process of reappraisal of the weaknesses and strengths of their rule in India. They had to find an alternative to the restive Hindus. The remnants of the Muslim feudal class, the progeny of those who had saved their skin in the war of independence of 1857, were ready and willing to come to their aid again. In the aftermath of 1857, they had also created a class of new feudals, who were at their beck and call, in the region that was destined to emerge as Pakistan.
There is adequate documented evidence that the British actively encouraged the Muslim landowners to launch the Muslim League . At the helm was the wholly owned British creation, the Agha Khan . Ismaelis, whose spiritual and temporal head the Agha Khan is, had been ousted from Egypt by the majority Sunnis and had ended up in Kerman in Iran, from where they were exiled by the Iranian rulers to the remoteness of Iranian Baluchistan. They lived precariously in the area, till a British administrator of the then Indian Baluchistan took them under their wing, and brought them over to Sindh. They were finally settled in the vicinity of Bombay, with Agha Khan ensconced in a palace in Poona, and favored with the titles of His Highness, the Prince etc, for services rendered to the crown. The family never looked back, even though the father of M.A.Jinnah took the Agha Khan to court on the charge of misuse of community funds and was excommunicated for his pains .
The Muslim professionals, with Jinnah who was to emerge as the leading light of Hindu-Muslim unity, kept away from the League.
The nationalist movement gathered momentum. Jinnah was probably the first to realize the precarious state of the Muslims, that the British patronage would not last for long, and it was futile to depend upon foreigners who would have, at the end of the day, to leave the reins of power in indigenous hands. In 1916 he engineered an equitable deal between the Hindus and Muslims .
At this stage, it would be pertinent to remind ourselves of the class character of the Hindu and Muslim political activists. Hindus were under the sway of their nascent Capital personified by the Birlas and Tatas. The latter were actually Parsees, but their essential economic interest was the same as those of Hindu capitalists.
Muslims drew their sustenance from the feudal class.
I have deliberately not made any note of the vast ranks of the poor; ninety five percent of the population, as neither the Muslim nor the Hindu leadership took (the British neither) them into account.
The nationalist leadership (read Hindu for practical purposes), lacking any mass base could not afford to alienate any significant section of the educated class, so gulped the bitter pill of the pact Jinnah had made them accept, though they fully realized that it would give sustenance to the Muslim feudals, they so detested.
Now Gandhi descends on the scene and by mobilizing the disempowered through a heady mix of populism, mysticism and religion soon manages to loom large over the political horizon and manages to curb all the radical elements in the congress. He also tried, though mercifully with little success, to change the class character of the congress by obsessionally pushing handlooms and other cottage industry. The party remained a tool of the Indian Capital, as the Muslim League, Jinnah and a few others leaders not with standing, was to sub serve the same function for the Muslim feudals. Jinnah and all the constituitionalists, moderates, and the King’s men in Indian politics were effectively sidelined.
Citing the greater cause of greater nationalism, agents of the Capitalist class took the opportunity of repudiating the Congress-League pact on safeguarding the rights of Muslims in independent India. Maulana Azad, Rafi Qidwai, Dr Ansari, clerics and other Muslim luminaries in the congress were left high and dry.
Muslim League did not have an effective leader of an all India level. The only exception was Iqbal who was more a visionary, poet and a philosopher.
Reenter the Agha Khan into the Muslim body politic. He took Liaquat Ali Khan, a scion of a large feudal house in tow and went with a beggars bowl in hand to beseech Jinnah to forsake his luxurious self imposed exile in England, and return to India to be the helmsman of Muslims.
Perhaps goaded by the memory of the slight he had suffered at the hands of Gandhi, possibly consoling himself with the thought that he would be able to mold the Muslims into his own shape, and according to his detractors unable to resist the blandishment of a great place in History, and totally out of line with his cherished character, he nonetheless agreed to return and take charge and worked tirelessly, unceasingly and with great skill to obtain adequate guarantees for the rights of Muslims in India.
One must not lose sight of the fact that for several years the Muslim feudals, especially in what is Pakistan now, did not accept his leadership. It was only after they realized that Pakistan was certain to emerge in the near future, that they climbed on the bandwagon.
We need not go into the mechanics of how Pakistan came to be accepted by all the relevant parties, except to note that the Capital sabotaged the last attempt at keeping India united by repudiating the cabinet mission plan, through no other than Jawaharlal, son of Moti Lal Nehru, who had earlier on wrecked the Congress-League pact on Muslim rights.
Now two nations are born, one India ruled by the Indian National Congress, led by the mouthpieces of The Indian Capital. Nehru, whom Gandhi had promoted to make the agenda of the left redundant by the socialist slogans of the former, was an exception. He of course, agreed with the demolition of the feudal system for his own cherished reasons. But he held fast to his egalitarian views and in addition promoted science and technology, central planning, social services, and protection of the indigenous capital. But that trend did not outlast him. His own daughter took the first steps to do away with the social safety net, and what is worse, rekindled the fire of communal hatred and prejudice.
Now let us return to Pakistan in 1947. We have a country with no infrastructure, little by way of resources, or trained personnel, literally surviving on hope and the strength of an idea. The Capital dominated country next door with held its share of assets worth fifty five crore Rupees, and it would surely have collapsed, if the Nizam of Hyderabad, with his own not entirely altruistic reasons, had not come forth with a loan of twenty crores, equivalent of a one hundred and fifty million Dollars in today’s currency. He wanted Pakistan’s support in his looming conflict with India.
Jinnah was the monarch of all he surveyed. He could tell the constituent assembly of a nation, ostensibly created in the name of a religion, that the religion will have no role to play in the affairs of the State. On a lesser level he could tell a delegation of Sindhi students calling on him to protest the separation of Karachi from Sindh, that if they had confidence in his leadership, they should let him do his work and return to their classes to do their work. He almost dismissed Ayub Khan, then General Officer Commanding East Pakistan, for delinquency in performance of his duties. Only the intervention of Miss Jinnah, on whose feet the General had fallen, saved the man’s job.
But his most audacious and ultimately disastrous pronouncement was to tell a public meeting in East Bengal (East Pakistan then) that Urdu and only Urdu will be the Official/National language of Pakistan.
Jinnah was coldly logical. Logic was, I think, with him on the issue . Urdu though spoken at home by only the immigrants from North India was understood all over the country. But you do not tell a person that because his own mother is not so popular he should offer greater allegiance to his stepmother. Mind you the mother in this case is a highly accomplished lady with rich literature, traditions and heritage. Further the majority of the population of the country spoke the language, though they all lived in one wing.
Unlike Gandhi who was not or chose not to be a hands on politician and left the wheeling and dealing to his followers Nehru, Patel and Azad balanced each other, Jinnah kept the reins of Government firmly in his hands. In fact his first act as Governor General was to invoke the emergency powers of the office setting a precedent, which had disastrous consequences for his creation. He could emulate Gandhi and let Liaquat, Fazlulhaq, Nishtar and Suharwardy balance each other. But he did not. He had chosen to sideline all who not toe his line.
After his death Liaquat, nowhere near Jinnah’s status was left in charge, and could not control the disparate elements. That was indubitably the critical institutional weakness in the early days of Pakistan.
Jinnah fought his physical frailness and advanced disease for over a year by sheer will power aided by whiskey and cigarettes as one of his biographers would have it, and managed the affairs of the State, vastly complicated in the early days, almost single handedly . If he had lived longer the ruling Quad would have killed him, as they did his successor .
But what led to its eventual demise was the fact that the two wings of the country were divided not just by the thousand miles of India, but by something more significant- the Quad in the west and the working class, left, nationalist and professional coalition on the East side. Landowners in Bengal had been mostly Hindus and had migrated to India. In West Pakistan they were Muslims and stayed put- forever.
The national assembly could not pass a constitution, essentially because the Quad in the west would not agree to concede to Bengalis the number of seats in the national assembly proportionate to their population.
The intra Government struggle went on. Liaquat, though scion of a large feudal estate in his own right had left his lands behind in India, and altruistically, perhaps foolishly in retrospect, had not claimed compensation he had freely offered to others. The Quad did not accept him as one of its own. They saw him instead as an impediment in their quest of total control. He was cut down in a hail of bullets.
A constitution could be passed only when East Pakistan politicians had been beaten into submission and had accepted parity with West Pakistan in the number of seats in the national assembly .
But the Quad could not take the risk of the progressive elements of West Pakistan joining hands with the ones in East and forming a Government, which would cater to the common man rather than to them. A few weeks before general elections the President imposed martial law, and a few weeks later the Chief Martial law administrator, Ayub Khan, sent the President packing into exile.
We need not go into details of governance under Ayub except to say that IMF-World bank policies were followed faithfully and wealth accumulated in a few hands . The celebration of the decade of “Development” in 1968 by his henchmen served as the wake up call for the long suffering Pakistanis. They took to the streets and forced Ayub to resign.
Ayub was forced to flout his own tailor made constitution and handed over power not to the speaker of the national assembly, but to his army chief, who awed by the display of strength by the public, ordained an election based on universal franchise. He conceded to East Pakistan what had been rightfully theirs from the beginning- proportionate to the population number of seats in the national assembly.
The election results stunned the establishment. Mujeeb of East Pakistan won an overall majority, and was pledged support by the progressive parties from the western wing.
Now the fat was in the fire, with flames burning ever brighter. The Quad struck back with brute force, reinforced in this instance by a shrewd and populist feudal-Bhutto. They launched an unprecedented reign of terror.
They had gone too far. International outrage erupted. The Indian Capital came to the aid of East Pakistan. After a bloody civil war, the Eastern wing seceded.
On the western side Bhutto, the arch feudal, hoodwinked the radical left and every body else too, and effectively demolished the nascent Pakistani Capital in the name nationalization. The feudal system was rejuvenated. Suffering from a delusion of grandeur, he made the fatal error of taking on the International Capital and was eliminated.
In an astounding display of hypocrisy international capital turned its back on Zia. All kinds of economic sanctions were imposed on the country. It lurched to the brink of bankruptcy. He had to mortgage the rice crop to the late BCCI to pay Government employees. Zia was later to mess up the economy further by his so-called Islamization. He also introduced patently laws discriminatory, to the women, the poor, and all the disenfranchised. They are still on the books.
His rule spawned ethno-centric political groups. To save his skin more than to serve Islam, he finally led the country into the “Jihad” in Afghanistan, which was in fact a proxy war between the USSR and the USA, and down the precipice of drugs and armaments. Ethnic mafias, financed by drug and arms, assisted by security agencies, reduced the province of Sindh to a state of virtual civil war.
Zia was saved by the bell as it were. The Soviet Union decided to prop up its satrap in Afghanistan. USA got the chance it had been praying for to avenge its humiliation in Viet Nam. Zia became the darling of the West. Aid, economic and military pored in.
Having bled the USSR dry USA agreed to cessation of hostilities in Afghanistan. Zia obsessed by his messianic zeal would not agree and went downs in flames, and for good measure, took the US ambassador and military attaché to a fiery grave.
He had left a legacy of drugs, arms and anarchy. Capital can requires stability, law and order to survive. What ever of the capital had been left after ZAB’s depredations fled the country in Zia’s time.
Benazir and Nawaz followed Zia in a ten-year long game of musical chairs. Both were beholden to the Quad. They were tolerated till Nawaz grew too big for his britches and was sent packing by the current holder of the highest office in the land.
My submission is that Democracy could not take roots in Pakistan, because the system of representative Government is a function of Capitalism, which never attained the requisite predominant position in the country.
In order to understand the submission “ Democracy is a function of Capitalism” one has to delve deep into social, economic, and political evolution of human race and subject it to critical analysis.
Let us start with a few definitions.
Capitalism- is an economic system in which means of production are controlled and in a large measure, owned by a numerically small group of people- the capitalist class. They dominate the government by maintaining a symbiotic/dominant relationship with mainstream political parties media and academia. Benefits of the system are supposed to filter down class lines. Little is left for the common man.
Socialism- is an economic system in which an ideology driven party controls the means of production, state, media, labor unions, academia and professions etc. The party/state endeavors to provide for, not necessarily adequately, the basic needs of the public- food, shelter, jobs, healthcare, education etc.
Fascism- is a system in which an ideology driven party exercises the same degree of control over levers of authority as the socialists do but makes little effort to provide for the public.
Subtypes of Fascism are:
1). Theocracy in which clergy/Mullahs are in control .as in Iran and pay little attention to public welfare, in fact serve as active impediments to progress.
2). Military Dictatorship in which the army functions on behalf on the Quad, .as they as matter of routine do in Pakistan.
There are, however, many variations of the systems described above. Degree of control and intrusion into daily life also varies greatly.
Let us cast a brief glance at the associated political systems.
Democracy- is a system of government in which people are “supposed” to be governed by their representatives with their consent, obtained through an election held on a regular basis. The ruling class is usually an integral part of the Capitalist class, but in times before the Industrial revolution comprised of landed gentry.
Imperial system- in which all power is vested in the king who delegates some authority to his family, friends, and henchmen. The imperial system controls all means of production. Feudals/ tribal heads are given limited governance in the their area of influence. Muslim kingdoms and emirates are prime examples.
This is not to be confused with the pseudo-imperial system in which the King/Queen and royal family are kept for ceremonial purposes. This system survives in some European countries, but also exists in Malaysia etc.
Feudal System- in which an imperial/colonial power has left the feudals in charge of levers of power. Prime example is Pakistan. Feudals were able to subjugate the Royals as in the U.K a few centuries ago and ruled the roost till set aside by the Capitalists.


Stages of political evolution:
Broadly speaking human race has evolved through the following epochs.
i Hunters/gatherers/Nomads in which men went out to forage for food, and were often away for long periods of time. It is also dubbed Matriarchal age in which women were the dominant sex and often had several husbands.
ii. Tribal/agricultural when families settled on land and aggregated into tribes. This heralded the end of the age of the female domination.
iii Imperial, iv feudal, v Colonial and vi Capitalist followed over varying periods
Capitalist era oversaw the fastest and the most far-reaching changes in society. Inspired by advances in sciences and technology several countries in Europe underwent Industrial Revolution. Simultaneously Feudals had in many European countries wrested control of levers of power from the hands of the Imperium.
Means of production changed radically. Fewer hands could produce more. Surplus value increased. To give an example, if one unit of work produced two units of commodity in agriculture, the same one unit in industrial production produced ten units. This gave immense incentive to increase production. For that capital was needed.
Capital could be generated by the work of the employees and a great proportion of it saved by giving the workers less and less. Dominance over the government was needed to control the workers as well as the feudals and royals etc. Feudals had shown the way by organizing Political parties. What could be simpler than subverting the system by first co-opting, then making the feudals and royals subservient?
Socialist- should be classed as sub-epoch as it did not dominate the world as capitalist do, had sway over lesser part of the world and in historical perspective faded away rather quickly. The working class, inspired though it was, by the writings of Karl Marx, failed in the end to over throw the supra-national capitalist class.
We thus arrive at the conclusion that 1). Germany during World War II was not a capitalist system as means of production were controlled by an ideology driven party. 2). Middle Eastern potentates are not feudal in character. The house of rulers controls means of production. 3). Bangladesh is an anomaly, not democracy. It started off as a fascist state, underwent Military dictatorship, has been under an elected government for a few years and has again degenerated this time into military rule under cover of a civilian dispensation. Military Dictatorship. Pakistan is in the same category, though at a lower rung of development as means of production are still controlled by feudals. In Bangladesh an indigenous capitalist class is struggling to emerge.
Sociological development does not proceed with mathematical precision. In any society segments at various stages of evolution may co-exist, for example there are a number of capitalists in Pakistan and there are feudals in England.
India is a special case in study. It developed a big industrial base while still under alien rule. Industry financed Indian National Congress, won independence and promptly abolished the feudal system. On the contrary, in the less developed Pakistan feudals are surviving, indeed thriving.
Study of Japan and Korea is very instructive. Under pressure of industrialization and being deficient in raw materials, Japan evolved from imperial/ feudal to fascist to pseudo imperial system in a short span of time. South Korea metamorphosed from feudal to fascist and with the advent of vigorous capitalism into a stable democratic system within a few decades. I must add that the system is still having teething problems.
The United States of America started off with a feudal dominated representative Government, and with development of a Capitalist class, the feudal element surrendered power to the latter.
In fine, we can conclude that in every country, development of industry has gone hand in hand with establishment of democracy, though not conforming to mathematical precision, yet there has been some uniformity in the process.

Indian National Congress was founded in 1885.
Muslim League was founded in 1906.
Agha Khanis are dissident Shias. They accept only seven Imams and are some times called seveners. Mainstream Shias accept twelve Imams and are called twelvers.
Source The Agha Khans by Mihir Bose published by World’s work Ltd, The Windmill Press, Kingswood, Tadworth, Surrey. England.
The so-called Congress-League pact awarded more representation and other safeguards to minorities in respective provinces.
I recently read an autobiography of an Englishman, Ralph Russell who is an eminent Urdu scholar, a progressive, and an erstwhile communist, who taught at the Institute of Asian and African studies London for thirty years. He was posted in India during WWII as an officer in the British Indian army. He served in the frontier province, the Punjab, UP, Bengal and several states in South India. He was able to indoctrinate soldiers of all linguistic groups in communist theory, using Urdu/Hindustani as the medium of communication.
Nehru was able to impose Hindi, which was understood though not the mother tongue of the majority of Indians as the official language of the country. But he did not have to contend with speakers of one regional language concentrated in an isolated wing of the country.
Stanley Wolpert in “Jinnah of Pakistan”.
I chose to call the feudal, military, mullah and bureaucratic combine the evil Quad. The military, which over time took on comprador bourgeoisie character, vies with the feudal class for preeminence.
Suhrawardy’s Awami League had walked out of the assembly.
Harvard trained economist Mahbubulhaque made the famous statement that 22 families owned most to the wealth of the country. That was made much of by ZAB.


S.Ehtisham