Making Sense of Pakistan.indb

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

FARZANA SHAIKH

Making Sense

of Pakistan

Columbia University Press

Publishers Since 1893

New York Chichester, West Sussex

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Shaikh, Farzana.

Making sense of Pakistan / Farzana Shaikh.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-0-231-14962-4 (alk. paper)

1. National characteristics, Pakistani. 2. Pakistan—Civilization. 3. Pakistan—Social

conditions. 4. Pakistan—Foreign relations. 5. Islam and state—Pakistan. I. Title.

DS379.S445 2009

954.9105—dc22

2009007314

∞

Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper.

This book is printed on paper with recycled content.

Printed in India

c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

References to Internet Web sites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither

the author nor Columbia University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired

or changed since the manuscript was prepared.

CONTENTS

Preface 00

Introduction 00

1. Why Pakistan?: History and Ideology 00

Community 00

Nation 00

Power 00

2. Who is a Pakistani?: Culture and Identity 00

Migrants and Natives 00

Sectarian myths and the politics of exclusion 00

Non-Muslims and the mirage of citizenship 00

3. The Burden of Islam: The Sacralization of Politics 00

Holy battles 00

In the name of Islam 00

The lure of Shariatization 00

4. The Dilemmas of Development: The Uncertainties of Change 00

Free and Unequal 00

Culture of Corruption 00

The Puritan Backlash 00

5. Between Crescent and Sword: Professionalizing Jihad 00

Forging an Islamic army 00

Jihadis and juntas 00

The wages of sin 00

6. Demons from Abroad: Enemies and Allies 00

Standing up to India 00

America’s sullen mistress 00

Taking charge of Afghanistan 00

Epilogue 00

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

In the preface to my first book published twenty years ago I reflected

on the challenge posed to South Asian Muslims confronted with the

contradictions of their faith and with the uncertainties that plagued its

role in shaping the demand for Pakistan. This book returns to the

theme by carrying the story forward and demonstrating the conse-

quences for Pakistan of those unresolved contradictions. As before I

feared I had set myself an impossible task, but as before I soon found

myself buoyed up by the support of colleagues, friends and family

without whom this project could not have been realized.

This is especially true of those in Pakistan. Many gave generously of

their time; others helped open doors for me that may have remained

shut: to all of them I extend my heartfelt thanks. Some, however,

deserve special mention. In Islamabad and Rawalpindi Dushka Saiyid

and Syed Mushahid Hussain provided me with invaluable contacts and

sources. I am also deeply indebted to General (retd.) Mahmud Ali Dur-

rani, General (retd.) Asad Durrani, General (retd.) Malik Iftikhar,

General (retd.) Muhammad Rafi Khan, who agreed to spend long

hours with me discussing changes in military thinking over several

generations. I want to thank the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Islama-

bad and its ambassador to Pakistan in 2003, Janis Kanavin, for mak-

ing available to me his embassy’s premises for a series of dialogues on

Islam and Islamic education with Hafiz Muhammad AnwaruI Haq

Haqqani of the Dar ul Uloom-e-Haqqani in Akora Khatak, and with

Hafiz Fazl ur Rahim and Muhammad Yousaf Khan of the Jamia

Ashrafia in Lahore. Among others in Islamabad who extended their

warm hospitality and who shared with me their views on Pakistan

were Tasneem Beg, Parwaiz Iqbal Cheema, Roedad Khan, Rifaat Hus-

sain, Shaheen Rafi, Tariq Rahman, Ahmed Salim, Ikram Sehgal and

Mohammad Waseem.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

vii

In Lahore my greatest debt is to the late Qamar F.R. Khan, a true

model of generosity and matchless courage. In Lahore, I also wish to

express particular thanks to Dr Mubarak Ali, the late Farrukh Aziz,

Air Marshal (retd.) Zafar Choudhry, Brig (retd.) Rao Abid Hamid,

Tahira Mazhar Ali Khan, Kamil Mumtaz, Abbas Rashid, Ahmed

Rashid, I.A. Rehman, Rashid Rehman and Fareeda Shaheed, who all

patiently fielded my questions on the many causes of Pakistan’s mis-

fortunes. In Karachi, the city of my birth and of much of my educa-

tion, I benefited from discussions with Arif Hasan, Adrian Husain and

Sohail Lari. Amjad Awan, Nina Aslam, Mariam Bhutto and Nigar

Khan helped ease my many practical difficulties. In London, Maleeha

Lodhi, Pakistan’s accomplished former high commissioner to the UK,

kindly offered to share her insights. My sisters, especially Anwara,

bore the stress of my endeavors with unfailing humor while making

sure that every resource was put at my disposal.

The support of colleagues at institutions in the UK, the United

States, Europe and India has been invaluable in helping me stay the

course. I wish particularly to thank the Royal Institute of International

Affairs (Chatham House) in London for electing me as an Associate

Fellow of its Asia Programme and for giving me the opportunity regu-

larly to share my ideas on Pakistan with its distinguished membership.

I also want to acknowledge my debt to the Institute for Advanced

Study in Princeton for inviting me as a Visitor to the School of Social

Science in 2006–07, and especially to Professor Joan Scott, whose

enthusiasm for my work on Pakistan was a real stimulus. At the Insti-

tute I learnt greatly from the wisdom of Lakhdar Brahimi and from the

critical insights of Steve Feierman, Kristen Ghodsee, Rosalind Morris,

Susanna Hecht, David Scott and rest of the ‘Third World Now’ semi-

nar group. I want to thank Professor Simonetta Casci and Professor

Georg Kreis of the universities of Pavia and Basle, respectively, for

giving me the opportunity to rehearse some of the ideas that have

since found their way into this book. In India the professional integ-

rity, unflinching support and friendship of Mushirul Hasan of Jamia

Millia Islamia, who made possible my contacts with Indian collea-

gues, has been a source of inspiration and immense encouragement. I

also owe an equal measure of debt to Professor T.N. Madan, whose

keen interest in my work on South Asian Islam over the years has been

a privilege.

Few authors could dream of a more supportive editor than Michael

Dwyer of Hurst publishers, who patiently put up with a string of

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

viii

missed deadlines, but whose thoughtful comments and meticulous edit-

ing of the final manuscript serves as a testimony to his innate gracious-

ness. The acute observations of an anonymous reader were invaluable

in helping me both to broaden the book’s narrative and tighten its

argument.

My greatest debt, however, lies closer to home. Patrick and Emile—my

dual anchors—ensured that this book saw the light of day even if in

the process I fared less well as wife and mother. From the start their

involvement with this project was sustained and intense. Patrick read

the manuscript more than once bringing to it his gifts as an outstand-

ing scholar, logician and master of the written word. To Emile and his

new found passion for intellectual inquiry I owe the good fortune of

having avoided the tedium that could so easily have stood in the way

of getting the job done. To these two mighty sources of support, I

dedicate this book.

For Patrick and for Emile

INTRODUCTION

More than six decades after being carved out of British India, Pakistan

remains an enigma. Born in 1947 as the first self-professed Muslim

state, it rejected theocracy; vulnerable to the appeal of political Islam,

it aspired to Western constitutionalism; prone to military dictatorship,

it hankered after democracy; unsure of what it stood for, Pakistan

has been left clutching at an identity beset by an ambiguous relation

to Islam.

This book—a work of interpretation rather than of historical

research—addresses the political, economic and strategic implications

of Pakistan’s uncertain national identity. Such uncertainty has had

profound and far-reaching consequences: it has deepened the country’s

divisions and discouraged plural definitions of the Pakistani. It has

blighted good governance and tempted political elites to use the lan-

guage of Islam as a substitute for democratic legitimacy. It has dis-

torted economic and social development and fuelled a moral discourse

that has sought to gauge progress against supposed Islamic standards.

It has intensified the struggle between rival conceptions of Pakistan

and set the country’s claim to be a Muslim homeland against its obli-

gation to act as a guarantor of Islam. More ominously still, it has

driven this nuclear-armed state to look beyond its frontiers in search

of validation, thus encouraging policies that pose a threat to its sur-

vival and to the security of the international community.

That Pakistan should face a particularly acute challenge in forging a

coherent national identity will scarcely surprise those who have long

pointed to its artificiality as a nation-state. Indeed, at independence,

the country was largely bereft of the prerequisites of viable nation-

hood. The exceptional physical configuration of the new state, in

which its eastern and western territories were separated (until 1971

and the secession of Bangladesh) by more than a thousand miles of

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

Indian territory, was an immediate handicap. So was its lack of a com-

mon language. Its choice of Urdu—spoken by a small minority—to

serve as a national language was fiercely resisted by local regional

groups with strong linguistic traditions. They expressed powerful

regional identities that separated the numerically preponderant Benga-

lis of the country’s eastern province from their counterparts in the

west, where Punjabis dominated over Sindhis, Pashtuns and Balochis.

Pakistan’s national integration was further handicapped by the lack of

a common legacy grounded in a strong nationalist narrative informed

by a mass anti-colonial struggle.

Yet, these severe limitations were judged to be of secondary impor-

tance when set against the fact of a shared religion—Islam—held up by

Pakistan’s founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah (1876–1948), as the real

test of the Muslim ‘nation’ that would inherit Pakistan. At its simplest,

Jinnah’s claim rested on the assumption that, insofar as the Muslims

of British India were members of a separate religious community, they

were also the bearers of a distinct and potentially sovereign political

identity. This assertion, although in many ways quite extraordinary,

appealed to Jinnah’s many followers for whom the force of Islam was

judged to extend beyond the sphere of religion to touch vital matters

of temporal existence, including the conditions of modern nationhood.

It is this vexed relationship between Islam and nationalism that has

proved to be deeply problematic and is arguably the single greatest

source of ideological uncertainty in Pakistan.

This ideological uncertainty has deep historical roots. The building

blocks that shaped the idea of Pakistan—community, nation and

power—though largely informed by Islam, were all strongly contested.

The different standpoints, articulated in the course of intense intellec-

tual and political debates among South Asian Muslims in the late nine-

teenth and early twentieth centuries, reflected a marked lack of

consensus regarding the meaning of Islam. This resulted in competing

conceptions of the religious community, the nation and indeed the

proper ends for the exercise of Muslim power in South Asia. The leg-

acy of these conflicting notions has decisively influenced Pakistan,

above all in the resolution of its ‘consensus problem’.

INTRODUCTION

The parallels between the South Asian Muslim search for consensus

and Pakistan’s attempts to come to terms with pluralism are striking.

For what emerges is that, with few exceptions, an awareness of doctri-

nal and ideological diversity among thinkers engaged in defining a

Muslim community in India did not usually add up to a positive pat-

tern of acceptance, acknowledgment or appreciation of diversity. This

ambiguity, I suggest, stemmed from an attachment to the idea of the

Muslim religious community as defined by a singular ‘communal’ pur-

pose, whose multiple meanings were treated as an enduring problem

to be solved.

This conundrum of ‘consensus’ has marked Pakistan. Despite broad

(if uneasy) acceptance that Pakistan meant (and continues to mean)

different things to different people, its multiple meanings have invari-

ably frustrated the cohesion of a national community that is anchored

in, and is still widely judged to be representative of, an undifferentiated

religious community. Indeed, the burden of its presumed status as the

bearer of a religiously informed ‘communal consensus’ has com-

pounded the uncertainties attached to Pakistan’s national identity.

These uncertainties were accentuated by the contradictory expecta-

tions embodied in Pakistan. One called attention to the affirmation of

a universal Islamic community, whose geography in the minds of many

South Asian Muslims remained open to question. The other empha-

sised a Muslim ‘nation’ whose so-called ‘communal’ political and

economic interests were circumscribed by territorial boundaries. The

problematic relationship between Islam and territorial nationalism,

which preoccupied Muslim intellectuals and ideologues as different as

Muhammad Iqbal (1877–1938) and Husain Ahmed Madani (1879–

1958) compounded the challenge of reconciling these expectations. It

is no wonder that, as heir to these contrasting expectations, Pakistan

started life ridden with contradictions.

These contradictions were swiftly exposed. Though touted as a

‘homeland’, Pakistan (unlike Israel) refused to adopt a ‘right-of-return’

policy, appearing to make a mockery of its claim to serve as the refuge

for a Muslim ‘nation’. Nor was it ever clear whether the ‘nation’ that

stood to inherit Pakistan applied to an all-India Muslim diaspora or

only to the settled Muslim majorities in north-western and eastern

British India, poised to exercise political sovereignty over these regions.

Pakistan soon became the object of contestation between Muslim

migrants from India and local Muslim populations settled in the

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

territories that comprised the new state. With access to power and

economic resources at stake, migrants and natives set about projecting

ideas of the ‘nation’ that conformed to their distinct visions of Pakistan

and of ‘the Pakistani’. In time these differences hastened the disintegra-

tion of the country in 1971, without securing a consensus either on

‘Islam’ or on the terms of ‘Pakistani-ness’.

Other historical ambiguities also left their mark. Earlier generations

of South Asian Muslims had wrestled with two versions of ‘Islamic

universalism’. One, which espoused the ‘universal’, entailed a ‘one-

and-only-one-way’ to Islam—a view favoured, for example, by the

prominent Indian Muslim theologian, Shah Waliullah (1703–1762).

The other, in which the ‘universal’ stood as testimony of Islam’s uni-

versal appreciation of pluralism, was a stance adopted by the equally

eminent Indian Muslim theologian, Abul Kalam Azad (1888–1958).

The first, positioning the ‘universal’ against ‘difference’, was com-

mon and found a strong voice in Pakistan among Muslim revivalist

thinkers, notably Abul Ala Mawdudi (1903–1979), who in 1941

founded the Jamaat-i-Islami (or Islamic Party). The second, placing

both universalism (that is, recognition of our common humanity) and

difference in the same conceptual space, was rarer, and has been the

source of so much uncertainty. It lies at the heart of struggles around

the multiple identities (ethnic, sectarian, religious) marking out Paki-

stanis and which are deemed to ‘await’ resolution through their incor-

poration into some version of the ‘universal’ Pakistani.

The historical quest for consensus about the meaning of Islam

among South Asian Muslims also triggered important questions about

the proper way to express the terms of Islam, and indeed the proper

way to be a Muslim, in Pakistan. This has led to the promotion of

exclusionary political discourses and practices that seek to impose ever

narrower definitions of the Muslim and to establish the pre-eminence

of a particular type of sectarian Islam as emblematic of the Pakistani.

They have led to the disenfranchisement of the country’s Ahmedi

minority, who have been adjudged not to be Muslim for subscribing to

a different version of Islam. It has also resulted in attempts to justify

discriminatory laws against Pakistan’s Shia minority, who stand

accused by sections of the country’s Sunni majority of failing properly

to express Islam. The promotion of exclusionary discourses has also

been conducive to the dismantling of institutional protection for the

country’s small non-Muslim minorities, thus fuelling doubts about

their claims to qualify as real Pakistanis.

INTRODUCTION

Uncertainty about national identity and the lack of consensus over

Islam greatly affected the country’s constitutional and political devel-

opment; they also impinged on the construction of a coherent eco-

nomic and social vision. Jinnah was famously ambivalent about his

understanding of the relationship between Islam and politics. While he

had done more than most to tighten the bond between religion and

nationalism, thus laying the foundations of Pakistan, he was by all

accounts a reluctant convert to his own idea. Moreover Jinnah, like

the political and military leaders who succeeded him, was unable to

resist the temptation of mobilising the language of Islam to generate

power—power that lay for the most part beyond the reach of mass

democratic politics, about which Jinnah was also ambivalent.

It is no wonder then that, after Jinnah’s death in 1948, within

months of Pakistan’s independence, many of its political elites were

uncertain about, or hostile to, his understanding of the role of Islam in

defining the nation’s constitutional foundations. It took lawmakers

almost a decade to reach agreement in 1956 on the country’s first

consti tution and its long and arduous ratification was bedevilled by

controversy over the issue of an Islamic constitution for Pakistan—one

that the final document failed to resolve.

What divided opinion was not whether an Islamic constitution was

justified for a country that at the time was still home to a significant

non-Muslim minority (almost 14 per cent of the total population,

albeit concentrated mainly in East Bengal), but what the terms of such

a constitution might imply. These terms, in turn, drew attention to the

very question of the meaning of Islam—on which consensus among

lawmakers was palpably lacking. While Jinnah’s worldly political suc-

cessors, plagued by uncertainty about the public role of religion, were

content to acknowledge Islam as a fundamental component of the

country’s identity, religious parties pressed for Islam to be embodied

in an Islamic state—although they too were notoriously vague about

what that entailed.

The political repercussions of this doubt over Pakistan’s constitu-

tional identity were immense. Within three years of the constitution’s

promulgation and with the country still bereft of an elected national

government, a military dictatorship had assumed charge that ushered

in a cycle of military and civilian administrations. Although each pur-

sued a distinct agenda, each did so by struggling to articulate a monop-

oly on the expression of Islam.

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

Again historical antecedents played a part. There was dissent from

the beginning. Jinnah’s claim to be the ‘sole spokesman’ for Muslims

had vied with Maulana Maududi’s authoritarian reading of a ‘holy

community of Islam’. In turn, General Ayub Khan (1958–68), in col-

laboration with various pirs (Muslim holy men), competed with the

revivalist Jamaat-i-Islami to gain a monopoly over the discourse of

‘modernist’ Islam. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Awami

League’s espousal of ‘Bengali Islam’ stood (again mainly versus the

Jamaat-i-Islami) in opposition to the authority of ‘Pakistani Islam’.

Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto (1972–77), championed ‘folk Islam’, again in col-

laboration with an assortment of mainly Sindhi pirs, to challenge the

dominance of ‘scripturalist Islam’, advocated both by the Jamaat-i-Is-

lami as well as by sections of the country’s modernizing elite. Later,

General Zia ul Haq (1977–88), who initially worked with but then

against the Jamaat, favoured a ‘legalist’ interpretation of Islam with a

strong punitive bias that aimed to stem both its popular as well as its

modernist expressions. In time it strengthened the hold of an ulama-

inspired, ‘shariatized Islam’ which, by the 1990s, openly challenged

the legitimacy of the nation-state and further aggravated Pakistan’s

consensus problem.

The uncertainties that dogged the country’s national identity led to

wide swings in policy that exacerbated the divide between competing

visions of the country’s socio-economic change. With no clear appre-

ciation of the role of Islam in public life, policies were pursued and

judged not in terms of their success or failure to deliver broad social

and economic benefits, but in terms of whether they weakened or

strengthened the putative Islamic purpose of the state.

Here too there were historical precedents. Although Jinnah showed

relatively little interest in economic matters compared to his counter-

parts in Congress, he nonetheless saw fit to prevail upon the Muslim

League in the months leading up to Partition to define an economic

programme for Pakistan that could be justified with reference to Islam.

But with no consensus on the economic terms of Islam, it was not long

before wildly contrasting economic systems ranging from the public

ownership of property to private enterprise, from socialism to capital-

ism, were touted as compatible with Islam and therefore, also with the

desired objectives of Pakistan.

The resulting incoherence was compounded by the emergence of

a parallel discourse of corruption. It sought to judge the economic

INTRODUCTION

failures of the state, and especially its failure to curb the use of public

office for private gain, not as the consequence of inequitable economic

policies or poor governance, but as the moral failure of a state that

claimed responsibility, and was held accountable, for upholding

Islamic values in public life. Here too the absence of a consensus on

Islam transformed the debate on corruption from a concern with the

economic complexion of the state to a struggle over which version of

Islam was most representative of the moral probity of Pakistan.

Ranged in opposition to each other were those who associated corrup-

tion as being symptomatic of the endemic hold of regional and rural-

based expressions of unreformed and custom-bound ‘low’ Islam, and

those who associated it with the pretensions of a predominantly urban,

legalist-scriptural ‘high’ Islam favoured by the country’s dominant,

modernizing elite and sections of the religious establishment.

This core ideological ambiguity generated a powerful puritanical

counter-reaction, most evident in debates over the value of Islamic

religious education. Beset by ambiguity over the precise relationship

between the Muslim and the Pakistani, the state has had to acknowl-

edge such education as vital not only for the training of the good Mus-

lim, but also as the prerequisite to the moulding of the good Pakistani

citizen. In so doing, it has allowed the managers of such education—

the ulama and assorted Islamists—to emerge as influential purveyors

of Islamic standards and as proponents of the argument that the lat-

ter ought to determine the state’s putative Islamic identity and that of

its citizens.

The influence of these religious authorities was considerably

enhanced by their growing links with Pakistan’s most powerful state

institution—the military. Like the political leadership, the armed forces

were compelled to confront the multiple meanings of Pakistan and the

diverging interpretations of Islam that attached to the country’s iden-

tity. Because of its repeated intervention in national politics, the mili-

tary leadership has been forced to engage in these questions, which

arise from the imperatives of managing two conflicting discourses of

Islam in pursuit of political objectives.

The first, with which the military has more commonly been associ-

ated, was a Muslim ‘communal’ narrative that emphasised Pakistan’s

identity in opposition to India. The second reflected a discourse more

closely modelled on Islamist lines, which projected Pakistan as the

focus of a utopian Islamic vision underpinned by military expansion

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

predicated on jihad (holy war). Since the late 1970s the military has

sought to reconcile these opposing discourses and in the process has

attempted both to determine the national interest and to define the

very meaning of Pakistan. To do so, it has increasingly relied on

Islamic religious parties whose co-operation it had come to value in

the wake of a close and covert working relationship forged during the

Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Yet the terms of this alliance were inherently unstable. While the

military looked to Islam to strengthen the Muslim communal discourse

and keep alive opposition to India by extending Pakistan’s regional

interests in Kashmir and Afghanistan, its jihadi protégés invoked Islam

primarily to strengthen the putative Islamic character of the state.

Furthermore, this tenuous balance was clearly expected ultimately to

favour the military, owing to its overwhelming control of the state.

But events after 11 September 2001 caused a dramatic shift in this

equation, forcing the military to consider a re-orientation away from

opposition to India towards a more aggressive posture vis-à-vis mili-

tant Islam. In the process, it also weakened the Muslim communal

discourse of Islam upon which the military had depended to secure its

political fortunes and which had served as a powerful counter-narrative

against the Islamist tide seeking to impose a strictly confessional iden-

tity on Pakistan. Bereft of this counter-narrative, the military has been

left floundering in its attempt to craft a fresh narrative resting on

claims to speak on behalf of a more authentic Islamic constituency in

Pakistan than that represented by its Islamist foes. Such a situation is

likely further to frustrate the search for consensus over the meaning of

‘Islam’, the cancer that threatens Pakistan’s body politic.

The fragility of its identity also explains why Pakistan has been

driven to compensate for its ill-defined sense of nationhood by seeking

validation abroad, and why of all its foreign engagements none has

been as central as its opposition to India. This negative identity is

rooted in the specific character of Pakistani Muslim nationalism that

was moulded in opposition to the claims of India nationalism rather

than in response to British colonial rule. Overcoming the limitations of

this ‘negative’ identity is not only Pakistan’s single greatest foreign

policy challenge, but is also vital to the construction of Pakistani iden-

tity. Nowhere has this been more emphatically pursued internationally

than in its struggle with India over Kashmir.

At least as important has been the affirmation of Pakistan’s histori-

cal claim to parity with India—a claim that rested above all on the idea

INTRODUCTION

of power as a Muslim prerogative. Based on Jinnah’s historical insist-

ence that Muslims were a potentially sovereign nation entitled to par-

ity with the Hindu nation, it has since defined the country’s perennial

international quest to be validated as the equal of India. Pakistan’s alli-

ances with the great powers, especially the United States and to a lesser

extent China, though informed by considerations of security, have

been concerned to establish its national and international parity with

India, with damaging consequences. For Pakistan has sought also to

emulate India by aspiring to the status of a regional power—a status it

associates with India—and to realize it through control over subordi-

nate powers, most notably Afghanistan, and through the possession of

nuclear weapons.

That Pakistan today struggles still with a coherent national identity is

widely acknowledged. Yet, the absence of such an identity is, more

often than not, merely alluded to rather than squarely addressed, for

the state’s dysfunctionality is seen to stem primarily from other causes.

They range far and wide and many provide compelling explanations of

Pakistan’s key problems: its failure to withstand military dictatorships;

its uneven social and economic development; its severe ethnic divisions,

and even the pursuit of questionable foreign policies. Yet these expla-

nations are treated, for the most part, as causes of Pakistan’s fragility

as a nation-state rather than as symptoms of the underlying uncertainty

about its identity—an uncertainty that stems from the lack of consen-

sus over Islam.

One of the main reasons for this apparent oversight is the hold of

the still powerful idea that Islam, as a religious ideology, had nothing

to do with the quest for Pakistan. This view was largely inspired by the

work of the eminent Pakistani sociologist, Hamza Alavi.

His neo-

Marxist argument rested on the claim that the movement for Pakistan

was driven not by religious motives, but by the economic and political

interests of a salary-dependent class of Muslims, who he described as

the salariat. It was this class, he maintained, that stood most to gain

from Pakistan, and it was also this class that used religion (Islam) as

an ideological ploy (as classes do) to justify the creation of Pakistan.

After independence, this ‘secular-minded’ salariat, bound by reference

to ‘Muslim ethnicity’ (rather than religious ideology) faced disintegra-

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

tion. Strong regional identities linked to the Bengalis, Sindhis, Pashtuns

and Balochis resurfaced to mount a challenge. Their target, Alavi

claimed, was the Punjabi salariat, whose ‘hegemonic’ powers they

opposed, but whose determination not to share power ruined the pros-

pects of a common national identity.

Alavi’s arguments have influenced a generation of scholars.

Buoyed

by support from the Cambridge School of history with its emphasis on

interests rather than ideas as engines of historical change, they have

projected the movement for Pakistan as a struggle, above all, for politi-

cal and economic gain rather than the promotion of Islam.

Their

scholarship has been invaluable in deepening our understanding of the

dynamics of Indian Muslim separatism and the creation of Pakistan.

Yet, as I have argued elsewhere,

the excessive attention paid to mate-

rial interests in the movement for Pakistan risked ignoring the very real

force of powerful normative concerns informed by an Indo-Muslim reli-

gious discourse. These concerns were at least as important in shaping

the demand for Pakistan as were the interests of the Muslim salariat.

While regional competition over access to salaried employment,

especially in government, certainly played a part in thwarting the

development of a shared national identity in Pakistan, this competition

was deeply rooted in a struggle over rival versions of Islam. The role

of ethnic and regional forces in challenging the ‘hegemonic’ national

discourse of the Pakistani state

would, I suggest, be vastly enriched if

their resistance could be set against the religious orientation of a domi-

nant salariat who had long harboured a contempt for regional expres-

sions of Islam that were seen to be at odds with their modernist

versions of Islam. Exploring the differences grounded in these compet-

ing conceptions of ‘reformed’ and ‘corrupted’ Islam might not only

illuminate the multiple meanings attached to Islam in Pakistan, but

also explain how Islam as a key component of Pakistan’s national

identity came to be a divisive rather than a unitary force.

This is not to say that the challenge of forging a national identity for

Pakistan should be attributed solely to the terms of Islam or to a dis-

cursive tradition rooted in Islam. On the contrary, as Talbot has per-

suasively demonstrated, many of Pakistan’s difficulties stem from the

historical inheritances of the colonial era.

As he argues, the authori-

tarian legacy of colonial rule had a profound effect, especially in the

western regions of Pakistan. Here exceptionally low levels of political

participation effectively pre-empted the development of participatory

INTRODUCTION

politics, which could have strengthened the basis of a national identity

for Pakistan. This is a powerful argument and few would deny that the

time it took Pakistan to shake off the constitutional strictures of the

colonial state significantly damaged its prospects of resolving the sharp

differences that impinged on the construction of the new state.

But Talbot also acknowledges that one of the legacies of colonial

rule was the problematic relationship between Islam and Muslim

nationalism in a state that, although created in the name of religion

(Islam), was opposed by the men of religion—the ulama. Nevertheless,

he is certain (as indeed was Alavi and those Alavi influenced) that

Pakistan’s problem lay not in the contested terms of Islam, but merely

in the lack of ‘fit’ between the ‘secular outlook of the League’ and the

‘temporary millenarian enthusiasm’ of its followers.

This, as Metcalf

has rightly observed, makes little sense when set against ‘the self con-

scious identification of Pakistanis with Islam [which] is notable even to

other Muslims’.

Nor, she emphasises, can one differentiate in the case

of Pakistan between ‘some authentic statement of Islam’ and ‘the

opportunistic use of Islam’.

There was (and is) much uncertainty as

well as a lack of consensus regarding the meaning of Islam and this has

plagued both the secular leaders of the Muslim League as well as the

ulama and their millenarian Islamist allies.

There were of course important differences between the League’s

secular-minded politicians and their more religious counterparts in

their approach to Islam. Drawing on the insights of Metcalf and

Nasr,

I argue that two rival discourses of Islam—the communal and

the Islamist—have struggled for ascendancy in defining Pakistan’s

national identity. The first, rooted in a Muslim separatist discourse of

power that Alavi would have recognized as typical of the Muslim sal-

ariat, has been espoused by the country’s ruling elite, which includes

the military. The second, grounded in a more religious and at times

radical reading of Islam, has been favoured by parties dedicated to the

protection of Islamic values. It is these contested versions of Islam,

rather than any disjunction between a ‘secular’ leadership and a ‘reli-

gious’ establishment that account for the difficulties in forging a coher-

ent national identity.

There is also much interplay between these contested versions of

Islam. In Pakistan’s early days secular politicians relied on radical

readings of religion to drive programmes of far-reaching economic

and social change and to outline their vision of Pakistan as an Islamic

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

society. More recently, sections of the conservative clergy have backed

the military in pursuit of regional policies against India that aimed to

strengthen a secular Muslim communal notion of power. But all strug-

gled with the uncertainties inherent in the multiple meanings of Paki-

stan and the diverging interpretations of Islam that were held to attach

to the country.

What it also shows is that these uncertainties, long seen as afflicting

Pakistan’s political leadership, were no less prevalent in the military. If

that is the case, then the common perception that divisions and doubts

among politicians in Pakistan left them especially vulnerable to an

early assault by a more self-confident military

may need to be re-

visited. Most of Pakistan’s politicians, especially in the early years,

lacked a political base in the regions and were unsure of democracy,

thus leaving them open to the appeal of authoritarian rule. However,

their doubts over the fundamental question of Pakistan’s national

identity and of the place of Islam in defining that identity were no

more acute than those of their military counterparts.

Siddiqa has offered a more nuanced understanding of the military as

deeply embedded in the dynamics (and indeed the uncertainties) that

plague Pakistan’s civilian political leadership.

She argues that the

army’s position has been enhanced not so much by the weakness of the

country’s political elite, but the ‘class’ interest complicity between the

two, which has served the military well. This focus on ‘class’ interests

(for which Siddiqa is by her own account indebted to Alavi), however,

obscures the complex relationship between Pakistan’s religious identity

and its most powerful state institution. It lay at the centre of the mili-

tary’s own engagement in the question of Pakistan’s identity—an

engagement prompted by the urgency of transforming the military

from a colonial to a national institution. But this process was also

beset by uncertainty that stemmed from conflicting perceptions of

Pakistan’s identity as a nation-state defined by territorial borders and

as a Muslim state created in opposition to territorial nationalism.

Uncertainty over these terms helps to explain why, notwithstanding its

immense coercive powers and its repeated intervention in politics, the

military has consistently failed to impose any single vision of Islam as

the basis of Pakistan’s national identity.

Nevertheless, the military continues to play a key role in shaping

questions of national interest. That it does so has been widely attrib-

uted to the support it has enjoyed from external powers, especially the

INTRODUCTION

United States. These relations of dependence between the ‘over-devel-

oped’ Pakistan state dominated by the military and ‘metropolitan’

[read American] capital’ have received the attention they deserve.

But

these accounts signally fail to analyse or to deconstruct this relation-

ship through the prism of Pakistan’s fragile identity. While the con-

tested terms of this identity are often alluded to,

their implications

for Pakistan’s external relations have rarely, as here, been systemati-

cally explored. They are judged either to be irrelevant to the country’s

strategic options or dismissed as mere extensions of state ideology, and

therefore open to political manipulation. Neither of these claims, I sug-

gest, can be sustained with regard to Pakistan. Nor can Pakistan’s

place in the international economic and political order be understood

solely with reference to the imperatives of strengthening the state and/

or the class interests of its dominant elites

Ultimately, however, what will determine Pakistan’s stability as a

nation-state is not so much greater certainty or a stronger sense of

consensus. Rather, it will depend on the nature of the consensus itself.

One possibility is that a consensus will emerge regarding the value of

pluralism itself. Such a consensus—around, say, the nature of ethnic,

religious or linguistic pluralism—would be conducive to greater

national stability. Another possibility, however, is that Pakistan will

pursue a strict consensus underpinned by an exclusive definition of the

citizen and a one-and-only-one-approach to Islam. This kind of con-

sensus would have damaging effects for Pakistan. It would not be

conducive to internal economic stability, nor would it bode well for

the geopolitics of regional stability. Without a doubt, the nature of

consensus will determine Pakistan’s future as a nation and the limits of

its contribution to a more secure international community.

WHY PAKISTAN?

HISTORY AND IDEOLOGY

It is well-known that the term ‘Pakistan’, an acronym, was originally thought

up in England by a group of Muslim intellectuals. P for the Punjabis, A for the

Afghans, K for the Kashmiris, S for Sind and the ‘tan’, they say, for Balo-

chistan. (No mention of the East West, you notice: Bangladesh never got its

name in the title, and so eventually it took the hint and seceded from the seces-

sionists….). So, it was a word born in exile which then went East, was borne-

across or translated, and imposed itself on history; a returning migrant, settling

down on partitioned land, forming a palimpsest on the past. A palimpsest

obscures what lies beneath. To build Pakistan it was necessary to cover up

Indian history, to deny that Indian centuries lay just beneath the surface.

Can history settle the fundamental matter of Pakistan’s raison d’être?

Many in Pakistan have no doubt that it can. Many others, and not just

its detractors, claim it cannot. What is indisputable (and remarkable)

is that the question should still be asked even as Pakistan settles into

middle age, more than sixty years after its creation in 1947. But why

should an inquiry into the historical meaning of Pakistan be at all rel-

evant for an understanding of its present dilemmas or, indeed, its

future course? To answer this question is to acknowledge the profound

conviction among its people that Pakistan’s purpose has been ill-

served—indeed that something has gone wrong with the country’s

history. Yet few are willing to scrutinise that history for fear that it

will shred the fragile national palimpsest and, with it, expose a past

brutally at odds with the country’s political mythology.

The architecture of this mythology has rested on two fraught

notions: community and nation. Neither is unique to Pakistan, which,

WHY PAKISTAN?

like Israel, enjoys the rare distinction of embodying a form of religious

nationalism that involved the transformation of a religious community

into a nation. Other suggestive points of comparison have also been

noted: both countries shared a vision of themselves as a refuge for the

persecuted; both attracted the hostility of the religious establishment;

both sought to balance the expression of communal interests with

demands to justify them on religious grounds; and both held to the

vision of impregnable fortresses dedicated to the creation of just and

humane societies.

Yet what distinguished Pakistan were the grounds that defined the

transition of the Muslims of British India from a religious community

into a nation with political aspirations. At its simplest it involved the

assumption that a distinct religious identity (Islam) had forged a mono-

lithic community that predisposed Muslims to assume a separate iden-

tity, which determined all other lines of social and political difference.

The real significance of this identity lay in the ostensibly special status

of Muslims that was seen to rest above all on their pre-eminent claim

to power. It flowed from the experience of Muslim dominance in

India, which reinforced the idea that an essential part of being Muslim

entailed belonging to, or identifying with, the ruling power; but it also

derived from an Islamically informed discourse that valued power as

an instrument in the service of God’s Law.

This collective conscious-

ness was frustrated by the search for consensus over the definition of

an Indian Muslim ‘community’, a difficulty that was compounded not

only by divisions of region and class that eroded the binding force of a

common religion, but by the multiple meanings attached to Islam itself.

They reflected the extreme doctrinal and ideological complexity of the

Islamic tradition. Yet, with just a few exceptions, an awareness of this

diversity among South Asian Muslims, including Muslim intellectuals

and ideologues, has generally not produced a positive pattern of

acceptance, acknowledgement or appreciation for that diversity.

This was nowhere as pertinent as in the understanding of the notion

of a Muslim community—an idea that has been more fundamental to

Pakistan than the relatively recent construction of a Muslim nation

upon which the country is assumed to rest. Indeed, no explanation of

the relationship between religion and nationalism in Pakistan would

be complete without addressing the idea of the Muslim community.

It formed the very basis of the claim by the father of the nation,

Jinnah, who declared Indian Muslims a nation precisely because they

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

represented a community defined by Islam. Though the meanings

attached to this community in South Asia have been infinitely varied,

the epistemological value attached to the idea of a communal consen-

sus in Islam has consistently challenged the broad acceptance of these

multiple meanings. The legacy of a community whose internal differ-

ences were said to have frustrated the Muslim quest for consensus also

profoundly influenced Pakistan’s efforts to subscribe to the nation as

a political (and therefore negotiable) concept. Just as the multiple

meanings of the Muslim community in India were once judged to

undermine its authority as a focus of individual allegiance, so too have

the multiple meanings of Pakistan (and of Islam) presented an endur-

ing problem—one that must be solved in order to transcend the social

and political cleavages that undermine Pakistan’s claim to a national

identity. But while many had hoped that the substance of this identity

would be strengthened by the ready-made assumptions of a putative

Muslim community, Pakistan’s history has merely underscored the

deeply contested meanings of the latter.

Community

Indeed, no concept in South Asia has developed in as contested a man-

ner as the notion of a Muslim community. Yet, as a concept it has

been marked by ambiguity stemming from the vagaries of history and

a discursive tradition that sought to reconcile opposing definitions of

the community as both universal and exclusive in scope. Historically,

the idea of a Muslim community in India evolved in the context of the

suggestion that while British rule helped promote the idea of a com-

mon Indian nation, it also fragmented that nation by casting India as

a land of disparate and seemingly irreconcilable religious communities.

Some, like the Muslims, were seen to have the potential to develop

separate political identities as nations. The movement for Indian self-

government launched by the Indian National Congress, founded in

1885, and the recognition of a separate Indian Muslim political iden-

tity under reforms introduced in 1909 accentuated the tensions

between an emerging Indian national consciousness and a burgeoning

Muslim communalism.

In the years that followed, the peculiarly sub-

continental phenomenon of Muslim ‘communalism’, which has been

described as ‘the community-wise exclusiveness of material interests

and cultural concerns’,

came to be associated almost exclusively with

WHY PAKISTAN?

the separatist agenda favoured by the All India Muslim League (hence-

forth the Muslim League, founded in 1906).

From the outset, the Muslim League campaigned for the protection

of Muslim interests and openly questioned the validity of Indian

nationalism. Although recent scholarship has emphasised the shared

genealogies of nationalism and communalism,

in practice they emerged

as rival ideologies. Armed with opposing versions of Indian history

and contrasting interpretations of the significance of lines of social dif-

ference, they juxtaposed an Indian nation against a Muslim commu-

nity. Integral to this tension was the questionable privileging of an

all-inclusive secular Indian nationalism over the exclusionary concerns

of a Muslim communalism associated with narrow religious dogma.

Yet, the notion of a Muslim community upon which Muslim com-

munalism was seen to rest was far from universally understood or

appreciated. This was true as much among the Muslims of the north-

central provinces of British India, who would later emerge as the

strongest advocates of Pakistan, as of Muslims from the north-western

and eastern provinces, who were less enthusiastic.

Indeed there is now

an uneasy acceptance even among Pakistanis that, far from representing

a single identity, Pakistan meant (and continues to mean) different things

to different people. These multiple meanings have been difficult to

reconcile with the carefully nourished myth of a single communal pur-

pose, anchored in the idea of an undifferentiated Muslim community.

Some historians of South Asia have warned against the tendency to

make religion the sole marker of a Muslim community, which, they

insist, is a legacy of colonial policy. In so doing, they claim, it risks

‘essentializ[ing] the religiously informed identities of a highly differen-

tiated subject population now called upon to conceive of itself as mem-

bers of communities bound by doctrinal creeds’.

At the same time,

they recognise that British social engineering alone cannot explain the

emergence of a Muslim communitarian ideology and acknowledge that

Indian subjectivity, including presumably that of Muslims, also had a

role to play in shaping this communitarian discourse. But, they insist,

this discourse varied over time and place: while communalism in one

context drew upon religion as a signifier of cultural difference, in oth-

ers it was erroneously conflated with religion as faith or worse, ‘reli-

gion as political ideology’.

Others too have implicitly questioned the

usefulness of relying on the term ‘communalism’ to suggest Indian

Muslims as a monolithic community. They blame the ‘Hindu nationalist

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

imagination, with its desire for a clear definition of Indianness based

on an exclusive sense of culture … [as] decisive in imposing an artifi-

cial cohesion to the diverse local Muslim identities on the subconti-

nent’

—a claim that would certainly have been familiar to Jinnah,

who accused Hindu opinion of ‘foisting’ and ‘fathering’ the idea of

Pakistan.

Since then it has found an echo in the revisionist scholar-

ship on Partition that emphasises Congress’ role in encouraging per-

ceptions of a Muslim community, whose separation was judged to be

vital to the future of a secular state in India.

These arguments, though well taken, remain contested. While the

distinctions between religion as cultural difference, as faith, and as

political ideology are no doubt useful for analytical purposes and may

well illuminate the process of community formation in South Asia in

the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it is far from clear whether they

were at all meaningful as distinctions to Indian Muslims. Historically,

the boundaries between Islam as a religious doctrine, as a force for the

projection of Muslim culture and as a political tradition based on the

notion of power as a Muslim prerogative, have been far more blurred

in South Asia than is perhaps acknowledged. It is one thing therefore

to insist on definitions of the Indian Muslim community that conceptu-

ally distinguish religion as faith, culture and politics—not least to

avoid conflating these affirmations of difference in the South Asian

context as communalism.

It is another to suggest that historically

Indian Muslims were at odds with these overlapping registers or indeed

averse to ideas of community that simultaneously embraced contrast-

ing imperatives.

Similarly, while it may be instructive to set the emergence of a

monolithic Muslim community against the background of an emerging

nationalist discourse that placed a high premium on uniformity and to

call attention to Congress’s interest in promoting the idea of a Muslim

community united in opposition to its vision of independent India,

both interpretations confuse convergence with causality. By arguing

that the idea of the monolithic Muslim community chimed with the

nationalist imagination and its interests (represented predominantly by

Congress), it is mistakenly assumed that the notion of the community

was itself a creation of these extraneous influences. In so doing, one

runs the risk of underestimating the compelling appeal among Muslims

of a spiritual community, whose fulfilment lay in its realization as a

social and political community in the service of higher ends sanctioned

WHY PAKISTAN?

by Divine purpose. It is this quest for power that emerged as the com-

mon theme in otherwise diverging conceptions of the Indo-Muslim

community and that would later legitimise the claims of a Muslim

nation qualified for separate statehood.

Two broad meanings have attached to the idea of the Muslim com-

munity as it took shape in the context of nineteenth-century colonial

India. The first drew attention to the universalist dimensions of the

Muslim community by emphasising its inclusive nature, although it

also narrowed its parameters by defining the community in strictly

religious terms as faith-based. The second, more exclusive in character,

restricted its definition to the sum total of Muslims in India but

allowed for the meanings of the community to extend the strict tenets

of the faith to encompass the realms of culture and custom. However,

both were predicated on a clear understanding of the political impera-

tives that marked out the community and that were believed to enjoy

Divine sanction.

In the late eighteenth century the main representatives of what might

be called a sharia-based conception of the Muslim community in India,

which arose in response to Mughal formulations of the cosmopolitan

community, were, not surprisingly, religious leaders. Some, like Shah

Waliullah of Delhi (1703–62), were towering intellectual figures, who

exercised a decisive influence on later Indo-Muslim reform movements

in the nineteenth century.

Others, like Sayyid Ahmed of Rae Bareilly

(1786–31), were better known as men of action, whose legacy of jihad

has continued to rumble on to the present day.

Notwithstanding

these differences, they all shared a common concern with the moral

regeneration of Indian Muslims and with the need to purify the faith

and purge it of local (mainly Hindu) influences. By doing so, they

hoped not only clearly to demarcate the boundaries of the Muslim

community, but to do so by defining those boundaries as quintessen-

tially faith-based. This apparent ‘shrinkage in the substance of Islam’

to a faith-based community did not, in the minds of these reformers,

signal a compromise with the community’s universalist pretentions.

On the contrary, their insistence on correct religious practice stemmed

from the belief that only a return to the essence of the faith could

restore the community’s universal and historical importance.

Nevertheless there were tensions between this sharia-based under-

standing of the community and more cosmopolitan versions favoured

by the Mughal courts, especially under the emperors Akbar and

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

Jehangir. Both rulers had been keen advocates of social harmony (sulh-

i-kul), which later reformers such as Waliullah and his son, Shah

Abdul Aziz (1746–1823), would vigorously oppose for compromising

the governing principles of the sharia. But as Alam has persuasively

demonstrated, the Mughals’ attachment to inter-confessional harmony

did not mean that they were unconcerned with the maintenance of the

sharia. Rather, their version differed from the more juristic interpreta-

tions defended by later reformers. Informed by a system of ethics

(akhlaq) and grounded in a tradition of political accommodation, this

non-juridical reading of the sharia favoured ‘the balance of the con-

flicting interests of groups and communities, with no interference in

their personal beliefs’.

For Waliullah, by contrast, the sharia was less

an agent of balance than a force to restore the community’s internal

coherence. To achieve this he sought above all to purify the faith by

delineating more sharply the boundaries between Muslims and non-

Muslims, but also by cementing divisions among Muslims. Their expo-

sure to pre-Islamic local customs and their ignorance of the Quran and

the Prophetic traditions, he believed, had widened these fissures.

But Waliullah’s search for communal coherence was not restricted

to religious reform. Central to his understanding of the Muslim com-

munity as the embodiment of a universal order based on Islam was the

revival of Muslim power in India. His passionate dedication to the

moral regeneration of the community must be understood primarily as

a response to the loss of Muslim power following the disintegration of

the Mughal empire. However, the universal community that Waliullah

sought to reform as the foundation of Muslim worldly power diverged

sharply from the more cosmopolitan Mughal model that had legiti-

mised Muslim dominance. For while he clearly equated the universal

with the universal acknowledgement of ‘one and only one Islamic

way’, the Mughal construction of the ‘universal’ amounted to a univer-

sal appreciation of pluralism. The first (more commonly) positioned

universalism against difference; the second (unusually) placed both

universalism and difference in the same conceptual space. The tension

between these opposing versions of the Muslim community, based on

different readings of the ‘universal’, remained unresolved. Yet, despite

these differences both were united by a profound belief in the status of

Muslims as a righteous community with a pre-eminent claim to pow-

er.

Although Waliullah and his peers may have been concerned to

reserve power exclusively to Muslims, and the Mughals inclined to

WHY PAKISTAN?

distribute it more widely in the interests of balancing different groups

and communities, both saw the Muslim community at the apex of

universal order, whose relationship to power was divinely endorsed.

The steady consolidation of British rule in the nineteenth century

and the final disintegration of Muslim power after the mutiny of 1857

forced a redefinition of the community. With little social space and

even less political room, many Muslims retreated in order to reinforce

the scriptural foundations of their community. They included the pio-

neering ulama of Deoband, who set out to recast the community as the

site of individual religious responsibility: a means of coping with a

hostile and unfamiliar environment. They believed that the force of

overwhelming British power required the community’s withdrawal at

least until such time as the process of reform was complete. Only then,

they argued, would the community be able to re-claim its rightful

political inheritance, albeit under the tutelage of a clerical leadership.

This led to a greater emphasis on the need for religious reform, which in

turn entailed sharpening the religious dimensions of the community.

But conceiving of the community in these strictly religious terms was

as pragmatic as it was problematic. Indeed, it has been argued that

while the Deobandi ulama may well have steered clear of political

engagement, their ‘retreat from an active programme of re-establishing

the Muslim state was more a tactic than the enunciation of a new prin-

ciple’.

Some have also implicitly questioned whether the Deobandi

ulama’s concern with the ‘the interiorization of reform’ in the nine-

teenth century was entirely independent of public and political con-

cerns, especially given their turn to political activism within a few

decades.

This was to become particularly clear in the 1920s, when

the ulama of Deoband had succeeded in forging a powerful and endur-

ing anti-colonial alliance with the Congress Party. Ironically, this led

some like the prominent Deobandi alim, Maulana Husain Ahmed

Madani (d. 1957), to seek to deepen the religious kernel of the com-

munity and tighten its boundaries even while maintaining that Indian

Muslims were part of a common Indian nation (qawm).

Some have

explained this apparent contradiction by suggesting that few

Deobandis envisaged the outcome of Indian independence as anything

other than a mere blueprint ‘for a federation of religious communities

with little common social and political life’.

Be that as it may, what

is worth underlining is that this position was fundamentally in keeping

with the Deobandis’ predominantly faith-based conception of the

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

Muslim community as a union that was ultimately sustained by the

force of its religious message. At the same time, this affirmation of the

community’s religious core did not imply any diminution of its univer-

sal status. Indeed, Madani was clear that unlike other communities

such as a nation (qawm) or a faith-based organization (millat), the

Muslim community was distinct in its reach as a trans-historical

and trans-national union. For Madani the idea that Hindus and Mus-

lims could not form a single nation was, as Zaman has perceptively

ob served, at least ‘as insidious a notion as the idea that the Muslims of

India were separate from the global Muslim community’.

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad (1888–1958), the bête-noire of separa-

tist Muslims, shared these sentiments. His conception of the Muslim

community, strongly informed by the sharia, clearly emphasised its

scriptural roots, but unlike his fellow theologians in Deoband, who

were more concerned with the sharia’s legal injunctions, Azad stressed

its broader moral and ethical principles. With his profound conviction

in Islam’s universalist message, Azad remained steadfast in the view

that the pursuit of national and political separatism of the kind that

underlay the demand for Pakistan fundamentally violated the spiritual

priorities of the Quran by ‘placing a question mark around Islamic

capacity to survive without frontiers and among other religions’.

Of course some have since claimed that Azad cynically tailored his

theological stance to suit his programme of political co-operation with

Congress and its model of ‘composite nationalism’.

Others have

pointed to the hollowness of this suggestion by underlining Azad’s life-

long engagement (however ‘disembodied’ and ‘dislocated’) with religious

ecumenism.

Yet others have claimed that Azad’s pluralist model, far

from being a secular or multi-religious enterprise, was no less than a

form of ‘jurisdictional apartheid’.

Their views have been reinforced

by those seeking to unpack Azad’s notion of the united community

(umma wahida), who regard it as more suggestive of an alliance

between Muslims and non-Muslims rather than of any understanding

of unity between the two groups. They argue that, despite Azad’s incli-

nation in his later years to equate the idea of the united community

(umma wahida) with a united Indian nation (muttahida qaumiyyat) in

support of a partnership between Muslims and Hindus, he never lost

sight of the essentially contingent nature of this relationship.

This line of thinking is certainly persuasive when judged against

Azad’s impatience with the constraints of temporal politics, which he

WHY PAKISTAN?

clearly judged to be peripheral to a community in the service of a

higher end. Nowhere was this more explicitly stated than in 1912,

when he urged Indian Muslims to support India’s liberation alongside

Hindus by suggesting they call on their reserves of ‘Islamic self-assur-

ance’ to banish their minority complex. In a declaration that would be

echoed decades later by Jinnah in his own quest to liberate Indian

Muslim from their condition of ‘minorityism’, Azad denounced ‘this

pre-occupation with majority and minority [which] has become the

root of our problem’. Mocking his fellow-Muslims for their cowardice

in the face of Hindus, he reminded them that they were ‘members of a

[global] brotherhood of four hundred million believers in the unity of

God’, and who had therefore no reason to be ‘afraid of two and

twenty million idol worshippers of India’.

More explicitly than any

of his contemporaries, Azad here was giving voice to a vision of the

community as synonymous with the Muslim idea of the umma. In so

doing, he set the stage for a challenge to emerging discourses of the

community that sought to equate it more squarely with the Muslims of

India rather than a universal Muslim umma.

This much narrower discourse of community had been in evidence

since at least the late 1880s. It coincided with the emergence of nation-

alist politics under the aegis of the Indian National Congress and had

developed in response to the colonial restructuring of India’s political

economy. The first had prompted fears of impending electoral reforms

that promised to empower the numerically preponderant Hindus at the

cost of India’s Muslim minority. The second threatened to undermine

the influence of a hitherto dominant Muslim service class, or salariat,

who after almost two centuries at the helm of administrative affairs

under the Mughals now faced the prospect of being displaced by a

more advanced Hindu salariat conversant in English and buoyed

by the demands of a burgeoning Indian nationalism.

Both forced an

urgent review of the place of Indian Muslims in any future political

dispensation.

The most prominent Muslim engaged in working out the implica-

tions of these developments was the educational reformer and thinker,

Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan (1817–1898).

Widely credited for lending

substance to the idea of a modern Muslim community that would

combine the pursuit of religious and secular goals, he sought to break

free from the rigours of scriptural discourse. Not only was his Muslim

community restricted to its Indian frontiers, it also stood opposed to

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

any suggestion of extra-territoriality such as to stoke the fires of pan-

Islamism or to leave his fellow Indian Muslims vulnerable to charges

of disloyalty to their colonial masters. Indeed, it was precisely Sir

Sayyid’s loyalty to the Raj that would also encourage a more secular

understanding of the community. As Sir Sayyid’s politics was to dem-

onstrate, what underpinned the community was less the authenticity of

its Quranic message than the Muslims’ special status in India’s political

hierarchy. Restoring this special status, in part through access to mod-

ern education and in part by winning concessions that would formalise

the community’s undisputed claim to an equal share of power, consti-

tuted an integral part of Sir Sayyid’s community politics.

It would be erroneous to assume that Sir Sayyid’s understanding of

the community encompassed or extended to all Muslims in India. On

the contrary, the object of his attention was mainly restricted to the

community of a largely Urdu-speaking Muslim ‘salariat’ concentrated

in and around northern and central regions of British India, including

the United and Central Provinces, Bihar, Orissa, Bombay, Delhi and a

handful of princely states. They were the chief beneficiaries of Sir

Sayyid’s programme of partial secularization and modernization and

it was they, more than any other group of Muslims, who came to be

identified as the Muslim community. Muslims from the north-western

and eastern provinces, which later constituted Pakistan, were barely

affected by Sir Sayyid’s reforms except for those who had seized the

opportunity of an education at the Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental Col-

lege established by him in the northern town of Aligarh in 1875.

Indeed, the Muslims of the north-west and north-east appeared to be

relatively peripheral to Sir Sayyid’s developing ideas of the Muslim

community. The causes, it has been suggested, may have been eco-

nomic. The Muslim landed classes in the north-west had little need of

Sir Sayyid; they already enjoyed privileged relations with the Raj and

had cemented powerful alliances with local religious leaders, who

helped buttress their standing in rural areas. As for Muslims in the

north-east, they were mainly of peasant stock and as such were seen to

have little use for the modern education favoured by Sir Sayyid and

which was geared to the needs of the salariat.

This would appear to suggest that Sir Sayyid’s conception of the

community was not so much religious as ethnic—unmistakeably

rooted in India and with a strong regional bias towards North Indian

Muslims. Yet, there is little doubt that Sir Sayyid was responsive to,

WHY PAKISTAN?

and aware of, more religiously informed notions of the community. In

a remarkable observation in 1888 he declared that, ‘as regards Bengal,

there is, as far as I am aware, in lower Bengal, a much larger propor-

tion of Mohammadans than Bengalis. And if you take the population

of the whole of Bengal, nearly half are Mohammadans, and something

over half are Bengalis.’

What is revealing here is an understanding

(and separation of) the community of Muslims in Bengal as a religious

community divorced from its ethnic and regional Bengali roots. This

apparent denial of the validity of a Muslim’s regional ties and indeed

the rejection of regional expressions of Islam would, in time, come to

be closely associated with the religious stance of Pakistan’s governing

elite, whose modernist orientation is widely seen to be a legacy of Sir

Sayyid.

However, it is difficult to establish to what extent Sir Sayyid’s

extra-territorial understanding of the Muslim community stemmed

from an awareness of Islam as a universal faith and to what extent

from a Mughal cosmopolitanism that valued foreign ancestry as a hall-

mark of the Muslim ruling classes, whose ties of kinship tightened

solidarity in the face of non-Muslim competition.

Sir Sayyid’s

speeches are littered with references to the foreign ancestry of his com-

munity and like the many Muslim notables he spoke for, he was con-

spicuously shy in defining himself territorially as Indian, preferring to

evoke his place among Mughals and Syeds with foreign roots.

These different ways of imagining the Muslim community as both

universalist and extra-territorial on the one hand and culturally deter-

mined and locally grounded on the other, resurfaced in the thinking of

the poet and politician, Muhammad Iqbal (1877–1938). Along with

Sir Sayyid and Muhammad Ali Jinnah, he forms part of the triumvirate

presiding over the pantheon of Pakistan’s national heroes, and might

even lay claim to be the ‘patron saint of the Pakistani elite’.

Much of

Iqbal’s standing rests on what has been described as the ‘liberating

thrust’ of his vision which, in celebrating individual freedom, is seen to

depart from ‘the existential community chained to the worldview of

the religious guardians of Islam’.

Certainly Iqbal left few in doubt

that the practical focus of his concerns lay with the community of

Muslims in India rather than with Muslims as a worldwide community

of believers (umma).

Beset by anxiety over their constitutional status as a minority in a

future all-India federation dominated by Congress, he concluded that

the only practical solution lay in Muslim self-government managed

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

through a territorial arrangement that involved the consolidation of ‘a

Northwest Muslim Indian State’.

In this Iqbal, like Sir Sayyid,

favoured a regional, if not ethnic, understanding of the community as

coterminous with the Muslims of northwest India rather than with all

Indian Muslims. His political vision of an autonomous Muslim state

‘within the British empire or without the British empire’ showed that

the community he had in mind was, first and foremost, the immediate

community of Muslims in the north-western provinces of India,

comprising Punjab, the North-West Frontier Province, Sind and

Baluchistan.

While this exclusion of the Muslims of Bengal and of

Muslims from elsewhere in India sat uneasily with the vision of a

universal community, it demonstrated Iqbal’s remarkable grasp of

the power of geography in shaping the limits of a viable political

community.

Iqbal’s own unease with this restricted view of the community was

expressed in his unusual claim that the demand for a Muslim state in

the northwest could not be taken as evidence of a primordial Muslim

attachment to territory such as to qualify them for nationhood in the

European sense of the term. Muslims, he declared, were a ‘nation’, not

because of their contingent presence in a particular location but

because of their essential, that is to say, their enduring and non-nego-

tiable, membership in a common religious community that also served

as the model for a universal society. What had necessitated the recast-

ing of this community along ‘national’ lines bounded by territory, he

argued, was not the espousal of ‘European political thinking,’ but the

realization that ‘the survival of Islam in India depended upon its cen-

tralization in a specified area’.

At the same time, Iqbal was keen to

distance himself from any model tied too closely to sharia-inspired ver-

sions of the ‘community’ that relied on ulama and Islamist conceptions

of Muslim society.

Equally important was Iqbal’s hostility to Persian-inspired popular

Sufi mysticism (tasawwuf), which he blamed for encouraging versions

of a universal Muslim community that came to be closely associated

with sections of the Deobandi ulama and the thinking of Maulana

Abul Kalam Azad.

While Iqbal shared their view of the universal

concerns governing the Muslim community, he diverged sharply in

his understanding of what this entailed by way of political implica-

tions. Unlike Azad, for example, for whom the universal was synony-

mous with the idea of unity (wahdat) and with a community that

WHY PAKISTAN?

accommodated difference while grounded in commonly defined rules

of righteous action, Iqbal argued that the idea of wahdat, tainted by its

association with pantheistic Sufism, was neither desirable nor intrinsic

to Islam. The essence of Islam and its community, he declared, lay in

monotheism, which in its opposition to polytheism (shirk) had ‘noth-

ing to do with … wahdat and kathrat (plurality)’.

Indeed, its practical application as spelt out by Iqbal in 1921

appeared to demonstrate that there would, in fact, be little room for

plurality and difference in the universal space of his community. ‘If

you want to make it [universalism] an effective ideal and work it out

in actual social life, you must start … with a society exclusive in the

sense of having a well-defined creed and a well-defined outline but ever

enlarging its limits by example and persuasion. Such a society, accord-

ing to my belief, is Islam.’

This understanding of the ‘universal’ Mus-

lim community was to serve as a powerful template for later ideas

seeking to reconcile the imperative of Muslim nationhood with the

prescriptions of a community that claimed universal sanction.

For the moment however this rarefied and learned dialogue of ideas

could not escape the imperatives of British rule or the parochial affili-

ations of tribe and class that sought to challenge any tidy construction

of community. The requirements of indirect rule, which came to be

associated with the method of British control over India, demanded

above all a stable and hierarchically organized society. Indirect rule

also required the management of social divisions through a complex

pattern of authority involving rulers of princely states, the landed aris-

tocracy and tribal leaders. These divisions were as much vertical as

horizontal, reflecting not only the separation between rulers and ruled

but distinctions between class, caste, races and tribes. A common argu-

ment running through the corpus of modern Indian historiography has

been that the organization of society along these lines was deliberately

‘constructed’ to delay the onset of nationalism.

Most historians now

recognize that they also served to reinforce strategic alliances between

the British and local Indian power-holders in the northwest of India,

especially in Punjab.

Both sides stood to gain from this co-operation:

the British by strengthening their hold over rural areas, which allowed

them to facilitate trade and extract revenues from taxation and local

chiefs by strengthening feudal and tribal affiliations threatened by

emerging discourses of the Muslim ‘community’ that were potentially

hostile to parochial loyalties.

This was much less marked in eastern

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

regions of British India (later to emerge as East Pakistan), where the

subservient Muslim peasantry was scarcely in a position to act as a

bulwark of colonial rule. This is not to say that the development of

parochial or local ideas of the community at odds with sharia-centric

versions of a universal community was any less robust in these areas.

In East Bengal, a strong regional culture buoyed by a nascent Bengali

Muslim bourgeoisie helped to promote a socio-territorial idea of a

Bengali community that soon came into conflict with sharia-inspired

notions of the supra-regional community that gained momentum dur-

ing the 1920’s—and which later informed the idea of Pakistan.

The application of colonial law also helped to consolidate parochial

loyalties and seal attachments to the local community, especially in

parts of the north-western regions. Here, unlike elsewhere in India

where colonial law worked in tandem with Islamic law to create new

legal interpretations and institutions (mainly in the domain of personal

law), customary law was the order of the day. Its enforcement was

often left to tribal jirgas and, as in parts of the Punjab, mediated

through feudal structures permeated by kinship and clan ties.

The

aim was to help British administrators forge alliances between the

colonial state and rural intermediaries. They included large landowners

and tribal heads, who acted as key agents of social control in rural

areas. By allowing local chiefs to formalise their power, sanctioned by

means of customary law, British officials helped to strengthen alterna-

tive notions of the community based on local political configurations.

However, even these local communities were not entirely divorced

from the framework of Islamic prescriptions. Many were legitimated

by the institutions of rural Islam ranging from the pirs (spiritual mas-

ters) of Sind

to the sajjidda nashins (guardians of Sufi shrines) in

Punjab

Nevertheless, on the whole they tended to be instinctively

hostile to the ulama and other purveyors of the sharia-inspired notions

of community, whose vision of the socio-political order ran counter to

conceptions of authority favoured by tribal and customary law.

Nation

The transition from these many-layered and often conflicting ideas of

the Muslim community to the rhetoric of an Indian Muslim nation was

far from straightforward. It certainly precluded any linear development

from community to nation. At the same time, there were links,

WHY PAKISTAN?

however nebulous, that helped sustain the idea of a pre-existing Mus-

lim community in India as the foundation of a future Muslim nation

in Pakistan.

In his seminal Radhakrishnan lectures, Bayly has argued that more

attention should have been paid to indigenous traditions that fuelled

and gave meaning to the development of nationalism in India.

Although he is careful to warn against falling prey to teleology of the

sort that would suggest that modern nationalism was somehow preor-

dained by the past, he argues that any explanation of its development

must be ‘epistemologically and socially rooted in these inheritances’.

Thus, even while conceding that Western models of the nation came to

dominate political discourse after the 1880s, Bayly emphasises that the

crucial question is one of how this ‘derivative concept’ of nation and

nationalism came ‘to be rooted in the institutions of the Indian environ-

ment and understood in terms of its own ethical and political ideas’.

The observation is especially pertinent when exploring the sense

imparted by Indian Muslims to the idea of a Muslim nation, and its

relationship to the community, especially after the Indian Mutiny of

1857. What emerges is a fluid, ever-changing, picture that both shaped

and was shaped by a framework drawing on traditional ideas of the

community as the repository of righteous government as well as on

indigenous sources of local authority rooted in what Bayly describes as

‘regional patriotism’. The result is a more complex representation of

the transition from Muslim community to Pakistani nation than is

allowed for by those argue that Muslim separatism should be seen

primarily as the manipulation of cultural symbols that are consciously

selected to further the political interests of a dominant elite.

The risk

here is that by focusing too closely on the material underpinnings of

nationalist discourse and the putative motives of nationalist utterances,

the narrative loses sight of ‘the emotional, ideological and institutional

context within which nationalist ideas gained currency, value and

weight’.

Among the ideas jostling for a place in this firmament of

nationalist discourse after 1857 were the concepts of qaum, watan,

mulk and millat used by Muslims to confound and obscure the mean-

ing of the nation.

The creation of the Indian National Congress in 1885 marked a

turning point in the emergence of an alternative Muslim discourse on

the nation. What propelled it was a different interpretation of India’s

past shaped as much by a collective memory of Muslim rule in India as

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

by Muslim unease over how best to reconcile the claims of Islam as a

locus of power with those of the nation as the centre of political loy-

alty. Sayyid Ahmed Khan was instrumental in setting the tone of this

alternative discourse. Apparently riddled with contradiction, it never-

theless made sense to those among India’s Muslims who had grown

fearful of the nationalist vision projected by Congress. Their concerns

were articulated by Sayyid Ahmed, who argued that Hindus and

Muslims were not one nation (qaum) but two,

even if their blood

had mixed at times.

They shared little except a common country

(watan)—Hindustan. This was but one of many variations on the

theme of the Muslim nation that Sayyid Ahmed deployed to tease his

audience and confound later generations of historians. At least as

common were his frequent references, especially before 1885, to Hin-

dus and Muslims as members of one qaum.

What is undeniable is

that for Sayyid Ahmed qaum rarely, if ever, implied the global brother-

hood of Islam.

Indeed, his hostility to the universalist pretensions of

the Turkish Caliphate, which might have sustained this view, was

almost as strident as his antipathy to Congress—both he believed

aimed to rip apart the fabric of loyalist politics vital to Muslim fortunes

under the Raj.

Notwithstanding these inconsistencies, there were some elements

that remained constant in Sayyid Ahmed’s understanding of the nation.

They included notions of class and ancestry, which suggest that his

Muslim ‘nation’ was an exclusive enterprise managed and directed by

men (for it was also an essentially patriarchal organization) of high,

preferably foreign, birth. It also suggested that, to the extent that for-

eign descent was a key component of the nation there was no a priori

understanding of the ‘nation’ as rooted in native soil. This reading of

the qaum was quintessentially a product of Sayyid Ahmed’s cosmo-

politan Mughal heritage, which tended to shun the crude divisions of

faith such as were the preserve of contemporary religious reform move-

ments. It comes as no surprise that, when in 1861 three non-Mus-

lims—the princely rulers of Patiala and Benaras and the prime minister

of the princely state of Gwalior, Sir Dinkar Rao—were included in the

Viceroy’s Legislative Council, Sayyid Ahmed ‘rejoiced’ that they had

been called upon to ‘discharge their duties manfully and right well’.

Well-born Hindus were, then, as much a part of the Sayyid Ahmed’s

Hindustani ‘nation’ as well-born Muslims. Or were they?

By the time Sayyid Ahmed had come to terms with the full import

of the 1857 uprising, his thinking on the ‘nation’ appeared to be

WHY PAKISTAN?

undergoing a shift. By 1888 there were clear signs that he was set to

recast Hindus and Muslims as bearers of distinct identities—‘two eyes’

of a ‘beautiful bride’ (Hindustan)—even while suggesting that he still

equated the term qaum among Muslims not with a country or race but

with religion.

This idea of the qaum as an expression of a separate

Muslim religious identity would appear to confirm Bayly’s suggestion

that it was merely an aspect of ‘old patriotism’ consistent with the

idea of Hindustan as an ‘ancient royal realm’ rather than suggestive

of a proto-nationalist community synonymous with what later nation-

alists would imagine as a territorial homeland (watan) or country

(mulk) (country).

Yet, it would be naive to assume that Sayyid Ahmed’s notion of the

qaum was devoid of a political dimension. For to do so would be to

gravely underestimate the force of his conviction that Muslims as a

qaum, understood both as a religious fellowship and a sub-culture

defined by a common ruling-class ancestry, had a special relationship

to the political order. Sayyid Ahmed understood better than most that

the transformation of the colonial state and the re-organization of the

Indian legal and administrative systems in the 1880s entailed funda-

mental shifts, which were set to challenge the political dominance of

well-born Muslims. They now faced the introduction of a range of

unfamiliar criteria for admission to the higher echelons of state service.

This included a mastery of English, rather than Persian (the former

language of administration), which mainly privileged western-educated

Indians, drawn from the Presidency towns of Calcutta, Madras and

Bombay. Lumped by Sayyid Ahmed Khan under the rubric of ‘the

Bengalis’, they came to represent for him the single most potent chal-

lenge to his qaum. It would be fair to say that this scramble for gov-

ernment jobs, which made manifest the decline of Muslim privilege,

proved to be almost as traumatic for Sayyid Ahmed Khan’s later poli-

tics as questions about the dubious quality of Muslim loyalty were for

his early politics. It triggered an urgent reassessment of his qaum: now

more closely to be informed by the political concerns of Muslims from

well-born (sharif) families with a service class background, who hailed

from the provinces of north and central India and, to a lesser extent,

parts of eastern India, including Bihar.

It was this focus on well-born Muslims with their long and distin-

guished tradition of close links to the centres of power that led Sayyid

Ahmed increasingly to equate power with bureaucratic access and to

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

demand that such access be secured for Muslims on a basis of equality

with Hindus in any colonial devolution of power to Indians. But this

also led to a subtle shift in Sayyid Ahmed’s thinking towards a more

ethnic definition of the Muslim qaum as representative of the region-

ally-specific and upwardly-mobile Muslim salariat with a distinct ‘cul-

ture’ based on Islam. This ‘ethnicisation of religious identity’

was of

course greatly facilitated by the parallel process of Islamic revivalism

in north India in the late nineteenth century, which accentuated cul-

tural and religious differences and significantly widened the political

fault lines between Muslims and other communities. Together they set

the stage for a new, but by no means unproblematic discourse of the

Muslim nation.

Among those who revealed its inherent tensions was Iqbal, whose

ambivalence towards nationalism was symptomatic of a deeper strug-

gle to reconcile the claims of an extra-territorial community informed

by a universal religion with the demands of a Muslim ethnicity seeking

expression within a geographically circumscribed nation. Like many of

his generation, Iqbal’s early political consciousness was fuelled by an

instinctive attachment to the homeland of India, which has been used

to substantiate the claim that Iqbal started out as an Indian nationalist

before dedicating the rest of his life to Muslim separatism. However,

Iqbal’s political trajectory was more complex and more internally con-

flicted than has generally been recognized.

Whilst the idea of the nation as an aspect of belonging clearly did

exercise its charms on Iqbal, he proved to be far more resilient to

nationalism as a focus of primary, if not exclusive, allegiance. This

emerged most forcefully in his opposition to the nationalist credo

favoured by Congress, which he condemned as an attempt to import

the evils of Western materialism and to undermine the spiritual basis

of Indian society by recasting the nation as an object of worship.

Iqbal’s objections to Congress’ creed were not, however, dictated solely

by his antipathy to an alien doctrine. At least as important was his

sense of apprehension about what majority Hindu rule might signify

for Muslim power and, by extension, for Islam as a ‘cultural force’.

For it had become obvious to Iqbal that the two were, in fact, insepa-

rable. In the years following his return from Europe in 1908, the over-

riding refrain of his political discourse was not so much the issue of

guaranteeing the economic, social or political rights of Indian Muslims

but of securing a safe haven for Islam in India. Iqbal probably did

WHY PAKISTAN?

more than anyone to sow the seed of the claim that the demand for a

separate Muslim state was primarily a demand for a Muslim enclave

where Islam would no longer be ‘in danger’.

Iqbal’s instinctive hostility to the idea of the nation also led him to

resist, intellectually at least, any link between a Muslim nation and a

separate Muslim state—a link that would have been to compromise his

engagement with Islam as a ‘universal community’ which could brook

no divisions of the sort implied by national differences. Therefore,

when in 1930 he laid out his scheme for a territorially demarcated and

centralized Muslim state in the north-west of India, he justified its for-

mation not on the grounds that Muslims were a nation, but that ‘the

life of Islam’ depended on it.

It is now understood that what Iqbal

was proposing was not an independent Muslim state as such, but an

autonomous entity with the option of choosing either to remain ‘within

or without’ the Indian federation. Nevertheless even if he had pressed

for total independence, it is far from certain that Iqbal would have

done so by recasting the Muslims of India as a nation.

Although he harboured strong reservations about separate Muslim

territorial statehood, regarding it as a blow to communal solidarity,

Iqbal always stated that territorial borders to secure Islam were essen-

tially temporary devices destined over time to wither away by ever

enlarging the frontiers of the Islamic community ‘by example and

persuasion’.

As such, the territorial nationalism espoused by Con-

gress would surely have appeared to him to be especially pernicious

inasmuch as its support for a permanent geographical space for an

Indian nation rested on the dubious premise of a distinction between

Indians and non-Indians. By contrast, his reluctant admission of ter-

ritorial nationalism suggested that he believed such boundaries could

only be justified when sustained by the force of a far more funda-

mental dichotomy between Muslims and non-Muslims that, in the

context of India, necessarily required ‘the creation of a Muslim India

within India’.

The power of this vision of a safe haven for Islam in India stemmed

also from the deep-rooted mystique that Muslims like Iqbal attached

to the idea of a protected enclave, where the practice of their faith

could continue unhindered. While debate still rages about whether or

not Iqbal ever envisaged an Islamic state of the sort demanded by some

of his protégés, including Maulana Abul Ala Maududi of the revival-

ist Jamaat-i-Islami, he made no secret of his support for a Muslim

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

homeland. The basis and justification for this (possibly independent)

homeland lay not in the controversial proposition that Muslims were

a nation, and therefore entitled to a separate state, but in the far more

compelling myth that Islam itself was in danger. Once this was

acknowledged—and Iqbal did more than most to press the case—there

were two options: migration or resistance. Iqbal understood that the

second made little sense in the context of India, which by the 1920s

and 1930s appeared to be moving inexorably towards a democratic

transition and an eventual transfer of power to a Hindu majority.

There remained the option of migration, but this was to prove just as

problematic given the demographic make-up of colonial India, where

Muslims lived cheek-by-jowl with non-Muslims across the subconti-

nent. Iqbal’s ingenious scheme of ‘amalgamating’ the lands lying to the

north-west of India, which were already defined by their Muslim

majorities, offered a practical way out to secure his ultimate objec-

tive—the protection of Islam as ‘a cultural force’. Though he did not

go so far as to make a case for the large-scale migration of Indian

Muslims to a putative protected haven, the vision he invoked in his

speech as president of the Muslim League in 1930 was clearly sugges-

tive of the mythical place to which early Muslim pioneers, led by their

Prophet, retreated to escape subjugation and slavery by the enemies of

their faith.

That Iqbal was less concerned with forging a Muslim nation than

ensuring a place where Islam could survive in India was perhaps most

emphatically underlined by his failure to factor into his scheme the

Muslims of the Gangetic plain, especially those concentrated in the

eastern half of Bengal. Like Sayyid Ahmed Khan, for whom the qaum

was essentially a regional configuration confined to the Muslims of

north and central India, Iqbal’s vision of the ‘Indo-Muslim’ community

was most immediately shaped by the local world of north-west India,

dominated at the time by the major political configurations of the Pun-

jab. His intense if haphazard involvement in this localised (mainly

Punjabi) sphere of influence would also explain why the imperatives of

all-India politics, which ultimately forced Jinnah to resort to the rheto-

ric of nationhood in order to carve out a separate political space for

Muslims in India, remained marginal to Iqbal’s worldview.

This is not to say that Iqbal was wholly oblivious to the presence of

Muslims beyond the north-western regions with which he was most

familiar. By the mid 1930s the preponderance of Bengali Muslims in

WHY PAKISTAN?

the east was beginning to influence his thinking about the future shape

of Islam in India. In his letters to Jinnah in 1937 he demonstrated his

awareness of the Muslims of east Bengal, demanding ‘Why should not

the Muslims of North-West India and Bengal be considered nations

entitled to self-determination?’

Yet, Iqbal’s interest in Bengali Mus-

lims as a constituent element of a putative Muslim nation was ulti-

mately peripheral to his main objective, which aimed primarily to

secure ‘the enforcement and development of the Shariat of Islam’

through the consolidation of ‘a free Muslim state or states’.

His over-

riding concern was not so much to confront the challenge of trans-

forming Muslims from a minority to a nation, but in deciding how

best to adapt a community with universal pretensions into a regionally

circumscribed entity with a limited remit. Indeed, when faced with the

untenable logic of extending national self-determination to Muslims in

provinces where they were in a minority, he concluded that ‘personally

I think that the Muslims of North-West India and Bengal ought at

present to ignore Muslim minority provinces’ and concentrate instead

on a ‘line of action’ for the Muslims of north west India (followed, if

need be, by a ‘separate federation’ for the Muslims of Bengal). In so

doing, Iqbal echoed both a discourse that equated the Muslim qaum

with the Muslims of the north-western provinces and contemporary

schemes that assumed more than one Muslim federation to resolve the

issue of Muslim self-determination in India.

Iqbal was not alone in promoting the idea of a separate Muslim

state as a safe haven for Islam. Maulana Mawdudi (1903–1979), the

founder of the sub-continent’s premier revivalist movement, the

Jamaat-i-Islami, also shared this view. During a decade-long associa-

tion with Iqbal in the late 1920s and 1920s, Mawdudi came to be

closely involved in an institutional programme of Islamic revival aimed

at facilitating the creation of a Muslim national homeland.

Although

these relations were soon crippled by Mawdudi’s political ambitions

and by his increasingly antagonistic stance towards the Muslim

League, which he denounced as a ‘party of pagans’ (jamaat i jahiliya),

they left a lasting imprint on Mawdudi’s thinking. His competing ver-

sion of the Muslim nation was clearly modelled on the idea of a home-

land for Muslims that would also serve as a haven for Islam. Like

Iqbal, he too was closely focussed on the Muslims of the north-western

provinces, whose interests he tended to equate with the Muslim

‘nation’ of India. Finally, like Iqbal he remained deeply ambivalent

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

about nationalism preferring to frame it in the language of power as a

necessary condition for the survival of Islam.

Mawdudi’s version of the ‘two-nation theory’, formulated in

response to the model of secular nationalism favoured by the Congress

party, contained all the hallmarks of the crude binary opposition

between a supposed Hindu nation and its Muslim counterpart. Accord-

ing to Nasr, it also represented Mawdudi’s ‘binary view of the world

as sacred and profane’.

His two-nation theory, outlined in 1938,

described Muslims as ‘a distinct people whose social life is based on a

particular ethical and cultural norm’ and envisaged a state within a

state that echoed Iqbal’s vision of a ‘Muslim India within India’.

Indeed, like most such schemes then in circulation, Mawdudi’s blue-

print, which provided for two ‘culturally autonomous’ entities, presup-

posed neither the physical partition of the sub-continent nor lip-service

to Muslim ‘national’ self-determination. Rather, like Iqbal, his concern

was to secure a safe haven—a Dar ul Islam, which he explained ‘means

only a Muslim cultural home and not a Muslim state, but if God wills

it, the two may become one’.

Though Mawdudi soon moved in favour of secession and the crea-

tion of a separate Islamic state, which he emphatically sought to dis-

tinguish from Jinnah’s model of a less theologically inspired Pakistan,

it is far from clear that he did so on the basis of a commitment to any

ethos of nationalism—about which he remained deeply ambivalent. It

is worth noting that he was perhaps more prepared than most of his

peers to confront the full implications of a Muslim homeland by rec-

ognizing that it would have to guarantee the right of any Muslim to

migrate to a consolidated space designated as such. In plans for a

loosely confederal structure proposed at the same time, Mawdudi

endorsed what effectively amounted to ‘a right of return’ for Indian

Muslims living outside thirteen designated Muslim ‘territories’ (the

fourteenth and largest being reserved for Hindus) by furnishing a time-

table over twenty-five years to complete an exchange of population.

This scheme, though lacking any semblance of practicality, was none-

theless consistent with Mawdudi’s overall objective, which was less to

engage in the logic of Muslim nationhood than to establish an Islamic

state in a designated Muslim territory. Ultimately, for Mawdudi as for

Iqbal (both ideologues par excellence) the merits of an independent

Muslim state had little or nothing to do with affirming the authenti-

city of a Muslim nation. What made an independent Muslim state

WHY PAKISTAN?

imperative was the need to restore to Muslims the privilege of power

both believed was a divinely sanctioned prerogative.

For Muhammad Ali Jinnah, ever the pragmatic politician, these a

priori positions were far more difficult to sustain. Initially he had been

reluctant to lend his support to Iqbal’s territorial scheme outlined in

1930, fearing it would divide Indian Muslims and fuel civil war. As

Ziring observes, ‘he [Jinnah] could not envision a viable Muslim state

as described by the renowned poet [Iqbal]’. Balochistan was still a

wild, arid, border region and Sind had not yet been split off from the

Bombay presidency. The North West Frontier Province was a rugged

mountain area along the Afghan border, its inhabitants largely tribal,

and, with the exception of a limited settled area around Peshawar, it

was subject to no known central authority. Only the Punjab repre-

sented the contemporary world of South Asia and there Muslims had

to find communion with the Sikhs in addition to resident Hindus.

Jinnah also recognized the problem of hundreds of thousands of Mus-

lims from the Muslim minority provinces, for whom Iqbal had made

little or no provision in his version of the Muslim majority state. Nor

indeed is there any evidence that Jinnah at this, or any other, stage was

inclined to back the mass migration of Indian Muslims to a putative

Muslim ‘homeland’; on the contrary, he was persuaded that the pres-

ence of substantial numbers of Muslim and non-Muslims minorities in

each of the successor states of India and Pakistan would act as an

effective deterrent against attack by the other, serving as hostages to

good behaviour. Even so, his position on Pakistan as a ‘homeland’ was

no less fraught with contradictions. For while he was keen to encour-

age qualified Muslim doctors, teachers, lawyers and others to migrate

to Pakistan from Muslim minority provinces in India, he is said to

have been averse to the idea of the exchange of population on religious

grounds. These ambiguities surrounding Jinnah’s idea of Pakistan as a

homeland contributed significantly to its anguished history. Gyanendra

Pandey, the Indian historian, has underscored this point noting that

‘[t]here was always going to be some doubt about the ethnic and ter-

ritorial basis of this religiously defined nation. For there was never any

suggestion that the ninety million Muslims of undivided India—spread

out all over that territory, with Muslim-majority regions existing in

north-western and north-eastern India and in pockets (towns and

districts) elsewhere—could all be accommodated, or even wish to

migrate, to the areas that became Pakistan’.

Nevertheless, the idea of

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

a ‘homeland’ exercised, as it still does, a powerful hold on the Paki-

stani imagination. For many of Jinnah’s supporters, and indeed for

subsequent generations in Pakistan, it bears all the hallmarks of a

modern restatement of the Prophetic migration, complete with the

sacrifices and sufferings endured by a beleaguered community forced

to abandon hearth and home.

Werbner has drawn attention to the influence of these elements as

founding myths of Pakistan and as essential to an understanding of its

‘civil religion’. She shows how the struggle for Pakistan’s national

independence is most vividly accounted in terms of the ‘the central

Judaeo-Quranic myth’ of migration and liberation. She takes as exam-

ples celebrations marking Jinnah’s birthday that serve as the ‘enact-

ment on the political plane of an established world vision constituted

in its axiomatic principles on the religious plane. Just as on the reli-

gious plane the Islamic nation, the umma, is constituted, above all, in

the person of the Prophet … so too the Pakistan nation is constituted

in its visionary perfection in the person of the Quaid-i-Azam’.

What

is paradoxical is that the idea of Pakistan as a Muslim ‘homeland’ (in

contrast to an Islamic state) has also exercised its hold on the country’s

liberal intelligentsia, which has generally been hostile to theological

myth-making. For them, the idea of a Muslim homeland has always

represented a softer and more pluralistic conception of Pakistan than

that suggested by a theologically-inspired version of an Islamic state.

Jinnah however was unmoved, at least until the 1930s, by any of

these concerns. His aim until then had been quite simply to achieve a

constitutional arrangement at the centre of a broadly federal India that

he hoped would guarantee his place (along with Gandhi and Nehru) as

an architect of India’s freedom and, in the process secure his role as an

‘ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity’. Unlike Gandhi and Nehru, Jin-

nah faced the awkward problem of being without a political constitu-

ency. This was brought into sharp relief in the 1920s when the

devolution of power to the provinces under the new colonial dispensa-

tion (the Government of India Act 1919), meant that Muslims like

Jinnah, from provinces where Muslims were in a minority, were ruth-

lessly shunted aside in favour of regional and party bosses. For a man

like Jinnah, who had made no secret of his disdain for mass politics,

returning to resume life as an English gentleman with a lucrative legal

practice was an option he found hard to resist. By the time he was

persuaded by the then almost moribund Muslim League to return to

WHY PAKISTAN?

India in 1935, he had done some hard thinking. It was not long before

the fundamental shift in Jinnah’s discourse emerged to suggest that the

terms of reference for what had until then passed for Muslim separatist

politics had changed dramatically. Where once there had been talk of

a Muslim minority with constitutional safeguards, the clamour now

was about a Muslim nation and a non-negotiable right to parity with

the majority Hindu nation.

The remarkable twist by which Jinnah persuaded a minority to arro-

gate to itself the attributes of a nation bound by little more than a

common religious identity is still widely regarded as a tour de force.

His skills in bringing together the disparate interests of Muslims in the

Muslim majority areas of the north-west and east, more interested in

regional autonomy, with those of Muslims from the minority provinces

of northern and central India, more interested in securing equal part-

nership with Hindus at the centre of an all-India federation, has con-

tinued to win admiration. That he, a secular-minded Muslim with a

taste for ham sandwiches, did so by employing the language of Islam

to further his political ends, is remarkable. Far from proving an embar-

rassment, it is seen either as evidence of a master tactician at work or

as the moves of an honourable politician reluctantly forced to resort to

desperate measures to salvage the interests of his community.

Jinnah’s most notable success lay in attaching to Muslims the label

of a modern nation. As such it stood in marked contrast to the use of

the old-style qaum favoured by Sir Sayyid, more suggestive of an ‘old’

Indian regional patriotism. Indeed, these parochial loyalties—whether

of region, tribe or kin—were regarded by Jinnah as deeply threatening

to his political project, which aimed above all to secure the recognition

of the League as the exclusive representative of Muslim interests in

India. The exceptional nature of these ambitions largely determined

the exceptional nature of Jinnah’s project, for while the demand for a

separate Muslim state remained open to negotiation, the prerogative

of the League and its leader exclusively to represent the Muslim nation

was not. Those who challenged it were ruthlessly suppressed. They

included Muslims who had thrown in their lot with Congress (so-called

‘nationalist Muslims’) and strongly resisted Jinnah’s idea of equating

the civilizational unity of Muslims with Indian Muslim nationhood.

But they also included Muslim regional leaders, especially in the Pun-

jab and Bengal, who sought to chart a difficult course between Muslim

separatism and the demands of their local constituencies, which

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

included significant non-Muslim minorities. Jinnah’s determination to

crush these awkward compromises set a precedent which some believe

sowed the seeds of Pakistan’s ‘post-independence political culture of

intolerance.

In time it would also stifle a culture of dissent and

strengthen the politics of ‘hegemonic discourse’ in Pakistan.

Power

Yet what Jinnah clearly realized, unlike his predecessors, is that while

the notion of communal solidarity remained a desirable ideal for many

Muslims, its moral purchase rested on its relation to political power—

conceived not as intrinsically corrupting, but as an instrument in the

service of higher, Divinely ordained, ends. And while the idea of Mus-

lims as a political minority might well have secured constitutional

safeguards to protect their rights, they could not convey the signifi-

cance of the special status of Muslims or enhance their claim to politi-

cal parity with a non-Muslim majority. By defining Muslims as a

nation Jinnah was able both to encompass their entitlement to political

power and to establish their parity with a putative Indian nation,

thereby at a stroke affirming their potentially sovereign status.

At the same time, Jinnah’s attempt to recast Indian Muslims as a

nation solely on the basis of religious affinity was clearly fraught with

contradictions. Not least were the deep ethnic and linguistic divisions

that separated Muslims across the sub-continent. Few doubted (rightly

as it turns out) that they could be subsumed under, or be replaced by,

an overarching Islamic identity that would form the basis of a nation.

More important still were the very different expectations of Muslim

nationhood harboured by Jinnah’s growing band of followers. For his

supporters in the so-called Muslim minority provinces of central India,

the idea of a Muslim nation promised to restore their special status as

Muslims, which they feared had been compromised by the exigencies

of proto-democratic politics. For others in the north-eastern provinces

of Bengal and Assam, the rhetoric of Muslim nationhood clearly

offered the region’s rural Muslim majority the prospect of economic

emancipation from a dominant class of Hindu landowners. Yet others

in north-western India were drawn to Iqbal’s idea of a viable safe

haven for Islam in India: for them Muslim nationhood served as a

compelling ideal and an ‘outlet for expressing their religious concern

in the political arena’.

WHY PAKISTAN?

How then, despite these different expectations, was the problematic

transition from community to nation managed, thus providing Paki-

stan with its raison d’être? The notion of a Muslim community, bound

by a putative Islamic solidarity could not be supported either by the

deep-seated ethnic and linguistic differences that divided Muslims or

by the boundaries that separated local Muslim tribal and feudal elites,

especially in the north-west. Nor indeed was there agreement among

Jinnah’s followers on the scope of this community. While visionary

Muslims like Iqbal chose to highlight his community’s supra-territorial

or universalistic aspects (in opposition to the territorial nationalism of

the kind espoused by Congress), his more pragmatic-minded counter-

parts set its limits more narrowly within the broad though as yet

notional boundaries of Hindustan. Meanings attached to the ‘nation’

and the ‘homeland’ were also fractured. For the embattled Muslim

gentry of north India, influenced by indigenous versions of ‘old patri-

otism’, the nation was clearly tied to a sense of place with specific

modes and methods of communication, whether of language, literature

or religious structures. But their status in a province where they were

in a minority triggered a disjunction between the nation and the land

that could only be resolved by recasting the idea of Pakistan as a

homeland—as a point of destination rather than as a centre of

consolidation.

This, in turn, has lent a certain force to the description of Pakistan

as a ‘migrant state’,

conceived by and for those who were to leave

their native homes to re-settle in a new land they wished to govern as

a nation-state. The bond between the nation and the land was alto-

gether more secure for Jinnah’s supporters in the north-western prov-

inces and the eastern regions of Bengal and Assam. Although divided,

especially in the north-west, by linguistic, ethnic and tribal affiliations,

the idea of the nation emerged there as more tangible and less elusive.

Instrumental to its consolidation was the attachment to the land. How-

ever, strong pre-existing ethnic identities rooted in these territories

meant that Jinnah’s hastily cobbled ‘two-nation’ theory was vigorously

(if unevenly) challenged by Muslims in these so-called Muslim majority

areas. Perhaps not surprisingly, it was in Bengal that the idea of a

Muslim nation proved to be most problematic. Firmly grounded in a

specific territory, blessed with a common language that cut across a

relatively homogenous Muslim population, its ambiguous relation-

ship with a Bengali regional identity (or putative nation) with a large

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

non-Muslim component effectively challenged Jinnah’s alternative,

ethnic conception of a Muslim nation.

But the latter, which equated religion with culture—and which Jin-

nah had sought to employ against Congress’s self-avowedly political

definition of the Indian nation—met with an especially uneasy recep-

tion in Bengal. There, the distinction between religion and culture had

been sustained by a powerful regional identity, which now threatened

to set the imperatives of a more robust Bengali nation on a collision

course with Jinnah’s fragile conception of a Muslim nation. That

dilemma was given its most coherent expression in 1944 by Abul

Mansur (himself a Bengali Muslim) and president of the Bengal Mus-

lim League, who declared that, ‘[r]eligion and culture are not the same

thing. Religion transgresses the geographical boundary but tamaddun

(culture) cannot go beyond the geographical boundary […]. For this

reason, the people of Purba [Eastern] Pakistan are a different nation

from the people of the other provinces of India and from the “religious

brothers” of Pakistan.’

The increasingly ambiguous relationship between nation and terri-

tory, between religion and culture, and, most fundamentally, between

(cultural) community and state, which emerged in the 1940s, led Jin-

nah to reshape Muslim politics by using the language of Islamic uni-

versalism. By doing so, he hoped to forge an instrument that not only

chimed with Muslim sentiment, but would also serve as a powerful

tool to mobilize Muslim opinion in favour of his campaign for the

consolidation of a distinct Muslim political entity. At the heart of this

universalist vision lay the notion of the Muslims as a righteous com-

munity that aspired to reunite morality with power under a ‘true’

leader, who by embodying the virtues of honesty, persistence and

unwavering steadfastness, qualified for Divine selection and as the

‘natural’ choice of the community.

While the paradigmatic example of this vision has been most fully

expressed in the community of Muslims assembled by the Prophet

Muhammad, it has left a lasting impression on Muslims for whom

historical change has been closely associated with exemplary leaders

able to redeem and renew society. Though some have argued that Jin-

nah’s own personality ‘was antithetical to mystical notions of

charisma’,

his style of leadership evoked a complex blend of temporal

and righteous power that in the minds of many of his followers would

have sanctioned the notion that ‘democracy under [“true”] leadership

WHY PAKISTAN?

is paradoxically absolute since it allows no room for disagreement’.

Jinnah’s claim to be the sole spokesman for Indian Muslims and his

insistence on the League as their exclusive representative, though

judged at times to be arbitrary if not ruthless, were nevertheless widely

accepted by his followers as necessary to the process of Muslim collec-

tive redemption. In the context of the 1940s, it was identified as the

struggle to ‘liberate’ Muslims from the ‘servitude of “minorityism” to

make possible their equality of status (parity) with non-Muslims and

eventually justify their bid for ‘national self-determination’.

Yet, the theme of liberation in the historical narrative of Pakistan is

troubled with ambiguity. The narratives of anti-colonialism that were

central to anti-colonial struggles in Asia and Africa inevitably remained

muted for this was a nation forged not in reaction to a foreign colonial

master, but in opposition to competing colonial subjects, who though

mainly Hindus, were also non-Muslim. By incorporating the struggle

for freedom and the myth of Pakistan into the broader mythology of

Islam, Jinnah successfully evoked a compelling civil religion that rep-

resented ‘the struggle of true believers against idolators (Hindus) and

people of the Book (Jews and Christians) who deny the message of the

Prophet and persecute his followers’.

This civil religion would

become vital to the political life in Pakistan, whose historical trajectory

has been singularly devoid of the strong ideological moorings charac-

teristic of long drawn-out mass struggles for independence against

foreign colonial rule.

Jinnah himself contributed to this process by appealing to the lan-

guage and rhetoric of Islamic universalism as a means of defeating the

tribal, racial and linguistic affiliations that threatened to ruin his Mus-

lim nationalist project. Unfortunately for Jinnah, much of the discourse

of Islamic universalism upon which he had been forced to rely to real-

ize his political project had been shaped by the ulama and their version

of a sharia-based Islam.

Furthermore by using the language of univer-

sal Islam to lend substance to his concept of a Muslim nation Jinnah

also pre-empted any understanding of the political community (or

‘nation’) as either ‘limited’ or ‘sovereign’.

Its implications would sur-

face in years to come in debates over the merits of divine versus popu-

lar sovereignty as the basis of Pakistan’s constitution and in questions

about the ‘transnational’ dimensions of the country’s identity.

For at the heart of Islam’s universalist posture lies the idea of the

umma, which unlike the nation, is imagined as both unlimited and

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

coterminous with mankind. The contradictions of using the language

of Islamic universalism to drive a nationalist project left their mark on

the new state, which though inspired by visions of a putative ever-en-

larging universal community was yet forced to recognize its finite

boundaries. Nor did the discourse of Islamic universalism facilitate the

idea of the Pakistani nation as a ‘sovereign’ political community. For

while the modern nation was imagined, as Anderson reminds us, as an

Enlightenment project that sought to challenge the divinely ordained

bases of political legitimacy, Islamic universalism presupposes a com-

munity that seeks to authenticate divine sovereignty. At the heart of

this tension lay the question of allegiance, which Jinnah used to mas-

terly effect by employing the language of Islamic universalism to secure

the Muslims’ loyalty to a higher power against the claims both of

parochial and tribal affiliations and of a putative Indian nation as

elaborated by Congress. The consequences of such formulations have

significantly moulded Pakistan’s identity as a sovereign nation-state.

Yet, if the universalist logic of Islam was at odds with Pakistan as a

national project, it was essential to the much larger purpose that

underlay the movement for Pakistan. This, as Iqbal had intimated, had

little or nothing to do with Muslim nationhood—an idea, he empha-

sised, which made no sense to Muslims. It is perhaps no accident that

the idea of a Muslim nation should have entered so late into the politi-

cal lexicon of the League. While political developments after 1937,

especially the steady erosion of trust between Congress and vast num-

bers of Muslims, helped quicken the shift from Muslims as a minority

to Muslims as a nation, the change from one status to the other was

less fundamental to the emergence of Pakistan than is generally

assumed. For what linked both ideas, and was eventually to legitimise

and lend meaning to Pakistan among its supporters, was the notion

that power and its management were a divinely sanctioned Muslim

prerogative.

The historical roots of this assumption are now generally, and quite

rightly, held to flow directly from the experience of Muslim rule in

India, which though loosely and sometimes unevenly established had,

by about 1300, stamped itself across much of the subcontinent. By the

time the Mughal empire came to dominate vast swathes of India in the

1550s, the force of Muslim overlordship had been so firmly projected

onto the collective memory that it sustained the myth of power as a

Muslim birthright. Although more marked among the Muslim nobility

WHY PAKISTAN?

and service classes (the ashraf), this assumption reached wider and

deeper in society than is generally acknowledged. In Bengal, for exam-

ple, among the Muslim peasantry these perceptions of power were not

uncommon. The Bengal scholar Rafiuddin Ahmed has observed that

while ‘British rule did not hurt the Muslim peasantry of Bengal any

more than it did the Hindu [it] left amongst Muslims a sense of depri-

vation that was uncommon among the Hindus. After all, they thought,

the British had wrested power from “them”, as if to suggest they had

descended from ancestors who had ruled India long before the coming

of the British.’

There can be no doubt however that it was among the

Muslims of north India, with their proximity to the centres of power

until the arrival of the British in the eighteenth century, that the collec-

tive memory of Muslim rule was most effectively forged as a political

instrument. Even as Muslims in India were forced by the ‘inescapable

political accountancy of the Raj’

to don the garb of a mere minority,

many were determined not to allow its logic to compromise their spe-

cial status or their historical claim to power.

This idea of the special status of Indian Muslims was to prove a vital

link in bridging the gap between their condition as a minority and as a

nation. It fuelled both the League’s early insistence upon securing rec-

ognition for the political importance of Muslims as well Jinnah’s later

demand for Muslim parity with Hindus in the all-India centre that

dominated the political landscape in the decade leading up to Partition.

While the transition from Muslim minority to Muslim nation was nec-

essary to render more intelligible to others the nature of Muslim oppo-

sition to Congress, its real significance to Jinnah’s Muslim followers

rested squarely on the assumption that Muslims were ‘special’, and

specially qualified to ensure the just dispensation of power. But as

Pakistan’s subsequent history was to demonstrate, the country’s search

for consensus was to repeatedly frustrate this Muslim quest for power.

WHO IS A PAKISTANI?

CULTURE AND IDENTITY

Nowhere has the lack of consensus over the meaning of Pakistan and

its ambiguous relation to Islam surfaced more sharply than in doubts

over the definition of ‘the Pakistani’—a definition that is still deeply

contested. Soon after independence conflicting discourses of Pakistan

as both a point of destination for Indian Muslims and a consolidated

centre of Muslim power accentuated tensions between Muslim

migrants and indigenous groups, each armed with rival versions of ‘the

Pakistani’. On the one side were the moral claims of Muslim refugees

from India, who sought to establish their pre-eminence as ‘real’ Paki-

stanis by comparing their migration to the archetypal Muslim exodus

(hijrat) led by the Prophet Muhammad to establish the first Islamic

community in seventh century Arabia. On the other, there prevailed

the political logic of so-called ‘sons of the soil’, who appealed to their

demonstrable (if sometimes imagined) roots in the regions of Pakistan.

This conflict to establish the alpha-citizen of the new country was

symptomatic of the lack of resolution between two opposing ideas of

political belonging that had informed the idea of Pakistan: the first,

resting on an ideational construction of a natural Muslim community,

the second on the notion of a locally negotiated national community.

In the late 1960s this struggle developed in tandem with a related dis-

course on ‘the Pakistani’ as ‘Muslim’, whose wide-ranging implications

were reflected in the civil war that led to the break-up of the country

in 1971. They centred on attempts by the Bengali majority to

strengthen an ethnic definition of the Pakistani in opposition to others

that favoured an identity more closely tied to Islam. Although these

WHO IS A PAKISTANI?

efforts were brutally suppressed, they radically challenged the two-

nation theory that emphasised allegiance to ‘Islam’ over regional loyal-

ties as the sine qua non of being Pakistani.

Pakistan’s altered contours after 1971 precipitated fresh uncertain-

ties over Pakistani identity, which now assumed more complex forms.

At issue were perceived attempts to Punjabise it, which triggered a

reaction among the country’s smaller regional groups (especially those

of Sind and Balochistan), where there emerged a strong shift in favour

of more plural expressions of Pakistani identity. The country’s turn

towards the Islamic lands lying to the west of Pakistan also encouraged

fresh interest in equating ‘the Pakistani’ with ‘the Muslim’. The hard-

ening of the state’s Islamic identity in the 1980s intensified these con-

cerns, but also sharpened sectarian differences that fostered the

preference for a certain type of Sunni sectarian Islam as a defining fea-

ture of the ‘universal’ Pakistani. Together these currents have signifi-

cantly weakened the drive to achieve a pluralism friendly definition of

Pakistani identity. The persistent lack of consensus over Islam and its

role in relation to the state further undermined this effort. Its conse-

quences have contributed towards the dismantling of institutional

protection for the country’s non-Muslim minorities and fuelled doubts

about their claims to qualify as ‘real Pakistanis’.

Migrants and natives

The uncertainty over who qualifies as Pakistani owes much to the

nation’s emergence in 1947 as something of a migrant state, one that

is often compared to Israel. Yet there were differences. Unlike Israel,

which at independence housed a few hundred thousand Jews, who

readily made place for the thousands who fled Europe at the end of

World War II, the new state of Pakistan already included in 1947 well-

settled communities of more than 70 million Muslims. With independ-

ence these communities faced not only the uncertainties of defining

themselves as Pakistanis in a land to which they had hitherto belonged

simply as Punjabis, Sindhis, Balochis or Pashtuns, but also the chal-

lenge of positioning themselves in relation to more than 7 million

Muslim refugees from India who arrived claiming an equal right to be

Pakistani. At issue was a conflict that resonates to the present day. It

centres on who can claim to be the true heirs of the new state and who

thereby best qualifies as a ‘real’ Pakistani.

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

At independence the two sides of this titanic battle involved so-called

Muslim migrants (or mohajirs) from India and others long settled in

the lands that made up the new Pakistan, who saw themselves as

native sons of the soil. Much has been written about the refugee crisis

that faced Pakistan in 1947 as well as the long-term economic and

political consequences of such massive migration.

Attention has

focussed on the limitations of the new state, which bereft of any recog-

nizable infra-structure, was quickly overwhelmed by a refugee crisis

that (astonishingly) few had anticipated—notwithstanding the feverish

rhetoric of a homeland and refuge for Muslims fleeing Hindu tyranny.

Worse, the violence triggered by such mass migration was such that

the Muslim League (never known for its administrative skills) soon

ceded the task of governance to the evidently more competent mem-

bers of the civil bureaucracy and the army. The critical role assumed

by these institutions at the inception of the state would set the tone for

their future dominance in national life.

Most of the refugees who arrived in Jinnah’s Muslim homeland

headed towards the north-western rather than the eastern territories of

the regions designated as Pakistan: Punjab and Sind bore the brunt of

the influx. Many chose to settle in the towns of Sind, especially Kara-

chi, the country’s commercial and administrative hub. Better educated

and more urbanized than the local population, and distinguished by

their use of Urdu rather than Sindhi as their language of preference,

their integration was to prove far more fraught than that of their

Punjabi-speaking counterparts, who had migrated to West Punjab.

Elsewhere, in East Bengal, the pressure was no less intense though the

number of migrants here, mainly from neighbouring Bihar, was far

smaller than in the west. But their integration too would emerge as a

problem in years to come when their preference for Urdu rather than

Bengali heightened resentment among the local Bengali-speaking popu-

lation, who marked them out as ciphers of the country’s Urdu-speaking

dominant elite based in West Pakistan.

Most historians now acknowledge that one of the most significant

consequences of the refugee crisis was how it fundamentally altered

the balance of power, especially in the country’s western provinces.

Here, better-educated migrant communities quickly dominated the

institutions of the new state, which were for the most part concen-

trated in the west. This included influence over the ruling Muslim

League already under the control of a predominantly migrant leader-

WHO IS A PAKISTANI?

ship, headed by Jinnah and his chief lieutenant (and later the country’s

first prime minister), Liaquat Ali Khan. It also ensured that Urdu—the

language most commonly associated with non-Punjabi migrant com-

munities—came to be recognized as the national language of Pakistan

although only a small minority spoke or understood it at the time.

But the ascendancy of these mainly Urdu-speaking migrant commu-

nities in the early years was also reinforced by powerful myths, whose

strong Islamic resonance ensured that their claims to ‘be Pakistani’

assumed a significance that set them apart from indigenous communi-

ties settled in the five Muslim majority provinces that constituted Paki-

stan in 1947. The most important of these myths referred to the

Islamic exodus (hijra), which by association nourished the claim that

Muslim refugees fleeing India for Pakistan were engaged in an act of

heroic sacrifice comparable to that performed by the founders of the

first Islamic community in seventh-century Arabia.

Popular percep-

tions of Pakistan as variously a Muslim homeland, a safe haven and a

refuge from persecution reinforced these myths. Just as those who

accompanied the Prophet on that migration had come to be accepted

as the first real Muslims, so too, it was believed, had those who had

journeyed with Jinnah to the land of the pure earned the right to be

recognized as the first real Pakistanis.

Although officialdom in the form of the 1951 Census studiously

avoided the use of the term mohajir to describe Muslim migrants from

India, choosing instead to rely on the word ‘refugee’—that is, one

forced to flee his home ‘as a result of partition or for fear of distur-

bances connected therewith’—the status of Muslim refugees in the

early years was strongly coloured by their association with myths cen-

tred on the Islamic exodus and the inauguration of a new era. Judged

by Muslims as the defining moment of the universal Islamic experi-

ence, these myths came in time to serve as a powerful symbolic

resource for Muslim refugees from India. The latter sought to compen-

sate for their lack of local roots by committing to a project whose

definitions of a ‘natural’ (Muslim) community would soon be chal-

lenged by regional expressions of a negotiated ‘national’ community.

Historically this tension had been implicit in the lukewarm response

of the main Muslim-majority provinces to the idea of Pakistan as a

‘universalist’ Muslim enterprise—at least until such time as it was

defined as a national option that re-cast Pakistan as a territorial

arrangement with the potential for independence. But this uncertain

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

engagement with the idea of Pakistan by those who would later claim

to be its sons of its soil, paradoxically, also facilitated most Urdu-

speaking Muslim migrants to stake their claim as alpha-citizens of the

new state.

The pre-eminence of these Urdu-speaking migrant communities,

sustained by the language of Islamic universalism, soon clashed with

the imperatives of a national project, which assumed birth to be a hall-

mark of citizenship. Yet it is significant that, in marked contrast to

Israel, Pakistan eschewed a ‘right-of-return’ policy that would have

given any Muslim the right to settle in this self-proclaimed Muslim

homeland. Although the new state had little choice but to allow the

mass migration of Indian Muslims in the immediate aftermath of Parti-

tion, the introduction of permits, passports and visas for Muslims

seeking entry in the 1950s left few in any doubt that, whatever the

claims of the new state, ‘being Muslim’ did not automatically translate

into ‘being Pakistani’.

Among the first to challenge early attempts to cast Urdu-speaking

Muslim migrants from India as the archetypal Pakistanis were local

Punjabis from the new Pakistani province of Punjab. Although Pun-

jab’s Muslim leaders before independence had been less than enthusi-

astic about Jinnah’s idea of Pakistan as a platform for Muslim

representation at the centre of an undivided India, Jinnah’s success in

dividing their ranks and winning the support of powerful landlords

and local religious leaders (pirs) proved to be decisive in securing the

province he acknowledged as the cornerstone of Pakistan.

The Punjab

was also of course the main recruiting ground for the British army—a

military legacy that continued after the creation of Pakistan with sig-

nificant implications for its national life. Higher than average levels of

urbanization, particularly in the east of the province had also ensured

that large numbers of Punjabis enjoyed access to superior education,

allowing many to occupy key posts in the civilian bureaucracy. Con-

trol in the west over some of the richest agricultural land in the sub-

continent reinforced these patterns of dominance.

Significantly, Punjabis were also able to lay claim to their own

mythology of migration, which was at least as compelling as that asso-

ciated with Urdu-speaking migrant communities. Of the estimated 7–9

million Muslims who are believed to have migrated to Pakistan in

1947, the majority (almost 5 million) came from East Punjab. Their

migration was attended by acts of horrific violence, the scale of which

WHO IS A PAKISTANI?

dwarfed most others in the wake of Partition. Many suffered dread-

fully as they fled scenes of mass communal killing, lending to their

experience the heightened poignancy associated with the notion of

religious flight. As those who had made sacrifices and suffered with

their lives, Punjabi-speaking mohajirs were clearly on par with their

Urdu-speaking counterparts to lay the strongest moral claim to qualify

as real Pakistanis.

The refugees from East Punjab appeared however to care little for

the term mohajir or the moral standing it bestowed on those who bore

the label. Part of the explanation, as Talbot has suggested, lay in their

easy absorption into West Punjab, where they were not required to

make the linguistic or social adjustments forced upon their Urdu-

speaking counterparts from the United Provinces who had resettled in

Sind. It was just a matter of time before their separate refugee identity

was subsumed under a broader Punjabi ethnic identity.

By contrast,

Urdu-speaking migrants enjoyed none of these advantages. The vast

majority (more than 60 per cent), who settled in Sind, found its culture

far removed from the idealised mores of a tiny elite, whose courtly

style still held many in thrall, while others sought refuge in the creation

of Urdu-speaking enclaves where they nourished a melancholic attach-

ment to a world left behind.

Verkaaik has argued how the mohajir-driven idea of Pakistan as a

homeland was influenced by Indo-Muslim debates in the late nine-

teenth century, which emphasised Islam as foreign to India. These

debates reinforced the assumption that Muslims were a ‘diasporic

nation, a nation without a homeland’

—a status that many later

expected to be resolved with the creation of Pakistan. This link

between migration and the idea of Pakistan underwent a profound

change after independence. Whereas the use of the term mohajir had

been intended in the early years to convey the solidarity between Mus-

lim migrants and local Muslim populations, it gradually came to

accentuate their differences. By the late 1980s these had widened as

mohajirs, marginalised by the resurgence of regionally based ethnic

politics, especially in Sind, appealed to the ‘uniqueness of the migrant

experience’

to shape an ethnic identity of their own. Migration now

came to be associated with a ‘new mentality that combined cosmopoli-

tanism, modernity and a sense of patriotism’.

Lacking this experi-

ence, locals were also judged, by extension, to lack the attributes that

flowed from it—attributes that the country’s dominant modernist elite

had long favoured as the hallmarks of the quintessential Pakistani.

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

The struggle to decide who qualified as the real Pakistani unfolded

against the backdrop of another battle that was waged early in the life

of the new state, involving the Bengalis of East Pakistan. Accounting

for a clear majority of the country’s population, they demanded the

right to redefine the meaning of ‘Pakistani’ by insisting on its equation

with the national majority, which they defined not in religious, but in

ethnic terms. At the centre of this debate, which came to a head in the

1950s, was the status of the Bengali language. The Bengalis insisted

that it should be recognized as the national language of Pakistan. They

argued that as Urdu, the language of choice of the governing elite, was

spoken at the time by less than four per cent of the population, it could

not claim to be that of ‘the Pakistani’. This controversy has been

widely seen as symptomatic of an intensifying power struggle between

a Bengali middle class determined to secure a share of power in central

decision-making commensurate with their demographic weight and

dominant Urdu-speaking mohajir groups, who feared that the recogni-

tion of Bengali as a national language would erode opportunities in

education and government employment.

This is unquestionably true,

but it also set in motion a process that questioned the existing assump-

tion that ‘the Pakistani’ was synonymous with the Urdu-speaker.

Many of these assumptions had been shaped by debates concerning

Indo-Muslim separatism. In the late nineteenth century, Urdu, with its

lexicon of Persian and Arabic words, had been adopted by Muslim

separatists as a key cultural symbol and a marker of Muslim identity

(along with Islam), to lend substance to the claim that Muslims were a

‘nation’.

The creation of Pakistan exposed the difficulties of adopting

a national language, whose significance was lost on the local popula-

tion who had their own regional languages. More importantly, Urdu’s

association with the migrant population also served to underline that

it was a language alien to ‘the Pakistani’.

This perception of Urdu found a powerful echo in East Bengal,

where its use as a marker of Pakistani identity was most vigorously

challenged. For a time, the migrant perspective equating Urdu with

Pakistani identity had attempted to hold its ground by denouncing

calls for the state recognition of Bengali as ‘anti-national’. Jinnah, him-

self a migrant (with a shaky grasp of Urdu), set the tone. In March

1948 he told a public meeting in Dhaka: ‘the state language of Paki-

stan is going to be Urdu … anyone who tries to mislead you is really

an enemy of Pakistan’.

His statement met with widespread anger,

WHO IS A PAKISTANI?

which finally bubbled over in fierce riots in the provincial Bengali capi-

tal, Dhaka, in 1952. The Bengalis eventually secured the recognition of

Bengali as an official state language alongside Urdu in the 1956 con-

stitution, but their gains were mixed. Their rejection of Urdu came to

be perceived in West Pakistan as tantamount to a rejection of the lan-

guage that many had long associated with the language of the ‘Islam’,

which was judged to be constitutive of the ‘Pakistani’.

There were more ominous myths at play that were rooted in the

enduring tension between versions of ‘authentic Islam’ associated with

migrant culture and the ‘corrupted Islam’ of the local population.

Nowhere was this tension more marked and nowhere was it to have

more devastating consequences than in East Pakistan. Here Urdu-

speaking Muslim immigrants (mainly from West Bengal and Bihar)

nurtured the belief that ‘their’ Islam was superior to that of the indig-

enous Bengali Muslim population, whose ‘syncretistic’ practices, suf-

fused with local Hindu and Buddhist rituals, were regarded as an

affront to the identity of ‘the Pakistani’.

The historical roots of this

divide lay in the Mughal period, when Muslim officials posted to the

region expressed disdain towards recently converted local Muslim still

attached to rituals commonly associated with Hinduism.

Like their

Mughal counterparts, immigrants who arrived in East Bengal were

often culturally and racially distinct—many spoke Urdu and were in

appearance more North Indian than Bengali. But like their Urdu-

speaking counterparts in the western regions of Pakistan, they also

aspired to shape the identity of the Pakistani in line with their own

image of the universal Muslim.

The influence of this migrant discourse was sustained by doubts over

the quality of the Bengali’s Muslim-ness, which was judged to fall

short of the necessary credentials required to qualify as a Pakistani.

The brutal army campaign in East Pakistan in 1971 stood as a gro-

tesque testimony to the notion that the Bengalis’ uncertain attachment

to their faith rendered them less-than-perfect Muslims and thereby also

undermined their aptitude to be less-than-perfect Pakistanis. In short,

Bengalis were deemed to be guilty of betraying both Islam and Paki-

stan. But as Cohen observes, the only way West Pakistanis could ulti-

mately justify the bloody crackdown against the Bengalis was ‘to

conclude that the Bengalis were not “truly” Pakistanis, that is, they

were not truly Islamic or Muslims—theirs was a moral and religious

failure, not a political one’.

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

The secession of Pakistan’s eastern wing, which emerged as Bangla-

desh in December 1971, dealt a severe blow to Jinnah’s already fragile

construction. It fuelled the explosive question: was Jinnah’s two-nation

theory dead and if not, who now represented the Pakistani? It is unde-

niable that the creation of Bangladesh marked the end of the less than

plausible two-nation theory, thus exposing the tenuous basis of Paki-

stan. Yet it has been argued that the country that emerged after 1971

was more homogeneous in that it was ‘no longer a geographical, cul-

tural, religious, or economic absurdity’.

Many now expected the

uncertainties of the country’s raison d’être and the struggle over con-

flicting identities finally to be resolved.

One attempt to overcome this problem of ‘uncertainty’ after 1971

was to re-cast the two-nation theory by arguing that, despite the large

number of Muslims in India, the vast majority (almost 70 per cent) of

Muslims in the subcontinent still chose to live independently of ‘Hindu

domination’.

The creation of Bangladesh, it was claimed, did not so

much negate as validate the premise that Muslims and Hindus were

indeed two nations, qualified for separate statehood. Ironically, the

Muslim League’s 1940 Lahore Resolution, which had called for two

independent Muslim states in the north-west and north-east of India,

was now enthusiastically resurrected. However, it also prised open a

veritable Pandora’s Box by encouraging Pakistan’s remaining constitu-

ent units after 1971 to re-interpret the spirit of the original resolution.

The question now turned to whether the right to autonomy implicitly

granted to the Bengalis under the Lahore Resolution could be extended

to Pakistan’s other regional groups with recognisably distinct cultures.

Pakistan’s altered contours after 1971 accentuated these concerns.

While the loss of East Pakistan had helped smooth some sharp differ-

ences, the new fault lines of nationhood had become more complex

and more persistent. Ethnic nationalism continued to gain momentum,

especially among Sindhis and Balochis, and to a lesser extent among

the Pashtuns. Together they pressed for a more territorial definition of

‘the Pakistani’ in opposition to state-promoted versions still rooted in

an extra-territorial discourse of Muslim nationalism that was seen to

favour Urdu-speaking mohajirs. Paradoxically, there was little support

for ethnic nationalism in the Punjab Although Punjabis qualified in

every sense as true sons of the soil, their broad control over the state,

and especially the army, had transformed them into agents of a larger

WHO IS A PAKISTANI?

Pakistani identity that stood in opposition to other regional claims. In

time this perception of Punjabi dominance would foster claims that the

‘Punjabisation’ of Pakistan had opened the way to the creation of

‘Punjabistan’ and had blurred the distinction between the Pakistani

and the natives of its largest province.

These tendencies were accentuated by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s landslide

electoral victory in 1970. It fuelled a regional Sindhi nationalism and

heightened antagonism between Bhutto’s fellow-Sindhis and Urdu-

speaking migrants. But it also triggered the emergence of a new

mohajir ethnic identity that signalled fresh reflections on ‘the Paki-

stani’. According to Verkaaik, until 1971 every Pakistani could lay

claim to a double identity, each with a strong extra-territorial dimen-

sion: as a Muslim (s)he belonged to the umma or the universal Islamic

community, as a Pakistani (s)he belonged to the millat or local reli-

gious community. However, neither of these identities was wholly

disconnected from territorial realities, for while ‘the umma explained

Pakistan’s eastern border with India, the millat did so for the western

borders with other Muslim countries’.

Bhutto lent substance to these territorial dimensions by adding a

third identity to ‘the Pakistani’: that which was attached to an ethnic-

territorial ‘nationality’ (or qaum), each corresponding to one of the

country’s four regions (Sind, Baluchistan, Punjab and the North West

Frontier Province). This development was significant for two reasons:

first because it sought to reconcile regional identities with a Pakistani

national identity so that the two were no longer seen to be mutually

exclusive; second because it effectively discarded the two-nation theory

of Muslim versus Hindu in favour of a reconstructed three-dimensional

model that emphasised simultaneous attachment to umma, millat

and qaum.

This shift from religious to ethnic nationalism was hugely problem-

atic for migrant communities like Urdu-speaking mohajirs settled

mainly in urban Sind, who now emerged as ‘flawed’ Pakistanis ‘with

neither history nor a sense of territorial attachment, urban, on the

move, and unreliable.

Faced with the threat of being relegated to the

status of outsiders they now opted to re-define themselves as Pakistanis

by fashioning an identity based on ethnicity rather than religion. This

involved the creative appropriation of Sindhi regional traditions that

were used to project the idea of mohajirs as Pakistan’s ‘fifth national-

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

ity’ with a ‘territory’ of its own carved out of Sind’s main city—Kara-

chi—designated ‘Karachi suba’ (province of Karachi).

By the late 1980s, however, this territorially and regionally-based

under standing of ‘the Pakistani’ had given way to a vigorous state-

sponsored program of Islamization that sought to call attention to the

supra-territorial dimension of Pakistani identity. It had been facilitated

by Pakistan’s geopolitical turn towards the Middle East following the

secession of Bangladesh, which devalued attachment to the regions of

South Asia and heightened consciousness of a ‘transnational’ Islamic

brotherhood. The ‘new’ Pakistani that emerged after 1971 was more,

rather than less, conflicted—he was called upon proudly to declare

allegiance to an ethnic-territorial nationality while under pressure also

to affirm his identity as a de-nationalized Muslim.

Since the 1990s struggles to define ‘the Pakistani’ have returned to

familiar lines of division between sons of the soil and outsiders. Many

of these have been concentrated in Balochistan, where a violent nation-

alist insurgency has been aggravated by the settlement since the 1980s

of Pashtun refugees from Afghanistan, who seek acceptance as Balo-

chis and ‘Pakistanis’.

Their claims have been stiffly resisted by Baloch

nationalists seeking to restrict control over the province’s assets, espe-

cially natural gas, to real Baloch, or sons of the soil. The decision by

former President Musharraf, who seized power following a military

coup in 1999, to launch an ambitious development program centred

on the expansion of a deep sea port in Gwadur triggered fresh Baloch

resistance. This time Baloch opposition was aimed not at ethnic Pash-

tun migrants from Afghanistan seeking to settle in the province, but at

ethnic Punjabis, who were accused of planning to colonise Balo-

chistan.

In so doing, Baloch nationalists invited hostility for restrict-

ing the right of ‘the Pakistani’ to freedom of movement. While these

claims and counter-claims are by no means new to the politics of

regionalism in Pakistan, what is unusual is that the language of the

native was now employed not against migrants from beyond the bor-

ders of the state, but against those perceived to be outsiders within

the state.

These shifts reflected the legacy of earlier attempts to inject Pakistani

identity with a clearer ethnic-territorial dimension. They failed, how-

ever, to compensate for the fact that Pakistan’s founding ideology lay

in ruins after 1971. Instead, the tension between regional and Islamic

expressions of Pakistani identity has remained unresolved. For a time

WHO IS A PAKISTANI?

after 1971 some Pakistani historians, led by the eminent archaeologist

A.H. Dani, sought to ease these tensions by projecting Pakistan not as

a separate Muslim homeland, but as the centre of a territorially defined

nationality that acquired its distinctive features from an Indus Valley

civilization rather than from Islam.

These ideas have recently been developed further by one of Paki-

stan’s leading public intellectuals, Aitzaz Ahsan, who wants to

strengthen a more secular conception of ‘the Pakistani’. At the heart of

his vision is the idea of Pakistan as the successor of the primordial

‘Indus state’, while ‘the Pakistani’ emerges as the heir of a so-called

‘Indus man’ or woman.

Though Ahsan recognizes the distinct fea-

tures of Indus society that mark it out from the culture of the Gangetic

plains, he is less emphatic than Dani about the role of Islam in de-

linking this society from its Indian habitat. Indeed, what is particularly

noteworthy is that Ahsan’s ‘Pakistani’ must embrace his ‘Indian-ness’

in order to claim his identity: ‘by denying the Indian’, Ahsan declares,

the Pakistani ‘den[ies] the Indus’.

But Ahsan is also aware of the

ambiguities that flow from Pakistan’s character as a ‘migrant state’.

Since the 1970s, he observes, ‘locals’ and ‘migrants’ have undergone

‘personality switches’. While the ‘local’, who once evoked his roots in

the region with pride has assumed ‘an extra-territorial personality’ that

looks to, and is captivated by, an alien ‘Arab element’, the peripatetic

mohajir ‘continues to recall, and relive, life in [an imaginary] Indian

birthplace’. Together they have re-fashioned a ‘denationalized’ Paki-

stani for whom ‘the very rationale of Pakistan must be a total diver-

gence of the attributes of the Pakistani from the Indian’.

The idea of this denationalized Pakistani received strong encourage-

ment during the 1980s, when Islamist forces gathered strength. They

fostered fresh interest in defining the Pakistani as synonymous with the

Muslim. But in a state still beset by the lack of consensus over Islam,

differences resurfaced (reminiscent of the struggle in East Pakistan)

over the proper way to be a Muslim in order to qualify as a real Paki-

stani. These differences have unleashed a violent sectarian struggle

over attempts by militant protagonists of Pakistan’s Sunni Muslim

majority to establish a particular (Sunni sectarian) type of Islam as a

necessary prerequisite of the universal or sovereign Pakistani.

They

have also lent momentum to calls to widen the scope of constitutional

definitions of the Muslim that would disenfranchise Muslim minori-

ties, notably the Shias, who fail to conform to sectarian constructions

of the Pakistani.

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

Sectarian myths and the politics of exclusion

The arcane politics of sectarianism stands out as one of the many curi-

osities of modern-day Pakistan. Predicated on notions of legitimate

authority more appropriate to seventh-century tribal Arabia than to a

modern nation state with secular pretensions, it has surfaced repeat-

edly to dominate political discourse and precipitate violence that has

threatened to tear apart the fragile national fabric. Current perceptions

of sectarian conflict in Pakistan, which concentrate on differences

between a Sunni majority and a Shia minority, have tended to blur the

intricate patterns of its sectarian mosaic. They have also ignored a long

tradition of sectarian politics in Pakistan that predates the current

Sunni-Shia conflict but which like it has sought to influence the debate

on the rights of minorities and the question of citizenship.

Sectarian conflict between Sunnis and Shias in Pakistan was accentu-

ated in the wake of General Zia ul Haq’s far-reaching programme of

Islamization introduced in the late 1970s. His measures met with stiff

resistance from the country’s Shias, who condemned them as a thinly

disguised attempt to privilege Sunni interpretations of Islamic law.

Regional developments at the time, notably the Shia revolution in Iran

and the consolidation of Saudi-backed Sunni mujahedin groups

involved in the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan, also politicized the sec-

tarian landscape in Pakistan. In time they contributed to broadening

the base of sectarian discourse in Pakistan from an aspect of religious

schism to a formidable force of religio-political activism.

Yet it is also worth noting that sectarian divisions were rarely, if

ever, relevant to the conduct of state leaders in its early years.

Indeed,

Shias were prominent in the movement for Pakistan. The Aga Khan,

co-founder of the All India Muslim League; the Raja of Mahmudabad

of Lucknow, one of the largest landowners in northern India and the

well-known financier, M.A. Ispahani, were all Shias, who generously

bank-rolled the All India Muslim League and campaigned tirelessly for

a separate Muslim state. But it is Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who really

stands out among these Shia luminaries and whose Ismaili Shia roots

serve as a bitter reminder to those seeking today to establish Pakistan

as a Sunni state.

An estimated 95 per cent of Pakistan’s population is Muslim. Of

these about 75 per cent are Sunnis, while an estimated 15–20 per cent

are said to be Shias. Most Shias in Pakistan (as elsewhere in the Mus-

WHO IS A PAKISTANI?

lim world) are Twelvers (ithna ashari or imami) Shias, followed by a

much smaller number of Seveners, also known as Ismailis. It is worth

bearing in mind that despite their minority status, Shias in Pakistan,

numbering an estimated 30 million people, account for the second

largest Shia population in the world after Iran. At the same time, these

broad, binary categories of ‘Shia’ and ‘Sunni’ mask the reality of a

more complex sectarian landscape. In Pakistan, Sunnis, like Shias, are

internally differentiated and sharply divided along doctrinal lines. Both

encompass a host of sub-sects, cults, and rival religious traditions.

Though most Sunnis in Pakistan subscribe to the moderate Hanafi

school of law, they are daily challenged by a small but growing number

of Sunnis, who favour the more orthodox practices of the Hanbali

mazhab inspired by Arabian Islam. Sunnis in Pakistan are also influ-

enced by rival doctrinal movements: Barelvis with their preference for

devotional practices centring on the worship of hereditary saints out-

number the more strident, orthodox Deobandis.

Shias are no less

prone to divisions.

The Twelvers or ithna ashari Shias, who represent

the main body of Shi’ism, dominate in Pakistan. However, they have

traditionally looked to Iran for spiritual leadership in contrast to

the Seveners, better known as Ismailis, who predominate in northern

Pakistan and parts of urban Sind and who owe allegiance to the

Aga Khan.

It is ironic that this rich sectarian landscape rarely figures in the dis-

course of religious politics in Pakistan. What has generally passed for

a ‘Shia-Sunni’ divide, and what drives the country’s politics of sectar-

ian identity, is in fact more narrowly confined than is commonly sup-

posed. It is limited mainly to followers of the Deobandi tradition, who

in Pakistan have sought in recent years to appropriate the term Sunni

for themselves.

Their main target is also more restricted with much

of their wrath directed at Twelver

Shias, who are singled out for their veneration of Shia imams and

their elaborate ritual practices.

The sectarian overtones of this question first surfaced in the early

1950s, when radical Sunnis mounted a campaign against Ahmedis in

Pakistan, who insist they are Muslim, but whose status as such has

been questioned by orthodox Muslims.

The aim of the anti-Ahmedi

protests, which erupted in 1953, was to force the government to declare

Ahmedis a non-Muslim minority. Although the campaign failed to real-

ize its aim until 1974, when Ahmedis were constitutionally designated

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

‘non-Muslims’ and stripped of their rights as full citizens, it set a prec-

edent that significantly enhanced the power of Sunni groups pressing

for a sectarian construction of ‘the Pakistani’.

Since then radical Sun-

nis have repeatedly pressured the state to consider ever narrower defi-

nitions of ‘the Muslim’ that would exclude the country’s Shia minority

and reserve the constitutional rights of ‘the Pakistani’ to the country’s

Sunni Muslims.

These dynamics were fuelled by the chronic ambiguity and confu-

sion over the meaning of Pakistan as a homeland for Muslims that

raised questions about the status of its non-Muslim minorities and

their claims to qualify as Pakistani.

Both fuelled a debate on citizen-

ship that is still unresolved and that has left the field open to those

who would test the state’s Muslim credentials by challenging its com-

mitment to the equality of all its citizens. This dispute around the ques-

tion of Pakistan’s identity also explains why it has buckled under the

demands of notions of citizenship anchored in the management of dif-

ference. While much has been made of Jinnah’s famous declaration of

11 August 1947 in which he announced his support for the ‘fundamen-

tal principle that we are all citizens and equal citizens of one State’,

failed to dilute the force of the divisive rhetoric he had helped nurture

in the decade leading up to the creation of Pakistan.

The fact that the exclusionist discourse favoured by sectarian groups

seeking to influence the citizenship debate should have become mani-

fest so quickly after independence was testimony to this uncomfortable

reality. It suggested that, notwithstanding Jinnah’s determination to

ensure ‘that ‘religion … has nothing to do with the State,’

‘Islam’ (in

this case) could not, after all, be selectively applied or manipulated

without incurring the risk of undesirable outcomes. By leaving open

until the very moment of independence the question of whether Paki-

stan would serve primarily as a homeland for Muslims without exclud-

ing others or whether its sole purpose was to exist for Muslims over all

others, Jinnah contributed to the ambiguity of the new state. Nor did

he seek to resolve these ambiguities after independence. On 25 January

1948 just months before his final exit from politics, and in failing

health, he publicly retracted his earlier commitment to democratic

citizenship by declaring that Pakistan’s constitution would be based on

Islamic law (sharia) ‘to make Pakistan a truly great Islamic State’.

The new state’s professed loyalty to Islam, however ambiguous,

heightened the risks it posed to democratic citizenship—risks that were

WHO IS A PAKISTANI?

to be compounded by sectarian politics. In March 1949, the country’s

first Prime Minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, while moving the Objectives

Resolution to determine the principles of Pakistan’s future constituent

assembly, declared that the state ‘will create such conditions as are

conducive to the building up of a truly Islamic society’.

This was put

to the test within months. In May 1949, the Majlis-i-Ahrar (a Muslim

communal off-shoot of the Indian National Congress) that was in the

forefront of the movement against the Ahmedis, challenged the state to

fulfil its obligations and frame a constitutional definition of ‘the Mus-

lim’. Although much of the debate at the time was clouded by esoteric

idioms of prophetology, centring on the disputed messianic status of

Mirza Ghulam Ahmed, who founded the Ahmedi movement in Punjab

in 1889,

it prised open vital questions that have since underlined the

state’s fragile commitment to modern secular citizenship. By raising,

and keeping alive, the question of who a Muslim ‘really’ is and what

constitutional status a ‘real’ Muslim can legitimately claim, sectarian

discourse brutally exposed the high cost of sacralizing political debate.

In time it would also lend a decisive rhetorical edge to those seeking to

translate this debate into a struggle to make the definition of ‘the Paki-

stani’ conditional upon that of ‘the Muslim’.

Consensus on the meaning of the ‘Muslim’ remained elusive. As the

judicial commission appointed by the government in 1953 to investi-

gate the causes of the anti-Ahmedi movement gloomily observed, an

agreement on the definition of a non-Muslim did not automatically

translate into one on the definition of a Muslim. Its conclusion fol-

lowed an invitation to a group of protesting ulama to define for the

commission who they would consider Muslim. Their sharply diverging

opinions led the commission to declare that, ‘[k]eeping in view the

several definitions given by the ulema (sic), need we make any com-

ment except that no two learned divines are agreed on this fundamen-

tal. If we attempt our own definition [of the Muslim] as each Divine

has done and that definition differs from that given by all others, we

unanimously go out of the fold of Islam. And if we adopt the defini-

tion given by any one of the ulema (sic), we remain Muslims according

to that alim [Muslim religious scholar] but kafirs (apostates) according

to the definition of everyone else.’

The Commission also debated the

status of Pakistan’s Shia community and charges of apostasy levelled

against them by the ulama, warning that, ‘what is happening now

seems almost a writing on the wall, and God help us if we do not stop

these … people from cutting each other’s throat’.

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

Many hoped that the 1953 commission of inquiry into the anti-

Ahmedi riots would curb the force of sectarianism and force it to

retreat in the face of General Ayub Khan’s relatively secular dispensa-

tion following his military take-over in 1958. But the state was soon

embroiled in a fresh controversy that revived the political salience of

sectarian identities. It was prompted by Ayub’s contentious decision to

engage with Sunni religious parties, which had called for the enforce-

ment of the constitution and restrict Shia activities on the grounds that

they violated the rights of the Sunni majority.

Whilst these demands

were eventually rejected by Ayub, they nevertheless underscored the

latent power of sectarian discourse.

The need for a fresh affirmation of Pakistan’s Islamic credentials in

the wake of the secession of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) in 1971

lent new momentum to the sectarian debate. The provisions of the

1973 constitution promulgated by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto reflected this

concern. It strengthened the Islamic complexion of the state by requir-

ing both the president and the prime minister to be Muslim. The con-

stitution for the first time also made it incumbent for holders of both

offices publicly to confess their faith as ‘believers’ by acknowledging

the finality of Muhammad’s Prophethood, thereby implicitly offering

a definition of ‘the Muslim’. As such it differed from Pakistan’s first

constitution (1956), which had required the president to be a Muslim

but did not specify what this entailed. Within months of the enforce-

ment of the 1973 constitution (which remains in force), anti-Ahmedi

groups had swung into action. In early 1974, an eight-party alliance of

religious parties launched a hundred-day campaign against the Ahme-

dis. An increasingly beleaguered Bhutto was forced to convene a spe-

cial session of the National Assembly, which deliberated on ‘the status

in Islam of persons who do not believe in the finality of the prophet-

hood of Muhammad’.

Conducted behind closed doors, it led to a

constitutional amendment (the Second Amendment of 7 September

1974) that formally relegated Ahmedis to the status of a non-Muslim

minority, thereby stripping them at a stroke of the citizenship rights

they had enjoyed until then as Muslims.

These extraordinary developments marked a watershed in the debate

on citizenship and minority rights in Pakistan. They established a prec-

edent that enabled a political institution (the National Assembly),

elected through a secular process (elections), formally to arrogate to

itself the authority to pronounce on matters of faith pertaining to

WHO IS A PAKISTANI?

individual citizens. They also underlined the profound dilemma facing

Pakistan—that is, upholding modern standards of citizenship in the

context of a sacralized political discourse that could not (publicly at

least) accommodate the separation between religion and the state. A

telling reflection of this lay in the contradiction between the National

Assembly’s decision to criminalize the preaching of any doctrine that

questioned the finality of Muhammad’s Prophethood and Bhutto’s (in

the circumstances) fatuous declaration that Pakistan’s ‘secular consti-

tution’ would ensure that ‘every Pakistani had the right to profess his

religion, proudly, with confidence and without fear’.

Subsequent measures adopted against the Ahmedis in 1984 as part

of General Zia’s Islamization programme further exposed the gap

between the secular pretensions of the state and the growing reality of

a discriminatory definition of Pakistani citizenship based on an exclu-

sionary definition of Islam. It is worth noting that, even while the 1974

constitutional amendment had barred Ahmedis from holding any posi-

tion reserved for Muslims, it did not abrogate Article 20 of the consti-

tution, which guaranteed the right of religious minorities to propagate

their faith. Nor had it suspended Article 33, which made the state

responsible for safeguarding the legitimate rights and representation of

minorities in parliament. By contrast, Zia’s Ordinance 20 of 1984 not

only institutionalised discrimination against the Ahmedis by further

eroding their civil rights (for example, denying them the right to have

their evidence in court treated on par with evidence submitted by a

constitutionally recognized Muslim), but also transformed Ahmedi

daily religious life into a criminal offence (for example, by threatening

Ahmedis with criminal prosecution for calling themselves Muslims or

referring to their places of worship as mosques).

Within a few dec-

ades of its formation, Pakistan had established new parameters for

citizenship, dependent almost wholly on the definition of an individu-

al’s creed and religious profile. By doing so, it had also fundamentally

revised the discussion on the status of non-Muslim minorities, who are

now in danger of being increasingly regarded as compatriots sharing a

common territory rather than as citizens with a claim to legal and

political equality.

The resurgence of militant sectarian conflict in Pakistan since the

late 1980s

has intensified the debate on the status of minorities and

has added a new and more problematic dimension to it. It centres on

the place of minority Shias, whose Muslim-ness and membership as

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

equal citizens of the national community had not until recently been

questioned (except perhaps within the confines of theological debates).

This anti-Shia discourse is seen to be a direct consequence of Zia’s

Islamization policies, which sought to strengthen the state’s monopoly

over religion by enforcing a narrow, Sunni interpretation of Islamic

law.

Shia protests against the programme gained momentum in 1980

under the auspices of the predominantly Twelver Shia movement, the

Tehrik-i-Nifaz-i Fiqh-i Ja‘fariyya (TNFJ or Movement for the Imple-

mentation of Ja‘fari [Shia] law), which successfully secured guarantees

that exempted Shias from subscribing to the new laws—for example,

the payment of the Islamic alms tax (zakat),

—and which served

thereby, paradoxically, to sharpen the Sunni profile of the state.

It was not long before Islamization moved inexorably towards

‘Sunnification’.

This had profound consequences: it undermined the

broad universalist claims that had until then been the hallmark of all

Islamization projects in Pakistan and, by equating Sunnism with Islam,

removed at a stroke the place of Shi’ism as a separate but equal voice.

With Sunni law dominant and increasingly conflated with Islam, Sunni

Islamists were now poised to claim that those who did not subscribe to

Sunni law—that is, the Shias—were outside the pale of Islam and

therefore deserved to be recast as religious minorities. Much of this

debate has been shaped by the agenda of the militant Sunni organiza-

tion, the Sipah-i-Sahaba-i-Pakistan (SSP or Army of the Prophet’s

Companions), which is strongly informed by Deobandi ideology and

dedicated since its creation in 1985 to making Sunni Islam the official

religion of Pakistan.

External factors, especially the regional rivalry between Iran and

Saudi Arabia, also fuelled the deadly conflict between Sunnis and Shias

that has engulfed Pakistan.

The Iranian revolution of 1979 left weak

states like Pakistan especially vulnerable to the fall-out from the com-

petition between these two rivals and significantly amplified the hith-

erto muted refrain of sectarian politics. The Afghan civil war, which

raged for much of the 1980s, also acted as a catalyst, consolidating the

power and position of Sunni mujaheddin groups who, with the back-

ing of Saudi Arabia and to a lesser extent Iraq, helped contain the

regional ambitions of Iran and curbed the self-confidence of embold-

ened Shia activists.

The political landscape of Pakistan had by then undergone significant

changes that encouraged the role of increasingly combative sectarian

WHO IS A PAKISTANI?

actors. As already noted, General Zia’s Islamization programme,

which was billed as an attempt to enforce the universalist prescriptions

of Islam, was engaged in nothing less than laying the foundations for

an essentially Sunni interpretation of Islamic law. Therefore, the exter-

nal aspect was at best an enabling factor that sustained rather than

generated the sectarian phenomenon. At worst, it was symptomatic of

a political culture where the ‘foreign hand’ and ‘intelligence agencies’

have been routinely singled out for blame every time there is a crisis.

Neither ought to be given much credence, absolving as they do both

state and society in Pakistan of responsibility for an ever more violent

sectarian conflict.

Indeed, what demands attention is the role of the state in construct-

ing sectarian identities. While it is often assumed that the state at

inception was ‘neutral and had no sectarian agenda’,

it has in fact

since the late 1970s been actively complicit in the hardening of sepa-

rate religious identities. In this it was motivated by the need primarily

to neutralize regional identities, which were perceived to be a greater

threat to its political hegemony than any challenge from sectarian dis-

cord. The support for religious parties in Balochistan in recent years,

for example, has been widely used as a strategy to weaken the claim of

Baloch nationalists. Equally, the appeal to an Islamic over a Pashtun

identity has been systematically deployed to dilute the force of Pashtun

nationalism in the border regions of the North West Frontier Province.

Thus, the state’s engagement with sectarianism is neither a recent phe-

nomenon nor one that breaks with any established tradition of state

neutrality. It is in part a legacy of the movement for Pakistan, which

had sought to employ the language of Islamic universalism to lend

substance to the national project. The fragility of the latter, which was

soon reflected in the tensions between an autocratic centre and rebel-

lious regional forces, meant that the state quickly developed an interest

in Islamic social engineering as the means to ensure its own survival.

This had serious consequences for the trajectory of sectarian identities

which, because of the state’s over-riding concern with the question of

its religious identity, have enjoyed a degree of benign tolerance not

accorded to the mobilization other forms of identity—in particular,

ethnicity, which has routinely been condemned as threatening to the

integrity of the state.

The Islamic concerns displayed by sectarian politics have helped

legitimate its power-brokers, but it has also sharply reduced the state’s

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

ability to infringe upon the religious space or to control it. This is most

clearly demonstrated in the state’s failure to curb the spread of sectar-

ian forces in central and south Punjab, where the dynamics of local

politics have accelerated religious divisions. In the districts around the

urban centre of Jhang, anti-Shia rhetoric since the mid 1980s has been

fuelled by tensions between a dominant class of Shia landlords and an

emerging Sunni middle-class with political aspirations. Here, Sunni

radicalism has served not only to mobilize popular Sunni support

against the Shia elite, but has also offered an identity to new classes

that lacked a place in traditional society. These represent the urban

middle-classes, issued from Sunni Muslim families who had migrated

from Indian East Punjab to adjacent regions in West Punjab allocated

to Pakistan at the time of Partition. A large number of these migrant

families were exposed to sectarian traditions favoured by the staunchly

anti-Shia discourse of the Deobandi (and to a lesser extent the Ahl-i-

Hadis) movements. Both have a history of religious and political activ-

ism, and both have on occasion been associated with the Islamic

populism of Punjab-based parties such as the Majlis-i-Ahrar i-Islam,

which spearheaded the campaign against the Ahmedi minority before

and after Partition.

Elsewhere, sectarian causes have also been well served by the dynam-

ics of local politics. In the Federally Administered Tribal Agencies of

Kurram and Orakzai as well as in the so-called Northern Areas around

the urban centre of Gilgit, local pressures arising from the influx of

large numbers of Afghan refugees and a deliberate state policy to reset-

tle Sunnis in the region have disturbed the fragile Shia-Sunni demo-

graphic balance. Since the 1980s these developments have accentuated

sectarian tension and generated conflict. One of the worst affected

areas in recent years has been Parachinar, the main administrative cen-

tre in Kurram. Its Pashtun population is mainly Shia, belonging to the

Turi and Bangash tribes—a minority among Pashtuns, who are over-

whelmingly Sunnis. However, the influx of large numbers of Sunni

Afghan refugees in the 1980s and the resettlement of Sunnis from other

parts of Pakistan disturbed this fragile equilibrium and has led Parachi-

nar to be repeatedly convulsed by sectarian violence. Although the

tension has been rooted in competition over access to scarce resources,

especially land, it has been sustained by a wider exclusionary idiom

based on an imagined supra-local sectarian identity.

But it is in Pakistan’s Northern Areas that the sectarian politics of

exclusion has been most visible in recent years. Here, Ismaili Shias

WHO IS A PAKISTANI?

make up more than 60 per cent of the region’s total population of

about 1.5 million, and it is also here that in the late 1980s some of the

worst sectarian violence flared, resulting in hundreds being killed

around the region’s urban hub, Gilgit. As in Kurram, this violence had

local causes that included Shia hostility to the settlement of many

Sunni businessmen from the Punjab and the NWFP attracted by the

opportunities offered by the opening of the Karakoram Highway in

1986. Their resentment was sharpened by the latitude Zia gave to

Sunni Islamist parties, which were blamed for widespread sectarian

violence in 1988. In recent years sectarian politics has come increas-

ingly to express local frustration over the lack of a constitutional iden-

tity for the Northern Areas. They occupy an anomalous position

wherein they are administered by Pakistan but are denied the status of

a province on grounds that they form part of the disputed territory of

Kashmir.

A further grievance stems from the introduction in 1999 of

textbooks by the federal education ministry, which local Shias claimed

reflect a Sunni bias. It has led to strikes and protests only quelled in

2005 after the government agreed not to teach the contentious mate-

rial in local schools—though the textbooks themselves still remain to

be revised.

Is this yet another example of the ideological foundations of Paki-

stan leaving it ill-prepared to face the demands of modern citizenship,

subject as it was to the conflicting claims of a religiously divided soci-

ety? At its inception the state had to face the dilemma of choosing

between rival interpretations of the dominant religion—Islam—and

deciding which would receive state support. It also had to determine

the criteria for citizenship and how its people comprised the national

community. One aim was to recognize religious pluralism and accept

non-Muslims (Christians, Hindus, Parsis and most recently Ahmedis)

as citizens; another was to cast Pakistan as an unequivocally territorial

state where religious affiliation should be immaterial to full and equal

membership of the political community.

Others sought to transform the country into an Islamic state with a

clear Sunni dimension that could rival Shia Iran. Recently there have

even emerged voices dedicated to recasting Pakistan’s identity as a

transnational state, carrying the message of Islam to other areas by

peaceful means and, if necessary, by force. These are not hard and fast,

let alone easily distinguishable, identities—indeed there is much inter-

play between Pakistan as ‘cultural haven’, ‘homeland’, ‘Islamic state’

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

or ‘Islamic vanguard’. But, as Cohen notes, this complexity means that

politics in Pakistan will always struggle with a heavy burden that can-

not be removed without the resolution of its ‘ideological puzzle’: that

is, ‘reconciling the different permutations of state and religion in a

country ridden with widespread ethnic and linguistic conflict and a

dysfunctional oligarchic political order’.

Non-Muslims and the mirage of citizenship

These uncertainties have also had decisive impact on the status of

Pakistan’s non-Muslim minorities. The question of whether or not they

qualify to be Pakistani is to a very large degree rooted in the contradic-

tions of Pakistan’s founding ideology—the two nation theory. This

presupposed two nations—not Indians and Pakistanis, but Hindus and

Muslims. And while all nations, as Pandey has observed, are carved

out of a ‘core’ or ‘natural’ citizen,

in Pakistan the exclusion of mar-

ginal religious groups, namely non-Muslims, has been more readily

facilitated by the emphasis on a religious rather than a territorial

understanding of the boundaries of the nation.

Many now recognize that for the vast majority of its citizens Paki-

stan’s creation in 1947 represented the founding of a homeland for the

Muslims of India—not all, but those who chose to go, those forced to

flee persecution and those lucky enough to be in the right place at the

right time. What precisely this newly created homeland signified for its

non-Muslims members, who at the moment of Pakistan’s creation

constituted almost a fifth of its total population, was not however fully

articulated. Some have explained this oversight by claiming that no

one, including Jinnah, had anticipated the creation of a separate nation

state. Others claim that Jinnah had always intended Pakistan to be an

inclusive political community, as is shown by his rush to declare at

independence that all who found themselves within the territory of the

new state would be Pakistanis, entitled to equal citizenship. ‘Every one

of you,’ he declared in August 1947, ‘no matter to what community he

belongs, no matter what relations he had with you in the past, no mat-

ter what his colour, caste or creed, is first, second, and last a citizen of

this State with equal rights, privileges and obligations.’

It remains

unclear whether in making his appeal Jinnah was offering a blueprint

for the future state of Pakistan or simply responding to the crisis trig-

gered by the mass communal violence that engulfed parts of Pakistan

WHO IS A PAKISTANI?

in the weeks leading up to Partition. According to some historians, Jin-

nah at the time had been keen to retain a non-Muslim minority in

Pakistan to serve as ‘hostages’, in order to ensure fair treatment for

Indian Muslims who chose to remain in India.

Whatever Jinnah’s motives in pressing for common citizenship, his

successors found it an increasingly difficult challenge to guarantee the

constitutional equality of all of Pakistan’s citizens. Indeed, Pakistan

appears to have moved far away from Jinnah’s inclusivist model by

sanctioning the political exclusion of its non-Muslim minorities and

legalizing the disenfranchisement of Muslims whose status was in

question. Explanations for these changes vary widely: they range from

the supposed gulf between inclusive notions of citizenship and the

imperatives of majoritarian nationalism (of which Pakistan’s religious

nationalism is one example), to confusion over the role of Islam in

public life (which has been especially acute in Pakistan). Nevertheless,

most of these interpretations implicitly recognize the narrowing of the

political community in Pakistan that has resulted in separating mem-

bership in the community from any automatic claim to equal rights for

all citizens.

What it suggests is that the imperatives of equal citizenship have

been repeatedly challenged by the normative force of ideas that have

favoured the mutual exclusion of Muslims and non-Muslims. Of

course, Pakistan’s dilemma is not unique. As Pandey has persuasively

argued with reference to India, the construction of ‘the real Indian’ has

depended upon a presupposed ‘natural’ or ‘core’ mainstream that is

invisibly and unconsciously equated with the Hindu. The idea of the

axiomatic ‘Indian’, he maintains, has depended upon the simultaneous

creation of the hyphenated national, whose uncertain status as the

‘Indian Muslim’ or the ‘Indian Christian’ has reinforced the inter-

changeability of ‘Indian’ and ‘Hindu’. More importantly still, the equa-

tion of the ‘Indian nation’ with a ‘Hindu majority’ has gone mostly

unchallenged and since has shifted the focus of attention onto the ‘des-

ignated’ or ‘proper’ place of the minorities. That status is determined

above all by a constant demand for a proof of loyalty to the state—a

demand, he suggests, that is made only of those who are judged not to

be its ‘real’ or ‘natural’ citizens.

Although the axiomatic ‘Pakistani’ is rarely juxtaposed against a

‘Pakistani Christian’ or ‘Pakistani Hindu’, the equation of ‘Pakistani’

and ‘Muslim’ is, if anything, even more rigidly bound than in India. As

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

in India this equation has tended not so much to raise questions about

its problematic relation to more inclusive definitions of the Pakistani

nation, but to concentrate attention instead on the status of non-Mus-

lim minorities, who are under ever-greater obligation to prove their

loyalty and thus to qualify as Pakistanis.

The legacy of Partition made these obligations particularly acute for

the Hindu minority in Pakistan, who much like their Muslim counter-

parts in India, were forced to endure the suspicion of harbouring

divided loyalties. These loyalties were most sternly tested during the

crisis leading up to the secession of Bangladesh in 1971. At that time,

the Hindu population of East Bengal, which accounted for almost 12%

of the country’s total, was widely accused by Pakistani government

forces of acting as a ‘fifth column’ in the service of India’s military,

which was accused of supporting Bengali nationalists and hastening

the break-up of Pakistan. The Christian minority in Pakistan has also

come under scrutiny to demonstrate its loyalty both because Christians

stand as ciphers of anger against colonial rule and because of frustra-

tion over current Western policy that is judged to be anti-Islamic. As

such, they have paid a particularly heavy price.

What makes Pakistan a case apart from most other forms of majori-

tarian nationalism is the central yet ambiguous role accorded to Islam

in the definition of both the nation and the state. It has served as a

channel for exclusion that has led to the erosion of the rights of non-

Muslims and furthered their disenfranchisement as citizens. In practice,

any move that seeks to grant full legal and political equality of Mus-

lims and non-Muslims must first wrestle with the perceived breach of

the provisions of Islam that are judged to justify the boundaries of a

nation, which unambiguously distinguishes between Muslims and non-

Muslims. It is true that many Muslim states have successfully recon-

ciled restrictive political norms derived from classical Islamic doctrine

with modern egalitarian demands. But in Pakistan, the haphazard

convergence of religion and nationalism that shaped the creation of

the country and the uses to which it was put during extended periods

of authoritarian rule has made the state more prone to institutional

discrimination against non-Muslims. This has significantly enhanced

the dangers for the latter. They run the risk of being relegated to

their proper place as minorities on the fringe of the nation—entitled to

share the same homeland (watan) or country (mulk) with a Muslim

majority but without the legal and political rights owed to them as

equal citizens.

WHO IS A PAKISTANI?

The contradictions inherent in Pakistan’s nationalist struggle were

not the only factors to account for the steady political marginalization

of its non-Muslim minorities. The structure and demographic composi-

tion of the new state were no less important in shaping attitudes

towards the political rights of religious minorities. Although fractured

by sharp ethnic and linguistic divisions, Pakistan at independence was

more religiously homogeneous than India. Its population, estimated at

around 80 million at the time, was overwhelmingly Muslim and tightly

concentrated in 76 districts clustered in the north-west and north east

of India.

This homogeneity was particularly marked in the country’s

western provinces, where the mass exodus of non-Muslims, estimated

at between 5–6 million, mainly Hindus and Sikhs from urban areas in

the Punjab and Sind, simplified a hitherto more complex demographic

landscape. At the same time, the entry of more than six million Mus-

lim refugees from India sharpened its Muslim contours. By contrast,

migration in and out of East Bengal was much less significant. Accord-

ing to the 1951 census it only received some 700,000 Muslim refu-

gees from India,

while only a fraction (about 1.5 million) of its

non- Muslim, mainly Hindu, population, decided to emigrate, leaving

it with a more complex demographic pattern than in the west wing of

the country.

Not surprisingly these differences induced very different perceptions

about the legal and political status of non-Muslim minorities in the

two wings of the country. One of the earliest indications surfaced

within months of independence in December 1947, when the veteran

Bengali Muslim League leader, H.S. Suhrawardy, tried unsuccessfully

to open the membership of his party, the Muslim League, to non-

Muslims. He argued that this would enable Bengal’s sizeable Hindu

minority (almost a quarter of the population of East Pakistan) to enter

mainstream politics and would also reinforce the League’s commit-

ment to Jinnah’s (albeit new-found) inclusivist ethos as the basis of the

new state. However, neither of these proposals appealed to

Suhrawardy’s fellow-Leaguers. Their position was summed up, ironi-

cally, by one of Jinnah’s closest associates from the NWFP, Sardar

Abdur Rab Nishtar, who declared that such a move would ‘finish the

League’ adding, ‘I say if the League exists, Islam exists, Musalmans

exist’.

As a result, non-Muslims chose subsequently to turn to the

United Front—a Bengali regional coalition that inflicted a stunning

defeat on the League in the 1954 provincial elections.

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

By then signs of alienation were already in evidence. In debates over

the framing of the country’s first constitution in 1956, non-Muslim

members of the Constituent Assembly, almost all Hindus from East

Bengal, raised serious objections to what came to be known as the

‘Objectives Resolution’ designed to serve as its Preamble. Of particular

concern was its commitment to an Islamic rather than a secular con-

stitution, which they feared would discriminate against the rights

of akistan’s non-Muslim citizens. In a series of wide-ranging amend-

ments, they urged lawmakers explicitly to recognize the equality of

Muslims and non-Muslims by substituting the state’s obligation to

ensure that ‘Muslims shall be enabled to order their lives … in accord-

ance with the teachings and requirements of Islam’ with an obliga-

tion instead to ensure that ‘Muslims and non-Muslims shall be equally

enabled to order their lives in accordance with their respective

religions’.

Remarkably, no Muslim member spoke up in favour of the amend-

ments proposed by non-Muslim members. Indeed, they were roundly

dismissed as unjustified and intended to make a mockery of what the

Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan called the ‘real Islamic society’ to

which Pakistan aspired. Nevertheless, Khan could scarcely have failed

to ignore the warning from some non-Muslim members of the Con-

stituent Assembly, who counselled him against pressing ahead with the

Resolution on grounds that it would incur ‘the curse’ of ‘posterity’.

This was not enough to deter Khan, who instead of seeking a consen-

sus, put the Resolution to the vote. With the exception of one Muslim

member, the left-wing politician Muhammad Iftikharrudin, who

denounced the Resolution as a travesty of ‘a proper Islamic constitu-

tion [and] real democracy’, all Muslim members voted in favour of the

original Resolution, while every one of their non-Muslim counterparts

voted against.

These lingering doubts about the legal and political equality of Paki-

stan’s non-Muslim citizens were scarcely resolved with the approval in

March 1956 of the country’s first Constitution. It barred non-Muslims

from becoming President even while allowing for the possibility of a

non-Muslim Speaker of the National Assembly, who would temporar-

ily have had to assume this post in the absence of the President. No

such ban however was imposed on the post of prime minister, which

remained open to non-Muslims. Indeed, this parliamentary model,

which vested real power in the National Assembly, was used to counter

WHO IS A PAKISTANI?

accusations by those critics of the Constitution who claimed it rele-

gated non-Muslims to the status of second-class citizens. But the

doubts persisted, fuelled by the Constitution’s ambiguity over the elec-

toral system. Unable to settle the question of whether to abolish sepa-

rate electorates, which many still regarded as a pillar of the state’s

‘two-nation’ ideology,

it was left to be decided by the National

Assembly in consultation with the provincial assemblies. But in a star-

tling demonstration of the uncertainty over the place of Islam, law-

makers in October 1956 approved a Bill that endorsed two separate

electoral systems for the country’s two wings. Under its provisions,

non-Muslim voters in East Pakistan were given the same rights as their

Muslim counterparts by voting jointly for all parliamentary candidates.

In West Pakistan, non-Muslims were denied the right to elect Muslim

candidates and restricted to separate electorates.

Although the Bill was subsequently amended in 1957 to give Muslim

and non-Muslim voters in both wings equal rights to choose candi-

dates under a system of joint electorates, the issue remained politically

contentious. While most Bengali regional parties, including the Awami

League and the Hindu Congress called for joint electorates to be

declared irreversible, the Muslim League, which controlled power at

the centre, dithered over its implementation. In the event, the issue was

still unresolved by the time the Constitution itself was abrogated fol-

lowing the 1958 military coup. The debate served as a telling expres-

sion of Pakistan’s continuing failure to reconcile notions of citizenship

resting on two mutually exclusive models of statehood—the first

grounded in territory (the nation-state), the second in a putative supra-

territorial community (umma). As Jalal points out, ‘[Pakistan] could

not be ‘national’ and ‘Islamic’. It could not be ‘national’ because in the

Islamic conception of the state non-Muslims do not have equal rights

of citizenship; and it could not be ‘Islamic’ if the boundaries of the

nation-state, as opposed to religious affiliations, were to distinguish

citizens from non-citizens’

These glaring inconsistencies are even better understood when set

against the simmering tensions within a dominant political elite forced

to balance the claims of a Western style democracy in which national-

ity and citizenship rights are held to be coeval, with a religiously

informed nationalism in which Islam is judged to be the basis of politi-

cal legitimacy. For a while, the change of regime that followed the

1958 military coup led by Ayub Khan appeared to ease some of these

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

tensions. Not only did the military regime sideline the political classes’

uncertain compromises over the issue of Pakistan as an Islamic state,

and by extension the uncertain place of non-Muslims within it, but it

also sought to project an image that underlined its secularizing mis-

sion. The new Constitution, promulgated in 1962, dispensed with the

‘Islamic’ prefix and firmly rejected a recommendation by the constitu-

tional commission to restore separate electorates for non-Muslims.

Nevertheless, restrictions on non-Muslims holding the post of presi-

dent remained intact, demonstrating that the regime’s secular creden-

tials were, in part, symbolic and possibly even open to negotiation.

This was confirmed when, under pressure from the religious lobby, the

1962 Constitution was amended to recognize Pakistan as an ‘Islamic

Republic’. And though the 1962 Constitution broke with its predeces-

sor by clearly endorsing a system of joint electorates, this time for the

whole country, these provisions were rendered meaningless (as were all

other provisions relating to the franchise) in a system which ruled out

direct, universal franchise. Furthermore, Ayub’s insistence upon retain-

ing the One-Unit formula (which had amalgamated all four western

provinces into a single entity to neutralize East Pakistan’s political

majority and impose parity with ‘West Pakistan’), also meant that the

representation of the interests of non-Muslims, who made up almost a

quarter of East Pakistan’s population, was effectively limited.

Despite these constraints, and the absence of any real shift in favour

of greater legal and political equality for non-Muslim citizens, Ayub’s

modernizing social agenda has generally been credited with encourag-

ing a climate of greater tolerance, which paved the way for the more

complete integration of Pakistan’s non-Muslim citizens. Many have

pointed to Ayub’s contempt for the Muslim religious establishment as

the reason why, especially in the early years of his government, he

ignored religious and sectarian divisions that were potentially damag-

ing to his nation-building project. At the same time, the bitterness and

rancour that followed Ayub’s divisive economic policies meant that

any gains made in bridging religious divisions were soon overwhelmed

by the regional disparities that widened the gulf between East and

West Pakistan. One of its most disturbing consequences was the revival

of an exclusionary discourse against East Pakistan’s non-Muslim,

mainly Hindu, population. At the time, it took many by surprise.

For while Ayub’s attempts to strengthen a secularized Islam were

expected to have little effect on redressing equity grievances between

WHO IS A PAKISTANI?

Pakistan’s different regions, many had hoped that it would at least ease

the latent tension between the country’s Muslim and non-Muslim citi-

zens. Instead, what it unleashed in the form of the 1971 civil war in

East Pakistan was a violent reaction against Ayub’s secular experiment.

One of its consequences was to reject a secular and plural definition of

‘the Pakistani’ in favour of restoring its equation with ‘the Muslim’.

Nowhere was this more chillingly demonstrated than in the preoccupa-

tion with the question of the ‘good Muslim’ during the military cam-

paign against Bengalis in East Pakistan. As a means of selecting who best

qualified as a ‘good’ Pakistani, it made swift work of non-Muslims

who, by definition, were least to meet the standards expected of ‘the

Pakistani’.

These trends became more pronounced after the formal secession of

East Pakistan, which instantly transformed the rump state into a

largely homogenous entity in religious terms. From having once had to

confront the challenge of working out credible arrangements to guar-

antee equal citizenship for non-Muslims comprising almost 14 per cent

of its total population, the new state could now afford merely to

acknowledge its responsibility to protect the 3 per cent that remained.

This was reflected in the 1973 Constitution drafted by the country’s

first elected assembly, which represented an overwhelming Muslim

majority. It may explain why the Islamic provisions of the Constitu-

tion, which for the first time established Islam as the ‘state religion of

Pakistan’, elicited much less discussion and why the bar placed on non-

Muslims from holding both the post of President and Prime Minister

generated only mild controversy.

With additional offices of state now constitutionally closed to non-

Muslims, the charge of second-class citizenship and indeed the disen-

franchisement of non-Muslims, could no longer be evaded. For all its

democratic underpinnings, therefore, the 1973 Constitution (which

remains in force) represented the first clear signs in Pakistan of a drift

towards institutional inequality, allowing discrimination against the

country’s non-Muslim minorities. And it is Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who

yielded to the pressure of declaring the Ahmedis a non-Muslim minor-

ity, and thereby sanctioned their disenfranchisement, who is held

chiefly responsible for bringing into play the toxic demarcation

between Muslims and non-Muslims.

While personally Z. A. Bhutto, the main architect of the Constitu-

tion, may well have favoured a more secular dispensation for Pakistan

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

including a more egalitarian status for non-Muslims, he like many of

his peers was unable to resist the lure of a ‘real’ Pakistan held out by

the removal of the country’s awkward eastern province. As Ziring has

observed, the insistent presence of East Bengal’s large non-Muslim

population, with its disturbing Hindu undertones, had always sug-

gested that ‘Pakistan could never realize its potential as a Muslim

country while connected to East Bengal’.

Some Pakistanis also

acknowledged the opportunities presented by the separation of East

Bengal. Reflecting on the emergence of Pakistan as a ‘more viable

entity’ after 1971, the prominent Pakistani scholar, Burki, has argued

that the separation of East Pakistan was a development rich with pos-

sibilities for Pakistan. The latter, he claims, were damaged by the per-

ennial struggle over the meaning of Pakistan between the Bengalis and

their compatriots in West Pakistan. It was this tension, he suggests,

that was primarily responsible for confounding the issue of Pakistan’s

Muslim identity. ‘As long as Pakistan remained divided into two

wings’, he argues, ‘the question of Islam’s role in the affairs of the state

remained unanswered. The people of East Bengal were content to let

Islam guide individual behaviour rather than become the religion of

the state. The most the Bengalis were prepared to do in this respect

was to pass the Objectives Resolution in 1951[sic] … Only after …

Pakistan broke up in 1971 did the leaders’ resolve to keep religion out

of politics begin to weaken.’

Though he does not say so, the implica-

tion of Burki’s remarks leaves no doubt that this apparent weakening

of resolve paved the way for a recognisably Muslim nation with the

power to forge a clear Muslim identity.

Whether or not, and how far, this identity depended upon the politi-

cal marginalisation of non-Muslims is an issue that Burki chooses to

side-step. Nevertheless, the sweeping changes associated with General

Zia’s Islamist brand of politics in the 1980s left little doubt that Zia

himself associated the strengthening of Pakistan’s Muslim identity with

the steady erosion of the rights of its dwindling non-Muslims. His

most decisive moves in this direction were contained in a series of judi-

cial reforms (known as the Law of Evidence), announced in 1984.

They barred non-Muslims from giving evidence against Muslims in

newly established Islamic courts (so-called sharia courts), and obliged

them to accept that their evidence in such courts would be worth half

that submitted by a Muslim, thus making it easier for Muslims to pur-

sue legal proceedings against non-Muslims.

WHO IS A PAKISTANI?

These divisions were reinforced in 1985 with the restoration of sepa-

rate electorates, which constitutionally stripped non-Muslims of the

right to vote in territorially demarcated constituencies designated for

the election of candidates to the National and Provincial assemblies.

Henceforth non-Muslims, divided into four groups (Christians, Hin-

dus, Ahmadis and Sikhs, Buddhists and Parsees grouped together) were

denied the right to vote for the same candidates or share the same con-

stituencies as Muslims. Instead they were restricted to voting for can-

didates from their own religious group. While the selective manner in

which these rules were applied suggested that their purpose (like most

other measures introduced by Zia under the rubric of Islamization)

was mainly rhetorical, there was no doubt that that they did much to

undermine secular politics, which since the separation of East Pakistan

had come to be most closely associated with the PPP.

Indeed, the issue of separate electorates had resurfaced in 1977 pre-

cisely in the context of a campaign by pro-Islamic parties to abolish

joint electorates, which they claimed favoured the PPP, whose liberal

policies were judged to favour voters from religious minority groups,

encouraging them to side with the party. Barring non-Muslims from

the election of general seats, they believed, would be to their advantage

and to the detriment of the PPP. Encouraged by Zia’s own disdain for

Bhutto’s secular politics, they supported his move to push through an

amendment in 1979 that restored separate electorates. The new system

was implemented in elections to local bodies in 1983 and again in

1985 during party-less national and provincial elections. In a referen-

dum held in 1984 to endorse his presidency Zia eschewed separate

electorates. It was projected not as a test of the president’s perform-

ance in office but as an endorsement of ‘the process … to bring the

laws of Pakistan in conformity with the injunctions of Islam’—a ques-

tion so carefully worded as to virtually exclude non-Muslims from

pronouncing on it while making it difficult for Muslims to oppose it

without seeming to be against Islam.

The erosion of the political rights of non-Muslims and the equation

in public discourse between Pakistani and Muslim occurred against the

backdrop of other measures that institutionalized discrimination

against non-Muslims and shifted perceptions about their position as

constituent elements of the Pakistani nation. In a series of changes to

penal code laws relating to religious offences, announced in 1985, Zia

singled out disrespect to Islam and the Prophet as offences carrying a

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

life sentence or death penalty. The amendments aroused wide concern

among non-Muslims, who feared that they would be especially vulner-

able to prosecution. At issue were not only their rights as citizens enti-

tled to equal protection under the law, but also uncertainty over the

state’s religious neutrality. The latter had been an important considera-

tion in the framing of the 1860 British Indian Penal Code from which

many of the so-called blasphemy laws had been derived and which had

served as a benchmark when incorporated into the statute books at

independence.

Religious neutrality had also been undermined by Zia’s decision to

alter the status of the 1949 Objectives Resolution from a Preamble,

which outlined the fundamental principles of the state, to a justiciable

part of the Constitution enforceable in law. In so doing he removed

the constitutional ambiguity at the heart of the Resolution that had

allowed Pakistan’s early law-makers to reassure the country’s religious

minorities about their legal and political rights. By contrast, there

emerged under Zia a more categorical assertion of the state’s primary

obligation to its Muslim citizens that, for the first time, through the

application of blasphemy laws, could potentially be tested in a court of

law. These laws were an extension of Zia’s ill-advised programme of

Islamization, reflecting impatience with the undetermined question of

Pakistan’s Islamic identity—impatience Zia sought to resolve by hard-

ening the boundaries of the nation through a system of legal exclusions

aimed at non-Muslims.

The success of Zia’s endeavours owed much to a cultural discourse

that had been closely, if unevenly, associated with the foundations of

the state, that being Muslim was a condition of being Pakistani. Under

Zia the practical implications of these assumptions found more room

to develop. One area in which they were more systematically pursued

was in public education school textbooks. A recent and much cited

study on the influence of the latter in shaping national identity in Paki-

stan found that a major consequence of the injection of ‘Muslim

majoritarianism’ under the guise of Zia’s Islamization programme into

the national curriculum in the 1980s, was the idea that ‘Pakistan is for

Muslims alone’.

It shows how ‘the process of equating Muslim and

Pakistani identities starts in very early school education’ and how dis-

tortions in the teaching of history have led to a perception of Paki-

stan’s non-Muslims as lacking the requisites to qualify for full

citizenship.

This has created an environment in which non-Muslims

WHO IS A PAKISTANI?

have been steadily relegated to second-class citizens, whose political

loyalties have repeatedly been questioned and whose not inconsidera-

ble contributions to Pakistani society systematically ignored.

The ‘democratic interregnum’ of the 1990s changed little. The PPP,

led by Benazir Bhutto, failed to roll back discriminatory legislation

against non-Muslims, while Nawaz Sharif moved further to extend

Zia’s Islamization programme by formalising the application of sharia

law. If implemented, it could well have served as the final repudiation

of Jinnah’s foundational statement endorsing the legal equality of all

Pakistan’s citizens. Nor did General Musharraf’s vision of ‘enlightened

moderation’ succeed in stemming the erosion of the rights of Pakistan’s

non-Muslim citizens. All blasphemy laws remain intact while an

attempt by Musharraf to implement the laws in a less arbitrary manner

than at present was jettisoned in the face of protest from pro-Islamic

parties. Musharraf was also forced to back down on a proposal in

2005 to delete the so-called ‘religion column’. First introduced in 1974

(and subsequently extended by Zia) to single out Ahmedis as non-

Muslims, it still requires all Pakistani passport holders to specify their

religious affiliation. Widely condemned by liberal politicians as intended

to single out non-Muslim citizens by forcing them to declare their reli-

gious beliefs and thereby leave them more vulnerable to discrimina-

tory legislation, it stands as an indictment of a state that has pre sided

over the steady erosion of the constitutional and legal rights of non-

Muslims, leaving them largely bereft of institutional protection.

However, Musharraf’s military regime did order the abolition of

separate electorates in 2002, which finally restored to non-Muslims

the right to vote for both general seats as well seats reserved for minor-

ities. Initially welcomed as a necessary step to force Muslim candidates

to canvass for support among non-Muslim constituents and possibly

even encourage parties to nominate non-Muslim candidates, it has

since been condemned by non-Muslim organizations as failing in prac-

tice genuinely to enfranchise their communities. In a system still domi-

nated by the clan-based politics of patronage, they argue, it is Muslim

politicians rather than non-Muslim voters who decide who is to repre-

sent non-Muslims in the seats reserved for religious minorities in

national and provincial assemblies. Marginalised and ignored by politi-

cal campaigns in the run-up to the 2008 general elections, they point

to the fact that of the twelve non-Muslim candidates contesting general

seats to the National Assembly and six contesting general seats for the

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

provincial assemblies, most failed to receive endorsement from the

main parties and thus none was successful.

It is generally assumed that the erosion of Jinnah’s pluralist and

secular vision of Pakistan has been due either to a state centralization

contemptuous of ethnic diversity or to state-driven Islamization intent

on disciplining, if not marginalizing, religious difference. While it is

undeniable that these processes have defined the criteria of ‘belonging’,

the exclusionary political discourses and practices with which they are

associated are a consequence of a more profound uncertainty about

Pakistan’s national identity and a lack of consensus regarding Islam’s

relation to the state. Much of this uncertainty was historically embed-

ded in doubts about the value of pluralism, which so characteristically

defined the movement for Pakistan. Pursuing a strict consensus

informed by the language of a ‘given’ universal Islamic community, it

lacked the imagination and confidence either to conceive of the nation

as a ‘political project’ or to envisage the act of belonging as a ‘political

argument’.

THE BURDEN OF ISLAM

THE SACRALIZATION OF POLITICS

It would seem self-evident that, as a Muslim homeland built in the

name of Islam, Pakistan would be better equipped than most states to

define the role of Islam in national politics. Yet the debate on the place

of Islam in national life has raged on, muddied by the claims and

counter-claims of its many protagonists. That it should continue to do

so is in very large measure a reflection, if not a symptom, of the ideo-

logical confusion at the heart of a state still trapped in myths of its

own making. All states rely on myths, which they nurture to lend

meaning to the imagined political community. What is peculiar to

Pakistan is that the myths so carefully cultivated to sustain the national

edifice turned out after independence to be embarrassments that

needed to be shrouded from view or embellished in ways that made

them more palatable.

So it was that the carefully cultivated myth of Pakistan as a ‘nation’

of Muslims ill at ease with Indian secularism came to weigh heavily

upon the country’s first generation of leaders. Prompted by their own

(often ill-defined) secular leanings, they chose to reconcile their quest

for a modern constitutional framework based on religion by claiming

that Islam was not a mere religion (as was Hinduism) but the blueprint

for a comprehensive social and political order capable of adapting to

the mod ernity of nationalism. In doing so, they drew heavily on an

established modernist tradition of Indo-Muslim thinking that aimed

to free Islam from the pre-modern associations commonly attached to

religion.

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

At the head of this campaign was Muhammad Iqbal, who though

significantly more radical in his thinking than his predecessors Sayyid

Ahmed Khan and Amir Ali, like them proclaimed modernity to be

Islam’s birthright.

But this claim was also implicit in Jinnah’s under-

standing of Islam as modern. As Metcalf has perceptively observed,

while Jinnah’s cosmopolitanism inclined him (like Nehru) to regard

religion as archaic, what singled him out from his secular-minded peers

in Congress was the claim that ‘Islam was not a religion’—a view he

then used formally to buttress the claim in March 1940 that ‘the Mus-

lims were a nation, not a religion’.

‘The problem of India’ he declared,

‘is not of an inter-communal character but manifestly of an interna-

tional one and it must be treated as such’.

Nor, he later added, were

Islam and Hinduism ‘religions in the strict sense of the word’—they

were two ‘nations’.

Jinnah, no romantic he, soon realized that, while the principles of

Islam might represent a panacea for the resolution of the Muslim

national question, they were unlikely to help address the real short-

comings of Muslim society. These shortcomings were brutally exposed

at Partition, when Muslims (like others) demonstrated that the prime-

val impulses of their religion remained dangerously in place.

August 1947 Jinnah was forced to recognize that, whatever the

national claims on behalf of Islam, he could not tame the Islamic tiger.

In his famous inaugural speech to the first meeting of the Constituent

Assembly, he appeared to acknowledge the damaging effects flowing

from the use of religious rhetoric to justify his demand for Pakistan.

‘You will find,’ he observed, ‘that in the course of time Hindus would

cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the

religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual but

in the political sense as citizens of the state.’

Many have since interpreted this extraordinary re-statement of Jin-

nah’s vision as evidence of his unequivocal preference for a secular

state—although he did not, significantly, go as far as to use the word

secular. But Jinnah’s speech also fuelled fears among others, who won-

dered whether he had reneged on his commitment to the new country’s

founding ideology—the two nation-theory. While neither claim has

ever been decisively established, what it suggested was that Jinnah,

having mobilised Islam’s vote-winning potential, now sought to curb

its destructive power by confining religion to the private sphere. It would

set the tone for future battles over conflicting conceptions of Pakistan.

THE BURDEN OF ISLAM

Holy battles

These tensions first surfaced in the constitution-making process, which

extended for almost a decade, and culminated in the country’s first

constitution in 1956. This period was dominated by debates, the most

sustained of which centred on the role of Islam in the new state. In and

of itself, this was perhaps not unusual for a country with an over-

whelming Muslim majority. But instead of the confidence that was

expected to flow from this distinct Muslim identity, the process was

dogged by uncertainties. Binder, one of the most perceptive observers

of Pakistan’s constitutional endeavours in these early years, concluded

that ‘nowhere has the element of democratic nationalism been so

weak, the desire for an Islamic constitution so generally admitted, and

the cleavage between the Western-educated and the ‘ulama so wide’.

Divisions that have since been cast as ones between ‘traditionalists’

and ‘modernists’—if not between ‘fundamentalists’ and ‘secularists’—

were by no means hard and fast distinctions. On the contrary, they

often masked a more diffuse Islamic romanticism that cut across the

political spectrum, making the task of fleshing out Pakistan’s identity

as a modern Muslim state even more difficult.

Jinnah’s own prevarication did little to clear the confusion. In a

speech to the Sind Bar Association in Karachi on 25 January 1948, he

even seemed ready to abandon his earlier stance, which had called for

religion to be kept out of politics, and denouncing as ‘mischief’ attempts

to ignore ‘Shari‘at Law’ as the basis of Pakistan’s constitution.

While

few would deny that these inconsistencies were to be expected from

Jinnah, who by that time was consumed by fatal ill-health, they set an

unfortunate precedent for his successors. Many have since used the

ambiguity cultivated by Jinnah to negotiate their own positions and, in

doing so, have continued the legacy of a movement that under Jinnah

himself came to represent all things to all men.

The Objectives Resolution passed in March 1949, which has served

as a preamble for all three of Pakistan’s constitutions (1956, 1962 and

1973), was symptomatic of this ambiguity.

Though regarded as the

country’s ‘constitutional Grundnorm’,

its endorsement was marred

by a discord that demonstrated the fragility of the consensus underpin-

ning the new state. This became plain during clashes on the floor of

the Constituent Assembly, where the gulf separating Pakistan’s secu-

larising elite and its men of religion marked the onset of a battle that

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

rumbles on today. At issue was how best to provide a constitutional

niche for Islam that recognized its importance in the creation of the state

while containing its influence in dictating policy and framing laws.

The country’s dominant, governing elite in these early years was

drawn mainly from the urban professional classes of north-central

India. Though they represented a formidable presence in Pakistan,

their lack of local roots meant that few could do without some form of

Islamic legitimation. But such legitimacy came at a price, which

involved compromising the secular objectives with which these classes

were closely associated. The religious lobby (consisting of both the

traditional ulama and religious parties), although seemingly vigorous

in style and rhetoric, was also constrained. Many of its members had

been vocal critics of Jinnah’s scheme for a separate Muslim state,

which few believed was intended to be an Islamic state. The religious

lobby was soon seduced when Jinnah, having failed to obtain consti-

tutional concessions from Congress, promised an Islamic government

to mobilize the hitherto tepid support of the Muslim-majority prov-

inces of Punjab and Bengal. Nevertheless, many still harboured reser-

vations about Pakistan—reservations compounded both by fears of

Jinnah’s instinctively secular preferences as well as by concerns that

support for a territorial state was tantamount to rejecting the primacy

of the universal Muslim community defended by classical Islam.

These reservations were not confined to the traditional men of reli-

gion, the ulama. Indeed it has been argued that ‘the idea of making

Pakistan an Islamic state began with the politicians and not the

ulama’.

Among them were Islamist politicians, who were closely

allied to the Jamaat-i-Islami, who acted as the main catalyst to ensure

that Islamic concerns would be taken into account by law makers

entrusted with drafting the 1956 Constitution.

These efforts, which

were also instrumental in persuading the ulama to join the fray in sup-

port of an Islamic constitution, were finally rewarded with the adop-

tion of the 1949 Objectives Resolution. Projected at the time by the

Jamaat as a decisive victory for its campaign in support of an Islamic

constitution, it has since come also to be regarded by many historians

as the first in a series of major concessions secured by the Jamaat from

the country’s secular leadership. Just how far law-makers themselves

accepted these claims remains unclear, but what is not in doubt is that

the promulgation of the Resolution pointed conclusively to the grow-

ing political muscle of the religious lobby. The alliance between the

THE BURDEN OF ISLAM

Jamaat and the religious establishment represented by the ulama,

although uneasy, was successful in leaving its stamp on the Resolution.

Its influence showed especially with regard to two issues. The first

was the affirmation of Divine over popular sovereignty, thus setting

limits on the scope of parliament and interpreting its responsibilities as

a ‘sacred trust’. The second concerned the obligation of the state to

‘enable’ Muslims to ‘order their lives … in accord with the teaching

and requirements of Islam as set out in the Holy Quran and Sunna’.

Nevertheless the governing elite, led by the country’s first Prime Min-

ister Liaquat Ali Khan, vigorously denied that the Objectives Resolu-

tion, by recognizing Divine sovereignty, proposed to erode the power

or authority of ‘the chosen representatives of the people’ or that there

was ‘any danger of the establishment of a theocracy’.

Nor, he

claimed, was the affirmation of Divine sovereignty incompatible with

the emergence of Pakistan as a ‘sovereign independent state’ as indi-

cated in the second paragraph of the Resolution.

Addressing fears that the Resolution’s so-called ‘enabling clause’,

which committed the state to assist Muslims ‘to order their lives in the

individual and collective spheres in accordance with the teachings and

requirements of Islam’,

privileged Muslims over others, Liaquat

invoked Islam’s spirit of tolerance, insisting that it served as a model

for the state’s fair treatment of minorities. Not to show tolerance, he

claimed, would be to ‘transgress[ing] the dictates of our religion’.

But

Liaquat also reiterated that ‘the state was not to play the part of a

neutral observer, wherein Muslims may be merely free to profess and

practise their religion, because such an attitude would be a very nega-

tion of the ideals which prompted the demand for Pakistan’. Instead,

he said, ‘the state will create such conditions as are conducive to the

building up of a truly Islamic society, which means that the state will

have to play a positive part in this effort’.

Liaquat was strongly supported by the leadership of the Muslim

League, whose members in the Constituent Assembly backed the Reso-

lution as consistent both with Islam and with what they believed to be

Jinnah’s vision of the state of Pakistan. But, even then, there was obvi-

ously little consensus on the kind of Islam that would underpin the

constitutional foundations of the state, and much uncertainty about

Jinnah’s understanding of the state’s relation to Islam. Some, like Mian

Iftikharuddin, the left-leaning member from Punjab, voted against the

Resolution on the grounds that it did not represent what he called ‘a

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

proper Islamic constitution’ since it ignored the ‘progressive’, ‘revolu-

tionary’ and ‘democratic’ dimensions of Islam.

Others however,

including Jinnah’s close political associate, Abdur Rab Nishtar, spoke

in favour of the Resolution precisely for what he claimed was its accu-

rate representation of Islam, which rejected any ‘divorce between reli-

gion and politics’.

Citing Jinnah’s often repeated claim that ‘Islam was a complete code

of life’, Nishtar also declared that the Resolution was wholly consist-

ent with Jinnah’s notion that ‘religion governs not only our relations

with God, but also our activities in other spheres of life’.

More sig-

nificantly, while he acknowledged that Jinnah had indeed pledged to

protect the country’s minorities, Nishtar doubted whether Jinnah ever

questioned that his first obligation was to ‘the Muslim majority’ for

whom the state had been created and for whom Nishtar claimed the

Resolution had been primarily framed.

Interestingly, some among the

ulama also justified their support for the Resolution by claiming that

its goal to establish a state based on Islam chimed with Jinnah’s ‘ideas’.

The prominent Deobandi alim and member of the Constituent Assem-

bly, Maulana Shabbir Ahmed Usmani, was among them.

Although the divisions between the Western-educated elite and the

religious lobby were real, the tenor of these early constitutional debates

suggests that the desire for some kind of constitution based on Islam

was more widespread than is perhaps acknowledged. It is true that

many secular politicians succumbed readily to the temptation of

appealing to Islam in order to paper over the cracks that surfaced after

independence. But most also found it hard to discard the memory of

the closing years of empire, which had been dominated by visions of

an Islamically informed constitutional order, which they equated with

a state governed by Islam, even if what they meant was obscured by

the lack of consensus over Islam. What is also clear is that for the vast

majority of this first generation of leaders, the Islamic basis of the

Pakistani state was to be reflected not so much in legal injunctions

embodied in the constitution of the state, but in the affirmation of

Islamic ethical and social concerns—a legacy of nineteenth-century

Indo-Muslim apologists who, by asserting that every social virtue was

contained in Islam, often ended up romanticizing the principles of an

Islamic polity.

The ambiguities of the Objectives Resolution and the so-called

‘repugnancy clause’ of the 1956 constitution, which committed the

THE BURDEN OF ISLAM

state to reject any law opposed to the Quran or Sunnah, testified to the

influence of this legacy of Islamic romanticism. But it also reflected the

weakness of Pakistan’s secular politicians, who were fearful of the

power of the religious lobby upon which they had to rely not only to

ensure the final success of the movement for Pakistan but also to lend

them a patina of legitimacy in circumstances where few could call

upon the support of local constituencies. Bereft of their bases of power

and faced with growing challenges from regional separatists in Bengal,

Sind, the North West Frontier Province and Balochistan, they had little

choice but to fall back on Islam as both a source of legitimacy and the

basis of national unity. With the exception of a handful of Hindu

members of parliament who opposed an Islamic constitution, few

Muslim politicians, including the more secular-minded among muhajir

politicians, were able to conceal their belief in the intrinsic superiority

of an Islamic constitutional order.

The real dividing line between these separate camps lay then not in

their differences over the desirability of an Islamically informed consti-

tutional order but in their understanding of what that order entailed—a

division reminiscent of the tension between the idea of a pre-existing

Muslim nation and a Muslim nation in-the-making. The religious

lobby, consisting of the ulama and religious parties dominated by the

Jamaat-i-Islami, confidently declared that the nature of an Islamic state

was knowable, if not yet known. On the other hand, the self-pro-

claimed secular Muslim intelligentsia was given to improvisation while

still waiting for Pakistan’s true Islamic spirit to unfold through the

working of a yet-to-be-defined political system.

Not surprisingly, non-Muslims who uniformly opposed the Resolu-

tion were at odds with their Muslim counterparts. They claimed that

the Resolution represented a deviation from Jinnah’s vision and

insisted that Jinnah himself ‘most unequivocally said that Pakistan will

be a secular state’.

Some even argued that ‘were this Resolution to

come before this House within the life-time of the great creator of

Pakistan, the Quaid-i-Azam, it would not have come in its present

shape’.

Be that as it may, opposition to the Resolution was confined

almost entirely to members belonging to Hindu and other religious

minorities, who feared that its stress on an Islamic dispensation threat-

ened to compromise the secular state and, with it, the right of non-

Muslim citizens to claim equality with their Muslim counterparts.

Their concerns raised questions that would return to haunt Pakistan in

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

later years, for while the debate over Divine against popular sover-

eignty appeared to fade away with each new constitution (1962,

1973), its implications resonate to the present day. Then as now these

questions centred on the issue of whether, having acknowledged God’s

sovereignty, the state was also duty-bound to enforce His law (the

sharia) as supreme.

Then, as now, many were persuaded that the question would have a

vital bearing both on the rights of the country’s religious minorities

and on the future of Pakistan as a secular state committed to the equal-

ity of all its citizens. Hindu members of the Constituent Assembly,

who represented almost a quarter of the population of East Bengal,

voiced some of the strongest objections to the Objectives Resolution in

1949. They feared (not without reason) that the sovereignty clause,

which sought to privilege Islamic law, (sharia) would not only

encroach upon the equal rights of religious minorities but also erode

the authority of parliament to guarantee those rights. These fears

would be confirmed in years to come but the signs were already appar-

ent. Under the 1956 constitution the ceremonial post of Head of State

(or president) was reserved for Muslims—a provision retained under

the 1962 constitution. But by the time the 1973 Constitution came to

be promulgated, non-Muslims were denied access to the posts both of

president and prime minister.

This shift was particularly striking in the light of Liaquat’s categori-

cal statement, following the approval of the Objectives Resolution in

March 1949, in which he condemned ulama groups as enemies of

Islam for suggesting that non-Muslims in Pakistan would henceforth

be denied the right to head ‘the administration’. ‘This,’ he declared,

‘was absolutely wrong,’ insisting that the Objectives Resolution had

accepted that ‘a non-Muslim can be head of the administration’, leav-

ing many to understand that he intended ‘the administration’ to mean

‘the government’. But in a fashion characteristic of the leadership,

Liaquat immediately muddied the waters by invoking the idea of the

‘Islamic state’ that he believed would be ‘established in accordance with

this Resolution’.

This fuelled doubts about the secular commitments

of Pakistan’s first generation of leaders and re-opened the door to

Islamic parties determined to regain the initiative at a time when the lack

of consensus over the role of Islam in defining the state was palpable.

General Ayub Khan’s military coup of 1958, which put an abrupt

end to this process, temporarily salvaged the cause of Pakistan’s secular

THE BURDEN OF ISLAM

intelligentsia. By steering Pakistan away from an overtly ideological

(that is, Islamic) stance to more developmental concerns, he succeeded

in shifting the debate along lines that favoured the country’s secular

elites. According to Nasr, national politics now came to focus not so

much on ‘why Pakistan was created’ but ‘where Pakistan was head-

ing’.

This is not to say that Ayub’s pro-secular regime had no vision

of the role it intended to reserve for Islam in public life. But it was a

vastly simplified formula that reflected Ayub’s style of paternalistic

politics and was clearly designed to fit what he fondly referred to as

the ‘genius’ of the Pakistani nation.

It involved, first, harnessing Islam as a force for political unity; and

second, projecting it as an engine of socio-economic development. In

so doing, Ayub fell squarely within the Muslim modernist tradition to

which he had been exposed as a young student at Aligarh College.

There he had forged his conviction that Islam was not a mere religion

but a ‘movement’ that was both ‘dynamic and progressive’

, thus

echoing Jinnah’s own description of Islam as not a religion but a com-

prehensive social order with the power to determine the contours of a

modern Muslim nation. In this way, Ayub also sought, much as Jinnah

before him, to appropriate the right claimed by the both the ulama and

religious parties, notably the Jamaat-i-Islami, to interpret Islam.

Ayub’s use of Islam as a force for political unity differed in one

important respect from his predecessors. By regulating religious dis-

course in the service of a strong state he assumed that, over time, the

benefits of the latter would trickle down and create a strong nation

capable of standing without the aid of Islamic crutches. The case for

this so-called ‘trickle-down’ theory was supported in large part by the

philosophy of Ayub’s economic policy, which assumed that strong

economic growth, however asymmetric, would eventually lay the foun-

dations for wider economic welfare. Although none of these assump-

tions was vindicated, they served as powerful engines to modernise

the regime.

Ayub’s admiration for the Kemalist experiment in Turkey also

played a part. Like the Turkish leader, Kemal Atatürk, Ayub hoped

that wide-ranging social and economic reforms would help sever his

country’s links with its immediate past and, by extension, its ideologi-

cal mooring in Islam. But as Ziring has persuasively argued, any com-

parison between the two was doomed to failure: while Turkey was

successfully salvaged from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire to emerge

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

as a sovereign state, Pakistan remained the prisoner of a ‘colonial dis-

pensation that had little relevance to the contemporary nation-state’.

More importantly, he observes, while the circumstances of World

War I had assured Turkey an ‘instant national identity’, Pakistan

surfaced in the wake of a shambolic transfer of power by the British

Raj as ‘as a truncated structure, housing a diverse, disparate and

divided people’.

Ayub eventually understood this but not before trying in vain to

reformulate Islam in ways that would by-pass the religious establish-

ment. The method he adopted was bureaucratic in approach and

involved managing Islamic discourse through the official sponsorship

of a flock of advisory councils and research institutes. Not surpris-

ingly, it failed to win the backing of the country’s religious parties,

which were determined to challenge Ayub’s attempt to curb its powers

to interpret Islam. Having secured from the secular leadership the right

to define the constitutional identity of Pakistan as Islamic, they now

sought to consolidate those gains by strengthening its monopoly over

the public expression of Islam. Nevertheless, Ayub did succeed, par-

tially at least in the early years of his administration, in rolling back

the space afforded to Islam as a guide to public policy. With hindsight

it is clear that what he was engaged in was not so much evicting Islam

from the public sphere as restoring to it a modernist rendering of

Islam, which he believed more faithfully reflected the original vision of

Pakistan. ‘Our mind,’ he declared, ‘is the mind of Islam, which is capa-

ble of expressing … the language of science, the language of economics

and the language of current affairs.’

There was little ambiguity about Ayub’s own role in this venture.

He sought nothing less than to steer Pakistan under his tutelage

towards the right kind of Islam and away from the obscurantist Islam

of the ulama. It has prompted some to suggest that, in so doing, he

effectively ‘Pakistanised’ Islam and opened the way for Jinnah’s secular

two-nation theory to be replaced by a Pakistani ‘ideology of Islam’—

which would serve as ‘a national ideology, a principle of unity between

the two wings of Pakistan and a flexible code of life befitting the mod-

ern age’.

His most significant achievement in this regard was the

promulgation in July 1961 of the Muslim Family Laws Ordinance,

which aimed to establish greater consistency between the legally per-

missible and the morally acceptable in matters affecting Muslim mar-

riage, divorce, the age of consent and inheritance.

But it also reflected

THE BURDEN OF ISLAM

a fresh and concerted move by the country’s secular leadership to

assert a monopoly on existing forms of religious expression—an

attempt that set the stage for a bitter struggle between Ayub and pro-

Islamic parties, which rallied behind the Jamaat-i-Islami to condemn

the measure. The Jamaat’s efforts to bury the Ordinance failed to make

headway as Ayub moved swiftly to resist the challenge by seeking judi-

cial protection for its provisions. It ensured that the Ordinance

remained in force until it finally secured protection under the 1973

constitution. Nevertheless, its limited enforcement has lent credence to

the view that the Ordinance ‘functioned more as a symbolic point of

attack by fundamentalists than as an instrument of large-scale social

change’ and that its modest gains have been largely overshadowed by

the Islamic distortions of a criminal justice system for women that

occurred in the 1980s.

Ayub’s campaign to ease the burden of Islam and encourage a more

secular discourse had extracted a heavy price from his critics among

the ulama and their Islamist allies. In 1963 they forced him to reinstate

Pakistan as an Islamic Republic after months of protest against his

1962 Constitution, which had referred simply to the ‘Republic of Paki-

stan’. Embattled and on the defensive, he now turned to the mainly

rural-based purveyors of mystical or ‘folk’ Islam (sufis) in the hope of

mobilizing their support against the predominantly urban-based cleri-

cal opposition. Just how far he succeeded in persuading the masters of

rural Islam to legitimise his modernizing agenda remains unclear.

Indeed, opinion is divided between those who claim that Ayub

extended his modernizing programme into the rural hinterland by

offering new interpretations of Sufi Islam more consistent with ideas

of development,

and those who insist that his alliance with rural reli-

gious leaders actually retarded the process of modernization in the

countryside by strengthening the hold of traditional forces.

What is

not in doubt is that in so doing Ayub continued a long tradition

involving secular leaders, who had relied on rural-based spiritual lead-

ers (pirs) and guardians of local shrines (sajjida nashin) to curb the

hostility of urban-based ulama doubting their Islamic credentials. They

included Jinnah, whose canny alliance with local pirs in the Punjab in

the 1940s had effectively neutralized opposition from the ulama suspi-

cious of his secular discourse.

By working to forge alliances with

Muslim spiritual leaders in the countryside, Ayub like Jinnah and those

who followed him, grew less certain of the relationship between Islam

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

and the state. This uncertainty was aggravated by their tendency to use

the language of Islam to generate various forms of power—power that

was neither accountable nor within reach of ordinary democratic proc-

esses, such as elections.

The embarrassment of an educated political elite fraternising with

semi-literate purveyors of Islamic practice, commonly equated with

backwardness and superstition, meant that these contacts had officially

to be disavowed. Indeed, Ayub had pitched his regime’s legitimacy on

waging a successful campaign against forms of religion that he had

repeatedly claimed were antithetical to the modern Muslim mentality.

In so doing, he reflected the concerns of Pakistan’s first generation of

political leaders, who prided themselves as the heirs of the spirit of

Aligarh, which had placed a high premium on rationality and frowned

on the spread of popular or folk Islam. But this attachment to formal

learning and disdain for popular Islam was also shared by sections of

the Deobandi ulama and their Islamist allies, who used it to hone a

national discourse dedicated to ridding Pakistan of the corrupt and

impure customs associated with folk Islam. Their opposition to Ayub’s

modernist agenda tended to blur these similarities, much as in the years

immediately following independence when the debate over Pakistan’s

Islamic identity had appeared to separate ‘modernists’ from ‘tradition-

alists’ even though both held tenaciously (albeit for very different rea-

sons) to the idea of reserving a role for Islam in the definition of the

country’s national identity.

These apparent divisions resurfaced under Ayub, accentuated by the

scope and pace of his secular reforms. His attempt to appropriate the

ulama’s rights to interpret the role of Islam in the public sphere also

antagonised them and their Islamist allies. In their opposition to the

regime they could count on the support of regional parties, especially

in Sind and Bengal, which had grown to resent the concentration of

power at the centre and the widening disparities between Punjab and

Pakistan’s poorer provinces. Ayub’s authoritarian style of government

and his brutal suppression of ethnic conflict deepened this political alien-

ation forcing him, in time, to appeal to Islamic solidarity in an attempt

to overcome divisions and shore up the legitimacy of his regime.

The Combined Opposition Party (COP) which emerged to contest

the 1965 presidential elections and staged a two-pronged attack against

authoritarian and secularism failed to mount a realistic challenge. Led

by a motley coalition of religious zealots, leftists and ethno-nationalists,

THE BURDEN OF ISLAM

it nominated the frail and politically inexperienced Fatima Ali Jinnah

as its presidential candidate against Ayub. Though revered as the sister

of Pakistan’s founder, her symbolic appeal was not enough to oust the

incumbent. As a woman, Fatima Jinnah also stirred feelings of pro-

found ambivalence among the Deobandi ulama and the pro-Islamic

parties, which were characteristically hostile to women in public life

and which until then had typically refused to endorse a Muslim woman

as head of state. That they did so was a measure of pragmatism since

they ran the risk of being castigated as the peddlers of double stand-

ards. Worse, they stood to be out-manoeuvred by Ayub, who set aside

his regard for the rights of women by declaring that a woman was not,

after all, fit to rule! In this he called on the support of the Barelvi

ulama and their network of local pirs and assorted sajjida nashins to

vie with the Jamaat as representatives of true Islam—disturbing evi-

dence of the manipulation of religious expression as a means to hold-

ing onto power.

With hindsight Ayub was more effective than most in riding the

crest of Islamist opposition. When his regime finally collapsed its

downfall was more readily attributable to Pakistan’s defeat in the war

against India in 1965 and to the strength of regional movements in

Bengal and Sind than to any pressure from organized Islamist forces.

Indeed the surge of populist politics spearheaded by the PPP and the

Awami League threatened for a while completely to engulf Islamic par-

ties, whose dismal showing in the 1970 elections reflected their politi-

cal weakness. However the political crisis in East Pakistan, which

followed the general elections, gave Islamist forces the opportunity to

regain the initiative. Their target was the Awami League’s brand of

secularism, which parties like the Jamaat-i-Islami vigorously opposed.

Its student organization, the Islami Jamiat-i-Tulaba (IJT), played a key

role in this, mobilizing its forces and driving a campaign against ‘the

enemies of Islam’. This was underscored by its involvement in counter-

insurgency operations during the 1971 civil war in East Pakistan and

its role in the organization of the para-military al-Badr and al-Shams

brigades, which functioned as Islamist shock-troops. These alignments

laid the foundations for a far-reaching alliance at the very heart of the

state between Islamists and army, which would allow both sides to

benefit in the decades to come. The army, soon to be embroiled in

military adventures in Afghanistan and Kashmir, would receive reli-

gious sanction while religious parties, long denied access to state

power, would gain in prominence.

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

This dramatic realignment between Islamist forces and their erst-

while secular-minded foes in the army was largely underpinned by the

ethos imparted to troops drawn from West Pakistan. They were

instructed in the belief that by fighting the local Bengali population,

they were fending off India and, by extension, a Hindu challenge to

the Islamic way of life. For Islamists the alliance proved to be an unex-

pected boon. Co-operation with a key state institution not only averted

the threat of political marginalization posed by the election results but

also helped see off critics who had questioned the nationalist creden-

tials of Islamic parties, which had expressed reservations about the

idea of Pakistan before independence. It was the popular turn to Islam

following the secession of East Pakistan that allowed the re-entry of

Islamist parties into national politics and ensured that they lived to

fight another day.

But the dynamics of the new political landscape had also become

more complex and the outcome of any struggle for supremacy less

certain. At one level Islamic parties stood to benefit from a climate in

which answers to the national predicament were being sought in Islam.

This was merely a short distance from the claim that secularism itself

was to blame for the crisis. The ‘secular’ ways of national leaders, and

in particular those associated with the military regime of General

Yahya Khan, who had taken over after Ayub’s resignation in 1969,

would soon come to serve as evidence. In a characteristic assessment

of the time, the authors of the Hamoodur Rahman Commission

charged to investigate the events of 1971 civil war noted that, ‘the

belief appears to be universally entertained by all sections of our peo-

ple that one of the major causes of our disgrace was the moral degen-

eration which had set in among senior army commanders’ that

included among others ‘lust for wine and women’.

The most serious

allegations centred on General Yahya, whose addiction to ‘heavy

drinking’ and questionable friendship ‘with a number of ladies of indif-

ferent repute’

was held up as indisputable evidence that ‘secularism’

had corroded the moral fabric of the leadership and hastened the dis-

integration of the nation.

This shift was also reflected in the weakening of the country’s found-

ing ideology—the two-nation theory—which now came to be seen as

too closely tied to the secular vision associated with Jinnah and the

country’s first generation of politicians. It led to the understanding

that, having lost its eastern wing, the ‘new’ Pakistan could afford to

THE BURDEN OF ISLAM

shed the legacy of a historical past rooted in South Asia. Instead, it

turned west towards the Muslim Middle East, where it hoped more

firmly to anchor its Islamic identity, which many believed had eluded

the state so long as it faced resistance from the Bengalis who were con-

tent to relegate religion to the private sphere. As such, there was an

overwhelming sense that Pakistan could yet emerge from this crisis

strengthened by a final reconciliation between Islam and nationalism.

The long and uneasy co-operation between the country’s two wings, it

was felt, had stood far too long in the way of Pakistan realising its full

potential as a Muslim country.

To a large extent Z.A. Bhutto, who assumed power as Pakistan’s

first democratically elected prime minister, encapsulated the mood of

this new Pakistan. He steered the country more clearly perhaps than

any other leader before him in the direction of closer relations with the

Muslim heartland that lay to the west of its borders. He did so con-

sciously observing that ‘the severance of our eastern wing … has sig-

nificantly altered our geographic focus … At the moment, as we stand,

it is within the ambit of South and Western Asia. It is here that our

primary concern must henceforth lie.’

Internally too Bhutto signalled

changes that confirmed the new-found importance of Islam in the con-

duct of public affairs. His ruling PPP openly proclaimed the power of

‘Islamic socialism’ to drive its populist programme and, perhaps taking

a page out of Ayub’s book, moved quickly to forge alliances with vari-

ous local pirs—although unlike Ayub he showed little inclination to

challenge the Islamists by seeking to exercise a monopoly over public

expressions of Islam.

On the contrary, Bhutto took credit for promulgating the country’s

most explicitly Islamic constitution yet. The 1973 constitution, which

remains in force, reiterated Pakistan’s identity as an Islamic Republic

and for the first time recognized Islam as the ‘State religion of Paki-

stan’. The teaching of Islam was made compulsory and a Council of

Islamic Ideology was established to advise the national and provincial

governments on legislation in keeping with the Quran and Sunna. In a

further unusual and equally unprecedented move, the Constitution

required the state also to ‘endeavour to preserve and strengthen frater-

nal relations among the Muslim countries based on Islamic unity’.

With the stage thus set to respond to long-standing demands by

Islamists and their allies among the ulama, it was expected that the era

of holy battles involving secularists and religious parties would steadily

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

lose momentum as a broader consensus emerged about the role of

Islam in politics and government. But these expectations proved to be

ill-founded as Bhutto tried in vain to render his regime’s secular image

more palatable to an Islamist opposition newly empowered by a cul-

tural climate keen to reaffirm Pakistan’s Islamic roots and a Constitu-

tion prepared to endorse it. The determination of the Islamists and

their allies among the ulama to take on Bhutto emerged almost as soon

as his government took power. An immediate issue on which religious

parties rallied was against recognition of Bangladesh, which they

strongly opposed, claiming it compromised the principle of Islamic

solidarity that had lent substance to Pakistan’s founding ideology—the

two-nation theory. They were supported by groups representing

mohajirs, who had been strong proponents of the two-nation theory.

Their stance on this occasion was informed however less by visions of

a Muslim nation than by the cause of thousands of Urdu-speaking

Biharis left stranded in Bangladesh, whose repatriation they expected

would add clout to their campaign to resist Bhutto’s pro-Sindhi poli-

cies. The Islamist opposition also drew on the support of public opin-

ion in Punjab, the heartland of the army, which was still smarting from

Pakistan’s humiliating military defeat at the hands of combined Ben-

gali nationalist and Indian forces.

Nevertheless, Bhutto’s room for manoeuvre vis-à-vis the Islamist

opposition was constrained by his need to win support for his new

Constitution, which had come under scrutiny from Islamic parties

pressing for Pakistan to be designated an Islamic republic. So evenly

balanced was this contest that, despite Bhutto’s strong electoral man-

date, when he did finally announce Pakistan’s official recognition of

Bangladesh in 1974, he felt obliged to do so with the full backing of

the international Muslim community gathered under the auspices of

the Islamic Summit Conference in Lahore. The strategy was the clear-

est demonstration yet of Bhutto’s part in consolidating a time-hon-

oured tradition among Pakistan’s political leaders to call on Islam to

meet the Islamist challenge. And as with his many illustrious predeces-

sors, starting with Jinnah, Bhutto too soon realized that the gains

flowing from such appeals were ephemeral. More importantly still,

and to his immense cost, he would also come to understand that Islam

could neither be selectively applied nor easily manipulated and that by

venturing to do so, he invited an Islamist backlash.

It was not long before Bhutto was caught off-guard by Islamic par-

ties bent on forcing him to establish his Islamic credentials. The robust-

THE BURDEN OF ISLAM

ness of the latter had long been doubted by Bhutto’s foes among the

ulama and the Islamist opposition, who condemned his apparently wil-

ful disregard of Islamic practices. His well-known taste for fine wine,

and women, combined with a political style that reinforced his image

as a Western-educated progressive all ensured that his secular demean-

our remained a live political issue. Bhutto fuelled the controversy by

publicly endorsing Pakistan as a ‘citadel of Islam in Asia’.

Mindful of

allegations that he was a wayward Muslim, and anxious to ward off

claims that his party had relied on the financial backing of Pakistan’s

Ahmedi community, in 1974 he stripped Ahmedis of their Muslim

status, hoping thereby to rehabilitate his image with his Islamist critics.

Like Ayub, Bhutto also relied on the guardians of folk Islam as an

alternative spiritual power base, given the ideological legitimacy denied

him by the keepers of high Islam—the ulama and their Islamist allies.

Bhutto’s patronage of the cult of the popular Sindhi saint, Lal Shahbaz

Qalandar, which was frowned upon by the orthodox ulama, signalled

his determination to draw on rival traditions of rural Islam. Not only

was he persuaded of the importance of the appeal of rural Islam among

the poor, but he was also certain that strengthening this nexus was

vital to maintain his control over the countryside.

Ultimately these

efforts failed: the appeal to popular Islam neither empowered Bhutto’s

regime nor protected him from the wrath of his Islamist foes.

Indeed, the Islamist opposition to Bhutto moved concertedly to out-

manoeuvre him by sharpening their discourse and calling for the intro-

duction of a Prophetic Order or Nizam-i-Mustapha. It was supported

by local holy men in rural Punjab and parts of rural Sindh, who were

closely allied to the Barelvi ulama, organized as the Jamiat-i-Ulama-i-

Pakistan (JUP). They favoured a more lenient approach to promoting

the cult of the Prophet and to intercession at the shrines of rural saints,

both of which were routinely condemned by the more orthodox

Deobandi clergy as well as by the urban supporters of the Jamaat-i-

Islami. However, these differences were suspended as the campaign

against Bhutto gained momentum and coalesced around a slogan that,

by calling simply for the ‘rule of the Prophet’, appeared to be free from

the confusion that had beset the pro-Islamic lobby’s attempts to define

an Islamic state.

By asserting that the Prophet was the perfect governor and the

Quran a perfect book of law, the need to define the Islamic state and

to produce an appropriate constitution, which had so confounded the

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

early generation of secular and religious leaders, seemed much less

urgent. Instead, the issue of Pakistan’s putative Islamic identity now

appeared to be premised more simply on a series of what were assumed

to be, for Muslims at least, self-evident truths. Confronted with this

challenge, Bhutto tried one last time to outwit his opponents, not by

appealing to folk Islam, but by seeking to generate the power that

flowed from the democratic process tied to the ballot-box. In March

1977 he ordered general elections and was widely accused by the

Islamist opposition (freshly re-cast as the Pakistan National Alliance—

PNA) of rigging them in his favour. Desperate to salvage his future,

Bhutto now moved to co-opt the opposition by emerging as the cham-

pion of Islamization. In a series of dramatic and widely publicized

announcements, he ordered a ban on alcohol, an end to gambling

and the closure of nightclubs. All had been projected by the ulama

and their Islamist allies as essential conditions of their vision of Nizam-

i-Mustapha. The move marked the triumph of Islamic activists in

Pakistan. Though thwarted by a military coup from making a bid for

state power, their gains would henceforth be abundantly reflected in a

new dispensation that, for the first time, not only took account of

Islam in the very texture of state and society, but significantly eased

the passage of Islamist forces from the margins to the centre of

national political discourse.

In the name of Islam

This development was pushed forward by Pakistan’s military ruler,

General Zia ul Haq, who ousted Bhutto in July 1977. After hailing the

‘spirit of Islam’ that had forced Bhutto to relinquish power, he

declared: ‘[i]t proves that Pakistan, which was created in the name of

Islam, will continue to survive only if it sticks to Islam. That is why I

consider the introduction of an Islamic system as an essential prereq-

uisite for the country.’

While there is no doubt that, like many of

Pakistan’s political leaders since independence, including Jinnah, Zia’s

need for regime legitimacy fuelled his desire to tap the repertory of

Islam, he was exceptional in declaring from the outset that he intended

to ride the Islamist wave rather than stamp on it.

But like his predecessors, he too soon found that merely acknowl-

edging the Islamist tiger was not enough; it was necessary to keep pace

with it. And indeed it was the slow pace of Zia’s Islamization pro-

THE BURDEN OF ISLAM

gramme and his reluctance consistently to endorse the Islamist concep-

tion of the state, rather any personal compromise with secular values,

that eventually diluted the enthusiasm of his early supporters in the

Jamaat-i-Islami, thus prompting him to turn to (and eventually bolster)

the ulama parties. Conveniently for Zia, the ulama’s concerns lay not

so much in plans to introduce an Islamic state, about which they

remained famously ambiguous, but in the reform of society along lines

deemed more in keeping with Islam.

Zia’s reforms, to the extent that they came increasingly to depend

upon the Islam of the ulama, reflected this subtle but fundamental shift

away from the narrowly political concerns of the Jamaat’s demand for

an Islamic state towards changes aimed at transforming society as a

whole. As such, Zia’s vision of the Prophetic Order (or Nizam-i-Mus-

tapha) called for the implementation of Islamic laws that would, in the

first instance, regulate social and economic transactions—leaving for

later the Islamization of the state itself. The working assumption was

that an Islamic state had to be preceded by an ‘Islamized’ citizenry.

While this assumption proved to be politically expedient for Zia, who

was concerned above all to legitimize his military regime, it also car-

ried force in a climate of national uncertainty that had prompted a

fresh turn to Islam in order to address the crisis of identity caused by

the loss of East Pakistan. Although Bhutto’s economic and social poli-

cies had been widely expected to ease the sense of national malaise, his

government’s failure to live up to expectation was equated with the

failure of secular regimes, which stood condemned for their tenuous

attachment to Islam. Paradoxically, Bhutto’s transparently insincere

attempts to play the Islamic card, far from fuelling a revulsion against

the political uses of Islam, intensified the drive to anchor the state

more firmly in the principles of Islam.

It was in this climate of enduring uncertainty that Zia set about

addressing the ambiguities that surrounded Pakistan’s putative Islamic

identity. His first port of call was the famous Objectives Resolution,

which having served until then as a preamble to successive constitu-

tions, was in 1985 made ‘justiciable’—that is to say, made subject to

enforcement by the courts.

The significance of the move lay in the

formal application of the so-called ‘enabling clause’ included in the

Resolution, which obliged the state to create conditions such as to

‘enable’ Muslims to order their public and private lives ‘in accordance

with the teaching and requirement of Islam as set out in the Holy

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

100

Quran and the Sunna’. It is worth noting that, despite the fanfare sur-

rounding Zia’s decision to make the Resolution a substantive part of

the Constitution, his reforms did not wait for constitutional validation.

Much of his Islamization programme was implemented between 1979

and 1984, sanctioned not by the Constitution but by Zia’s own Provi-

sional Constitutional Order of 1981, which had effectively subordi-

nated the Constitution by guaranteeing the military regime immunity

from judicial prosecution.

This has lent some credence to the view that Zia’s Islamization pro-

gramme was designed primarily to buttress his legitimacy rather than

to reflect any real shift in favour of an Islamic constitutional identity.

Indeed the question of legitimacy was particularly sensitive for Zia,

coming as it did soon after the blanket denunciation of Bhutto’s gov-

ernment as illegitimate both for its fraudulent return to power and its

failure to respect Islamic laws. However, Zia’s own claim to legitimacy

was equally fragile on both secular and religious grounds in that he

was neither an elected leader nor recognized as an expert on the inter-

pretation of Islamic law (mujtahid). But the general understood early

on that as long as he could rely on the support of the religious parties,

he could claim that together they would ensure that Pakistan fulfilled

its destiny as an Islamic state. The question of legitimacy weighed no

less heavily on religious parties. Their poor performance in the polls

meant that, despite their Islamic credentials, their claim to power lay

in agreeing to co-operate as junior partners with a military regime

more concerned to restore the authority of the state than to further the

agenda of Islamization.

While there is much to substantiate this instrumentalist reading of

Zia’s Islamization programme, it was also rooted in expectations gen-

erated by the struggle over the role of Islam in Pakistan. Zia was unex-

ceptional among Pakistan’s military rulers in seeking to legitimize his

unconstitutional take-over nor the first to be concerned with building

a strong state. But the fact that developmental goals such as had pro-

vided the basis for Ayub’s regime and defined Bhutto’s reformist

agenda were rejected in favour of a return to a ‘re-foundation’ of the

state, suggests that the idea of a national consensus that had lasted

until the 1970s had broken down.

Some have gone further, arguing that not only had this ‘liberal-

modernist’ consensus been rendered obsolete by changes in the social

and political landscape since 1971, but that its viability had always

THE BURDEN OF ISLAM

101

been in doubt and may even have concealed ‘the people’s yearning for

a simpler past’ shaped by a diffuse attachment to Islam that many still

associated with Pakistan.

The delicate equilibrium between the mate-

rial interests of the few and the religious concerns of the many that had

fuelled the demand for Pakistan, and had held the state together since

independence, had effectively crumbled by the 1970s. This opened the

way for a new regime to offer the possibility of restoring that balance,

even while keeping its own political imperatives in sight. By espousing

the Islamist cause, Zia promised nothing less than to elevate the re-

formation of Pakistan to a ‘moral plane’ not seen since the heady days

leading up to the creation of the country in 1947.

Between 1979 and 1983 Zia introduced a range of measures aimed

at laying the foundations for a comprehensive Islamic system.

They

included legal reforms, economic policy, educational planning and the

enforcement of a harsh, religiously sanctioned, penal code. A new set

of so-called shariat laws backed by shariat courts was rigorously

applied with draconian punishments to curb adultery, false witness,

theft and the consumption of alcohol. Far-reaching policies aimed at

Islamizing the economy were announced, though these were less sys-

tematically applied. They involved interest-free banking and the intro-

duction of a controversial Islamic tax (zakat) system that met with

protest from the country’s Shia minority, who resisted the extension of

its Sunni Hanafi provisions.

But it was through education that Zia hoped most effectively to

consolidate Islamization. Under his regime Quranic schools (or

madrassas), established with the help of zakat funds and support from

private sponsors with privileged access to coffers in Saudi Arabia,

worked in tandem with state schools to help forge a new national con-

sensus. At the heart of this exercise lay the promotion of the new

notion of an ‘ideology of Pakistan’, which received official sanction in

a 1981 directive instructing the authors of school and college text-

books to ‘guide students towards the ultimate goal of Pakistan—the

creation of a completely Islamised state’.

This now became the key

reference point for debate and the bench-mark against which to test

the authenticity of Pakistan as an ideological ‘Islamic state’.

Secular-minded critics of this new consensus have long regarded the

notion of the ‘ideology of Pakistan’ as the brain-child of the religious

right, especially the Jamaat-i-Islami. Its main purpose, they argue, was

to inject this ideology with ‘Islam’ and to equate it with Pakistan’s

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

102

founding ideology, the ‘two-nation’ theory, in an attempt to obscure

the secular content favoured by Jinnah.

. But they also recognize that

the ease with which the two came to be used interchangeably after Zia

seized power was facilitated by the persistent lack of a clear consensus

on the identity of the new state and by the failure to recognise the

‘definite conflict’ between the League’s secular leadership and the

party’s more religious rank and file.

. Most importantly, they

acknowledge that Jinnah’s increasingly equivocal stance on the place

of Islam in public life, which led to his many compromises with the

ulama in the run-up to Partition, enabled Zia and his religious allies to

exploit Jinnah’s failure to project a strong secular vision and to impose

their own idea of Pakistan as an Islamic state.

Others deconstructed the significance of the ideology of Pakistan by

suggesting that vital differences separated Zia’s vision of Pakistan as

an ideological state based on Islam from Jinnah’s more liberal under-

standing of a Muslim state diffusely informed by Islam.

They argue

that while the former was set to enforce Islam, often of a doctrinaire

variety, the second aimed (in the spirit of the Objectives Resolution)

merely to create an ‘enabling environment’ for Muslims to organise

their lives without judicial or legal sanctions. Over time these differ-

ences were steadily eroded owing largely to Zia’s co-option of religious

parties, which pressed for an ever more rigid understanding of Islam as

‘a set of regulative, punitive and extractive commands’.

This particu-

lar understanding of Islam also helped secure Zia’s main objective—to

ensure that Islamization remained a state-sponsored and state-control-

led exercise. By claiming that the Islamic state would act as a Divine

instrument with ‘uncontested sovereignty’, Zia hoped to widen the

reach of the state.

In time these efforts met with resistance not from

a re-invigorated ‘liberal-modernist’ consensus, but from emboldened

ulama bent on a campaign of ‘shariatization’, which threatened the

very existence of the state, as is discussed below.

Until then the real value of Pakistan as an ideological state was to

inject Zia’s military regime with some legitimacy. Zia himself skilfully

managed to co-opt pro-Islamic parties, notably the Jamaat-i-Islami,

whose standing among a burgeoning class of small merchants, shop-

keepers and new professionals was an invaluable asset to a regime

seeking to widen its support, especially in the early years. But Zia also

understood that the backing of these new, and as yet insecure, middle

classes demanded re-packaging his policies not as revolutionary, but as

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103

part of a process of Islamization that had already commenced at inde-

pendence and had then been deliberately thwarted by the country’s

secular leadership.

It came as no surprise that Zia moved speedily to revive the debate

about the so-called ‘repugnancy clause’ enshrined in the Constitution,

which obliged the state to disallow laws judged to be inconsistent with

‘Islam’ but did not provide firm mechanism for doing so. In 1979 he

ordered the creation of four Shariat benches in the High Courts of

Punjab, Sind, the NWFP and Balochistan to establish a mechanism to

rule on the ‘repugnancy’ of laws suspected of being un-Islamic. In the

1950s and 1960s agreement over the mechanism had been repeatedly

frustrated by the struggle between those who favoured the creation of

a special body of religious experts to decide on the matter and those

who insisted that the final decision should be left to parliament. Con-

stitutional debates over the question of repugnancy had also been

mired over whether laws were required merely to be consistent with

Islam (and if so which Islam) or specifically with the injunctions of the

Quran and Sunna. Zia had little to fear from these debates. With par-

liament dissolved and a Constitution that still formally subscribed to

the principle of Divine sovereignty, he was confident enough to press

ahead with his agenda.

Some argue that Zia’s agenda bore all the hallmarks of a cosmetic

exercise. For instance, limits were imposed on the shariat benches of

the four provincial high courts, since their rulings to bring laws in line

with Islam were made subject to appeal to the Shariat Appellate Bench

of the Supreme Court. The powers of the Federal Shariat Court, estab-

lished in 1980, were also circumscribed by a bar on reviewing Ayub’s

Muslim Family Laws Ordinance, which was still widely condemned by

the ulama and their Islamist allies as a blatant violation of the sharia.

And their influence, now embodied in the Council of Islamic Ideology,

was also curbed by the Council’s strictly advisory role, making it in

effect subordinate to the Federal Shariat Court, which reserved the

right to issue mandatory rulings.

These measures, seeking to incorporate Islamic laws into the frame-

work of the modern state, soon ran into difficulties. But unlike in the

1950s and 1960s, the struggle did not so much involve liberals and tra-

ditionalists divided by their interpretations of Islam, but the country’s

Shia minority, which was determined to resist laws it claimed were

tantamount to the imposition of a Sunni programme of Islamization.

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

104

Their anger had been fuelled in 1981 by the failure to include any Shia

as a full-time judge in the Federal Shariat Court of ulama. This led to

mass protests by Shias, who also refused to accept the mandatory col-

lection by the state of the alms tax (zakat). Their objections centred on

claims that since no state was worthy of the respect enjoyed by the

Prophet’s order, Shias chose to give alms directly to the poor.

Although Zia was eventually forced to exempt Shias from laws relat-

ing to the payment of the alms tax, the bitter sectarian divisions

unleashed by the controversy aroused suspicion that Islamization was

a guise for the ‘Sunnification’ of Pakistan.

Zia also faced the wrath

of his allies, especially the Sunni Deobandi ulama and an increasingly

strident Sunni political constituency. They argued that as Sunnis were

a majority in Pakistan, the state had the responsibility to enforce com-

pliance with Sunni laws rather agreeing to concessions for the Shia

minority. This sectarian discourse, masquerading as the rights of the

majority, soon triggered a wider campaign for the recognition of Paki-

stan as a Sunni state—a goal some believed was within reach with the

application of Islamic laws that appeared to have settled the contested

issue of Pakistan’s identity as an Islamic state.

In fact, the issue of Pakistan as an Islamic state was far from

resolved. This was nowhere as dramatically highlighted as in the pro-

longed campaign launched by women’s groups, outraged by laws that

sought to regulate the conduct of women and revise their status as

equal citizens. In a series of decrees issued in 1979 the military regime

had announced that it would replace existing (colonial) penal codes

with what came to be known as the Hudood (punishment) Ordinances.

These prescribed strict codes of punishment for criminal offences under

Islamic law, including adultery. The Federal Shariat Court was also

mandated to amend an 1872 law and replace it with an Islamic Law of

Evidence (Qanoon-i-Shahadat), which regarded the value of a woman’s

testimony in court to be worth half that of a man.

Both measures aroused the fury of women’s groups, most notably

the newly founded Women’s Action Forum (WAF), which campaigned

against these and other measures, including discriminatory provisions

relating to retribution and blood-money.

Though the agitation drew

mainly on the support of urban middle-class women, it nevertheless

represented the first co-ordinated opposition to Islamization. The WAF

also drew strength from the emergence of a broad-based pro-democracy

movement that brought together ethnic and Shia parties in alliance

THE BURDEN OF ISLAM

105

under the aegis of the Movement for the Restoration for Demo-

cracy (MRD).

Two issues were of particular concern to the WAF and its allies

among other women’s groups opposed to the reforms. First, there was

the definition of sexual crimes under Islamic laws introduced by Zia’s

regime, which refused to distinguish between rape and adultery and

equated sexual misdemeanours with crimes against the state punisha-

ble by death. Second, there was the introduction of a Law of Evidence,

apparently sanctioned by Islam, which undermined the legal status of

women and the equality guaranteed to them as citizens by the Consti-

tution. Although some have argued that these measures were also

cosmetic in that they were neither widely nor even deliberately aimed

at women,

there can be little doubt that they amounted to an unprec-

edented attempt to institutionalise the subordination of women in

Pakistan on the basis of the narrowest possible reading of Islam.

Indeed, for groups like the WAF, this was the nub of the problem.

Their opposition to the reforms was framed not in the universal dis-

course of human rights but in the assertion that the laws bore no rela-

tion to real Islam. The emphasis on equal civil and political rights for

women only seemed further to accentuate the dilemma underlined by

Metcalf ‘of trying to speak both an Islamic and a liberal language and

yet to avoid what are commonly taken to be the ultimate implications

of both’.

One of its many consequences was to force women’s groups

to oscillate between two equally hazardous alternatives: either to

acknowledge the merits of Islamization (albeit with a reformist-liberal

edge) to shake off the charge of impiety, or set even more stringent

standards for real Islamic reform than those pursued by the regime and

its orthodox allies.

These dilemmas were in part symptomatic of WAF’s class origins,

which rendered it both socially conservative and inclined to adopt a

functional stance that has been described as the ‘convenience of

subservience’.

Determined by patterns of social hierarchy and power-

ful norms of social exchange, it encouraged educated, urban and

upper-class women otherwise in favour of emancipation to resist ‘chal-

lenging their prescribed roles in society … which afford[ed] privileges

not available to women lower down the rungs of the social hierarchy’.

Nowhere was this more in evidence than in the response to General

Zia’s Islamization programme, which outraged sharif [‘well-born’]

Pakistani women accustomed to enjoy the benefits accruing from

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

106

access to elite education, class and social connections. It was this that

drove an elite band of feminists to stage a rear-guard action, which

sensitized more women across the social spectrum to new ways of

engaging with politics.

Women were not the only force to challenge Zia’s attempt to impose

his version of revivalist Islam on Pakistan. Ethnic forces, which resur-

faced with vigour under his regime, also took up the cudgels. Most of

the tension was concentrated in Sind where Sindhi regionalists were

still smarting from the humiliation of Bhutto’s ouster and the pain of

his execution. Many of Zia’s Islamization policies were condemned as

a ruse to perpetuate Punjabi domination with the backing of the army.

Other ethnic groups, including the Baloch and the Pathans, also

regarded his Islamization programme with suspicion. Zia won them

over, albeit temporarily, by resorting to appeasement.

His alliance

with ulama parties headed by the Jamiat ul Ulama i Islam (JUI) was

also instrumental in containing ethnic discontent in Baluchistan where,

as in the NWFP, both parties enjoyed influence. Indeed, the rhetoric of

Islam then fuelling the war in Afghanistan was significant in curbing

Pashtun sub-nationalism, which was to steadily give way to the lan-

guage of militant Islam and then to support the covert, US-led, cam-

paign to oust Soviet forces from Pakistan’s neighbour.

But while some ethnic forces challenged Zia’s rhetoric of Islamic

solidarity by highlighting the importance of ethnic identity, others

adapted by appropriating Islam to define their ethnic identity. This

was nowhere more in evidence than in the political mobilization of

Urdu-speaking muhajirs, who by ‘ethnicizing Islam’ in the process of

forging a collective muhajir identity, showed how profoundly Islamiza-

tion had altered the complex relationship between ethnicity and reli-

gion in the 1980s. More importantly, it also demonstrated how the

language of high Islam, once commonly associated with the state,

could be reshaped in opposition to the state.

By the 1980s there were

also indications that Zia’s engagement with Islamism had wrought

deep changes in the orientation of the country’s religious establish-

ment—changes that prompted a questioning of the very legitimacy of

the state as the repository of Pakistan’s national identity. Where

Islamization had once loudly proclaimed the reach of the strong state,

the state’s very susceptibility to a new process of ‘shariatization’

revealed the formative weaknesses of both the Pakistani state and the

country’s national identity.

THE BURDEN OF ISLAM

107

The lure of shariatization

Indeed, the process of shariatization

needs to be carefully distin-

guished from the better-known phenomenon of Islamization that has

been most closely associated in Pakistan with the military regime of

General Zia ul Haq. The differences between the two are often blurred

by the common assumption that both share an uncompromising

emphasis on the enforcement of Islamic law, at the expense of a com-

mitment to the broader ethical foundations of Islam that held sway in

the early discourse about the nation-state in Pakistan. Nevertheless,

the social and political forces behind each of these processes were rec-

ognizably different.

Islamization in Pakistan was largely been a state-driven process,

which at times has enjoyed the support of the country’s powerful

Westernized elites. The latter relied on a statist interpretation of Islam

to oppose the populist policies favoured by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and, in

time, increasingly espoused a culture that was distinctly Islamic in

tone.

By contrast, the recent phenomenon of shariatization corre-

sponds more closely to what some scholars have described as the indi-

genization of the post-colonial state in Pakistan and the steady

nativization of its society.

Both have marked the rise of so-called

vernacular groups, which are neither Anglicized nor Western but rec-

ognizably modern on their own terms—that is ‘entertaining instrumen-

tal rationality’ in the feverish pursuit of material advancement without,

for example, inviting cultural intrusion into the domain of social, espe-

cially sexual, relations.

Politically, their aim is to share centre-stage

with Pakistan’s still largely dominant Westernized elites and lay claim

to a slice of the country’s economic and intellectual resources, while

attempting to reshape society to secure their new position.

Among

their intellectual resources is the language of religious sectarianism.

Although it has been used to redefine the meaning of the national com-

munity by seeking to exclude Muslim minority sects, like the Ahmedis

and the Shias, and to secure constitutional recognition for Pakistan

as a (majority) Sunni state, it is in fact congruent with their very mod-

ern aims.

To highlight these differences is not to suggest that Islamization in

Pakistan is synonymous with what commonly passes as establishment

Islam—as found in some parts of the Middle East, notably Egypt and

Saudi Arabia, where the state has worked closely with the Islamic

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

108

religious establishment, especially the ulama. Nor is it intended to

imply that shariatization should be understood as another version of

so-called popular Islam. Indeed, both assumptions would be wrong:

state-sponsored Islamization of the kind favoured by General Zia was

primarily an exercise aimed against the Islamic religious establishment.

Its main proponents were lay activists associated with Pakistan’s pre-

mier Islamist party, the Jamaat-i-Islami, who made no secret of their

hostility to the traditional, mainly Sunni, clerical establishment. Until

the mid-1980s, it was these lay activists, rather than the ulama that

were the driving force behind Islamization.

For its part, the assumption that the roots of shariatization can be

traced to some tradition of popular Islam in Pakistan is also ill-

founded. Popular Islam, as commonly understood in Pakistan, is asso-

ciated with Sunni Barelvis, who still predominate over vast swathes of

the Punjab and the hinterlands of Sind.

Better known for their ven-

eration of saints and shrines, their ritual practices show a clear prefer-

ence for the Sufi ‘way’ (tariqah) over the (sharia). The main Barelvi

party, the Jamiat-ul Ulama-i-Pakistan (JUP), was very much a junior

partner in the former governing coalitions in Balochistan and the

North West, where shariatization was strongest. These former ruling

coalitions were dominated, rather, by the more reformist-minded fol-

lowers of the Jamiat-i-Ulema-i-Islam (JUI), whose leadership represents

Pakistan’s religious establishment which, until recently, was better

known for its politically conservative inclinations.

Since the 1980s however this religious establishment has undergone

a process of radicalization that has enabled it successfully to appropri-

ate the rhetoric of political Islam, typical of the Islamist lay intelligent-

sia represented by the Jamaat-i-Islami.

Zia’s military regime initially

sought to exploit the tension between Islamists and traditional clerics

as a means of staying in power. But faced with the risk of revolt by a

disinherited younger generation, the regime turned to the conservative

ulama, who it believed held the key to social peace. This concern with

social order was reflected in Zia’s economic policies, which placed a

premium on the private sector. Their purpose was to ensure the crea-

tion of a middle- and lower-middle class base for his regime that could

effectively resist any threat from the Pakistan People’s Party’s lower

class base of support, whose aspirations had remained largely unful-

filled during the party’s tenure in power. The ulama’s successful co-

optation of those Kepel refers to as the ‘devout bourgeoisie’,

who

THE BURDEN OF ISLAM

109

formed the backbone of Zia’s support, was the key to its political

effectiveness in the service of Zia’s regime. In exchange the ulama

demanded greater autonomy, especially over the administration of

religious seminaries (madrassas), which by the early 1980s were serv-

ing as magnets for a younger generation. Frustrated by the failure of

Bhutto’s economic policies, which had promised to secure roti, kapara

awr makan (food, clothing and shelter), they now turned eagerly to the

ethics of sharia-based Islam as an alternative precisely when it also

seemed poised to define public policy and determine its direction in

their favour. Through this complex process Zia helped create what has

been described as ‘an ulama wing of Islamism, which would increas-

ingly assert itself at the cost of lay thinkers and organizations’.

The sharia-based Islam which now emerged in Pakistan was rooted

in the Deobandi school founded near Delhi in 1867.

Its discourse is

less concerned with the creation of an Islamic state—the object of

Islamization—than with the establishment of the ‘political hegemony

of Islam’. Thus unlike lay Islamists, for whom the Islamic nature of the

state has always been more important than the strict application of the

sharia, the primary objective of these ‘neo-fundamentalist’ ulama

has

been (in true Deobandi style) the reform of society through the imple-

mentation of the sharia. In the worldview of the Jamiat ul Ulama i

Islam, which has been nurtured by its extremist off-shoots led by the

so-called ‘ petty ulama’,

the state is, at best, an instrument to be used

to transform society along Islamic lines. Its limited role is sustained by

an Islamic discourse that has habitually regarded the territorial state as

an artificial construct, whose physical boundaries are judged to be

transient and subversive of a presumed universal community of believ-

ers (umma).

The implications of this discourse for the development of Pakistani

nationalism contrast sharply with those of Islamization. The latter was

grounded in the Pakistani nation-state, despite the global scope of

Islam. The importance attached to the capture of the state also meant

that the legitimacy of any programme of Islamization had to be sought,

above all, from a domestic and national constituency. By contrast,

shariatization aims both to question the validity of the state and to

influence the debate on national identity by redefining Pakistani

nationalism primarily in terms of its relation to an imagined extra-

territorial ‘community of believers’. More significantly, perhaps, the

sec ondary importance attached to the control of the state has dimin-

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

110

ished the value of nurturing a domestic constituency. This has come at

a time when the manipulation of extra-territorial Islamic networks and

a strategy of political violence are increasingly available to ascendant

political forces, given Pakistan’s deep involvement with the Afghan

war and its aftermath.

Indeed, the ideology of shariatization emerged against the back-

ground of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Afghan civil war,

which allowed transnational Islamic religious-political networks to

compete with national states as sources of patronage. But it was also

grounded in history. Its roots go back to the nineteenth century, when

teams of peripatetic Muslim holy men and preachers journeyed from

India to the Arabian Peninsula and returned armed with more doctri-

naire readings of Islam. They inspired the great jihad movements of

the 1820s, which galvanized thousands of Indian Muslims to trek

across India’s north-western frontier to Kabul to expand the social

space for an ideal Muslim society purged of pagan practices.

This

doctrinaire version of Islam competed with and retarded modernizing

trends among British India’s Muslims. A century later, as Muslims in

the Middle East prepared to come to terms with the nation-state, thou-

sands of Indian Muslims were caught up in a drive to protect the Turk-

ish Caliphate. Tens of thousands once again migrated from India to

Afghanistan—in their terms, from the realm of the infidel (dar ul harb)

to the realm of the Muslim (dar ul Islam).

A decade later, in the late

1920s one of the most important transnational (and ostensibly apoliti-

cal) grass-roots movements, the Tablighi Jamaat, began to take shape

among Indian Muslims. An offshoot of the Deobandi movement, it

today enjoys wide support inside Pakistan, where it is dedicated to re-

affirming a Muslim religio-cultural self and to forging an ‘identity

constituted without reference to territory’.

This transnational vision in Pakistan is also a legacy of the intellec-

tual tension between Islam and nationalism, which found one of its

sharpest expressions in the thinking of Muhammad Iqbal. Widely

credited with laying the ideological foundations of a separate Muslim

state in India, Iqbal was never, ironically, a supporter of nationalism,

let alone of nationalism among Muslims: he objected to the claim of

modern nationalism to supplant the universal community (the umma)

as the sole focus of the Muslim’s political loyalty.

Maulana Maw-

dudi, the leader until his death in 1979 of the Jamaat-i-Islami, though

committed in principle to an Islamic state, founded his party in 1941

THE BURDEN OF ISLAM

111

as a movement opposed to nationalism, which he condemned as a

Western conspiracy. Mawdudi also denounced Jinnah’s campaign for

Pakistan not just on the grounds that it was a secular project but also

because it embodied a particularism that undermined the transnational

Muslim community.

While these tensions between nationalism and transnational religions

are by no means exceptional to Pakistan, they were of particular

importance to the country owing to its formative weaknesses as a state,

the indeterminacy of its political boundaries and the early onset of

authoritarianism, which made resorting to Islam as a legitimacy bank

of last resort endemic to its tortuous political history. In 1947 Pakistan

had emerged out of a bloody partition as a territorial absurdity with

its two wings (West and East Pakistan, now Bangladesh) separated by

more than 1,000 miles of Indian territory. Moreover, for more than

half their length, Pakistan’s current borders to the west (the so-called

Durand Line separating it from Afghanistan) and the north (the so-

called Line of Control bordering Indian-held Kashmir) do not corre-

spond to internationally recognized boundaries. In the areas to the

west, bordering Afghanistan, there exist in addition large territories

designated as ‘tribal areas’ which are subject to tribal laws rather than

to the writ of the national government.

For almost a quarter of a

century this state, which many regarded as merely a congeries of pro-

vincial units, endured, based on a volatile mix of a national culture

founded on an ideology which transcended national borders, weak

development efforts, political authoritarianism and US patronage.

Eventually this mix would yield to the contradictions inherent in the

national imagining of Pakistan. The secession of the country’s eastern

wing was a watershed, reviving painful memories of the refusal in

1947 of millions of Indian Muslims to migrate to, or partake in, the

great ‘Muslim hope’ that was Pakistan. Nevertheless, many hoped

that, with the traumas of Partition behind it and the secession of East

Pakistan a reality, the new country would emerge in 1971 as a more

intelligible nation-state. It did not: new challenges surfaced in which

the extra-territoriality of Pakistan’s putative Muslim identity, hitherto

contained, burst open in a changed, more conducive, context. Rather

than any normalization, the re-drawing of Pakistan’s borders after the

secession of its eastern wing in 1971 merely strengthened the denation-

alizing tendencies inherent in Pakistan’s founding ideology, Islam. This

was prompted in part by a geo-political reorientation towards the

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

112

Muslim Middle East. Of course this re-orientation need not, as it did,

have entailed a loosening of Pakistan’s South Asian identity. But the

loss of East Bengal meant that the very idea of Pakistan had to be

reconfigured from a South Asian refugee experience, which demanded

bridge-building between disparate communities, to one ‘more akin to

Islamist doctrine and precept than that suggested by the constrained

and tortured secularism of the earlier vision’.

Although Islamization in Pakistan is usually attributed to General

Zia, its pull, as we have seen, was already evident in his immediate

predecessor, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. But while Bhutto set the stage, it was

General Zia who deepened the nexus between Islamization and the

state, first establishing a connection between the lay Jamaat-i-Islami

and the ulama, and then launching a comprehensive program of

Islamic reform that paved the way for a distinctly legalistic (as opposed

to an ethical) approach to Pakistan’s Muslim identity. This focus on

Islamic legal injunctions and their implementation called for a new

Islamic bureaucracy, which in turn required new alliances such as that

between the military regime and sections of the traditional religious

establishment, namely the ulama. They presided over a vast network

of religious seminaries—the madrassas—which now became the main

suppliers of the cadres who were to administer Zia’s Islamic state.

Significantly, the state patronage of the madrassas, to the extent that

they revived in a new, more state-oriented and centralized form,

Islamic educational networks that had hitherto depended upon local

structures of political authority and social control, has been regarded

as a sign of the growing indigenization of the post-colonial state in

Pakistan.

Although most ulama, who emerged as power-brokers in the later

years of the Zia era were politically cautious Deobandis, Zia’s new

dispensation tempted enough of them with an opportunity to occupy

a legitimate space in the political arena and in modern sectors of state

and society.

Their control over the madrassas and the placing of their

graduates in government agencies and state institutions also gave them

the required leverage to train a citizenry that many hoped would be

more inclined to accept Islamic ideology as ‘an appropriate anchor for

the conduct of politics’.

It was this close involvement of the

madrassas with the state that made possible their transformation from

centres of traditional religious learning into politicized, modernized

(and also militarized) institutions that, in time, would radically chal-

THE BURDEN OF ISLAM

113

lenge the state’s right to control policy-making, interpret Islam, and

define the parameters of Pakistani nationalism.

The newly politicized clerical establishment could challenge the state

in this fashion, setting off shariatization, largely because of its tradi-

tional autonomy, which stemmed in good part from the financing of

madrassas, especially the larger ones, out of voluntary contributions

(zakat).

And although the madrassas that now proliferated in Paki-

stan (officially estimated in 2002 to stand at around 10,000 with more

than a million and a half students under training)

benefited from

extensive state funding in the 1980s, the ulama resisted the control

that might normally have been expected to accompany such such

patronage. Indeed, influential ulama groups have continued to resist

state encroachment into the domain of religious education—whether

through financial or curricular regulation

—even under the military-

dominated regime of former President Parvez Musharraf and despite

intense international pressure.

The institutional capacity of the clerical establishment to resist and

stand aloof from the state was also encouraged by the increasingly

strained relations between Zia’s military regime and the Islamist intel-

ligentsia, which under the Jamaat-i-Islami had by the mid 1980s lost

confidence in the credibility of Zia’s Islamizing agenda and opted to

side with the nascent pro-democracy movement. In 1987 the party’s

new leader, Qazi Husain Ahmed, declared that neither Islamization

nor the Afghan war justified Zia’s abrogation of democracy, and more

extraordinarily still, maintained that Pakistan’s political predicament

could be solved only by ending martial law rather than promulgating

the shariat bill (which took effect in June 1988).

This afforded space

to ulama parties like the Jamiat ul Ulama i Islam, now undergoing a

process of change from religious conservatism to political radicalism

with the help of militant groups nurtured by the war in Afghanistan,

to shape a new kind of Islamic discourse less concerned with the iden-

tity of the nation-state than with the transformation of society along

the lines of a doctrinaire reading of Islam.

The Afghan civil war erupted in 1979 and its call to jihad, while

heavily dependent on covert material assistance from the United States

and sections of the Pakistan’s ruling military establishment, relied for

its day-to-day implementation on transnational Islamic religious net-

works. While the facts and profound implications of these events for

Pakistani politics have already been extensively documented,

what

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

114

needs to be emphasized here is how this involvement fundamentally

re-shaped Pakistan’s Muslim identity by gradually eroding popular

attachment to symbolic sites of traditional Islam, to the land and its

frontiers, and to local hierarchies of rural and tribal society. What

emerged instead, under pressure from an increasingly radicalized and

politicized clergy, was the steady decontextualization of religious prac-

tices based on a strict, literalist, reading of Islamic law, which many

have since loosely described as ‘neo-Wahhabi Islam’. While the United

States’ pursuit of its Cold War objectives were critical to this develop-

ment, it is significant that Pakistan proved also to be environmentally

friendly to this culture.

Part of the explanation lies in the re-emergence of the question of its

Islamic identity after the loss of East Pakistan. New doubts arose about

the merits of Pakistan’s local, ‘Indian’ roots, and by extension ‘Indian

Islam’, whose vulnerability to non-Muslim influences had been the

subject of debate among Muslim reformers in the nineteenth century.

They included Iqbal, who had already identified ‘Arabian Islam’ as a

corrective to more ‘corrupted’ forms of ‘Indian [and Persian] Islam’.

As such thinking assumed a new and greater resonance in redefining

Pakistan’s Muslim identity, the influx of more than three million

Afghan refugees in the 1980s also radically altered the country’s politi-

cal landscape. They included a first generation of mostly literate and

urbanized Afghans who, while in exile in Pakistan, quickly fell under

the sway of the Jamaat-i-Islami, which until at least the mid-1980s

was chiefly responsible for funnelling US and Arab funds to the Afghan

mujaheddin.

But the Jamaat’s steady alienation from General Zia’s military

regime led the regime to woo the ulama parties such as the Jamiat ul

Ulama i Islam, which, having already been politicized under Zia, now

sharpened its political profile. These parties appealed to by now ‘de-

tribalized’ young Afghan refugees whose desperate circumstances made

them especially responsive to a more radical brand of Islam. The ulama

parties and their network of madrassas took in (almost always as

boarders) Afghan children, who interacted with young Pakistanis of

different ethnic origins—Pashtuns (like themselves) but also Balochis,

Sindhis and Punjabis. Instructed in Arabic and Urdu, they became

instrumental in the creation of a putative ‘universal Islamic personal-

ity’ structured around Deobandi ideology.

This compelling vision exercised a powerful pull on Pakistan—a

state still in search of an identity. Of course the vision also served the

THE BURDEN OF ISLAM

115

needs of Pakistan’s most significant state institution—the army—which

would rely on transnational Islamic groups to implement its regional

foreign policy formula, and in so doing, emerged as a key agent of

shariatization. But the shifts contained in this vision were equally

symptomatic of economic and social decline in Pakistan—a decline

that stemmed from core uncertainties about the direction of change

and about the role of Islam in determining the priorities of national

development.

116

THE DILEMMAS OF DEVELOPMENT

THE UNCERTAINTIES OF CHANGE

The ideological ferment of the 1970s and 1980s, which led to growing

Islamic consciousness in Pakistan, compounded the uncertainty over

the country’s national identity and the role of Islam in shaping it. The

constitutional debates of the 1950s had failed to resolve the question

of whether Pakistan was intended to be an Islamic state that privileged

Muslims, or a Muslim nation-state that would guarantee the equality

of all its citizens. Ayub’s secular-oriented military regime in the 1960s

sought to ease these tensions by drawing attention away from the his-

torical purpose of the state to a concern with economic and social

development. But his divisive policies weakened the effort to mould a

more secular national identity. The prospects of the latter were severely

weakened after 1971with the loss of East Pakistan and the rise of

Islamist forces ranged against the secular discourse of Bhutto’s People’s

Party. Their position strengthened in the 1980s and 1990s with their

entry into the political mainstream, which dramatically sharpened the

profile of Pakistan’s putative Islamic identity.

The economic and social implications of the struggle over Pakistan’s

national identity and its relation to Islam took time to surface. One

reason was the overwhelming importance attached to framing an

Islamic constitution, which dominated public debates in the 1950. By

contrast, the clamour over the direction of economic and social poli-

cies and their supposed agreement with the state’s Islamic foundations

was relatively subdued, notwithstanding the (albeit modest) attention

given to these issues prior to the independence of Pakistan.

THE DILEMMAS OF DEVELOPMENT

117

It was not until the 1960s, with the onset of Ayub’s ambitious devel-

opment programme that the spotlight turned on the economic and

social complexion of a state that professed to be founded on Islam. By

the 1970s this interest had widened, stimulated by the popular appeal

of Bhutto’s egalitarian economic and social agenda re-packaged as

Islamic socialism. But it was also driven by a more pointed moral

engagement in the 1980s and 1990s with issues of corruption in public

life and the desirability of extending certain forms of Muslim religious

education to protect the Islamic character of the state. Indeed one of

the consequences of the pressure to measure economic and social poli-

cies against yet to be agreed standards of Islam has been to privilege a

moral discourse of corruption. Though widely held to be a by-product

of inequitable economic policies and poor governance, corruption has

come increasingly to be judged in the light of standards of morality

expected of a state that still claims responsibility, and is held account-

able, for upholding Islam in public life. But here again there is little

consensus on which Islam is more representative of the moral probity

of the Pakistani state. There is a discourse on corruption in which the

culture of a high scriptural Islam commonly associated with the coun-

try’s religious establishment has long found an echo in the legalist bias

of the modernist Islam advocated by Pakistan’s elite. Together they

have emerged as critical voices against the so-called low, regional

expressions of Islam espoused by hereditary landowning classes backed

by local religious authorities (Sufi pirs), whose habits of patronage

(riwaj) are believed to have encouraged the spread of corruption. The

refrain of this high Islam with its contempt for regional forms of unre-

formed Islam has intensified public engagement with economic and

social issues. In so doing, it has also created a climate working to the

advantage of a religious establishment whose long-standing interest in

the moral reform of state and society has found a ready platform in

the increasingly politicized agenda of the ubiquitous Koranic school,

the madrassa.

As in matters political and constitutional, the debate on economic

and social change has been notable for its marked absence of consen-

sus regarding the meaning of Islam. While secular politicians loudly

claimed that Pakistan would be a laboratory for Islamic principles of

economic equality and social justice, their failure to live up to the

expectations fostered by these claims left them vulnerable to their crit-

ics among the ulama and Islamist parties intent on testing the Islamic

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

118

credentials of the state. The differences between the two sides have

also brought into focus the perennial struggle between those content to

accept an ad hoc role for Islam in the sphere of policy, subject by defi-

nition to change, and those determined to elevate Islam to the status of

an immutable Law.

Free and unequal

It is generally assumed that issues of Muslim welfare and equity were

marginal to the idea of Pakistan. While this is true when compared to

the overwhelming concern with the defence of Muslim cultural iden-

tity, upon which all else was seen to depend, they were by no means

minor concerns. Although the material interests of the Muslim salariat,

who set the agenda for Pakistan, rarely extended beyond the demand

for bureaucratic access,

the emergence of non-salariat groups, such as

the large Bengali Muslim peasantry, in the movement for Pakistan

ensured that issues of equity had to be addressed. More importantly,

for these non-salariat classes questions of equity were, more often than

not, framed in the language of Islamic social justice.

This was encouraged as much by the persistent if nebulous connec-

tion between Islam and the idea of Pakistan as by the influence of

modernist interpretations of Islam that dominated discussion about the

nation and that regarded the Pakistan project as a quest for distribu-

tive justice grounded in Islamic principles. Some core themes gained

credence among prominent Muslims who favoured the idea of a sepa-

rate Muslim political order in India and in time would come to be

closely associated with Pakistan. They included luminaries as diverse

as Iqbal in Punjab and the radical Bengali Muslim peasant leader,

Maulana Abdul Hamid Khan Bhashani (1885–1976). Both held to the

view that the consolidation of a Muslim political sphere was essential

to put in place economic arrangements consistent with Islam. Indeed,

for Iqbal the vision of a consolidated centre of Muslim power in South

Asia was inconceivable without acknowledging the egalitarian ethos

underlying Islam, which he believed could not be guaranteed in condi-

tions marred by the structural inequalities of Hindu society.

There was little consensus on what economic terms of ‘Islam’ were

required to ensure a more equal society for the Muslims of India.

While Iqbal and others emphatically declared that some forms of capi-

talist development were inconsistent with the spirit of Islam, neither he

THE DILEMMAS OF DEVELOPMENT

119

nor those who shared his vision, especially in East Bengal, felt able to

bring their version of Islam in line with socialism. The fear of being

seen to compromise the spiritual foundations of Islam, and the hostil-

ity of the Muslim League’s conservative leadership to any far-reaching

economic reforms, undermined the practical influence of a socialist

reading of Islam. Jinnah’s own ambivalence about the direction of

economic policy also compounded the uncertainty over Pakistan’s eco-

nomic complexion and its relationship to Islam. While known to give

serious thought to the urgency of economic reform as an Islamic

imperative, and even on occasion to question the compatibility of capi-

talism with Islam, Jinnah’s economic instincts were overwhelmingly

conservative and favoured private property. Like the leadership suc-

ceeding him, he addressed popular expectations by displaying his

commitment to the objectives of economic and social justice believed

to conform to Islam rather than by implementing an economic blue-

print consistent with recognizably Islamic measures, such as interest

free banking.

The issue here is not so much Jinnah’s sincerity as a politician, but

his uncertainty over the socio-economic implications of Islam for Paki-

stan. The latter haunted the economic debate in the 1960s when ideo-

logical battles over the merits of public and private enterprise in

Pakistan were judged as much by their success in meeting standards of

economic efficiency as by meeting those consistent with the ideals of

distributive justice endorsed by Islam. Bhutto’s appeal to ‘Islamic

socialism’ in the 1970s and General Zia’s attempts to fashion an

‘Islamic economic society’ along capitalist lines in the 1980s offered

two very different understandings of Islam.

Pakistan’s developmental trajectory is often seen as an example of a

‘dual paradox’: while achieving extraordinarily high rates of growth,

there has been hardly any significant expansion in public services or

reduction in poverty.

Why have welfare and equity consistently taken

second place in Pakistan? The question is worth re-visiting given claims

that the demand for an independent Muslim state was as much a strug-

gle for Muslim power as for economic justice, which Islam demands

and, which, it was believed, could not be guaranteed under Hindu-

majority rule. Historically, much of the explanation lies in the weak-

ness of the League’s popular roots. Stymied from the outset by the

dominance of a leadership deeply entrenched in the Muslim landed

and commercial classes of north and central India,

these roots were

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

120

barely nourished during the League’s campaign for separate Muslim

nationhood. The League’s near pathological fear of mass politics,

which characterised the movement for much of the 1920s, found

expression in Jinnah’s preference for ‘constitutionalism’. It not only

justified the League’s disdain for Gandhi’s civil disobedience move-

ment, but also distanced it from popular campaigns for greater social

and economic equality unleashed by Gandhi. Although by the late

1930s the League seemed ready to temper this innate conservatism by

calling for ‘the social, economic and educational uplift of the Muslim

rural population’, its opposition to the expropriation of private prop-

erty, in marked contrast to Congress, was to be a lasting fissure

between the two organizations. In time it set the tone for the very

differ ent priorities accorded by India and Pakistan to social and eco-

nomic welfare.

These differences also expressed the gulf that separated Jinnah from

his peers in Congress, notably Jawaharlal Nehru. According to Wolp-

ert, Jinnah’s highly respected biographer: ‘[e]ven as Jawaharlal placed

increasing faith in socialist solutions for India’s problems of poverty,

Jinnah retreated more than ever behind the bastions of private prop-

erty. His growing passion for real estate … [would] soon rival his

interest in politics. Private property, most of it forever rooted on

Indian soil, became, ironically enough, almost as fascinating a diver-

sion for Jinnah’s mind and energies during the last lonely decade of his

life as Pakistan itself.’

The League’s development as a mass-based

party in the early 1940s appeared, paradoxically, to strengthen rather

than dilute Jinnah’s appreciation of the value of private property. His

entry into the so-called Muslim majority areas of Punjab and Sind

required accommodation with the Muslim landed gentry, who domi-

nated local politics. With the League bereft of any popular roots in

these regions—the result of years of neglect stemming from its preoc-

cupation with the interests of a mainly urban north Indian Muslim

elite—it had no choice but to forge alliances with local, mainly landed

elites. However, the price for their support of the League’s still unsub-

stantiated claim to be the sole representative of Muslim India was

nothing less than the freedom to protect their economic interests

against the egalitarian currents then sweeping Asia. They were backed

by a powerful coalition of rural-based Muslim religious leaders—the

sajjida nashin—who themselves controlled vast estates and were often

closely connected by marriage to the leading landlord families.

THE DILEMMAS OF DEVELOPMENT

121

This is not to say that the League or Jinnah acted out of compulsion

or were reluctant partners of forces hostile to economic and social

reform: on the contrary. In East Bengal, the party’s high command,

with Jinnah’s support, actively sought in the 1940s to contain the fiery,

radical rhetoric of popular Bengali leaders such as A.K. Fazlul Haq

and Abul Hashim. Instead it sided with mainly Urdu-speaking, con-

servative, land-owners out of touch with the concerns of the rising

Bengali vernacular elite represented by Haq and Hashim. Both aroused

fears of a ‘revolutionary’ agenda that conjured visions of a communist

take-over among their detractors. Neither was ever nominated to serve

as a member of the League’s powerful Working Committee.

Jinnah himself made no secret of his disdain for their brand of Ben-

gali populist politics. He was also quick to dismiss the landed barons

of Punjab and Sind as ‘spineless’.

These mutually contradictory posi-

tions have been interpreted as evidence of Jinnah’s lack of interest in

developing a coherent economic programme—the claim being that

issues of power and representation far outweighed any concern with

Muslim economic and social development.

This is true, but it also

risks simplifying Jinnah’s uncertainty about the economic implications

of a Muslim national identity predicated on a relationship to Islam—

especially as it pertained to the ownership, production and distribution

of wealth. But with the seemingly inexorable drive in favour of a ‘Mus-

lim’ Pakistan, Jinnah could no longer evade the question of which

economic system (capitalist, socialist or mixed) would best achieve the

standards of distributive justice endorsed by Islam.

In 1944 he took up the challenge during an address to the League’s

newly established Planning Committee, which he had delegated to

frame a programme for Muslim development based on state interven-

tion.

That its purpose was to address expectations of centralised

planning compatible with Islam was made explicit by none other than

Jinnah. He advised members that, ‘In whatever problems you tackle

there is one point which I must request you to keep in mind, and it is

this. It is not our purpose to make the rich richer and to accelerate the

process of the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few individu-

als. We should aim at levelling up the general standard of living

amongst the masses … Our ideal should not be capitalistic, but Islamic

and the interests of the welfare of the people should be constantly kept

in mind.’

Warnings that Jinnah and his peers were set to join the bat-

tle over the economic boundaries of the new Muslim state surfaced

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

122

almost immediately. Within days, the mouthpiece of conservative

Muslim opinion, the Lahore-based Civil and Military Gazette, had

denounced Jinnah’s preference for a non-capitalist economy as con-

trary to the ‘spirit of Islam’.

Just why Jinnah came to regard capitalism as antithetical to Islam

and inappropriate to Muslim economic development is unclear. His

personal preference for private ownership and his indifference to reli-

gious injunctions would appear to run counter to both. What is

known, and could well contain clues to his apparent change of heart,

was a brief but pointed correspondence with Iqbal in 1937.

In it

Iqbal made a strong case for a brand of socialism compatible with the

spiritual foundations of Islamic Law as the best way ‘to solve the prob-

lem of Muslim poverty’ and to ensure ‘the right to subsistence’.

also warned that unless the League addressed the problem, ‘the Mus-

lim masses will remain indifferent to it’.

With his finely honed vision-

ary instincts, he offered Jinnah a way out. The solution, he claimed,

lay in ‘the enforcement of the Law of Islam and its further develop-

ment in the light of modern ideas’; neither however was possible ‘with-

out a free Muslim state or states’.

Nevertheless, Iqbal was optimistic

about the prospect of success for he was convinced that, unlike the

threat posed by Nehru’s socialism to the rigid hierarchies of Hinduism,

‘the acceptance of social democracy, in some suitable form and consist-

ent with the legal principles of Islam, is not a revolution but a return

to the original purity of Islam’.

Iqbal’s urban, lower middle-class background had made him an

early recruit to the cause of socialism with its promise of a more egali-

tarian (though not classless) society. With his radical Islamic piety, he

was irresistibly drawn to the serious if nebulous idea of Islam as a

social and economic system founded on the principles of brotherhood,

equality and social solidarity. But how these principles were to be

translated in the context of a modern industrial society and how they

would be expressed in the socio-economic system of a free Muslim

state, or indeed who would control the means of production where

Muslims held sway, were questions that Iqbal, who died in 1938, did

not have to confront. Yet his struggle to hold on to Islam’s theistic

base as the necessary foundation of any free Muslim state, while sub-

scribing to the ethics of modern socialist doctrine, anticipated later

debates in Pakistan. These would be concerned overwhelmingly with

how far, if at all, the economic and social programme of a Muslim

THE DILEMMAS OF DEVELOPMENT

123

state had to reflect the moral concerns of Islam, and how they could

best reconcile Jinnah’s claim that Islam was not a mere religion of

medieval practices, but a social order that could serve as the basis of a

modern nation.

The search for consensus was also undermined by the colossal prob-

lems that faced Pakistan in its early years. Although Iqbal and Jinnah

may well have thought that containing the worst excesses of capitalism

was more ‘Islamically desirable’, Pakistan’s economy at independence

offered few opportunities to put in place the socialist objectives that

Iqbal believed could be justified by Islam and that Jinnah later

appeared to endorse. The challenge of accommodating almost eight

million refugees from India, the lack of an industrial base and a mate-

rial inheritance from the Raj that was wanting, meant that Pakistan’s

early leaders, including Jinnah, soon turned to private enterprise as the

main engine of the fledgling economy. Success depended on the engage-

ment of private entrepreneurs, who were overwhelming drawn from

the Muslim merchant classes, many with close links to Jinnah.

But

their concern with high returns on investments would, over time,

greatly weaken the impetus of social democracy and stifle debate about

its relevance to a Muslim Pakistan.

Yet, even in these early decades, when economic issues were far less

embroiled in the question of Pakistan’s relation to Islam, those press-

ing for more equitable economic policies did so in line with Islamic

expectations that were assumed to be embodied in Pakistan. One such

instance was the movement for land redistribution in the 1950s, which

owed much to the leadership of outspoken leaders such as Mian Ift-

ikharuddin from the Punjab and his Bengali counterparts, Abul

Hashim (Secretary General of the Bengal Muslim League in the 1940s)

and Maulana Bhashani (whose left-wing politics had earned him the

sobriquet, ‘red maulana’). Closely allied to radical factions in the

League,

whose quest for Muslim power they equated with the pursuit

of Islamic economic and social justice,

they were among the earliest

precursors of the idea of ‘Islamic Socialism’ that gained ground in the

late 1960s and 1970s. But the perennial lack of consensus over what

kind of Islam defined Pakistan’s national identity meant that their par-

ticular understanding of Islamic moral concerns about economic and

social relations in Pakistan was vigorously contested. The strongest

challenge came from the ulama and the Islamist groups allied to reli-

gious parties. Although they may have shared with their socialist foes

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

124

a common desire to restore Muslim power, their objectives varied. The

Muslim socialists who supported Pakistan seized on it as an opportu-

nity to apply principles of economic and social justice they believed

were consistent with Islam. For their part, the ulama and their Islamist

allies were drawn primarily to the idea of Pakistan as a space for the

fulfilment of obligations prescribed by Islam, which included obliga-

tions tied to the ownership of private property (the payment of zakat).

These differences over the socio-economic implications of Islam for

Pakistan sharpened in the 1960s and 1970s. At first, they were mut-

ed—overwhelmed by the more intense debate over the place of Islam

in the constitutional definition of Pakistan. There were also powerful

forces at work immediately after independence that tended to conceal

the lack of consensus over economic and social policy. The civil

bureaucracy, which had emerged as a powerful stabilizing force,

looked to the nascent industrial bourgeoisie to help off-set the influ-

ence of indigenous landowning and tribal groups. Their belated and

lukewarm response to the idea of Pakistan still aroused suspicion while

their devotion to forms of popular Islam appeared to jar with the tra-

dition of reformed Islam favoured by most bureaucrats and entrepre-

neurs. Dominated by a small minority representing urban Muslims

from India, with few local roots, they tended also to be indifferent, if

not instinctively hostile, to regional and ethnic expressions of Islam

favoured by the local, largely rural, majority. Nevertheless, their con-

trol of the state and of its resources ensured that these influential urban

elites soon developed a powerful socio-economic base, which success-

fully resisted competing versions of Islam.

This is not to say that

local, especially landholding, interests held no sway over the direction

of socio-economic change in these early years. On the contrary, they

still commanded enough authority in the ruling Muslim League effec-

tively to thwart all attempts to introduce tenancy and land reforms

until forced to make modest concessions in the 1960s.

Ethnic and regional conflicts accentuated the lack of consensus over

Islam, minimising the risk to ruling elites of any immediate threat from

below of the kind that had forced asset redistribution in the East. But

while the struggle over Islam may have eased the pressure for more

equitable economic policies, it could do little to restrain the excessive

consumerism that flowed from these policies and that came, in time, to

be associated with state corruption. By the mid 1960s, there was a

sustained debate that fuelled controversy over the state’s responsibility

THE DILEMMAS OF DEVELOPMENT

125

to meet economic standards consistent with its Islamic objectives.

Ayub Khan’s economic policies, which were implemented from 1958–68

(and hailed by his supporters as the Decade of Development), failed to

address equity issues.

Not only was there evidence of a steep rise in

levels of absolute poverty, but there was, by all accounts, also a stag-

gering concentration of wealth in a handful of mainly West-Pakistan-

based families.

The fact that Ayub’s preferred economic strategy of

‘functional inequality’

paid scant attention to the development of

social welfare sectors, such as education and health, further alienated

the masses and eroded government legitimacy. More dangerously still,

these trends were symptomatic of wider regional disparities between

East and West Pakistan that had fuelled resentment among Bengalis,

who accused Ayub’s regime of reducing the east to an internal colo-

ny.

It was also the perception and the popular feeling

that inequali-

ties had increased under his regime that brought disaffection with

Ayub. A major indicator ‘was the considerable increase in the level of

conspicuous consumption and wasteful expenditure on extravagant

and lavish housing and other consumer durables by the richer classes

in the country … in the face of … extreme poverty’.

At issue was

Ayub’s secularizing agenda, which was implicitly held responsible for

promoting economic inequities and encouraging corruption in viola-

tion of ‘Islam’. While opposition to his regime was certainly not

restricted to differences over economic priorities, the apparent disjunc-

tion between Ayub’s policies and Islam’s commitment to distributive

justice served as a particularly potent symbol in Pakistan, where the

state was still inclined to put its Islamic commitments on display.

The unfettered growth of private enterprise, the absence of meaning-

ful land reform and the massive concentration of wealth and power

during Ayub’s decade of development questioned how compatible

these could be with an Islamic economic order in Pakistan. While the

space to be accorded to Islam in formulating public policy remained

unsettled, fundamental questions on the desirability of private prop-

erty, the merits of public against private ownership and the state’s

responsibility to ensure a social welfare system still continued to be

debated within an Islamic framework. What separated the two sides of

this debate was not whether Islam should determine economic policy,

but which Islam should serve as its engine.

This lack of consensus also accounted in part for the wild swings in

economic policy that have characterised Pakistan’s political trajectory.

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

126

The creeping socialism

apparently endorsed by Jinnah on the eve of

independence derived from a modernist reading of Islam that empha-

sised distributive justice as the cornerstone of the modern national

community. The more robust modernist interpretation of Islam pre-

ferred by Ayub was shaped by radically different assumptions, which

also tended to equate true Islam with personal piety. This modern

understanding of religion, Metcalf observes, implied that when ‘it

[Islam] intruded on socio-economic issues, it did so in conformity with

Western standards of practice and interpretation’

—derived from the

legacy of ‘classic modern Western economic theory in which econom-

ics was wholly divorced from moral considerations.

Its most potent

expression was the doctrine of ‘the social utility of greed’, adopted by

Ayub, which justified inequality on the grounds that it led to economic

growth.

By the mid 1970s, these modernist variations of an Islamic

economic order were challenged by Bhutto’s version of Islamic social-

ism before a return to private enterprise in the 1980s was justified by

Zia as consistent with his programme of Islamic reform.

During these decades there emerged sharp differences that frustrated

the search for a consensus on Pakistan’s most efficacious economic

policies. This applied even to those apparently in agreement over the

desirability of introducing a Muslim socialist order as a corrective to

the unbridled capitalism of Ayub’s regime. Opinion in the late 1960s

and 1970s was divided between those who propounded Islamic social-

ism and those who appealed to ‘Muhammadan equality’ (musawat-i-

Muhammadi): both were vulnerable to criticism. While the former

were accused of surreptitiously fostering a materialistic worldview that

was antithetical to Islam (and therefore inappropriate for Pakistan),

the latter were said to have substituted a moral philosophy of Islam for

sound economic doctrine. Both dismissed their critics by insisting that

they were guided, above all, by the need to re-orientate national policy

along lines that would privilege the economic and social concerns of

Islam, which they claimed had been eroded during Ayub’s regime.

They were also united in their opposition to private property, con-

demning it as ‘un-Islamic’ on the grounds that Islam judged labour to

be the sole value in economic production.

Indeed, they sought to but-

tress this claim by suggesting that Islam’s unequivocal ban on interest

amounted to a rejection of any concession to capital—implying thereby

that private enterprise was itself ‘un-Islamic’. These views received

wide currency in the mid 1960s in the monthly magazine Nusrat,

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127

which was the main ideological organ of the PPP. The objective,

according to one authoritative assessment, was ‘to develop Islamic

Socialism as an intellectual movement that would enable Pakistan,

fully in consonance with its religious foundations, to find a route to

modernity between atheistic materialism on the left and the wholesale

westernization and religious obscurantism on the right.’

Its essence

would eventually find its way into Bhutto’s own poorly crafted rheto-

ric of ‘Islamic socialism’ in the 1970s.

What is worth noting is that there was little in this discourse on the

socialist foundations of an Islamic economic order to suggest that it

could become the basis of a more coherent Pakistani national identity

of the sort that had come to be commonly associated with Arab

nationalism. A rare exception was Hanif Ramey, who made his name

as a PPP stalwart and one of the party’s chief ideologues in the 1970s.

He called for a socialist re-interpretation of Pakistan’s national identity

that would unite ‘the oppressed classes’ and strengthen national soli-

darity. Nevertheless, as Jawed perceptively observes, it was social jus-

tice rather than national solidarity that moved most Islamic socialists

in Pakistan.

This would be consistent also with Metcalf’s view that,

by the early 1970s there was less concern than in the 1950s and 1960s

with Islam as a focus of national unity in Pakistan than with Islam as

a ‘programme of government action’.

This is not to say that there

was unanimity about Pakistan’s national identity or indeed consensus

over the place of Islam in the expression of that identity, but that the

link between Islam and Pakistan ensured that ‘an Islamic language’

remained the dominant language of national debate. While richly

diverse in its use of symbols, it effectively pre-empted the development

of any other rival language, whether couched in terms of secular

nationalism, liberalism or socialism. Nor, as Metcalf emphasises, was

this the language of ‘Islamic tradition’—on the contrary, it represented

‘a self-conscious and deliberate reformulation of Islam by people who

were literate, often professional, and usually urban’.

They included Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, whose promise to restore the

principles of distributive justice and equity to the forefront of Paki-

stan’s development strategy was famously projected as Islamic social-

ism. It is true that Bhutto, unlike Ayub, ‘did not seek to reinterpret

Islam to serve the needs of development’, but rather ‘to serve popu-

lism’.

His concern with distributive justice as Islamically desirable

was neither unusual when set against the wider discourse of radical

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

128

egalitarianism in Pakistan’s early years, nor so easily dismissed as the

opportunistic use of Islam when the separation of East Pakistan in

1971 demanded a fresh affirmation of the popular roots of Pakistani

Islam. It found a voice in the thinking of ‘Islamic Socialists’ led by

Ramay, Rasul Bakhsh Talpur and others who, encouraged by the

appeal of Bhutto’s heady mix of egalitarianism and popular Sufi Islam,

redoubled their efforts to find Quranic support for radical land reforms

and the nationalization of basic industries.

By doing so they hoped

both to respond to their supporters, who feared that the PPP’s brand

of socialism would compromise the Islamic ends associated with Paki-

stan, as well as to see off criticism from religious parties, whose alter-

native interpretations of Islam favoured radically different economic

policies.

These interpretations had also surfaced in the late 1960s in response

to the inequities encouraged by Ayub’s policies, and they were widely

promoted by the ulama and lay Islamist parties, led by the Jamaat-i-

Islami. Unlike the Islamic socialists, who were preoccupied with the

issue of distributive justice in a Muslim state like Pakistan, the ulama

and lay Islamists were concerned primarily with creating the right con-

ditions to fulfil the obligations demanded by Islam. They argued

strongly in favour of private property and free enterprise on the

grounds that they were necessary to meet obligations demanded by

Islam such as the payment of (zakat) and the pilgrimage to Mecca

(hajj)—neither of which they claimed was possible if all wealth was

owned by the state.

This is not to say that ulama groups had no

regard for questions of economic justice; rather the redress for poverty

and inequality was sought not in the design of economic instruments

but in the more rigorous compliance with religious obligations centring

on the various forms of institutionalized charity.

However, the ula-

ma’s support for private property did not readily translate into an

endorsement of capitalism. On the contrary, they saw the moral fail-

ings of capitalism (usury, speculation, hoarding and exploitation of the

poor) as far outweighing any benefits flowing from the respect for

private property.

These broad concerns were systematized by the Jamaat-i-Islami and

its leader, Maulana Mawdudi. Fiercely hostile to Ayub’s version of

modernist Islam, but no less antagonistic to socialist readings of Islam,

he mounted a spirited defence of private property and free enterprise

as being fundamental to the economic objectives of Islam.

Those

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129

were identified as the freedom of economic action, the creation of a

charitable network, and the rejection of class conflict. The rules

designed to achieve these objectives were the sanctity of private prop-

erty, the freedom of enterprise and the circulation of wealth.

Such

considerations converged with the ulama’s own concerns to resist state

control, deepen religious obligations and strengthen Islamic solidarity.

In 1970 the Jamaat launched its election manifesto, which set out its

vision of an Islamic economic order for Pakistan. Regarded by some as

‘a Western-type capitalist system with a social security scheme’,

failed to win popular support at a time when the stark disparities in

wealth that followed Ayub’s regime demanded a more rigorous treat-

ment of socio-economic issues than the Jamaat offered.

Yet, it was

not so much the Jamaat’s treatment of socio-economic issues along

emphatically Islamic lines that worked against it, but rather its assump-

tion that the relation between Pakistan’s national economic priorities

and Islam was self-evident.

Bhutto’s attempts while in power to forge a new consensus on Islam

as a socio-economic movement with the potential to address inequali-

ties set him on a course of confrontation with both Islamists and the

ulama. By that time he had also lost the support of the left-wing fac-

tions in his own party, who had grown disillusioned with his authori-

tarian style of government and disregard for equity objectives

embodied in the PPP’s extensive nationalization programme.

His

unwillingness to challenge the dominance of the landed classes and

enact land reforms also alienated supporters, who had expected Bhutto

to fulfil the promise to remove ‘the remaining vestiges of feudalism’.

But, ultimately, it was the combined power of the small propertied

classes represented by traders, merchants and shop-keepers hard hit by

nationalization, and Islamist parties appealing to the sanctity of private

property, that sealed Bhutto’s political fate.

These groups emerged as the main beneficiaries of General Zia’s

military regime which ousted Bhutto in 1977. Among its earliest meas-

ures was a review of Bhutto’s socio-economic policies. The aim, to

restore private enterprise as the main engine of growth though de-

nationalization, was to be carefully calibrated. Instead of dismantling

the whole edifice of Bhutto’s economic programme, the emphasis

shifted to opening up sectors previously closed to private enterprise.

Nevertheless, the move from state-led ‘Islamic socialism’ to state-led

‘Islamic capitalism’ was unmistakeable, preparing the way for growth

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

130

that would eventually compare favourably with Ayub’s ‘Decade of

Development’.

Exogenous factors, notably US financial and military aid in support

of Pakistan’s role as a front-line state against the Soviet invasion of

Afghanistan, sustained the boom.

So too did overseas remittances by

Pakistani workers in the Gulf, which helped fuel a parallel economy. It

served as a magnet for private entrepreneurs, who preferred to bypass

conventional banking channels in favour of alternative systems, such

as hawala or hundi, which relied on the informal transfer of capital

through private individuals.

This flourished in many rural areas and

small towns, which also served as the main recruiting grounds for

migrants to the Middle East and acted as the nodes of the informal

economy. Private initiatives mushroomed, boosting sectors from tour-

ism to transport, but also encouraging investments in so-called ‘collec-

tive goods’ informed by notions of Islamic charity, including the

building of mosques and religious schools (madrassas).

The regime

vigorously encouraged these charitable initiatives as the necessary tools

to forge an Islam that would come to define Pakistan’s new econo-

mic order.

This reading of Islam was predicated on an orthodox rather than a

modernist reading which re-imagined Pakistan as a state unambigu-

ously created to apply Islamic law. In matters of socio-economic pol-

icy, the aim was not to bring ‘Islam’ in line with conditions prescribed

by modern ideologies but to adapt modern conditions in ways that

would facilitate Islam. The belief in class conflict that had informed

the PPP’s social-democratic reading of Islam now gave way to rival

interpretations stressing the idea of a co-operative society of Muslims

under obligation to secure the economic objectives of Islam—as most

closely associated with the Islam favoured by lay Islamist parties, such

as the Jamaat-i-Islami and the traditional ulama. Indeed, they emerged

as the strongest supporters of Zia’s military regime. While they never

threatened to supplant it as an alternative centre of power, their influ-

ence over socio-economic change, especially in the early years, was

unmistakeable. Questions first raised in the 1960s about how best to

make Pakistan more responsive to an Islamic social and economic

system were explored with keen interest by the regime, which relied

both on the expertise of traditional ulama, such as Maulana Taqi

Usmani, and on the advice of prominent lay Islamists from the Jamaat

i-Islami, like Khurshid Ahmad, who served as a senior minister in Zia’s

first cabinet.

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131

In 1980 Zia appointed a committee to review how the main objec-

tives of an Islamic system of economic management could be applied

to Pakistan.

Echoing themes already rehearsed among the ulama and

the lay Islamist parties in the 1960s, the committee concluded in its

report that the main purpose of an Islamic economic system was the

achievement of justice and kindness (al adl wal ahsan). Its fulfilment in

the context of Pakistan, it declared, depended upon universal educa-

tion, land redistribution and a ceiling on inherited wealth. While the

committee’s recommendations were singled out by most critics as

purely cosmetic, designed for public consumption, what was striking

was its admission of uncertainty regarding the instruments necessary

for an Islamic economic order. Neither the abolition of interest nor

wealth and land taxes (zakat and ushr), identified by the ulama and

most religious parties as indispensable to Islamic economics, were

deemed to be so by the committee.

Its members were also ambiguous about the role of the private sec-

tor in leading economic growth. While the committee had no doubt

that ‘an Islamic economy will require the state to play a tangible role’

in the interests of guaranteeing the standards of social welfare expected

of an Islamic system, it was unwilling to countenance a role for the

state that would allow it to occupy the ‘commanding heights’ of the

economy.

This underlying uncertainty was confirmed when the com-

mittee’s members, possibly anticipating that there was nothing new or

specifically Islamic about its proposals, agreed that ‘these are the objec-

tives of any economic system; but that does not disqualify them from

being the objectives of the Islamic economic system as well, particu-

larly as they follow directly from Islam’s own distinctive economic

philosophy’.

By the mid 1980s, a consensus over Islam and, by extension an

Islamic system, was as yet nowhere in sight. The military regime’s

Sixth Five year Plan (1983–88) placed fresh emphasis on a reduced

role for the state as quintessentially ‘Islamic’.

But the state enforce-

ment of zakat and other Islamic taxes, traditionally regarded as volun-

tary acts of Muslim piety,

which had been implemented in defiance

of the finance committee’s recommendations, gave a dominant role to

the state, one that was to be further extended by its close supervision

of the abolition of interest. These wide variations in the understanding,

and selective application of ‘Islam’ by the regime were largely respon-

sible for the scepticism with which Zia’s policies on Islamization came

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

132

to be regarded. In time, they reinforced the impression that the terms

employed to define ‘Islam’ were governed mainly by considerations

aimed at boosting the regime’s political legitimacy through the choice

of measures that carried the greatest symbolic association with Islam.

The end of the Zia era in 1988 signalled a fresh debate about the

relation between ‘Islam’ and Pakistan’s socio-economic order. This

came increasingly to focus not so much on ‘Islam’ and the direction of

change (‘capitalist’, ‘socialist’ or ‘Islamic), but on ‘Islam’ and the con-

sequences of change. Where earlier uncertainty had concentrated on

which reading of ‘Islam’ would define the course of Pakistan’s socio-

economic development, doubts now surfaced over which ‘Islam’ could

best contain the damaging consequences of socio-economic change,

notably corruption. To some extent the shift in emphasis reflected glo-

bal currents, which showed a decisive shift in favour of economic lib-

eralization and privatization. The return to power of the PPP under

Benazir Bhutto in 1988 and again in 1993 was accompanied with none

of the fanfare of ‘Islamic socialism’ associated with her father’s party.

Instead, forced by Pakistan’s ballooning debt crisis to accept the condi-

tions set by multilateral lending agencies, notably the IMF, it gave free

rein to the private sector to kick-start the economy.

With political institutions all but destroyed by the previous regime,

this set the stage for a wholesale assault on the state by eager entrepre-

neurs ready to pay to break through bureaucratic hurdles in order to

establish new enterprises. These trends became even more acute under

Nawaz Sharif, whose use of state resources to further economic liber-

alization precipitated even more dramatic changes. According to one

respected commentator, ‘the 1990s were the moment where the eco-

nomic interests of middle and elite Pakistan became articulated into

politics and into a desire to use politics for economic gain’.

It was

also the moment when the question of corruption, long associated with

the vestiges of a backward rural Islam, would come to be more closely

linked to the rational and modernist Islam associated with the govern-

ing elite.

The culture of corruption

Of the many issues that have surfaced about Pakistan, especially since

the early 1990s, few have so consumed the attention of observers as cor-

ruption. Perceptions of its scale and pervasiveness have been reinforced

THE DILEMMAS OF DEVELOPMENT

133

by the prevalence of international corruption league tables, which have

consistently deemed Pakistan one of the most corrupt countries in the

world.

Although successive governments have been willing (publicly

at least) to launch ever more ruthless anti-corruptions campaigns, it

appears still to be deeply entrenched. So grave is the problem now held

to be that some have even argued that what Pakistan needs most

urgently is good government—that is, instituting a system of account-

ability rather than ostensibly democratic government based on holding

elections.

Despite this recent global attention, corruption in Pakistan has long

been symptomatic of deeper concerns about a state whose distortions

are judged to be the results of the moral failings of a leadership igno-

rant of Islam. Moreover the debate on corruption has been mired in

rival interpretations of Islam, each accused of corrupting socio-eco-

nomic change in Pakistan. While some regarded corruption as flowing

from the distorted priorities of the new, modernist, Islam espoused by

the country’s governing elite, others saw it as proof of the resilience of

the unreformed, popular Islam that held sway over vast swathes of

Pakistan’s rural society. Since the 1980s the emergence of a more self-

conscious Islamic identity has lent momentum to yet other forms of

more puritanical Islam which have intensified the debate and threat-

ened more systematic campaigns in favour of reforming standards of

public and private morality.

The relationship between forms of Islam and the debate on corrup-

tion has a curious pedigree in that it has often represented a nostalgic

yearning for Pakistan’s first generation of leaders, whose respect for

the high ideals of Islam are believed to account for their apparent

reluctance to raid the public purse.

Stories abound of Jinnah’s frugal-

ity (despite his immense wealth), while the high standards of financial

probity and accountability set by his close associates (many of them

devout Muslims), such as Liaquat Ali Khan and Khwaja Nazimuddin,

serve as bench-marks by which to judge and routinely condemn subse-

quent generations of Pakistan’s leaders. Not surprisingly, the common

view has tended increasingly to endorse the view that ‘the business of

politics now attracts the scum of the community and a legion of scoun-

drels. In the name of democracy, unspeakable crimes are committed …

larceny, loot and plunder in broad day light, with no fear of account-

ability’.

Corruption in Pakistan is often regarded as the new evil that

marked a break with the values of an older and more glorious period.

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

134

This may explain why attitudes towards corruption, at least during the

earlier part of Ayub’s regime in the 1960s were relatively tolerant. One

influential economic assessment suggested that corruption under Ayub

was instrumental to economic efficiency even if it did fuel ‘anecdotal

evidence that the recipients of import and industrial licenses either

were close friends of the regime or had greased the palms of people in

authority to grant them’.

But tolerance for the high levels of corruption unleashed by Ayub’s

model of unbridled growth found no place in the hostile discourse of

its critics, especially the traditional ulama, who singled out the regime’s

version of Islamic modernism for encouraging corruption. At issue was

Ayub’s attempt to codify elements of a modernist tradition he first

imbibed as a student at Aligarh by subjecting the legal injunctions of

Islam to critical and rational scrutiny. Outstanding examples ranged

from the far-reaching 1961 Muslim Family Laws Ordinance, which

formalized Islamic injunctions as legal rules relating to polygamy,

divorce and inheritance [see chapter 3] to the regulation of the Islamic

lunar calendar by reference by a central meteorology department.

Measures such as these, the ulama feared, strengthened the forces of

secularism and eroded the state’s Islamic purpose ‘to command right

and forbid evil’.

It was precisely Ayub’s ‘modernist’ zeal for innova-

tion (bid’a) that had fatally divorced statecraft from moral considera-

tions and opened the way for widespread corruption.

Ayub also faced a stiff challenge from Islamist parties like the

Jamaat-i-Islami. While the ulama had condemned the regime’s

unhealthy desire for innovation as the source of corruption, the Jamaat

attributed it to Ayub’s authoritarian style of politics, which it claimed

ran counter to Islam.

Yet, the Jamaat was more restrained in its cri-

tique of Ayub’s modernization programme and its resulting disparities,

fearing that to do so would trigger a populist reaction against private

property—an institution the Jamaat vigorously defended.

No less

important was the Jamaat’s own engagement with modernism, which

left it more ambivalent about Ayub’s modernizing agenda than the

traditionalist ulama. The Jamaat’s vision of Islam squarely encom-

passed the modern and the new; neither was seen as threatening or

necessarily corrupting. Indeed, the Jamaat’s leader, Maulana Maw-

dudi, emphasised that modernity, albeit under the auspices and name

of Islam, was vital to overcome the economic and political weakness

affecting Muslims. It was not Ayub’s modernity as such that was the

THE DILEMMAS OF DEVELOPMENT

135

source of corruption, but his failure to Islamize modernity that was

judged by the Jamaat to be corrupting.

Ultimately, their struggle cen-

tred not so much on the respective merits of two rival versions of

Islam—the traditional and the modern—but on rival claims to define

the parameters of a modern Islam with the power to free Muslims

from retrograde practices such as corruption. For the Jamaat, it was

precisely Ayub’s failure to bring Pakistan in line with reformed Islam

and his subsequent compromises with the popular Islam of Sufi pirs

to secure his political future that were held to be responsible for

corruption.

Ayub vigorously resisted these claims, repeatedly stressing his com-

mitment to the principles of Islam. But, as Metcalf observes, his Islam

was ‘modernist’ concerned less with ‘providing a blue-print or guide to

policies and actions’ (let alone delineating a regime of public morality)

than serving as the ‘ultimate interest’ of his policies.

Ayub’s attempt

to separate Islam as a focus of national loyalty from Islam as a pro-

gramme of action could not be sustained. By the late 1960s his style of

Islam had failed to respond to urgent calls for more equitable wealth

distribution and, worse, it appeared to foster an ‘un-Islamic’ outlook

favouring the ostentatious display of wealth in the midst of squalor

and poverty. Notwithstanding these weaknesses, Ayub’s modernist

understanding of Islam served as a powerful weapon in the service of

a dominant discourse opposed to local cultures, whose preference for

custom (riwaj) over the rule of law was deemed to be the root cause of

corruption. In recent years it has found an echo in the suggestion that

corruption in Pakistan is fundamentally an expression of the country’s

old indigenous regional traditions, which habitually favour custom

over the rule of law and seek the sanction of a popular and unreformed

Islam to perpetuate arbitrary practices. Representatives of this view

argue that the revival of old cultures sustained by regionally entrenched

landed elites (jagirdars) and tribal chiefs (sardars) have been responsi-

ble for damaging the quality of governance and bringing corruption

into the country.

The process gained momentum when the old feudal elites, threat-

ened by the emergence of a new class of capitalist farmers under Ayub,

mounted a rear-guard action to reassert their authority. Ill at ease with

the modernist vision of Pakistan as a state sanctioned by the rule of

law, local leaders reasserted the customary rules of reciprocity and the

exchange of favours to undermine the institutions of the modern state.

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

136

By the mid-1960s, it is claimed, the state’s legal foundations had been

eroded, leaving it prey to a cultural environment that predated Paki-

stan and in which corruption, conceived as the granting and withhold-

ing of favours in exchange for political support, became the norm. The

modernizing elite, who sided with Ayub in the hope of eclipsing this

old culture of corruption, were unable to withstand the challenge.

Lacking local constituencies, they were no match for local landed mag-

nates and tribal chiefs who held sway over many of the north-western

regions that became part of Pakistan in 1947.

While much of this critique levelled against this ‘ancient culture of

corruption’ can be read as a means of justifying the modernizing

imperative common to any nation-state, it acquired a particular signifi-

cance in Pakistan, where the Islam of the governing elite has left a

decisive imprint on thinking about the consequences of corruption for

socio-economic change. Metcalf identifies two main features charac-

teristic of the Pakistani elite’s treatment of Islam. The first was its

‘modernist orientation’, which has favoured a degree of ‘jurispruden-

tial radicalism’ (and impatience with existing forms of popular Islam),

which is a legacy of nineteenth-century Indo-Muslim reform move-

ments.

Partial to rational thinking, it lent itself readily to the demands

for a modern Muslim state. The other, more implicit, was its disdain

for ‘regional forms of Islam’ in Pakistan, which were seen to be instinc-

tively hostile to legally established authority.

These elements, characteristic of modernist thinking, converged with

the outlook of most revivalist organizations, notably the Jamaat i-Is-

lami, which was otherwise opposed to the Islam of the ruling classes.

What drew them together was a common understanding of corruption

as a nexus between powerful landed and tribal authorities, who

appealed to custom rather than law to stamp their authority and the

network of Muslim holy men (pirs), who relied on customary religious

practices rather than Islamic law to control the lives of rural worship-

pers. Together, these forces were believed to have weakened the

impulse of an enlightened society, leaving it vulnerable to corruption.

While there are unquestionably wide differences among Muslim

reformists in Pakistan over the interpretation of Islamic law—ranging

from the liberalism of Aligarh modernists, who have dominated state

power since independence to the more rigid posture adopted by reviv-

alist supporters of the Jamaat on the margins of power—all share a

common concern to establish legal supremacy as a corrective to the

corruption of the ‘old’ order.

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137

Three main assumptions have flowed from this idea of corruption as

a feature of the indigenous order in Pakistan—assumptions that have

had a vital bearing on the perception of the country’s economic and

social development. The first is that corruption is inherently a feature

of the indigenization of the post-colonial state, which so long as it was

under the control of so-called modern elites had successfully withstood

its damaging effects by appealing to an ethic of public service sanc-

tioned by the rule of law. The second is that the indigenization of the

Pakistani state heralded the return of old feudal and tribal classes,

whose customary modes of predatory authority had been legitimized

by the electoral democratization. The third is that elected politicians,

who have been the chief beneficiaries of this process, to the extent that

they depend electorally upon local and regional constituencies, have

become carriers of this old culture—leaving them more vulnerable to

corruption than their more modern counterparts in the civil bureauc-

racy and the military.

Pakistan’s first democratic election and the return to power of the

Pakistan People’s Party in 1970 reinforced these perceptions. For some,

the election of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, a scion of one of the oldest landed

families of Sind, formalized the resurgence of the old order, deepening

the hold of corrupt practices.

That Bhutto was not perceived to be ‘as

straightforward a modernist as Ayub Khan’

lent credence to this

view. Bhutto’s complex style of politics, combining an urbane Western

education with a decidedly rural idiom that found common cause with

rural elites, represented by landlords and pirs, reinforced this percep-

tion. As such, Bhutto’s decision to empower regional elites and pro-

mote regional, especially Sindhi, cultures appeared to signal a break

with ‘Iqbalian modernism’.

The ‘corrupted’ forms of Islam popular

in the regions, including the worship of saints and shrines, had long

been regarded by Iqbal’s followers as inappropriate for a modern

nation such as Pakistan. Revivalist supporters of the Jamaat also made

no secret of their opposition to Bhutto, whose secularism appeared to

them as morally reprehensible as his attachment to the ‘unreformed’

Islam of Sindhi shrine culture: both were seen to have corrupted the

fabric of the modern state in Pakistan.

This unlikely convergence of modernist and scripturalist Islam

would explain, in part, why opposition to Bhutto eventually crystal-

lised under the banner of Islam—although, characteristically, what this

really meant remained uncertain. The Jamaat’s revivalist blue-print for

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

138

Pakistan clearly held little appeal for the modernists, who made up the

ranks of the secular and leftist factions allied to the anti-Bhutto Paki-

stan National Alliance (PNA).

But their shared distaste for the old

culture of feudal and tribal patronage and for the unreformed Islam

they believed helped sanction it, lent substance to the claim that they

were all acting to salvage the Islam they believed was the bulwark of

Pakistan as a modern Muslim state. According to Mawdudi, this Islam

had little place for ‘these Brahmins and pirs, these nawabs and ru’asa

[sing, rais, traditional leader] these jagirdars and feudal lords … to rob

… [and] to satiate [their] selfish demands.’

Nor, according to their

counterparts among the modernist elite, was this Islam compatible

with ‘the economics of riwaj’ favoured by the ‘old establishment’,

which they claimed had been provided opportunities by Bhutto ‘on a

grand and unprecedented scale’, leaving the way open for a sharp rise

in corruption.

Whether or not Bhutto went further than any other leader in cor-

rupting the institutional foundations of the modern state in Pakistan is

open to question. Nevertheless, his status as a politician who nurtured

his links with local cultures, with their versions of folk Islam, rein-

forced popular perceptions that politicians were more predisposed to

corruption than their modern counterparts in the civil bureaucracy and

the army. The idea gained wider currency in the 1990s during the

troubled prime ministerial tenures of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz

Sharif, which, according to some assessments, left Pakistan more

unequal and corrupt than at any other time since the 1960s.

Like her

father, Benazir was accused of corrupting the state by entrenching its

feudal character and transforming public institutions into instruments

for the arbitrary exercise of power.

The compromises with indigenous

feudal and tribal cultures were less stark in the case of Bhutto’s succes-

sor, Nawaz Sharif, who twice succeeded her in 1993 and 1997. His

skill in the art of patronage politics appeared to be firmly grounded in

rules devised by an emerging, predominantly urban, industrial-based,

middle class, which had consolidated its gains under Zia.

Regarded by the state’s purportedly modern elites (the bureaucracy

and the military high command) as committed to development, Sharif

raised expectations that he would revive the country’s modern indus-

trial sector along lines reminiscent of the Ayub era. While reports of the

misappropriation of public funds and the accumulation of bad debts

by business associates and family members soon surfaced, Sharif’s

THE DILEMMAS OF DEVELOPMENT

139

commitment to economic modernization tended (as during the Ayub

era) to encourage a more forgiving attitude to corruption, deemed a

necessary evil to grease the wheels of an economy in disrepair. The fact

that he hailed from an urban, industrial background that made no

secret of its attachment to reformist currents within Islam, also fuelled

expectations that Sharif would be less vulnerable to the corrupting

influence of popular and folk Islam characteristic of local cultures. His

and his closest political associates’ involvement in the Tablighi Jamaat,

an off-shoot of the reformist Deobandi movement, reinforced these

expectations. Although indifferent to matters of Islamic law and juris-

prudence, the Tablighi movement actively discourages ‘deviant’ cus-

toms centring on the veneration of holy men (pirs) and the practice of

syncretic rituals associated with popular Sufism.

Since Sharif’s ouster in 1999 following a military coup led by Gen-

eral Musharraf, who was forced to resign in 2008 under pressure from

a democratically elected government, the issue of corruption has come

under fresh scrutiny. Critics have challenged the claim that it is prima-

rily the class of elected politicians that is chiefly to blame for corrup-

tion by pointing to the failings of the civil-military alliance that has run

the country for much of its history. What is unique about corruption

in Pakistan, they suggest, is not the resurgence of an old culture repre-

sented by ‘corrupt political leaders, inept political parties, and ruthless

landlords’ contemptuous of the rule of law, but the vice-like grip of a

‘modern’ civil-military alliance, whose members, as ‘the real perpetra-

tors of corruption have cleverly manoeuvred to shift the blame to

scapegoats’.

This is believed to be especially true of Pakistan’s mod-

ern armed forces. Their supremacy in the form of successive military

regimes transformed them from a state institution into a ‘political

class’ with significant economic interests tied especially to the acquisi-

tion of agricultural land.

These changes have led to the development

of the military ‘as one of the many land barons or feudal landlords’

with a pattern of social behaviour that ‘is like that of any big feudal

landlord’—a trend that intensified under General Zia’s government

(and later vigorously encouraged by Musharraf).

Until then, it is argued, the army was relatively well-placed to claim

the moral high ground as agents of the modern state pitted against the

corruption of the old order. But it soon lost the reputation it thought

it enjoyed. Hamza Alavi was among the first to signal these changes.

He identified two factors that had made the army more prone to the

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

140

logic of an informal system at odds with the rules governing military

professionalism. The first was the granting of land to army officers,

which he believed sensitised them to the socio-cultural logic of reward

and reciprocity, ‘so that even those who did not come from substantial

landowning families acquired landed interests and a corresponding

class commitment’. The second involved the participation of the mili-

tary in business (ostensibly to help equip its members to manage state

corporations), which offered ‘much greater scope for patronage and

nepotism’.

Indeed entry into business through careers in the state

service, both civil and military, has since the 1980s become a marked

feature of military rule in Pakistan, leading to a steady decline in levels

of transparency and accountability.

Other informal networks have

also influenced the military and made it vulnerable to corrupt prac-

tices. Since the 1980s, allegations have surfaced of an established nexus

between the then ruling military regime and shadowy drugs syndicates

with close links to key members of Zia’s military administration.

They suggest that the dominance of Yusufzai and Khattak Pathans,

who are entrenched in military and industrial circles, may have forged

connections between senior army officers and drug traffickers though

these charges have always remained open to question.

Paradoxically, it was its informal alliance with Islamist parties that

rendered the military more vulnerable to the moral discourse of cor-

ruption. Having freely employed the rhetoric of Islam under General

Zia, the armed forces now found themselves under pressure also to

abide by Islamic standards. The accent on the public adherence to

Islamic norms since the 1980s had fuelled expectations of higher

standards of public morality consistent with Islamic standards, but

they came precisely at a time when the gap between piety and morality

appeared to be widening. One response to the growing strain was the

hardening of an Islamic language that found expression in a puritani-

cal tendency

that now seeks to dominate debates on Pakistan’s puta-

tive Islamic purpose.

The puritan backlash

Nowhere has this puritanical tendency been more actively nurtured

than in the defence of Muslim religious education, whose main institu-

tion—the madrassa—is regarded by its guardians as a bastion against

corruption, and possibly even a microcosm of the Islamic state they

THE DILEMMAS OF DEVELOPMENT

141

believe was envisaged for Pakistan. In a striking confirmation of this

vision, the distinguished alim, Maulana Rafi Usmani, president of the

well-known madrassa, the Dar al Ulum in Karachi, told an assembly

of new students in 1997 that they were poised to enter ‘a secure for-

tress’ … [where] ‘God has created a small world for us … [which] the

rest of the world does not know’. ‘Its purpose,’ he claimed, was ‘to

show everyone what an Islamic government is like. We can tell them

to come and see our little model, our example of an Islamic society.’

It is undeniable that the hermetically sealed world of the madrassa

can no longer be isolated from the currents now sweeping across Paki-

stani society. While this has been a cause of serious misgiving among

some sections of the traditional religious establishment, others within

it have seized upon the opportunity to use the pedagogical objectives

of the madrassa as a means of pressing for the reform of public stand-

ards along lines consistent with the Islamic purpose of the state. In that

sense, the debate on the value of religious education, which is said to

have contributed to the exponential growth of madrassas in Pakistan

has also stimulated public engagement with issues of moral probity as

a means of testing the state’s ‘Islamicity’. Among those hastening to set

the tone of this debate are the ulama, whose interest in the moral

reform of state and society are rooted in their long involvement with

traditional Islamic education. As purveyors of this education they have

long claimed that they are also best placed to steer state and society

away from anarchy and corruption.

Their claims are partly grounded in the historical status of the

madrassa in South Asia, which has been closely associated with both

the protection of a Muslim identity and the formation of the ‘morally

respectable’ Muslim. This role was enhanced in colonial India when

madrassas as diverse as Farangi Mahal in Lucknow and the Darul

Uloom in Deoband came increasingly to be preoccupied with models

of right conduct (adab) and its relation to the definition of Muslim

identity and the defence of Islam.

The prominent place occupied by

Islam in independent Pakistan restored the elements of this debate to

centre-stage so that, as Zaman notes, ‘the [Pakistani] ulama’s vision of

how an Islamic identity is best preserved is closely tied to the institution

of the madrasa’.

100

So too are the moral foundations of that identity

which, in keeping with the broad pedagogical aims of religious educa-

tion, are dedicated both to providing basic education and ensuring

‘socialization to certain norms of proper behaviour and knowledge’.

101

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

142

Recent studies that investigate the appeal of Islamic religious educa-

tion in Pakistan also confirm that the preference for such education

stems not so much from financial compulsion (for example, poverty),

but from a clear value attached to such learning in Pakistan, where the

training of the good Muslim is seen to be a prerequisite of the good

Pakistani citizen.

102

Moreover uncertainty about which Islam is best

suited to producing the good Muslim and, by extension, the good

Pakistani has widened the space for contestation while allowing the

madrassas and their managers—the ulama and Islamist groups—to

emerge as influential purveyors of Islamic standards.

They have been encouraged by the ample space afforded by succes-

sive governments concerned with Islamic religious education in Paki-

stan and its role in setting standards of public life that are judged to be

consistent with a state committed to Islam. The assumption that reli-

gious education is vital to the broader Islamic aims of the state has

been nowhere more in evidence than in repeated attempts to reform

the madrassa curriculum. Paradoxically, Ayub Khan, who made no

secret of his hostility to the ulama and Islamist parties, appeared to

share this assumption. In 1962 he appointed a committee charged with

overseeing the reform of the madrassa curriculum. In its report, it

emphasised that ‘it was Islam which gave birth to Pakistan and more

than anything else it is Islam which will guarantee its future greatness.

The importance of religious education is therefore obvious in a country

like Pakistan’.

103

At the same time, the report declared that religious

education of the kind imparted by madrassas could not be restricted

merely to the study of the Koran and other religious texts, but was also

responsible for creating ‘an Islamic nation’. More significantly, in an

apparent break with the regime’s style of Islam, which understood it

above all as an aspect of personal piety, the report called for religious

education that would reflect Islam as a total system and that would

‘cover all aspects of human life’.

104

While it is more than plausible, as

Zaman suggests, that the committee may have intended to use this

recommendation to justify bringing the sphere of traditional religious

education more closely under state control,

105

it is unlikely that either

the ulama or Islamist parties saw the recommendations in quite the

same light. Indeed, the support of the Jamaat-i-Islami

106

suggests that

it may well have construed the committee’s recommendations as

endorsing the Jamaat’s position that the values imparted through a

modern religious education were vital to set the standards expected of

Pakistan as a modern Islamic state.

THE DILEMMAS OF DEVELOPMENT

143

This was certainly the guiding assumption of the 1979 report on

madrassa reform commissioned by Ayub’s more devout successor,

General Zia ul Haq. Strongly backed by Islamist parties, including the

Jamaat-i-Islami, it left no doubt that the purpose of religious education

in Pakistan was to enhance the state’s Islamic identity. Mindful of the

part played by madrassas in fostering Muslim identity in colonial

India, the committee came out strongly in favour of the madrassa in

Pakistan as the ‘anchor which holds the entire society together’.

107

Despite the stated intentions of his regime to enhance the role of reli-

gious education, Zia failed to inspire the confidence of the religious

establishment dominated by the ulama. They feared the imminent loss

of their autonomy, but also condemned as ‘irreligious’ proposals to

transform ulama organizations into official institutions.

108

By doing so,

they signalled their determination jealously to guard their prerogative

to pass judgement on the presumed Islamic character of the state.

Their position was buttressed by the failure of President Musharraf’s

sustained efforts to bring religious education in line with his vision of

Pakistan’s identity as a beacon of ‘moderate Muslim enlightenment’.

Regarded by the ulama and Islamist parties as a ruse to justify his pro-

Western policies, it served nevertheless as an opportunity for Mushar-

raf to reiterate the state’s role in ensuring a prominent role for Islam in

the public sphere. The government’s White Paper on Education, which

was published in 2006 (and revised the following year), stressed the

importance of religious education in Pakistan by insisting that ‘Islamic

ideology must determine the policy of education … and provide for

options that will enable the Pakistani Muslim to develop himself or

herself as a true Muslim’.

109

While the report made much of ‘true

Islam’ as endowed with the power to ‘meet modern challenges with

modern responses’,

110

it shared with its predecessors a readiness to

flaunt the state’s Islamic credentials by appearing to subscribe to the

worldview of the ulama and other religious groups. ‘The responsibility

of the state’ it declared’ was to provide its citizens with [a] … knowl-

edge of individual and social values as ordained in the Quran’. As

such, ‘the importance of madrasas as a supplement to State’s efforts

cannot be over emphasised’.

111

This is not to say that the state has necessarily, or always, deferred

to members of the country’s religious hierarchy as the guardians of

Pakistan’s Islamic identity or as keepers of its public morality. Indeed,

the history of Pakistan is replete with instances of conflict between the

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

144

state and its critics within the religious hierarchy. At the same time, the

state’s ambiguity about the place of Islam in public life and the need of

authoritarian regimes to prop up their tenuous legitimacy by recourse

to the rhetoric of Islam has ensured that the spokesmen of religion are

given license not only to remain actively engaged in public life, but also

to arbitrate on the state’s Islamic character. It is worth noting that,

since Pakistan’s controversial engagement in the US-led ‘war on terror’

in 2001, some madrassas such as the Jamiat ul Ulum al Islamiyya in

Karachi and the Darul ul Ulum Haqqaniya in Akora Khattack in

NWFP, have questioned the state’s Islamic credentials by denouncing

proposals to reform the madrassas as evidence of the state’s failure to

protect the latter as bastions of Islam and as guarantors of Pakistan’s

Islamic identity.

But the state’s role in fostering ambiguity about the place of Islam in

public life is not the only reason to account for the salience of religious

education in Pakistan. At least as important has been public disen-

chantment with the failure of successive governments to provide basic

public services, and especially of their failure to provide a more equi-

table education system.

112

The latter has transformed the issue of reli-

gious education from one concerned with debating the merits of

Islamic instruction in a modern state to one that now serves as the

basis of a powerful moral discourse against the failings of the state. It

has been strengthened by the persistence of deep divisions along lines

of class and language in Pakistan’s educational system that some have

compared to ‘educational apartheid’.

113

They have accentuated social

and economic inequalities and produced what some describe as ‘deni-

zens of alien worlds’, who ‘live in the same country but are completely

alienated from each other.

114

Since independence access to quality education, especially to elite

schools, where the medium of instruction is English, has been the pre-

serve of classes with power and privilege. Bhutto’s 1972 educational

reforms sought to redress this imbalance by nationalizing most private

schools with the exception of a number of prestigious English-medium

schools and those owned by missionaries or run as charitable trusts.

But his reforms also widened existing divisions by creating a new hier-

archy within schools where the medium of instruction was English.

They were now internally divided between poorly state-administered,

so-called, English medium schools, subject to a national curriculum,

and privately run elitist English-medium schools with their own

THE DILEMMAS OF DEVELOPMENT

145

curriculum that prepared children from wealthy families for educa-

tion abroad.

The 1980s witnessed further disparities following the reversal of

Bhutto’s nationalization programme. Under General Zia private entre-

preneurs were encouraged to enter the educational market, where

demand for English as the language of power had intensified at the

same time as had demands for instruction in Islam necessary to qualify

for service in the new, Islamized state. It led to a significant expansion

in the numbers of madrassas,

115

but also in the numbers of private

schools offering both worldly

116

and religious education. With their

modest fee structure they served as magnets for students from lower

middle class families seeking to be both modern, by mastering English,

(however imperfectly) and Islamic. Many of the private schools that

offered a ‘mixed’ education have garnered the support of Islamist par-

ties keen to extend their appeal among politically disempowered

classes seeking to lay claim to positions of power through access to

English in the context of a more religiously grounded education. Ironi-

cally Islamist groups were at the forefront of anti-English campaigns

that peaked in the late 1970s, but were cut short by Zia—himself once

their greatest champion—who reversed an order imposing Urdu as the

medium of instruction in all schools. Since the 1980s, Islamist groups

have emerged as strong supporters of instruction in English. Differing

in style from both the rejection and resistance of English by the ulama

and its acceptance and assimilation by the westernized elite, their strat-

egy reflects a bid by new groups, which have seized on the empowering

potential of English, to sharpen the Islamic profile of the state.

117

It has led to the claim that the majority of privately-financed English

medium institutions in Pakistan have been effectively transformed into

middle-class ‘Islamist institutions’.

118

Others appear to confirm this

trend. They point to the proliferation of private schools offering a

‘mixed’ education that combines religiously grounded education with

instruction in English, and warn that current efforts to ‘de-Islamize’

the state educational system run against the preference of ever larger

numbers of Pakistanis for ‘a worldly education in religious environ-

ments’.

119

Ominously, they also suggest that ‘these religiously oriented

private schools may not be the government’s allies in the production

of Pakistani citizens’.

120

If so, they could be poised to usher in a more

pointed puritan challenge against the perceived moral failings of a

state that will come to be ever more closely judged against models of

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

146

presumed Islamic authenticity, whose claims to deliver fairer services

will be enhanced by their claim to do so unambiguously in the name

of Islam.

It is precisely the state’s ambiguity and lack of ideological certainty

over the place of Islam in the public sphere that has left it vulnerable

to the charge by ulama and Islamist groups that its incompetence in

delivering basic services to its citizens constitutes a moral rather than

a political failing symptomatic of a lack of commitment to Islam. The

state has responded by making ever more lavish claims to speak on

behalf of Islam. Their implications have been especially marked in the

debate on the value of Islamic religious education, where by projecting

it as vital to the definition of Pakistan’s national identity, successive

regimes have allowed the pedagogical aims of such education, origi-

nally dedicated to producing good Muslims, to set the standards of the

good Pakistani citizen. At the same time, these standards have imper-

illed the state by serving precisely as the yardsticks by which an

increasingly restless citizenry, angered by the degradation of public life

in Pakistan, has chosen to test the state’s professed Islamic character.

But it is the absence of a consensus regarding the role of Islam that

has, above all, severely constrained the economic and social reach of

the state. Although Pakistan’s early generation of leaders boldly

declared that Islam would govern their economic system, the lack of

unanimity over Islam effectively precluded the development of a coher-

ent economic model. Competing ideas of Islam also influenced the

social and economic discourse on corruption by injecting into it a

strong moral component that has tended increasingly to equate poor

governance with the state’s fragile commitment to a more ‘authentic’

Islamic dispensation.

147

BETWEEN CRESCENT AND SWORD

PROFESSIONALIZING JIHAD

Few discussions of Pakistan can escape the armed forces’ overwhelm-

ing dominance of national life and its less than benign role as a key

political actor. The military’s monopoly over the right to speak on

behalf of the nation and its jealous control over the levers of power

have long been recognized as characteristic features of the Pakistani

state, even if their causes are still widely debated.

The most common

explanations of the military’s involvement in civilian affairs have cen-

tred on the traumatic circumstances that accompanied the nation’s

creation, which left it at birth with a fledging administration forced to

turn to its army to confront simultaneous challenges arising from com-

munal riots, the resettlement of millions of refugees and, above all, a

hostile regional environment marked by tension with Afghanistan and

a primordial fear of India.

Chronic structural imbalances also played

their part. The leaders of the new country, many of them migrants

from India, lacked constituencies in the territories they now claimed to

control. They were left with no choice but to cede ever greater powers

to the military that, with the support of external powers such as the

United States, led to the terminal decline of civilian political institu-

tions.

More recently, the causes of the army’s iron grip on politics

have come to be more closely analyzed less in terms of its claim to be

the best guardian of Pakistan’s national interest or of the weakness of

civilian politicians lacking legitimacy, but as rooted in the predatory

control over a vast economic empire (or ‘Milbus’) that is harnessed in

the service of the military’s class interests.

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

148

These explanations all carry considerable force. Yet, by ignoring the

implications of Pakistan’s unresolved national identity and the lack of

consensus over the role of Islam, they fail to explain how the military

emerged as a major force attempting not only to determine the national

interest but to define the very meaning of Pakistan. There are many

interpretations recognizing that an Islamic outlook has increasingly

permeated the military rank and file and that on occasion it has even

threatened the army’s professional ethos, making it more vulnerable to

the ideologies of radical Islam. Yet, there is little understanding of how

an institution assumed to be unequivocally national fell prey to the

multiple meanings of Pakistan and the diverging interpretations of

Islam that were held to attach to the country. Like the political leader-

ship, unsure of its secular credentials in a state where the nebulous

association between religion and nationalism had progressively sacral-

ized political discourse, the military too soon lost sight of its pro-

claimed ‘secular’ purpose.

The relative lack of interest in pursuing the complex relationship

between the state’s religious identity and its military institutions is

partly explained by the widely held assumption that the military,

unlike its weaker political counterparts, was under no pressure to

accommodate Islam or yield to the temptation of mobilizing its sym-

bols in order to shore up its authority. The common view is that, not-

withstanding the adoption of religious symbols, the army’s ‘Islamic

identity was only in name’ and served to dress a ‘largely moderate and

secular’ ethos.

This is true as far as it goes but this interpretation conceals the more

complex reality of a key state institution that has long sought to over-

come the ambiguities surrounding Pakistan’s national and Islamic

identities. This concern was sharpened by the army’s repeated involve-

ment in political affairs, which encouraged its interest in matters of

ideological nationalization, and by its jealous control over the projec-

tion of Pakistan’s regional interests. In particular, the military has

grappled with how best to mould itself as an institution that was

simultaneously capable of accepting Pakistan’s identity as a nation-state

defined by the limits of its territorial borders while contributing to its

distinctive features as a Muslim entity founded on claims that had his-

torically called into question the validity of territorial nationalism.

That religious identity has counted for less in explaining the mili-

tary’s political ascendancy in Pakistan stems also from the assumption

BETWEEN CRESCENT AND SWORD

149

that such interest as there was in Islam in the military tended to be

moderate and liberal. There was a presumption that any other form of

Islam, such as the more orthodox brand promoted by General Zia’s

military regime, was aberrant and unrepresentative of the military.

practice these distinctions were blurred and the military’s relation to

Islam more incoherent than is commonly supposed. Not only was there

no consensus within the military on the strategic implications of Paki-

stan’s putative Islamic character (as early and subsequent controversies

over the doctrine of jihad as a legitimate instrument of military strat-

egy demonstrates), but agreement was also lacking on which Islam best

served the corporate and political interests of the armed forces (as the

radically different positions on Islam adopted by Generals Ayub, Zia

and Musharraf clearly testify).

These doubts were largely symptomatic of unresolved tensions

between two conflicting versions of Islam which the military sought,

over time, to manage in pursuit of its own objectives. The first pertains

to the more liberal and moderate representations of Islam with which

it is still widely (if questionably) associated. It flows from a recogniz-

ably Indo-Muslim communal discourse of power that defines Pakistan

(marked by its Muslim identity) primarily in opposition to India

(marked by its Hindu identity). The second, reflecting a more radical

reading of Islam that is commonly judged to be at odds with military

thinking, has sought to project Pakistan’s Muslim identity as an

expression of social aspirations informed by a visibly religious inter-

pretation of Islam.

The uneasy relation between the two was brought

to the surface most sharply in the 1970s and 1980s following the sepa-

ration of East Pakistan and the outbreak of the war in Afghanistan.

These events prompted the military to make a bid to reconcile Paki-

stan’s Muslim (communal) identity, dictating the pursuit of strategic

interests against ‘Hindu India’, with the country’s Islamic identity as

the focus of a utopian Islamic vision guaranteed by a policy of regional

military expansion predicated on jihad.

But this shift had dangerous consequences. Far from easing the ten-

sion between a communal discourse concerned with Pakistan’s ‘Mus-

lim’ identity and a religiously informed ideology determined to enhance

the state’s ‘Islamic’ features, the strains have widened. The military’s

alliance with its jihadi protégés has also proved to be unstable. The

army looked to Islam to strengthen Muslim communal discourse and

prolong the conflict with India with the aim of buttressing its authority

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

150

at home and lending momentum to its regional policies in Kashmir and

Afghanistan. Islamist forces, however, invoked Islam not so much in

opposition to India (though they are undeniably opposed to Indian

secularism) but more clearly to seek to assert Pakistan’s internal

Islamic character.

Forging an Islamic army

On the face of it, Pakistan’s army would appear to be the least likely

agent of transnational Islamist ideologies, which are ostensibly at odds

with the consolidation of the institution over which the military has

held sway for more than half of the country’s history. Not only is the

army one of the primary state institutions in Pakistan, whose impor-

tance has loomed ever larger as it has undermined the political process,

but the top brass has long been an integral part of the modern govern-

ing elite for whom religion has generally been deemed to be a private

matter. At its inception, the army’s professionalism was defined more

by its secular British colonial heritage than by the notionally Islamic

char acter of Pakistan. On the face of it, until the late 1970s at least,

there was little discernible interest among the officer corps in the ques-

tion of the army’s precise relationship with Islam or in an Islamic state.

Yet, the military was far from insensitive to the rhetorical power of

Islam as a mobilizing force. It is of course true that prior to independ-

ence the military was relatively untouched by debates around the

Islamic character of the Pakistani state. Some have suggested that this

owed much to the fact that because the articulation of Pakistani

nationalism was largely ‘a civilian and constitutional enterprise’, the

military could not invoke the mythology of an armed ‘national’ resist-

ance. This, it is believed, slowed the process whereby the military shed

its ‘colonial identity’ in favour of one with clear ‘national’ credentials.

Nevertheless, questions about the military’s new identity, and its rela-

tion to ‘nationalist state ideology’ surfaced soon after independence.

They were triggered by Pakistan’s military failure in Kashmir in Sep-

tember 1948, which led to an attempt by senior military officers to

force a radical shift in military thinking and transform the army into a

‘national’ force. The 1951 ‘Rawalpindi conspiracy case’, as it came to

be known, has been described as ‘genuine, small and serious’.

Though

swiftly crushed, it pointed to the presence of a simmering debate in the

army unleashed by Pakistan’s military defeat in Kashmir. It focussed

BETWEEN CRESCENT AND SWORD

151

attention on the army’s less-than-‘national’ complexion, which was

held responsible for wrecking military operations in Kashmir. Resent-

ment was especially strong against British officers in senior positions

(including General Douglas Gracey, then commander-in chief), whose

concern to protect British interests, it was alleged, had undermined

Pakistan’s national interest in gaining control of Kashmir.

Although

those implicated in the conspiracy were also said to have communist

leanings, the evidence is far from clear.

What is not in doubt is that

the accused were pre-occupied by the army’s ‘national’ image and the

means to transform it from a ‘colonial’ into a ‘national’ institution. In

so doing, they are very likely also to have confronted the uncertain

relationship between religion and nationalism that defined Pakistan’s

national identity.

This was reflected in military thinking at the time, which equated

nationalising the army with the adoption of religious symbols and his-

torical allusions based on Islam, which were neither necessarily moder-

ate nor liberal. Thus by the late 1950s and early 1960s, parallels were

drawn between the armies of the classical age of Islam and the armed

forces of Pakistan.

Models of ‘Muslim’ soldier-hood were discussed

in army journals and Quranic verses invoked to explain and illuminate

the Muslim conduct of war.

These developments emerged in tandem

with other changes that heightened awareness of the need to forge a

national military identity that would represent both a departure from

colonial models influenced by Britain and America as well as a clear

break with its Indian counterpart with which it had once shared a

colonial-secular heritage. But it was far from clear how this military

identity could be conceptualized.

Over time, the lack of any clear intellectual resolution of these issues

at the national level was overtaken by shifts in the class composition

and patterns of military recruitment that eventually forced the military

to become more responsive to the language of Islam—even if the mean-

ings attached to Islam still varied widely within the institution. At the

same time, the army’s growing involvement in politics meant that it

now urgently required the use of Islamic symbols able to provide mili-

tary regimes with legitimacy

and the power to re-cast the country’s

national identity in line with the military’s domestic authority and the

pursuit of its regional objectives.

Alavi was among the first to examine the nexus between sections of

the army and pro-Islamic groups in a landmark study of the post-

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

152

colonial state. He highlighted how new patterns of recruitment in the

1960s—from poorer districts of Punjab and from the NWFP—re-

shaped alliances in Pakistan’s premier military institution.

Recruits

with strong social grievances soon outnumbered the sons of wealthy

landed families who had once supplied the bulk of the army’s con-

servative generals. These new recruits were more prone to the religious

extremism associated with the Jamaat-i-Islami, whose influence in the

armed forces by the late 1970s had become well-established.

This has

been confirmed by more recent research showing that those who joined

the officer corps after 1971 were drawn from more modest social

backgrounds than their predecessors, and that these recruits from the

urban lower middle and lower classes were also more inclined to

favour ‘conservative religious values’.

The tarnished image of the

army in the aftermath of Pakistan’s military defeat in 1971 also eroded

its appeal among more affluent groups, which gave way to recruits

from humbler backgrounds lacking exposure to Western influences

and trained mainly at local military academies.

Increasingly the army

was regarded as a source of employment for rural families of modest

means and the urban lower-middle classes, encouraging trends that

would eventually transform the military into the site of lucrative

rewards and profit-making ventures.

These changes had a profound effect on the officer corps, which left

it more vulnerable to Islamist influences. In his now classic study on

the Pakistan army, Cohen identified three generations of military

men—the ‘British’, the ‘American’ and the ‘Pakistani’. Each, he argues,

were shaped by their distinct class and social backgrounds and by

exposure to distinct events and cultural influences, which produced

more or less homogeneous cohorts of officers.

Each showed distinct

features: the ethos of military professionalism of the first ‘British’

generation;

the more pronounced liberal attitudes of the next ‘Ameri-

can’ generation of army officers

both of which sat well with the

social background of the officer classes; and the new post-1971 ‘Paki-

stani’ generation of army officers of a diminished and less well-funded

army (due to cutbacks in US aid) who were whit‘more representative

of the wider society in class origin … least subjected to foreign profes-

sional influences, and … drawn from a generation with no direct con-

tact with India”’.

Regional and ethnic distinctions in the army

between the numerically preponderant Punjabis and others;

changes

in standards of professionalism that sought to de-link their attachment

BETWEEN CRESCENT AND SWORD

153

to ‘Western’ norms, and the introduction of subjective criteria (per-

sonal and family connections or religious zeal) for promotion in the

ranks,

were other factors that altered the character of the army and

its role in national politics—thus inducing a re-articulation of Pakistani

nationalism.

The ‘Pakistani’ officer class that took over during Zia’s military

regime had had little exposure to Western professional influences. It

represented a generation that was more familiar with the Muslim Mid-

dle East (especially the Gulf States) through training and security

related programmes and that had no direct contact with India.

Although recruitment was still overwhelmingly biased in favour of the

Punjab, where geographical proximity to Kashmir and overlapping

kinship ties between local Punjabis and Kashmiri Muslims kept alive

the ‘communal’ dispute with India, other influences began to compete

for attention.

They re-opened the question of Pakistan’s identity,

which had been thrown in doubt by the separation of East Pakistan,

and revived the issue of Islam—an issue largely deferred (if not entirely

suppressed) by the ‘British’ and ‘American’ generation of army officers

in the 1950s and 1960s. A weakening in standards of military profes-

sionalism in the period 1965–71 and overt challenges to the authority

of senior officers, whose secular ways were blamed for the debacle of

1971

intensified the pressures in favour of a more Islamically

informed military identity—which under Zia would come to equate

military professionalism with Islamic piety and the display of religious

beliefs as a pre-requisite for advancement within the ranks.

It was at this time that there began to emerge signs of a recognisable

symbiosis between the senior military leadership and parts of the reli-

gious establishment committed to a vision of ‘transnational’ Islam.

The driving force behind this convergence was the military’s policy of

‘proxy war’ in Afghanistan and Kashmir, which aimed at redressing

the regional strategic balance with India.

It relied on an irregular

force of volunteers drawn from militant Islamic groups who were pre-

pared to execute the military’s policy across Pakistan’s porous borders

by invoking the language of Islamic universalism. It was facilitated by

volunteers, who included Islamic combatants with global connections,

and whose training had been entrusted to Pakistani military command-

ers. Their role, in turn, was facilitated by the constraints of the Cold

War, which required all US assistance to anti-Soviet forces in Afghani-

stan to be covertly channelled through Pakistan’s intelligence agencies.

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

154

Although the Pakistani military sought mainly to establish control over

Afghanistan in an effort to secure for it strategic depth in the event of

an attack by India, many were also drawn by the appeal of a trans-

national discourse of ‘shariatization’, which served to legitimize the

regime’s policies of extra-territorial adventure in Afghanistan. Further-

more, at a time when the break-up of Pakistan as a territorial entity

had revived fundamental questions about the country’s national iden-

tity, many responded readily to a discourse that offered a sense of

purpose that appeared to transcend the goals associated with a ‘nation’

constrained by territorial borders.

The Pakistani army’s engagement with pro-Islamic groups was not

unprecedented. In 1947 the army had called on the religious zeal of

Pathan tribesmen to stage armed incursions into Kashmir in an effort

to liberate its Muslim population from Indian control. Later in 1971 it

had worked closely with the armed wings of pro-Islamic parties, nota-

bly the Jamat-i-Islami, to secure religious sanction for its brutal cam-

paign against the ‘enemies of Islam’ among Bengalis in East Pakistan.

However, it was during the Afghan civil war that the involvement of

militant Islamic groups with the senior military leadership, notably in

the army, was most firmly cemented. Islamic parties and their more

radical off-shoots responded enthusiastically, making available volun-

teers dedicated to the pursuit of transnational Islam and eager to act as

conduits for covert assistance to the Afghan mujaheddin.

It has also

been suggested that Zia’s Afghan policy was premised on the twin

options of playing the ethnic and Islamist cards simultaneously. By

favouring Pashtun-led Islamist parties in Afghanistan and Pakistan and

by appealing to Islamic solidarity, Zia hoped to neutralize the ‘Pakhtu-

nistan’ issue—that is, the demand for an autonomous Pashtun state in

Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province. According to Olivier Roy,

‘[I]nstead of repressing their own “Pathans”, the Pakistani military

establishment (in which Pakhtuns were over-represented in terms of

their demographic weight), chose to turn the Pakhtunistan issue the

other way round, by blurring the contested borders and taking root

inside Afghanistan’ (italics added).

Despite these historical links between the military and pro-Islamic

militant groups, the rank and file of Pakistan’s army came into contact

with transnational Islam not through their ties with militant groups

but through their exposure to non-militant movements, notably the

Tablighi Jama‘at, whose ostensibly non-political and proselytizing

BETWEEN CRESCENT AND SWORD

155

mission stressed faith renewal through personal reform. Originally a

loosely structured organization, with a local base in the central Indian

region of Mewat where it emerged in the late 1920s as a response to

Hindu revivalist campaigns, it had spread rapidly across South Asia by

the 1980s. Its transnational message, while rooted in the critique of the

Indian Islam of the nineteenth century, was developed on the assump-

tion that ‘the more the Jama‘at expands transnationally the more uni-

versally its ideology is recognized’

—an approach that was naturally

boosted during the Afghan civil war.

Much of the Tablighi Jama‘at’s appeal among Zia’s officer corps lay

in the General’s own strong preference for its organization and ideolo-

gy.

He was the first Pakistani head of state ever to attend a Tablighi

annual congregation (ijtima) in 1979 at the organization’s national

centre in Raiwind, near Lahore.

Its initial attraction within the army

may, ironically, have been rooted in its apolitical character since feign-

ing distaste for politics has also been, for the army, the necessary ideo-

logical counterpart of its repeated and active political involvement. Yet

the Tablighi Jama‘at’s apolitical stance is fraught with ambiguity, sug-

gesting as it does that by ‘making Muslims conscious of their separate

identity and aware of their social obligations from a religious perspec-

tive [it] ultimately serves a political purpose’.

Moreover, its invoca-

tion of the faith (dawa) is inspired by the Deobandi reformist tradition,

which emphasises external aspects of the Sharia over its inner mean-

ings as favoured by most Sufi traditions. This is reflected in the prefer-

ence of Tablighi members for more orthodox, Deobandi ulama parties,

notably the Jamiat ul Ulama in Islam (JUI).

Finally, as a proselytizing

force, the Tablighi Jama‘at harbours a strong activist component based

on ‘enjoining good and forbidding evil’ (amr b’il ma‘ruf wa nahiy ‘anil

munkar)—a core concept in Tablighi versions of jihad as action (not

excluding violent action) in the service of God.

This public disavowal of politics by the Tablighi Jamaat has permit-

ted many officers and enlisted men to engage in its activities and to

demonstrate their religious disposition without fear of raising suspi-

cions about their engagement in Islamic activism. By the mid-1980s

the presence of so-called tablighis in the army was common knowl-

edge. Few officers made a secret of their attendance at Tablighi con-

gregations or masked their involvement in Tabligh-led missionary

work. Indeed one senior Tablighi activist, General Javed Nasir, rose to

head the military’s intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

156

(ISI) in 1992–93.

Entrusted with the task of continuing the ISI’s

responsibility for the execution of Pakistan’s Afghan policy, he dis-

charged his functions through a combination of conventional intelli-

gence techniques and the holding of dhikr (ritual remembrance of God)

assemblies.

The military authorities not only looked benignly upon

these developments, assuming the Tablighi Jama‘at to pose no political

threat, but the organization was also encouraged as a counter to the

more strident discourse of Islamist parties like the Jamaat-i-Islami,

whose insistent demand for an Islamic political state was seen as a

challenge to the military high command.

The army’s role in fostering the influence of ‘transnational’ influ-

ences was also rooted in Zia’s regional policies, which sought to privi-

lege Pakistan’s putative ‘ideological’ boundaries over its territorial

frontiers. This was closely tied to Zia’s quest for political legitimacy,

which he believed could be secured by re-casting the army from an

institution dedicated to the defence of the state’s borders to one con-

cerned with guarding the ‘ideological’ frontiers of a wider Muslim

community, whose limits would be set by the sharia. But in doing so,

Zia also opened up for debate the validity of Pakistan as a nation-state

by calling into question its role in hosting a separate ‘national’ army

that appeared to stand in opposition to other Muslim armies and that

thereby undermined faith in a Muslim commonwealth. It is perhaps

not surprising therefore that, in the late 1970s and 1980s, some Paki-

stani military strategists approached the territorial state as something

of ‘ an interim measure’ that would in time be succeeded by a more

broadly based Islamic political entity.

In its place there emerged a

preference for an alternative model that was held to be more consistent

with the aims of an avowedly Islamic state like Pakistan. This model

was increasingly defined by reference to Tablighi ideas of ‘ umma con-

sciousness’

that, by drawing attention to global Muslim unity, offered

an implicit critique of the nation-state system.

This model also redefined the nature and conduct of state institu-

tions under Zia. Directly challenging the assumption that what was

authentic was necessarily national, he ‘transnationalized’ Pakistan’s

army along lines more in keeping with the presumed norms of extra-

territorial Islam. Its authenticity would now be judged by how far it

could extend its reach beyond the frontiers of the nation-state, whether

in Afghanistan or Kashmir. Owen Bennett-Jones, who has explored

the relationship between the army and the transnational Islamic militant

BETWEEN CRESCENT AND SWORD

157

networks it deployed in these countries, concluded that it is far from ‘a

one-way street’. Common perceptions that the army merely aided and

abetted Islamic militant groups overlook an altogether more ‘insidious

aspect’: the motivation of Pakistani soldiers who fought alongside the

Afghan mujaheddin in Afghanistan and, later, with pro-Islamic mili-

tant groups in Islamists in Kashmir. These soldiers, he writes, were

‘affected by their experience of working and fighting with Jihadis.

Caught up by the romance of the Mujahideen’s struggle, [they] have

come to admire their civilian militant counterparts’.

The influence of the Tabighi Jamaat on the military establishment

must also be assessed in the light of Zia’s attempts to diversify the reli-

gious basis of his regime. Having started out as an admirer of the

Jamaat-i-Islami and of its blue-print for an Islamic society, Zia grew

increasingly wary of its strident politics and resented its impatience

with the pace of his regime’s Islamization. Soon the Jamaat, which

once enjoyed exclusive access to the armed forces, found that it was

required to share influence with other groups Zia regarded as less

politically suspect, notably the Tablighi Jamaat. It has also been argued

that Zia himself had become disenchanted with the Jamaat-i-Islami’s

failure to put forward concrete proposals for an Islamic state or to

propose an effective substitute for the secular state, whose ideology

Zia believed had hastened the demise of earlier military regimes.

But

Zia’s transnational vision would have mattered less for the state and

the nation had the army itself not undergone changes that made it

more responsive to its appeal. To a younger generation of officers

commissioned after 1971, who were less confident about the identity

of their nation and about the contested boundaries of their state, Zia’s

image of the Pakistan army as an ‘army of Islam’ entrusted to protect

‘the territorial and ideological frontiers of the state’ presented one way

of resolving this issue of identity. His recourse to the normative sym-

bols of Islam was dictated in large part by his concern to legitimise his

regime, but it also furthered the debate that had raged inside the army

since the 1950s about its transformation from a ‘colonial’ to a

‘national’ institution.

Zia reasoned that this could not be achieved without re-defining

Pakistan as a state. Increasingly what emerged in the discourse of the

ruling officer corps in the late 1970s and early 1980s was the notion

that while the frontiers of the state of Pakistan were territorially

demarcated, the boundaries of its nation were not. On the contrary,

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

158

these were judged to be ideologically parallel to, and informed by,

broad adherence to the sharia—resurrecting thereby the historical

uncertainties over the precise relationship between the religious com-

munity and the nation that has clouded the idea of Pakistan since its

inception. But it would also explain the powerful resonance of Zia’s

appeal to mould an army, whose role as the defender of the ‘territorial

and ideological frontiers of the state’

appeared finally to hold out the

prospect of settling the question of Pakistan’s identity.

Juntas and jihadis

The symbiosis between successive military regimes and so-called jihadi

or militant Islamic groups in Pakistan has rested on two broad founda-

tions: first, the need for a putative Islamic ideology to legitimize mili-

tary takeovers and enhance the military’s claims for an institutional

role in national politics; second, rhetorical support for a pan-Islamic

discourse to buttress regional policies dictated by military priorities.

Mobilising Islam in order to substitute for the absence of political

legitimacy was a legacy of Pakistan’s nationalist movement and has

defined civil and military governments since the state’s inception. The

League’s political roots lay outside the territories that formed Pakistan

and many of its leaders were without constituencies in the new state.

These ‘unrepresentative’ politicians were led to justify their control

over the state by appealing to Islam. What this meant in practice was

an overwhelming emphasis on a shared ideology—Islam—as the most

important basis of political authority over and above any shared eco-

nomic or political interest. Ethnic divisions and conflicts increased this

temptation to rely on religion as a unifying factor. The military, which

took power for the first time in 1958 under General Ayub Khan, inher-

ited this legacy.

Although Ayub attempted at first to shift the basis of his regime’s

authority from an attachment to the putative Islamic purpose of the

state to developmental goals that emphasized modernization and the

consolidation of a strong state, the success of these endeavours proved

short-lived.

His ambitious programme of economic and social reform

failed to secure either the legitimacy of his regime or resolve the coun-

try’s problem of national identity and the lack of consensus over Islam.

Soon Ayub, like his political counterparts, found that Islam could

mobilise forms of state authority that ordinary democratic processes,

BETWEEN CRESCENT AND SWORD

159

such as voting, left beyond his reach.

Although he had also hoped

that his focus on development would help unify the country and reduce

regional disparities, especially between East and West Pakistan, it had

the opposite effect. Not only did they widen class and regional dispari-

ties, but, as Nasr persuasively argues, they also deepened divisions

between ‘a secular and Westernized ruling class and a mass of people

living according to time-honoured Indo-Islamic traditions’.

Loath to call on the procedures of democratic legitimacy, Ayub

turned to Islam to boost the legitimacy of his regime and to contain

the class and ethnic divisions that threatened it. It is notable that he

also consciously avoided ‘an absolutist interpretation of Islam’ and

showed little interest in sectarian interpretations that favoured Paki-

stan’s majority Sunni Muslims or questioned who a Muslim ‘really’

was. Instead, he appeared to throw his weight behind a ‘communal’

(rather than an ‘Islamic’) understanding of Pakistan that projected it as

a state created not so much to further the cause of Islam, but to free

Muslims from Hindu domination and to defend Pakistan from India.

This ‘communal’ discourse, that is, the belief in one monolithic Mus-

lim community that stood in opposition to ‘Hindu India’, was appro-

priated by Ayub, for whom it appeared perfectly to encapsulate the

rivalry between Pakistan and India upon which the military depended

for its dominant position in national politics. He was to play a vital

role in promoting this communal discourse of Islam—a role he

expected both to enhance the standing of the military and strengthen

its reputation at home and abroad as the purveyor of ‘moderate’

(rather than ‘Islamist’) interpretations of Pakistan’s Muslim identity.

But Ayub also understood that an identity predicated on mere oppo-

sition to India could not, in the long run, sufficiently legitimate mili-

tary rule or contain the challenge posed to the centralized military state

by the expression of regional ethnicities that had gained ground since

independence. With the idea of ‘Muslim ethnicity’, which had informed

the conception of the Muslim ‘nation’, having outlived its purpose

with the creation of the state,

he had now to craft a new identity for

Pakistan. The aim was to allow the military to retain the communal

emphasis on Pakistan’s identity as a Muslim homeland created in defi-

ance of a united India while making room for a more robust Islamic

interpretation of this identity that was capable of supporting the mili-

tary’s geo-strategic objectives against its neighbour. By doing so, Ayub

set in motion the first of many efforts by the military to reconcile two

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

160

diverging interpretations of ‘Islam’ that had attached to Pakistan’s

identity and to resolve their uncertain relation in favour of the mili-

tary’s own political interests.

The tone was set in September 1965 with the onset of Pakistan’s

second war with India over Kashmir. In his address to the nation,

Ayub warned his people that ‘Indian aggression in Kashmir was only

a preparation for an attack on Pakistan’. ‘Indian rulers,’ he claimed,

‘were never reconciled to the establishment of an independent Pakistan

where the Muslims could build a homeland of their own’, but their

defeat was imminent because ‘the 100 million people of Pakistan

whose hearts beat with the sound of ‘La ilaha illallah, Muhammad ur

rasool ulllah [there is no God but God and Muhammad is His mes-

senger] will not rest till India’s guns are silenced.’

Here, more clearly

than ever before, Ayub signalled the army’s intention to mould an

identity for Pakistan that recalled both its status as a territorial Muslim

homeland and a fortress of Islam, each bound to the other through the

army, the institution charged with their common defence. In his auto-

biography, Friends not Masters, Ayub had ruminated on Man’s yearn-

ing for ‘an ideology for which he should be able to lay down his life.

Such an ideology with us’ he had observed, ‘is obviously that of Islam.

It was on that basis that we fought for and got Pakistan’. But this had

complex implications, he concluded, for while it was ‘true that in

[Islamic] society national territorialism has no place, yet those living in

an area are responsible for its defence, security and development’

—

tasks he confidently expected would be most readily associated with

the military.

Tactics, as much as ideology, played a part in pushing this military

vision of Pakistan’s identity. The use of irregular mujaheddin forces

under the command of army officers during the 1965 campaign in

Kashmir underscored this point. Encouraged by simmering Muslim

unrest triggered by the disappearance of a holy relic attached to the

Prophet Muhammad’s hair from the Hazratbal shrine in Srinagar,

Ayub turned to armed Islamist volunteers in order to instigate an

armed revolt in Kashmir against Indian authority.

By stoking griev-

ances around expectations of a shared belief in a collective Muslim

identity under siege, Ayub paved the way for the convergence of an

Islamist movement to safeguard Pakistan’s identity and the communal

discourse that had shaped Pakistan’s Muslim identity in opposition to

India. The need to forge such an alliance appears already to have been

BETWEEN CRESCENT AND SWORD

161

under some consideration. A report by Ayub’s Bureau of National

Research and Reconstruction, established in 1958, suggested that in

the event of a crisis in its military alliance with the United States, Paki-

stan should call on its ‘long traditions of irregular fighting’ informed

by ‘its own ideology … of self-defense (jihad) which Islam has ordained

makes it incumbent upon everyone to contribute towards the national

defense’.

Ayub clearly took the advice to heart when he ordered sen-

ior army commanders in 1965 to arm and train a force of Kashmiri

irregulars, the Mujahid Companies, to defend Pakistani positions along

the ceasefire line.

So vital did these religiously motivated irregular forces prove to be

in the pursuit of the military’s regional objectives against India in these

early years that it was unsurprising that the military rulers who suc-

ceeded Ayub’s considered relying on them to consolidate their power

at home. The 1971 civil war in East Pakistan was the first testing

ground of the domestic potential of a nexus between the military and

Islamic militant groups hitherto used for foreign policy purposes. The

strategy employed remained much the same, with the army relying on

irregular para-military forces to conduct brutal attacks against the

Bengali opposition before the onset of the formal military campaign.

Underpinning this venture was a close working relationship between

the Jamaat-i-Islami and the new military government headed by Gen-

eral Yahya Khan. He had taken over after mass demonstrations, in

which the Jamaat had played a key role, had forced Ayub to resign.

Elections held in 1970 had raised expectations that the Jamaat might

emerge as a major power-broker. In the event, it failed to capture more

than four seats in the National Assembly, prompting many in the party

to look for an informal alliance with the military regime. For its part,

the military government was keen to contain the build up of populist

pressures in East and West Pakistan under the aegis, respectively, of

the Pakistan People’s Party and the Awami League. The Jamaat’s will-

ingness to mobilize, on behalf of the military government, its shock

troops in order to curb political dissent, especially in East Pakistan,

sealed this unholy alliance.

As the military campaign against the Awami League in East Pakistan

got underway, the Jamaat mobilized thousands of armed volunteers

(razakars) to be put at the service of Pakistani troops engaged in East

Pakistan. Two brigades in particular, designated al Badr (sun) and al

Shams (moon), gained notoriety for their readiness to employ counter-

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

162

insurgency tactics against the Bengali guerrilla force (Mukti Bahini) in

advance of army operations.

The brigades attracted well-educated

recruits from madrassas, who were drawn by their brief to mount ‘spe-

cialized operations’ during the civil war. Said to be a euphemism for

the activities of the army’s death squads, they have been held respon-

sible for the murder of scores of Bengali intellectuals on the outskirts

of Dhaka just hours before the surrender by Pakistani troops in

December 1971 to Indian forces fighting in support of Bangladeshi

resistance.

While the links between the military and counter-insurgency groups

allied to pro-Islamic parties operations are yet to receive detailed

attention,

they were consolidated by General Yahya’s military regime

to co-opt sections of the religious right that fared poorly in the 1970

elections. In September 1971 General Yahya inducted four members of

the Jamaat-i-Islami into the cabinet to oversee the establishment of

‘peace committees’ in East Pakistan organized by local branches of the

Jamaat-i-Islami and ulama groups affiliated to the Jamiat ul Ulama

Pakistan and the Nizam-i-Islam party. This fresh symbiosis between

military and pro-Islamic groups, which some believed had been weak-

ened by Ayub’s avowedly secular stance on questions of social reform,

was welcomed by both sides. According to Nasr, the terms of the

agreement ensured that ‘the army would receive religious sanction in

its increasingly brutal campaign, and the Jamaat would gain in politi-

cal prominence’.

An additional consideration was the opportunity it

provided to pro-Islamic parties to salvage their ideological credibility.

Most of them had opposed the movement for Pakistan on grounds that

it envisaged the creation of a secular state. Now, it was hoped, their

engagement in a campaign to ‘save’ Pakistan from disintegration in

1971would finally see off politically damaging accusations that they

were ‘anti-Pakistan’.

The return to power of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto as Pakistan’s first demo-

cratically elected prime minister in 1972 marginalized the working

relationship between the military and its religious allies, which until

then had dominated state policy. Instead, populist forces allied to left-

wing parties moved to occupy centre-stage. But Bhutto’s failure to

assert the authority of elected institutions against stiff opposition from

a powerful military-bureaucratic alliance and his half-hearted commit-

ment to economic reform undermined his hard won gains. A critical

factor contributing to his downfall and to the concomitant resurgence

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163

of Islamic parties opposed to his policies was the defection of the lower

middle classes, including traders, merchants and shopkeepers, espe-

cially in the Punjab. They had been badly affected by Bhutto’s nation-

alization measures. Many belonged to families that had migrated from

India and that still harboured feelings of insecurity about their new

home, making them susceptible to the appeal of Islamic parties

opposed to Bhutto’s government.

More ominously still, military

officers unhappy with Bhutto’s PPP, now turned to rekindle their inter-

est in Islamism, gravitating towards Islamic parties and renewing ties

established in the previous decades.

Ultimately Bhutto was fatally weakened by his inability to break free

from an ideological paradigm that had already been heavily influenced

by the army. His spirited anti-India stance, which projected India as

‘an enemy of Islam and Muslims and, therefore an inveterate foe of

Pakistan’

suggested that, whatever his differences with the military

(and there were many), he was unable to resist the force of a carefully

crafted identity for Pakistan that sought to bring the military’s geostra-

tegic vision in line with the state’s presumed organic Islamic character.

Nowhere was this more in evidence than in his justification of the need

for a nuclear deterrent against India in terms of Pakistan’s weapon in

the service of ‘Islamic civilization’.

Like the military Bhutto also came

to rely on Islamist groups to secure Pakistan’s objectives against

Afghanistan. In late 1973 he approved plans to recruit conservative,

pro-Islamic groups to mount an insurgency in Afghanistan against the

powerful Afghan premier, Mohammad Daoud, whom he accused of

fanning the flames of Pashtun nationalism and of encouraging Paki-

stan’s Pashtun population to press their claim for an independent

Pashtunistan. A newly created ‘Afghan cell’, supervised by Bhutto’s close

confidante and head of Pakistan’s frontier paramilitary forces, General

Naseerullah Babar, oversaw this covert Islamist insurgency, confirming

the military’s jealous control of Pakistan’s regional policies and its by

now habitual use of Islamist groups to further these policies.

Yet even while Bhutto shared the military’s understanding of Paki-

stan’s national security objectives he was wary of relying on Islamist

groups to pursue his domestic policies. There is no evidence, for exam-

ple, that he called on the use of Islamic irregular forces to sustain his

military campaign against nationalists in Balochistan in 1973–77. On

the contrary, Bhutto regarded Baloch nationalism as primarily a chal-

lenge to his personal authority and a threat to the centralized state. As

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

164

such he did not hesitate to crush it by crude military force, avoiding

any of the Islamically enflamed ideological justification that had been

judged necessary to contain Bengali nationalism in East Pakistan. This

was also a reflection of Bhutto’s confidence in the sources of his own

domestic legitimacy: he believed that he could afford to be less depend-

ent on Islamist groups. This did not mean that he ruled out the appeal

of Islam to secure his own domestic political survival (as his concession

over the Ahmedi issue demonstrated) or to enhance his international

standing (as his mastery of the 1974 Lahore Islamic summit amply

suggested). Rather, he was less tempted to cultivate the kind of link-

ages that bound the military and Islamists because he still believed that

his legitimacy derived from a democratic mandate beyond the reach of

the military and their Islamist allies.

No leader did more rudely to challenge Bhutto’s optimism than

General Zia ul Haq. Under his regime, the military came closest to

affecting a convergence between the country’s armed forces and Islam-

ist groups in matters of state interests and national identity. The con-

text of this alliance had already been set by Zia’s close working

relationship with the Jamaat-i-Islami, which had played a key role

along with other Islamic parties in ousting Bhutto. But it was the role

Zia reserved for radical Islamic groups in helping to shore up the

domestic legitimacy of his regime and extending the reach of its power

beyond Afghanistan and Kashmir that marked a new departure in the

military’s engagement with the forces of Islamism. Zia’s admiration

for Islamic parties, especially the Jamaat i Islami, and later the ulama-

dominated Jamiat ul Ulema i Islam (JUI), was well known. His per-

sonal piety and the demise of the two-nation theory precipitated by the

loss of East Pakistan in 1971 reinforced in him the vision of Pakistan

as ‘an ideological state’ predicated on Islam. The defence of this iden-

tity allowed the military regime to reap rich dividends at home among

Islamist parties that had long sought to project Pakistan as an Islamic

state and to respond to changes in the regional environment precipi-

tated by the Afghan war, which now opened ‘new strategic vistas for

Pakistan’.

Zia’s success in articulating these diverse concerns lay in his deft

handling of the internal and external demands made by Islamist groups

on the military. Internally, it involved the engagement of private

groups emerging from within Islamic parties and religious organiza-

tions to facilitate the state’s domestic jihad by penetrating the private

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165

sphere with the aim of regulating individual morality. Externally, it

centred on the mobilization of private armies linked to religio-political

groups by re-casting the military conflict with India as a religious war.

By so ‘privatizing’ the concept of jihad

, Zia tailored it to match both

his vision of the internal ‘Islamic’ character of the state and to serve as

a formidable instrument in the projection of the military’s regional

ambitions.

Initially Zia’s impulse had been directly to involve the state in the

management of both processes rather than to sub-contract them out to

groups beyond the formal control of the state. But soon after announc-

ing ambitious plans for the moral transformation of society in the early

1980s, he realized that the practical implementation of Islamic stric-

tures relating to eating, drinking, prayer and fasting were beyond the

capacity of the state. The rethink may well have been prompted by

advice from the regime’s preferred think tank, the Council of Islamic

Ideology (CII), which in 1982 called on the regime to seek the co-op-

eration of like-minded groups in society to back its moral reform pro-

gram, saying it could not be achieved through mere public legal

enactment.

Zia’s hopes that the state would take the lead in formu-

lating an ‘Islamic’ foreign policy also had to be moderated when he

was forced to agree, in exchange for generous US assistance, to the

terms set by the United States for the conduct of the covert war in

Afghanistan. It led the government effectively to relinquish control

over the day-to-day management of the war to privately armed groups,

whose proclaimed dedication to jihad was to prove the only test of

their loyalty to the regime.

Buoyed by these incentives and eager to extend their own separately

crafted agenda of sharpening Pakistan’s identity as a guarantor of

Islam, there now emerged a clutch of Islamic groups who offered their

services to the regime. They included groups such as Hizb ul Mujahe-

din and Harkat ul Mujahedin, which were closely allied to the Jamaat

i Islami and the Jamiat ul Ulama i Islam (JUI) respectively. Others

developed as armed wings of religious organizations. One such exam-

ple was the Lashkar-i-Taiba (re-named Jamaat ud Dawa in 2002).

Its

parent organization, the Dawat ul Irshad (Centre for Preaching and

Guidance), encouraged by Zia, had emerged as one the most influen-

tial purveyors of a new educational philosophy that justified the use of

force to re-educate society along Islamic lines and further Islam’s pros-

elytizing mission.

Granted prime land by Zia in 1986 in the small,

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

166

dusty town of Muridke, some 20 kilometers north of Lahore, it

claimed the responsibilities Zia had hoped to reserve for the Islamic

state. But the Lashkar-i-Taiba insisted that, in the absence of such an

Islamic state, it was justified in monitoring both standards of individ-

ual behaviour expected of Muslims, such as the payment of zakat and

in mobilizing individual Muslims to wage jihad wherever other Mus-

lims were oppressed beyond the frontiers of Pakistan.

While its case

with regard to zakat was broadly in line with Islamic tradition—which

recognized the payment of zakat as a Muslim’s religious duty and

therefore within the private domain of piety

—Lashkar-i-Taiba’s

stance on jihad as an individual exercise represented a major break

with Islamic tradition insofar as it required the declaration of jihad to

be backed by state sanction.

Other more amorphous groupings also emerged at this time, defined

less by their organizational rigour than by the presence of charismatic

individuals. One of these was a loose assembly of radical Islamists

grouped around Maulana Abdullah, an obscure hard-line cleric who

had set up base at the Red Mosque in the heart of Pakistan’s capital,

Islamabad. He won Zia’s favour after agreeing to recruit thousands of

Muslim holy warriors (jihadis) to take on Soviet forces in Afghanistan.

In exchange, he secured permission in 1986 to expand his mosque

complex and build two Koranic schools. They were to become the

target of military action by President Musharraf in 2007, who acted in

retaliation against a series of vigilante actions in Islamabad aimed at

imposing sharia law. Until then the Red Mosque had basked in the

glow of patronage by senior members of Zia’s military and intelligence

apparatus for whom it served as the first port of call for eager recruits

prepared to bolster the military’s strategy at home and abroad.

At the heart of these varied alliances lay the military’s objective to

harness Islamist groups in the service of its interests against Afghani-

stan and India. While the first centred on neutralizing the irredentist

threat poised by Pashtun nationalism, the second involved a strategy

of ‘bleeding’ India by fuelling militant unrest in Kashmir in the hope of

winning concessions from New Delhi. In time both converged and

were subsumed by the larger goal of resisting India. The control of

Afghanistan came increasingly to be dictated by military perceptions

of its value as a vital point of retreat in the event of an Indian attack

on Pakistan. Support for insurgent groups in Kashmir pressing for

secession from India would bolster the campaign in favour of the prov-

ince’s integration into Pakistan.

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167

These objectives were fraught with risk. Fierce factional fighting

between rival mujahedin groups following the withdrawal of Soviet

troops in 1989 demonstrated that Pakistan’s control was more tenuous

than it once thought and threatened to compromise what Zia described

as Pakistan’s hard earned ‘right to have a friendly regime in Afghani-

stan’

—a right it sought later to exercise by nurturing the Taliban. In

the meantime, the end of the civil war in Afghanistan had also left

thousands of Islamist volunteers recruited as fighters without an occu-

pation. They stood as both a threat and an opportunity to the military.

While mindful of the dangers of unleashing the zeal of these holy war-

riors in pursuit of their Islamist ideals at home, the military was clearly

unwilling to squander their potential to wage a campaign, masquerad-

ing as jihad, in support of regional gains against India. Having mas-

tered the art of covert warfare, the military now sought to replicate the

‘liberation’ of Afghanistan by mounting greater Islamist resistance

against Indian forces in Kashmir.

The prospect of this new adventure was received enthusiastically by

the military’s Islamist protégés, who were heartened by the familiar

rhetoric of jihad. Nevertheless, there were differences within these

militant groups that were to become more pointed and, in time, render

more difficult the military’s task of controlling them. Some like the

Harkat ul Jihad al Islami (HUJI), founded by a band of students at the

radical Binori madrassa in Karachi who joined the Afghan resistance

in 1979, were driven by the appeal of a pan-Islamic state. It was part

of an organizational network that extended beyond Pakistan to include

parts of Central Asia, China and Bangladesh.

Others, like the Hizbul

Mujahedin (HM), founded in 1989 as an armed subsidiary of the

Jamaat-i-Islami, had more limited objectives centring on the integra-

tion of Kashmir into Pakistan.

What united them was the shared

rhetoric of jihad, their preferred instrument of choice to achieve their

objectives.

At this time too some Pakistani military officers were irresistibly

drawn to jihad as the means not only to defy India’s military superior-

ity, but also to settle the issue of Pakistan’s Islamic identity. Among

those pressing for the more creative use of jihad were senior military

commanders, including Generals Hameed Gul and Javed Nasir. Both

had been closely involved in training Pakistani and foreign fighters in

Afghanistan and both would subsequently head the Inter-Services

Intelligence (ISI). Gul, described as ‘loudly religious’,

took over as

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

168

head in 1987. Disillusioned with the Geneva Accords and disenchanted

with the United States, he soon emerged in his own words as a ‘Mus-

lim visionary’ with an eye to purging Pakistan of Western cultural

influences and paving the way for an Islamic revolution.

Nasir, a

born-again Muslim, was involved in the recruiting, training and arm-

ing of militants under the auspices of a so-called ‘Kashmir cell’ super-

vised by the ISI. Both enjoyed privileged relations with local and

foreign jihadi groups and neither made a secret of his desire to trans-

late religious convictions into political practice.

The rhetoric of jihad served as a perfect vehicle for these concerns.

Gul and Nasir held strong pro-Islamist views and favoured the projec-

tion of Pakistan’s identity as a pan-Islamic hub. Under Nasir’s leader-

ship, the ISI (much to the consternation of Pakistan’s ally, China)

supported Chinese Muslims in Xinjiang province, Muslim rebel groups

in the Philippines, radical Muslims in Central Asia and channelled

arms to Bosnian Muslims.

By the mid 1990s the links between sec-

tions of the military high command and radical Islamists had clearly

fuelled confidence in the prospect of a military-led Islamist takeover

such as came to light following the arrest in September 1995 of thirty-

five senior officers on charges of planning to stage a mutiny and

impose a strict Sunni Islamic state with a pan-Islamic agenda drawn up

by HUJI.

The aim was to re-cast Pakistan’s identity from an ‘intro-

verted’ Muslim state confined to South Asia to ‘an extroverted Islamic

state’, whose interests extended past its frontiers to the Muslim world

beyond.

Although out of all proportion to Pakistan’s real power to

undertake military conquest, this geo-political conception was designed

to help ease the uncertainties that had plagued the debate about Islam

and national identity.

The backing of civilian governments in the 1990s in favour of the

use of jihadist groups as strategic assets in Afghanistan and Kashmir

testified to this. Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, who held power in

turn as prime ministers during this period, readily agreed with the pri-

orities, as well as the means, set by the military in the pursuit of Paki-

stan’s regional policy. From 1989 onwards, both endorsed the use of

irregular forces in Kashmir and Afghanistan—even if each did so as

much to out-manoeuvre the other as to reinforce the military’s objec-

tives. Both leaders recognized that the space afforded to Islamist

groups under Zia left them with no choice but to join them in using

the issue of Kashmir as a means of bolstering the Islamic credentials of

BETWEEN CRESCENT AND SWORD

169

their respective parties. During her first government (1988–90), Bena-

zir Bhutto moved to regain the initiative on Kashmir by declaring 5

February a public holiday to ‘pray for the success of jihad in Kashmir’.

This was in response to Sharif’s call for a national strike to mark Paki-

stan’s solidarity with the people of Kashmir.

By the time Bhutto took power for the second time in 1993 the stage

was set for a more marked investment in militancy. It was facilitated

by her government’s alliance with the JUI, intended to divide the Islam-

ist vote then being assiduously courted by Sharif. Her move was to

prove vital in strengthening the so-called ‘military-mullah’ nexus by

enabling her resourceful Interior Minister, General Naseerullah Babar

(who had been recruited by her father on a similar military mission to

curry favour with Islamist groups in Afghanistan—see above), to

develop a working relationship with the JUI, whose string of Deobandi

madrassas nurtured the Taliban. They took power in Afghanistan

under Bhutto’s watch in September 1996. This has led some to con-

clude that ‘between 1993 and 1997 the most radical element of Islam-

ism was associated with the military and the secular PPP, not with the

mainstream Islamism of Nawaz Sharif and the PML’.

This is not to say that Bhutto’s opponent, Nawaz Sharif, eschewed

links with the jihadi network. Sharif’s umbrella organization, the

Islami Jumhoori Ittehad (Islamic Democratic Alliance—IDA) included

the Jamaat-i-Islami, whose militant arm, the Hizb ul Mujahedin (HM),

had by the early 1990s become the most organized and effective group

in Kashmir. It enjoyed Sharif’s active support for its role in Islamizing

and, indeed, ‘Pakistanizing’ the conflict in Kashmir, seeking as it did to

impose versions of Islam more compatible with the Jamaat’s Islamist

vision than with the Sufi interpretations more common to the region.

Sharif, who maintained close relations with the military high command

and the ISI, especially during his first tenure as prime minister, was

also said to have considered proposals by the ISI to back covert activi-

ties by foreign jihadi groups in Kashmir using the proceeds of the drugs

trade.

Although Sharif strongly denied his involvement in any plan to

finance pro-Islamic militant groups in Kashmir on these terms, his first

tenure coincided with a clear change in tactics that pointed to greater

emphasis on the covert use of intermediary groups in order to widen

the conflict. It was demonstrated in 1993 with the emergence of the

Harkat ul Ansar (HUA, also known as the Harkat ul Mujahedin),

which would soon displace more public outfits such as the Hizb ul

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

170

Mujahedin (HM), to become the chief agent for the covert recruitment,

training and arming of foreign fighters in Kashmir on behalf of Paki-

stani interests.

This marked a pronounced shift in favour of groups

dedicated to recasting the conflict in Kashmir as a global war between

Muslims and non-Muslims.

Changes in the ethnic composition of the leadership of some militant

groups facilitated this process, leading to the fragmentation of the

jihadi landscape. One such case was the Harkat ul Ansar (HUA),

whose Pashtun leadership tended to be less motivated by concern for

Kashmir than the cause of jihad. Not surprisingly, it soon split with

most of its Punjabi rank and file, whose commitment to Kashmir led

to the creation in 2000 of Jaish-i-Mohammad under the leadership of

Masood Azhar from Bawalpur in southern Punjab. By the time Sharif

took over as prime minister for a second time in 1997, so-called ‘jihadi

culture’ had become far less of a monolithic phenomenon. At the same

time, it had also developed as an endemic feature of Pakistan’s political

landscape, with the military’s intelligence agencies believed to be cast-

ing long shadows on its trajectory.

In reality, these bonds between the military and radical Islamist

groups concealed tensions that stemmed from their competing visions

of Pakistan. These tensions would exact a devastating price during the

late 1990s and in the aftermath of the country’s controversial engage-

ment in the US-led ‘war on terror’ in 2001. Having used the language

of Islam in the service of a Muslim communal agenda that justified

opposition to India, the military was forced to confront the challenge

of meeting the lavish expectations it had fostered. The most immediate

focus of that challenge lay in the resolve of Islamist groups to bring

home the jihad and sharpen the state’s Islamic profile by targeting

those judged not to be real Muslims in Pakistan. It has led to unprec-

edented sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shias, but also to the

dangerous fragmentation of Islam encouraged by so-called ‘Talibaniza-

tion’ sweeping parts of the country’s north-western regions, which

now threatens the state and its institutions, notably the army.

The wages of sin

Of the many metaphors used to describe Pakistan’s political turmoil

on the eve of the twenty-first century, none appears to have so fully cap-

tured its flavour as the term ‘blowback’. A leftover from terminology

BETWEEN CRESCENT AND SWORD

171

first employed by American agents in the 1950s to refer to the unin-

tended consequences of covert actions in the pursuit of Cold War

objectives abroad, it has come to epitomize Pakistan’s acute crisis, at

once victim and perpetrator of seemingly random events. These events

have been closely tied to the conflicts in Afghanistan and Kashmir,

which brought the military establishment and militant Islamists closer.

In time this convergence blurred the lines between military priorities

driven by a Muslim communal discourse of identity predicated on

Pakistan’s rivalry with India and Islamist concerns that relied on the

structure of this rivalry to reinforce Pakistan’s Islamic character.

Although the soldier and the mullah began as rival contenders in the

struggle to define the meaning of Pakistan, their common search for

sources of power beyond the reach of the democratic process led them

both to depend on the language of ‘Islam’. This convergence became

more palpable after the separation of East Pakistan, which resurrected

entrenched uncertainties about the country’s Islamic identity. The con-

flicts in Afghanistan and Kashmir, which depended upon the regional

invocation of Islamism, accentuated these uncertainties by enhancing

the transnational dimension to Pakistan’s national identity. It paved

the way for a fresh fight-to-the-finish among irreconcilable political

and religious competitors, who today pose the most potent challenge

yet to the survival of the state.

The repercussions of Pakistan’s destructive engagement in these

regional conflicts were quick to materialise. Its deadliest manifestation

was the escalation of sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shias,

which has scarred the country’s political landscape and shaken the

foundations of state and society. Although the discourse of sectarian-

ism, and indeed sectarian conflict, had assumed political overtones

since the implementation in the 1980s of pro-Sunni policies by General

Zia, it was not until the mid 1990s that sectarian violence came to be

recognized as a direct consequence of Pakistan’s engagement in

Afghanistan. Pakistan’s support for the Taliban was unquestionably a

key factor in accentuating sectarian violence in Pakistan insofar as it

helped establish an internationalist ‘Sunni sphere of influence’. It drew

inspiration from Saudi Islam and relied on international connections

furnished by its close, if amorphous, links with Al Qaida.

After the

Taliban assumed power in 1996 they deepened their links with radical

Sunni groups in Pakistan, providing sanctuaries and serving as a con-

duit for arms. Before long the Taliban’s fiercely anti-Shia rhetoric came

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

172

to serve the ends of Sunni sectarian forces, such as the Sipah-i-Sahaba

(SSP) and its militant off-shoot, the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi (LJ), which were

dedicated to the creation of a Sunni state in Pakistan.

Yet the onset of sectarian conflicts flowing from Pakistan’s involve-

ment in Afghan clearly predated the Taliban take over, having assumed

a new dimension when the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan

brought home the jihad to Pakistan. The country soon became the site

of two fundamentalisms: the ‘red’ variety, coming from Iran and the

‘green’ kind promoted by the military and its Islamist allies.

One

significant measure of the sectarian blowback was the 1995 military

coup attempt, which, with the help of Sunni militants allied to the

Harkat ul Jihad al Islami (HUJI), had aimed to declare Pakistani a

Sunni Islamic. Support was strong in Punjab, where the HUJI followers

(who came later to be known as the ‘Punjabi Taliban’) were active in

sharpening the discourse of Sunni sectarianism in Punjabi districts

around Raiwind and Jhang. Elsewhere, sectarian conflict was precipi-

tated by the decision in the late 1980s to re-settle Sunni tribesmen

from Afghanistan in an effort to alter the demographic complexion in

regions such as the Northern Areas and the tribal agency of Kurram,

both with a history of Shia activism.

Yet Pakistan’s response to sectarian violence in the years following

the Afghan conflict was ridden with contradictions. While the state

was forced to recognize the scale of sectarian conflict and the dangers

it now posed to its authority at home, the use by the military of sectar-

ian groups in the pursuit of Pakistan’s objectives in Afghanistan and

Kashmir resulted in a policy of domestic appeasement dictated by self-

interest. This explains how a campaign to stem the tide of Sunni sec-

tarian violence in 1994–1996 in the Punjab, supervised by Benazir

Bhutto’s Interior Minister, General Naseer ullah Babar, was actively

pursued even while Babar approved arms and training for Sunni mili-

tants deployed to support military-backed operations in Afghanistan

and Kashmir.

Thus groups implicated in sectarian violence at home

were found co-operating with military commanders abroad.

They included militant off-shoots of political parties that enjoyed

the confidence of the military high command. For instance, the SSP

and its military arm, the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, although blamed for

numerous sectarian attacks against minority Shias, maintained privi-

leged relations with the military through their organizational links

with Jaish i Mohammad—which was one of the main Pakistan-based

BETWEEN CRESCENT AND SWORD

173

jihadi groups operating in Kashmir that worked closely with the mili-

tary to sharpen the Kashmiri (and Punjabi) profile of jihadi activism

against Indian forces.

What held these groups together was Pakistan’s

‘Afghan war’, which aimed both to undermine the prospect of a secu-

lar regime receptive to India as well as to nurture an Islamist govern-

ment friendly to Pakistan. Helping to create and later support the

Taliban served the two interests but, as Rashid has observed, it was

Pakistan’s rivalry with India over Kashmir that came increasingly to

dictate its Afghan policy.

Of singular importance was the Taliban’s

agreement to provide access to training bases for Pakistan-backed mili-

tants preparing for attacks against Indian forces in Kashmir.

A major legacy of this militant culture, encouraged by Pakistan’s

involvement in Afghanistan and Kashmir, was the emergence of what

is now commonly referred to as ‘Kalashnikov culture’—namely easy

and ready access to arms, which makes it simple for militant groups to

become para-military organizations. What is also noteworthy is the

spread of this militant culture to parts of the country not commonly

associated with the so-called ‘martial races’—a notion popularized by

the British in India to justify higher levels of military recruitment into

the colonial armed forces from northern Punjab and the frontier

regions than, say, Sind or Balochistan. In Sind, for example, criminal

violence soared when, in the wake of the Afghan conflict, arms and

drug mafias controlled by ethnic Pashtuns were forced to move south

from the regions bordering Afghanistan. These criminal networks,

with their extended financial interests, came to permeate the world of

Islamist politics in Sind, where they promoted ‘Islamic’ issues such as

sectarianism. It soon resulted in what has been described as the ‘Islami-

zation of criminal activity and criminalization of segments of Islamism

in Pakistan’.

The pattern was replicated elsewhere in parts of southern Punjab

around Bahawalpur, Multan and Rahimyar Khan. Not formerly

known as recruiting grounds for the armed forces, these areas emerged

in the early 1980s as choice bases for the recruitment of fighters loyal

to jihadi and sectarian organizations, who since then have intensified

their activities in these regions.

It was also in Bahawalpur that one of

the more prominent jihadi groups, Jaish-i-Mohammad, emerged in

2000 under the leadership of Masood Azhar (himself a native of Baha-

walpur) with the aim of widening the armed struggle in Kashmir.

It is open to debate whether the Pakistan armed forces were enthused

by this growing militarization of society, for it suggested the determi-

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

174

nation of some powerful groups to break away from their military

handlers. One such was Lashkar-i-Taiba. While regarded by the mili-

tary as a key asset in promoting its covert campaign in Kashmir,

Lashkar’s activities at home, and especially its role in fuelling sectarian

conflict, soon caused consternation in the army. In 1998, a delegation

representing Sharif’s government that was said to have the backing of

military commanders prevailed upon the Lashkar-Taiba to sever its

links with Sunni sectarian organizations in exchange for a promise to

be allowed to enter the political mainstream.

It prompted a country-

wide crackdown against armed sectarian groups and against erstwhile

allies of the Lashkar-i-Taiba, notably the militant Sunni organization,

Lashkari-i-Jhangvi, aimed at ending sectarian violence in the country.

Yet, these efforts were to prove short-lived. Within a year sectarian

violence had resumed in parts of the Punjab and the urban centres of

Sind, leading to the assassination of scores of Shia and Sunni activists

and prompting the army to step in to contain the violence. For most

astute observers however it demonstrated the military’s unwillingness

to confront evidence that the sources of support for militant sectarian-

ism in Pakistan lay in Afghanistan and Kashmir, where the army

depended upon sectarian groups to execute its regional policies.

Groups such as the Harkat ul mujahideen, involved in military-backed

operations in both Afghanistan and Kashmir, were especially impli-

cated in fuelling Sunni militancy in Pakistan.

The military’s reluctance to sever its connections with these groups

also rested on the assumption that, ultimately, it could effectively con-

trol their scope for action. During the 1990s the military’s patronage

of radical Islamists involved it in engendering a series of splits that

aimed to weaken groups judged to be crafting independent agendas.

Ethnic divisions facilitated these efforts. In early 1991 the pan-Islamic

group, Harkat ul Jihad al Islami, which had been co-operating with

the military in organizing foreign fighters to join the Afghan resistance,

was challenged by a break-away group of Pashtun fighters, leading to

the creation of the Harkat ul Ansar (since renamed the Harkat ul

mujahideen). The Harakat ul mujahideen was widely deployed in

Kashmir and played a key role in the military’s ill-judged attempt to

seize the Kargil heights in 1999.

100

By 2000 it came also to be widely

implicated in promoting a sectarian agenda in Pakistan, where it faced

a split triggered by a faction with a large Punjabi following that emerged

as Jaish-i-Mohammad.

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175

Jaish-i-Mohammad was widely known to enjoy the backing of mili-

tary sponsors, who were keen to consolidate the development of an

identifiably ‘Pakistani’ group that would be more responsive to the

military’s specific objectives in Kashmir than ‘foreign’ jihadi groups

with keener pan-Islamic agendas spawned by the conflict in Afghani-

stan. Sections of the military had also become aware of the need to

check the growing power of the Lashkar-i-Taiba, which had insisted

on claiming pride of place among the six hundred or so mujahedin

combatants involved in the Kargil operation, and whose success in

recruiting retired army and intelligence officials was believed to have

significantly strengthened its organizational and operational capabili-

ties.

101

With its growing influence and ambition to establish its suprem-

acy among jihadi groups, it was not long before the military moved to

contain the Lashkar-i-Taiba by sponsoring the creation of the Jaish-i-

Mohammad. But any hopes that the military might have harboured in

using the Jaish-i-Mohammad in the quest for its own regional objec-

tives against India in Kashmir were thwarted by the group’s dedication

to pursuing an altogether independent sectarian agenda at home in co-

operation with radical Sunni militants loyal to the Sipah-i-Sahaba-i-

Pakistan and its armed wing, the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi. Some have gone

so far as to suggest that the ‘SSP [Sipah-i-Sahaba-i-Pakistan], the JM

[Jaish-i-Mohammad] and the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi appeared to be three

wings of the same party: the SSP [Sipah-i-Sahaba-i-Pakistan] was the

political umbrella while the JM [Jaish-i-Mohammad] and the Lashkar-

i-Jhangvi were the jihadi and domestic wings respectively’.

102

But the ability of the military to control the complex agendas and

activities of this vast array of militant groups was in fact far from

secure. This was less a reflection of the military’s coercive powers,

which remained intact, than of its need to rely on the Islamist lobby to

shore up the legitimacy of its fresh engagement in national politics. In

October 1999, the army chief, General Musharraf, seized power vow-

ing to restore national institutions and to repair Pakistan’s image as a

beacon of moderate Islam. But this agenda was almost immediately

undermined by the military’s close working relationship with Islamist

groups upon which it still relied to pursue its regional objectives, espe-

cially in Kashmir. It was also compromised by the army’s longstand-

ing interest in containing political parties dedicated to reaffirming the

primacy of a popular mandate as the only foundation for constitu-

tional rule.

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

176

While international pressure forced the military, publicly at least, to

loosen its connections with Islamist groups in Kashmir, its search for

legitimacy at home enhanced its dependence on the Islamist lobby.

Forced by international pressure to surrender its objectives in Kashmir,

the military could no longer call upon its claim to act as a bulwark

against India, which had served until then as the military’s main raison

d’être. Bereft of a robust narrative to sustain its hold on power, Mush-

arraf was led increasingly to fall back on groups that actively favoured

the discourse of Islamism. In time it would severely constrain his

power to weaken the props that supported Pakistan’s Islamic identity.

These included thousands of Koranic schools (madrassas), which suc-

cessfully resisted official registration, as required under the Madrassas

Registration Ordinance 2001.

103

Further evidence of the regime’s impo-

tence lay in its failure to repeal General Zia’s notorious blasphemy

laws aimed at non-Muslim minorities,

104

and to annul the equally

abhorrent Hudood ordinances that, despite some minor amendments

approved in 2006, continue to undermine the constitutional rights of

Muslim women.

These developments have been seen to be suggestive of the military’s

enduring ambivalence towards Islamist groups and their agendas.

Musharraf’s personal involvement in the training and recruitment of

the mujahedin in Afghanistan during Zia’s tenure and his role in sup-

pressing a Shia uprising in Gilgit in 1988 with the use of Sunni radical

militants, it is argued, heightened his ambivalence and deepened his

own appreciation of the advantages of fostering the military’s links

with Islamists.

105

It is also fair to assume that these links were consid-

erably strengthened by Musharraf’s decision to involve large numbers

of irregular mujahedin forces in the military operation he commanded

in Kargil in 1999 and by his co-operation at the time with key military

commanders who were known to be deeply committed to the Islamist

cause.

106

Since then, these links have become more complicated in

response both to the development of a more muscular Islamist lobby

in Pakistan and to the international constraints imposed on the mili-

tary’s ambitions in the wake of the September 2001 attacks. Such

ambivalence was reflected in the contradictions of a military regime

that was now obliged to rail publicly against ‘Islamic extremism’—all

the while seeking to preserve its ‘institutional views’, which were that

the Islamists were its best allies in the struggle against India.

107

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177

Ultimately, this balancing act could not be sustained in an interna-

tional climate that had fatally undermined the bedrock of the Muslim

‘communal’ narrative, with its emphasis on opposing India, upon

which the military had long pitched its claims. While the military’s

involvement with the Islamists, especially since the 1980s, had given it

the means to co-opt the Islamist narrative to serve its institutional

interests, it could not (despite Zia’s grand efforts) in the end claim to

speak on behalf of this narrative. In the context of Pakistani politics,

where the articulation of national identity was still uncertainly poised

between opposition to India and reference to ‘Islam’, there were fresh

opportunities for the amplification of the Islamist narrative as a drive

to strengthen Pakistan’s Islamic identity. But the course of this Islamist

narrative has been uneven and it has come fiercely to be resisted by a

military unwilling to relinquish its role as the final arbiter of the coun-

try’s national identity.

The military leadership’s intentions were posted soon after 11 Sep-

tember 2001 when it was forced to revise its Afghan policy and shortly

afterwards to tone down its support for the insurgency in Kashmir.

The first led it to withdraw support from the Taliban; the second

forced it to rein in the operations of Islamic militant groups. While it

was understood that these changes had been exacted in response to the

demands from the United States, some within the military hierarchy

were encouraged to use the occasion to contain the violent ‘blowback’

unleashed by the military’s controversial support for Muslim extremist

groups in Afghanistan and Kashmir. They appeared to enjoy the con-

fidence of Musharraf, who in January 2002 announced a ban on all

militant groups, including sectarian outfits, signalling thereby a break

in relations between the army and its militant protégés in Afghanistan

and Kashmir.

His decision came in the wake of a daring attack by militants on the

Indian parliament in December 2001, which had brought Pakistan to

the brink of a dangerous military confrontation with India. In his

speech justifying the ban, Musharraf recalled Jinnah’s vision of ‘the

ideology of Pakistan’, which he claimed stood in contrast to the ‘theo-

cratic state’ advocated by Islamist parties and their militant allies.

Their attempts to establish a ‘state within a state’, he declared, would

be defeated by his military regime, which had come to recognize that

‘today Pakistan is not facing any threat from outside … the real threats

are posed from within’.

108

This public renunciation of groups once

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

178

considered linchpins of the army’s Kashmir policy was widely seen at

the time as representing a welcome paradigm shift in the military’s

strategic thinking that hitherto had emphasised opposition to India.

But in accepting this paradigm shift the military also lost the potential

to feed off the Muslim communal narrative predicated on rivalry with

India upon which its fortunes had so long depended.

Severely weakened by the loss of its ideological anchor, the military

moved to salvage what it could of its bargain with Islamism. Within

months of Musharraf’s ban on Muslim extremist groups, they resur-

faced with new names and their members resumed their activities.

With his programme of ‘enlightened moderation’ coming under scru-

tiny from an increasingly sceptical liberal constituency, but unable to

call on the ‘communal’ narrative informed by opposition to India, the

military regime had no choice but to turn, again, to Islamist groups to

help buttress its legitimacy. The new arrangement between the military

and Islamist groups was demonstrated in two ways. The Islamist lobby

supported Musharraf’s tenure as president, while retaining the post of

army chief (in violation of the constitution). In exchange, the military

regime ensured the success of the Islamist lobby (now organized as the

Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal) in the 2002 general elections, which allowed

them to gain control of the governments of the North West Frontier

Province and Balochistan, thereby decisively entering the political

mainstream. What marked this arrangement out from others before it

was that the military was no longer in control of a narrative, let alone

the dominant one. By 2004, popular opposition to US policies in the

region and the spread of a pro-Taliban tribal insurgency in the border

areas next to Afghanistan had energized the Islamist lobby, putting it

in a position finally to make good its challenge to oust rivals in an

increasingly deadly struggle to define the identity of Pakistan.

The military’s response was to try to craft a new narrative based on

the fear of an imminent Islamist takeover. This rested on the assump-

tion that the military, once the country’s best defence against external

aggression, was now the only force that stood in the way of a domestic

Islamist peril. Although this claim came soon to be dismissed as a myth

cultivated by the military to tighten its political grip,

109

the military’s

warning resonated abroad, where Western governments, fearful that

violent Islamists could gain control of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons,

rushed to heed the alarm raised by Musharraf. Domestically the mili-

tary’s new narrative was doomed from the outset. Its weakness

BETWEEN CRESCENT AND SWORD

179

stemmed not so much from the fragility of its claims, which may have

been real enough given the strength of Islamism in parts of the north-

western regions, but from its failure to construct an alternative dis-

course that could compensate for the loss of the communal emphasis

on Pakistan’s Muslim, as against its Islamic, identity. With opposing

India and stoking the Kashmir conflict no longer compatible with the

demands of the new international order, Pakistan had little choice but

to seek legitimacy in indigenous cultural and civilisational values. But

with sharp ethnic divisions pre-empting any recourse to cultural unity

as the basis of the nation, the country’s military leadership was forced

to rely exclusively on the values of Islam. And since there was no con-

sensus on the role of Islam, its efforts to resurrect a variant of the com-

munal approach to Pakistan’s Muslim identity by rooting it in ideas of

‘enlightened moderation’, proved to be futile.

Yet, Pakistan’s search for validation has rarely been constrained by

these internal considerations. Indeed, the uncertainty over its national

identity and the lack of consensus over Islam that has dogged the state

since inception have made it imperative for Pakistan to compensate for

its poorly developed identity by seeking corroboration from others.

This has taken multiple forms, whether claiming parity with regional

rivals such as India, forming alliances with great powers, notably the

United States, or manipulating dependent states like Afghanistan.

180

DEMONS FROM ABROAD

ENEMIES AND ALLIES

It is commonplace to observe that a country’s foreign policy is deter-

mined by its national interest. It is less common to suggest that in the

case of a country like Pakistan, foreign policy has been dictated by

issues of national identity. Indeed, what is revealing about Pakistan is

the extent to which its foreign policy, though naturally shaped by

national security interests, has served as a vital compensation for the

country’s lack of a clearly defined sense of nationhood.

Of all Pakistan foreign engagements, none has been as central to its

identity as its relations with India. The peculiar circumstances of the

country’s creation very largely account for this. For Pakistan was born

not in a struggle against British colonial rule, but in opposition to the

Indian nationalist movement. Overcoming the legacy of this ‘negative’

identity has been the defining feature of Pakistan’s policy towards

India, and the greatest challenge of all has been embodied in their dis-

pute over Kashmir. It is here, amid the rhetoric of rival claims over

territory and state sovereignty, that Pakistan has fought to assert itself

and to liberate its identity from the uncertainties that have attached to

its status as merely ‘not India’. But the achievement of this identity has

depended also upon affirming Pakistan’s historical claim to parity with

India. Grounded in Jinnah’s insistence upon the equality of the nations

of Hindus and Muslims as the basis of any territorial division of Brit-

ish India, this search for identity has served as a powerful incentive in

Pakistan’s quest for military parity with India and its determined pur-

suit of the ultimate force equalizer—nuclear weapons.

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181

It was perhaps inevitable that Pakistan’s primordial conflict with

India—almost seven times its size in population and more than four

times its land mass—should have driven it to seek assistance abroad.

Security against an attack from India was certainly a major considera-

tion in its decision early on to enter into an alliance with the United

States. Yet the basis upon which it contracted to do so also reveals

Pakistan’s need for validation and its desire to win recognition of its

special status. The alliance with the US as a strategic ‘partner’ ensured

that Pakistan’s military defences against India would also project the

country’s global image. But Pakistan’s drive to validate its identity by

partnering the great powers in pursuit of their strategic objectives has

brought few gains and none of the international recognition, which

would confirm its status as a power to rival India.

Nevertheless, the desire to play a role that is disproportionate to its

actual power has been a fundamental aspect of Pakistan’s self-percep-

tion. Rooted in the determination to free the country from its historical

association with a Muslim minority discourse shaped in response to a

Hindu majority, whose claims to nationhood it sought to emulate, it

has left a lasting legacy on the conduct of the country’s foreign policy.

For the very attempt to emulate India has led Pakistan also to seek to

match the foreign policy aims of its larger neighbour. Chief among

these, and of overwhelming concern to Pakistan, was India’s claim to

be a regional power, which Pakistan has sought to imitate, particularly

in its relations with Afghanistan. Although the consequences of these

foreign policy ambitions have often been devastating to Pakistan and

the strategic costs immense, no price is yet seen to be too high to vali-

date Pakistan’s claim to nationhood.

Standing up to India

No analysis of Pakistan’s conflictual relations with India can avoid the

question of historical antecedents. Of these, the violent and bloody

events around the Partition have defined the bases of the unmitigated

hostility between the two countries. They have fuelled a climate of

suspicion that has led to three wars and that many now believe threat-

ens a nuclear confrontation. At the heart of this deadly rivalry is Kash-

mir. While ostensibly a dispute over the control of territory, any

proposed resolution has been complicated by issues that touch upon

questions of national identity, the viability of national legitimation

projects and conflicting interpretations of history.

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

182

Yet it is worth noting that even in the midst of the unremitting hos-

tility which has triggered three wars (1948, 1965 and 1971) and two

major military stand-offs (1999 and 2002), dialogue between the two

sides has been kept alive. It has resulted in major agreements, ranging

from an understanding to share river waters (the 1960 Indus Waters

Treaty) to normalizing relations albeit tenuously, over Kashmir (the

1972 Simla Agreement). Since 2002 there have been further efforts to

break the deadlock over Kashmir.

These efforts have encouraged a

so-called ‘composite dialogue’ that has boosted confidence-building-

measures (CBMs), including bilateral trade, the relaxation of visa

regimes, cultural exchanges and the settlement of lesser disputes

involving troop withdrawals from the Siachen Glacier and the demar-

cation of the Sir Creek maritime border in the marshlands of the Rann

of Kutch.

However, few expect such dialogue fundamentally to shift

perceptions, especially in Pakistan, where opposition to India is still

heavily laden with the significance of what it means to be Pakistani.

Indeed, much of the uncertainty over Pakistan’s identity stems from

the nagging question of whether its identity is fundamentally depend-

ent on India and what its construction might entail outside of opposi-

tion to the latter. This has prompted the suggestion that Pakistan is a

state burdened with a negative identity shaped by the circumstances of

Partition. The League’s rejection of ‘Hindu domination’, it is argued,

has since fed Pakistan’s national obsession with India. Unable to

escape the India syndrome, it has failed to craft an independent iden-

tity beyond that which it moulded as a challenger to India.

The broad

thrust of this argument is difficult to resist. With the creation of Bang-

ladesh in 1971, the idea that Indian Muslims were a self-contained

nation, whose attachment to Islam qualified them to seek separate

statehood, became even harder to sustain. Yet, this vision rested on a

further assumption that still exercises a powerful hold on the national

imagination in Pakistan. It centres on the claim that the Muslims of

India, distinguished by their political and historical importance as the

dominant power in the region for over six centuries, had risen to a

status of coequality, or parity, with their Hindu counterparts.

The

creation of two separate states, India and Pakistan, appeared to the

founders of Pakistan to validate this claim, even if it only did so in the

Westphalian language of the de jure equality of states.

This argument has been vital to Pakistan and explains why its rela-

tions with India have been almost exclusively dictated by the need to

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183

defy the asymmetry of its position vis-à-vis its neighbour. While asym-

metrical relations between states are by no means exceptional, Paki-

stan’s experience has honed the belief that India still rejects the

rationale of Pakistan’s statehood, even if it has been forced to accept

its reality. The roots of this perception also lie in diverging interpreta-

tions of Partition. For while Partition is widely represented in Pakistan

as a triumph of Muslim nationalism and evidence of the irrefutable

historical truth about Muslim nationhood, many in Pakistan live with

the awareness that in India Partition is mourned as a tragedy—a pain-

ful reminder of the failure of India’s secular project that could only be

redeemed by undoing Pakistan. India’s intervention in the civil war in

Bangladesh in 1971, which led to the disintegration of Pakistan, still

serves as proof for Pakistanis of India’s intentions to cast doubt on the

soundness of Partition, and by extension, the legitimacy of Pakistan.

This enduring rivalry

between India and Pakistan is grounded not

only in rival interpretations of Partition, but also in two opposing

national projects tied to distinct visions of nationhood: one (Indian)

predicated on the principles of secularism, the other (Pakistani),

founded somewhat problematically on the idea of a Muslim nation. At

the same time, the designation of India and Pakistan as, respectively,

secular and confessional states is far from straightforward. Indeed, the

construction of these differences and their significance in the shaping

of each state’s identity are deeply contested in ways that have also

influenced their relations with one another. Since its inception Pakistan

has vigorously resisted any suggestion by India that it represents a

theocratic or confessional Islamic state, while holding firm to its Mus-

lim identity. However, the uncertainty attached to this identity has

encouraged Pakistan to seek its most tangible expression in opposition

to India’s putative Hindu identity, which involves denying India’s secu-

larity. The instinct to shape Pakistan’s Muslim identity in contradis-

tinction to India’s Hindu identity was epitomized by Jinnah, who set

the tone by choosing to refer not to India, but to Hindustan.

But the affirmation of Pakistan’s Muslim identity (against India’s

assumed Hindu identity) has been far from smooth. Since independ-

ence it has been vigorously contested by the protagonists of ethnic and

regional groups on the periphery of the state, who oppose its right to

appropriate the definition of Pakistan’s Muslim identity. This has been

especially marked with regard to military regimes which, by casting

Pakistan’s conflict with India as a civilizational

issue, have appeared

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

184

to tighten the state’s links with Islam and used them as a pretext to

crush the articulation of ethnic differences. Another important conse-

quence of projecting foreign policy issues in these terms, it is argued,

has been to strengthen the impression that there exists a national con-

sensus, especially on Kashmir.

This has been vital to military regimes

in Pakistan, which more often than not have used the conflict with

India over Kashmir as a pretext for retaining control over national

politics. Tensions such as these have accentuated the uncertainty over

Pakistan’s national identity vis à vis India: for so long as Pakistan

chose to subscribe to a Muslim identity shaped in response to the com-

munal rhetoric of Partition, it seemed to acquire meaning only in rela-

tional opposition to India. However, by opting, as it did after 1971, to

re-orient itself more firmly in line with an Islamic identity attached to

the Muslim world of the Middle East, it risked authenticating India’s

long-held portrayal of Pakistan as primarily a confessional state.

Thus, Pakistan’s struggle against India is deeply embedded in a pain-

ful awareness of its own lack of a national history. The fact that India

has had a historical identity (however ill-defined) that predated Paki-

stan’s own has compounded the latter’s need for external validation.

Although the Independence Act of 1947 recognized India and Pakistan

as two independent and equal Dominions,

in reality it had made no

provision for two successor states—assuming that the Union of India

would inherit the mantle of British India’s unitary centre with Pakistan

contracting out of the Union and then laying claim to its share of

Union assets.

Though Jinnah successfully disputed these assumptions,

most notably by rejecting proposals for a common governor-general

for both Dominions and insisting on a separate governor-general for

Pakistan—a post he chose to assume himself

—the implications of this

debate had a deep impact on Pakistan. By choosing to declare its inde-

pendence on 14 August 1947, a day before India, it hoped to neutral-

ize any suggestion that it lacked an independent international persona.

Yet, since its inception Pakistan has wrestled with the knowledge of

India’s historical precedence. This has served both as a reminder of

Pakistan’s historical status as a second-class successor to Britain’s

Indian empire as well as a disturbing indication that Pakistan’s was

born, not out of a national struggle against a colonial power but

merely as the legacy of secession by a minority in India.

The fact that many of Pakistan’s legal boundaries are still in dispute

(with Afghanistan in the tribal areas and with India in Kashmir) has

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185

also cast a shadow on the clarity of its sovereign identity. This has

further eroded Pakistan’s sense of national self, which remains tied to

the affirmation of Pakistan’s parity with India and which seeks assur-

ance through military alignments with great powers (notably the

United States) or the control of subordinate powers like Afghanistan

that could be relied to enhance Pakistan’s regional profile. While per-

ceptions of the imminent threat posed by India to Pakistan’s physical

survival have been crucial in lending urgency to these policies, the

country’s approach to issues of war and peace with India has deeper

roots grounded in questions regarding the identity and purpose of the

state. While it is true that issues of identity have also played an impor-

tant role in shaping Indian attitudes to Pakistan, especially in the wake

of resurgent Hindi nationalism, the implications are quite different for

India. As Nasr points out, ‘India does not depend on identity for legiti-

macy, stability and survival in the manner that Pakistan does’; further-

more, he observes, ‘Indian identity is not dependent on Pakistan’.

contrast, the question of identity remains central in Pakistan, where

the debate over the role of Islam continues to be played out externally

and in relation to India—projecting a Muslim identity to counter

India’s notional Hindi identity or resisting India’s interpretation of

Pakistan’s supposed ‘Islamic’ purpose.

Nowhere have these issues been more salient that in Pakistan’s dis-

pute with India over Kashmir. The conflict dates back to Partition, but

few at the time (with the possible exception of Nehru) appreciated

how symbolically charged it would be for the rival national projects

espoused by the National Congress and the Muslim League. Jinnah

himself had clearly underestimated the role that Kashmir would come

to play in Pakistan’s search for a coherent national identity. His only

visit there, in 1944, was to lend support to Kashmiri Muslim groups,

which under the aegis of the conservative Muslim Conference had

decided to throw in their lot with the Muslim League. But his visit did

little to rouse the League’s senior leadership from its complacency over

Kashmir or to spur their efforts to engage more vigorously with Kash-

mir’s Muslim population.

By contrast, Congress leaders assiduously

courted Kashmiri Muslims. In 1940 Nehru accepted an invitation from

the Kashmiri nationalist and prominent Muslim leader, Sheikh Abdul-

lah, who was said to have taken offence at Jinnah’s decision to ques-

tion the representative credentials of his organization, the National

Conference.

Nehru visited Kashmir on two further occasions in 1945

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

186

and 1946. Senior Congress leaders, including Abul Kalam Azad and

Ghaffar Khan, followed suit: both attended the annual gathering of

Abdullah’s National Conference in 1945, where their presence under-

scored this difference in approach to Kashmir in comparison with their

counterparts from the League.

Nevertheless, there was little to suggest that the casual attitude

adopted by Jinnah and the League with regard to Kashmir would

result in such heavy penalties for Pakistan. As a Muslim majority area

that was contiguous to the country’s western regions, Kashmir

appeared to fulfil all the necessary criteria for inclusion in Pakistan.

Few doubted that geography and demography would both favour

Pakistan’s right to Kashmir. How and why these claims came eventu-

ally to be thwarted are questions that have been mired in controversy

and stand at the historical origins of the conflict. They centre broadly

on the questionable decision in October 1947 by the Dogra ruler of

Kashmir, Maharaja Hari Singh, to accede to India in response to an

armed incursion by tribal militants from Pakistan. The precise terms

under which this accession was secured have been contested. Sugges-

tions from Pakistan that they were obtained under duress and possibly

even after the deployment of Indian troops, have always been vigor-

ously rebutted by India—although its claims to have acted legally have

been questioned by independent scholars.

What is not in doubt is

that the bitterness that followed the Maharaja’s accession was instru-

mental in persuading Jinnah to send in his troops in an effort to regain

control of territory that Pakistan has since believed should rightly have

been hers. The short war that ensued escalated in May 1948, forcing

the United Nations to take notice and impose a truce in early 1949,

which led to the drawing of a ceasefire line (designated since 1972 as

the Line of Control). It also left India with more than two-thirds of the

disputed territory, including the coveted Vale of Kashmir. Pakistan

controlled a narrow strip, consisting of western Jammu and Kashmir,

renamed ‘Azad’, or ‘Free’, Kashmir, along with a clutch of remote

mountainous regions further to the north-west collectively known as

the ‘Northern Territories’.

Since then the status quo has twice been challenged by Pakistan. In

1965, it sought to instigate a mass uprising in Kashmir and seize the

region by orchestrating a series of decisive military moves. Again, in

1971, it attempted to break through Indian positions along the LOC

in retaliation for India’s involvement on the side of the Bengalis in East

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Pakistan, thus forcing it to redeploy its troops from Bengal.

But over

time, Pakistan’s position on the issue of Kashmir has also been altered

by fundamental shifts in the nature of its national identity. At inde-

pendence its approach to the problem of Kashmir was still dictated by

an emphasis on Pakistan’s communal identity shaped by the ideology

of Muslim nationalism, which challenged Indian nationalist claims to

represent Muslims and which insisted on the right to a Muslim home-

land carved out of territories where Muslims were a majority. Accord-

ing to this logic, based on the idea that Muslims and Hindus were two

nations separated by religion, Kashmir became central to Pakistan’s

territorial and communal identity. Therefore, so long as Kashmir was

excluded the communal project that defined Pakistan remained incom-

plete. But this communal project was itself linked to ‘the Muslim

Question on the subcontinent’,

which was overwhelmingly a question

of where Muslims belonged rather than where Islam could be pro-

tected (though in practice there was much overlap between the two).

Until 1971 Pakistan’s relation to Kashmir was framed primarily in

these in these terms insofar as Kashmiri Muslims were regarded as

‘belonging’ to the Pakistani homeland specially conceived for Muslims.

Pakistan’s support for a plebiscite in Kashmir did not, and indeed

could not, on the basis of its ‘national’ logic, accommodate an inde-

pendent Kashmir.

But Pakistan’s relation to Kashmir as an expression of Pakistani

identity changed after 1971. The loss of East Pakistan dealt a grievous

blow to the communal project and with it Pakistan’s communal iden-

tity. It forced Pakistan to re-imagine itself in terms that enhanced its

Islamic identity and brought it more self-consciously in line with radi-

cal interpretations of a state based on Islam. With it came a shift in

how Kashmir’s relation to Pakistan’s identity came to be represented.

The focus no longer lay in projecting Pakistan as a Muslim homeland

to which Kashmir as a Muslim majority province belonged by virtue

of the established claims of the two-nation theory. Instead, Kashmir

was recast as sacred territory awaiting liberation through jihad—thus

authenticating Pakistan’s identity as the protector of Islam. It is per-

haps no coincidence, as some have noted, that in recent years Kashmir

has emerged as much more of a territorial concern for Pakistan. Earlier

generations had attached importance attached to it, primarily as a

symbolic representation of the idea of Pakistan.

Over time, the complex relation between Pakistan’s identity and the

issue of Kashmir has also been accentuated by the country’s internal

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

188

ethnic differences. It is now commonly acknowledged that the Kash-

miri cause has always enjoyed much greater support in Punjab than in

any other region of Pakistan.

Indications of uneven support for the

campaign in Kashmir were already in evidence in the early years when

official sponsorship met with a lukewarm response among the Bengalis

in East Pakistan, who were far less troubled by the threat posed by

Kashmir to the claims of Pakistani nationhood than by their ambigu-

ous relation to West Bengal and their place in an overarching Bengali

nation. Bengali impatience with the question of Kashmir finally bub-

bled over in 1965, when the bulk of Pakistani troops were deployed to

protect Pakistan’s western borders and positions along the Line of

Control in Kashmir, leaving East Bengal defenceless.

These grievances

over the conduct of the war have been regarded by some as crucially

responsible for deepening Bengali political alienation and hastening the

momentum towards the disintegration of the country in 1971.

Since then doubts about the centrality of Kashmir to Pakistan’s iden-

tity have surfaced in Sind and in Balochistan, where on the whole

devotion to the Kashmiri cause has always been much less pronounced

than in Punjab.

This is in part due to the relative marginalization of

these provinces from the centres of power

and to the consequences of

their poor representation in key state institutions, notably the armed

forces. Indeed, the military has traditionally nourished a keen interest

in the Kashmir dispute and, since it is dominated by ethnic Punjabis,

this has made them the keenest supporters of the Kashmiri cause. It

has also been suggested that the absence of any clear ethnic ties

between Sindhis and Balochis on the one hand and Kashmiri Muslims

on the other has accentuated their sense of distance from Kashmir and

made them far less ready to regard it as central to Pakistan’s national

identity.

This would also explain in part the strong commitment to Kashmir

in Punjab, where many Punjabis take pride in tracing their roots to

Kashmir—roots that have no doubt been strengthened by the proxim-

ity of the two regions and over time, by over-lapping patterns of

migration and settlement. Since the 1980s these ties have intensified

and acquired a distinctly Islamic hue that has in turn coloured the par-

ticipation of Punjabi groups fighting on the side of Kashmiri mili-

tants.

The strengthening influence of jihadi activism in Kashmir has

also roused the sympathies of the Pashtuns. Although they were not

known to feel strongly about Kashmir, reserving their sympathies for

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189

Afghanistan, they were now encouraged by the role of the disputed

province in the re-definition of an Islamic identity for Pakistan. Their

engagement had grown stronger under the influence of Deobandi

ulama, who had gained ground among Pakistan’s Pashtun population

following their active participation in the Afghan war in the 1980s and

who now sought to emulate their tribal forefathers’ attempts to wrest

Kashmir from the control of Indian ‘infidels’ in 1947.

While the role of Kashmir in shaping Pakistan’s identity vis-a-vis

India cannot be over-estimated, equally important has been Pakistan’s

desire to overcome its power handicap by aiming for military and dip-

lomatic parity. In the 1950s Pakistan had hoped to counter this asym-

metry through formal military alignments with the United States,

aiming thereby to redress the imbalance in conventional military forces

and strengthen the perception of Pakistan’s equality with India. But

the decision by the United States to arm India in the wake of the Sino-

Indian war of 1962 left Pakistan with no choice but to turn to China

to lessen the effects of its asymmetry. India, for its part, had burnt its

bridges with the Soviet Union and the non-aligned world by actively

seeking military assistance from the United States. However, China

was no more willing than the United States to provide Pakistan with

the formal security guarantees that it considered vital to counter the

power differential with India and to help it erase the memory of its

minority complex towards India.

The legacy of this ‘minority discourse of power’

has been a deter-

mining factor in shaping Pakistan’s self-avowed status as the challenger

to India—a status it has single-mindedly pursued often at the cost of

destructive regional policies. Though it was expected that independent

statehood would ease the pressure of these claims on Pakistan, the

crippling disadvantages with which Pakistan emerged at independ-

ence

meant that the equality guaranteed by formal statehood

amounted to little when set against its rival’s size, resources but espe-

cially its military strength. While Pakistan recognized that it could do

little to redress the balance of the first two, the temptation to match

India militarily proved to be irresistible. For almost three decades

after independence, Pakistan was single-mindedly dedicated to over-

coming its military inferiority by forging close security relations with

the United States—before turning to China to help compensate for

the shortfall brought on by the suspension of US aid after the Indo-

Pakistan war of 1965 [see below]. It was however the military

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

190

confrontation with India in 1971 and the humiliation of defeat at the

hands of Indian military forces in Bangladesh, while the United States

and China looked on, that finally convinced Pakistan it could no

longer depend on unreliable allies to overcome the military imbalance

with India.

The search for parity now shifted to the unexplored terrain of

nuclear weapons as the ultimate means of tackling the issue of deter-

rence posed by India’s overwhelming military superiority. There were

other considerations that prompted Pakistan to sign up to the nuclear

option. One important factor involved increasing pressure on India to

make concessions on Kashmir by using the nuclear threat as an

umbrella under which to stage low-intensity conflicts of the sort wit-

nessed in Kargil in 1999.

Another centred on Pakistan’s long standing

desire to enhance Pakistan’s status in the Muslim world as primus inter

pares.

More recently, it has even been suggested that Pakistan hoped

to use its nuclear status to act as the guarantor of a new strategic dis-

pensation in Central and West Asia and match India by acquiring

strategic depth.

Whether any of these objectives have been well served

by Pakistan’s nuclear status remains a moot point. What is not in

doubt is that Pakistan’s role in the proliferation of nuclear technology

in recent years has so deeply compromised its status as a nuclear power

that few believe that it can now fulfil the country’s ambitions to share

the space that has come to be reserved for India as a mature and full-

fledged member of the international community.

America’s sullen mistress

Nowhere has Pakistan’s determination to counter its perceived asym-

metry with India exacted a higher cost on the country than in its rela-

tions with the United States, which have been defined by mutual

dependence rather than mutual respect. While Pakistan has needed the

United States to validate its claim to be the equal of India, the United

States has relied on Pakistan to act as its local proxy in pursuit of

America’s foreign policy aims.

And while the United States has con-

sistently refused to grant Pakistan the privilege of the formal security

guarantees that would have secured its diplomatic and military parity

with India, Pakistan has proved no less wily in resisting the leverage

sought by the United States in pursuit of its objectives. The costs of

sustaining this unstable relationship have been immeasurably higher

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191

for Pakistan, whose need to ally with great powers has been fashioned

as much by its search for national validation as by the imperatives of

national security. Having insisted on the principle of parity as the basis

of any territorial arrangement between ‘Pakistan’ and ‘Hindustan’, it

became imperative after independence for Pakistan to strike alliances

with external powers that could help it sustain its claim to be geo-

politically the equal of India.

But the alliance with the United States, which made Pakistan the

beneficiary of large scale economic and military assistance,

brought

with it no special status of the kind Pakistan craved. Not did it fulfill

Pakistan’s hopes of having its sovereignty validated by an agreement

formally to guarantee its frontiers. Indeed, it is precisely Pakistan’s

unfulfilled quest for guarantees, which would have sealed its status on

the international stage as the equal of India that has contributed to its

deeply troubled relationship with the United States. It also explains

why this relationship is so laden with emotional overtones unusual in

international relations. Plagued by uncertainty about a partner whose

support it has reason to doubt, and lacking the formal protection that

first prompted it to seek alliance with the United States it is no wonder

that Pakistan has resorted to the language of recrimination to describe

its closest ally as both duplicitous and disloyal.

Evidence of US indifference towards Pakistan had surfaced early. At

independence it was India that had held the attention of the United

States and which the United States coveted as the diplomatic prize to

ensure a durable American presence in South Asia. By contrast, there

was little or no enthusiasm for Jinnah’s Pakistan, which ran against

the United States’ preference for a united India. At the same time, the

immense challenges of post-war reconstruction in Europe and percep-

tions of a growing Soviet threat discouraged the United States from

any immediate engagement in the Indian region. What this implied in

practice was that the United States was more than willing to delegate

responsibility for the defence of Western interests in South Asia to

Britain, who, as the former colonial power in the region, was still

regarded as best placed to secure those interests.

Two factors undermined the smooth progression of US plans to

entrust South Asian affairs to its war-time ally, Britain. The first was

India’s determination to loosen its links with the Western bloc and

chart a non-aligned course in foreign policy, which the United States

regarded as a potential danger to US global interests at a time when it

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

192

was locked in combat with the Soviet Union. The second was Paki-

stan’s search for international security guarantees against India in

exchange for its co-operation in the service of great-power politics.

Both forced a major reassessment of US policy towards the region. By

the early 1950s Nehru’s hostility to the United States as the new face

of Western colonialism had come to be perceived by the Western alli-

ance as synonymous with Indian tolerance for Soviet communism.

These sentiments would become common and heighten US impa-

tience with India. Yet there was little or no suggestion even at this time

that this impatience would ever translate into a US policy to leave

India vulnerable to the risk of a communist invasion. Pakistan under-

stood this but was confident that, even if the idea of a separate Muslim

state with dubious democratic credentials held little popular appeal in

the United States, the geo-strategic importance of this new country had

not been lost on US policy-makers. As early as 1948, a series of US

policy recommendations suggested that, from the perspective of US

national security objectives, the most important South Asian nation

was not India but Pakistan. Heavily influenced by the priorities of the

military and intelligence communities, they pointed to two main con-

siderations: Pakistan’s contiguous border with the Soviet Union, which

could serve as the site of US bases, and Pakistan’s proximity to the Per-

sian Gulf, which could enhance its role in defending vital oil routes.

Pakistan’s first generation of leaders demonstrated no less under-

standing of their country’s geostrategic position and how best to sell it

to eager buyers in the West. In 1947 Jinnah played on Western fears of

Soviet expansion by making a case for Pakistan that some claim rested

on a Cold War version of the Great Game between imperial Russia

and British India.

It was predicated on the idea that the security of

the north west of India was a global concern ‘and not merely an inter-

nal matter for Pakistan alone’; as such, the defence of one was inextri-

cably tied to the other. The theme of a common defence had long been

familiar to Jinnah and other Muslim separatist leaders, including Iqbal,

who had sought to justify the demand for a separate Muslim state in

the northwest of India on the ground that a strong state in this strate-

gic corner was vital to the defence of the subcontinent.

But Jinnah

had also cleverly anticipated the imperatives of the Cold War by draw-

ing attention not only to Pakistan’s position as a frontier state but also

to its character as a Muslim state, where ‘communism does not flour-

ish in the soil of Islam’.

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193

It mattered little that Jinnah’s observations would soon be put in

doubt by Pakistan’s alliance with communist China, in retaliation for

the United States’ decision to arm India following the Sino-Indian bor-

der war in 1962. What counted in these early years was to cultivate

Pakistan’s image as a Muslim state, ill at ease with communism and

somewhat out of place in a region (South Asia) not commonly associ-

ated with the Muslim world. In time these impressions would be

strengthened by America’s dependence on Pakistan as a key compo-

nent of its Cold War strategy in the Middle East

—a situation which

also yielded rich dividends for Pakistan in the pursuit of its own

regional interests against India. These benefits came at the cost of hav-

ing to decide upon a clearer identity for Pakistan. The country’s close

association with a Middle Eastern agenda pre-empted any immediate

resolution of the country’s internal Muslim character (now taken for

granted) or an understanding of its South Asian past (now judged to

be superfluous).

Concerns such as these fuelled Pakistan’s obsession with securing

territorial guarantees to protect its borders—an obsession that was

matched at the time only by the United States’ fixation on the need to

fight communism. Despite their developing relationship, Pakistan and

the United States were driven by different objectives. While Pakistan’s

search for territorial guarantees was dictated primarily by its fear of

India, the United States debated the merits of such guarantees with

reference to securing Pakistan’s compliance with US Cold War objec-

tives in the Middle East.

The illusion of a common purpose would henceforth set the tone of

this fundamentally flawed bilateral relationship. Yet Pakistan’s willing-

ness to be primed by the United States as the local captain of a wider

pro-Western Muslim alliance in the Middle East was not altogether at

odds with its self-perception. Founded as it was on the idea of a Mus-

lim nation, Pakistan had initially sought to balance its geopolitical

weakness in relation to India by appealing to religion (Islam), and by

extension, to a wider community of Muslims, whose support it

expected would help it match India. Jinnah had helped reinforce this

impression by assuring American diplomats in May 1947 that, as a

Muslim state, Pakistan’s foreign policy would be decisively oriented

towards the Muslim countries of the Middle East.

His commitment

was echoed in 1950 by Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan, who

impressed upon his American interlocutors that Pakistan’s Islamic

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

194

identity and its regional continuity with the Muslim Middle East put it

in a unique position.

By doing so he appeared to underscore the

depth acquired by the western part of Pakistan in relation to India,

augmenting its efforts to achieve symmetry with India.

But these early self-perceptions also point to uncertainties in the

definition of Pakistan’s identity, which continued to waver between an

‘ideational’ and ‘local’ understanding of the nation. While the former

emphasized Pakistan’s relation to Islam and made it more prone to

identify with the wider Islamic world centred on the Middle East, its

local understanding situated the country more firmly within a South

Asia dominated by India. This tension was skillfully employed by Paki-

stan, which relied on its ideational character as a Muslim state to offset

the limitations imposed by its local identity. By looking beyond South

Asia to a wider Islamic world, it avoided local bilateral arrangements

that would have established India’s regional dominance.

At the same time, managing this tension in the context of its rela-

tionship with the United States was fraught with risk for Pakistan. It

found itself at odds in the 1950s with radical trends in the Arab world

opposed to the United States and its claim to speak on behalf of the

‘Muslim world’ was widely resented. Pakistan’s conduct was judged

‘over-optimistic and amateurish’, as were its references to ‘being the

largest Muslim state and the fifth largest country in the world’. ‘Such

talk’, some observed, ‘from a country whose rationale was little under-

stood at the time, and whose capacity to survive was still a question

mark, was not well received by other [Muslim] countries, proud of

their own heritage’.

Whatever hopes Pakistan may have entertained

to establish a pre-eminent status among its Muslim peers in the Middle

East finally vanished with its decision in 1955 to participate in the

Baghdad Pact (renamed the Central Treaty Organization—CEN-

TO—in 1958). It led to widespread condemnation, especially by Egypt,

which saw Pakistan as complicit in the attempt by Westerns powers to

tighten their control over oil shipments through the Suez Canal.

Nor was Pakistan’s membership of the US-led Western defence sys-

tem trouble free. Signs of strain had surfaced as soon as Pakistan real-

ized that its accession to Western sponsored collective security

arrangements, including the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization in

1954 and the Baghdad Pact, afforded no protection against an attack

from India. This brought to a head Pakistan’s simmering resentment

against the United States—resentment accentuated by the former’s

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195

awareness of the domestic and international liabilities incurred by its

relationship with the United States. These losses were most acutely felt

on three fronts: the failure to obtain credible guarantees for Pakistan

against a military attack from India; the failure to internationalize the

issue of Kashmir, and the failure to contain Pakistan’s isolation from

the Muslim world. Together they served as the basis on which Pakistan

would feel justified in accusing the United States of betraying an ally.

The question of US aid served as an early cause for Pakistan to air

its grievances. In 1951 Pakistan complained that US aid to India had

left it feeling like ‘a prospective bride who observes her suitor spending

very large sums on a mistress, i.e. India, while she herself can look

forward to no more than a token maintenance in the event of

marriage’.

These emotions re-surfaced in 1953, when Pakistan clam-

oured for more US aid in exchange for its public alliance with the

United States, claiming that to do otherwise ‘would be like taking a

poor girl for a walk and then walking out on her, leaving her only with

a bad name’.

Though Pakistan’s marriage prospects were gradually

to dim with its formal disengagement from US-sponsored security

arrangements, this signalled the end not so much of a tumultuous

relationship as a change in Pakistan’s position from wronged wife to

sullen mistress.

As mentioned above, America’s decision to arm India in the wake of

the 1962 Sino-Indian conflict precipitated in Pakistan a radical reas-

sessment of its relationship with the United States. Most explanations

have focused on Islamabad’s anger over the moves to strengthen its

deadliest foe by its closest ally. This is very largely true, but it also

brought to the fore the governing assumptions that had shaped Paki-

stan’s alliance with the United States. They rested squarely on the

expectation of a special bilateral relationship that would formally vali-

date its claim to strategic parity with India. After 1962 this search for

validation was transferred to China though Pakistan’s reasons for

doing so were no less governed by its shrewd appreciation of American

fears of Chinese communist expansion in South Asia, which it hoped

would revive American interest in Pakistan as the equal of India.

Yet Pakistan’s quest for validation and geo-political parity with

India was to prove as disappointing in its relation with China as with

the United States. While it is now widely accepted that Chinese mili-

tary aid to Pakistan, and possibly even Chinese nuclear co-operation,

have been indispensable in reducing Pakistan’s power disadvantage vis

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

196

à vis India, Pakistan’s desire for the unambiguous endorsement of its

founding rationale has met with no more than rhetorical support from

China. This was cruelly exposed in 1965 when China failed to assist

Pakistan during the Indo-Pakistan war, making a mockery of Prime

Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s warning in 1963 that an attack on Paki-

stan would be challenged by the ‘the largest state in Asia’.

During the

war with India in 1971 China’s verbal support proved again to be the

only tangible evidence of its defence of Pakistan, which had entertained

expectations of some material rewards for its part in facilitating the

Sino-US rapprochement that year.

At the same time, Pakistan’s will-

ingness to accommodate a less than satisfactory partnership with

China that did not directly address its security needs vis-à-vis India

suggests that more is at play in Pakistan’s complex relations with great

powers than merely seeking military protection from India. At issue is

the recognition of Pakistan as a state that seeks international sanction

to assume a role out of all proportion to its real power. Given the con-

tinuing uncertainty over its national identity and the lingering doubts

over the prospects of its survival, Pakistan has come to rely on Great

Power endorsement as a vital measure of its historical purpose.

The disintegration of the country in 1971 accentuated these concerns

by encouraging Pakistan to seek new forms of international validation

that could regenerate its historical claim to parity with India. The pur-

suit of a nuclear weapons programme, which began in earnest in the

mid 1970s, was seen to be the most effective route to achieve these

objectives.

But while the United States may have been willing to part-

ner Pakistan in its quest for parity with India by agreeing to furnish it

with modern weapons and military training, it clearly intended to draw

the line over nuclear weapons. Indeed, no issue has estranged Pakistan

from the United States more than the determination to pursue a

nuclear weapons programme. Yet shock at the decision by the United

States to suspend military aid to Pakistan (and to India) in 1965 and

alarm over India’s testing of a nuclear device in 1974, persuaded Paki-

stan that it could no longer entrust its security to the United States or

continue to rely on external powers to guarantee its security.

But the

pursuit of nuclear weapons also afforded a fresh opportunity for Paki-

stan to make a determined bid for entry into an exclusive club that it

expected would assure the country the recognition it craved as the

equal of India.

However, stiff opposition from the United States and growing inter-

national surveillance forced Pakistan to acquire nuclear technology in

DEMONS FROM ABROAD

197

a manner that was more suggestive of an international pariah than of

an aspiring member seeking entry into a privileged nuclear club. By the

mid 1970s Pakistan had embarked on a covert campaign to secure,

mostly by illegal means, the wherewithal for a uranium enrichment

programme that would help reach the status of nuclear power in 1998.

Just how much the United States was privy to this information and

what options it intended to pursue to curb the development of Paki-

stan’s nuclear programme may never be fully known. However, what

is now reasonably well established is that, following the Soviet inva-

sion of Afghanistan, the United States effectively turned a blind eye to

Pakistan’s nuclear weapons programme in exchange for Pakistan’s co-

operation in the war against Soviet forces. By so doing, the United

States gained Pakistan’s co-operation as a frontline state while signal-

ling that it was prepared to live with a nuclear Pakistan on condition

that Pakistan did not go public by testing a nuclear device.

At the time, Pakistan was interested in a US-backed security treaty

to protect Pakistan against an attack by India in exchange for its front-

line responsibilities. The then military ruler General Zia ul Haq

expressed this priority by demanding a formal security agreement

upgrading the 1954 Mutual Defence Assistance Agreement but with

no loopholes in the definition of a ‘threat’ and with clear and unam-

biguous guarantees ratified by Congress.

Given that Pakistan had

formally withdrawn from CENTO in early 1979 on the grounds that

it wanted membership of the Non-Aligned Movement (into which it

was admitted that year), the demand was received with bemusement

by the United States, which rejected it as inappropriate. Instead, it per-

suaded Pakistan to settle, as in the 1950s and 1960s, for an enlarged

economic and military aid package.

These concerns were central to Pakistan’s involvement in Afghani-

stan in the 1980s, which catapulted Pakistan to international promi-

nence and helped sustain the impression that it now commanded the

respect and attention of the Great Powers as a state set to rival India.

Working in close and covert co-operation with United State to support

Afghan resistance forces, it was confident that this new partnership

would finally confirm Pakistan’s arrival on the international stage.

These expectations were fuelled in part by the assumption that Paki-

stan’s relations with the United States had shifted from an alliance

with divergent objectives to a partnership based on the perception of a

common Soviet communist threat. This placed Pakistan for the first

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

198

time in a real position to guarantee the security of the United States

much as America ensured the protection of Pakistan’s security.

These

assumptions failed to stand the test of time. Tension over Pakistan’s

determination to pursue its nuclear weapons programme and its stub-

born refusal to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) soon marred

the sense of common purpose. The withdrawal of Soviet forces from

Afghanistan in 1989 finally forced open these cracks leading to the

imposition in 1990 of US sanctions against Pakistan and a threat to

declare the country a ‘terrorist state’.

The closing decade of the twentieth century found Pakistan effec-

tively bereft of the support of its most powerful patron and facing

international isolation amid allegations that it now served as a haven

for drug traffickers and international terrorists. Far from emerging as

a frontline state in partnership with the United States on the interna-

tional stage, it found itself edging towards the unenviable status of a

rogue state under scrutiny by America’s terrorism watch-list.

By the

mid 1990s Pakistan was set on a dangerous course, since its search for

international recognition now rested on its grotesque decision to

assume the patronage of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. In 1998,

its determination to proceed with nuclear tests in response to similar

ones by India, in defiance of the international community, brought

fresh sanctions. They were tightened in 1999 following General Mush-

arraf’s military coup, which threatened to complete Pakistan’s interna-

tional isolation and confirm its reputation as a pariah state.

These developments were dramatically thrown off-course on 11

September 2001 following the terrorist attacks on New York and

Washington. Accounts of how the United States forced Pakistan to

abandon its support for the Taliban and their chief financier, Osama

bin Laden, who was held responsible for the terrorist attacks, have

been widely documented. But what has also held the attention of many

concerned with Pakistan were the remarkable parallels between the

crisis faced by the country at the time of the Soviet invasion of Afghan-

istan in 1979 and that which confronted it on the eve of 9/11. The

most obvious similarities pertained to the military regimes that were in

control on both occasions. Although the regimes led by generals Zia

and Musharraf were divided by their preferences, respectively, for

orthodox and more moderate varieties of Islam, both upon taking

power faced diplomatic isolation to much the same degree over their

disregard for the international community. In the case of Zia, it was

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199

compounded by his unwillingness to compromise on the development

of Pakistan’s nuclear programme; in the case of Musharraf, by his

reluctance to sever Pakistan’s links with the Taliban. Both milit-

ary regimes also confronted severe financial pressures—brought on

by the costly readjustments of a less than satisfactory nationaliza-

tion programme in the late 1970s and by the debilitating effects of

punitive US sanctions in the 1990s. Above all both military regimes

craved legitimacy, which they hoped to secure by co-operating with

the United States.

Yet the dilemmas faced by Musharraf were far greater than those

with which Zia had to grapple. Like the US, Pakistan under Zia had a

clear interest in opposing the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. By

contrast, even if General Musharraf had little choice but to support the

ouster of the Taliban regime, in doing so he was reversing a long-

standing effort by Islamabad to install a friendly government in Kabul.

Moreover whilst General Zia was able to improve his domestic politi-

cal standing by pursuing a policy that enjoyed the support of Paki-

stan’s Islamic radicals, General Musharraf was forced to confront them

at a time when militant Islam was becoming an ever-stronger force.

But Musharraf also faced another problem. In General Zia’s day, India

leaned towards the Soviet Union and had cool relations with the US.

Under Musharraf Pakistan witnessed the emergence of India as a key

US economic partner and possibly even a strategic ally bound by the

terms of a nuclear agreement, whose currently civilian purpose could

develop a military dimension. Whilst 9/11 forced America to court

Pakistan and secure its compliance in the ‘war on terror’ in the face of

immense popular opposition, Pakistan is deeply aware that, should

there be any deterioration in its relationship with the United States,

then India would be poised to emerge as America’s major ally in South

Asia—fatally undermining Pakistan’s carefully constructed edifice of

parity with India.

There are now for Pakistan also disturbing signals

to suggest China’s long-standing hostility to India, which largely dic-

tated its support for Pakistan, is being transformed by the need to

improve trading and wider bilateral relations.

These factors together could herald a change in Pakistan’s relations

with the great powers, especially the United States, upon which it has

depended to sustain its historical claim to parity with India and vali-

date its national identity. However, Pakistan’s quest to match India

has not been restricted merely to enhancing its status through alignments

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

200

with major powers, but also by seeking to exercise control over subor-

dinate countries, notably Afghanistan. Influence over that country has

been regarded as vital not only to the management of Pakistan’s

regional geopolitics but also to the projection of Pakistan’s identity as

the regional equal of India.

Taking charge of Afghanistan

Therefore, Pakistan’s Afghan policy is best understood as an extension

of its historical claim to parity with India. Just as nuclear weapons

have served Pakistan as ‘equalizers’ in its quest for military parity with

India, so too has Pakistan’s Afghan policy come to represent the ulti-

mate test of Pakistan’s aspirations to rival India as a regional hegemon.

This has entailed the delicate management by Pakistan of two mutually

contradictory identities—as a revisionist state on the issue on Kashmir

and a defender of the status quo in relation to Afghanistan. The strains

involved in balancing these opposing identities explain, in part, Paki-

stan’s longstanding ambition to reshape its regional environment by

securing Afghanistan as a ‘junior partner’ with a friendly government

and thus enhance Pakistan’s capacity to challenge India.

However, Pakistan’s Afghan policy was initially framed in response

to the irredentist threat posed by Afghanistan, which in 1947 had

questioned Pakistan’s right to legitimate statehood on grounds that its

western borders were drawn on territory seized from Afghanistan by

British colonial forces without the consent of the local Pashtun popula-

tion. The claim has always been vigorously contested by Pakistan,

which has refused to countenance any suggestion of the ‘illegality’ of

the Pakistani state or the proposals to review its border with Afghani-

stan—the Durand Line.

But this resistance on the part of Pakistan

was deeply tied to its awareness that its claim to represent a coherent

national identity capable of matching India’s could not be sustained

without a territorially secure state. This consciousness was heightened

by Pakistan’s emergence in 1947 as a truncated state. Challenged by

these unique features, which appeared to mock Jinnah’s vision of a

consolidated Muslim homeland, Pakistan was determined not to allow

an assault on the legality of its borders or its right to speak on behalf

of all those within these borders—claims opposed by Afghanistan.

The most contentious of these issues was the legality of the Durand

Line. It had been negotiated in 1893 as the frontier separating Afghani-

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201

stan and the British Indian Empire. Running south-west of Kabul, its

demarcation brought to an end almost half a century of conflict

between Afghanistan and British India that culminated in the recogni-

tion by Britain of Afghanistan’s sovereignty in 1921. This frontier also

divided the Pashtun population of the region, which had been accus-

tomed to living together, and cut through territory they claimed in

common. Although successive Afghan rulers had been forced to accept

the Durand Line in exchange for Afghanistan’s sovereignty and to

head off the threat of military attacks by British forces in India, they

failed to pacify Pashtun tribes under their nominal authority. The

opposition of these Pashtun tribesmen also pre-empted all attempts by

Britain’s government in India to establish effective military control in

the regions east of the Durand Line. In this they were covertly sup-

ported by Afghan leaders, who since the late 1920s had agreed to

guarantee the autonomy of tribesmen west of the Durand Line. In so

doing, they helped prepare a campaign that would eventually call into

question the contractual basis of the Durand Line as an invalid agree-

ment concluded between two unequal parties obtained under duress by

the stronger of the two, namely Britain.

This question came to a head as Britain set out to dismantle the

Indian empire and devolve power to its two successor states, India and

Pakistan. At issue were rival interpretations of the international status

of the Durand Line. While the British insisted that it had served as an

international frontier between Afghanistan and British India and that

it would, upon the devolution of power, also serve to demarcate the

frontier between Afghanistan and Pakistan, Afghan leaders claimed

that the Line stood merely as the demarcation of zones of influence

rather than as an international boundary.

Afghan leaders also insisted

that any agreement concluded between two such unequal parties as

Britain and Afghanistan in 1893 could not serve as the basis for future

arrangements between two equally sovereign states. Nor could it

endure indefinitely;

indeed the treaty of 1893 had called for the rene-

gotiation of its terms after a hundred years. These objections soon cast

a shadow over the legality of Pakistan, both as a valid successor state

to British India and as the authentic voice of the Pashtun population

east of the Durand Line. They were thereafter to determine Pakistan’s

relations with Afghanistan.

Pakistan’s position was formally summed up in 1947. It maintained

that the ‘Durand Line is a valid international boundary recognized and

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

202

confirmed by Afghanistan on several occasions [in 1905 and 1919];

that the Durand Line terminated Afghan sovereignty over the territory

or influence over the people east of [the] Durand Line; and finally that

Pakistan, as a successor state [to British India] derived full sovereignty

over this area and its people and had all the rights and obligations of

a successor state’.

Finally, Pakistan also insisted that the question of

self-determination for Pashtuns had been decided by a British-super-

vised plebiscite held in 1947 in NWFP in which 99 percent of the votes

cast were in favour of joining Pakistan. The fact that Pashtun national-

ists boycotted the plebiscite, resulting in a mere 55% of the electorate

actually participating in the vote, was not seen to have prejudiced

Pakistani claims.

Not surprisingly, these developments were regarded with alarm by

Jinnah. He was determined to resist any attempt to jeopardize his plans

for a consolidated Muslim presence in the northwest and east of India

in preparation for a bid to secure their independence. Any suggestion

that the NWFP and its adjacent tribal areas with their Muslim majori-

ties could be detached from the body of British India or that the Pash-

tuns represented a ‘nation’ were therefore firmly resisted. Both went

against the grain of Jinnah’s vision and threatened to diminish the

strength of his claims. His argument was that there were only two legit-

imate successors to the British in India—Congress and League. Main-

taining this rigid logic of parity was vital to Jinnah, who understood

that the consideration of a third centre of national and territorial alle-

giance could compromise his own scheme for a Muslim nation-state.

He succeeded in persuading the British government (along with

Congress) to agree to a plebiscite in the North West Frontier Province

(on the basis of a limited electoral franchise) that gave its Pashtun

population the choice of joining either India or Pakistan. The agree-

ment to go ahead with a plebiscite was unusual when compared to

other provinces, where the decision to opt for India or Pakistan had

been left to elected assemblies. In the NWFP, the Congress-dominated

provincial government could not be relied upon to deliver a verdict in

favour of Pakistan. Although Pashtun nationalist parties boycotted the

referendum, their protest did not derail the referendum, which was

held on 20 July 1947 and resulted in a vote overwhelmingly in favour

of Pakistan.

Afghanistan’s opposition to the terms of the plebiscite, and by exten-

sion, the legalization of the Durand Line were clearly expressed when

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203

Afghanistan became the only country to vote against Pakistan’s admis-

sion to the United Nations, in September 1947. At the time the Afghan

representative to the UN, Abdul Hussain Khan Aziz, justified his

stance by declaring that ‘Afghanistan cannot recognise the NWFP as

part of Pakistan so long as the people of the NWFP have not been

given the opportunity, free from any kind of influence, to determine

for themselves whether they wish to be independent or to become part

of Pakistan’.

These objections were withdrawn in February 1948,

when Afghanistan became one of the first countries to establish diplo-

matic relations with Pakistan.

This reversal of Afghanistan’s position

was suggestive of the lingering influence of a section of Afghanistan’s

deeply divided political establishment that, under King Nadir Shah (d.

1933), had distanced itself from Pashtun nationalism in favour of rec-

ognition of the Durand Line as a legal border between Afghanistan

and British India.

However, its influence was clearly on the wane for it was not long

before relations between Afghanistan and newly independent Pakistan

deteriorated. In 1949 a declaration of independence by Pashtun tribes-

men on the Pakistani side of the Durand Line was immediately sup-

ported by Afghanistan, which hailed the birth of Pashtunistan.

Mounting tension led to border clashes, and Pakistan cut fuel supplies

to Afghanistan. Bitterness continued for much of the 1950s, egged on

by the fierce Pashtun nationalist agenda espoused by the Afghan Prime

Minister, Mohammad Daoud. Though his policies were designed pri-

marily to strengthen the Afghan state by harnessing it to the Pashtun

ethnic cause, their consequences for Pakistan’s fragile national identity,

already beset by ethnic conflicts, were far-reaching.

Pashtun nationalism, with its pronounced irredentist bent, posed an

immediate threat to this identity. Although it was the fault-line

between East and West Pakistan that was eventually to shatter Paki-

stan’s national identity, it was the historical position of the Pashtuns

of the North West Frontier Province that singled them out as the great-

est danger to the new state. The Afghan factor sharpened this percep-

tion insofar as the involvement of Afghanistan was seen to compound

Pakistan’s difficulty in assimilating the Pathans. And while there were

similar movements elsewhere, notably in Bengal, which also threatened

Jinnah’s vision of a Muslim nation, their momentum was cut short by

Partition.

By contrast there were few signs that Afghanistan intended

to relinquish its claim to Pakistan’s tribal areas (including at times vast

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

204

tracts of northern Baluchistan, which hosted a sizeable Pashtun popu-

lation) or to withdraw its influence over Pashtun affairs after Paki-

stan’s independence. Indeed, Afghanistan registered a strong protest

in 1955 over a controversial decision by Pakistan to amalgamate

its four western provinces into ‘One-Unit’, triggering Afghan accusa-

tions that the Pashtuns and their territory were being forcibly inte-

grated into Pakistan. In response Pakistan not only vigorously defended

its right to exercise control over the territories claimed by Afghan-

istan as the nucleus of an autonomous Pashtun state, but also refu-

sed to subscribe to the theory that Pashtuns were a nation entitled to

self-determination.

It was in the 1960s that signs first emerged of a shift in Pakistan’s

instinctively defensive position vis-à-vis Afghanistan. This marked the

onset of a strategy that sought to manage Pakistan’s conflict with

Afghanistan by recasting the Pashtun question as a threat to Afghani-

stan while neutralizing its political saliency for Pakistan. It relied on a

combination of state policies that co-opted Pashtuns into the country’s

key state institutions, especially the army, and on the language of

Islamic solidarity, to blunt the appeal of Pashtun ethnicity. By so doing

Pakistan hoped not only to reaffirm its identity as a national homeland

for all Muslims in the region, but also to establish its claim as a

regional power with the potential both to absorb lesser rivals like

Afghanistan and to mount an effective challenge to bigger contenders

such as India.

The earliest manifestations of this strategy appeared in a White

Paper published in 1962. Coming hard on the heels of a provocative

suggestion by Pakistan that Afghanistan should test the wishes of its

Pashtun population by arranging for a referendum that would offer

them the choice of living in Afghanistan or Pakistan,

it warned that

‘if the Frontier [sic] of a country has to be predetermined on linguistic

and ethnic bases as claimed by the Afghans, it will result in the dis-

integration of Afghanistan’.

The report drew attention to the vulner-

ability of Afghanistan’s 3.5 million Pashto speakers (as compared to

Pakistan’s 8 million Pashtuns at the time) by emphasizing that they

formed a mere fraction of the country’s total population of some

15 million non-Pashtuns, and highlighted the dangers that faced the

country’s other ethnic groups (Tajiks, Uzbeks, Persian and Turkish

speak ers), who could also be encouraged to seek integration into neigh-

bouring states.

This attempt by Pakistan to threaten Afghanistan with

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205

a fate it feared itself—that of national and territorial disintegration—

marked the beginning of a change of posture that appeared to lend

credence to the observation by the eminent anthropologist, Olaf Caroe,

who declared that in time it was more likely that ‘Peshawar would

absorb Kabul, not Kabul absorb Peshawar’.

This shift in Pakistan’s position also came against the background of

wider changes in the 1960s that confirmed Afghanistan’s failure to

internationalize the issue of Pashtunistan by calling on external pow-

ers, including the Soviet Union. Their reluctance to be drawn into the

conflict over Pashtunistan encouraged Pakistan, even while it expressed

dismay over the unwillingness of the international community to medi-

ate in its separate conflict with India over Kashmir. Nevertheless, Paki-

stan’s growing military strength, resulting from its alliance with the

United States, did much to fuel its determination to set its relation with

Afghanistan on a new and more belligerent footing.

This was accompanied by more decisive moves to defuse the Pashtun

question by launching a concerted campaign to co-opt larger numbers

of Pashtuns into centres of national power—that is, the army and the

senior civil services.

This policy was significantly expanded in the

1970s and 1980s by General Zia, who helped raise Pashtun represen-

tation in the army to their current levels of around 20 per cent.

In the

civil services these levels stood at an estimated 10 per cent, roughly in

line with the share of Pakistan’s Pashtun population at the time.

Eco-

nomically too the Pashtuns have fared better than most. Investment,

especially in the settled areas of the NWFP, boosted economic develop-

ment. Elsewhere, in provinces like Sind and Baluchistan, where Pash-

tuns formed a migrant population, they enjoyed relative economic

predominance, especially in the booming transport and construction

sectors. The success of these policies over time has nowhere been more

forcefully demonstrated than in the recent decision by Pashtun nation-

alist parties in Pakistan to abandon their demand for a separate

‘Pakhtunistan’ in favour of a province of ‘Pakhtunkhwa’ to replace the

North West Frontier Province.

It was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 that provided the

real impetus for Pakistan finally to address the historical challenge

posed by Afghanistan and to implement a policy that promised to ful-

fill the country’s strategic and ideological objectives. The strategic

objectives centred overwhelmingly on securing its western border so as

effectively to neutralize the effects of a so-called pincer movement

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

206

involving a simultaneous military threat from India and Afghanistan.

Afghanistan’s tacit alliance with India, which made no secret of its

moral support for Pashtun autonomy, had long been a cause of con-

cern to Pakistan. The Soviet invasion provided Pakistan with just the

opportunity to direct the course of events in a manner that it believed

would finally address these security concerns. Islamabad’s patronage

of the mujahedin resistance forced to operate from Pakistan and its

control over facilities for millions of Afghan refugees opened for the

first time the real prospect of ensuring a friendly government in

Afghanistan. While the strategy was clearly risky insofar as it was

predicated on the vulnerability of Soviet forces and their eventual with-

drawal from Afghanistan, the benefits were deemed (at least, at the

time) far to outweigh the costs of possible blowback and the strains

imposed on Pakistan’s infrastructure.

Among the benefits of direct concern to Pakistan’s dominant mili-

tary establishment was the prospect of gaining strategic depth.

Although regarded by some military strategists as irrelevant to the

conditions of modern warfare, the idea has exercised the minds of sev-

eral generations of Pakistani military leaders.

Keen to overcome the

limitations of Pakistan’s narrow geographical space in the event of a

war with India, they assumed that control over Afghan territory would

provide Pakistan’s armed forces with enough of a hinterland to

enhance their ‘ability to fight a prolonged war with India’.

A hinter-

land such as this, it is now understood, was also considered vital as a

useful base to train and arm Pakistan-backed Kashmiri militants while

extending Pakistan’s influence in Central Asia and boosting its ambi-

tions to rival India.

The ideological considerations were no less compelling. By galvaniz-

ing the mujahedin resistance and favouring hard-line Islamist groups

committed to the establishment of an Islamic state in Afghanistan,

Pakistan’s leaders hoped not only to defuse the Paktunistan issue but

also to ensure that questions of religious solidarity took precedence

over ethnic loyalties. According to Olivier Roy, this reflected as much

a desire to project the merits of Pakistan’s own political trajectory in

the service of Zia’s Islamization programme, as to use the Islamic

option to by-pass the ethnic one. Its implementation of this policy was

subtle in the extreme. It entailed the use of the ethnic and religious

connections to reinforce links between Pakistan’s Pashtun population

(by now key players on the economic and political scene) and their

DEMONS FROM ABROAD

207

Afghan counterparts, who were favoured by Pakistan at the expense of

other ethnic groups in Afghanistan.

By so doing, Pakistan not only

furthered a vision that insisted upon the primacy of religion over eth-

nicity, but also successfully transformed the ethnic Pashtun question

into an Islamist project tailored to enhance Pakistan’s identity as the

natural homeland for the Muslims of the region.

The consolidation of these gains was vital for the military in Paki-

stan, which despite the restoration of civilian government, from 1988

to 1999, still exercised a decisive veto over the direction of Pakistan’s

Afghan policy. The military’s prerogative over this policy was predi-

cated on the confidence that it could always count on a national con-

sensus with regard to the non-negotiability of the Durand Line. In

1993 Pakistan firmly rejected Afghanistan’s appeal to re-negotiate the

Durand Line in line with the provisions of 1893 treaty calling for a

review after a hundred years and reiterated its original position—

namely, that the Line was a valid international boundary.

Pakistan’s power to insist on the status quo with regard to the

Durand Line was not matched by its tenuous grip over mujahedin

groups battling for supremacy following the withdrawal of Soviet

forces from Afghanistan. This gap threatened to undermine the con-

solidation of Pakistan’s strategic and ideological gains. The ascendancy

of the Tajik-dominated leadership in Kabul, which was determined to

resist Pakistan’s attempts to determine Afghan affairs through its con-

trol of Pashtun groups, was an additional source of concern for Paki-

stan. By the mid 1990s Pakistan could no longer rely on its Pashtun

protégés inside Afghanistan to secure its regional interests or to defuse

the challenge to the status quo posed by differences over the status of

the Durand Line. These concerns were a major impetus behind Paki-

stan’s decision to regain the initiative by backing Afghan groups closer

to home. They included the so-called Taliban, who started as a band

of fighters born in Afghan refugee camps inside Pakistan and educated

in make-shift schools dispensing crude varieties of Islamic education.

Predominantly Pashtuns belonging to lesser tribes habitually removed

from centres of power in Afghanistan, they were seen as ideal material

by Pakistan to reinvigorate its Afghan policy and secure the gains that

had so far eluded her.

This policy rested on expectations that, once in power, the Taliban

would recognize the Durand Line, curb Pashtun nationalism and

absorb the threat of Islamic radicalism that now threatened to

MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN

208

blowback into Pakistan. The entire strategy rested on the assumption

that Pakistan would remain the master of events—an assumption that

was fatally flawed. Not only did Pakistan soon find itself the victim of

policies pursued by the Taliban, notably the decision to host Al Qaida,

but it also failed to achieve the objectives designed to enhance its secu-

rity. ‘In fact’, as Ahmed Rashid argues persuasively, ‘just the opposite

occurred. The Taliban refused to recognize the Durand Line or drop

Afghanistan’s claims to part of the NWFP. The Taliban fostered Pash-

tun nationalism, albeit of an Islamic character and it began to affect

Pakistani Pashtuns’.

In time, these developments would leave Paki-

stan vulnerable once again to forces from Afghanistan—forces it

helped create, but failed to contain. They are now held responsible for

the spread of the so-called ‘Talibanization’ of Pakistan, thereby under-

scoring the cruel irony of Pakistan now seeming to provide strategic

depth to the Afghan Taliban.

Events since 9/11 have forced Pakistan (publicly at least) to with-

draw its support for the Taliban and, more generally, to refrain from

the kind of close involvement in Afghan affairs to which it had grown

accustomed since the early 1980s. This has raised the prospect of a

shift in Pakistan’s Afghan policy in exchange for guarantees involving

a mutually acceptable resolution of its dispute with Afghanistan over

the status of the Durand line. So far Pakistan has refused to consider

any change in the status quo that would involve re-drawing its border

with Afghanistan. While some have argued that Pakistan may now

have good strategic reasons to maintain a porous border with Afghani-

stan rather than to press for the recognition of the Durand Line as an

international frontier (that would constrain Pakistan’s scope for inter-

ference in Afghan affairs),

both are suggestive of Pakistan’s insatiable

need to shore up its fragile national identity.

Compensating for the limitations of this identity has driven Pakistan

to pursue policies that, while admittedly informed by considerations of

security, have been overwhelmingly concerned to validate the country’s

historical purpose—whether by pursuing its historical claim to parity,

forging alliances with super-powers, or aspiring to adopt the mantle of

a regional power. Together they have dictated Pakistan’s foreign engage-

ments and determined the country’s unending search for meaning.

209

NOTES

INTRODUCTION

1. See Hamza Alavi, ‘Class and state’ in Hassan Gardezi and Jamil Rashid

(eds), Pakistan: the roots of dictatorship: the political economy of a pra-

etorian state (London: Zed Press, 1983). pp. 40–93 and his ‘Ethnicity,

Muslim society and the Pakistan ideology’ in Anita Weiss (ed.), Islamic

re-assertion in Pakistan (Lahore: Vanguard Books, 1987), pp. 21–47.

2. Alavi, ‘Ethnicity, Muslim society and the Pakistan ideology’ in Weiss (ed.),

Islamic re-assertion, pp. 23–46.

3. See, among others, Ayesha Jalal, The sole spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim

League and the demand for Pakistan (Cambridge University Press, 1985)

and Yunus Samad, A nation in turmoil: nationalism and ethnicity in Paki-

stan, 1937–58 (Delhi, Sage, 1995) and more recently, his ‘Pakistan: from

minority rights to majoritarianism’ in Gyanendra Pandey and Yunus

Samad, Faultlines of nationhood (Delhi: Roli Books, 2007), pp. 65–138.

4. See. among others, David Page, Prelude to Partition: the Indian Muslims

and the imperial system of control, 1920–1932 (Oxford University Press,

1982) and Francis Robinson, Separatism among Indian Muslims: the poli-

tics of the United Provinces’ Muslims, 1860–1923 (Cambridge University

Press, 1974)

5. Farzana Shaikh, Community and consensus in Islam: Muslim representa-

tion in colonial India, 1860–1947 (Cambridge University Press, 1989).

6. Yunus Samad, ‘Reflections on Partition: Pakistan perspective’, Interna-

tional Journal of Punjab Studies, Vol. 4, no. 1 (January-June 1997),

pp. 43–63.

7. Ian Talbot, Pakistan: a modern history (London: Hurst, 2005)

8. Ibid., p. 5.

9. See Barbara Metcalf, ‘The case of Pakistan’, in Barbara Metcalf, Islamic

contestations: essays on Muslims in India and Pakistan (Delhi: Oxford

University Press, 2004), p. 219.

10. Ibid.

pp. [9–11]

NOTES

210

11. S.V.R. Nasr, ‘National identities and the India-Pakistan conflict’ in T.V.

Paul (ed.), The India-Pakistan conflict: an enduring rivalry (Cambridge

University Press, 2005), pp. 178–201.

12. See among others, Hasan Askari Rizvi, The military and politics in Paki-

stan, 1947–77 (Lahore: Sang-i-Meel, 2000); Shahid Javed Burki, Pakistan:

fifty years of nationhood (Boulder, CO: Praeger, 1999) and Lawrence Zir-

ing, The Ayub Khan era: politics in Pakistan, 1958–69 (Syracuse, NY:

Syracuse University Pres, 1971.

13. Ayesha Siddiqa, Military Inc: inside Pakistan’s military economy (London:

Pluto Press, 2007).

14. It is instructive in this regard to compare the stability that flowed from the

success of the Islamization programme in Malaysia with the sharp fissures

it opened up in Pakistan during the 1980s. See, Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr,

Islamic Leviathan: Islam and the making of state power (New York:

Oxford University Press, 2001).

15. This relationship was first elaborated by Alavi in his seminal piece ‘Class

and state’ in Gardezi and Rashid, (eds), Pakistan: the roots of dictator-

ship, pp. 54–56. Since then it has been extended by others, notably Ayesha

Jalal, The state of martial law: the origins of Pakistan’s political economy

of defence (Cambridge University Press, 1990) and more recently (and

rather more vigorously), by Tariq Ali, The duel: Pakistan on the flight

path of American power (London: Simon & Schuster, 2008).

16. Stephen Cohen, The idea of Pakistan (Washington, DC: Brookings Institu-

tion Press, 2004).

1. WHY PAKISTAN?

1. Salman Rushdie, Shame (London: Jonathan Cape, 1983), p. 87.

2. Barbara Metcalf, ‘The case of Pakistan’ in Peter Merkl and Ninian Smart

(eds), Religion and politics in the modern world (New York: New York

University Press, 1982), p. 171.

3. For an extended discussion of the influence of an ‘Islamically informed’

discourse on the conduct of Indo-Muslim politics see, Farzana Shaikh,

Community and consensus in Islam: Muslim representation in colonial

India, 1860–1947 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).

4. Matiur Rahman, From consultation to confrontation: a study of the Mus-

lim League in British Indian politics, 1906–1912 (London: Luzac, 1970).

See also Francis Robinson, Separatism among Indian Muslims: the politics

of the United Provinces’ Muslims, 1860–1923 (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1974).

5. T.M. Madan, Modern myths, locked minds: secularism and fundamental-

ism in India (fourth impression) (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003),

p. 269.

6. See Gyanendra Pandey, The construction of communalism in colonial

North India (Delhi: Oxford University Press), 1990.

pp. [11–17]

NOTES

211

7. Ayesha Jalal, ‘Exploding communalism: the politics of Muslim identity in

South Asia’ in Sugata Bose and Ayesha Jalal (eds), Nationalism, Democ-

racy and Development: state and politics in India (Delhi: Oxford Univer-

sity Press, 1996), pp. 76–103.

8. For an account of the uneven support for the idea of Pakistan among

Indian Muslims across different regions in India see among others, Ian

Talbot, Pakistan: a modern history (revised edition) (London: Hurst,

2005), pp. 66–94; Christophe Jaffrelot(ed.), A history of Pakistan and its

origins (London: Anthem Press, 2002), pp. 12–20; Yunus Samad, A nation

in turmoil: nationalism and ethnicity in Pakistan, 1937–1958 (New Delhi:

Sage, 1995) and Ayesha Jalal, The sole spokesman: Jinnah the Muslim

League and the demand for Pakistan (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1985).

9. Ayesha Jalal, Self and sovereignty: individual and community in South

Asian Islam since 1850 (London: Routledge, 2000), p. 41.

10. Ayesha Jalal, Self and sovereignty: individual and community in South

Asian Islam since 1850 (London: Routledge, 2000).

11. Sunil Khilnani, The idea of India (revised edition) (Delhi: Penguin,1999),

p.163.

12. According to Jinnah, ‘They [the Hindus] fathered this word upon us. Give

the dog a bad name and then hang him … You know perfectly well that

Pakistan is a word that is really foisted upon us and fathered upon us by

some section of the Hindu press’. See his speech to the All India Muslim

League in April 1943 in S.S Pirzada(ed.), Foundations of Pakistan: All

India Muslim League Documents, 1906–1947, II (Karachi: National Pub-

lishing House, 1970), p. 425.

13. See Asim Roy, ‘The high politics of India’s Partition: the Revisionist Per-

spective’, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 24, no. 2 (May 1990), esp.

pp. 400–408.

14. Jalal,‘Exploding communalism’, pp. 80–90.

15. Of these, clearly the most important was the eponymous movement in

Deoband, near Delhi, founded in 1867. For the best single account of this

movement and its precursors see Barbara D. Metcalf, Islamic revival in

British India: Deoband, 1860–1900 (Princeton: Princeton University

Press, 1982).

16. See Ayesha Jalal, Partisans of Allah: Jihad in South Asia (Cambridge,

Mass., Harvard University Press, 2008).

17. A phrase used by a critic against the prominent Indian Muslim leader,

Abul Kalam Azad, who emerged in the 1940s as a senior spokesman for

Congress. He was accused of boiling down all religions (including Islam)

to a single faith-based essence consisting of a belief in God to justify his

support for Congress and its brand of ‘composite nationalism’. See Ian

Henderson Douglas, Abul Kalam Azad: an intellectual and religious biog-

raphy, edited by Gail Minault and Christian Troll (Delhi: Oxford Univer-

sity Press, 1988), p. 279.

pp. [17–19]

NOTES

212

18. Muzaffar Alam, ‘Sharia and governance in the Indo-Islamic context’, in

David Gilmartin and Bruce B. Lawrence (eds), Beyond Turk and Hindu:

Rethinking religious identities in Islamicate South Asia (Delhi: Indian

Research Press, 2002), p. 239.

19. T.N. Madan, Modern myths. Locked minds (fourth impression) (Delhi:

Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 129.

20. Madan singles out ‘the quest power for power’ as a ‘key variable’ in the

trajectory of Indo-Muslim thinking, noting how the challenges involved in

maintaining scriptural authority (orthodoxy) and recovering the purity of

the faith (revivalism) were held to be indistinguishable from the gaining or

re-gaining of Muslim power—an objective he nevertheless most closely

associates with ‘fundamentalism’. Ibid., pp. 106–49.

21. Metcalf, Islamic revival in British India, pp. 150–51.

22. Madan, Modern myths, p. 137.

23. See Muhammad Qasim Zaman, The ulama in contemporary Islam: cus-

todians of change (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), p. 13.

24. Husain Ahmed Madani, Muttahida qawwmiyat aur Islam (originally pub-

lished 1938?) (Delhi: Qawmi ekta trust,1972). See also Barbara Metcalf,

‘Re-inventing Islamic politics in inter-war India: the clergy commitment to

“composite nationalism”’ in Mushirul Hasan and Asim Roy (eds), Living

together separately: cultural India in history and politics (Delhi: Oxford

University Press, 2005), pp. 389–403 and Ziya ul Hasan Faruqi, The

Deoband school and the demand for Pakistan (Bombay: Asia Publishing

House, 1963).

25. Barbara Metcalf, ‘Deobandis’ in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the modern

Islamic world, I (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 363.

26. Zaman, The ulama in contemporary Islam, p.33.

27. See Kenneth Cragg, The pen and the faith (London: George Allen and

Unwin, 1985), p. 28. See also, Farzana Shaikh, ‘Azad and Iqbal: the quest

for the Islamic “Good”’, in Mushirul Hasan(ed.), Islam and Indian

nationalism: reflections on Abul Kalam Azad (Delhi, Manohar, 1992),

pp. 59–76.

28. A view held especially by his critics in Pakistan. For a classic Pakistan

exposition see, I.H. Qureshi, The Muslim community of the Indo-Pakistan

sub-continent, 610–1947 (Gravenhage: Mouton and Co., 1962)

pp. 258–60.

29. Aijaz Ahmad, ‘Azad’s careers: roads taken and not taken’ in Mushirul

Hasan (ed.), Islam and Indian nationalism, p. 139.

30. Peter Hardy, Partners in Freedom and true Muslims: the political thought

of some Muslim scholars in British India, 1912–1947 (Lund: Scandinavian

Institute of Asian Studies, 1971), p. 34.

31. Madan, Modern myths, p.160.

32. Al Hilal, 1 (8): 2–3, quoted in Douglas, Abul Kalam Azad, p. 144.

33. On the ‘salariat’ see Hamza Alavi, ‘Ethnicity, Muslim society and the

Pakistan ideology’ in Anita Weiss(ed.), Islamic reassertion in Pakistan: the

pp. [20–23]

NOTES

213

application of Islamic laws in a modern state (Lahore: Vanguard, 1987),

pp. 24–27. See also Hamza Alavi, ‘Class and state’ in Hassan Gardezi and

Jamil Rashid (eds), Pakistan—the roots of dictatorship: the political

economy of a praetorian state (London: Zed Press, 1983), pp. 57–59.

34. For the most definitive study of Sir Sayyid and his reform movement see,

David Lelyveld, Aligarh’s First generation: Muslim solidarity in British

India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978).

35. Shahid Javed Burki, Pakistan: fifty years of nationhood (Boulder, Colo-

rado: Westview Press, 1999), p. 2.

36. See his speech in Meerut in A.M. Zaidi(ed.), Evolution of Muslim political

thought in India, I (New Delhi: Michiko and Panjathan, n.d.), p. 51.

37. This legacy notwithstanding, the relationship between Islam and ethnicity

was likely to be deeply problematic within the terms of Islam which, as

Verkaaik shows in his brilliant study of mohajir (migrant) identity, has

resulted in the ingenious option of ‘ethnicizing’ Islam. He observes: ‘Islam

claims universal relevance transcending ethnic and territorial attachments

… For this reason [it] has been considered incompatible with ethnic soli-

darity from the first days of Pakistan’s existence onwards … Yet the close

and problematic linkage between the nation and Islam …. also meant that

Islam largely set the limits of public debate. Although it is possible to sup-

port a wide range of positions on the interpretation of Islam … one can

hardly speak out against Islam as such lest one be accused of both heresy

and unpatriotic loyalties. Hence, regional groups resisting the authoritar-

ian regime in Islamabad legitimized the regional basis of their protest by

articulating an ethnicized Islam of their own’. Oskar Verkaaik, Migrants

and militants: fun and urban violence in Pakistan (Princeton: Princeton

University Press, 2004), pp. 20–21.

38. Lelyveld, Aligarh’s first generation, p. 311.

39. Shaikh, Community and consensus in Islam, pp. 93–96; 114–18. See also

Abbas Rashid, ‘Pakistan: the ideological dimension’ in Asghar Khan (ed.),

Islam, politics and the state: the Pakistan experience (London: Zed Press,

1985), pp. 73–74.

40. Verkaaik, Migrants and militants, p. 25.

41. Jalal, Self and sovereignty, p. 167.

42. See Iqbal’s presidential address to the All India Muslim League on 29

December 1930 in Sharifuddin Pirzada (ed.), Foundations of Pakistan:

Documents of the All India Muslim League, 1906–47, II (Karachi:

National Publishing House, 1970), p. 159.

43. Ibid.

44. Ibid.

45. See Farzana Shaikh, ‘Azad and Iqbal’ in Hasan, (ed.), Islam and Indian

nationalism, pp. 59–76.

46. Quoted in Muhammad Daud Rahbar, ‘Glimpses of the man’ in Hafeez

Malik (ed.), Iqbal: Poet-Philosopher of Pakistan (New York: Columbia

University Press, 1971), p. 53.

pp. [23–27]

NOTES

214

47. Iqbal to R.A. Nicholson, 24 January 1921 in B.A. Dar (ed.), Letters of

Iqbal (Lahore: Iqbal Academy, 1978), p. 144.

48. For a classic exposition see Pandey, The construction of communalism in

colonial North India.

49. See Ian Talbot, Pakistan: a modern history (London, Hurst, revised edn,

2005), pp. 53–94. See also David Gilmartin, Empire and Islam: Punjab

and the making of Pakistan (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press,

1988) and David Page, Prelude to Partition: the Indian Muslims and the

imperial system of control, 1920–1932 (New Delhi: Oxford University

Press, 1982).

50. See Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, Islamic Leviathan: Islam and the making of

state power (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 41–47.

51. See Mohammad Shah, ‘The Bengal Muslims and the world of Islam: Pan-

Islamic trends in colonial Bengal as reflected in the press’ in Rafiuddin

Ahmed (ed.), Understanding the Bengal Muslims: Interpretative essays

(New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001).

52. Talbot, Pakistan, pp. 59–61.

53. See Sarah Ansari, Sufi saints and state power: The pirs of Sind, 1843–1947

(Cambridge University Press, 1992).

54. See Gilmartin, Empire and Islam.

55. C.A. Bayly, Origins of nationality in South Asia: patriotism and ethical

government in the making of modern India (New Delhi; Oxford: Oxford

University Press), p. 106.

56. Ibid., p. 105 (italics added).

57. The standard interpretation remains Paul Brass, Language, religion and

politics in North India (Cambridge University Press, 1974). See also his

‘Elite groups, symbol manipulation and ethnic identity among the Mus-

lims of South Asia’ in David Taylor and Malcolm Yapp (eds), Political

identity in South Asia (London: School of Oriental and African Studies,

1979). The argument has resurfaced more recently in Christophe Jaffrelot,

‘Nationalism without a nation: Pakistan searching for its identity’ in

Christophe Jaffrelot (ed.), Pakistan: nationalism without a nation? (Lon-

don: Zed Books, 2002) pp. 10–11.

58. Bayly, Origins of nationality, p. 105.

59. ‘Now suppose that all the English were to leave India,’ he mused, ‘Then

who would be the rulers of India? Is it possible that two qaums—the Mus-

lim and Hindu—could sit on the same throne and remain equal in power?

Most certainly not.’ See his speech in Meerut on 16 March 1888 in Shan

Muhammad (ed.), Writings and speeches of Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan

(Bombay: Nachiketa Publications, 1972), p. 184.

60. Referring to the creation of a common language—Urdu—that belonged to

neither Hindus or Muslims, he observed in 1883: ‘the blood of both have

changed, the colour of both have become similar … we mixed with each

so much that we produced a new language—Urdu, which was neither our

language nor theirs’. See his speech in Patna on 27 January 1883, ibid.,

p. 160.

pp. [27–30]

NOTES

215

61. ‘Do not forget’, he declared, that Hindu and Muslim are words of reli-

gious significance otherwise Hindus, Mussalmans and Christians who live

in this country form one nation regardless of their faith.’ See his speech in

Gurdaspur, 27 January 1884, ibid., p. 266.

62. Lelyveld, Aligarh’s first generation, p. 311.

63. See his speech in Ghazipur on 9 January 1864, in Shan Muhammad (ed.),

Writings and Speeches, p. 114. See also G.F.I. Graham, The life and work

of Syed Ahmed Khan (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1909),

pp. 56–57.

64. See Sir Sayyid’s clarification of his speech delivered in Lucknow on 28

December 1887, in Shan Muhammad (ed.), Writings and Speeches,

pp. 218–20. See also Christian Troll, Sayyid Ahmed Khan: reinterpreta-

tion of Muslim theology (Delhi: Vikas), 1978, p. 303.

65. Bayly, Origins of nationality, p. 113.

66. A term borrowed here from Olivier Roy, who uses it explain the emer-

gence of a Muslim ‘ethnicity’, especially in the West, that is shaped by

religion ‘as a set of cultural patterns that are inherited and not related to

a person’s spiritual life’. See Olivier Roy, Globalised Islam: the search for

new ummah (London: Hurst, 2004), p. 124.

67. See Farzana Shaikh, ‘“Millat” and “mazhab”: rethinking Iqbal’s political

vision’ in Mushirul Hasan and Asim Roy (eds), Living together separately:

cultural India in history and politics (Delhi: Oxford University Press,

2005), pp. 366–88.

68. See his presidential address to the All India Muslim League, 29 December

1930 in Pirzada (ed.), Foundations of Pakistan, II, p. 159.

69. Iqbal to R.A. Nicolson, 24 January 1921 in Dar (ed.), Letters of Iqbal,

p. 144.

70. See his presidential address to the All India Muslim League, 29 December

1930 in Pirzada (ed.), Foundations of Pakistan, II, p. 158.

71. See Iqbal’s letter to Jinnah, 21 June, 1937 in Sharifuddin Pirzada (ed.),

Quaid-e-Azam Jinnah’s correspondence (Karachi: Guild Publishing House,

1966), p. 163.

72. See Iqbal’s letter to Jinnah, 28 May, 1937 in ibid., p. 159.

73. Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, Mawdudi and the making of Islamic revivalism

(Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 34–39.

74. Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, The Vanguard of the Islamic revolution: the

Jamaat-i-Islami of Pakistan (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of Cali-

fornia Press, 1994), p. 20.

75. Ibid., p. 109.

76. Ibid.

77. Ibid., p. 110.

78. Ibid. p. 110.

79. Lawrence Ziring, Pakistan: at the cross-current of history (Oxford:

Oneworld, 2003), pp. 14–15.

80. Gyanendra Pandey, Remembering Partition: violence, nationalism and

history in India (Cambridge University Press), p. 153

pp. [30–37]

NOTES

216

81. Pnina Werbner, Imagined diasporas among Manchester Muslims: the

public performance of Pakistani transnational identity politics (Oxford:

James Currey, and2002), p. 83.

82. Talbot, Pakistan, p. 92.

83. Yunus Samad, ‘Reflections on Partition: Pakistan Perspective’, Interna-

tional Journal of Punjab Studies, 4, no. 1, January-June 1997,

pp. 43–63.

84. David Gilmartin, ‘Religious leadership and the Pakistan movement in the

Punjab’, Modern Asian Studies, 13, 3 (July 1979), p. 498.

85. Jaffrelot, ‘Nationalism without nation: Pakistan searching for its identity’

in Jaffrelot (ed.), Pakistan, pp. 15–16.

86. See Hamza Alavi, ‘Ethnicity, Muslim society and the Pakistan ideology’ in

Anita Weiss(ed.), Islamic re-assertion in Pakistan: the application of

Islamic laws in a modern state (Lahore: Vanguard, 1987), pp. 21–47.

87. Quoted in Harun-ur-Rashid, The foreshadowing of Bangladesh: Bengal

Muslim League and Muslim League politics, 1936–47 (Dhaka: Asiatic

Society of Bangladesh, 1987), p. 181.

88. Werbner, Imagined diasporas, p. 78.

89. Mohammad Waseem, Politics and the state in Pakistan (Islamabad:

National Institute of Historical and Cultural Research, 1994), p. 80.

90. Werbner, Imagined diasporas, p. 78.

91. Ibid., p. 91.

92. S.V.R. Nasr, Islamic Leviathan, p. 47.

93. Benedict Anderson, Imagined communities: reflections on the origin and

spread of nationalism, revised edition (London: Verso, 1991), p. 7.

94. Rafiuddin Ahmed, Understanding the Bengal Muslims (New Delhi.

Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 14–15.

95. Khilnani, The idea of India, p. 162.

2. WHO IS A PAKISTANI?

1. The violence of Partition has recently received close scholarly attention. For

two of the best recent accounts see Gyanendra Pandey, Remembering Parti-

tion: Violence, nationalism and history (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 2002) and Yasmin Khan, The great Partition: the making of India

and Pakistan (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007). See also Mushirul

Hasan, India Partitioned: the other side of freedom (Delhi: Roli Books,

1995).

2. See Theodore Wright, ‘Indian Muslim refugees in the politics of Pakistan’,

Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Studies, Vol. 12, no. 2 (1974),

pp. 189–205. See also Talbot, Pakistan: a modern history, pp. 102–06.

3. Talbot, Pakistan, p. 102.

4. The creation of this community followed the Prophet Muhammad’s emi-

gration from the Arab city of Mecca to Yathrib (renamed Medina) in

622 AD.

pp. [38–49]

NOTES

217

5. For a thoughtful exploration of the ambivalent relationship between the

‘Muslim’ and the ‘Pakistani’, and its sinister legacy in the construction of

modern India and Pakistan see Vazira-Fazila Yacoobali Zamindar, The

long Partition and the making of modern South Asia: refugees, bounda-

ries, histories (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007). The struggle

to reconcile the Islamic with the national has also received attention from

others. Jalal spells out the ‘contradiction attending the construction of the

discourse on Pakistani nationhood’ as ‘the willingness to sever all ties with

co-religionists in India whose geographical location denied them the rights

of citizenship in the Muslim state even while they were theoretically

constitutive elements of not only the ummah, but more importantly, the

pre-1947 “Muslim nation”’. See, Ayesha Jalal, Democracy and authori-

tarianism in South Asia: a comparative and historical perspective (Cam-

bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 235–36.

6. Talbot, Pakistan, pp. 68–70.

7. Talbot, Pakistan, p. 109.

8. Ibid., p.46.

9. Ibid., p. 47.

10. Ibid., p. 47.

11. See, Raunaq Jahan, Pakistan: failure in national integration (New York:

Columbia University Press, 1972) and Hasan Zaheer, The separation of

East Pakistan: the rise and realization of East Pakistan (Karachi: Oxford

University Press, 1995).

12. For an account of the background to these riots see Ziring, Pakistan: at

the cross-current of history, pp. 56–58.

13. For the use of Urdu as a symbol in the consolidation of a separate Muslim

identity in India see Robinson, Separatism among Indian Muslims,

pp. 69–76 and Brass, Language, religion and politics in North India,

pp. 127–38

14. According to Tariq Rahman, it was the shift in the attitude of the mohajirs

towards Urdu that led to its becoming a divisive issue. He argues that

while in the early years Urdu-speaking mohajirs had agreed that Urdu

would represent no more than a lingua franca for Pakistan, it was the

claim in the 1970s that Urdu was also one of the languages of Sind that

transformed the issue into a source of division by pitting Urdu-speaking

migrants settled in large numbers in urban Sind against local Sindhis. See

Tariq Rahman, Language and politics in Pakistan (Karachi: Oxford Uni-

versity Press, 1996), pp. 110–32.

15. Anwar Dil and Afia Dil, Bengali language movement in Bangladesh

(Lahore: Ferozesons, 2000), p. 82.

16. For a fine discussion of syncretistic Islam in Bengal see Asim Roy, The

Islamic syncretistic tradition in Bengal (Princeton: Princeton University

Press, 1983).

17. Rafiuddin Ahmed, The Bengal Muslims,1871–1906: a quest for identity

(New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1981), pp. 5–27.

pp. [50–53]

NOTES

218

18. Cohen, The idea of Pakistan, p. 169.

19. Burki, Pakistan: fifty years of nationhood, p. 216.

20. Ibid., pp. 217–18.

21. Yunus Samad, ‘Pakistan or Punjabistan: Crisis of national identity’, Inter-

national Journal of Punjab Studies, Vol 2, no. 1 (1995), pp. 23–41.

22. Verkaaik, Migrants and militants, p. 40.

23. Ibid.

24. Ibid., p. 41.

25. Ibid., pp. 42–55. This was a key demand of the main mohajir organiza-

tion, the Mohajir Qaumi Movement (Mohajir National Movement—

MQM), founded in the mid 1980s and since renamed the Muttahida

Qaumi Movement (United National Movement).

26. Their claims have been articulated by the Paktunkhwa Milli Party. See,

Jaffrelot (ed.), A history of Pakistan and its origins, p. 30.

27. See Frédéric Grare, The resurgence of Baluch nationalism, Carnegie Paper,

no. 65, January 2006, http://www.carnegieendowment.org/files/CP65.

Grare.FINAL.pdf

28. A.H. Dani (ed.), Indus Valley: New Perspectives (Islamabad: Quaid-i-

Azam University, 1981).

29. Aitzaz Ahsan, The Indus saga and the making of Pakistan (Karachi:

Oxford University Press, 1996).

30. Ibid., p. 9.

31. Ibid.

32. Shahnaz Rouse, ‘The outsider(s) within: Sovereignty and citizenship in

Pakistan’ in Amrita Basu and Patricia Jeffrey (eds), Appropriating gender:

women’s activism and policiticized religion in South Asia (New York:

Routledge, 1998), p. 59.

33. S.V.R. Nasr, ‘International politics, domestic imperatives, and identity

mobilization: sectarianism in Pakistan, 1979–1998’, Comparative politics,

Vol. 32, no. 2 (January 2000), pp. 171–190. See also, Zaman, The ulama

in contemporary Islam, pp. 135–43.

34. This is not say that there were no sectarian riots in these early years. One

of the most ferocious took place during the Shia month of mourning

(Muharram) in Khairpur district in Sind in1963. Later, in 1970 there were

reports of posters in some districts of Pakistan which called on Sunnis to

take over the country with the slogan ‘Jaag Sunni, jag, Pakistan tera hai’

(Wake up Sunnis, Pakistan is yours). See Mariam Abou Zahab, ‘The

regional dimension of sectarian conflicts in Pakistan’, in Christophe Jaf-

frelot (ed.), Pakistan: nationalism without nation, p. 125, fn. 2.

35. Mohammad Waseem, ‘Origins and growth patters of Islamic organiza-

tions in Pakistan’ in Satu p. Limaye, Mohan Malik and Robert Wirs-

ing (eds), Religious radicalism and security in South Asia (Honolulu:

University of Hawaii Press, 2004), p. 31.

36. Vali Nasr, The Shia revival: how conflicts within Islam will shape the

future (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006), pp. 63–80.

pp. [53–59]

NOTES

219

37. F. Daftary, The Ismailis: their history and doctrine (Cambridge University

Press, 1990.

38. Mariam Abou-Zahab, ‘Sectarianism as a substitute identity’ in Soofia

Mumtaz, Jean-Luc Racine and Imran Ali (eds), Pakistan: the contours of

state and society, Karachi, Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 78; see also

S.V.R. Nasr, ‘The rise of Sunni militancy in Pakistan: the changing role of

Islamism and the ulama in society and politics’, Modern Asian Studies,

Vol. 34, no. 1, 2002, pp. 139–80. On the Deobandi tradition see Metcalf’s

unrivalled Islamic revival in British India.

39. The Ahmedi controversy centres on messianic status attached to its

founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmed (1830?-1908), which is regarded by

orthodox Muslims as a rejection of Islamic dogma centring on the claim

that Muhammad was the last prophet. See Yohanan Friedmann,

‘Ahmadiya’ in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the modern Islamic world

(New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 545–7. For a more

extended discussion see, Yohanan Friedmann, Prophecy continuous:

aspects of Ahmedi religious thought and its medieval background (Berke-

ley, CA: University of California Press, 1989).

40. L. Binder, Religion and politics in Pakistan (Berkeley: University of Cali-

fornia Press), pp. 258–96.

41. Seyyed Vali Nasr, Islamic Leviathan: Islam and the making of state power

(New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 146–47.

42. For a comparable India perspective, but with rich insights into the case of

Pakistan see Gyanendra Pandey, ‘Can a Muslim be an Indian?’, Compara-

tive Studies in Society and History, 41,4 (1999) and his ‘Disciplining dif-

ference’ in Gyanendra Pandey, Remembering Partition: Violence,

Nationalism and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001),

pp. 152–74.

43. See his presidential address to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan in

Karachi, 11 August, 1947, in Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah:

Speeches and statements, 1947–48 (Karachi, 1989), p. 143.

44. Ibid.

45. See Jinnah’s speech to the Sind Bar Association in Karachi in Dawn, 24

January 1948.

46. Hamid Khan, Constitutional and political history of Pakistan (Karachi,

Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 93.

47. For a background to Ahmedi thought and practice see Yohanan Fried-

mann, Prophecy continuous: aspects of Ahmedi religious thought and its

medieval background (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989).

48. Report of the Court of Inquiry into the Punjab disturbances, 1954 (Munir

Report) (Karachi: Government of Pakistan, 1954), p. 35.

49. Ibid., p. 35.

50. A.S. Pirzada, The politics of the Jamiat ul Ulema-i-Pakistan, 1971–77

(Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 2.

51. Dawn, 1 July, 1974.

pp. [59–62]

NOTES

220

52. National Assembly’s verdict on finality of prophethood of Hazrat Muham-

mad, The National Assembly of Pakistan, Debates, 7 September 1974,

(Islamabad: 1974).

53. Yohanan Friedmann, Prophecy continuous, pp. 42–43.

54. It is estimated that that more than 4,000 people have died in sectarian

violence in Pakistan since 1980. See Zaffar Abbas, ‘Pakistan’s schism spill

into the present’, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/3724082.

stm These figures have since rise sharply in 2008 with the escalation of

sectarian violence, especially in the tribal agency of Kurram, which has

killed more than 400 people.

55. See S.V.R. Nasr, ‘The rise of Sunni militancy in Pakistan’, pp. 145–54.

56. Afak Haydar, ‘The politicization of the Shias and the development of the

Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Fiqhe-Jafaria in Pakistan’ in Charles H. Kennedy (ed.),

Pakistan, 1992 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993), pp. 75–93.

57. See S.V.R. Nasr, ‘International politics, domestic Imperatives and identity

Mobilization’, Comparative Politics, Vol. 32, no. 2, January 2000,

p. 176.

58. On the intricacies of Sunni politics in Pakistan see S.V.R. Nasr, ‘The rise

of Sunni militancy in Pakistan’, pp. 143–85 and Muhammad Qasim

Zaman, ‘Sectarianism in Pakistan: the radicalization of Shia-Sunni identi-

ties’, Modern Asian Studies , Vol. 32, no. 3, 1998, pp. 687–716.

59. Mariam Abou Zahab, ‘The regional dimension of sectarian conflicts in

Pakistan’ in Jaffrelot, (ed.), Pakistan, pp. 115–128.

60. Ibid.

61. Zaman,‘Sectarianism in Pakistan’, p. 691.

62. Ian Talbot, Pakistan: a modern history, pp. 117–118 and Ahmad Hassan

Dani, A short history of the Northern Areas of Pakistan (Lahore 2001).

See also International Crisis Group, Discord in Pakistan’s Northern Areas,

Asia Report 131, 2 April 2007, http://www.crisisgroup.org/library/docu-

ments/asia/south_asia/131_discord_in_pakistan_s_northern_areas.pdf

63. See, Cohen, The idea of Pakistan, p. 163.

64. See, Pandey, Remembering Partition, p. 152.

65. See, Jinnah’s presidential address to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan,

August 11, 1947 in Speeches and writings of Mr Jinnah, II (Lahore:

Shaikh Muhammad Ashraf, 1964) p. 402.

66. See R.J. Moore, ‘Jinnah and the Pakistan demand’, Modern Asian Studies,

Vol. 17, no. 4, 1983, pp. 529–61.

67. Gyanendra Pandey, ‘Can a Muslim be an Indian?’ Comparative Studies in

Society and History, Vol. 41, no. 4 (October 1999), pp. 608–629.

68. See Shaun Gregory, ‘The Christian minority in Pakistan: issues and

options’, University of Bradford, Pakistan Security Research Unit, Briefing

no. 37, 17 July 2008, p. 5, http://spaces.brad.ac.uk:8080/download/

attachments/748/Brief+37.pdf

69. Kingsley Davis, ‘India and Pakistan: the demography of Partition’, Pacific

Affairs, Vol. 22, no. 3, September 1949, pp. 243–52.

pp. [63–71]

NOTES

221

70. Theodore Wright,‘Indian Muslim refugees in the politics of Pakistan’,

Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Studies, Vol. 12, 1975,

p. 194.

71. Quoted in Hassan Zaheer, The separation of East Pakistan: the rise and

realization of Bengali Muslim nationalism (Karachi: Oxford University

Press, 1994), p. 18.

72. Hamid Khan, Constitutional and political history of Pakistan (Karachi:

Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 96. Italics added.

73. Ibid., p. 104.

74. The system of separate electorates was introduced by the British under the

Government of India Act 1909. It was granted in response to demands by

a group of aristocratic and high-ranking Indian Muslims—the so-called

‘Simla Deputation’—which successfully lobbied the Viceroy, Lord Minto,

in Simla in October 1906 to approve a separate electoral list for Muslims.

Their case rested on the claim that the Muslim minority had separate

‘communal’ interests that could not be protected so long as it was left

vulnerable to voters representing the Hindu or non-Muslim majority.

Though vigorously challenged by Indian nationalists at the time, the insti-

tution of separate electorates was adopted as a key element of the mani-

festo of the Muslim League (founded in December 1906), which relied on

it to reinforce the idea of a separate Muslim ‘nation’ driven by distinct

concerns—an idea that was later to become an integral part of Pakistan’s

founding ideology. For a discussion of the historical background of the

demand for separate electorates see Shaikh, Community and consensus in

Islam, pp. 119–59.

75. Jalal, Democracy and authoritarianism in South Asia, p. 234.

76. Ziring, Pakistan: at the cross-current of history, p. 135.

77. Burki, Pakistan, pp. 219–20.

78. The referendum proposition asked voters: ‘Whether the people of Pakistan

endorse the process initiated by General Zia ul Haq, the President of Paki-

stan, to bring the laws of Pakistan in conformity with the injunctions of

Islam as laid down in the Holy Quran and the Sunnah of the Holy Prophet

(peace be upon Him) and for the preservation of the ideology of Pakistan,

for the continuation and consolidation of that process for the smooth and

orderly transfer of power to the elected representatives of the people’. For

a further analysis of the referendum see, William Richter, ‘Pakistan in

1884: digging in’, Asian Survey, Vol. 25, no. 2 (February 1985),

pp. 145–54.

79. A.H. Nayyar & Ahmad Salim (eds), The subtle subversion: the state of

curricula and textbooks in Pakistan (Islamabad: Sustainable Development

Policy Institute, 2003) http://www.sdpi.org/whats_new/reporton/State%20

of%20Curr&TextBooks.pdf

80. Ibid., p. 11.

81. Ibid., p. 9.

82. For a systematic treatment of the erosion of Pakistan’s secular and plural

legal system through the introduction in the late 1970s and 1980s of a

pp. [71–79]

NOTES

222

parallel code claiming to rest on the sharia, see Shaheen Sardar Ali and

Javaid Rehman, Indigenous peoples and ethnic minorities of Pakistan:

Constitutional and legal perspectives (London: Curzon, 2002). According

to a recent report by the Christian non-government organization, Centre

for Legal Aid and Settlement (CLAAS), its main features include the estab-

lishment of sharia benches as integral parts of Pakistan’s superior judiciary

to rule against laws judged to be ‘repugnant to Islam’; the introduction in

1979 of Islamic punishments (Hudood Ordinance); the enforcement in

1984 of the Law of Evidence that reduced by half the value of court testi-

mony given by a non-Muslim in comparison to that of a Muslim; the

introduction of blasphemy laws, which after 1986 carried the death pen-

alty for remarks deemed to be derogatory to the Prophet Muhammad; the

Eighth Amendment of the constitution passed in 1985 re-introducing

separate electorates that by relieving Muslim candidates from seeking the

support of non-Muslims contributed to their disenfranchisement, and the

1988 and 1998 amendments extending the supremacy of the sharia. See

Nasir Saeed, Faith under Fire: a report on the second class citizenship and

intimidation of Christians in Pakistan (London: Centre for Legal Aid and

Settlement, 2002), pp. 12–18.

83. Devirupa Mitra, ‘Political voice of minorities still stifled in Pakistan’,

http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/uncategorized/political-voice-of-

minorities-still-stifled-in-pakistan_10019217.html. See also http://www.

elections.com.pk/newsdetails.php?id=384

84. Pandey, Remembering Partition, p. 160.

3. THE BURDEN OF ISLAM

1. Faisal Devji, Landscapes of the Jihad: Militancy, Morality, Modernity (Lon-

don: Hurst, 2005), p. 123.

2. See Barbara Metcalf, ‘Nationalism, modernity, and Muslim identity in India

before 1947’ in Barbara Metcalf, Islamic contestations: essays on Muslims

in India and Pakistan (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 183.

3. See Jinnah’s presidential address to the All-India Muslim League in Lahore,

March 1940 in Jamil-ud-din Ahmad (ed.), Speeches and writings of Mr Jin-

nah (Lahore: Shaikh Muhammad Ashraf, 1960–6

edition), p. 159.

4. Ibid. p.160.

5. For insights into the destructive nexus of religion, politics and violence at

Partition, see Ian Talbot (ed.), The deadly embrace: religion, politics and

violence in India and Pakistan 1947–2002 (Karachi: Oxford University

Press, 2007), especially the contributions by Talbot (pp. 1–16) and Khan

(pp. 36–60). See also the now classic study by Pandey, Remembering

Partition.

6. See Jinnah’s presidential address to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan,

August 11, 1947 in Ahmad (ed.), Speeches and Writings, pp. 403, 404.

7. Leonard Binder, Religion and politics in Pakistan (Berkeley and Los Ange-

les: University of California Press, 1961), p. 6.

pp. [80–83]

NOTES

223

8. Jinnah reserved his opprobrium for those who might well have lined up

behind him in support of his passionate defence in the Constituent Assem-

bly of Pakistan as a secular state. ‘I cannot understand,’ he observed, why

this feeling of nervousness that the future of constitution of Pakistan is

going to be in conflict with Shariat Law There is one section of the people

who keep on impressing everybody that that the future constitution of

Pakistan should be based on the Shariah. The other section deliberately

want [sic] to create mischief and agitate that the Sharia Law must be

scrapped.’ Dawn, 26 January 1948.

9. For a fine discussion of the inherent ambiguities that lay at the heart of the

Resolution see, Binder, Religion and politics, pp. 116–53.

10. S.M. Zafar, ‘Constitutional development’ in Hafeez Malik (ed.), Pakistan:

Founders’ aspirations and today’s realities (Karachi: Oxford University

Press, 2001) p. 31.

11. Binder, Religion and politics, p. 22.

12. Nasr, The vanguard of the Islamic revolution, pp. 117–31.

13. For the full text of the Resolution see The Constituent Assembly of Paki-

stan Debates, V (Karachi: Government of Pakistan, 1964), p. 2.

14. See Liaquat’s speech introducing the Resolution on 7 March 1949 in

Hamid Khan, Constitutional and political history of Pakistan (Karachi:

Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 92–93.

15. The Constituent Assembly of Pakistan Debates, V, p. 2.

16. Khan, Constitutional and political, p. 93.

17. Ibid., p. 93.

18. Ibid., pp. 54, 55.

19. See speech by Abdur Rab Nishtar in the Constituent Assembly on 10

March 1949 in Khan, Constitutional and political history, p. 101.

20. Ibid., p. 102.

21. Usmani, who spoke at length in favour of the Resolution on 9 March

1949, drew attention to an address by Jinnah to Muslim students in Jul-

lunder in 1943 in which he was quoted as saying ‘in my opinion our sys-

tem of government was determined by the Quran some 1350 years ago’.

Usmani used this to dismiss claims by critics of the Resolution, who sug-

gested that had Jinnah been alive, the Resolution would not have come up

before the Constituent Assembly. Ibid., pp. 100–01.

22. See speech by Birat Chandra Mandal in the Constituent Assembly on 9

March 1949, ibid., 97.

23. See speech by Bhupendra Kumar Datta in the Constituent Assembly on 9

March 1949, ibid., p. 99.

24. See speech by Liaquat Ali Khan in the Constituent Assembly on 12 March

1949, ibid., p. 103.

25. Nasr, Islamic Leviathan, p. 61.

26. See Ayub’s speech to a gathering of Deobandi ulama in May 1959 in

Muhammad Ayub Khan, Speeches and Statements, Vol. 1 (Karachi: Gov-

ernment of Pakistan Press, 1961), pp. 110–11.

pp. [83–89]

NOTES

224

27. Lawrence Ziring, Pakistan: at the crosscurrent of history (Oxford: One-

world, 2003), pp. 87–88.

28. Muhammad Ayub Khan, Speeches and statements, I (Karachi: Oxford

University Press, 1961), p. 57

29. Waseem, Politics and the state in Pakistan, p. 158.

30. The decision to secularize family law in Pakistan dated back to the 1950s

though the weakness of the leadership at the time meant that it had to

wait for support from Ayub’s military-backed regime. The fierce contro-

versy unleashed by its proposals also meant that it was never put to the

vote in parliament and remains in the statute books as an executive ordi-

nance. Among its key provisions were changes in the right of Muslim men

under Islamic law to contract polygamous marriages, which were made

subject to review by an Arbitration Council responsible for protecting the

claims of existing wives and children likely to be affected by a polygamous

marriage. Other provisions related to divorce, where the scope for abuse

by Muslim men was limited by curbing their right under Islamic law to

unilateral divorce by bringing it in line with morally approved practices

that would secure the fair treatment for women. Islamic laws on inherit-

ance were also modernized by extending the right to inherit property to

orphaned grand-children, hitherto excluded from any claim their grand-

parents’ property. See Fazlur Rahman, ‘The controversy over the Muslim

Family Laws’ in Donald E. Smith (ed.) South Asian religion and politics

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966), pp. 414–27. See also, Chris-

tele Dedebant, Le voile et la banniere: l’avante-garde feministe au Pakistan

(Paris : CNRS Editions, 2003), pp. 112–20.

31. Bruce Lawrence, Shattering the myth: Islam beyond violence (Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 1998), p. 144.

32. Katherine Ewing, ‘The politics of Sufism: redefining the saints of Paki-

stan’, Journal of Asian Studies, 42, 2, (1983), pp. 257–60, 266.

33. Saifur Rahman Sherani, ‘Ulema and pir in Pakistani politics’ in Hastings

Donnan and Pnina Werbner (eds) , Economy and culture in Pakistan:

Migrants and cities in a Muslim society (London, Macmillan, 1991),

pp. 216–46.

34. David Gilmartin, Empire and Islam: Punjab and the making of Pakistan

(Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1988), pp. 216–17.

35. See, The report of the Hamoodur Rehman Commission of Inquiry into

the 1971 war [as declassified by the Government of Pakistan] (Lahore:

Vanguard, nd), p. 285.

36. Ibid., p. 289.

37. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, Speeches (Islamabad: Government of Pakistan, 1973),

p. 13.

38. The phrase was first used by Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi during

his address to the 1974 Summit in Lahore, where it received an enthusias-

tic public reception orchestrated by Bhutto’s government. See Stanley

Wolpert, Zulfi Bhutto of Pakistan (Oxford: Oxford University Press,

1993), p. 234.

pp. [90–97]

NOTES

225

39. Bhutto’s close interest in promoting government patronage of local holy

men and their shrines, especially in rural Sind, are explored in Sherani,

‘Ulema and pir in Pakistani politics’ in Donnan and Werbner (eds), Econ-

omy and culture, p. 235. See also Verkaaik, Migrants and militants,

pp. 37–39.

40. See report on General Zia’s address to the nation in Dawn, 8 July 1977.

41. The change followed amendments to the 1973 Constitution contained in

a presidential order issued in March 1985. Under the newly introduced

Article 2A, the 1949 Objectives Resolution was reproduced as an annex

rather than a preamble, thereby making it an operative part of the Consti-

tution. Its status has, since then, remained unchanged.

42. Nasr, Islamic Leviathan, p. 159.

43. See David Taylor, ‘The politics of Islam and Islamization in Pakistan’ in

James Piscatori (ed.), Islam in the Political Process (Cambridge: Cam-

bridge University Press, 1983), p. 195.

44. Ziring, Pakistan at the cross-current of history, p. 165.

45. For a classic study exploring the many facets of Zia’s Islamization pro-

gramme see, Anita Weiss (ed.), Islamic re-assertion in Pakistan: the appli-

cation of Islamic laws in a modern state (Lahore: Vanguard, 1987).

46. Quoted in Parvez Amirali Hoodbhoy and Abdul Hameed Nayyar, ‘Rewrit-

ing the history of Pakistan’ in Asghar Khan (ed.), Islam, politics and the

state: the Pakistan experience (London: Zed Books, 1985), p. 165.

47. Ibid., pp. 167–68.

48. Ibid., p. 168.

49. Ibid., pp. 169–71.

50. See Hasan Askari-Rizvi, ‘Is Pakistan an ideological state?’, Daily Times

(Lahore), 9 May 2005.

51. Taylor, ‘The politics of Islam,’ in Piscatori (ed.), Islam in the political

process, p. 196.

52. Nasr, Islamic Leviathan, 137.

53. Seyyed Vali Nasr, ‘International politics, domestic imperatives, and the

rise of politics of identity: sectarianism in Pakistan, 1979–1997’, Com-

parative Politics, Vol. 32, no. 2 (January 2000), p. 176.

54. For contrasting views of the impact of these reforms on women see

Charles Kennedy, Islamization in Pakistan: implementation of the Hudood

Ordinance’, Asian Survey, Vol. 28, no. 3, March 1988, pp. 307–16, and

Anita Weiss, ‘Implications of the Islamization programme for women’ in

A. Weiss (ed.), Islamic re-assertion in Pakistan, pp. 97–114. For a fine

discussion of the clout of upper-class women in resisting these reforms see,

Dedebant, Le voile et la banniere, pp. 133–47.

55. Kennedy, ‘Islamization in Pakistan’, pp. 312–13.

56. Barbara Metcalf, ‘Islamic arguments in contemporary Pakistan’ in Met-

calf, Islamic contestations, pp. 258–59.

57. Ayesha Jalal, ‘The convenience of subservience: women and the state in

Pakistan’ in Deniz Kandiyoti (ed.), Women, Islam and the state (London:

Croom Helm, 1991), pp. 77–114.

pp. [97–105]

NOTES

226

58. Ibid., p. 79.

59. Christophe Jaffrelot, Islamic identity and ethnic tensions’ in Christophe

Jaffrelot (ed.), A history of Pakistan and its origins, pp. 29–30. See also S.

Mahmud Ali, The fearful state: power, people and internal war in South

Asia (London: Zed Books, 1993), p. 155.

60. Verkaaik’s study of the ethnic-religious movement, the Mohajir Qaumi

Movement (the MQM), representing Urdu-speaking migrants (mohajirs)

in Pakistan skillfully traces this transformation. He shows how MQM

began by challenging the ‘high’ cultural Islamic modernist tradition associ-

ated with state ideology and appropriating the ‘low’ Islam of saints and

shrines to carve out a mohajir ethnic space before reverting to ‘high’

Islamic traditions of martyrdom and sacrifice to sharpen its opposition to

the state. See Oskar Verkaaik, Migrants and militants, op. cit.

61. I owe my use of the term ‘shariatize’, and later of the term ‘shariatization’,

to Mumtaz Ahmad. His reference to ‘shariatization’ to describe the poli-

cies pursued by General Zia ul Haq in the late 1970s and 1980s helped

capture the essence of a process that marked a radical break with earlier

attempts at Islamization. See Mumtaz Ahmad, ‘Pakistan’, in Shireen

Hunter (ed.), The politics of Islamic revivalism: diversity and unity

(Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1988), pp. 236–239. My aim

here is to amplify the meaning of that process by teasing out more rigor-

ously its differences with Islamization and to identify the main agents

driving that process with a view to elaborating how it transformed the

debate on national identity in Pakistan. See also Saeed Shafqat, ‘From

official Islam to Islamism’ in Jaffrelot (ed.), Pakistan: nationalism without

a nation?, pp. 131–47.

62. Nasr, Islamic Leviathan, p. 134. See also Robert LaPorte, Jr, ‘Urban

groups and the Zia regime,’ in Craig Baxter (ed.), Zia’s Pakistan: politics

and stability in a frontline state (Lahore: Vanguard, 1985), p. 14.

63. Mustapha Kamal Pasha, ‘Savage Capitalism and Civil Society in Pakistan’,

in Anita Weiss and S. Zulfiqar Gilani (eds), Power and civil society in

Pakistan (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 32.

64. Mustapha Kamal Pasha, ‘The Hyper-Extended State: Civil Society and

Democracy, in Rasul Bakhsh Rais (ed.), State, Society and Democratic

Change in Pakistan (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 196.

65. Pasha, ‘Savage Capitalism’, p. 35.

66. S.V.R. Nasr, The Vanguard of the Islamic Revolution, p.193.

67. See Sarah Ansari, Sufi Saints and State Power: The Pirs of Sind, 1843–

1947 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); David Gilmartin,

Empire and Islam: Punjab and the Making of Pakistan (Berkeley and Los

Angeles: University of California Press, 1988); Usha Sanyal, Devotional

Islam and politics in British India: Ahmed Riza Khan and his movement,

1870–1920 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996); and Jamal

Malik, Colonialization of Islam: dissolution of traditional institutions in

Pakistan (New Delhi: Manohar, 1998).

pp. [105–108]

NOTES

227

68. Mariam Abou-Zahab and Olivier Roy, Islamist networks: The Afghan-

Pakistan connection (London: Hurst, 2004), pp. 19–46.

69. Gilles Kepel, Jihad: The trail of political Islam (London and New York:

I.B. Tauris, 2002), pp. 98–105.

70. S.V.R. Nasr, “The Rise of Sunni Militancy in Pakistan”, p. 149.

71. For a classic exposition of the founding principles of the school at

Deoband see Metcalf, Islamic Revival in British India.

72. For an excellent discussion of contemporary Islamic neo-fundamentalism

and its basic tenets, see Olivier Roy, Globalised Islam: The search for a

new ummah (London: Hurst, 2004). For an earlier discussion see also

Olivier Roy, The failure of political Islam (London and New York: I.B.

Tauris, 1999) pp. 75–88.

73. Mumtaz Ahmad, ‘Revivalism, Islamization, Sectarianism and Violence in

Pakistan’, in Craig Baxter and Charles Kennedy (eds), Pakistan, 1997

(Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998), pp. 101–21. For a discussion of the

role of a similar class of preachers or ‘peripheral ulama’ on the margins of

the clerical establishment in Egypt, see Malika Zeghal, ‘Religion and Poli-

tics in Egypt: The Ulama of Al Azhar, Radical Islam, and the State

(1952–94)’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 31, No.3,

1999, pp. 401–27.

74. For an analysis of the ways in which this discourse shaped the conduct of

Indo-Muslim politics in late nineteenth and twentieth centuries see,

Shaikh, Community and consensus in Islam, pp. 200–07.

75. Aziz Ahmad, Studies in Islamic culture in the Indian environment (Oxford:

Clarendon Press, 1964), pp. 210–212. For the best survey of this and

other similar Islamic movements, see also Peter Hardy, The Muslims of

British India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972).

76. Gail Minault, The Khilafat movement: Religious symbolism and political

mobilization in India (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982).

77. Barbara D. Metcalf, ‘Nationalism, modernity, and Muslim identity before

1947’ in Barbara Metcalf, Islamic Contestations: Essays on Muslims in

India and Pakistan (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004), p.182.

See also Khalid Masud (ed.), Travellers in faith: studies of Tablighi Jamaat

as a transnational islamic movement for faith renewal (Leiden: E.J. Brill,

2000); Yoginder Sikand, The origins and development of the Tablighi

Jama’at (New Delhi: Orient, Longman, 2002) and Mumtaz Ahmad,

‘Islamic Fundamentalism in South Asia: the Jamaat-i-Islami and the

Tablighi Jamaat’ in Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby (eds), Funda-

mentalisms Observed (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press,

1991), pp. 510–523.

78. See Farzana Shaikh, ‘“Millat and Mazhab: Re-thinking Iqbal’s Political

Vision” in Mushirul Hasan and Asim Roy (eds), Living together sepa-

rately: cultural India in history and politics (New Delhi: Oxford University

Press, 2005), pp. 366–88.

79. Nasr, Vanguard of the Islamic revolution, pp. 103–15.

pp. [108–111]

NOTES

228

80. For a detailed report into the legally anomalous position of the tribal

areas, formally designated as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas

(FATA), see International Crisis Group, Pakistan’s tribal areas: appeasing

the militants, Report no. 125, 11 December 2006, http://www.crisisgroup.

org/library/documents/asia/south_asia/125_pakistans_tribal_areas___

appeasing_the_militants.pdf

81. Lawrence Ziring, Pakistan: at the cross-current of history (Oxford: One-

world, 2003), p. 130.

82. S.V.R. Nasr, ‘The Rise of Sunni Militancy in Pakistan’, pp. 145–154.

83. Ibid., p. 152.

84. Muhammad Qasim Zaman, The Ulama in Contemporary Islam: Custodi-

ans of Change (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002),

pp. 111–143.

85. Nasr, Islamic Leviathan, p. 143.

86. Muhammad Qasim Zaman, ‘Religious Education and the Rhetoric of

Reform: The Madrasah in British India and Pakistan’, Comparative Stud-

ies in Society and History, 41, 2 (April 1999), pp. 294–323.

87. See, International Crisis Group, Pakistan: madrasahs, extremism and the

military, Asia Report no. 36, 29 July 2002, p. 2 http://www.crisisgroup.

org/library/documents/report_archive/A400717_29072002.pdf

88. Jamal Malik, ‘Dynamics among traditional religious scholars and their

institutions in contemporary South Asia’, The Muslim World, 87, 3–4

(July-October 1997), pp. 216–17.

89. For a thorough exploration of this struggle in Pakistan and elsewhere in

the Muslim world, see Robert Hefner and Muhammad Qasim Zaman

(eds), Schooling Islam: the culture and politics of modern Muslim educa-

tion (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007).

90. See Nasr, The vanguard of the Islamic revolution, p. 201.

91. See, among others, Ahmed Rashid, Descent into chaos: how the war

against Islamic extremism is being lost in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Cen-

tral Asia (London: Allen Lane, 2008) and his Taliban: the story of the

Afghan warlords (London: Pan Books, 2001). See also Gilles Dorronsoro,

Revolution unending: Afghanistan—1979 to the present (London, Hurst,

2005); William Maley (ed.), Fundamentalism Reborn? Afghanistan and

the Taliban (London: Hurst, 1998); Olivier Roy, “The Taliban: A Strate-

gic Tool for Pakistan” in Christophe Jaffrelot (ed.), Pakistan: nationalism

without a nation?, pp. 161–178; and Peter Marsden, The Taliban: war,

religion and the new order (London, Zed Books, 1998).

92. Shaikh, ‘Millat and mazhab’, pp. 379–80.

93. Kepel, Jihad, p. 104.

4. THE DILEMMAS OF DEVELOPMENT

1. The term salariat was famously employed by Hamza Alavi to describe the

social group that served as the main driver of Muslim nationalism in colo-

pp. [111–118]

NOTES

229

nial India. He describes the salariat it as a class (falling somewhere

between the middle class and the petit-bourgeoisie) of urban professionals

‘who had received education that would qualify them for employment as

scribes and functionaries in the expanding colonial state apparatus’.

Hamza Alavi, ‘Ethnicity, Muslim society, and the Pakistan ideology’ in

Anita Weiss (ed.) Islamic Reassertion in Pakistan, p. 24.

2. Rural and landless peasants Bengal were no strangers to the powerful

appeal of Islam in the pursuit of economic objectives. The first half of the

nineteenth century had witnessed the emergence of the revivalist Faraizi

movement, which politicized Muslim rural communities in Bengal by

organizing resistance against Hindu landlords and money-lenders. Rafiud-

din Ahmed, The Bengal Muslims, 1871–1906: A quest for identity (New

Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1981).

3. For one of the most comprehensive and insightful assessments of Paki-

stan’s economic development since independence see S. Akbar Zaidi,

Issues in Pakistan’s economy (2

edition) (Karachi: Oxford University

Press, 2005).

4. Only eleven of the thirty-five members of the Simla Deputation (which in

1905 won the right for the separate representation of Indian Muslims in

new legislative councils and in 1906 formed the nucleus of the All India

Muslim League), were not titled. Members were required not only to dem-

onstrate an ability to read and write ‘with facility’, but to be in command

of an income of not less than Rs 500 a year. See Mohammad Waseem,

Politics and the state in Pakistan (Islamabad: National Institute of Histori-

cal and Cultural Research, 1994), p. 62.

5. Mushirul Hasan, ‘India and Pakistan: Why the difference?’ in Mushirul

Hasan and Nariaki Nakazato (eds), The unfinished agenda: nation-build-

ing in South Asia (New Delhi: Manohar, 2001), pp. 328–337.

6. Stanley Wolpert, Jinnah of Pakistan (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005

edn), pp. 144–45. This is confirmed by more recent reports. In what is

described as ‘a revealing portrait of his priorities’ in the early months after

the independence , Jinnah is said to have repeatedly pressed the US ambas-

sador to Pakistan in March 1948 to buy Jinnah’s residence ‘Flagstaff’ for

use by US embassy personnel’. See Tariq Ali, The duel: Pakistan in the

flight path of American power (London: Simon and Schuster, 2008),

pp. 43–44.

7. Ian Talbot, Pakistan: a modern history (London:Hurst, rev edn, 2005),

pp. 67–87.

8. Ibid. p. 88.

9. A.H. Beruni, Makers of Pakistan and modern India (Lahore: Shaikh

Mohammad Ashraf, 1950), p. 209.

10. K.B. Sayeed, Politics in Pakistan: the nature and direction of change (New

York: Praeger, 1980), p. 13.

11. For details see Ian Talbot, ‘Planning for Pakistan: The Planning Commit-

tee of the All India Muslim League 1943–46’, Modern Asian Studies,

Vol. 28, no. 4 (October 1994), pp. 875–889.

pp. [118–121]

NOTES

230

12. Quoted in ibid., pp. 880–81.

13. Ibid.

14. Syed Sharifuddin Pirzada (ed.), Quaid-e-Azam Jinnah’s correspondence

(Karachi: Guild Publishing House, 1966), p. 159.

15. Ibid.

16. Ibid.

17. Ibid.

18. Ibid., p. 160.

19. In his famous presidential address to the League in 1940, Jinnah had

declared that Islam and Hinduism were ‘not religions in the strict sense of

the word’. See his Jamil-ud-din Ahmad (ed.), Speeches and writings of Mr

Jinnah (Lahore: Shaikh Muhammad Ashraf, 1960), p.160. Metcalf

explains Jinnah’s interpretation of Islam as possibly ‘his own gesture stem-

ming from the cosmopolitanism and isolation from mainstream religious

practice he shared with Nehru, toward self-presentation as a “modern”’.

See Metcalf, Islamic contestations, p. 183. Nehru though was unequivo-

cally persuaded that religion (Hinduism) was outmoded and destined for

a natural death with no prospect whatever of representing a modern

nation-state. Jinnah’s very different understanding of religion (Islam)

would complicate the uncertainties that beset Pakistan in its own troubled

passage to modernity.

20. Jamil Rashid and Hassan Gardezi, ‘Independent Pakistan: Its political

economy’ in Hassan Gardezi and Jamil Rashid (eds), Pakistan: the roots

of dictatorship: the political economy of a praetorian state (London: Zed

Press, 1983), pp. 5–6.

21. Khalid bin Sayeed, Politics in Pakistan: The nature and Direction of

Change (New York: Praeger, 1980), p. 59.

22. Bhashani was eventually to abandon the Muslim League and create the

more radical Awami National Party (ANP) in 1957, which enjoyed strong

support in rural districts of East Bengal.

23. Their views were reflected in the Report of the League’s Agrarian Com-

mittee submitted in 1949. See Talbot, Pakistan, p. 123.

24. Hamza Alavi,‘Class and state’ in Gardezi and Rashid (eds), Pakistan,

p. 58.

25. Omar Noman, The political economy of Pakistan (London: Routledge

and Kegan Paul, 1988), p. 41.

26. See Akbar Zaidi, Issues in Pakistan’s economy (Karachi: Oxford Univer-

sity Press, 2005, 2

edn), pp. 97–103.

27. ‘Functional inequality’ was a central pillar of the economic doctrine

favoured by Ayub’s regime. It was predicated on the thesis that resources

should be directed towards sectors with the propensity for the highest

returns on the assumption that such returns would automatically ‘trickle

down’ to less favoured sectors as development proceeded. Ibid.,

pp. 101–02.

28. Raunaq Jahan, Pakistan: failure in national integration, pp. 67–85.

pp. [121–125]

NOTES

231

29. Ibid., p.103.

30. Vaqar Ahmed and Rashid Amjad, The management of Pakistan’s econ-

omy, 1947–82 (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 90.

31. See Omar Noman, Economic and social progress in Asia: Why Pakistan

did not become a tiger (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1997).

32. Talbot, ‘Planning for Pakistan’, p. 887

33. Metcalf, Islamic contestations, p. 225

34. Ibid., p. 223

35. Gustav Papanek, a member of the so-called Harvard Advisory Group that

exercised a powerful influence on economic policy under Ayub, described

the doctrine as one based on the notion that ‘great inequalities were neces-

sary in order to create industry and industrialists’ and that the pursuit of

profit and high incomes were both acceptable ‘because they are used

chiefly for investment, rather than for conspicuous consumption’—an

assumption that was to prove fatally flawed in the case of Pakistan. See

Gustav Papanek, Pakistan development: social goals and private incentives

(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967), pp 242–43.

36. Nevertheless, it has been widely noted that despite Zia’s much heralded

public advocacy of the private sector, which ensured the support of the

business and entrepreneurial classes, he did not rush to denationalize

industries brought under state control by Bhutto. This has strengthened

the view that, as with the rest of his Islamizing agenda, Zia’s economic

policies were driven primarily by the need to shore up his regime and

secure its bases of support. According to Zaidi, ‘the Zia regime took a far

more pragmatic and politically clever line by not denationalizing in haste.

It encouraged the private sector by giving it greater incentives and remov-

ing controls … Once the government realized that ownership and control

of the public sector industries was an effective tool for granting political

patronage and favour, there seemed little recourse to gift such a means

away’. See, Zaidi, Issues in Pakistan’s economy, pp. 117.

37. Nasim Ahmed Jawed, Islam’s political culture: Religion and politics in

pre-divided Pakistan (Austin, TX: University of Texas, 1999), p. 105.

38. Philip E. Jones, The Pakistan People’s Party: Rise to Power (Karachi:

Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 101.

39. Jawed, Islam’s political culture, pp. 108–09

40. Metcalf, Islamic contestations, pp. 236–37.

41. Ibid., p. 260.

42. Vali Nasr, Islamic Leviathan, p. 79.

43. Jones, The Pakistan People’s Party, p. 223.

44. Jawed, Islam’s political culture, p. 114.

45. Ibid., p. 116

46. A fatwa issued by leading ulama during the 1970 general elections warned

voters against the ‘evils’ of capitalism, including indecent exposure and

immodesty. Ibid., p.115.

pp. [125–128]

NOTES

232

47. For a fine exposition of Maududi’s theory of Islamic economics see S.V.R.

Nasr, Mawdudi and the making of Islamic revivalism (New York, Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 103–06.

48. Jawed, Islam’s political culture, pp. 118–22

49. Ibid., p. 123

50. S.V.R. Nasr, The vanguard of the Islamic revolution, p. 164.

51. Shahid Javed Burki, Pakistan under Bhutto, 1971–77 (London: Macmil-

lan, 1980)

52. Ibid., p. 138.

53. Talbot, Pakistan, p. 244.

54. Zaidi, Issues, p. 117.

55. Shahid Javed Burki, Pakistan: Fifty years of nationhood, pp. 118–19.

56. Noman, The political economy of Pakistan, p. 157 and Jonathan Addle-

ton, Undermining the centre: the Gulf migration and Pakistan (Karachi:

Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 127, 207.

57. Addleton, Undermining the centre, pp. 154, 158.

58. For a detailed exposition of the report and its implications for creation of

an Islamic economic system see Shahid Javed Burki, ‘Economic manage-

ment within an Islamic context’ in Anita Weiss (ed.) Islamic reassertion in

Pakistan: the application of Islamic laws in a modern state (Lahore: Van-

guard Books, 1987), pp. 49–58.

59. Ibid., p. 53

60. ‘An Agenda for Islamic economic reforms: the report of the committee on

Islamization appointed by the Finance Minister, 1980’, quoted in ibid.

p. 52.

61. Quoted in Burki,‘Economic management’, p. 51. Italics added.

62. Shahid Javed Burki, ‘Pakistan’s Sixth Plan: helping the country climb out

of poverty’, Asian Survey, Vol. 24, no. 4, 1984, pp. 400–22.

63. Jamal Malik, Colonialization of Islam: dissolution of traditional institu-

tions in Pakistan (New Delhi: Manohar, 1998), pp. 85–86.

64. Vali Nasr also makes a convincing case to show that economic as much as

political considerations may have influenced the regime’s decision to

introduce Islamic taxes. He argues that they helped reduce the budget

deficit, and though accounting for only some 2% of government revenue,

were ‘important in a country where tax evasion is pervasive’ and where

‘some segments of the population such as the landed elite pay little or no

taxes. Vali Nasr, Islamic Leviathan, pp. 144–45.

65. Zaidi, Issues in Pakistan’s economy, p. 504. See also Burki, Pakistan,

pp. 107–08 and Stephen Cohen, The idea of Pakistan (Washington, DC:

The Brookings Institution Press, 2004), pp. 251–52.

66. The most widely used guide to corruption is the Corruption Perceptions

Index (CPI) published annually by the Berlin-based organization, Trans-

parency International. In 2007 Pakistan’s performance was still judged to

rate poorly with a CPI score of 2.4 in a range of 10 (highly corrupt) to 0

(highly corrupt) out of 179 countries surveyed. See http://www.transpar-

ency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/cpi/2007

pp. [128–133]

NOTES

233

67. Based on the slogan: ‘ pehley ehtesaab, baad intikhab’ (‘accountability

first, elections later’), it was popularised in a series of articles by one of

the country’s most widely read newspaper columnist, Ardeshir Cowasjee,

Dawn, 1999.

68. Such movements are not of course exceptional to Pakistan. See,

J. P. Olivier de Sardan, ‘A moral economy of corruption in Africa’, The

Journal of Modern African Studies, 37, 1 (1999), pp. 25–52.

69. One recent assessment concludes that, unlike its ‘founding fathers’ (Jinnah

and Iqbal) Pakistan’s new ‘political leadership has enriched itself by plun-

dering (‘borrowing’) the nationalized banks, and receiving kickbacks from

foreign sellers of industrial and military hardware. This may sound like

excessive generalization, but is not without truthful comment’. See Hafeez

Malik, Founders’ aspirations and today’s realities (Karach: Oxford Uni-

versity Press, 2001), p. 2.

70. Roedad Khan, Pakistan: a dream gone sour (Karachi: Oxford University

Press, 1997), p. 207.

71. Burki, Pakistan, 179.

72. For a discussion of the Pakistani ulama’s conception of the Islamic state

see Zaman, The Ulama in contemporary Islam, pp. 93–99.

73. The Jamaat’s leader, Maulana Mawdudi, traced the historical origins of

corruption to the Ummayyad dynasty, which he accused of transforming

the Caliphate into a tyrannical regime. See Vali Nasr, Mawdudi, p. 92.

74. Ibid., p. 105.

75. According to Vali Nasr ‘Although the two had different aims, little sepa-

rated Mawdudi’s position from that of the Islamic modernists. He sought

to appropriate modern scientific thought and Islamize it; they accepted

modern scientific thought and attempted to interpret Islam according to

it. The modernists wanted to modernize Islam whereas Mawdudi wanted

also to Islamize modernity. The distinction was enough to permit Maw-

dudi to inveigh against his modernist rivals.’ Ibid., p. 53.

76. Metcalf, ‘The case of Pakistan’ in Merkl and Smart (eds.) Religion and

Politics, p. 178.

77. Burki, Pakistan: Fifty years of nationhood, p. 182

78. Metcalf, ‘The case of Pakistan’ in Merkl and Smart (eds.) Religion and

politics, pp. 180–181.

79. Ibid., p. 226.

80. Shahid Javed Burki, Pakistan under Bhutto, 1971–77 (New York: St Mar-

tin’s Press, 1980),

81. Oskar Verkaaik, Migrants and militants, p. 36.

82. Ibid., p. 36. See also Akbar S. Ahmed, Discovering Islam: Making sense

of Muslim history and society (New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul,

1988), pp. 81–83.

83. The PNA was formed in January 1977 as an electoral alliance against

Bhutto. Dominated by the Islamist opposition, it included nine parties

headed by the Jamaat-i-Islami, the Jamiat-ul Ulama-i-Islam, the Jamiat-ul

pp. [133–138]

NOTES

234

Ulama-i-Pakistan and six other moderate and left-leaning factions belong-

ing to the Tehrik-i-Istiqlal, the Pakistan Muslim League-Pagaro, the

National Democratic Party, the Pakistan Democratic Party, the Khaksar-

i-Tehrik, and the Azad Kashmir Muslim Conference.

84. Quoted in S.V.R. Nasr, Mawdudi and the making of Islamic revivalism,

p.132. However, the Jamaat’s political ambitions eventually led towards

a qualified acceptance of Sufism resulting in the late 1980s in visits by

prominent Jamaat leaders to popular Sufi shrines. See Nasr, Mawdudi and

the making of Islamic revivalism, pp. 123–24.

85. Burki, Pakistan, p. 182.

86. Omar Noman, ‘An uncivil society: the role of shadow privatization, con-

flict and ideology in the governance of Pakistan’, in Anita Weiss and S.

Zulfiqar Gilani (eds), Power and civil society in Pakistan (Karachi: Oxford

University Press, 2001), p. 173.

87. Ibid., 178.

88. Barbara Metcalf, ‘Traditionalist’ Islamic activism: Deoband, Tablighis,

and Talibs’ in Islamic contestations, p. 274. See also Mumtaz Ahmad,

‘Tablighi Jamaat’ in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the modern Islamic

world, Vol. 4 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 165–69.

89. Aftab Ahmad, ‘Historical antecedents of corruption in Pakistan’ in Arvind

K. Jain (ed.) The political economy of corruption (London and New York:

Routledge, 2001), p. 142.

90. Ayesha Siddiqa, Military Inc: Inside Pakistan’s military economy (London

and Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press, 2007).

91. Ibid., p. 174.

92. Hamza Alavi, ‘Class and state’ in Gardezi and Rashid (eds), Pakistan: the

roots of dictatorship, pp. 66–67.

93. Imran Anwar Ali, ‘Business and power in Pakistan’ in Weiss and Gilani

(eds), Power and civil society, p. 110

94. One of those implicated was General Fazle Haq, Zia’s governor in the

North West Frontier Province from 1978–85. He was also briefly chief

minister of the province in 1988. See Tariq Ali, The duel, p. 123.

95. See Veena Kukreja, Contemporary Pakistan: political processes, conflicts

and crises (New Delhi and London: Sage Publications, 2003),

pp. 201–02

96. See also, Omar Noman, ‘An uncivil society’ in Weiss and Gilani (eds)

Power and civil society in Pakistan, p. 179.

97. Quoted in Muhammad Qasim Zaman, The ulama in contemporary Islam,

p. 87.

98. There is heated controversy over the propotion of madrassa education in

Pakistan. While some estimates suggest that they comprise a very small

share (possibly no more than 1 per cent) of the education market, others

claim that they could occupy as much as a third of the market though this

estimate has since been revised downwards. For these conflicting claims

see Tahir Andrabi, Jishnu Das , Asim Ijaz Khwaja and Tristan Zajonc ,

pp. [138–141]

NOTES

235

“Religious School Enrollment in Pakistan: A Look at the Data” (Wash-

ington DC: World Bank, February 2005), http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/

papers.cfm?abstract_id=667843 and International Crisis Group, ‘Paki-

stan: Madrasas, Extremism and the military’, 29 July 2002, ICG Report

36, http://www.crisisgroup.org/library/documents/asia/south_asia/036___

pakistan_madrasas__extremism_and_the_military_amended.pdf.

99. See Barbara Metcalf (ed.) Moral conduct and authority: the place of adab

in South Asia Islam (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press,

1987)

100. Zaman, The ulama in contemporary Islam, p.74.

101. Barbara Metcalf, ‘Madrasas in secular India’ in Robert W. Hefner and

Muhammad Qasim Zaman (eds), Schooling Islam: The culture and poli-

tics of modern Muslim education (Princeton: Princeton University Press,

2007), p. 99.

102. See Matthew Nelson, ‘Religious education in non-religious schools: a

comparative study of Bangladesh and Pakistan’, Journal of Comparative

and Commonwealth Politics, Vol. 46, no. 3 (July 2008), pp. 337–67. See

also his ‘Muslims, markets, and the meaning of a “good” education in

Pakistan’, Asian Survey, Vol. 46, no. 5, 2006, pp. 690–720, and ‘Dealing

with difference: religious education and the challenge of democracy in

Pakistan’, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 43, no. 2 (March 2008),

pp. 361–90

103. Report of the committee set up by the governor of West Pakistan for

recommending improved syllabus for the various darul ulooms and Ara-

bic madrasas in West Pakistan (Lahore: Government Printing, 1962),

p. 3. See also Jamal Malik, Colonialization of Islam: dissolution of

traditional institutions in Pakistan (New Delhi: Manohar, 1998)

pp. 125–28.

104. Report of the committee (1962), p. 7

105. Zaman, The ulama in contemporary Islam, p. 78.

106. Malik, Colonialization of Islam, pp. 125, 128.

107. Zaman, The ulama in contemporary Islam, p. 77

108. Malik, The colonialization of Islam, pp. 136–39.

109. See, Education in Pakistan: A White Paper (revised) document to revise

and finalize the national education policy, February 2007 http://www.

moe.gov.pk/nepr/WhitePaper.pdf, p. 56.

110. Ibid., p. 56, 57.

111. Ibid., p. 57.

112. P.W. Singer, Pakistan’s madrassas: ensuring a system of education not

jihad, analysis paper #14; http://www.ciaonet.org/wps/sip02/sip02.pdf.

113. See, The Boston Group, Higher education in Pakistan http://web.mit.

edu/bilal/www/education/education_report.pdf, p. 6.

114. Tariq Rahman, Denizens of alien worlds: a study of education, inequal-

ity and polarization in Pakistan, (Karachi: Oxford University Press,

2004), p. 149.

pp. [141–144]

NOTES

236

115. There is currently great controversy over the number of madrassas in

Pakistan, the number of students actually enrolled in madrassas, over

what qualifies as a madrassa, and even over whether they serve as incu-

bators of militant politics. For a critical review see, Christine Fair, The

madrassah challange: militancy and religious education in Pakistan

(Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2008).

116. The term ‘worldly’ education is employed by some experts in deference

to Pakistanis, who are said to prefer the term to ‘secular’ education

with its overtones of the irreligious. See Fair, The Madrassa challenge,

p. 119, fn. 1.

117. Tariq Rahman, ‘Passports to privilege: the English medium schools in

Pakistan’ in Peace and Democracy in South Asia (online), Vol. 1, no. 1,

January 2005, http://www.thdl.org/texts/reprints/pdsa/pdsa_01_01_04.

pdf, p. 36. See also Tariq Rahman, ‘The Muslim response to English in

South Asia: with special reference to inequality, intolerance and mili-

tancy in Pakistan’, Journal of Language, Identity and Education, Vol. 4,

no. 2, January 2005, pp. 119–35.

118. Khaled Ahmed, ‘Islamist school chains and the coming New Order’, The

Friday Times, 10–16 September 1999.

119. Fair, The madrassah challenge, p. 98

120. Ibid.

5. BETWEEN CRESCENT AND SWORD

1. There are, by now, a number of fine studies on the military in Pakistan and

its undisputed primacy as a political player. Stephen Cohen, The Pakistan

army, first published in 1984, but since re-issued in a new edition (Karachi:

Oxford University Press, 1998), remains a classic for its insights into the

sociology of the army and the mind of its high command. Since then several

Pakistani scholars have made outstanding contributions to the study of

civil-military relations. Among the best are Hasan Askari Rizvi, The mili-

tary and politics in Pakistan, first published in 1974, but since re-issued as

a new edition (Lahore: Sang-i-Meel Publications, 2000), his Military, state

and society in Pakistan (Lahore: Sang-i-Meel, 2003) and Ayesha Jalal, The

state of martial law: the origins of Pakistan’s political economy of defence

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). These studies have more

recently been matched (if not surpassed) by ground-breaking work based

on painstaking research and unparalleled access to military sources. See, in

particular, Ayesha Siddiqa, Military Inc: Inside Pakistan’s military economy

(London: Pluto Press, 2007) and Shuja Nawaz, Crossed swords: Pakistan,

its army, and the wars within (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2008).

2. Askari-Rizvi, The military and politics.

3. Jalal, The state of martial law.

4. Siddiqa, Military Inc.

5. Nawaz, Crossed swords, xxxi.

pp. [145–148]

NOTES

237

6. Askari-Rizvi, Military, state and society, pp. 245–247.

7. The tension between these two versions of ‘Islam’ in the construction of

Pakistan’s national identity has also been richly pursued by Barbara Met-

calf and Vali Nasr. See Barbara Metcalf, Islamic contestations: essays on

Muslims in India and Pakistan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004),

pp. 217–35 and Vali Nasr, ‘National identities and the India-Pakistan

conflict’ in T.V. Paul (ed.), The India-Pakistan conflict: an enduring

rivalry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 178–201.

8. Markus Daechsel, ‘Military Islamisation in Pakistan and the spectre of

colonial perceptions’, Contemporary South Asia, 6, 2 (1997), p. 150.

9. Brian Cloughley, A history of the Pakistan army: wars and insurrections

(Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 29.

10. Nawaz, Crossed swords, pp. 83–84.

11. Ibid., p. 82. See also Jalal, The state of martial rule, pp. 119–123.

12. Pakistan’s 1965 military operation in Kashmir was code-named Operation

Gibraltar harking back to the Muslim conqueror of Spain, Tariq bin Ziad,

who established a beach-head at the rock named after him—Jebel al Tariq,

later Anglicized to Gibraltar. The trained guerrillas under Pakistani com-

mand, who were instructed to infiltrate into Indian-controlled Kashmir,

were organized into five units, each named after an Islamic military hero:

Tariq (bin Ziad), Mahmud (of Ghazni), Salahuddin (Saladin), Muhammad

(bin Wasim), and Khalid (bin Waleed). See Nawaz, Crossed swords,

p. 206.

13. Daechsel, ‘Military Islamisation in Pakistan’, pp. 150–51.

14. Mumtaz Ahmad, ‘The crescent and the sword: Islam, the military, and

political legitimacy in Pakistan, 1977–1985, The Middle East Journal, 50,

3 (Summer 196), pp. 372–386.

15. Hamza Alavi, ‘The state in post-colonial societies: Pakistan and Bangla-

desh’ in Kathleen Gough and Hari Sharma (eds), Imperialism and revolu-

tion in South Asia (New York and London: Monthly Review Press, 1973),

pp. 155–56.

16. Ibid., p. 156.

17. Hasan-Askari Rizvi, ‘The military’ in Weiss and Gilani (eds), Power and

civil society, pp. 202, 207. In his exhaustive study of the army, Shuja

Nawaz also notes the emergence of ‘a different breed of officers’. Citing

hitherto restricted recruitment data provided by official army sources he

confirms ‘that since the 1970s recruitment moved from the traditional

districts to new cities. With increased urbanization and increased remit-

tances from overseas workers [mainly from the Gulf States] to their fami-

lies in the countryside, many newly rich rural people migrated to the

fringes of smaller towns and cities. The expansion of cities, particularly in

the Punjab, created a new base for recruitment to the volunteer army: the

children of the lower middle class, akin to Zia’s own background, who

chose the military because of its economic and social advantages rather

than military traditions’. See Nawaz, Crossed swords, p. 385.

pp. [149–152]

NOTES

238

18. Kukreja offers a typical assessment of this period. She observes that ‘The

definite appeal of Islamic slogans to General Headquarters could plausibly

be interpreted in terms of the changing ethos of Pakistan’s military leader-

ship. A throwback to Islamic slogans appeared very attractive to the

homespun officers—trained at Quetta and Karachi—who had suffered the

humiliation of 1971 when Sandhurst-trained generals were in command.’

See Veena Kukreja, Contemporary Pakistan: political processes, conflicts

and crises (New Delhi and London: Sage Publications, 2003), p. 168.

19. For an outstanding recent study of the economic opportunities afforded to

the military by its control of political power and its interest in continuing

to hold on to this power to consolidate this ‘economic empire’, see Sid-

diqa, Military Inc.

20. Stephen Cohen, The Pakistan army (Karachi: Oxford University Press,

1998—first published 1984).

21. Ibid., pp. 55–63.

22. Ibid., pp. 63–70.

23. Ibid., p. 70.

24. Ibid., pp. 113–17.

25. Ibid., p. 54. See also Owen Bennett-Jones, Pakistan: eye of the storm (New

Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), pp. 253–54.

26. Rizvi, Military, state and society in Pakistan, pp. 245–248.

27. Ibid., pp. 240–45.

28. On one such occasion junior officers are said to have hurled abuse at a

senior general seeking to offer an explanation of Pakistan’s military defeat

in 1971 by accusing him of being a ‘drunkard’. See Salmaan Taseer,

Bhutto: a political biography (London: Ithaca Press, 1979), p. 130.

29. Cloughley, A history of the Pakistan army, p. 278.

30. For a controversial insider’s view of this nexus between the military and

militant groups see Husain Haqqani, Pakistan: between mosque and mili-

tary (Washington: Carnegie Endowment for Peace, 2005). For another

perspective ‘from the inside’ see Hassan Abbas, Pakistan’s drift into

extremism: Allah, the army, and America’s war on terror (New York:

M.E. Sharpe, 2005).

31. Rashid, Taliban, pp. 181–95; Abou Zahab and Roy (eds), Islamist net-

works, pp. 19–46. See also William Maley, Fundamentalism reborn?

Afghanistan and the Taliban (London: Hurst, 1998).

32. See Nasr, The vanguard of the Islamic revolution, p. 169.

33. Kepel, Jihad, pp. 101–05.

34. Olivier Roy, ‘The Taliban: a strategic tool for Pakistan’ in Jaffrelot (ed.),

Pakistan, p. 151.

35. Masud (ed.), Travellers in faith, p. xvi.

36. Stephen Cohen, The idea of Pakistan (Washington, DC, Brookings Institu-

tion Press, 2004), p. 116.

37. Hasan-Askari Rizvi, ‘The military’ in Weiss and Gilani (eds), Power and

civil society, p. 207.

pp. [152–155]

NOTES

239

38. Khalid Masud, ‘Ideology and legitimacy’ in Masud (ed.), Travellers in

faith, p. 99.

39. Mumtaz Ahmad, ‘Tablighi Jama’at’ in John L. Esposito (ed.), Oxford

Encyclopedia of Islam, p. 168.

40. Masud, ‘Ideology and legitimacy’, p. 105.

41. Yoginder Sikand, ‘The Tablighi Jama’at and politics’, International Insti-

tute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World (ISIM) Review, 13

(December 2003), p. 43.

42. Ahmed, ‘Tablighi Jama’at’ in Esposito (ed.), p. 169.

43. Brig. S.K. Malik, The Quranic concept of war (Lahore, Wajidalis, 1979),

p. viii.

44. Masud, ‘Ideology and legitimacy’, p. 99.

45. Bennett-Jones, Pakistan, p. 260.

46. Nasr, Vanguard, p. 194; Nasr, Islamic Leviathan, p. 136.

47. Daechsel, ‘Military islamisation’, p. 150.

48. See speech by General Zia ul Haq in Dawn, 6 September 1977.

49. Nasr, Islamic Leviathan, pp. 61–65.

50. One recent assessment goes so far as to conclude that ‘contrary to wide-

spread perception Ayub Khan was not a secularist [but] … Being a

straightforward soldier, he did not have time for an elaborate theory of

the Islamic state … He simply wanted to do what he perceived was good

for the state and declare it as Islamic’. Haqqani, Pakistan: between

mosque and military, p. 41.

51. Nasr, Islamic Leviathan, p. 61.

52. Ziring, Pakistan: at the cross-current of history, p. 83.

53. According to Cohen, it was under Ayub that ‘Pakistan began the process

of official myth-creation in earnest’. See Cohen, The idea of Pakistan,

pp. 67–68. One of the main engines tasked with the responsibility of fur-

thering this process was the Bureau of National Research and Reconstruc-

tion, which was granted sweeping powers by Ayub to target any section

of the news media that questioned the regime’s national security policies

predicated on rivalry with India. See Nawaz, Crossed swords,

pp. 173–74.

54. Hamza Alavi, ‘Ethnicity, Muslim society and the Pakistan ideology’ in

Weiss (ed.), Islamic re-assertion in Pakistan, pp. 21–48.

55. See Ayub Khan’s address to the nation, Dawn, 7 September 1965.

56. Ayub Khan, Friends not Masters (Karachi and London: Oxford University

Press, 1967), pp. 196–97.

57. Sumit Ganguly, The crisis in Kashmir: portents of war, hopes of peace

(Woodrow Wilson Center and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1997), pp. 55–57.

58. Quoted in Haqqani, Pakistan: between mosque and military, p. 46. For a

discussion of the broader remit of the Bureau see Nawaz, Crossed swords,

pp. 173–77.

59. Abbas, Pakistan’s drift into extremism, p. 45.

pp. [155–161]

NOTES

240

60. See General A.A.K Niazi, The betrayal of East Pakistan (Karachi: Oxford

University Press, 1998), p. 78. See also Nasr, The vanguard of the Islamic

revolution, pp. 66–67, 169 and Haqqani, Pakistan: between mosque and

military, pp. 79–80.

61. Talukder Maniruzzaman, The Bangladesh revolution and its aftermath

(Dhaka: Bangladesh Books, 1980), pp. 102–06.

62. The Hamoodur Rehman Commission appointed by the government in

January 1972 to conduct an inquiry into the 1971 civil war makes no

mention of the army’s use of counter-insurgency groups in East Pakistan

tied to pro-Islamic parties. As for the claim of what it describes as the

‘alleged killing of [Bengali] intellectuals in December 1971’, it concluded

that while there was ‘some talk’ of arresting persons on a ‘list of names’

of ‘miscreants, heads of Mukti Bahini … known leaders of the Awami

League … produced the agencies concerned’, it could not proceed ‘unless

the Bangladesh authorities can produce some convincing evidence’. With-

out it the Commission noted that ‘it is not possible to record a finding that

any intellectuals or professionals were indeed arrested and killed by the

Pakistan Army during December 1971’. See, The report of the Hamoodur

Rehman Commission of Inquiry into the 1971 War—as declassified by

the Government of Pakistan (Lahore: Vanguard Books, nd), pp. 511–12.

63. Nasr, The vanguard of the Islamic revolution, p. 169.

64. Talbot, Pakistan (expanded and updated edition, 2005), p. 244.

65. Vali Nasr, Islamic leviathan, p. 97.

66. See Anwar Syed, ‘Z.A. Bhutto’s self-characterizations and Pakistani politi-

cal culture’, Asian Survey, Vol. 18, no. 12 (December 1978), p. 1260.

67. See Farzana Shaikh, ‘Pakistan’s nuclear bomb: beyond the non-prolifera-

tion regime ‘, International Affairs, Vol. 78, no. 1, January 2002, p. 39.

68. Dennis Kux, The United States and Pakistan: disenchanted allies (Wash-

ington and Baltimore: Woodrow Wilson Center and The Johns Hopkins

University Press, 2001), p. 220.

69. Nasr, ‘National identities’, p. 187.

70. Abou-Zahab and Roy, Islamist networks, p. 26.

71. Talbot, Pakistan, p. 272.

72. For an extended discussion of the social basis of the Lashkar and its roots

in Salafi Islam see Abou Zahab and Roy, Islamist networks, pp. 32–44.

73. Explaining the relation between the two, Hafiz Saeed, one of the founders

of the Dawat ul Irshad and currently leader of the Lashkar i Tayyaba,

declared: ‘Islam propounds both Dawa. Both are equally important and

inseparable … If beliefs and moral are not reformed, Dawa alone develops

into mysticism and Jihad alone may lead to anarchy … This is the only

way to bring about change among individuals, society and the world.’

Quoted in Saeed Shafqat, ‘From official to Islamism: the rise of the

Dawat-ul-Irshad and the Lashkar-eTaiba’ in Jaffrelot (ed.), Pakistan:

nationalism without a nation, p. 143.

74. Abou Zahab and Roy, Islamist networks, p. 35.

pp. [162–166]

NOTES

241

75. See Jamal Malik, Colonialization of Islam: dissolution of traditional insti-

tutions in Pakistan (Delhi: Manohar, 1998), pp. 85–113.

76. See Ayesha Jalal, Partisans of Allah: Jihad in South Asia (Cambridge, MA:

Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 291–92.

77. On the background to the Red Mosque crisis and the links between the

mosque’s leadership and Zia’s military regime see Farzana Shaikh, ‘Bat-

tered Musharraf playing with fire’, The Times (London), 11 July 2007.

78. Quoted in Diego Cordovez and Selig Harrison, Out of Afghanistan: The

inside story of the Soviet withdrawal (New York: Oxford University Press,

1995), p. 92.

79. See Muhammad Amir Rana, A to Z of Jehadi organizations in Pakistan

(Lahore: Mashal Books, 2004), pp. 263–74.

80. Ibid., pp. 436–38.

81. Abbas, Pakistan’s drift into extremism, p. 134.

82. See Zahid Hussain, Frontline Pakistan: the struggle with militant Islam

(London: I.B. Tauris, 2007), p. 21.

83. Abbas, Pakistan’s drift into extremism, p. 148.

84. See Rana, A to Z of Jehadi organizations, p. 272; ibid., pp. 152–53 and

Cloughly, A history of the Pakistan army, pp. 354–55 and Hussain, Front-

line Pakistan, pp. 73–74.

85. Cohen, The idea of Pakistan, p. 172.

86. Vali Nasr, ‘National identities’, p. 197.

87. Vernon Hewitt, Towards the future? Jammu and Kashmir in the 21

Cen-

tury (Cambridge: Granta, 2001), p. 122.

88. Abbas, Pakistan’s drift into extremism, p 148.

89. Amir Rana, A-Z of jehadi organizations in Pakistan, pp. 24–45; Hewitt,

Towards the future, p. 165; Abou-Zahab and Roy, Islamist networks,

p. 54.

90. See Khalid Hasan, ‘Invisible Soldiers Inc (ISI’)s hallucination yielded ter-

rorism’, Friday Times, 7–13 January, 2005.

91. Olivier Roy, ‘Islam and foreign policy: central Asia and the Arab Persian

World’ in Jaffrelot (ed.), A history of Pakistan and its origins, p. 145.

92. Ahmed Rashid, Taliban: The story of the Afghan warlords (London: Pan

Books, 2001), p. 187.

93. See Vali Nasr, The Shia revival: how conflicts within Islam will shape the

future (New York and London: Norton, 2007), p. 161. See also, Mariam

Abou Zahab, ‘The regional dimension of sectarian conflicts in Pakistan’

in Jaffrelot (ed.) Pakistan: Nationalism without a nation?, p. 118.

94. See S.V.R. Nasr, ‘Islam, the state and the rise of sectarian militancy in

Pakistan’ in ibid., p. 94.

95. Abou Zahab and Roy, Islamist networks, p. 55. See also Rana, A to Z of

Jehadi organizations, pp. 214–36.

96. Rashid, Taliban, p.186.

97. Vali Nasr, ‘Islam, the state and the rise of sectarian militancy’ in Jaffrelot

(ed.), Pakistan: Nationalism without a nation?, p. 96.

pp. [166–173]

NOTES

242

98. See Aoun Abbas Sahi, ‘The Punjab connection’, Newsline, October 2008,

pp. 35–36.

99. See the Friday Times, 24–30 April, 1998.

100. Hewitt, Towards the future? p. 198.

101. Abbas, Pakistan’s drift towards extremism, p. 214.

102. Abou Zahab and Roy, Islamist networks, p. 30. Others support this view

of a regional and sectarian nexus. According to Zahid Hussain: ‘Most of

the LeJ [Lashkar-i-Jhangvi] cadres were also involved in Pakistan’s proxy

war in Kashmir. The continuing state patronage of Islamic militancy in

return produced an escalation in domestic sectarian conflict. The two

were closely intertwined.’ See Hussain, Frontline Pakistan, p. 96.

103. For a fine discussion of successive government initiatives to reform the

madrassas in Pakistan and the role of religio-activism in thwarting these

efforts, see Muhammad Qasim Zaman, ‘Deobandi madrassas in South

Asia’ in Robert W. Hefner and Muhammad Qasim Zaman, Schooling

Islam, pp. 59–86.

104. In May 2000 Musharraf formally reneged on his promise to reform the

blasphemy laws, apparently on the advice on the Chief of General Staff,

General Aziz Khan, known for his pro-Islamist sympathies, who warned

that it would trigger Islamist unrest. See Rashid, Descent into chaos,

p. 414 n. 24.

105. See, Christophe Jaffrelot, ‘Musharraf and the Islamists: from support to

opposition after September 11’ in Jaffrelot (ed.), A history of Pakistan,

p. 260.

106. Two commanders who played a vital role in helping Musharraf to plan

and execute the operation in Kargil were Lt. General Mahmud Ahmed,

Commander of X Corps, and Lt General Mohammad Aziz Khan, Chief

of General Staff. Ahmed, who made no secret of his sympathies for the

Islamist cause, later joined the Tablighi Jamaat; Aziz, who was scrupu-

lously religious, sported a flowing black beard in the late 1980s. See

Nawaz, Crossed swords, p. 512.

107. See Rashid, Descent into chaos, p. 220.

108. For the full text of President Musharraf’s speech see, The Nation, 13 Jan-

uary 2002. Among the groups banned were the LT and the Jaish-i-

Mohammad, which represented the two largest militant organizations

fighting in Kashmir. Other groups included the Sipah-i-Sahaba-i-

Pakistanand its Shia counterpart, the Tehrik-i-Jafria.

109. See Frederic Grare, ‘Pakistan: the myth of an Islamist peril’, Policy Brief

46 (New York: Carnegie Endowment for Peace, February 2006), http://

www.carnegieendowment.org/files/45.grare.final.pdf.

6. DEMONS FROM ABROAD

1. For a discussion of the background to changes in the formulation of the

Kashmir policies of India and Pakistan, see P.R. Chari, ‘Sources of New

pp. [173–182]

NOTES

243

Delhi’s Kashmir policy’ and Hasan-Askari Rizvi, ‘Islamabad’s new

approach to Kashmir’ in Waheguru Sidhu, Bushra Asif and Cyrus Samii

(eds), Kashmir: new voices, new approaches (New York: International

Peace Academy, 2006), pp. 117–37.

2. For a background to the Siachen dispute see, Sumit Ganguly, Conflict

unending: India-Pakistan tensions since 1947 (New York: Columbia Uni-

versity Press, 2001), pp. 79–10. On the maritime border dispute see

Ashutosh Mishra, ‘The Sir Creek boundary dispute: a victim of India-Pa-

kistan linkage politics’, IBRU Boundary and Security Bulletin, Winter

2000–2001, http://www.dur.ac.uk/resources/ibru/publications/full/

bsb8–4_misra.pdf See also A.G. Noorani, ‘Easing the Indo-Pakistan dia-

logue on Kashmir: confidence-building measures for the Siachen Glacier,

Sir Creek, and the Wular Barrage disputes’, Occasional Paper, no. 16

(Washington, DC: Henry L. Stimson Center, 1994).

3. Jean-Luc Racine, ‘Pakistan and the “India Syndrome”: between Kashmir

and the nuclear predicament’ in Jaffrelot (ed.), Pakistan: Nationalism

without a nation, pp. 113–16.

4. The idea that Indian Muslims were entitled to special representation that

reflected their political importance was a key demand of Muslim separa-

tists seeking to influence plans to introduce political reform in British

India. By doing so, they hoped to compensate for the numerical weakness

of India Muslims in relation to the Hindu majority. In time it served as a

powerful argument to justify the claim that the special status of Indian

Muslims qualified them for parity with the Hindu nation. See Farzana

Shaikh, Community and consensus in Islam, pp. 141–54, 194–227. Paki-

stan’s compulsive need to maintain parity with India after independence

was driven largely by these perceptions of co-equality.

5. An enduing rivalry is described by theorists as a conflict that lasts for than

two decades, is punctuated by militarized conflicts and ‘characterized by

a persistent, fundamental and long term incompatibility of goals between

two states’. See T.V. Paul, ‘Causes of the India-Pakistan enduring rivalry’

in Paul, The India-Pakistan conflict, pp. 3–4.

6. See Mohammad Waseem, ‘Dialectic between domestic politics and foreign

policy’ in Jaffrelot (ed.), Pakistan: Nationalism with a nation?,

pp. 266–67.

7. Ibid., p. 267.

8. Hamid Khan, Constitutional and political history of Pakistan,

pp. 67–68.

9. See, Ayesha Jalal, ‘Inheriting the Raj: Jinnah and the Governor-General-

ship Issue’, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 19, No.1 (February 1985),

pp. 29–31.

10. Jinnah’s decision to assume the post of Pakistan’s first Governor-General

has been mired in controversy. Some claim that, by doing so, he perpetu-

ated the vice-regal system and undermined the prospects of democracy

in Pakistan. See, Khalid bin Sayeed, The formative phase, 1867–1948

pp. [182–184]

NOTES

244

(London: Oxford University Press, 1968), pp. 223–57; 279–300. Others

argue that Jinnah distorted the powers of Governor-General by politiciz-

ing it and allowing it to ride roughshod over parliament. See Allen

McGrath, The destruction of Pakistan’s democracy (Karachi: Oxford

University Press, 1996). Their position is lent some credence by Mount-

batten’s suggestion that Jinnah coveted the role of Governor-General

because he had no intention of encouraging a Westminster-style parlia-

mentary democracy in Pakistan. When reminded by Mountbatten that

Jinnah should have been seeking the role of Prime Minister, Jinnah is said

to have replied: ‘Not in my Pakistan, there the Prime Minister will do

what the Governor-General tells him’, adding ‘that’s the way I am going

to run Pakistan’. See John R Wood, ‘Dividing the Jewel: Mountbatten and

the transfer of power to India’, Pacific Affairs, Vol. 58, no. 4, (Winter

1985–86), p. 660. Jalal’s position, which is that Jinnah was motivated by

the need to establish Pakistan’s equality with India and safeguard its sov-

ereignty, is designed primarily to salvage Jinnah’s reputation from charges

that he suffered from vanity—charges detailed in Alan Campbell Johnson,

Mission with Mountbatten (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1972),

p. 217.

11. Nasr, ‘National identities’ in Paul (ed.), The India-Pakistan conflict,

p. 179.

12. This is recognized by some Pakistani scholars. According to Hasan

Zaheer: ‘The Muslim League leadership’, overwhelmed by the issues aris-

ing from the creation of the new state, did not apply itself seriously to the

Kashmir situation in the period preceding independence day, while India

was systematically working at securing the accession of the state by any

means.’ See Hasan Zaheer, The Rawalpindi conspiracy case 1951 (Kara-

chi: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 63.

13. Sumantra Bose, Kashmir: roots of conflict, paths to peace, pp. 21–22.

Abdullah’s National Conference was founded in 1932 as the All Jammu

and Kashmir Muslim Conference. In 1939 it was renamed the National

Conference after conservative Muslim factions re-grouped to form the

Muslim Conference, claiming that Abdullah’s pro-secular stance and radi-

cal social policies had tied the organization too closely to Congress. Ibid.,

pp. 20–21.

14. Bose, Kashmir, p. 22.

15. This impression is strongly conveyed in the account by the respected his-

torian, Victoria Schofield, who quotes the senior Indian Foreign Ministry

official, J.N. Dixit, in 1994 as acknowledging that ‘everybody who has a

sense of history knows that legality only has a relevance up to the thresh-

old of transcending political realities. And especially in inter-state relations

… so to quibble about points of law and hope that by proving a legal

point you can reverse the process of history is living in a somewhat con-

trived utopia. It won’t work.’ See, Victoria Schofield, Kashmir in the

crossfire (London: I.B. Tauris, 1996), p. 291. For an extended, if some-

pp. [185–186]

NOTES

245

what controversial, discussion of the merits of rival interpretations of the

legality of Kashmir’s accession to India see, Ganguly, The crisis in Kash-

mir, pp. 8–13.

16. For a discussion of the anomalous status of Azad Kashmir and its rela-

tions with Pakistan see Leo Rose, ‘The politics of Azad Kashmir’ in Raju

Thomas (ed.), Perspectives on Kashmir: the role of conflict in South Asia

(Boulder, CT: Westview Press, 1992), pp. 235–253. For a detailed and

vigorous critique of the indeterminate status imposed on the Northern

Territories by Pakistan see Discord in Pakistan’s Northern Areas, Inter-

national Crisis Group, Asia Report no. 131, 2 April 2007, http://www.

crisisgroup.org/library/documents/asia/south_asia/131_discord_in_

pakistan_s_northern_areas.pdf. It suggests that Pakistan’s decision to deny

these Territories the right to a constitutional personality comparable to

Azad Kashmir stems largely from the fear that it will empower the region’s

Shia majority. Others appear to be less persuaded by the sectarian argu-

ment claiming that Pakistan’s interest in retaining direct control over the

Northern Territories is designed to ensure that in any future plebiscite on

Kashmir these Territories can be counted upon to vote in favour of Paki-

stan. See Bennett Jones, Pakistan, p. 70. Yet others have pointed to the

strategic importance of districts such as Baltistan within the Northern Ter-

ritories, which have served as vital staging posts for Pakistan-backed mili-

tary incursions into Indian-held Kashmir. See, Vernon Hewitt, Towards

the future, p. 111.

17. For details of these military campaigns in Kashmir see, Nawaz, Crossed

swords, pp. 217–238; pp. 303–310.

18. Ashutosh Varshney, ‘Three compromised nationalisms: why Kashmir has

been a problem’ in Thomas (ed.), Perspectives on Kashmir, p. 198.

19. Cohen, The idea of Pakistan, p. 52.

20. See, Mehtab Ali Shah, The foreign policy of Pakistan: ethnic impacts on

diplomacy, 1971–1994 (London: I. B. Tauris, 1997). See also Iffat Malik,

Ethnic conflict, international dispute (Karachi: Oxford University Press,

2001), p. 208.

21. The decision was predicated on military strategy at the time that rested on

the theory that East Pakistan’s defence lay in West Pakistan and that, as

such, the army would remain heavily concentrated in the West. Though

some senior military commanders questioned the wisdom of the strategy

and also recognized the political costs incurred by fuelling Bengali ‘appre-

hensions … about the inadequacy of their defence’, the military leadership

was reluctant to change course. See Nawaz, Crossed swords, pp. 240–41.

22. Raunaq Jahan, Pakistan: the failure of national integration (New York:

Columbia University Press, 1972), pp. 166. See also Talbot, Pakistan,

p. 119.

23. Bhutto’s ardent support for Kashmir was never widely espoused in Sind

and must be seen as a reflection, above all, of his desire to consolidate his

national standing and neutralize any suggestion that he represented Sindhi

nationalism.

pp. [186–188]

NOTES

246

24. Waseem, ‘Dialectic between domestic politics and foreign policy’ in

Jaffrelot (ed.), Pakistan, p. 267.

25. Mehtab Ali Shah, The foreign policy of Pakistan: ethnic impacts on diplo-

macy, 1971–1994 (London: I. B. Tauris, 1997), pp. 83, 107.

26. Ibid., p. 145.

27. See Sana Haroon, Frontiers of faith: Islam in the Indo-Afghan borderland

(London: Hurst, 2007), pp. 179–85, 197–215.

28. Nasr, ‘National identities’ in Paul (ed.), The India-Pakistan conflict,

p. 180.

29. For a fine survey of the extent of Pakistan’s liabilities at independence see,

Talbot, Pakistan, pp. 95–111. See also Jalal, The state of martial law,

pp. 25–44.

30. According to Ahmed Rashid: ‘Musharraf had calculated that India would

never escalate the [Kargil] conflict for fear it could lead to an unsheathing

of nuclear weapons. He expected the United States to step in and mediate

a ceasefire, after which Pakistan could demand talks on Kashmir.’ In the

event, Rashid concludes, ‘Pakistan lost on all counts. Rather than high-

lighting the Kashmir dispute. Musharraf’s adventurism had ensured that

Kashmir was further eclipsed and that India would win the propaganda

war’. See Rashid, Descent in to chaos, p. 41–42. A more benign version of

events is presented by Nawaz, who observes that while ‘there are clearly

many sides to the story of the [Kargil battle]’ [p. 510], one of its aims

(apparently endorsed by Prime Minister Sharif at the time), was ‘the idea

of raising the political temperature of political discussions on Kashmir

with India’ [p.508 510]. See, Nawaz, Crossed swords. Unlike Rashid,

Nawaz is more than willing to accept the view that ‘the Kargil infiltration

plan was a resounding [military] success’ [p. 515] and far less forthcoming

about the irreparable damage caused by the military decision over Kargil

to Pakistan’s already fragile image as a responsible nuclear power.

31. See Robert Wirsing, Pakistan’s security under Zia, 1977–88: the policy

imperatives of a peripheral Asian state (Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1991),

p. 114. See also, Shaikh, ‘Pakistan’s nuclear bomb’, p. 47.

32. Cohen, The idea of Pakistan, p. 88.

33. This has been recently been reiterated in a strong (and strongly worded)

account by Tariq Ali, who observes that ‘the new rulers of Pakistan devel-

oped an early communal awareness that to survive they had to rent their

country’ to the highest bidder, namely the United States. Since then, he

argues, the United States has used its position as paymaster to ensure that

Pakistan’s foreign policy serves American rather than Pakistani interests.

See Tariq Ali, The duel: Pakistan on the flight path of American power

(London: Simon and Schuster, 2008), p. 195. While Ali makes a convinc-

ing case he tends to underestimate Pakistan’s own skilful manipulation of

its relations with the United States that has allowed Pakistan to borrow

power to sustain its historical claim to a valid national identity and to

advance its own strategic agenda against India.

pp. [188–190]

NOTES

247

34. According to US Congressional sources, ‘a total of about US$16.5 billion

in direct, overt US aid went to Pakistan from 1947 through to 2007,

including some US$4.5 billion for military programmes. Since the 2001

renewal of large US assistance packages and reimbursement for militarized

counterterrorism efforts, Pakistan will by the end of FY 2008 have

received more than US$11 billion, the majority of this in the form of coa-

lition support reimbursements , with another US$3.5 billion for economic

purposes and nearly US$2.2 billion for security related programmes.’ See

Congressional Research Service Report for Congress, Pakistan-US rela-

tions by Alan Kronstadt, updated 25 August 2008, Library of Congress,

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL33498.pdf p. 89.

35. See, Dennis Kux, The United States and Pakistan, 1947–2000: disen-

chanted allies (Washington & Baltimore: Woodrow Wilson Centre & The

Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), p. 16.

36. See, Robert J. Mcmahon, The Cold War on the periphery: the United

States, India, and Pakistan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994),

pp. 106–08.

37. Ibid. p. 17.

38. Kux, The United States and Pakistan, p. 20.

39. See, Sisir Gupta, A study in India-Pakistan Relations (New Delhi: Asia

Publishing House, 1966), p. 440.

40. Jinnah quoted in Kux, The United States and Pakistan, p. 20.

41. McMahon, The Cold War on the periphery, pp. 143–53.

42. Pakistan of course understood this. In April 1950 Pakistan’s Prime Min-

ister Liaquat Ali Khan, during his first official visit to the United States,

formally mooted the idea of a US-sponsored backed territorial guarantee

for Pakistan, claiming it would free up Pakistani troops for use in Korea

as well as, eventually, against a possible Soviet threat in the Middle East.

But this tempting proposal received short-shrift owing to fierce opposition

from Britain, which warned the United States against alienating India. See

Jalal, The state of martial rule, p. 111.

43. Kux, The United States and Pakistan, p. 13.

44. See Liaquat Ali Khan, Pakistan: the heart of Asia (Cambridge, Mass: Har-

vard University Press, 1951), p. 83. See also, S.M. Burke and Lawrence

Ziring, Pakistan’s foreign policy: an historical analysis (New York:

Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 123.

45. Thomas Perry Thornton, ‘Pakistan: fifty years of insecurity’ in Selig Har-

rison, Paul Kreisberg and Dennis Kux (eds), India and Pakistan: the first

fifty years (Washington & Cambridge: Woodrow Wilson Press and Cam-

bridge University Press, 1999), p. 171.

46. Thornton, ‘Pakistan’ in Harrison (et al.), eds. India and Pakistan, p. 173.

47. Burke and Ziring, Pakistan’s foreign policy, p. 66.

48. Pakistan’s Governor-General, Ghulam Mohammad, quoted in Jalal, The

state of martial rule, p. 128.

49. Pakistan’s Governor-General, Ghulam Mohammad, quoted in Kux, The

United States and Pakistan , p. 60.

pp. [191–195]

NOTES

248

50. Kux, The United States and Pakistan, p. 143. Much was also made at the

time by Pakistan of China’s much trumpeted but never realized ultimatum

to India in 1965 to dismantle a string of border posts and to return 800

sheep and 59 Chinese yaks that India was alleged to have kidnapped. See,

Bennett Jones, Pakistan: eye of the storm, p. 79.

51. For an insider’s view of these unrealistic expectations see Sultan Moham-

mad Khan, Memories and reflections of a Pakistani diplomat (London:

London Centre for Pakistan studies, 1998), pp. 368–69, 343–48.

52. For discussion of these and other compulsions at the time see, Adrian Levy

and Catherine Scott-Clark, Deception: Pakistan, the United States and the

global nuclear weapons conspiracy (London: Atlantic Books, 2007),

pp. 11–137. See also, Shaikh, ‘Pakistan’s nuclear bomb, pp. 42–48

53. See, Haidar Nizamani, The roots of rhetoric: politics of nuclear weapons

in India and Pakistan (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2000), p. 72.

54. This relationship of mutual deception has been most comprehensively

explored by Levy and Scott-Clark, who argue that the United States

actively connived in concealing the truth about Pakistan’s nuclear weap-

ons capability on the dangerous assumption that it exercised enough influ-

ence over Pakistan to control its consequences. See, Levy and Scott-Clark,

Deception. According to Kux, there was a ‘tacit understanding’ during the

Reagan administration for much of the 1980s that the United Statas ‘could

live with Pakistan’s nuclear programme as long as Islamabad does not

explode a bomb’. Kux, The United States and Pakistan, p. 257.

55. A.Z. Hilali, US-Pakistan relationship: Soviet invasion of Afghanistan

(London: Ashgate, 2005), pp. 69–70.

56. Ibid., 70.

57. See, Craig Baxter, ‘Pakistan becomes prominent in the international arena’

in Shahid Javed Burki and Craig Baxter (eds), Pakistan under the military:

eleven years of Zia ul Haq (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1991),

pp. 137–153.

58. This was squarely recognized by Musharraf. Explaining his decision to

withdraw Pakistan’s support for the Taliban, he acknowledges that ‘I also

analyzed our national interest. First India had already tried to step in by

offering its bases to the US. If we did not join the US, it would accept

India’s offer. What would happen then? India would gain a golden oppor-

tunity with regard to Kashmir … Second, the security of our strategic

assets would be jeopardized. We did not want to lose or damage the mili-

tary parity that we had achieved with India by becoming a nuclear weap-

ons state.’ See Parvez Musharraf, In the line of fire: a memoir (London:

Simon and Schuster, 2006), p. 202

59. Olivier Roy, ‘The Taliban: a strategic tool for Pakistan’ in Jaffrelot (ed.),

Pakistan: nationalism without nation?, p. 151.

60. The Durand Line is named the British plenipotentiary, Sir Mortimer

Durand, who negotiated its demarcation in 1893.

61. For a detailed historical background see Mahnaz Ispahani, Roads and

rivals: the political uses of access in the borderlands of Asia (Ithaca, NY:

pp. [196–201]

NOTES

249

Cornell University Press, 1989), pp. 83–144. See also Leon Poullada,

‘Pushtunistan: Afghan domestic politics and relations with Pakistan’ in

Ainslee T. Embree (ed.), Pakistan’s western borderlands: the transforma-

tion of a political order (Durham,NC: Academic Press, 1977), pp. 126–44

and David Loyn, Butcher & bolt: Two hundred years of foreign engage-

ment in Afghanistan (London: Hutchinson, 2008), pp.125–42.

62. Poullada, ‘Pashtunistan’ in Embree (ed.), Pakistan’s western borderlands,

p. 137.

63. See, S.M.M. Qureshi, ‘Pashtunistan: the frontier dispute between Afghani-

stan and Pakistan, Pacific Affairs, Vol. 39, no. 1/2 (Spring-Summer, 1966),

p. 102.

64. Poullada, ‘Pashtunistan’, p. 134.

65. Qureshi. ‘Pakhtunistan’ pp. 104–05. The most passionate advocate of

Pashtun nationalism was the Pashtun leader, Abdul Ghaffar Khan or Bad-

shah Khan, also known to his followers as the Frontier Gandhi for his

heady mix of Islamic rhetoric with Gandhian principles of non-violence.

Opposed to Jinnah’s plans for Pakistan, his quasi-political movement, the

Khudai Khidmatgars (Servants of God) rejected allegiance to both India

and Pakistan and pressed instead for a third choice of forming a separate

political entity, Pakhtoonkhwa (land of the Pakhtuns) to unite Pashtuns

from both sides of the Durand Line. See Mukulika Banerjee, The Pathan

unarmed: opposition and memory in the north west frontier (Oxford:

James Currey, 20), pp. 167–91. Closely watched by Afghanistan, Khan’s

defiant stance encouraged Afghan leaders to press for a fourth option:

union with Afghanistan. Though couched in the language of self-determi-

nation, it clearly envisaged a Pashtun state on the territory of British India

that would be friendly to Afghanistan. See, Amin Saikal, Modern

Afghanistn: a history of struggle and survival (London: I.B. Tauris, 2004),

p. 113. The hope was that, ‘before long it [Afghanistan] would be able to

incorporate a state of this kind in its own territory’—thus serving as the

mirror image of policies that would come later to be associated Pakistan’s

Afghan strategy. See, L.F. Rushbrook Williams, The state of Pakistan,

London: Faber and Faber, 1962), p. 66. More recently Barnett Rubin, a

leading authority on Afghanistan, has also suggested that Afghanistan’s

argument in favour of an independent Pashtunistan rested on the assump-

tion that ‘it would have been integrated into Afghanistan’. See, Barnett

Rubin, The fragmentation of Afghanistan: state formation and collapse in

the international system (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2

edition,

2002), p. 62.

66. Quoted in Kalim Bahadur, ‘Pakistan’s policy towards Afghanistan’ in K.P.

Misra (ed.), Afghanistan in crisis (New York: Advent Books, 1981),

pp. 92–93.

67. See Barnett Rubin and Abubakar Siddique, Resolving the Pakistan-

Afghanistan stalemate, Special Report no. 176 (Washington: United States

Institute of Peace, October 2006), p. 7.

pp. [201–203]

NOTES

250

68. Saikal, Modern Afghanistan, p. 102.

69. The frustrating course of the movement for a United Bengal and the hos-

tility it aroused among sections of the Bengali political classes on both

sides of the communal divide in the run up to Partition are discussed in

Harun ur Rashid, The foreshadowing of Bangladesh: Bengal Muslim

League and Muslim politics, 1936–1947 (Dhaka: Asiatic Society of Bang-

ladesh, 1987) and Joya Chatterji, Bengali divided: Hindu communalism

and Partition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).

70. See statement by Pakistan Foreign Minister, Manzur Qadir, The Times,

9 March 1961.

71. See, Government of Pakistan, White Paper on the reality of Pakhtun issue

(Rawalpindi, Press and Publication, 1962), p. 18.

72. Ibid., pp. 18–19.

73. Olaf Caroe, The Pathans (London: Macmillan, 1958), p. 437.

74. Talbot, Pakistan, p. 252. According to others, the process of co-opting

Pashtuns was already in train by the 1960s, when some Pashtuns along

with Punjabis and Mohajirs emerged as the main beneficiaries of the

state’s economic and social policies at the expense of the Bengali, the Sin-

dhis and the Baluch. See Yunus Samad, ‘Pakistan: from minority rights to

majoritarianism’ in Gyanendra Pandey and Yunus Samad, Faultlines of

nationhood, p. 101

75. See, Siddiqa, Military Inc., p. 59.

76. Tahir Amin, Ethno-national movements of Pakistan (Islamabad: Institute

of Policy Studies, 1993), pp. 82, 175.

77. On 30 October 2008 the ruling Awami National Party (ANP) in the

NWFP announced that it had ordered all official correspondence for the

existing province of the NWFP to be conducted in the name of

‘Pakhtunkhwa’. See Daily Times (Lahore), 31 October 2008. This fell

short of the restructuring of the Pakistani state demanded by more radical

Pashtun groups, which had pressed for all Pashtun regions, including the

Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), the NWFP and northern

Baluchistan to be amalgamated into a new province of’ Pakhtunkhwa’.

See Rubin and Siddique, ‘Resolving the Pakistan-Afghanistan stalemate’,

p. 14.

78. Haqqani, Pakistan: between mosque and military, pp. 166–67.

79. Rashid, Taliban, p. 186.

80. See Rashid, Descent into chaos, pp. 110–15.

81. Olivier Roy, ‘The Taliban: a strategic tool for Pakistan’, in Jaffrelot (ed.),

Pakistan: nationalism without nation?, p. 151.

82. See Gilles Dorronsoro, Revolution unending: Afghanistan 1979 to the

present (London: Hurst, 2000), pp. 266–68; 272–78 and Rashid, Taliban,

pp. 17–30; 82–94. See also, William Maley (ed.), Fundamentalism reborn?

Afghanistan and the Taliban (London: Hurst, 1998).

83. Rashid, Taliban, p. 187.

84. Among those, who have called in to question the credibility of Pakistan’s

official position on the Durand Line is Ahmed Rashid. He maintains that

pp. [203–208]

NOTES

251

Pakistan’s military, which controls Pakistan’s Afghan policy, has never

insisted on pressing for the recognition of the Durand Line by Afghani-

stan. This reluctance, he argues, is a legacy of the 1980s when General Zia

promoted the vision of a Pakistani influenced-region extending from

Afghanistan into Central Asia that ‘depended upon an undefined border

with Afghanistan, so that the army could justify any future interference in

that country and beyond’. See Rashid, Descent into chaos, pp. 267–68.

p. [208]

252

EPILOGUE

It would appear that history, politics and geostrategic compulsions

have all conspired to hasten the decline of Pakistan and deepen its

uncertainty as a nation. Yet as this study has sought to demonstrate, it

is the country’s problematic and contested relationship with Islam that

has most decisively frustrated its quest for a coherent national identity

and for stability as a nation-state capable of absorbing the challenge of

its rich and diverse society.

The ambiguous but ample role afforded to Islam in the creation of

Pakistan (especially in the years immediately leading up to the coun-

try’s independence in 1947) ensured that Islam would not only play a

part in moulding the constitutional complexion of the new state, but

also set the priorities of its public policy. That it had damaging politi-

cal, economic and social consequences had less to do with Islam as

such than with a perennial uncertainty about its influence over Paki-

stan’s identity as well as with the lack of consensus over the very terms

of Islam. It is this contestation over the multiple meanings of Islam

that accounts today for the doubts about the meaning of Pakistan and

the significance of being Pakistani.

Seen from this angle, Pakistan was in trouble from the start. Never-

theless, it is by no means certain that the country has exhausted all the

resources needed to develop a more robust identity grounded in rules

of political negotiation rather than on the questionable assumptions of

a ready made Islamic consensus. Indeed, in recent years, Pakistan has

witnessed enormous changes—changes that signal the determination

of its people, if not of its governing elite, to be more receptive to new

ways of imagining their country’s identity. This identity, while still for

the most part predicated on opposition to India—an opposition that

has particularly suited the interests of a politically dominant military,

is now under fresh scrutiny. An emancipated media, a newly galvanized

EPILOGUE

253

legal fraternity, an astonishingly vibrant artistic community, a clutch

of combative historians and human rights activists are all in the fore-

front of new trends. Although their voices are far from being domi-

nant, they seek nothing less than to restore to Pakistan its identity as

an integral, rather than an exclusive, part of the South Asian region.

Their endeavours have been responsible for what some have (per-

haps too optimistically) described as a paradigm shift, which has

encouraged ever larger numbers of Pakistanis to begin to conceive of

their country’s purpose and of its Muslim identity as rooted in the

common history of South Asia. This re-engagement with the history of

the region rather than with religion has also prompted a fresh under-

standing of local dynamics that are now judged to be as conducive to

co-operation as to conflict. The spread of Islamist violence in recent

years has reinforced these perceptions. Many Pakistanis now believe

that the magnitude of the threat posed to their country by such vio-

lence is so immense that its future can no longer be guaranteed without

the support and co-operation of its neighbours, including erstwhile

foes, notably India.

But tilting the balance more firmly towards cooperation rather than

conflict as the basis for a new understanding of Pakistan will be a

demanding exercise. The most urgent (but also the most ambitious)

objective will involve changes in the country’s political dispensation.

For too long it has favoured the preferences of a military leadership

that has exploited the uncertainty over the country’s national identity

to pursue confrontation with Pakistan’s regional neighbours and to

consolidate its grip on power. While the military’s success in securing

its objectives owed much to its coercive capabilities, its gains have also

been facilitated by support from Pakistan’s political classes. Their own

ambivalence and uncertainty about the relationship between Islam and

the state has led them all too easily to seek the protection of successive

military regimes. This chronic uncertainty has been no less to blame for

their tendency (on the rare occasions when they held power in the guise

of elected civilian governments) to fall back on authoritarian rule in

order to establish a monopoly over political and religious expression.

Breaking this vicious cycle of authoritarian rule will not be easy. The

military can be expected jealously to protect its privileges while the

political classes will be loath to forfeit the benefits that have flowed

from their partnership with the praetorians. Their symbiotic rela-

tionship, which has so damaged Pakistan’s prospects of securing

EPILOGUE

254

governments by consent, could now be poised to exact an even heavier

price. Far from serving as the glue that held the country together in the

absence of a consensus over Islam, the military and its allies among the

political classes now preside (much as they did during the disintegra-

tion of the country in 1971) over the collapse of the state’s authority

across large parts of the country that are controlled by so-called ‘non-

state’ actors. The mortal threat presented by these developments could

serve as precisely the catalyst for a fresh alignment of forces—one

driven as much by the desire for change as by the awareness that any

further division of the country would be terminal.

Such speculation may of course prove to be futile. The troubles of a

nuclear-armed Pakistan are now a matter of global concern and the

danger of state failure is not an option that the international commu-

nity is willing to countenance. What is certain is that the international

community is determined to secure Pakistan against all risks—includ-

ing those of political reform. It is this rather than any reluctance to

pursue change inside Pakistan that is likely to act as a brake on the

much-needed overhaul of the country’s political system. Though many

abroad recognize that an unreformed Pakistan could eventually pose a

greater threat to world peace than one able to call on the genuine con-

sent of all its citizens (whatever their ethnic, religious and sectarian

persuasion), most Western governments still remain fearful of what

such reform could entail in a pivotal state, whose fate is now widely

believed to determine global security.

This is not to suggest that the international community is solely con-

cerned to restrain the transformation in Pakistan. On the contrary:

there is now strong pressure on Pakistan to re-orient itself away from

its perennial stance of confrontation with India. The aim is not only to

ease relations with New Delhi, but to distance Pakistan from the

appeal of a type of militant Islam that is at odds with Islamic traditions

indigenous to South Asia. Historically, these traditions, characterised

by their strong syncretistic bias in favour of exploring common ground

between Islam and India’s indigenous religions, have been judged to be

especially responsive to the region’s culturally plural character. Many

now also recognize that they may offer the best hope yet of ensuring

that the affirmation of cultural difference does not become a source for

discrimination.

Reviving these traditions, with their strong syncretistic foundations,

could alleviate the pressures on Pakistan. By recasting its enduring

EPILOGUE

255

quest for religious consensus in terms of a cultural heritage rooted in

the discourse of Indian Islam, it may yet salvage a pluralist alternative

consistent with democratic citizenship. Though any such endeavour

will be forced to confront (and adapt to) the challenge of orthodoxy in

Pakistan, it remains the only meaningful model for a country that seeks

still to project an identity founded on reconciling Islam’s universalist

message with respect for the rich diversity of its peoples.

256

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Farzana Shaikh is an Associate Fellow of the Asia Programme at the

Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) in London,

where she directs the Pakistan Study Group. After receiving a Ph.D in

Political Science from Columbia University she was elected to a

Research Fellowship in Politics at Clare Hall Cambridge. Since then

she has lectured at universities in the United Kingdom, Europe and the

United States, and has commented widely on Pakistan for the media in

Britain and abroad. She is the author of Community and Consensus in

Islam: Muslim representation in colonial India, 1860–1947 (Cam-

bridge University Press, 1989) and has written extensively on the his-

tory and politics of Muslim South Asia.