Six-point Programme a charter of demands enunciated by the awami league for removing disparity between the two wings of Pakistan and to put an end to the internal colonial rule of West Pakistan in East Bengal.
The Indo-Pak War of 1965 ended with the execution of Taskent Treaty. To the old grievances of economic disparity added the complain of negligence and indifference of central government towards the defence of East Pakistan. Bangabandhu sheikh mujibur rahman was vocal on this issue.
The leaders of the opposition parties of West Pakistan convened a national convention at Lahore on 6 February 1966 with a view to ascertain the post-Taskent political trend. Bangabandhu reached Lahore on 4 February along with the top leaders of Awami League, and the day following he placed the Six-point charter of demand before the subject committee as the demands of the people of East Pakistan. He created pressure to include his proposal in the agenda of the conference. The subject committee rejected the proposal of Bangabandhu. On the day following, the newspapers of West Pakistan published reports on the Six-point Programme, and Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was projected as a separatist. Consequently Sheikh Mujib abandoned the conference.
The Six-point Programme along with a proposal of movement for the realisation of the demands was placed before the meeting of the working committee of Awami League on 21 February 1966, and the proposal was carried out unanimously. A booklet on the Six-point Programme with introduction from Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and Tajuddin Ahmad was published. Another booklet titled Amader Banchar Dabi: 6-dafa Karmasuchi (Our demands for existence: 6-points Programme) was published in the name of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and was distributed in the council meeting of Awami League held on 18 March 1966.
Six Points
1.
The Constitution should provide for a Federation of Pakistan in its true sense on the Lahore Resolution, and the parliamentary form of government with supremacy of a Legislature directly elected on the basis of universal adult franchise.
2.
The federal government should deal with only two subjects: Defence and Foreign Affairs, and all other residuary subjects shall be vested in the federating states.
3.
Two separate, but freely convertible currencies for two wings should be introduced; or if this is not feasible, there should be one currency for the whole country, but effective constitutional provisions should be introduced to stop the flight of capital from East to West Pakistan. Furthermore, a separate Banking Reserve should be established, and separate fiscal and monetary policy be adopted for East Pakistan.
4.
The power of taxation and revenue collection shall be vested in the federating units and the federal centre will have no such power on the issue. The federation will be entitled to a share in the state taxes to meet its expenditures.
5.
There should be two separate accounts for the foreign exchange earnings of the two wings; the foreign exchange requirements of the federal government should be met by the two wings equally or in a ratio to be fixed; indigenous products should move free of duty between the two wings, and the Constitution should empower the units to establish trade links with foreign countries.
6.
East Pakistan should have a separate militia or paramilitary force.
The opposition leaders of West Pakistan looked at Mujib’s Six-point Programme as a device to disband Pakistan, and hence they rejected his proposal outright. The Ayub government projected Sheikh Mujib as a separatist and later instituted the agartala conspiracy case against him. He was arrested and put on trial. The case led to widespread agitation in East Pakistan culminating into the mass uprising of early 1969. Under public pressure, the government was forced to release him unconditionally on 22 February 1969.
The Awami League sought public mandate in favour of the Six-point Programme in the general elections of 1970 in which Sheikh Mujib received the absolute mandate from the people of East Pakistan in favour of his Six-point. But Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto refused to join the session of the National Assembly scheduled to be held on 3 March 1971 unless a settlement was reached between the two leaders beforehand. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his party sat in a protracted dialogue from 15 March 1971. The dialogue failed to produce any positive result. The army crackdown of 25 March sealed the fate of the Six-point including the fate of Pakistan. [Ashfaq Hossain]
June 7 remains a milestone in the history of Bangladesh.
On this day in 1966, the people of what was then East Pakistan observed a general strike in the province in support of the Awami League’s Six-Point programme of autonomy announced a few months earlier by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
The strike, in the course of which a number of individuals were killed in police firing and a number of others were injured, was a powerful instance of the Bangalees making their displeasure about their place in Pakistan known to the authorities.
But even as the general strike, or hartal, kept the province in its grip throughout the day, the central leaders of the Awami League — Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Tajuddin Ahmed, Syed Nazrul Islam and others — stayed behind bars. The strike would be spearheaded by two young Awami League politicians, Mizanur Rahman Chowdhury and Amena Begum.
Mujib, who would not become Bangabandhu till three years later, had been placed in detention under the Defence of Pakistan Rules on 8 May 1966. The reason was not hard to understand: Field Marshal Mohammad Ayub Khan, president of Pakistan, had made clear his opinion on the Six Points. He told the country that the purveyors of the Six Points would be dealt with in the language of weapons.
Ayub Khan was not the only individual who spotted a threat to Pakistan’s unity should the Six Points be acknowledged. His soon-to-be-out foreign minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto challenged Mujib early in the year to a public debate at Dhaka’s Paltan Maidan on the Six Points. It was Tajuddin Ahmed who accepted the challenge on Mujib’s behalf. In the event, Bhutto did not turn up.
The Six-Point programme included the following:
1. Pakistan would have a federal structure of government based on spirit of the Lahore Resolution of 1940, with a parliament elected on the basis of universal adult franchise;
2. The central government would have authority only in defence and foreign affairs and all other subjects would be handled by the federating units of the state of Pakistan;
3. There would be two freely convertible currencies for the two wings of Pakistan or two separate reserve banks for the two regions of the country;
4. The power of taxation and revenue collection would be vested in the federating units;
5. There would be two separate accounts for foreign exchange reserves for the two wings of Pakistan;
6. East Pakistan would have a separate militia or paramilitary force as a measure of its security.
Sheikh Mujibur Rahman planned to announce the Six Points at a conference of opposition political parties in Lahore in early February 1966. He was not permitted to do so by the other participants, including the chief of the Awami League at the time, Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan. They found the plan too incendiary to be articulated. Rebuffed, Mujib announced the plan at a news conference in Lahore the following day, February 5, 1966.
Mujib’s move raised howls of protest all over Pakistan. The civil-military bureaucracy and politicians straddling both government and opposition circles were quick to dub the Six Points as a secessionist plot to dismember Pakistan. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s arrest in May 1966, followed by the 7 June strike, swiftly led to circumstances where the Pakistan government opted for repression in East Pakistan. Tofazzal Hossain Manik Mia, the respected editor of the Bangla daily Ittefaq, was arrested on June 16 over his support for the Six Points. The next day, a ban was clamped on his newspaper.
Events would move fast after June 1966. In January 1968, Mujib would be charged with conspiracy to break up Pakistan. The case, which would become notorious as the Agartala Conspiracy Case, would eventually be withdrawn under public pressure on February 22, 1969.
A day after his release, Mujib would be honoured as Bangabandhu (friend of Bengal) at a historic rally in Dhaka.
Elegantly dressed in a suit and wearing a hat, Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah is seen relaxing on a bench during a visit to Simla. | Photo: PID
The following are excerpts from an article under the same headline that was published in Dawn on December 25, 1976, as part of a supplement marking the Quaid-i-Azam’s birth centenary.
ALL those who knew Quaid-i-Azam intimately, know very well that he did never crack a joke merely for the sake of raising a laugh. He was too self-controlling and disciplined a man to waste time on little things. One thing he valued most was, Time. Time, he knew, can never return. Shakespeare said: “Oh! Call back yesterday / bid time return”. But Quaid-i-Azam never had the need to do so. He used every minute of his life as carefully as he wanted to. Punctuality, keeping appointments and never wasting a moment was his second nature.
He was [once] arguing an appeal before the full bench of Bombay High Court. He argued the whole day. The working time was up to 5pm. The judges asked: “Mr. Jinnah, how much more time would you need to finish your side?” He replied: “My Lord, hardly 15 minutes.”
Then the senior judge [on the bench] said: “Could you continue for a few minutes longer today and finish your address?” Normally, when a High Court judge says so, no lawyer would decline. But not so with Mohammad Ali Jinnah. “My Lord, I would love to do so, but I have a very important appointment which I can just make in time if I leave the court at once.”
The junior-most judge sitting on the left side of the chief justice whispered to him to insist that the case be finished on the day. “That is all right, Mr. Jinnah. We also have an appointment, but we like to finish this today so that judgment can be delivered on Monday.” Out came the reply from this great lawyer, shooting like a gun: “My Lords, the difference between your Lordships and myself is that (raising his voice) I keep my appointments.”
The three judges, Engilshmen, all went more red in their face than they already were. They all rose as if in a huff. Everybody got up and while the advocates bowed fully, the judges seemed only to nod. It was thought that the solicitor, who had instructed Jinnah, felt that this may affect the result of the case. The next morning the judges appeared in a very good mood.
Advocacy
Mr Jinnah was absolutely on the top of the profession. Therefore, naturally many lawyers tried their best to be allowed to work with Mohammad Ali Jinnah but very few could be taken. Mr. Frank Mores, then Editor of Indian Express, once wrote: “Watch him in the court room as he argues his case. Few lawyers can command a more attentive audience. No man is more adroit in presenting his case. If to achieve the maximum result with minimum effort is the hallmark of artistry, Mr. Jinnah is an artist in his craft. He likes to get down to the bare bones of his brief in stating the essentials of his case. His manner is masterly. The drab court rooms acquire an atmosphere as he speaks. Juniors crane their necks forward to follow every movement of his tall well-groomed figure. Senior counsel listen closely, the judge is all attention; such was the great status of this top lawyer.”
Once a very close friend whose request Mr. Jinnah could not decline came with his son who had just returned from England as a full-fledged barrister. He said: “Jinnah, please take my son in your chamber and make him a good lawyer.”
“Of course, yes,” said Jinnah. “He is welcomed to work in my chambers. I will teach him all I can. But I cannot transmit my brilliance to him”. Then slowly he added: “He must make his own brilliance.” This went into the heart of the young barrister and he worked so hard on the briefs and the law that one day he too became a great lawyer, but nowhere near the height of Mr. Jinnah.
People’s enthusiasm
It was around 1936-37 that Quaid-i-Azam came to Karachi and appeared before the Chief Court of Sind, as it then was, and appeared in a very important case and three lawyers of Karachi appeared against him. He had made a name as a lawyer long ago and in politics also he figured as a giant personality.
Consequently the rush to the court room consisting of lawyers, students and politicians was so great that the court room was full to the brim. The entrance to the court room had to be closed to stop any noise, so that judicial work could be carried on with a decorum and dignity befitting the occasion. But at the end of every hour, the door was ordered to be opened so that those who wanted to go out or come in could do so. When the first opening of the door at 12 O’clock occurred there was such a noise of rush that it appeared that the judges would lose their temper.
“My Lords,” said Jinnah in very sweet, melodious voice, “these are my admirers. Please do not mind. I hope you are not jealous.”
There was a beam of smile on the faces of judges and they appeared to be magnetically charmed by the words of the great persuasive man. The door remained opened and Quaid-i-Azam looked back on the crowd, raising his left hand indicating that he desired them to keep quiet. The atmosphere became absolute pin-drop silence as if by magic. The case proceeded for two days.
Quaid and students
The Quaid-i-Azam was fond of students. He loved them immensely. He always exhorted them to study hard. “Without education”, he said, “all is darkness. Seek the light of Education”. In particular, he was most attached to the Aligarh Muslim students. He used to visit the Aligarh University as often as he could. In fact, in his will, he left the entire residue of his property worth crores of rupees to be shared by the Aligarh University, Sind Madressah and Islamia College, Peshawar.
On one occasion at Aligarh after a hard day’s work of meeting people, addressing the students as he was sitting in a relaxed mood, he was told that one student, Mohammad Noman, was a very fine artist of mimicry. He could impersonate and talk or make a speech with all the mannerism of his subject. Quaid-i-Azam was told that this student could impersonate him to such a degree that if heard with closed eyes, Quaid-i-Azam will think that it was he himself who was speaking and he will think as if he himself was talking to Quaid-i-Azam.
Quaid-i-Azam sent for the student at once. The student asked for 10 minutes’ time to prepare himself. After 10 minutes the student turned up dressed in dark gray Sherwani, a Jinnah cap and a monocle, like Quaid-i-Azam. Of course, he could not look like Quaid-i-Azam, but the appearance on the whole was somewhat similar.
Then the student put on his monocle and addressed an imaginary audience. The voice, the words, the gestures, the look on his face and everything appeared like Quaid-i-Azam. In fact, if he had spoken behind a screen without being seen, the audience would have taken him to be Quaid-i-Azam speaking himself. Quaid-i-Azam was very much pleased with the performance. But when it was finished, the culmination came unexpectedly. Quaid-i-Azam took off his own cap and monocle and presented to the student, saying: “Now this will make it absolutely authentic.”
Purdah
In November, 1947, Quaid-i-Azam was in Lahore and he personally supervised operation of the rehabilitation of refugees. One day Quaid-i-Azam was invited to a girls college. The girls and ladies of the staff did not observe purdah as he addressed them.
When back at Government House, Quaid-i-Azam was in a humorous mood and wanted to know why the ladies did not observe purdah. His sister, Miss Fatima Jinnah, said: “That was because they regarded you as an old man.”
“That is not a compliment to me,” said Quaid-i-Azam. Liaquat Ali Khan, who was present, said: “That was because they regarded you as a father”.
“Yes, that makes some sense.”
Man of character
Quaid-i-Azam was a man of such a strong character that he could not be easily attracted toward anyone, including women. Excepting his wife, there is no instance whatsoever of anyone at whom he glanced in love.
Once in Bombay, where he had gone to an English club to relax after hard day’s work, he played cards. The game was called Forfeit. It was played among four persons – two gentlemen and two ladies. Tradition required that the lady who lost the game must offer to be kissed by the gentlemen who won. The lady indeed was very attractive and she offered Quaid-i-Azam to be kissed by him.
Quaid-i-Azam said: “My lady, I waived my rights. I cannot kiss a lady unless I fall in love with her.”
Rose between thorns
On the 14th day of August, 1947, Lord Mountbatten with his wife came to Karachi for the investiture ceremony of the Governor-General of Pakistan. After Quaid-i-Azam was sworn in, the new State of Pakistan was handed over to him legally, constitutionally and with proper ceremony.
Lord Mountbatten proposed that Quiad-i-Azam be photographed with Lord and Lady Mountbatten. Quaid took it for granted, that, as usual etiquette requires, the lady will stand between the gentlemen. So he told Lady Mountbatten: “Now you will be photographed as the rose between the two thorns”. But Mountbatten insisted that Jinnah should stand in the middle. He said that being a Governor-General etiquette requires that Quaid-i-Azam should be in the centre. Naturally, Quaid-i-Azam yielded.
And when Quaid-i-Azam stood between the two, Mountbatten said to him: “Now you are the rose between two thorns.” He was right.
Whenever Quaid-i-Azam was cornered in a difficult situation, he proved greater than his opponent. His political enemies always wanted to publicise that Quaid-i-Azam was always with the Congress, but when the opportunity came he switched over to Muslim League.
In December, 1940, Quaid-i-Azam visited London along with the Viceroy and Congress leaders. He furnished details about Pakistan issue and quoted facts and figures as to how the Congress had betrayed the trust of the Muslims. One correspondent said to him: “Oh, you were also in the Congress once.” Jinnah retorted: “Oh, my dear friend, at one time I was in a primary school as well!”
Trick countered
In 1946, political agitation both by Congress and Muslim League had reached its zenith. The British government, always master of the art of side-tracking the main issue, suggested to Jawaharlal Nehru that as very soon India will be handed over to them, so as a beginning some Hindus and some Muslims should be taken in the Interim Cabinet. Before that there was no such thing. The body which was functioning was the Viceroy’s Executive Council. But Jawaharlal Nehru insisted that it should be called a Cabinet. Example was shown that the Viceroy himself calls it a Cabinet.
Quaid-i-Azam refused to do so. He said the Cabinet is a constitutional body the members of which are selected from the members of Parliament by the leader of majority. Here, there is no such thing. It is purely an Executive Council and it cannot become a Cabinet merely because you call it a Cabinet. A donkey does not become an elephant because you call it an elephant.
Call for honesty
Gandhi always used to speak about his inner voice. He seemed to create an impression that there is something spiritual within him, which, in time of necessity, gives him guidance and he obeys it and calls it his inner voice. As a matter of fact Gandhi often changed his opinion and suddenly took the opposite stand. Quaid-i-Azam called it a somersault.
Once having committed himself to a certain point of view, he took a dramatically opposite stance. On the next day, Gandhi maintained that his inner voice dictated him to take the opposite view. Quaid-i-Azam lost his temper and shouted: “To hell with this Inner Voice. Why can’t he be honest and admit that he had made a mistake.”
In June 1947, partition was announced by Lord Mountbatten. He insisted on an immediate acceptance of the plan. Quaid-i-Azam said he was not competent to convey acceptance of his own accord and that he had to consult his Working Committee. The Viceroy said that if such was his attitude, the Congress would refuse acceptance and Muslim League would lose its Pakistan. Quaid-i-Azam shrugged his shoulders and said: “What must be, must be.”
In July 1948, Mr. M. A. H. Ispahani went to Ziarat where Quaid-i-Azam was seriously ill. He pleaded with Quaid-i-Azam that he should take complete rest as his life was most precious. Quaid-i-Azam smiled and said: “My boy there was a time when soon after partition and until 1948, I was worried whether Pakistan would survive. Many unexpected and terrible shocks were administered by India soon after we parted company with them. But we pulled through and nothing will ever worry us so much again.
“I have no worries now. Men may come and men may go. But Pakistan is truly and firmly established and will go on with Allah’s grace forever”.
The equation between Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan more or less decided everything else in the country from 2013 onwards. In the photograph above, Nawaz Sharif is seen here visiting the Banigala residence of Imran Khan in early 2014 in order to build a consensus on security issues. Just months later, the only consensus between the two was on not having a consensus over anything.
Making new futures
By S. Akbar Zaidi
IN July this year when the editorial team at Dawn commissioned a series of special reports on the 70 Years of Pakistan, it chose topics that one would expect. An article on the Founding Fathers, on Ayub, two on Bhutto, one each on Zia and Benazir, and so on. It had planned the series well before commissioning specific writers, and at a time when Pakistan’s politics was probably settled and secure in the leadership of prime minister Nawaz Sharif who was looking forward to an imminent fourth term following the elections next year. The last theme chosen by the Dawn team, to which this essay responds, was, surprisingly, the very prescient ‘At the Crossroads’.
There is no way that in July, the editorial team could have predicted that by the end of the year, Pakistan might, indeed, be at a major ‘crossroads’ yet again. Clearly, the team knew something I didn’t, or had a crystal ball which told them the future. Either that or they played into the permanent cliché which defines Pakistan’s politics, its economy and society, that Pakistan is forever at some crossroads or the other even when things seem quite settled and appear to be going well.
The supporters of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) popularised – almost legitimised – the sit-in, holding the federal capital hostage for any uncertain stretch of time.
It is this particular unknowability, or the permanence of being stuck at the crossroads, which, for many political and social observers, defines Pakistan. Apart from these themes, there are pundits who are always finding ‘fault lines’ somewhere in Pakistan’s present, while others think that Pakistan moves only from crisis to crisis, yet others insist that Pakistan and Pakistanis are ‘resilient’, so bring on another trauma or crisis, and Pakistan will, as they say, ‘muddle through’.
There is an ahistorical understanding amongst many writers about how events and processes unfold. For others, who come up with a long wishlist of ‘what needs to be done’, there is absolutely no understanding of material conditions and relations which allow for certain developments to take place. Many react to immediate events without understanding what the causes for such events are, and fail to locate them in their specific context. Historians repeatedly emphasise that context matters, that it is critical.
But there is also the converse of this argument, that for social scientists who like to locate their understanding on material and social forces, Pakistan is perhaps one of the most unpredictable places in the world, where events emerge not just to surprise, but to completely disorient our understanding of possible outcomes based on material forces. Social scientists use the term ‘contingency’ for such unexpected events, but in the case of Pakistan, there seem to be far too many.
Just three examples from Pakistan’s very recent history would emphasise this point, that there are far too many ‘unknown unknowns’ (the enchanting term coined by Donald Rumsfeld), things which we could not have predicted or put into our calculations. In 1977, or again in 1999, when Generals Zia and Musharraf had taken over through coups dismissing democratically elected governments, one could not have imagined that they would have survived for a decade in power had it not been for unexpected events, both times related to the invasion of Afghanistan.
Both December 1979 and September 2001 were not events factored into our social, political and class analysis and understanding of Pakistan, and much of the understanding about Pakistani politics and society was unhelpful in explaining dynamic developments at that time.
Similarly, no one could have ever imagined that Asif Ali Zardari would be Pakistan’s president, but the circumstances following Benazir Bhutto’s assassination made something as impossible as that quite real. In each of these cases, the analysis by social scientists had to concede to the powerful hand of contingency and we were forced to only react to the events after the event. Pakistan’s past could not have been foretold.
IS THE PAST RELEVANT?
There are numerous people, including many scholars, who invoke the past as some ideal and idealised moment, hoping to resurrect it in the context of what Pakistan is today. There are those who want a morality and ethics based on the Prophet and his Companions’ time, arguing that only if we return to the values of that era, will we do justice to our existence today.
There are some who repeatedly cite the speeches made by Mr Jinnah, especially his August 11, 1947, speech, arguing that his was the call for tolerance and acceptance of different religious beliefs, if not for an outright call for some vague notion of secularism.
In more recent times, there are still a few who reminisce about Ayub Khan’s golden years wishing they were revived, and an even younger generation which wants Musharraf back and extol some of his perceived virtues – however, no one asks for a return of Zia or his times. Yet, none of these historical imaginaries, whether those which are well-intentioned or are ill-conceived, are possible in the current moment, for times, and their material conditions, have changed.
A ‘Jinnah’s Pakistan’ is not possible, for we have lived through a Zia’s Pakistan, and, after so many trysts with destiny, find ourselves in the post-Taliban moment. The contexts of such virtues have changed, for they cannot be mere idealistic thought experiments, but need to be examined in particular material social and political contexts. Jinnah’s famous speech was written in far more friendlier times, when around 12 per cent of the Pakistani population belonged to non-Muslim faiths. Today, that number is less than half of that, even after we have added to that list by declaring some communities non-Muslim. The notion of going to ‘your temple or church’ really doesn’t exist as an option after Zia. Pakistan has changed completely from the time of Mr Jinnah, or even of Mr Bhutto. Jinnah would weep at what many generations have done to the Pakistan he created.
AND WHAT OF THE FUTURE?
One of the first things one ought to learn about social sciences and in studying Pakistan is that we do not, and cannot, make predictions. When the 2013 elections were held, the Herald magazine conducted a poll of prominent political and social scientists to make their predictions (based on some analysis, of course) about the elections. In their foolish enthusiasm, many did, and were off the eventual results by not just a few seats, but by factors many times over.
IMRAN Khan and his Islamabad sit-in set in motion a movement that had its highs and lows not so much against the government as against the person of Nawaz Sharif, the prime minister.
In 2013, the electronic media was giving Imran Khan an almost certain chance to win the elections outright, and while some thought that Nawaz Sharif would win the largest number of seats, I do not recall any analyst predicting an outright majority for the PML-N.
Besides, even after his name appeared in the Panama Papers, there were very few analysts who thought that this would result in him being dismissed or disqualified. Predictions, especially about elections and political matters in Pakistan, are better left to astrologers and soothsayers, not to scholars trained in social and political sciences.
Yet, we also cannot be so irresponsible or complacent, and not venture forth speculating about the future, having some understanding and learning of material conditions and social processes. One can, at least, analyse class and social forces, look at changing regional and global factors, and, based on this, offer some analysis which, based on present conditions and contexts, would be valid.
One cannot control for the unknown unknowns, but we can make sense of where we are and possible future directions. These do not have to have predictive attributes and are merely speculative and conditional as well as contextual.
As mentioned above, less than six months ago, an emerging consensus was being formed that a Shahbaz-Nawaz victory looked close to certain in the Punjab and across Pakistan, barring some unforeseen circumstances. Those unforeseen circumstances took shape rather quickly, to become a very concrete case for Nawaz Sharif in the form of a trivial clause about a non-disclosure of an income (which wasn’t even received) at the time of filing his election papers in 2013, to bar him from contesting elections.
ONCE out of office in the wake of controversy around Panama Papers, Nawaz Sharif and daughter Maryam, among others in the family, had a tough time in and out of the courts.
The appointment of Qamar Bajwa as the new army chief, replacing the ever-popular Raheel Sharif, came across as a civilian victory with a smooth transition, clipping the wings of any ambition. Moreover, with the Zarb-i-Azb, followed by Radd-ul-Fasaad, it seemed that the military was finally sincere in breaking the mullah-military alliance.
Pakistan’s economy, too, was growing from strength to strength, with growth at a higher rate for every single year since Ishaq Dar became the finance minister, to be the highest in 11 years. Scores of international journals and newspapers were celebrating Pakistan’s transformation into a newly emerging and strengthening democracy with a buoyant middle class, and stabilising and increasing economic growth. Six months, it seems, is a rather long time in the history of Pakistan where so much which was built on since 2008, seems to have unravelled and come undone.
WHILE Imran and Nawaz played cat and mouse all through the tenure, the PPP, led by none other than Asif Ali Zardari, played the joker in the pack.
Nawaz Sharif has been forced out, Ishaq Dar is sent on leave, and the military has started giving numerous signals with clear political messages. First, there was that exchange with Ahsan Iqbal about a speech given by the COAS about the economy, and then there was the military’s central role in the Faizabad sit-in. What does one make of Pakistan’s future? At the crossroads? Again? Permanently?
Despite the recent intrusion into the political sphere by the military, yet again, and the dismissal of Nawaz Sharif, yet again, do not look like a script being repeated from the past. Far too much has changed, and old methods and tactics are unlikely to work. While old forces begin to bring back old politics and tried old methods, new forms of resistance and opposition have also emerged. Even the military is now often challenged, sometimes by the judiciary, more frequently by citizens themselves.
MAKING NEW FUTURES
NAWAZ continued to blow hot and cold over his ouster, playing the ‘popularity’ card, but had little relief as his party prepared for the general elections.
For the future to change from one which continues to be more-of-the-same, or worse, returns to a discarded and failed model, clearly there is an urgent need for a different politics, a different economics and a better way of living in society. This requires new actors and those who are willing to mobilise on issues which focus on material conditions, and are willing to take bold and necessary steps.
After many decades of annihilation, best demonstrated by the fall from grace of the old Pakistan People’s Party, some progressive voices have begun to emerge, organising themselves around causes which are best represented in the form of political organisation. When even liberals are being accused of being ‘the most dangerous group in Pakistan’, the urgency for progressives to unite against mainstream parties cannot but be emphasised. In 50 years, there has never been a better time, or greater need, for progressive politics in Pakistan. It is time now to make a future far different from the pasts we have lived through.
The writer is a political economist based in Karachi. He has a PhD in History from the University of Cambridge. He teaches at Columbia University in New York, and at the IBA in Karachi.
Though he held the rather ceremonial office of the President of the State, there was no doubt in any mind that Asif Ali Zardari was himself the government. In the photograph above, he is seen in a solemn mood soon after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto that changed the world upside down and inside out for him, his party and for the country at large.
The accidental president
By S. Akbar Zaidi
IT would be quite fair to say that not a single person, including Asif Ali Zardari himself, in Pakistan or anywhere else could have imagined in December 2007 that by September 9, 2008, he would become the president of Pakistan. Moreover, as Pakistan’s 11th head of state, Asif Zardari is amongst the handful of individuals who have been democratically elected to the high office, and is only the second to have completed his full five-year term.
Zardari also presided over as many as three prime ministers. For someone who was, in an earlier life, known as a playboy, had little education or any work experience, was called ‘Mister Ten Percent’ in Benazir Bhutto’s first government, far worse in her second, and for someone who has constantly been maligned and accused publicly of an unimaginable scale of corruption (for which our impartial courts have always found him innocent), this is quite an extraordinary evolution.
The circumstances which led up to Asif Zardari becoming president are well known. After Benazir’s assassination on December 27, 2007, he appeared in public at first as the grieving widower who had lost someone who was expected to become prime minister in the elections that were scheduled for January 2008 by General Pervez Musharraf.
THE burial of Benazir Bhutto at Garhi Khuda Bakhsh was an emotionally draining moment not just for the PPP supporters but for people across the land. It triggered the sympathy wave which produced tangible results in the elections that were held not much later.
Zardari was in voluntary semi-exile in Dubai at the time, and, after spending numerous years in jail in Pakistan, was living a life of festive freedom. While the victory of Benazir, who had agreed to be subservient to Musharraf as president, had been much anticipated, it was unclear what Zardari would do once his wife became prime minister.
There was speculation as to whether the former ‘Mister Ten Percent’ would return and once again become a minister in her government as he had done in her second term, or whether he would capitalise on the situation through other means, perhaps even staying on in Dubai, especially since the president of Pakistan with whom Benazir was expected to work, Gen Musharraf, was not particularly fond of him.
All that changed with Benazir’s assassination, and the first public appearances of the widower subdued a strong, particularly Sindhi, sentiment by saying Pakistan khappe at a time when the PPP jiyalas were unable to come to terms with such a monumental loss. He gave stability and reassurance to their emotions and sentiments, gave them a sense of hope, changed Bilawal Zardari’s name publically to Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, claiming that Shaheed Bibi had left a will in which the very young Bilawal and Zardari were to be co-chairmen of the party.
BENAZIR Bhutto receiving some last-minute brief from her close aide Naheed Khan as local party leader Sultan Qazi looked on. It was moments before Benazir Bhutto addressed a rally at the Liaquat Bagh in Rawalpindi on that fateful day of December 27, 2007, at the end of which she was no more and her husband Asif Ali Zardari became the new uniting force behind the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP).
Zardari emphasised the policy of reconciliation, rather than one of revenge, which he claimed was the nazria of Shaheed Bibi. With elections postponed till February 2008, it was not surprising that the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) won a large number of seats riding a sympathy wave following Benazir’s assassination. With Nawaz Sharif emerging as a voice against Musharraf’s military dictatorship and in support of the deposed judges of the Supreme Court, we will never know whether Benazir would have won if she had lived and contested the elections announced for January 2008. Nevertheless, the PPP had more seats than anyone else, and Musharraf asked the party to form the government.
After the elections, it was Sherry Rahman who introduced Asif Zardari as ‘Mister Sonia Gandhi’, implying that, like Gandhi, Zardari would not contest public office and would simply be the party co-chairman playing a role from the outside. The first PPP government formed after the February elections was, in fact, a coalition with the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), clearly a rather unique and ironic confluence of two rival parties compared to the 1990s.
Not only was Zardari suggesting the policy of reconciliation, but following the Charter of Democracy between Nawaz and Benazir in London in 2006, and so was Nawaz and his party. Despite the presence of a military dictator as president, who had since been forced to shed his military uniform for civilian attire, this was democratic consensus at work. After Benazir’s assassination, this could not have happened without Zardari’s consent.
A CONSEQUENTIAL PRESIDENT
President Asif Zardari administering oath of office to the cabinet led by Mian Nawaz Sharif whose PML-N won the elections in May 2013.
Perhaps it is inconsequential that the coalition arrangement between the PML-N and (now Zardari’s) PPP broke down, with the former parting ways from the government over the issue of the reinstatement of Supreme Court judges, for this was a rare experiment in Pakistan’s political history without precedent where the two main opposition rival parties were part of the government together. At least on one thing both parties were in agreement: on removing Musharraf as president and both started impeachment proceedings against him soon after forming the government.
Eventually, Musharraf was forced out and the chairman of the Senate became the acting president. In September 2008, Zardari, backed by the PML-N, became president of Pakistan and thus began a presidency and government which made critical interventions in Pakistan’s political structure, a fact which was emphasised on numerous occasions.
ONE of the parting acts of the PPP government was the initiation of legal proceedings against Pervez Musharraf for high treason. The former army chief subsequently had to appear in court, as seen here, for a few times before he was allowed to proceed abroad apparently for medical treatment.
If ever there was a constrained political office, constrained by the burden of the past and by circumstances that he himself was not responsible for, it was Zardari’s presidency when the PPP was in power.
There was the issue of the reinstatement of the judges, dismissed by his predecessor, and Zardari was afraid that, if reinstated, they might start proceedings against him and many other politicians. There was also the question of the Pakistan army, despite Musharraf’s resignation, which forced Zardari to spend five years looking over his shoulder for creeping military ambitions.
This was also the period when Osama bin Laden was found and killed in Abbottabad on May 2, 2011. Months earlier, Salman Taseer, the Punjab governor and a friend of Zardari, had been assassinated. Both these incidents, while they happened under Zardari’s watch, were not on account of him or his government. Moreover, during this period, judicial activism was at its zenith, questioning all forms of authority – civilian, political, and even military.
To make matters far worse, following the global economic crisis in 2008, there was an oil price boom, with prices touching $140 a barrel, as well as food price inflation where the price of essential items increased many times over. On all fronts, like many countries in the global South, Pakistan was facing critical problems, but, unlike the rest, Pakistan was also dealing with a democratic transition after almost a decade of military rule.
Yet, there were numerous key political and policy interventions by Zardari’s PPP government, well supported by the so-called ‘friendly opposition’ of Nawaz Sharif, that resulted in progress being made towards key issues. The two parties, led by the two leaders, were working for the collective democratic good.
ONCE in office, Asif Zardari surprised many with his calm politics. He is seen here receiving a pen from National Assembly speaker Fehmida Mirza and Senate chairman Farooq H. Naek before signing on the dotted line to ratify a constitutional amendment. Army chief Ashfaq Parvez Kayani was also present on the occasion in a symbolic gesture of acknowledging parliamentary supremacy.
For instance, the 18th Amendment to the Constitution not only reversed and removed many of Musharraf’s interventions, but went far further, and for the first time in Pakistan’s history, and probably a few decades too late, genuine devolution in the form of more powers to provincial governments took place. This was a far cry from Musharraf’s sham devolution of power which was merely symbolic.
Moreover, there was finally consensus on honouring the wishes of the people of the NWFP to name their province Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and on giving Pakistan’s Northern Areas a semi-provincial status by renaming the region as Gilgit-Baltistan and giving the region its own political representation. Attempts were also made to redress Musharraf’s adventurism and folly in Balochistan, where locals had become further alienated, through a Balochistan Package, offering financial resources for development.
Adding to the foundational step of the 18th Amendment, which altered the nature of Pakistan’s federation by getting rid of the Concurrent List, was the reformulation of the long overdue National Finance Commission (NFC). Not only that, but for the first time, the NFC Award recognised criteria other than just population, giving weightage to poverty, underdevelopment and special conditions – the effects of terrorism in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa – which allowed for a more representative distribution of resources to be made.
Moreover, it was through a democratic moment of reconciliation and equity by which Shahbaz Sharif’s government in the Punjab reduced its share in the NFC, giving a greater share to the less-privileged provinces, again unprecedented in Pakistan’s political economy where the Punjab has continued to dominate without concern for other provinces. Clearly, Zardari must personally be given credit for many of these achievements.
THE BAGGAGE OF HISTORY
Asif Zardari completed his presidential term and left with due decorum. Like his predecessor Pervez Musharraf, he was a president who called the shots – all the shots – in a parliamentary dispensation.
Asif Zardari, as president of Pakistan, had to deal with many of his own ghosts and much personal baggage from the past, but, not unlike his deceased father-in-law Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, he had to come to terms with, and negotiate, a democratic transition following almost a decade of military rule.
While Bhutto was much experienced in the art of politics, was proud and arrogant and ruled a country defeated in war where the majority province won its brutal independence, Zardari was not a politician, and had little experience of direct public responsibility. But he quickly mastered the task he was forced into.
However, 2008 was not as triumphant a democratisation as was 1970-71, when not just the country but, importantly, the military stood defeated. Although there were many important openings after 2008 to put Pakistan’s military spectre permanently to rest – the Bin Laden killing, Mehrangate, and, as a result, open and public criticism of the military, something that happens only once every few decades – but Pakistan’s newly emergent democratic forces lost a particularly important historical opportunity.
Incidents like the Memogate destroyed any credibility civilian political forces had accumulated, and other events and incidents reinstated the hegemony of the military. Furthermore, the consequences of Musharraf’s policies in the way he dealt with militants resulted in scores of suicide attacks killing tens of thousands of civilians, triggering an almost complete collapse of the economy. Even a military dictator, had he been in power, would have struggled with such formidable challenges.
It was not the inexperience of president Zardari which was to blame for the revival of Pakistan’s military and the challenges to democracy, for he had learnt the ropes of governing in difficult and contentious, even confrontational, times. And he did that rather quickly. The fact that Asif Ali Zardari became the first (and, so far, the only) civilian president who passed on power from one democratic government to another, without the military rigging or predetermining the election results, itself speaks volumes of his ability and sanguineness to stabilise Pakistan’s democratic ship.
What happens next in his (or Pakistan’s) political career remains uncertain, but what is clear is that the Asif Zardari presidency of 2008-13 needs a far more measured and impartial analysis than has been the case generally. A more honest assessment would suggest that his role as president has had a particularly significant and positive impact on Pakistan’s process of democratisation and that Zardari played a pivotal role in stabilising Pakistan’s political fortunes after Musharraf.
The writer is a political economist based in Karachi. He has a PhD in History from the University of Cambridge. He teaches at Columbia University in New York, and at the IBA in Karachi.
This story is part 14 of a series of 16 special reports under the banner of ‘70 years of Pakistan and Dawn’. Visit the archive to read the previous reports.
Exactly 70 years to the day, on December 25, 1947, Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah agreed to be photographed reading Dawn – the newspaper he had founded. The headline on the front page of Dawn that day read: ‘71 today’. The trace of a whimsical smile on Mr Jinnah’s lips is unmistakable as he is seen glancing at the newspaper. | Photo: Press Information Department (PID)
The importance of being Mr Jinnah
By Ayesha Jalal
IN one of the more unforgettable contemporary recollections of Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Beverely Nichols in Verdict on India described the lanky and stylishly dressed barrister as the “most important man in Asia”. Looking every bit like a gentleman of Spain, of the old diplomatic school, the monocle-wearing leader of the All-India Muslim League held a pivotal place in India’s future. “If Gandhi goes, there is Nehru, Rajagopalachari, Patel and a dozen others. But if Jinnah goes, who is there?” Without the Quaid-i-Azam to steer the course, the Muslim League was a divisive and potentially explosive force that “might run completely off the rails, and charge through India with fire and slaughter”; it might even “start another war”. As long as Jinnah was around, nothing disastrous was likely to happen and so, Nichols quipped, “a great deal hangs on the grey silk cord of that monocle”.
If the British journalist overstated Jinnah’s importance, he had put his finger on an essential piece of the sub-continental political puzzle on the eve of British decolonisation in India. Jinnah was a crucial link between the Congress and the Muslim League, which, if broken, could catapult India into disaster.
While regaling journalists at a tea party in his honour at Allahabad in April 1942, two years after the formal orchestration of the demand for Pakistan by the Muslim League, Jinnah had emphatically denied harbouring the “slightest ill-will” against Hindus or any other community. Charged with fomenting hatred and bigotry, he retorted: “I … honestly believe that the day will come when not only Muslims but this great community of Hindus will also bless, if not during my lifetime, after I am dead, [in the] the memory of my name.”
Drawing an analogy between himself and the first man to appear on the street with an umbrella, only to be laughed and scorned at by the crowd that had never seen an umbrella before, he said self-assuredly, “You may laugh at me”, but time will soon come when “you will not only understand what the Umbrella is but … use it to the advantage of everyone of you”.
Jinnah’s prediction that posterity would come to look kindly on the umbrella he had unfurled in the form of his demand for Pakistan remains unrealised. Confusing the end result with what he had been after all along, his admirers and detractors alike hold him responsible for dismembering the unity of India.
But, then, the Pakistan that emerged in 1947 was a mere shadow of what he had wanted. Let down by his own followers, outmanoeuvred by the Congress and squeezed by Britain’s last viceroy, Jinnah was made to accept a settlement he had rejected in 1944 and 1946.
His early death in September 1948 deprived Pakistan of a much-needed steadying hand at the helm during an uncertain and perilous time. With no one of Jinnah’s stature and constitutional acumen around to read the riot act, constitutional propriety and strict adherence to the rule of law were early casualties of the withering struggle between the newly-created centre and the provinces as well as the main institutions of the state.
Repeated suspensions of the democratic process by military regimes have ensured that even after seven decades of independence, Pakistanis are bitterly disagreed on the principles and practices of constitutional government as well as the sharing of rights and responsibilities between the state and the citizen. So, while there is no denying the centrality of Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s iconographic location in Pakistani national consciousness, there is a gaping chasm between the nationalist icon and the savvy politician.
Across the 1947 divide, clashing representations of Jinnah and his politics highlight the fissures in the Indian national imaginary. The unanimous rage that exploded as Indian nationalism, whether of the ‘secular’ or the ‘communal’ variety, in the wake of Jaswant Singh’s book on the Muslim League leader is evidence of Jinnah’s negative standing in the Indian psyche.
Left to an adoring following in Pakistan and equally impassioned detractors in India, the clear-headed lawyer who never missed a cue has been reduced to a jumble of contradictions that mostly cancel each other out. Jinnah’s demonisation in the Indian nationalist pantheon as the communal monster who divided mother India contrasts with his positive representation in Pakistan as a revered son of Islam, even an esteemed religious leader (maulana), who strove to safeguard Muslim interests in India. Misleading representations of one of modern South Asia’s leading politicians might not have withstood the test of history if they did not serve the nationalist self-projections of both India and Pakistan.
QUAID-I-AZAM Mohammad Ali Jinnah during his last visit to Dhaka, then East Pakistan. It was during this trip that he declared, at a mammoth public gathering on March 21, 1948, “Having failed to prevent the establishment of Pakistan … the enemies of Pakistan have turned their attention to disrupting the state by creating a split among the Muslims of Pakistan… If you want to build up yourself into a nation, for God’s sake give up this provincialism.” | Photo: PID.
Nations need heroes and Pakistanis have a right to be proud of their greatest hero. But popular memories too need to be informed by some bare facts and meaningful ideas. Fed on improbable myths and the limitations of the great men’s approach to history, Pakistanis have been constrained from engaging in an informed and open debate on whether their country merits being called Jinnah’s Pakistan. Is Jinnah at all relevant to the current Pakistani predicament?
Even the most approximate answer requires training our sights on matters that most concern Pakistanis – rule of law and a balance between state institutions that is conducive to social justice, economic opportunities and peaceful coexistence. Fed on state-sponsored national yarns about the past, Pakistanis are at a loss how to settle matters of national identity and the nature of the state – democratic or authoritarian, secular or Islamic.
The rise of Hindu majoritarianism in secular India and seemingly unending convulsions of religious bigotry amid state paralysis, if not compliance, in Islamic Pakistan is causing widespread dismay, confusion and disenchantment among a cross-section of citizens on both sides of the international border.
This is why reassessing the legacy of the man, who is universally held responsible for a partition that he had assiduously tried avoiding, is so necessary. But to do so meaningfully, one has to go beyond the simplistic distinction between the secular and the religious on which so many of the national myths of India and Pakistan are based.
There is no doubt that after the Muslim League’s election debacle in 1937, Jinnah made a conscious effort to display his Muslim identity. On key public occasions, he donned the sherwani – the traditional Muslim dress – rather than his well-tailored Western suits, and made more of an effort to appear as a mass politician. This was in some contrast to the days when his oratorical powers were restricted to the quiet of council chambers in the central legislature.
But the aloofness that characterised his earlier life did not give way to a new-found affinity with the teeming multitude. A champion of mass education as the key to the democratisation and freedom of India, Jinnah lacked the populist touch of a Gandhi.
Solitary in disposition, he used the distance between himself and his followers to command esteem and, most importantly, authority. Every bit the politician, Jinnah had a keen sense of timing and spectacle. Making the most of the adulation showered upon him by Muslims, he launched a powerful challenge against the Congress’s claim to speak on behalf of all Indians.
THE beautiful Ruttie Jinnah was Mr Jinnah’s second wife. The couple fell in love in Darjeeling in 1916. Two years later, they were married, after Ruttie, who was a Parsi, converted to Islam despite virulent family opposition. | Photo: National Archives, Islamabad
However, even while banding with segments of the Muslim ulema for political purposes, he remained to the core a constitutionalist with a distaste for rabble rousers who made cynical use of religion. He distanced himself from the humdrum of theological disputes about divinity, prophecy or ritual. “I know of no religion apart from human activity,” he had written to Gandhi on January 1, 1940, since it “provides a moral basis for all other activities”. Religion for him was meaningless if it did not mean identifying with the whole of mankind and “that I could not do unless I took part in politics”.
Jinnah’s expansive humanism is in stark contrast with the shocking disregard for the freedom of religious conscience in the country he created, a result of the political gamesmanship resorted to by authoritarian rulers and self-styled ideologues of Islam in post-colonial Pakistan.
In terms of his most deep-seated political values and objectives, Jinnah was remarkably consistent throughout his long and chequered political career. He had begun his journey as a Congressman seeking a share of power for Indians at the all-India centre.
Since Muslims were a minority in the limited system of representation in colonial India, he became an ardent champion of minority rights as a necessary step towards a Hindu-Muslim concordat and Congress-League cooperation. The provincial bias in British constitutional reforms after 1919 tested the resilience of a centralist politician with all-India ambitions.
As a constitutionalist of rare skill and vision, Jinnah tried reconciling communitarian and provincial interests while holding out an olive branch to the Congress. While his insistence on national status for Indian Muslims became absolute after 1940, the demand for a separate and sovereign state was open to negotiation until the late summer of 1946.
Jinnah was acutely aware that almost as many members of the Muslim nation would reside in Hindustan as in the specifically-Muslim homeland. The claim to nationhood was not an inevitable overture to completely separate statehood. An analytical distinction between a division of sovereignty within India and a partition of the provinces enables a precise understanding of the demand for a ‘Pakistan’. On achieving Pakistan, Jinnah was categorical that equal citizenship and an assurance of minority rights would form the basis of the new state.
THE Quaid-i-Azam in conversation with Altaf Husain, the first editor of Dawn Karachi, who visited Mr Jinnah to wish him a happy birthday on December 25, 1947. | Photo: PID.
The Quaid-i-Azam was checkmated at the end game of the Raj by the votaries of unitary and monolithic sovereignty. Yet his constitutional insights into the imperative of forging a new Indian union once the British relinquished power at the centre resonated well with a long South Asian political tradition of layered and shared sovereignties.
The four decades since the end of World War II were the heyday of indivisible sovereignty across the globe. Since the late 1980s there has been a perceptible weakening in the hold of that dogma. Jinnah’s legacy is especially pertinent to the enterprise of rethinking sovereignty in South Asia and beyond in the 21st century. If Pakistan and India can shed the deadweight of the colonial inheritance of non-negotiable sovereignty and hard borders which has been at the root of so many of their animosities, a South Asian union may yet come into being under the capacious cover of Jinnah’s metaphorical umbrella.
His expectation that Hindus quite as much as Muslims would one day bless the memory of his name remains unfulfilled. But moves in that directi on have been in evidence more recently. In 1999, the Indian prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, made a point of visiting the venue where the Lahore Resolution of 1940 was adopted by the Muslim League. This was followed in 2005 by Hindu nationalist leader Lal Krishna Advani’s homage to the founding father of Pakistan at his mausoleum in Karachi.
On the 141st birthday of Mohammad Ali Jinnah, it is worth recalling Bengali Congress leader Sarat Chandra Bose’s obituary comment, paying “tribute to the memory of one who was great as a lawyer, once great as a Congressman, great as a leader of Muslims, great as a world politician and diplomat and, greatest of all, as a man of action.”
The writer is Mary Richardson Professor of History and Director of the Center for South Asian and Indian Ocean Studies at Tufts University, Massachusetts, United States of America.
This story is the final part of a series of 16 special reports under the banner of ‘70 years of Pakistan and Dawn’. Visit the archive to read all reports.
President General Pervez Musharraf played his cards well till his hand was pressed to let go of his uniform, which, practically, was the beginning of the end for him. He is seen in the photograph above with Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani (right), the man who replaced him as the chief of the army staff, a day before Musharraf was to be sworn in as a civilian president. | Photo by Tanveer Shehzad.
A dictator by any name
By S. Akbar Zaidi
LEST it be forgotten, General Pervez Musharraf was always a military dictator who, to start with, overthrew an elected government, which is a treasonable offense punishable by death according to the Constitution of Pakistan. The epithet added to him being a ‘liberal dictator’, a crucial fallacy committed even by otherwise smart and intelligent academics, glosses over and partially legitimises the fact that he was, once and always, a military dictator.
The fascination by Pakistan’s anti-democratic elite, particularly its neoliberal, globalised elite, who partied long and hard with Musharraf and entertained him (and his hand-picked prime minister Shaukat Aziz), of imagining Musharraf as being some type of ‘liberal’, was limited to his westernised lifestyle which they shared.
There was nothing ‘liberal’ about his dictatorial politics, an incipient style of anti-democratic conduct, which the westernised elite also supported wholeheartedly. Whether Musharraf’s personal lifestyle-liberalism did any good in opening up social spaces to this elite (and non-elite) – being more tolerant of certain cultural and social practices, allowing women to occasionally find greater political agency and so on – is an important, though secondary, consideration.
WITH army behind him, Pervez Musharraf – not always as solemn and sombre as he appears here – ruled as he wished for about a decade which appears to be the cut-off span for military dictators in Pakistan.
The fact that dictators can be, when they so choose, benevolent and do some social good, needs to be sharply contrasted with their anti-democratic, authoritarian interventions that often have serious consequences in the long run.
One so-called liberal dictator of a very different era, General Ayub Khan, was partially responsible for the separation of East Pakistan; Musharraf, three decades later, left a legacy of violence, killings and suicide bombings under the guise of militant Islam and jihadism, which are perhaps only now being addressed.
Despite the best of lifestyle-liberal intentions, political consequences of decisions taken by dictators, leave their mark. Envisaging himself first as an Ataturk, and often as a Jinnah, by the end of his reign in 2008, as numerous events in 2007 were to reveal, Musharraf became another uniformed bully, hungry for personal power … just another military dictator dependent on the largesse of the United States.
Since General Yahya Khan, unlike Pakistan’s three coup makers, was more an accidental and make-shift military ruler rather than a military dictator, Musharraf needs to be viewed against the experiences provided by Generals Ayub and Ziaul Haq. And, unlike his two military predecessors, General Musharraf’s nine-year-long presence on, and dominance of, Pakistan’s political scene was far more colourful and riddled with far greater contradictions. While Ayub and Zia were ideologically opposites of each other, only sharing their distaste for civilian politicians, one could argue that their agenda and their politics were far more straightforward, simple and uncomplicated compared to Musharraf’s brand of lifestyle-liberalism mixed with a different brand of dictatorial politics.
One must also emphasise that the regional, global and domestic contexts – in terms of ethnic politics, social classes, global linkages and capitalist accumulation – of all three were also markedly different, though some similarities could be drawn.
From the Cold War politics of the 1960s to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s, to the US intervention in Afghanistan in the last decade, one could argue that Pakistan’s three military dictators shared some global and regional similarities, but the 1960s, the 1980s and the 2000s were all considerably different.
One major starting point to their coups which indicates how much the world and Pakistan had changed over the 40 years since 1958, was that, unlike his predecessors, Musharraf did not declare Martial Law when he dismissed and subsequently banished prime minister Nawaz Sharif on October 12, 1999. In fact, that he chose the title of Chief Executive as he wanted “to serve people, rather than rule” was clearly indicative of the sensibilities of a new generation and a different world.
Pakistan’s higher judiciary, in all its wisdom and based on many decades of its institutional experience of endorsing and working with military dictators, gave Musharraf three years after his coup to hold elections. As Pakistan’s chief executive, supported by the westernised elite, backed by numerous formerly radical members of civil society and NGOs, with a finance (and later, prime) minister specially invited from Citibank, Musharraf set up a technocratic government based on his Seven Point Reform agenda, which would make any autocrat proud.
The first three years of the Musharraf regime were troubled, although it was popular in some domestic circles, with Pakistan still a pariah state internationally as a result of sanctions that had been imposed after the nuclear tests in 1998. Things were made worse by the Musharraf coup in an era when military interventions were no longer fashionable. This international isolation, with consequences on Pakistan’s economy, lasted till the fateful day in September 2001 when much of the world changed.
Pervez Musharraf was able to steal the show interacting with the Indian media during the Agra Summit in July 2001, but that was also one of the reasons behind the deadlock he ran into with Indian prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee (right).
Just as Gen Zia was rescued by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Musharraf found after 9/11a longevity which he could not have expected in 1999. Once Musharraf decided that he was with the US rather than against it, and was far secure of his future, he began to unravel new interventions in the political and governance structures he had prepared.
He started by building a new system of local government (prior to 2001), doing away with the urban-rural divide and reducing the powers of bureaucrats. He increased considerably the number of seats reserved for women at all tiers of electoral representation. Having moved on from being a non-descript chief executive to being the president of Pakistan in July 2001, he called for a referendum in April 2002 to seek legitimacy from the people for his efforts, receiving a ‘Yes’ vote, in true dictator style, of 97.5 per cent.
Unlike Gen Zia’s never ending ‘90 days’, to his credit, Musharraf did hold elections after the Supreme Court’s three-year moratorium was over, in 2002. Yet, one must recognise that after the US attack on Afghanistan, with his future secured, he could easily afford to do so. With George Bush in the White House backing his ‘buddy’ in Islamabad fighting the War on Terror, Musharraf could get away with a great deal at home. And he did.
Meddling with the Constitution after creating a King’s Party of former tried and failed politicians from Nawaz Sharif’s party, he enforced electoral reforms which specifically barred both Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif from becoming prime minister again. He also lowered the voting age to 18 years, believing that Pakistan’s millennials would endorse his vision of Enlightened Moderation and vote for candidates he approved of, making graduation a requirement to contest elections.
Always under pressure from the religious right, however, he had to give in to their demands of allowing religious non-graduate, seminary-trained individuals to contest his graduate-only elections.
The result was that while he got a subservient parliament in Islamabad and Lahore, he was forced to give away the NWFP [since renamed KP] to the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), an alliance of religious parties opposed to Musharraf’s pro-West agenda and to his, and the GHQ’s, U-turn on the Taliban. Nevertheless, Musharraf learned to use the MMA presence in the NWFP as a bargaining chip with the Americans to his significant advantage.
THE 2007 IMPLOSION
THE year 2007 was quite eventful as, among other things, Musharraf confronted the Superior Judiciary, symbolised by Justice Iftikhar Ahmed Chaudhry, all year long and gradually found himself in a tight corner.
From 9/11 onwards, thinking that he was assured of a tenure reminiscent of Ayub Khan, backed unequivocally by the US, pumped up by the hubris and bravado of a commando that he once was, Musharraf unfolded another experiment in praetorian democracy in the country that was different from what the country had under Zia. Musharraf’s experiment, having been initiated in 2002, imploded in 2007. If ever there was a year of supreme significance in Pakistan’s political history, with consequences well into its future, it was 2007. In March of that year, Musharraf dismissed chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry. It was an event which resulted in not just the lawyers’ movement, but played a key role in bringing Musharraf down eventually, and in rebuilding Nawaz Sharif’s political future.
The baton-wielding force at Lal Masjid set in motion a chain of events that sucked the mighty force of the state in its vortex and left not just the capital Islamabad but the entire country psychologically paralysed.
On May 12, Musharraf showed his true colours and demonstrated his vicious streak in Islamabad that left many killed in Karachi as they awaited the arrival of the deposed chief justice. Then in July, an attack on Lal Masjid by the army – shown live on Musharraf’s gift to the Pakistani people, a free-for-all, independent, electronic media – led to the killing of an unknown number of militants. The incident resulted in the country’s worst wave of domestic terror which continued for at least a decade, killing, by some accounts, up to 70,000. In October, Musharraf signed the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO), granting amnesty to many prominent politicians, a further sign of his weakening grip on power. On November 3, Musharraf imposed a desperate mini-martial law, an Emergency, as an uncertain future stared him in the face.
ADDING to his woes was the return of Benazir Bhutto in the wake of the controversial National Reconciliation Order (NRO) Musharraf put his signature to.
Elections had been announced by then, and both Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif had returned to the country and were challenging Musharraf under the banner of a Charter of Democracy they had signed a year earlier in London. Having survived an assassination attempt in Karachi on her return in October, Benazir Bhutto fell victim to an assassin’s bullet on December 27, bringing to an end an extraordinary year.
ASSESSING MUSHARRAF
Pervez Musharraf was forced out by democratic forces in 2008. A decade later, he threatens to return to Pakistan to contest elections, but remains an absconder from the courts where he is under trial, among other cases, for treason. Given Pakistan’s political history, this is clearly a unique situation for a former president who also happened to be the army chief.
Good intentions are one thing; eventual outcomes something else. Whatever Musharraf thought he would leave as a legacy, he actually left Pakistan far more unstable, more violent, less tolerant, and in further disarray.
The Balochistan crisis, on which news continues to be suppressed, was a creation of his regime, where the killing of Akbar Bugti stands out as yet another case of state murder. Failure or success need to be evaluated in terms of what could have been achieved, and what wasn’t in assessing opportunities that were floundered.
TOWARDS the end of his tenure, his public existence was a big headache to handle for the man himself.
Musharraf and his technocratic whiz kids are to be held responsible for not achieving a number of key reforms when they had undisputed power, with key sections of the political class either in disarray or bought over, with support from some key constituencies, and when those in power were awash with capital from abroad. Just the fiscal space created on account of postponed debt repayments on account of 9/11 amounted to an extra $5 billion each year which could have been spent on social and infrastructure development. Yet, most was squandered in speculative property and stock market machinations which produced nothing tangible except making many of the cronies of the regime very rich.
Musharraf had a dictatorial model of politics, with crony capitalism his sense of economics, and lifestyle-liberalism his social agenda, all backed up by huge dependence on the United States.
A decade after his ouster, much of what Musharraf did has been undone, reversed by popular and political mandate, been put aside completely, perhaps a sign of maturity of the country’s democratic transition and transformation.
While his regime left behind consequences that survived well beyond 2008, history will prove Musharraf and his interventions to be far more fickle and fleeting than he could have ever imagined. No wonder he is remembered only as a lifestyle-liberal or ‘dictator chic’ (as Edward Luce of the Financial Times has used the phrase in a different context), who just happened to be Pakistan’s third military dictator.
The writer is a political economist based in Karachi. He has a PhD in History from the University of Cambridge. He teaches at Columbia University in New York, and at the IBA in Karachi.
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