Jinnah and the Islamic card

By Raghuvendra Tanwar

"....when the guardians of the laws and the government are only seeming and not real guardians then see how they turn the state upside down." Socrates

BY consciously misdiagnosing Pakistan’s problems and prescribing a misleading prescription, Nawaz Sharif is doing exactly what his political godfather, General Zia-ul-Haq, had done many years earlier. At a time when Pakistan requires radical economic restructuring, Sharif, instead of seeking the tough but logical path, has sought the help of "faith healers". Being a protege of General Zia, it was natural for Sharif to attempt to resolve his political problems by playing the Islamic card.

Even two decades ago, when General Zia first talked of introducing Islamic law, there was formidable opposition to it in Pakistan. The brilliant and outstanding former Chief Justice of Pakistan, Muhammad Munir, in From Jinnah to Zia, (1981) presented forceful arguments against those who attempt to introduce religion into affairs of the state and how they harmed both the faith and the state.

"...And as long as we rely on the hammer where a file is needed and press Islam into service to solve a situation it was never intended to solve, frustration and disappointment must dog our steps."

Munir goes on to say: "Khomeni in Iran has said that anyone adding the word democratic to the Islamic Republic of Iran will be guilty of treason... and now General Zia has said that Islam is the ideology of Pakistan and he will introduce Nizam-i-Mustafa (Islamic Democracy) ... But the question is, what is Islam? Muslims like others are divided in various sects... You cannot have one Islam for Pakistan, another for Iran, another for Egypt and yet another for India, where Islam is the second most followed faith ... The obvious course for Pakistan is to have a secular state".

Like other major faiths of the world, Islam is an excellent guide for the individual in his personal life. Making any religion the basis of any state inhibits governments from modernising and adapting to new contexts and conditions. Handing over the state to religious fundamentalists means suppressing reason and rationality by views created in different historical perspectives and transmitted through centuries often untested by logic.

But more important is the fact that while the state deals with the material and mundane affairs, religion deals with faith and belief that are abstract and have no parameters to test. Even the Prophet himself has pronounced that he was a Prophet in matters only of religion. Mundane affairs of state have been left by Islam to the Millat (community), which is supposed to function on an egalitarian basis.

There are a variety of reasons as to why state managers inPakistan have, when in political trouble or even to validate their rule, repeatedly attempted to Islamise the state. Ayub Khan made Pakistan an Islamic Republic in 1962. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto talked of Islamic socialism; General Zia-ul-Haq not only legitimised military rule, but simultaneously initiated a process of complete Islamisation; Benazir tried her bit, so much so that even the flamboyant Imran Khan talked of an Islamic welfare state in his 1996 election campaign.

Progress and ignorance, goes an old saying, cannot walk a common path. Pakistan with its widespread poverty and unemployment is also one of the few countries in the world where the percentage of population with primary education is actually declining. In the Baluchistan region, for example, female literacy stands at 2 per cent. By the end of the century, almost 40 per cent of children of less than 15 years of age in Pakistan will not have access even to primary education.

Pakistan’s political system has also fallen prey to a reactionary trend common to the subcontinent,including India. According to this, political power is necessary to maintain economic power. As such, the elite’s commitment to democracy has come to be just another means to secure one’s share of the financial loot. In 1947, 80 families controlled 3 million areas of land in Punjab (Pakistan), Sind and NWFP. Even in the previous National Assembly, 76 per cent of members are said to have had land holdings of more than 100 acres. In 1959, when Ayub Khan talked of land reforms he put the limit of irrigated land at 500 acres and unirrigated land at 1000 acres. Attempts were made later to reduce the limits by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, but sufficient scope was left in the law to circumvent it easily. As such the economic structure of rural society has remained unchanged since 1947.

The ruling nexus of the landlords, the orthodox, ulema and the military in Pakistan is well supported by one of the world’s most corrupt bureaucracies. A recent survey placed Pakistan as the third most corrupt nation. Various sources have estimated that more than 50 per cent of all government development grants are embezzled in toto. Pakistan, not surprisingly, has one of the world’s lowest per capita domestic saving level of 4.5 per cent as compared to India’s 23.7 per cent and anticipated 26 per cent. Even more disturbing is the fact that Pakistan’s trade in heroin, between $ 6 to 10 billion, exceeds all its exports put together. Thus, if Pakistan is judged by ‘Aristotelian standards’, it as grown into a state without foundations.

The manner in which elitist leaders have attempted, for political advantage, to manipulate the masses with the Islamic card needs also to be seen in view of the fact that even the birth of Pakistan was an elitist conception. Mohammad Ali Jinnah and most constituents of his party (the Muslim League) essentially lacked a rapport with the Muslim masses. A vast majority of Muslims were not inclined towards Partition and joined the emotionalised Partition movement only after leaders began projecting an appeal from the faith.

Pakistan was thus sold by its leaders in the garb of bahista, (heaven on earth); deen (faith), versus India’s duniya, (materialism); zamir (conscience) versus India’s jagir, (wealth); imandari (honesty) versus India’s nambardari (leadership).

Having achieved Pakistan, its founder Jinnah soon realised the futility of building and sustaining a new state on the basis of Islam alone. While addressing the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan for the first time (August 11, 1947) he said: "You may belong to any religion or caste or creed, that has nothing to do with the business of the state ... we should keep that in front of us as a goal and you will find that in due course of time, Hindus will cease to be Hindus and Muslims will cease to be Muslims ... not in the religious sense, because that is the faith of the individual, but as citizens of the state".

Unlike in India, where political parties successfully filled the vacuum left by the British, however the only stable force in Pakistan that replaced the vacated power structure was the armed forces and the bureaucracy.

The Muslim League that led the struggle for Pakistan’s creation disintegrated as a political force soon after Jinnah’s death, (1948). A good deal of the blame for the failure of the League to sustain itself as a political force is commonly (and rightly) attributed to Jinnah himself.

Jinnah was too "big" and "supreme" to think in terms of encouraging a healthy opposition. In his "viceregal" style, he side-tracked politicians and encouraged bureaucrats.

He operated with absolute power and did not visualise or permit the prospect of sharing power with a cabinet that could be answerable to Parliament. Even more importantly, Jinnah is to blame for treating Pakistan as if it was a homogeneous unit. He failed to understand that Pakistan (like India) was physically, ethnically, culturally and linguistically heterogenous and required an effective federal operation with the central government acting as a coordinating agency.

In sum, Jinnah initiated a concept of government that developed an alien character ands was in isolation of the masses. This in turn encouraged extraneous agencies like the military and religious fanatics to move centre stage in political affairs.

Yet Jinnah, all his faults notwithstanding, was not only a secularist at heart but wanted Pakistan to grow in the progressive democratic mould. While referring to the ruling elite and his inability to contain their overbearing and exploitative feudal traditions, Jinnah had said:

" .... I would like to give a warning to those who have flourished at your (masses) expense by a system which is so vicious, which is so wicked and which makes them so selfish that it is difficult to reason with them. The exploitation of the masses has gone into their soul".

Sharif not only needs to remember what the creator of Pakistan had said and believed but also a few lines from Shah Latif, cited here from D.H. Butani’s Future of Pakistan:

"Allah, let me not be clever, for the clever ones
experience sorrow.
It was in my innocence that Allah showered me with
his blessings".