Mirza’s memoirs: Part - I

Confronting historical negationism through historical revisionism was the Herculean task that lay ahead when I embarked on bringing out Iskander Mirza’s memoirs.

To challenge established, brittle narratives of fifty-plus years – buttressed with hate, falsifications and censorship – was no easy task. Even with the credible source material and valid historical references it will take time through debate to restore the missing chapters where Pakistan’s history is pockmarked with negationism.

All over the academic world, historians are of the abiding conviction that robust, free arguments about the realities, significance, and meaning of the past should be cherished as an integral element of an open society similar to what our so-called liberals harp on about but miserably fail when it comes to acknowledging facts from Pakistan’s history surrounding Iskander Mirza and the missing chapters from 1947-58. Such people would either look the other way or go on a hateful tirade of Iskander Mirza bashing – even to the extent of parroting Ayub Khan’s charge sheet ad nauseum, more like an attempt to absolve General Ayub of his transgressions.

All these years it was the establishment and right-wing elements who bowdlerized Iskander Mirza. Lo and behold, in 2023 with the publishing of ‘Honour-bound to Pakistan in Duty, Destiny & Death’ it was mostly liberals who went on a rampage.

Regardless of that, the Iskander Mirza memoirs have been well received and helped shatter the sinister silence of 65 years and initiated a much-needed debate on the missing chapters of Pakistan’s history. A well-informed fact and independent research-based debate is welcome. The man was honorable, had his flaws, took bad decisions, even admitted his mistakes but one can never doubt his sincerity or integrity of character. The truth is not always sweet, and the brittle egos that find their beliefs challenged find it bitterly disturbing. History can be both rewarding and punishing, depending on our desire to learn or disregard it. The trouble begins when we selectively like or dislike history.

With a chequered history divided between elected and unelected dictators, it is not unusual to fall in the trap of having favourites and to have a tendentious reading of the history as is so common in our highly opinionated intelligentsia. It’s a fact that the publishing of these memoirs has stirred many an anguished soul out of the woodworks. All in all, it’s been a heartening experience in more ways than anticipated.

My main objective here is to respond to the honourable counsel who authored an article in these very columns a few weeks back. I have immense respect for the honourable counsel and his legal acumen but beg to differ when it comes to his understanding of the history surrounding Iskander Mirza, his times and the decisions taken.

As a matter of fact, the missive I sent in response to his correspondence is what I will share here with minor changes. To understand the memoirs, it is essential to have good insight into the period it addresses and the history preceding it during the British rule. To judge it in 2024 with the prevailing political and social ground realities would be an exercise in futility and a case of extreme naivete.

With respect to East Pakistan, the generalizations by the counsel divert attention from the real reasons for the secession of East Pakistan, the roots of which lie in how West Pakistan treated East Pakistan from Day 1 and the major share of this dysfunctionality and the ultimate debacle rests on Punjab’s politicians. Iskander Mirza in his memoirs expresses his discomfort with One Unit and Punjab’s politicians playing their cards against East Pakistan. Even Liaquat Ali Khan justifies Objectives Resolution to Iskander Mirza as something he needed to do to strengthen his position. “Some of these people regard me as an outsider.” On another occasion, Iskander Mirza spoke on One Unit: “I had a lot of sympathy for the Pathans and hoped that we might appoint a lieutenant-governor for the NWFP and Balochistan but I could not get this agreed, because the Punjabi element was very much against this.” The security state that we inherited, compounded by Punjab’s insatiable lust for power and control, is what drove Pakistan to its dismemberment and continues to this day and yet some have the gall to blame Iskander Mirza for an uncommitted sin and conveniently dump the dirty baggage of history on a person who never got the opportunity to defend himself.

The counsel it seems is piqued at Iskander Mirza Quaid interactions mentioned in memoirs. Interestingly enough, Mehr Hussain in TFT has a very different take on the interactions, “Most interesting are his interactions with the Quaid-e-Azam, Muhammad Ali Jinnah as it shows the thought process of two men who seeked to serve the newly established Pakistan. To see the varying experiences of a lawyer and a military man as they navigate the world of politics is a lesson on how far low, we as a nation have fallen given the calibre of decision makers today.”

Pakistan was not born in ideal conditions and to single out any one individual for all that ails Pakistan would be a most unkind, simplistic and grotesquely myopic interpretation of a very Byzantine formative period. One must acknowledge that the Pakistan Army’s increasingly predominant position in post-independence Pakistan had its roots in the colonial state’s military recruitment policies in the late 19th century, making Punjab the army’s main conscription centre.

This policy ensured a stable supply of aspiring recruits from an area untouched by ‘Indian nationalism’. The tradition of paternalist authoritarianism was established in Punjab as well as in areas that later became British Balochistan and former NWFP. Rather than India and Pakistan possessing shared systems of governance from the Raj, the inevitable happened that much of the area that became West Pakistan formed part of a British Security State, where the requirements of maintaining political order were privileged over those of encouraging representative institutions to flourish.

The emergence of a political economy of defence rather than of development was established and a template for Pakistan polity with lopsided priorities was laid down, arising from its security concerns, in which democratic governance would inadvertently play second fiddle to the military and a centralized bureaucracy.

Regarding Pakistan joining Cento, again I quote from Mehr Hussain in TFT “While many in today’s Pakistan will jump to conclusions depending on where they stand on the political spectrum, what remains to be understood is that Mirza was not acting in a personal capacity. The fact he understood the need to appease the US and yet the necessity of engaging with China indicates he realised the need to act in the country’s interests and uphold Pakistan’s sovereignty that as Mehdi notes, ‘ruled supreme in his policies and obvious in his statements’.”

The learned counsel probably doesn’t appreciate what “The maintenance of the status quo in the Persian Gulf area is a matter of life and death to Pakistan” (page 136) implied for Pakistan in 1955. Passing simplistic judgements on critical national decisions taken in 1955 is easiest in 2024.

To be continued...

The writer is the author of ‘Honour-bound to Pakistan in Duty, Destiny & Death. Iskander Mirza – Pakistan’s FirstPresident’s Memoirs from Exile’.