Side-effect

On the eve of the anniversary of the country’s independence, what I heard from some of my colleagues struggling for provincial rights and from some socialites of Islamabad holding liberal political views, was the constant trumpeting of the idea that Pakistan is an unnatural creation and therefore its end is imminent. This leads us nowhere. Our immediate neighbours, both Indians and Afghans, are in no way homogeneous or live in natural state boundaries. There are no natural states. Pakistan is as artificial or natural as any other state in the world. The state is, primarily, an administrative and institutional arrangement that caters to the needs of the people who are its citizens and furthers their economic and cultural interests. It is the successful performance of the institutions of the state, and not the ethnic homogeneity or cultural similarity of its citizens, that makes a state work. If people as diverse as Punjabis and Keralites can share the same statehood in India and Tajiks and Pakhtuns in Afghanistan, why can’t a Punjabi and a Baloch in Pakistan? Racially, culturally, linguistically and in terms of political history, there is much more in common between a Punjabi and a Baloch than a Punjabi and a Keralite.

The ideology of Pakistan was to create a new state within the Indian sub-continent for a Muslim nation that is different from the Hindus. There is a need to look at the political environment of British India in the 1930s and 1940s to understand the creation of Pakistan. The slogans that were raised and the positions that were taken by a significant segment of the Muslim leadership grew out of a sense of fear, both real and perceived. The Indian National Congress, which was the main political force and the most representative party of the majority of Indians, did little to address the causes of that fear. We must not forget that the Muslim League under the Quaid-e-Azam agreed with the proposals put forward by the Cabinet Mission Plan, which included full provincial autonomy with a weak centre within the framework of the Indian Union. This happened more than five years after the passing of the Lahore Resolution. But the Congress leadership wanted a strong centre in order to realise the Nehruvian dream of an Indian nationhood. As a result, Muslim paranoia increased. I see the creation of Bangladesh as a replay of the same situation. Bengalis wanted their due share and an equal status. We humiliated them and pushed them out.

Now the irony is that Pakistan, which was created on the basis that provincial autonomy and decentralisation were denied to Muslim-majority provinces in united India, became a country where the rights of the provinces were denied from the very beginning by a strong centre. Smaller provinces and nations were oppressed and given little space for any human freedoms. Their elites mostly collaborated with the ruling establishment in the exploitation of the under classes. To an extent, Balochistan is an exception where some major tribal sardars supported resistance. On the other hand, the Indian government after independence, led by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru himself, realised very soon that a strong centre is not feasible and facilitated local rule, significant autonomy of states (provinces in our case) within the Indian Union and created a share for most, if not everyone, in Delhi. The other irony in our case is that although Pakistan was an outcome of a struggle for freedom and rights by a religious minority within India, after being founded, it marginalised and later subjugated its own religious minorities. India has not fared well as far as mainstreaming religious minorities and giving their poor segments a sense of security is concerned, but its law books are non-discriminatory and secular. That makes the struggle for civility and humanity less difficult.

To state the obvious, if Pakistan had been able to establish democratic political rule from the beginning, the governments had actively sought to create a sense of ownership and pride among the citizens and worked towards their economic well being, many problems we see today would not have emerged.

The writer is an Islamabad-based poet and rights campaigner. Email: harris@spopk.org