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Reality of Pakistan after 60 years
By Syed Shahabuddin
Tuesday 25 December 2012
IT is not surprising that after 60 years of existence, Pakistan has
not been able to develop a sense of common nationhood or even social
cohesion. It remains fragmented, as it is, among five or six different
ethnic groups.
Sectarian, linguistic and class differences, exploding into violence
from time to time, it could not build up a viable system of Islamic
laws. Even in the Malakand Division of FATA, including the Swat, the
enforcement of Shariah, often praised by the Pakistani orthodoxy, is
based on the British concession in the 1930s to the tribals that the
civil and criminal laws that operated in the subcontinent did not
apply to their region.
Finally, as conceived by Iqbal, Pakistan was to be a political
laboratory for experimenting with an Islamic polity in the modern
world or the evolution of Muslim jurisprudence to come to terms with
modern life. Neither has made any progress. Nor has Pakistan ever
achieved an Islamic personality.
In Pakistan most of the laws now in force are the same as those in
India. Not only from the legal point of view but even culturally, to
the extent that Urdu is the language of the elite in Pakistan, and
even religiously Pakistan is much closer to India than to any other
part of the Muslim world.
Most important, if 150 million Muslims continue to be equal citizens
of India, occasional violence and persistent discrimination
notwithstanding, the question is beginning to be asked not only in
India but in Pakistan about the rationale for the division of the
subcontinent.
The Muslim community of the subcontinent, now divided into three
states, would have not only prospered but lived more securely and made
greater contribution in the realm of fine arts, science, humanities
and sports, had their organic unity not been sacrificed at the altar
of politics or, shall we say, the interest of the Muslim elite or the
hurt ego of an individual, who at one time was one of the top leaders
of the national freedom movement, and who was dropped like a fly in
the ointment when he raised his voice against Hindu majoritorianism
and asked for democratic safeguards and guarantees for the Muslims as
the biggest minority.
Partition resulted from the failure of the freedom movement to evolve
a formula acceptable to both communities.
Nor did Pakistanis experience any cultural synthesis among the
Bengalis, the Punjabis, the Sindhis, the Saraikis the Pakhtoons, the
Balochis and the Biharis. Some of them speak Urdu but most prefer to
use their own mother tongue. Some of them even agitate against Urdu
being given the official language status. Even the great Urdu poet
Faiz, a Left activist, led a precession in Lahore against Urdu
becoming the sole language for official communication and the first
language in schools. Just about five per cent of the people of
Pakistan declare Urdu as their mother tongue.
In 1960s Muslim Indians continued to trickle into East Pakistan on
what was called the “Gardania” passport. After the explosion in East
Pakistan, which created Bangladesh, the “Bihari” Muslims in
substantial numbers crossed the border to take refuge in India,
sometimes escorted by the Indian Army. The interesting aspect is that
when they reached their original villages, their Hindu neighbors
welcomed them, albeit with a touch of sarcasm but no hostility. Indeed
it is their own relatives who became apprehensive that the returnees
may dispute their possession of the entire family property and
reported them to the authorities. Hardly any cases were report by the
Hindu neighbors.
In a united subcontinent the Muslims would today number about 450
million out of a total population of about 1800 million. Almost half
the national territory would be covered by Muslim concentration states
and districts. In a federal Indian polity, these Muslim pockets would
enjoy almost complete autonomy but, as Maulana Abul Kalam Azad put it,
they neither achieved an Islamic homeland nor equal citizenship in the
country of their birth. In the reorganization of states, the Sikhs got
the Sikh state; the tribals got many tribal states and some are
struggling for more. But the support Muslims extended in the 1940s to
the Pakistan Movement has not been forgotten. Hindu communalism has
opposed the reorganization of pockets of Muslim concentration as in
Purnea or Rohilkhand or Marathwada or Malda or Murshidabad in West
Bengal. Even the areas in which the Muslims form 30 to 40 percent of
the population continue to face hostility, distrust and
underdevelopment.
Perhaps the Muslims of united India would have been better received.
Yes, Muslim Indians continue to be silently dubbed in India as
Pakistanis and perceived increasingly as terrorists. They live in
fear; their muhallas are under close observation in a state of siege
by the state. These are occasionally targeted by majoritarian
violence; the last genocide occurred in Gujarat in 2002. But their
population continuously grows and today they constitute roughly 15
percent of the national population.
Unfortunately without proportional representation in central or state
legislatures or in administration or even in the Panchayti Raj
institutions, they do not enjoy real power. And when they speak of
discrimination, they are advised to leave India and go to Pakistan if
they are not happy.
What Muslims lost in 1947 is incalculable and the possibilities of
their development have been stunted by the very existence of Pakistan.
Over the last 60 years, Muslim Indians have suffered and survived,
they have proved their resilience, a capacity to rise from the ashes
to build a community, which, to quote Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, is as
proud of being Indian as it is of being Muslim. As India develops,
Muslim Indians are also developing though not in the same measure. But
an objective look on cities, towns, qasbas or even villages will show,
they have made marked progress educationally, economically and
socially. There are no doubt pockets of backward-ness and deprivation.
The virus of Hindu majoritarianism has entered the bloodstream of the
Indian nation. But secular forces would not let it deny constitutional
equality and social justice to the Muslim Indians.
Partition was thus ill-conceived and became a bad bargain for the
Muslims in the Muslim minority provinces of British India. Indeed it
may turn out to be a tragedy. It also continues to cast an ominous
shadow over their future because the anti-Muslim forces in India,
without any rhyme or reason, continue to consider the present
generation of Muslims as responsible for the creation of Pakistan and
look upon them as Pakistanis or Pakistani sympathizers and in any
situation of conflict between the two states, as political aliens and
at least fifth columnists.