To Understand Pakistan, 1947 Is The Wrong Lens

As a Pakistani living in the United States, I feel thatAmericans do not understand Pakistan because they do not care. And there is no real knowledge without caring. Indians certainly do care.

Pakistan has been on the Indian mind since the moment of their co-creation. India and Pakistan are like two ends of a thread tied in a fantastic Gordian knot; their attachment magically survives their severance.

And how the love grows! The recent Jaswant Singh controversy over Jinnah only partially unveiled how Pakistan is critical to the ideological coherence of Indian nationalism in both its secular and Hindutva varieties.

But behind this veil, Pakistan has always been internal to Indian politics. It should come as no surprise then that establishment Indians (bureaucratic and political elites, intellectuals, media types, and the chattering classes) are well-versed in the nuances of Pakistani society. Indians understand Pakistan like no one else does, or can.

Still, there is this curious blind spot: no one in India appears to remember 1971. Worse, no one seems to think it relevant. For all their sophistication, Indian elites continue to understand Pakistan primarily with reference to the events of 1947. Anything else is incidental, not essential. The established Indian paradigms for explaining Pakistan, its actions and its institutions, its state and society, have not undergone any significant shift since the Partition. The tropes remain the same: religion and elite manipulation explain everything. It is as if the pre-Partition politics of the Muslim League continues to be the politics of Pakistan—with slight non-essential variations. More than 60 years on, the factors may be different but little else has changed.

This view is deeply flawed. It reflects a serious confusion about the founding event of contemporary Pakistani society. The Partition has a mesmerising quality that blinds the mind, a kind of notional heft that far outweighs its real significance to modern South Asian politics. The concerns of the state of Pakistan, the anxieties of its society, and the analytic frames of its intellectual and media elites have as their primary reference not 1947 but the traumatic vivisection of the country in 1971. Indians have naturally focused on their own vivisection, their own dismemberment; but for Pakistan, they have focused on the wrong date. This mix-up has important consequences.

First, Indians tend not to remember 1971 as a Pakistani civil war, but rather as India’s “good” war. It is remembered as an intervention by India to prevent the genocide of Bengalis by Pakistanis. The fact that the Bengalis themselves were also Pakistanis has been effaced from the collective memory of Indian elites. This makes 1971 merely another Kargil, or Kashmir, Afghanistan or Mumbai—an instance of Pakistan meddling in other people’s affairs, and of the Pakistani military’s adventurism in the region. This is why mention of Balochistan at Sharm el-Sheikh created such a stir in India. It was literally incomprehensible to Indians that Pakistan could accuse India of meddling in its internal affairs. Surely, this is the pot calling the kettle black. But what the Indian mind perceives as Pakistan’s ongoing divorce from reality is in fact Pakistan’s most fundamental political reality. The Pakistani establishment has internalised the memory of 1971. In all things, and at all times, it must account for India. Dismemberment has the requisite effect of focusing the mind on existential matters. Nothing can be taken for granted.

Second, the Indian establishment routinely misconstrues as ideological schizophrenia the Pakistani intellectual classes’ complicated responses to India. The nuances of the Pakistani experience of India are the very picture of incoherence to them. Worse, Pakistanis often frustrate the project of creating a common South Asian sensibility to bridge the political gaps between the two communities.

But again, no one in India accounts for 1971 when making such grand universalising (and, if I may add, genuinely noble) plans for the future of the region. Pakistani intellectual elites share with their Indian counterparts the normative horror of what the West Pakistani military did in the East. How can anyone in their right mind not deem such behaviour beyond the pale? But horror does not preclude abiding distaste for the Indian state’s wilful opportunism in breaking Pakistan apart. It is for this reason that while the intellectual classes in Pakistan, especially the English language press and prominent university scholars, have almost always condemned their state’s involvement in terrorist activity inside India proper, they have remained largely quiet concerning Kashmir. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Kashmir does not seem so different to them than East Pakistan.

It is for this same reason that there was no great outcry about the isi’s supposed involvement in the bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul. The general sense among the educated elites was that India deserved it for trying to “encircle” Pakistan through Afghanistan. Indians process this either as paranoia or as a visceral hatred of India that blinds Pakistanis to facts. Perhaps there is some of this too. But it bears appreciating that Pakistan is a post-civil war society. Fear and anxiety concerning India’s intentions in the region are hardly limited to the so-called ‘establishment’ in Pakistan. It is a general fear, a well-dispersed fear, a social fear. And a relatively coherent fear at that.

This leads to the third, and perhaps the most important point. The Indian establishment does not see Pakistan as a ‘normal’ society. The substance of this abnormalcy is religion, which is also the irreducible difference between the two societies. It is the original sin and a foundational incoherence that is ultimately inescapable. And it has tremendous explanatory power. It explains both the ideological nature of the Pakistani state’s hatred of India and, simultaneously, the state’s manipulation of the zealous masses for its own ends. That these two explanations do not hold together coherently is besides the point to most Indians. This is an old story and is as such sensible. In the Indian imagination, Pakistan is endlessly regurgitating the politics of Jinnah and the erstwhile Indian Muslim League. While Indian politics moves on, Pakistan’s holds eerily still. I am certainly not one to deny that there are some obvious asymmetries between India and Pakistan. The nature of the relationship between religion and politics is certainly one of them. But it bears mentioning that perhaps the most relevant asymmetry concerns the repeated defeats suffered by the conventional Pakistani forces at the hands of their Indian counterparts. This asymmetry is neither that complicated nor particularly abnormal. It illuminates the actions of the Pakistani state as essentially strategic and only incidentally ideological. And in that sense, it allows an interpretation of Pakistan as a fairly pedestrian, even ‘normal’ post-conflict society in its relations with its much larger neighbour.

Ultimately, this is the real value of a renewed focus on 1971 rather than 1947. It normalises Pakistan. It allows for discussion of real differences between the two societies and the two states, rather than of reified stereotypes that have little political relevance any more. This is not to justify the actions of the Pakistani state, which are in many cases entirely unjustifiable on both moral and political grounds. It is merely to hope that a mutual comprehension of normalcy may lead to peace and progress. Certainly, no one will deny that there is value in that.

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(The author is with the Religious Studies Department at Yale University. He is also a member of the MacMillan Initiative on Religion, Politics and Society at Yale and a doctoral fellow at the Centre for Global Islamic Studies at Lehigh University.)

Jeay Sindh Mahaz Calls for Right of Self-Determination

Jeay Sindh Mahaz in a statement has claimed that Pakistan is not a naturally grown country, but that it is rather a man-made state that came into existence through a contract between different people. And that contract, everyone knows, is the 1940 Lahore resolution; also called the Pakistan resolution.

In civilized world, for different peoples to live together, a social contract happens to be the guiding and binding force. And to work together, make progress and live in peace and harmony that social contract is mandatory to be followed while in a country like Pakistan that itself came into existence through a contract, strict compliance to this social contract becomes even more important and necessary. But the Pakistani state has traversed in wrong direction since day one. In fact the story of Pakistan is a story of violations, breaches, and betrayals.

The first and foremost violation came with regard to the ‘Pakistan Resolution’ when the new state was created as per 1935 India Act. After few days that (1935) Act also stood violated. 1956 constitution was imposed arbitrarily wherein, negating all the arithmetic of the world, 54 percent population was made equal to 46 percent. Only after two years this ‘holy book’ was also buried thanks to the first of the many Martial Laws the country has seen.

Designed to suit the whims and wishes of a general, the so-called constitution of 1962 was enforced only to be scrapped with the help of second Martial law.

At this stage the most motivated and freedom-loving nation of the subcontinent, the Bengalis, decided that ‘enough is enough’ and an independent country of Bangladesh came into being.

 On the other hand, a unilateral declaration of coining ‘New Pakistan’ was made without consulting the national units (Sindhis, Balochs and Pakhtoons) who had originated the ‘Old Pakistan’.

In the new constitution (1973) of the new Pakistan, new promises were made though this was the most centripetal of all the constitutions through which all the rights of the federating units were usurped in the name of centre.

No need to say that from day one the state of Pakistan has been dominated and monopolized by Punjab, so the 1973 constitution strengthened Punjab’s hold, in the name of centre, over the rights and resources of Sindh, Balochistan and Pakhtoonkhawa. Even this constitution was changed and altered, by civil and military dictators, as frequently as they would change the servants of their house.

The biggest violation that comes in the range of a betrayal, committed during Pakistan’s life was when the very identity of the national units, to whom this country owes its existence, was erased in the name of national solidarity.

In short it can be said that the arbitrary, dictatorial and domineering mode of governance has rendered Sindh to the status of a colony and Pakistani has been turned into a colonial state, the way Britain ruled India.

All the natural resources and the sources of income of Sindh have been appropriated by the central government, every possible action is taken to wipe out Sindhi Language, culture and history, the process of bringing people from other provinces and other countries and settling them in Sindh to convert Sindhis into minority on their own soil and keep them in permanent subjugation is underway through state patronage in the same way as the occupying forces did in Palestine, Fiji, Northern Ireland and Western Sahara.

And most importantly Sindh’s political autonomy and the will & decisions of Sindhi people have been thrown in the mud. The status and standing of Sindh Assembly is lower even to that of the local council of a sovereign and democratic state and the laws and resolutions passé by this assembly have been thrown in dustbin like tissue paper by the little people sitting in the big houses of Islamabad.

The Capital City Karachi has been made, for all practical purposes, a no-go-area for Sindhis. The writ aid control of Sindh government over the institutions based in Karachi is zero and in order to get education, employment and abode in Karachi, the indigenous people are made to seek certificate from those coming here as refugees.

An idea of the status of Sindh and the authority of Sindhi People in the state of Pakistan can be had from the statement of Sindh’s elected Chief Minister where-in he said that Sindh gives country 67% of the revenue but we have to beg from the central government for every small thing.

On raising voice for the restitution of their rights sindhis were branded anti-state and anti-islam. Some rulers ridiculed their culture by declaring it as that of camel and donkey graziers, while others called them uneducated and ignorant. This situation can only be described as nothing but colonialism and colonialism is neither acceptable nor bearable to sindhis in any case. In fact for their national emancipation Sindhis have made great sacrifices and paid heavy prices and are ready and willing to do so again.

During their 5000-year long history Sindh has been occupied many a time but sindhi people have never surrendered to the fate. We struggled against the British colonialism and servitude not for becoming subjugated by their lackeys. We don’t want to live as beggars and dependants. We are ready and willing to live with all the nations as equals and as partners. On the other hand the state of Pakistan, owing to continuous breaking of promises and consistent violations of the (social) contracts, its arbitrary, dictatorial and domineering way of governance and its colonial character, has lost legal political and moral justification to rule over Sindh and sindhis. Now we are being ruled on the force of gun. Twenty first century is the century of peace, freedom and equality.

Hence it is time to change the colonial structure of Pakistani state and end its imperialistic role-character. Sindh is not an occupied territory. Sindh had opted to join Pakistan on the basis of 1940 Lahore Resolution, with its free will where-in it was unequivocally declared that Constituents Units shall be sovereign and autonomous. Sindh had decided to share its sovereignty with the neighbouring nations of the region in order to work jointly for peace, equality, progress and prosperity in Sindh, in Pakistan, in the region and in the world as whole. But the 62 years rule has resulted in war, terrorism, inequality, discrimination, domination, exploitation, poverty, beggary and national insult.

Therefore, Sindhi People want to restitute and reestablish their sovereignty so that they can be able to decide their destiny with their free will.

Jeay Sindh Mahaz considers it their foremost duty and historical responsibility to stand by Sindhi People in their struggle to achieve this goal. Hence Jeay Sindh Mahaz and its workers pledge to expend all their time, all their abilities, all their energies and all their resources to help Sindhi People get and use their universality recognized inalienable right of self determination. At the same time we call upon the democratic and progressive people from Punjab to break their silence and strengthen our voice as in a Pakistan-like multinational country national question happens to be the prime question of democracy. Also we hope and expect that peace-loving, humanist, secular, progressive and enlightened people of the world would extend their political and moral support to our cause.