The answer has to be in the negative. In the negative because Pakistan's future entirely depends upon the establishment of a democratic dispensation and the anointing of the democratic ethos and temper. For one thing, from day one, Pakistan has been committed to democracy.
And that to a point that despite democracy languishing for most of the past fifty years, despite being in tantrums, in doldrums, and in utter disarray, the passion for democracy could yet never be extinguished nor dislodged from the deepest recesses of the social consciousness of the general Pakistani populace.
The Pakistan movement which sought to, and did, establish Pakistan by a reference to the Muslim electorate in sub-continental India and the democratic credentials of its leadership, from Jinnah downwards, as pointed out by Professor Richard Wheeler, have, among other factors, helped to make democracy enmeshed with the subterranean vagaries of the Pakistani social heritage and ethos. Indeed, Jinnah had, moreover, consecrated this nation to a democratic destiny on the marrow of her birth, and the Independence leaders, despite almost insurmountable odds, did try to conform to the basic democratic norms, more or less - inducing even the prestigious New York Times to note on 15 November 1955 - ie, at a time when the fledgling state was being bedevilled by an acute constitutional crisis - that "the belief in democracy was interwoven with the drive for Pakistan and it would not be given up easily".
As for the periodic languishing of democracy, at least since October 7, 1958, it must be attributed to both "structural" faultlines on the one hand and to the decisions, designs, ambitions and failures of individual leaders, both military and civilian, on the other. Foremost among these faultlines that have shaped Pakistan's polity over the decades were the nature and convulsions of her birth - a cataclysmic birth, by any standard. Indeed, she was born in chaos, with problems galore - which, to quote Ralph Barbanti, former Professor Emeritus and Director, Islamic and Arab Development Studies, Duke University, no other post-war nation has been confronted with; problems which would have daunted even the best of statesmen and the most efficient rulers.
Being bereft of a central government, a capital, a sizeable and efficient administrative cadre, an organised defence force, cash balances (which India had so wilfully denied), poor social and administrative resources, equipment and weaponry, the Punjab holocaust, which had left vast areas in a shambles and communications disrupted and some seven million refugees to feed, house and settle, and above all, Pakistan's security problems with India, which seemed bent upon throttling Pakistan to a premature death, and the first Kashmir war - all this had inevitably led Pakistan to the politics of survival. Hence, Professor Wayne Wilcox's sombre conclusion that "Pakistan's origins shaped its outlook as a near garrison state".
That means the politics of survival with its concomitant expedient choices have ever since shaped Pakistan's security concerns, and this, in turn, determined its political approach and destiny. But survival cannot be bought, and expedient choices cannot be taken, without costs to the political system and the nation building process. Yet during the parliamentary era (1947-48), Pakistan was a "faulted, but a functioning parliamentary democracy", to quote Kenneth McGrath.
It is not usually realised what the lingering Kashmir issue has meant for Pakistan in terms of economic, political, and military costs. By simply keeping the Kashmir issue unresolved and simmering, India has bled Pakistan to its utmost. For one thing, it had led to an overemphasis on security concerns, leading to a massive build up of the armed forces and the ascendancy of the military bureaucracy, even, in Pakistan's political affairs. For another, Pakistanis have been willing to put up with all sorts of leadership, even military dictators, in the naïve hope that in concentrating all their attention and resources on security concerns, they could ensure getting Kashmir the Pakistan way.
The other critical structural deficiency has been "the tremendous famine of able leaders" to grapple with the crucial nation-building task, a debilitating deficiency referred to by Arnold Toynbee and Ivor Jennings in their assessment of developing countries and/or Pakistan's failure in the early years. Pakistan, tragically denuded within four years of her birth of the only two leaders that could have performed that task, was thrown at the mercy of her mediocre leaders, except for Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy. But, whatever be the reasons, he was allowed barely thirteen months to perform. Even so, that brief spell yet proved to be "a most creative period of integrative institution building", to quote Muniruzzaman Talukdar. Thus the dismal failure to create the requisite milieu for the growth of self-sustaining democratic traditions.
The chronic famine of able leaders to grapple with the crucial nation-building task has been pointedly referred to by Arnold Toynbee in his assessment of the developing countries in their early post-colonial years. To him, "The critical factor in the situation was the tremendous famine of able persons - a famine of experienced, able but above all honest and public spirited citizens with a working knowledge of how to run a country on modern lines..." In tandem, Sir Ivor Jennings, an authority on constitutions and constitutional developments, also attributes Pakistan's difficulties in constitution-making and in devising a viable political structure in the early 1950s to a serious dearth of leadership.
In the annals of Pakistan's existential career, Z. A. Bhutto was the only truly dynamic leader she has spawned. But his snowballing penchant for an animus dominande role in the traumatic period of post-Bangladesh Pakistan compounded by his massive rigging of the March 1977 elections finally brought Pakistan, once again, to a political disruption and a constitutional crisis, and Bhutto himself to a sticky end.
Some fifty years after the first military coup in 1958, the February 18, 2008 elections, by far the most free elections in Pakistan's chequered career, have yielded two major parties (PPP and PML-N) at the centre and a string of three minor parties (MQM, ANP and the JUI-F) in the provinces. They were/are, however, pragmatic and sane enough to decide upon a grand coalition, this being the most fortuitous development in the circumstances. Thus, for the time being, the democratic structure, whether functional, malfunctional or dysfunctional, is very much in place, but without its life giving and energising soul - the normative democratic ethos. Hence, despite the dubious democratic facade, the awesome quest for a democratic ethos continues to be inextricably trapped in a quagmire of a host of debilitating factors that are progressively hurtling Pakistan towards an Hobbesian Leviathan.
Foremost among them are the critical discontinuities in the socialisation process, the fault lines as it were, underscored by the relevant strata's deep divergence between profession and performance. Swearing by democracy but thwarting it thoughtlessly through self-oriented and wilful actions is a normal and routine business with the rulers and their cronies, which are a legion. Expediency is the rule, rather than the exception, and personal, rather than national, interest the guiding principle.
Consider, for example, the following:
(i) "bloodline", dynastic and/or personalised politics;
(ii) lack of internal democracy within parties, with nomination rather than election being the guiding principle for upward mobility in the parties, resulting in the abortion of the normative political process and in a chronic "famine of able persons", which Toynbee refers to;
(iii) retention of the party office by the constitutional head;
(iv) a self-professed "political" governor turning the Government House in Lahore into a party office, besides politicking and attempting to rock the PML-N provincial boat;
(v) the simmering confrontation between the Executive and the Judiciary;
(vi) the law makers brazenly pawning off fake degrees without much ado, with the Balochistan Chief Minister defending their dishonesty and perjury with the cavaliarish remark that "a degree is a degree whether genuine or fake"!; and
(vii) the irresponsible electronic media grossly violating Milton's "free marketplace of ideas" dictum, the bedrock of a democratic order - to name only some of the major faultlines and discontinuities.
Unless these faultlines are redressed, and in time, the long quest for a democratic ethos will continue to be a quest to nowhere. And without the establishment of a democratic culture and a democratic milieu, the quest for a vibrant, self-propelling, and progressive Pakistan will prove to be an unending quest towards a mirage. As Albert Moravia says, ideas are like delicate saplings which need to be nursed, nourished and watered over time before they put down roots. Likewise, democracy is not something that springs full grown from the ground. It invariably takes time, a good deal of time, to grow and get rooted in the consciousness of the people.
Finally, Pakistan is a multi-racial, multi-religious, multi-lingual and multi-cultured country, and in such a kaleidoscopic landscape national integration and nation building could be accomplished only through a democratic polity and a democratic process. Hence Pakistan's future is irretrievably entwined with an unadulterated democracy.
(Sharif al Mujahid is HEC Distinguished National Professor, has recently edited Unesco's History of Humanity, vol. VI, and edited In quest of Jinnah (2007), the only oral history on Pakistan's founding father.)
Comments
Comments are closed.