DOWN THE IDEOLOGICAL RABBIT HOLE
Husain Haqqani’s new book states that the ‘ideology of Pakistan’ is built on the twin pillars of Islam and antagonism towards India. An excerpt from a chapter on Islamist Rage examines what is at the heart of the nation’s current problems
According to British sociologist, Anthony D Smith, nationalism often involves ‘Rediscovering in the depths of the communal past a pristine state of true collective individuality’, and nationalists strive to identify ‘the spirit and values of’ some ‘distant Golden Age’. The challenge of Pakistani nationalism has always been to determine the country’s relationship with history. If Pakistan represents the revival of the ‘Golden Age’ of Islam, it must come to terms with the fact that none of the major Islamic empires — from the Umayyads... to the Ottomans... — were centred in today’s Pakistan; If Pakistan represents the resurgence of Muslim sultans who ruled the subcontinent, they too ruled from Delhi, not Karachi or Islamabad.
Pakistan could always acknowledge the history of the territory that it incorporates as the history of Pakistan’s various peoples. This would involve recognizing the history of the Sindhis and the Baloch, of the Pashtuns and the Punjabis, as well as the various tribes and communities that inhabit today’s Pakistan. The country would then be seen as a federation of diverse communities that became part of Pakistan at the end of British rule... But Pakistan’s leaders have always dreaded that this might lead to assertion of ethnic nationalism and irredentism, a concern accentuated by the separation of Bangladesh. For them, it is imperative that the creation of Pakistan be attributed... to an inherent incompatibility between the subcontinent’s Muslims and non-Muslims.
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The Pakistani version of history denies that a vast majority of Muslims in the subcontinent, including the parts that are now Pakistan, are members of local communities that converted to Islam at some point in time. Thus, Pakistanis view themselves as, simultaneously, the descendants of Arabs and Persians, as well as being related to the Turks and the Mongols. This creates such incongruities as a Punjabi belonging to the Jat tribe (that includes Hindus and Sikhs) lecturing Baloch or Sindhi students about his (and Pakistan’s) heritage being linked to the Muslims who ruled Cordoba and Granada in Spain. It is almost as if the creation of Pakistan has magically bridged differences of DNA, broken off ties to India and Hindus and linked people from the land of the Indus to wherever Muslims might have achieved greatness at any point of time in the last fifteen centuries.
Accepting that Pakistan is a newly conceived nation state that would create history as it goes forward, rather than historic appropriation or distorting the past, was a realistic alternative that was never given a chance. Pakistan could acknowledge its Indian heritage as well as the Muslim-ness of a majority of its population... It could even concede that some of its people, notably Punjabis, were later converts to Islam than others... Instead, successive Pakistani leaders and most of the country’s intelligentsia preferred to build the ‘ideology of Pakistan’ on the twin pillars of Islam and antagonism towards India.
In recent years, the rise of ‘Hindutva’ in India has helped Pakistan’s ideologues advance their case but even before that the fear of ‘the other’ served as an important element in composing Pakistan’s national- ism. Envisioning India as a ‘permanent enemy’ has led to militarism and militancy... But the adoption of Islam as the basis of nationhood, instead of as a system of beliefs designed for individual and collective spirituality or piety, has also contributed to social anarchy, political conflict and sectarian strife.
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Defining Pakistan’s nationalism through Islam exposed the country to the paradox of setting a national boundary upon a universalist faith. There were, as some scholars have pointed out, a ‘range of civilizational levels as well as the range of Islamic pasts’ for Pakistanis to choose from, making the unifying faith a source of great contention. As a consequence, Pakistan’s Islamists, and often the state apparatus, have sought to manipulate religious sentiment to bolster nationalist feeling without intending to establish the Islamic state they constantly talk about.
Islamic ideology not only sets Pakistan apart from India, notwithstanding many commonalities of history, culture and social mores; it also musters a diverse nation’s energies in pushing back on policy pressures from major international powers. In some ways, it is a weapon amid weakness even if it is a gun held to one’s own head. Constant indignation at real or perceived indignities against Islam are a useful device for Pakistan’s politicians and Islamists. They distract from substantive economic and social issues. Quite often, religious rage is generated through falsehoods and rumours, which are systematically deployed as vehicles of policy.
The periodic outbreaks of protest over insults to Prophet Muhammad and Islam are hardly spontaneous. In each case, the protesters do not react to something they see or become aware of in the ordinary course of life. Most of the objects of complaint — a remark made in private, a book published in the West or a movie that has not been released in Pakistan — are not widely accessible and yet the public is whipped into a fury. The Islamists first introduce the objectionable material to their audience and then instigate outrage by characterizing it as part of a supposed worldwide conspiracy to denigrate Islam...
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It is important to note that on at least three occasions in Pakistan’s history, the determination of its leaders to push back prevailed against the demands of religious activists and clerics. On all three occasions, political and military leaders as well as judges of superior courts came together to prevent illiberal interpretations of religion from becoming the law of the land. The first of these was the refusal in 1953 of Prime Minister Khawaja Nazimuddin to remove his foreign minister for being an Ahmadi and to declare the Ahmadi community a non-Muslim minority. Although the government was forced to impose martial law in Lahore to quell riots, it successfully made its case to the public that giving in to religious rioters would only lead to further sectarian divisions... Twenty-one years later, in 1974, the political leadership sought political advantage by appeasing clerics making anti-Ahmadi demands. Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto declared it an ‘achievement’ that he secured support of all major political parties in amending the constitution to declare Ahmadis non-Muslim under law... Had Bhutto, Zia and the judges acted like Pakistan’s leaders did in 1953, Pakistan could have avoided being saddled with a constitutional amendment and laws that are deemed by the rest of the world as violating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights... More recently, in 2016, the third instance of the Pakistani state’s defiance of clerical pressure manifested in the execution of Mumtaz Qadri, the police bodyguard who had killed Salmaan Taseer, governor of Punjab. Taseer was accused by Sunni clerics of supporting blasphemers when he supported amendments to Pakistan’s blasphemy laws and Qadri killed him ‘to avenge the Prophet’s honour’. Although Qadri admitted the crime, clerics described him as a man of faith acting in defence of Islam and demanded that he not be executed. Pakistan’s Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s verdict against Qadri. Prime Minister Sharif enrolled the support of the army chief, General Raheel Sharif, to carry out the sentence... Predictions that the decision to execute Qadri would plunge Pakistan into religious disturbances were proved wrong .... These... instances show the potential for rational decision making if Pakistan’s politicians and the permanent state machinery resolve to ignore or marginalize Islamists. Turning away from the ideological model of state requires willingness to at least question Pakistan’s selfcharacterization as a ‘citadel of Islam’, and a global centre for Islamic revival. Beginning with Jinnah’s 11 August 1947 address to the Constituent Assembly, there is sufficient ground to argue that Pakistan could as easily be envisaged as a modern territorial state as it has been visualized as an Islamic, ideological one.
A reimagined Pakistan would not necessarily embrace Jacobin secularism wherein the state attempts to restrict or limit the practice of religion. It would simply recognize that the individual can be pious, the society can be religious but the state should be non-confessional if it is to be different from what Pakistan has become. The constant refrain of Islamizing a Muslim-majority country, coupled with the belief that this nation must always be in conflict with its largest neighbour because of religious differences, is in many ways at the heart of most of Pakistan’s current problems.