Which did the people want?
23 March 1940. The resolution adopted by the All-India Muslim League in its general session in Lahore called for independent Muslim states by demarcating geographically contiguous states into “regions which should be constituted, with such territorial readjustments as may be necessary that the areas in which the Muslims are numerically in a majority… should be grouped…” The use of the term “majority” indubitably implies the alongside existence and presence of one or more minorities, hence the explicit stating in the document: “Adequate, effective and mandatory safeguards shall be specifically provided in the constitution for minorities in the units and in the regions for the protection of their religious, cultural, economic, political, administrative and other rights of the minorities.”
Thus Pakistan, in the first place, was perceived to be a Muslim-majority state, not an only-Muslim one. Such was the Pakistan that Quaid-e-Azam wanted to create. He believed that a nation that was pushed to demand for a separate homeland owing to intensifying persecutions in the name of inter-communal violence will not subject its minorities to the same barbarous atrocities. They say Quaid had envisioned Pakistan to be a secular state. They prove it by quoting such statements from his policy speech on 11 August 1947 as: “If you change your past and work together in a spirit that every one of you, no matter to what community he belongs, no matter what relations he had with you in the past, no matter what is his colour, caste or creed, is first, second and last a citizen of this State with equal rights, privileges, and obligations, there will be no end to the progress you will make,” and “You are free, you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place of worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed that has nothing to do with the business of the State.”
For him the fundamental principle of the State of Pakistan was “that we are all citizens and equal citizens of one state”. But is this what the oppressed Muslims of the Indian subcontinent really wanted? Had they asked for Quaid’s secular Pakistan or a land of the pure with the extent of purity complicatedly entwined with faith of an individual? By confusing the idea of secularism with liberalism, have we, as a nation, not failed Quaid’s vision of creating a safe abode for all? Is it actually Quaid’s Pakistan in which we are living? Or did we lose it the moment it conflicted with the military dictator Zia-ul-Haq’s scheme of arbitrary Islamisation?
While Jinnah wanted us to work on all the “angularities of the majority and minority communities”, Zia disseminated his personal approach of making Pakistan an overwhelmingly ideal Muslim state wherein majority, if not all, of the laws shall be in stringent compliance with Islamic injunctions as interpreted by only one person – the dictator himself. While Jinnah sensed what Muslims of the subcontinent were ostensibly demanding, General Zia smelled out the very core instinct of the inhabitants of Pakistan. Does this entail that Quaid was, perhaps, wrong in his judgments and somehow failed to comprehend what Muslims really wanted?
General Zia precisely knew and skilfully taught the whole nation how to use the religion card for attaining vested interests. Tying the salvation of Islam and implementation of its injunctions with Zia’s imperative continuation in power, the 1984 referendum put before the public a well-crafted question, the answer to which was very much known owing to 97pc of Pakistan’s population comprising Muslims. “Do you endorse the process initiated by the President of Pakistan, General Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq, for bringing the laws of Pakistan in conformity with the injunctions of Islam as laid down in the Holy Qur’an and Sunnah of the Holy Prophet (PBUH) and for the preservation of the ideology of Pakistan, and are you in the favour of continuation and further consolidation of that process and for the smooth and orderly transfer of power to the elected representatives of the people?” 98.5pc people voting in his favour are not as problematic as the three questions that were asked.
Is there any such Muslim who would not want his country to be run as per Islamic rules? But who is to interpret these injunctions? It is a highly sensitive issue because two parts of implementation are identification of non-compliance and punishment of criminals. The all-famous Hudood Laws, that shifted the burden of presenting evidence on the victim instead of the perpetrator and falsely interpreted the presence of four witnesses, resulted in conviction of many women who were first failed by this society and then by its laws. Mashal Khan’s assassination in what will be remembered as an intensely shameful incident of false accusation and mob lynching is a fallout of Zia’s policies that will seemingly be harboured in the mindset of Pakistanis for many generations to come. From introduction of Kalashnikov culture and madrasah system to Blasphemy and Hudood laws and Ehtram-e-Ramzan Bill, it took General Zia one whole decade to plant the seeds of extremism in the very foundations of Pakistan and corrupt the meaning of its ideology to such an extent that today we have become highly uncertain about Quaid’s vision and intentions.
There is, however, a heavier price that we all are paying as a nation. Muslims before Pakistanis, Sunnis before Muslims, Deobandis before Sunnis, green turban before green flag, and me before we. Our individual identities are now dearer and more precious to us than the label for which we united. Loss of national identity, not only in terms of provinces but also on the basis of religious and sectarian divide, is what has become so deeply rooted in the cornerstone of this country that it now seems impossible to recover from the dilapidated state we are living in. The 18th amendment gave Balochistan, Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa their true identities after years of living under the tags of Baluchistan, Sind and NWFP given by our colonisers, but Punjab could not become Panjab. There is no sense of owning the one or two identities that we were born with. Religion, like a few other realms, is more likely to be chosen by the individual himself, but it is this very subject that becomes the bone of contention and results in undue killings, targeted or mass.
“You you will find that in course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the state.” This was the shape of Pakistan that Quaid-e-Azam had desired. What we have is its antipode. Personal faith and personal space are two of the most violated features in Pakistan because what should have been given preference has been buried in the name of burying the hatchet, Kalabagh Dam to quote.
Before we pray for a prosperous Pakistan, we must answer a few bitter questions that require revisiting the ideology of Pakistan. Did Quaid want Zia’s Pakistan? Did the Muslims of the Indian subcontinent yearn for Zia’s Pakistan? Is secularism equivalent to liberalism? Is being secular a crime? And one last question which is, indeed, the most important one: What do present-day Pakistanis want – Quaid’s Pakistan or Zia’s Pakistan?