Pakistan As Nation State Project: 75 Years On
Ishtiaq Ahmed for Taylor and Francis
ABSTRACT
The partition of India began to take shape after years of contestation over nationalism, the rights of citizens, and minorities between the Indian National Congress, which claimed to represent all Indians and stood for a secular, democratic and united India, and the All-India Muslim League which claimed to represent all Muslims within the subcontinent. This article argues that Partition memory is selective, and that, like all memories, it is appropriated by post-colonial states to justify and legitimate their exclusive sovereign control over their populations and territories. In the case of Pakistan, the partition memory has also been important for Islamisation which began quite soon after the country’s formation and which has proceeded apace since.
Introduction
On the 75th Anniversary of the end of British Raj in the Indian subcontinent, which left India divided and bleeding to create ‘the independent Dominions of India and Pakistan’, the deep scars it inflicted on the psyche of the peoples of India and Pakistan and the behaviour of their governments needs to put into perspective.
Every day at dusk animosity between India and Pakistan is elaborately and ostentatiously manifested during the flag-lowering ceremony at the Wagah-Attari Border in Punjab situated between Lahore on the Pakistani side and Amritsar on the Indian side. Before Partition, when Punjab was united, many people had daily caught the early bus or train from one of these cities, did their job or business in the other, and returned home by dusk. The distance between the two cities is about 30 miles or 48 km. The cities were closely integrated economically and were expanding towards one another and were expected to merge in the future. Such processes were ruptured abruptly and surgically, erasing in the popular mind a shared history going back hundreds of years.
Consequently, the daily spectacle of the flag-lowering ceremony at the Wagah-Attari border with Indian and Pakistani soldiers ramming the iron-gates with a fierce bang, while large crowds on both sides add zest to the ceremony by nervous clapping and other awkward gesticulations presents a grotesque spectacle indicating that an impassable barrier exists between the two countries and their people (Ahmed, Citation2017, pp. 577–78).
Yet, modern technology, the Internet, and social media are creating new possibilities and opening new vistas for Indians and Pakistanis to interact virtually. Consequently, networks are being formed where exchange of information and opinion takes place regularly and constantly. Not surprisingly, state agencies and IT cells of ideologically driven groups also use these new facilities to advance their own agendas.
The partition
The partition of India and the two Muslim-majority provinces of Bengal and Punjab was the result of a contest over the future of India which began to take shape after years of contestation over nationalism, the rights of citizens and minorities between the Indian National Congress (INC, founded 1885) which claimed to represent all Indians and stood for a secular, democratic and united India, while the All-India Muslim League (AIML, founded 1906) claiming to represent all Muslims demanded the division of India to grant the Muslim minority (25%) a separate, independent state in regions where Muslims constituted a majority (Afzal, Citation2013).
In March 1940, the AIML demanded the partition of India based on the two-nation theory which dichotomised the Hindu majority and Muslim minority as two separate, hostile nations who could not live in peace in a united India. Almost as a knee-jerk reaction, the Sikhs of Punjab demanded the partition of Punjab so that the non-Muslim majority districts of Punjab were given either to India or constituted into a separate Sikh state. The British had, as late as 1943, no plans to leave India for at least another 30 years (French, Citation1997, p. 179; Reid, Citation2016, p. 185). During the war, while the Congress Party refused to support the war effort, Muhammad Ali Jinnah of the Muslim League offered support to the British and a mutually beneficial relationship was established between Viceroy Linlithgow and Jinnah. While Jinnah helped with recruitment of Muslim soldiers in the British Indian Army, Linlithgow helped Jinnah consolidate his role as the supreme leader of Muslims and to propagate freely his demand for Pakistan as a counterweight to the Congress Party’s demand that the British forthwith transfer power to Indians.
In any event, although the British won World War II, their economy and industry were devastated by German bombing. Food rationing and acute shortage of other essential goods virtually rendered Britain insolvent. It borrowed heavily from the United States, which exerted great pressure on it to grant India freedom (Sarila, Citation2005).
After World War II ended in Europe, elections were held in the UK which produced a major upset: arch imperialist Winston Churchill lost the election and a Labour government under Clement Attlee came to power. It announced elections for India to ascertain the wishes of the people. It was clear that holding on to India was no longer possible because of widespread unrest that the Congress had generated during the ‘Quit India’ movement, while the Japanese-sponsored Indian National Army was attracting popular attention; furthermore, an uprising of naval ratings had taken place in February 1946 (Ahmed, Citation2020, p. 329, Citation2021, p. 329).
The election campaign began in India to gain momentum from the end of August 1945. The Muslim League launched a patently virulent communalist campaign demonising Hindus as infidels and money-lending parasites. The Congress leaders who had been incarcerated since August 1942, when the Quit India movement was launched, were released only in June 1945. They sought a mandate for keeping India united. The Punjab Sikhs campaigned against being a part of Pakistan. The election results announced February–March 1946 validated the clashing claims of the Congress and the Muslim League. Congress swept the general seats, while the Muslim League scored a landslide of reserved Muslim seats as did the Sikh parties of the reserved seats for Sikhs (Ahmed, Citation2020, pp. 301–22, Ahmed, 30, 301–22).
Given such extreme polarisation, the British tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to convince the warring parties to accept the Cabinet Mission Plan (CMP) of May 1946 which envisaged a loosely united India with the centre’s jurisdiction limited to defence, foreign affairs and communications while all other residuary powers were vested in the provinces. The provinces were grouped into a Hindu-majority A group and groups B and C constituted the Muslim majority provinces of north-western and north-eastern India. Every 10 years, the groups as a whole or individual provinces in those groups could decide to withdraw from the Indian union. Moreover, more than 500 princely states surrendered only defence and foreign affairs to the union government while in the management of their internal affairs they retained the autonomy they enjoyed under British suzerainty. The elected members of the Constituent Assembly were to frame a constitution for India.
The Congress rejected the CMP as unworkable because the centre lacked effective powers; the three groups or individual provinces could withdraw from the union; and the princely states decided to integrate only partially into the Indian union. However, it decided to join the Constituent Assembly to frame a constitution for a united India. The Muslim League accepted the CMP but refused to join the Constituent Assembly (Ahmed, Citation2020, pp. 329–71, Citation2021, pp. 329–71).
The British persisted with the CMP and an interim government was formed which included both Congress and Muslim League ministers but the cabinet members worked at cross purposes. On 10 July 1946, Congress leader Jawaharlal Nehru declared in a press conference that the Congress would make a constitution in the best interests of a united India. In reaction, Mohammad Ali Jinnah of the Muslim League gave a call for direct action and threatened to use force to get Pakistan (Akbar Citation2011: 210–11; Azad Citation1989: 164–7).
Following Jinnah’s call to direct action on 16 August 1946 communal rioting claimed thousands of lives in Calcutta. The contagion then spread to Noakhali in Eastern Bengal, Bombay, the Hazara district of the North-West Frontier Province, and finally to the Punjab in early 1947. The Muslim League again gave a call for direct action which proved to be uncontrollable for the coalition government headed by Sir Khizr Hayat Khan Tiwana of the inter-communal Punjab Unionist Party, which included Congress and Sikh ministers. On 20 February 1947, Prime Minister Attlee declared that British would transfer power to the Indians by June 1948 (Ahmed, Citation2020, pp. 372–412, Citation2021, pp. 372–412).
On 2 March, Tiwana resigned and on 3 March trouble started in Lahore which spread quickly to Amritsar, Multan and Rawalpindi. In the rural areas of Rawalpindi, the first planned large-scale mass murder of Sikhs took place claiming anywhere between 5,000 and 6,000 lives. The rioting abated for a while but again, in April, it disturbed Amritsar and Lahore and from May onwards it escalated sharply until in July it got out of control, leading to a waning of the authority of the Punjab Government headed by Sir Evan Jenkins (Ahmed, Citation2017, pp. 108–196)
Meanwhile, the last viceroy, Lord (Louis) Mountbatten, had arrived in India in late March 1947 to transfer power by June 1948 to Indians, preferably in a united but loose federation with the princely states enjoying substantial autonomy as they did under British paramountcy. A second, implicit brief assigned to Mountbatten was to ensure that if India was partitioned both India and Pakistan would remain in the British Commonwealth as dominions. Mountbatten talked to leaders from across the board and concluded that India could not be kept united (Ahmed, Citation2020, pp. 423–33, Citation2021, pp. 423–33)
In the meantime, the British military, which until May 1946 had opposed the partition of India on grounds that it would entail the break-up of the Indian Army it had created to defend India against Soviet Communism, drastically re-evaluated the strategic advantages and disadvantages of partitioning India, and concluded in May 1947 that a partitioned India with a weak Pakistan under the leadership of Jinnah would be more amenable as an ally against Soviet Communism than an India under Jawaharlal Nehru, who was left-leaning and surrounded by anti-imperialists of different sorts (Ahmed, Citation2020, pp. 413–15; 433–4, Citation2021, pp. 413–15; 433–4; Mansergh and Moon, Citation1983, pp. 800–6; Citation1981, pp. 788–92).
At about that time, a radical reassessment of the political situation was undertaken by the Congress Party. Following news that communal riots had erupted in several towns in Punjab on 8 March 1947, it threw its weight behind the Sikh demand for the partition of India on a religious basis (Kirpal Singh, Citation1991, pp. 11–12). Khizr Tiwana, who resigned as Punjab premier, met Mountbatten and proposed that Punjab should remain united and be made a separate dominion. On the other hand, some Bengali Hindu and Muslim leaders had agreed to keep Bengal united even if India was divided. Such a stand was opposed vociferously by the Hindu Mahasabha. The Congress joined hands with it to demand that Bengal should also be divided on the same basis (Adak, Citation2013; Ahmed, Citation2020, pp. 426–29, Citation2021, pp. 426–29; Mukherjee Citation2021). Jinnah, who had demanded the partition of India on the grounds that Hindus and Muslims constituted two irreconcilable nations, now argued that Punjab and Bengal should not be divided because Punjabi Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs and Bengal Hindus and Muslims were nations and therefore should not be divided! Mountbatten pointed out to him that such a starkly contradictory standpoint was untenable in terms of either logic or ethics (Ahmed, Citation2020, pp. 430–31, Citation2021, pp. 430–31).
On 3 June 1947, the British Government announced the Partition Plan which on Mountbatten’s insistence brought forward the date of transfer of power from June 1948 to mid-August 1947, i.e., in less than 11 weeks. In accordance with the Partition Plan, the Punjab Assembly was divided into Muslim-majority and Hindu-Sikh majority blocs. If either bloc voted for the partition of the province, it would be carried out. On 23 June 1947, the Hindu-Sikh bloc voted in favour of partition. It meant that the Punjab would be divided between India and Pakistan – there was no provision for a separate Sikh state. The same principle applied to Bengal. The Hindu-majority bloc voted for the partition of Bengal. The partition applied to the directly administered provinces and not the princely states. They were to choose to either join India or Pakistan or remain independent (Ahmed, Citation2020, pp. 442–7, Citation2021, pp. 442–7, Mansergh and Moon, Citation1982, pp. 29–163).
A Boundary Commission headed by Sir Cyril Radcliffe, a British judge, was set up. It established a Bengal and a Punjab boundary commission which heard arguments from all concerned parties to determine the international border between India and Pakistan (Ahmed, Citation1999, pp. 116–67; Chatterji, Citation1999, pp. 168–202). Since neither the principal parties nor their nominated representatives to the commission could agree to the distribution of territory, a decision in the form of the ‘Radcliffe Award’ was made public on 16–17 August 1947. Controversy, verging on the proverbial conspiracy theory type of sensationalism, surrounds the Radcliffe Award. The boundary commissions set up for Bengal and Punjab were headed by native judges nominated by the Congress and Muslim League. Both sided with the respective parties which had nominated them. Under the circumstances, Radcliffe relied on the 7 February 1946 Demarcation plan, which the penultimate Viceroy Lord Wavell had prepared for India and Pakistan in case the British had to transfer power quickly and to quit India. Radcliffe applied it in a way that on the Punjab border the Pakistani claims were upheld and, on the Bengal border, the Congress claims were largely accommodated (Ahmed, Citation2020, pp. 449–50, Citation2021, pp. 449–50).
Mountbatten had set up several other committees to supervise the transfer of power, but there was a serious dearth of neutral troops to supervise the partition. One of the weird assumptions of the partition plan was that while government employees could choose to serve either the Indian or Pakistani state the populations would stay put. Against the background of communal violence escalating sharply in August 1947, the actual transfer of power proved to be one of the bloodiest in history. It resulted in the biggest migration in peacetime: 14–15 million Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs crossed the international border laid down in the Punjab in the north-west and Bengal in the north-east. Anywhere between one and two million of them lost their lives. It was a partition sui generis. Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs were all victims and perpetrators of crimes against humanity which spared neither the old nor children or women (Ahmed, Citation2017).
At any rate, Pakistan came into being with two parts, one in the north-western and the other in the north-eastern zone of the subcontinent where the Muslims were in the majority. In between was 1,000 miles of Indian territory. For all practical purposes, it was an indefensible state given Pakistan’s serious lack of infrastructure and military capacity and capability. The international border between West Pakistan and India was drawn very close to its major towns and cities, and it had no resources to spare for the defence of East Pakistan. Consequently, from the onset Pakistan was a security-conscious state which acquired the characteristics of a garrison state in which the military came to play a dominant role at the expense of civilian leadership (Ahmed, Citation2013).
The Kashmir dispute
As noted earlier, the Partition Plan did not include the princely states; their status was left ambiguous. It resulted in clashing claims to a number of princely states including Junagarh, Manadavar and Kashmir. The dispute over Kashmir resulted in wars between India and Pakistan in 1947–48, 1965 and on a limited scale (at Kargil) in 1999. Already in 1948, a ceasefire had resulted in the territories of that state being divided between India and Pakistan. The ceasefire was converted into a modified Line of Control in 1972. Constant tension and skirmishes on their border, especially along the Line of Control in the former Jammu and Kashmir State and terrorist activities from the 1980s onwards by so-called non-state actors based in Pakistan with Pakistan alleging an Indian hand in the insurgency in Balochistan have meant that insecurity and hostility are endemic to relations between the two countries and this has unavoidably had negative repercussions for minorities in both states. Diplomatic efforts have failed to resolve the conflict and now both states are armed with nuclear weapons, which means that in rational terms a war over Kashmir is impossible (Ahmed, Citation2013; Srivastava, Citation2021). After India abolished the special status of Jammu and Kashmir in August 2019 and integrated it into the Indian union war clouds were again on the horizon of South Asia but nothing happened beyond threats and diplomatic protests.
In India, on the other hand, the Hindu nationalist lobby has acquired unabashedly aggressive characteristics. In 2002, anti-Muslim riots rocked the Indian Gujarat State which left at least a thousand Muslims dead. From 2014 onwards when the strongman prime minister Narendra Modi of the Bharatiya Janata Party came to power and especially after that party’s landslide victory of 2019, the Hindu nationalist movement has acquired veritable majoritarian characteristics which identifies the nearly 15% Muslim minority as irrelevant to their project of transforming India into a Hindu ‘Rashtra’ (nation) and the Muslim minority is targeted as a fifth column harbouring nefarious designs of waging jihad (holy war) on India with the help of Pakistan and other Muslim countries (Anand Vardhan Singh, Citation2022, pp. 244–267, 290–364).
Partition memory and nation-building
Partition studies have been essentially about high politics concerning the omissions and commissions of Gandhi, Nehru, Jinnah, Mountbatten and, to some extent, Wavell. Official documents and collections of speeches and statements and biographies of the main protagonists in the partition drama provided ample material to play the blame game, which nationalist writers do with relish. The partition is remembered in diametrically opposite ways in India and Pakistan. While in India, it is deplored as the vivisection of the motherland, in Pakistan, it is celebrated as liberation from permanent Hindu domination. The Indian leadership, acutely aware of the dangers of separatism and secessionism which had subverted its bid to keep India united nevertheless chose a secular, inclusive, liberal-democratic state model for nation building which simultaneously strongly underscored the territorial integrity of India.
Gyanendra Pandey makes an important point in his book, Remembering Partition: History, Violence and History in India (Pandey, Citation2001), that partition was a violent rupture with the past and the beginning of the new era of not one but two separate nation-states. That memory of severance with the colonial past was appropriated by the power elites of India and Pakistan to define the nation-state and the rights of the people who live in them. Minorities not willing to merge their identities into the state-sponsored nationalist formula were penalised severely. For example, following the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1984 by her two Sikh bodyguards, an indiscriminate slaughter of Sikhs took place. Some 3,000 innocent Sikhs were killed in the most brutal manner. Such terrible punishment was part of a chain of violence that had been unleashed in Punjab, where extremist Sikhs had raised the banner of a separate Sikh state, Khalistan. The ruling Congress Party wanted to send a clear message that any attempt to break out of India and bring about another partition of India would be crushed ruthlessly. Pandey gives other examples of state violence in India against minorities not falling in line with official nationalism based on the idea of one nation, which is secular, inclusive and indivisible (Pandey, Citation2001, pp. 152–74).
The argument can be developed further in the light of the nation-state project, which new states have to address to establish a stable support base in their societies. Post-colonial states are not historical nation-states; rather they are state-nations or nations-in-the-making. Consequently, achieving congruence between the nation and the state is the uppermost task all post-colonial states must address. Culling a coherent and cohesive nation out of a disparate population comprising tribes, clans, castes, religions and linguistic nationalities is rarely easy. Power elites can try to cultivate loyalty to the state in the larger society through the dissemination of cultural and emotional symbols via the educational system. However, the use of intimidation and violence by the post-colonial state to prevent separatism and break-up of the state is also always at hand because no state is willing to let go the territory it considers its own and exclusive (Ahmed, Citation1998, pp. 39–68).
Logically, nation-building can proceed in two directions: either the whole population is considered equal members of the nation, or some cultural particularity shared by part of the population is selected as the basis of nation (Ahmed, Citation1998, pp. 44). Given the contrasting underlying logic upon which the Congress and the Muslim League fought with each other over the future of India – the former claiming to be a secular party open to all Indians irrespective of their religion (who, it argued, constituted one indivisible nation within an indivisible India), and the latter that it was the party of the Muslims who were a separate nation and therefore had a right to their separate state – the biases in their national projects are derived from their visions of nations and nation-states. In India, the Hindu nationalist movement has cashed in on the indivisibility of India to underscore that only Hindus constitute the true patriotic group while the loyalty of minorities such as Muslims and Christians is questionable (Anand Vardhan Singh, Citation2022).
It is not surprisingly that in the case of Pakistan the partition memory is appropriated to justify partition as liberation from permanent Hindu domination as well as differential citizenship and nation-building which privileges Muslims in constitutional and legal terms over non-Muslim Pakistanis.
The partition memory epitomised by 7 years of Jinnah’s endless harping on the existentialist threat posed by a ‘Hindu Congress’ and especially Gandhi to Islam and Muslims became the leitmotif for Pakistan to define its national project. The threat of a Hindu Congress Raj in a united India was converted into a continuing existentialist threat posed by Hindu India to Muslim Pakistan. Such a tendency was reinforced by an overall hostile attitude of the Pakistani power elite, civilian and military towards India. For example, Chaudhri Mohammad Ali (Citation1973) who represented the Muslim League in the negotiations over partition and later briefly served as prime minister of Pakistan (1954–55) and the chief Justice of Pakistan, Justice Muhammad Munir (Citation1980) who was nominated by the Muslim League to the Punjab Boundary Commission as one of the two Muslim judges to examine the arguments of all parties to the partition of Punjab, have in their books alleged that Congress leaders were to blame for the partition of India and that the Sikh leadership was responsible for genocidal attacks on the Muslims of East Punjab.
Both ignore overwhelming evidence which proves that it was the two-nation theory of the Muslim League which sowed deep fear and hatred between Hindus and Muslims and set in motion armed attacks on Hindus and Sikhs in March 1947, while the terrible Sikh reprisals did not start taking place until July 1947. However, Munir (Munir Citation1980, pp. 17) established that riots in the Punjab in an organised and planned manner were first carried out by Muslims in Rawalpindi district, but his overall argument is that the attacks in East Punjab were carried out with a clear mission to empty East Punjab of all Muslims.
Moreover, both Chaudhri Muhammad Ali and Justice Muhammad Munir allege that Nehru, Mountbatten and Radcliffe conspired to draw the international border in Punjab in a way that India was provided a road to Kashmir otherwise it would not have had direct access to that overwhelmingly Muslim princely state. Such a conspiracy theory has very wide acceptance in Pakistan.
An even more damning role is assigned to Congress and especially Nehru by Ayesha Jalal (Citation1985). According to her, from 1939 onwards Jinnah wanted a power-sharing deal within a united India for the Hindu and Muslim nations, but Nehru opposed such a deal because he was not willing to acknowledge that Muslims were a separate nation from Hindus. Jalal’s thesis ostensibly contradicts mainstream Pakistani scholarship which recognises Jinnah’s pivotal role in winning Pakistan, but by blaming Nehru she perpetuates the blame game in a novel way.
The problem is that her thesis is academically untenable in terms of evidence and proof. She has ignored the hundreds of speeches, statements and messages of Jinnah which unequivocally show that from 22 March 1940 onwards Jinnah was steadfast in demanding the partition of India to create Pakistan. He warned Muslims that in a united India Islam would be annihilated and Muslims obliterated and described aspersions cast by others that he was using the demand for Pakistan only as a bargaining chip to gain maximum advantages for Muslims in a united India as Congress propaganda, insisting that getting an independent, sovereign Pakistan was a matter of life and death for Muslims. Leaving one-third of Muslims in India to the mercy of Hindus to establish Pakistan was a price he was willing to pay (Ahmed, Citation2020, p. 248, Citation2021, p. 248; Yusufi, vol. III–IV; Yusufi, Citation1996).
Pakistani historians in general have produced hagiographical accounts of Jinnah’s determination not to compromise on Pakistan and to win Pakistan against all odds by outmanoeuvring Gandhi, Nehru, Azad, Patel and other Congress leaders as well as Mountbatten (Ahmed Citation2005; Al-Mujahid, Citationn.d.; Dar, Citation2014; Hayat, Citation2014; Karim, Citation2010; Mahmood, Citation2002; Qureshi, Citation1969). Pakistan Studies, a compulsory subject taught from junior school to bachelor’s level distorts partition history and preaches hatred against India and Hinduism according to some Pakistani scholars (Aziz Citation1993; Nayyar & Salim, Citation2004; Saigol, Citation2003).
Nation building
More importantly, once Pakistan came into being, the two-nation theory, the partition memory and the central role of Islam became the inevitable reference and framework for defining the constitution, law and rights of citizens of Pakistan. The problem was that Pakistani Muslims were by no means a homogeneous group; they were deeply divided by sect, sub-sect and ethno-linguistic differences. Such divisions among Muslims came to haunt Pakistani politics in the 75 years which have followed, generating considerable confusion and incoherence regarding how to consolidate Pakistan as a cohesive nation-state.
For example, having reiterated with relentless zeal that Hindus and Muslims could not constitute a nation and live in peace in a united India, Jinnah surprised his closest associates and lieutenants and the wider world when, on 11 August 1947, he addressed members of the Pakistan Constituent Assembly in Karachi thus:
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 … . We are starting with this fundamental principle that we are all citizens and equal citizens of one State … I think we should keep that in front of us as our ideal and you will find that in due course 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 (Yusufi Vol. IV, Yusufi, Citation1996, pp. 2604-5).
Whether such a statement reflected a true change of heart or was a momentary outburst of statesmanlike rhetoric is beside the point. ln the past, Jinnah had dismissed all notions of territorial nationalism, and secularism never ever figured in his pronouncements What is more plausible is that Jinnah, the arch politician, was quick to apprehend that if the Indian government expelled 35 million Muslims who had been left behind in India, Pakistan would simply collapse because in no way could it feed and shelter such a huge influx of refugees. Moreover, he wanted to assure the world that Pakistan would be a progressive, modern state. The Congress in any case had no intention of driving out the Muslims, and Jinnah’s speech must have strengthened the resolve of the Indian government not to target the Muslim minority. On the other hand, despite urging the Pakistani Muslims to protect minorities, the attacks on the six million Hindus and Sikhs who were in West Pakistan continued and in fact proliferated and forced them to flee to India. From a potential 21% Hindu-Sikh minority in West Pakistan, by the end of December 1947, it had diminished to a merely 1.6% seven decades later (Ahmed, Citation2020, pp. 537–40, Citation2021, pp. 537–40).
It should be noted that the 11 August speech was a one-off affair, never to be repeated. In all subsequent pronouncements, Jinnah returned to Islamic phraseology and terminology saying that Islamic law, the sharia, would be the main source of law for the Pakistan constitution and he talked about an Islamic economy, Islamic banking and so on (Ahmed, Citation2020, pp. 541–53, Citation2021, pp. 541–53).
After Jinnah’s untimely death on 11 September 1948, his successors moved forward to make explicit the linkage between Islam and the state because that was the basis on which the Muslim League had received a mandate from Muslim voters for the creation of Pakistan. Thus the Objectives Resolution moved in the Pakistan Constituent Assembly by Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan on 7 March 1949 proclaimed the novel idea that sovereignty over the entire universe belonged to God (Constituent Assembly Debates, Vol 5 Citation1949, pp. 1–7). He and other Muslim members who took part in the debate on the resolution made it clear that Pakistan was won for Muslims, and it would adopt Islamic injunctions to create an ideal Muslim polity which would treat non-Muslims fairly in accordance with Islamic norms and criteria (Binder, Citation1963). Such argumentation clearly meant that differential rather than same and equal rights distinguishing Muslims from non-Muslims will be conferred on the people of Pakistan.
The first constitution of Pakistan adopted in 1956 declared Pakistan as the ‘Islamic Republic of Pakistan’. It contained a commitment to bringing all laws into conformity with Islam. It could not be put into operation because the government was overthrown in a military coup in October 1958. The second constitution given in 1962 by Field Marshal Mohammad Ayub Khan reiterated the commitment to bring all laws in conformity with Islam but the word ‘Islamic’ was excluded, and Pakistan was declared simply as the ‘Republic of Pakistan’. Agitation broke out immediately at the exclusion of Islam and the first amendment restored it (Khan, Citation2006, pp. 209–251).
The third constitution adopted by the National Assembly of Pakistan in 1973 went some way further in ascribing an Islamic identity to Pakistan. Thus, unlike the first two constitutions that only required the president of the republic to be a Muslim, the third required the prime minister to be a Muslim too. It further obliged both to take an oath testifying their belief in the finality of Prophet Muhammad’s mission. This was directed especially against the Ahmadis who did not subscribe to the doctrine of the finality of Prophet Muhammad’s prophethood. In 1974, the National Assembly declared the Ahmadiyya sect non-Muslim on grounds that it did not believe in the finality of the prophethood of Muhammad (Ahmed, Citation2013, pp. 212–13). These incremental steps towards a doctrinally purer Islamic identity were interpreted by the ulema (clergy) as a commitment to making Pakistan a true Islamic state. All three constitutions, however, continued, on the one hand, to grant liberal civil and religious freedoms to non-Muslim Pakistanis while simultaneously marginalising them with a commitment to uphold the glory of Islam and to bring all laws in conformity with Islamic principles and law.
In 1977, the popularly elected government of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was toppled by General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq (1977–88). He succinctly declared his political mission: ‘I consider the establishment of an Islamic order a prerequisite for the country’ (Noman, Citation1988, p. 118). In 1979, he announced the imposition of the Hudud Ordinance, i.e., punishments laid down in Quran and Sunna for the offences of adultery (death by stoning), fornication (100 lashes), false accusation of adultery (80 lashes), drinking alcohol (80 lashes), theft (cutting off the right hand), and highway robbery (for robbery alone, cutting off of hands and feet, for robbery with murder, death either by the sword or by crucifixion). In 1983–84, he imposed further restrictions on the Ahmadis who had, as noted above, been declared non-Muslims in 1974. They were forbidden to use Islamic nomenclature for their worship, places of worship and so on (Ahmed, Citation2013, pp. 235–41).
In 1980, General Zia imposed the alms-tax, zakat, on Muslims, but the Shias, emboldened by the Iranian revolution led by Shia clergy, refused to pay it saying that according to their tenets they paid it to their ulema in Iran or in Iraq. The government refused to budge but when the Shias came out in the streets to agitate, they were exempted (Ahmed, Citation2010, p. 204). The Shia resistance to zakat showed that deep divisions existed between them and the Sunnis.
In 1986, a law on blasphemy was adopted which made disrespect to Islam and Prophet Muhammad a serious crime. Initially, it prescribed life imprisonment or capital punishment but later the death penalty was made the only punishment for blasphemy. In subsequent years, the blasphemy law has been invoked many times to put on trial alleged offenders who were mostly Christians, but also Ahmadis and occasionally others. On many occasions, the alleged offender has been brutally killed by vigilantes (Ahmed, Citation2011a, pp. 90–94). In 2011, the Punjab Governor Salman Taseer was slain by his official bodyguard in a hail of bullets. The reason was that Taseer had met a Christian woman who was on death row after being convicted by a court of blasphemy and had expressed sympathy for her. A Christian federal minister for minority affairs, Shahbaz Bhatti, was also killed by terrorists because he allegedly criticised the blasphemy law (Ahmed, Citation2013, pp. 410–13).
Regarding women, laws were introduced which clearly put women at a disadvantage. For example, a new law on the crime of rape was introduced which required four pious Muslim male witnesses to testify that they saw the phallus enter the victim’s vagina (the rape law was revised during Gen. Musharraf’s rule and the four pious male witness requirement was removed; Ahmed, Citation2011b, pp. 109–116). Gen. Zia undertook several other measures, to impose chaste Islamic conduct on women.
On the other hand, after Pakistan had, in 1979, openly joined the so-called Afghan jihad sponsored by the United States, Saudi Arabia and several other states against the Afghan Communists who had captured power in Afghanistan and the Soviet Red Army which had come in its thousands. Radical Sunni Islam gained rapid momentum in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where warriors were trained in armed insurgency. In 1989, when the Afghan jihad was over and the Soviet troops had left Afghanistan, sections of the Pakistani mujahideen (religious warriors) turned their wrath on the Shias in Pakistan, while other groups turned eastwards into the Indian Kashmir with a view to liberate it from India (Ahmed, Citation2011b, pp. 297–300).
Separatist movements
Although the Muslim League was successful in presenting broad Muslim unity against the Congress, after partition it quickly dissipated as the centre became a stronghold of mainly Punjabi and Urdu-speaking groups. Consequently, separatist movements emerged in the certain provinces. The only case of success has been the secession of East Pakistan, which became Bangladesh in 1971. Indian backing and military intervention to help Bengali rebels during the civil war is cited as incontrovertible proof of India’s sinister designs to harm Pakistan.
Another virulent ethnic conflict has claimed several thousand lives in the Sindh province, initially as a confrontation between the native Sindhi-speakers and the Urdu-speaking refugees, known as Mohajirs, who settled in the urban areas of that province after Partition. The Sindhis felt that they had been denied entry into their own cities, where most industry had been set up. The Mohajirs, on the other hand, alleged that they had made great sacrifices to leave their hearths and homes in India to serve Pakistan but because they were smaller in numbers they were being intimidated by the bigger nationalities of Pakistan (Ahmed, Citation1998, pp. 196–216).
That conflict dragged the central government into a confrontation with militants on both sides. Military action was undertaken several times to restore law and order. In addition, hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees have subsequently settled in Karachi, where armed militias run lucrative businesses in drugs and arms smuggling. Karachi remains a city deeply divided on ethnic lines where terrorism and violence wreak havoc every now and then.
Currently, an insurgency rages in Baluchistan after it was crushed earlier on several occasions (Ahmed, Citation1998, pp. 335–36). It has resulted in abductions and the disappearance of Baluch nationalists by the military and security forces, while the Baluch have targeted Punjabi settlers and at times fought battles with the army.
Conclusion
The partition of India, Bengal and Punjab was the product of a long and tortuous process of contestation over power and rights between the Indian National Congress and the All-India Muslim League, which failed to find a formula according to which India could be kept united. Partition memory is selective, like all memories, appropriated by post-colonial states to justify and legitimate their exclusive sovereign control over their populations and territories. In the case of India and Pakistan, partition was a very violent experience which inflicted unprecedented suffering on millions of people. In it is also embedded the rationale for their respective ideas of nationalism, citizen’s rights and nation-building. Historically, there was neither one grand Indian nation at any point in time nor a Muslim nation. Both India and Pakistan are state-nations, that is, nations-in-the-making rather than nations-in-the-being.
This study has focused on the partition memory being used in Pakistan to consolidate the nation-state. Externally, it serves well as self-fulfilling prophecy that the Indian leadership never wanted Pakistan to come into being but, having seen that dream fades away, the Indian leadership had hoped that Pakistan would disintegrate and return to the Indian fold. The wars with India over Kashmir and the break-up of Pakistan offer some indication of that prophecy being correct, at least partially. It has meant the maintenance of constant tension with India from which the Pakistan military obtains great advantages, and since it is the strongest and most powerful institution in the country it pays rich dividends internally as well. The military exercises veto powers over Pakistan’s internal and external affairs even when it is not directly in power as a result of military takeovers.
The raison d’etre of Pakistan has been that Indian Muslims were a nation in their own right. The Pakistani power elite embarked upon constitution making based on such a premise. Jinnah’s 11 August speech conferring equal rights on all Pakistanis proved to be just an aberration, which was corrected in the 7 March 1949 Objectives Resolution. Since then, constitution making and the politics of nation-building have unequivocally aimed at differential rights – more for Muslims and less for non-Muslims. Initially, this differential approach was not very substantive or substantial but became so from the 1970s onwards. In that sense, the partition logic and memory have constrained any deviation from the Islamic basis of Pakistan. The power elite has not had any reason to abjure it either. It remains the most effective means for governments to justify their existence.
However, a distortion of the partition memory has been important to proceed with the Islamisation of Pakistan. As noted already, both the Ahmadiyya community and the Shias supported the demand for Pakistan even when they were initially apprehensive and fearful of a Sunni-majority Pakistan coming into being. On the other hand, although without the help of the Sunni ulema, especially the Barelvis, who have the largest following in Pakistan, the demand for Pakistan could not have been popularised so effectively in the Muslim-majority provinces, some ulema and ideologues who opposed Pakistan such as Maududi became the spearheads of the movement for the Islamisation of Pakistan. They have been able to influence the development of rights in the direction of exclusion in law or through violent attacks on atypical sects and subsects.
Here, the underlying logic of partition has prevailed: if you do not share our faith, you are not one of us. Before 1947, this argument was used against Hindus and Sikhs and, after Pakistan, it has been used against Ahmadis in explicit legal terms and against Shias in a de facto manner. Needless to say, the Islamisation of Pakistan and rights-claims have adversely affected not only minorities and atypical sects but women as well because dogmatic Islam is based on the segregation of women.
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