The “nation-state” evolved over 200 years ago, so Pakistan is relatively immature at 60. It is beset with problems of insecurity, identity and governance. Its insecurity is derived from the bloody pangs of a Caesarian birth and its identity crisis reflects an attempt to cut the umbilical chord with secular South Asia and seek its destiny in the Islamic Middle-East.
Pakistan’s crisis of governance flows from its inheritance – a relatively developed colonial state apparatus representing the army and bureaucracy before the consolidation of a Pakistani nationhood. This led to the creation of a state-nation standing above the people rather than the other way round in the historical formation of nation-states in which the people formed a nation, then hammered out a consensual or constitutional state.
This Pakistani state-nation has sought to legitimize and entrench itself on the basis of religious ideology. It has tried to stamp a singular identity on the people with the objective of swamping their historically created and enduring multiple sub-identities of ethnicity, language, class, region and sect. By contrast, the historical nation-state, as in India, is predicated on the principles of pluralism and secular democracy in which unity is an acknowledgement, rather than a denial, of religious, linguistic, ethnic and class diversity among the people.
A state-nation built on a singular, solitary, centralizing religious identity, which is by definition exclusivist, polarizing and intolerant because it sets up categories of “us” and “them”, is more prone to bouts of internal and external violence than a nation-state based on pluralist multiple-identity secular democracy. In Pakistan, the state-nation/nation-state problem is compounded by one powerful contradiction based on its singular religious identity: Islam is a brotherhood that transcends the nation-state by demanding loyalty to a Khilafat which undermines the notion of loyalty to a national state bounded by geography with limited political sovereignty. Thus Pakistan’s attempt to forge an “Islamic nationalist” identity is a violent contradiction in terms of the state-nation/nation-state paradigm.
In 60 years, this ruling singular ideology has led to the establishment of a political culture of authoritarianism, violent dismemberment, debilitating regional wars, internal insurgencies, sectarian strife and a prohibitive arms race that has effectively blocked the trickle down effects of economic development to the vast majority of Pakistanis. All these elements signify progressive state-nation failure. What is the way forward?
First, we need less state religious ideology, not more, to make our multi-national state more temporal, peaceable and viable. This is not incompatible with increasing personal religiosity. To do this, however, we must rewrite history, revise the core education curricula, educate the media and cleanse the constitution of all manifestations of any singular religious destiny. We must also insist that the army and bureaucracy serve the cause of a civilianised nation rather than lord over it for reasons of misplaced religious (national) security. Therefore we must encourage civil society pluralism and autonomy in opposition to the centralism of the religious state. We must also support the peoples’ movement for greater democracy and liberal constitutionalism and insist on the irrevocable retreat of the military and clerics from the dominating heights of the state. Finally, our state’s relations with our neighbours should be based on peaceful co-existence and trade rather than territorial or religious ambitions. How does this translate practically?
General Pervez Musharraf must be compelled to shed his uniform and take the army back to barracks. Free and fair elections should return political parties to power which are at least united on a one point national agenda: to establish a political order that is democratic, that recognizes the pluralistic nature of our society and revises the Objectives Resolution in the constitution to engage with multiple impulses, including those of the judiciary and civil society groups, and disentangles the state and constitution from any singular religious identity.
The debate in Pakistan should not only be about choosing religious moderation over extremism or about civilian control over the military. It should be, above all, about the nature of the relationship between our pluralistic nation and our singular state. If this state -nation remains mired in singular religious ideology and identity, it can never be peaceable or democratic, regardless of whom among civilians, clerics and military men rule. But if a national consensus between the civilians and the military can be cobbled on this fundamental issue, the other contentious issues can be tackled. Is this possible?
Unfortunately, in the current religious mood of the people – in which anti-Western passions and clash of civilizations figure more prominently than notions of democracy, civil society or even economy – this seems unlikely. Hence a power-sharing deal between General Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto, whatever its transitional legitimacy, will not be able to redesign the state as required. For that to happen, the unequivocal support of Nawaz Sharif in a government of national consensus will be needed. Since that is not on the horizon, Pakistan may be fated to suffer many more trials and tribulations.