The 1973 Constitution allowed all citizens to vote together. But the 8th Amendment changed the law and mandated that non-Muslims couldn’t vote together with Muslims. Now, taking advantage of confusion in Articles 51 and 106 of the amended Constitution, the Bhutto government wants the joint system partially restored. This, in the world of human rights, is termed “affirmative action”: non-Muslims may not be elected by Muslims but they can vote and elect Muslim candidates to the federal and provincial assemblies.
The politicians are divided on various counts. There are those who simply cannot tolerate equal status for the minorities. Then there is the victim of the political divide who considers consensus, even on a good cause, to be a sign of weakness. Some people also feel comfortable going along with the clergy which objects to the joint electorate system on theological grounds. The PML(N) has therefore vowed to oppose the new law; the clergy has sworn to fight against it.
The non-Muslims are happy with the proposed changes. A partial restoration of the joint electorate will remove a representational hurdle with which the majority community is little bothered. In the current separate voting system, the minorities feel isolated. They say that their elected non-Muslim candidates are unable to represent them properly. The root cause of this is the large constituent unit of the separate electorate that may spread from Multan to Gilgit with one MNA representing an average of 18,000 voters he has never seen and can never visit.
The human rights record shows that most non-Muslims are subjected to maltreatment and dispossession of property because they have no one to turn to in their locality when trouble comes. For example, of the 600 persons rotting in jails under the Gustakh-e-Rasul (Insult of the Prophet) law, a majority is non-Muslim. On the one hand, Muslim MNAs and MPAs don’t care for them because they don’t get their votes. On the other, they are inclined to favour their Muslim voters whenever there is a showdown between the communities. Also, the administration pays less heed to the visiting non-Muslim MNA or MPA than to his locally powerful Muslim counterpart.
The non-Muslims welcome the double vote because it allows them to vote for Muslim leaders. This right attracts mainstream Muslim politicians towards them as a vote-bank. And in case there is local trouble there is a better chance of fair redressal through the powerful Muslim representative.
There is, of course, no hint of ‘secularisation’ in this, as is sometimes alleged by the opposition and the clergy; in fact, it consolidates the Islamic precept of protecting the minorities. It doesn’t reduce the Muslims majority to second-class citizenship, as is alleged, but reduces the second-class status of the non-Muslim voter.
The cleavage in the political soul of Pakistan is, however, much deeper. In 1906, a delegation of prominent Muslims met the British viceroy in Simla and asked him to separate the Muslim electorate to protect the minority population of India from being altogether deprived of representation in local government. The government agreed in 1909 and handed down the “communal award”. The Hindu majority party, the Indian National Congress, first agreed, then went back on it. This caused the big Hindu-Muslim rift in India which finally resulted in Partition.
In M A Jinnah’s famous Fourteen Points, point 4 was the optional demand for separate electorates, to be surrendered by the Muslims at an appropriate time. In 1929, however, the Khilafatist clergy and a big part of the Muslim League favoured the Nehru Report which reneged on a separate electorate system for the Muslims. The Quaid was able to get his Fourteen Points approved by his party, but only with great difficulty — he had to confirm that the demand for separate electorates for the Muslims would be abolished after the Congress agreed to other Muslim demands.
There was weightage involved in separate electorates. Punjab and Bengal had to surrender some of their numerical edge to allow the Muslim-minority areas in India to get more representation. But that is where is the irony lies. The Muslim majority areas were less keen on separate electorates in 1929, but after 1947 the Muslim majority in Pakistan sought to impose them on non-Muslims. East Pakistan rebelled against this scheme because it didn’t want to ‘separate’ 25 percent of its minority population.
In the 1950s the Muslim League made the matter of separate electorates a matter of theology. But the real reason was its profound mistrust of the Hindu population in East Pakistan. The other reason was that it had no support left in the eastern wing after 1954. In 1985, General Zia got the non-Muslims to vote in a fraudulent referendum on Shariat, then pushed them into a separate electorate through a martial law order. Why are we then fighting over the dubious legacy of separate electorates?
On the ground, the operation of the separate electorate system is a messy distortion of the democratic rights promised in our Constitution. We should therefore support the government in its plans to amend the electoral system and give greater rights to the minorities without diminishing those of the majority community.