Pakistan is stretched on a historical rack. One hand clutches at the 8th century, another gropes for the 21st. Some people look toward the Middle East for sustenance, others yearn for a future in South Asia. Some ideologues argue that nationhood has failed to take root because we have abandoned the two-nation theory. Others claim quite the contrary — that the two-nation theory was irrevocably distorted by the creation of Bangladesh and we should not measure our nationality by its yardstick any more. In between, almost once every decade, we have tinkered with competing ideologies like secularism, nationalism and capitalism. At the end of the day, no one quite knows who we are, where we belong and where we should be headed.
When the leaders of Muslim India dreamt of a separate homeland, they imagined a state where Muslims would live at peace with the contemporary world. The dream had two elements: first, that the inhabitants of the new state would be able to come out of their strait jacket of a minority community; second, that the new state would neither be theological nor medieval in its governance but a model modern state based on the tenets of justice and equality. How have we fared?
The nineteenth century Muslim thinker Sir Syed Ahmed Khan devoted his life to divorcing irrationality from Islam. He spelt out secular thought in an Islamic language. Then came the philosopher-poet Allama Iqbal who posited a homeland which would be both rational and humane. Iqbal’s attempt at ijtehad (reinterpretation) in his sixth lecture at Aligarh, obviating the infliction of ancient tribal punishments, inferred that laws should be made in response to the needs of a society and its people. M A Jinnah followed in the same vein, envisaging a state based on rationality. That was supposed to be the kernel of the “ideology of Pakistan”. But today’s Pakistan is a state that violates both reason and humanity.
The seeds of a medieval model were sown by opportunistic rulers who clutched at the lowest common denominator to bolster their power. This trend was started by Z A Bhutto when he began the process of sectarianising Islam in Pakistan. But the biggest blow to the Quaid’s attempt at keeping religion out of the affairs of the state was conclusively dealt by General Ziaul Haq. Since then, Pakistani leaders in trouble have consistently cut themselves off from the intellectual and political antecedents represented by Sir Syed, Allama Iqbal and the Quaid.
The cruel irony about Islamisation in Pakistan is that it enjoys consensus neither amongst the masses nor amongst the self-styled arbiters of Islam in the clergy. Indeed, instead of uniting Pakistan’s Muslims, Zia’s laws created the sectarian divide that is wreaking havoc on the body politic today. If the Muslim League under Nawaz Sharif thinks that it can get Nawaz Sharif thinks that it can get mileage out of Zia’s explosion of Islam, it is mistaken. There are ever more fierce proponents of the cause and nothing Mr Sharif can do will be enough to quench their first for the true ‘shariah’. While the appointment of a Deobandi maulvi as President has sent out all the wrong signals to a rapidly globalising international order, Mr Tarar is seen as nothing more than a sop by purists. Now the opposition led by Benazir Bhutto has hitched a ride on the Islamic bandwagon, hand in hand with Allama Tahirul Qadri.
The first giant step away from the founding fathers’ 20th century vision of Pakistan was Zia’s villainous amendment of the Objectives Resolution of 1949 to deny non-Muslims the right to practice their religion freely, thus violating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that Pakistan had signed in 1948. Once the country was put on the slippery slope of medievalist fundamentalism, the law against the insult of the Holy prophet (PBUH) was thrust down the throat of a protesting citizenry, exposing disadvantaged communities to further savage treatment at the hands of zealots. Zia’s zakat (called ‘Zia-kaat’ by the common man) destroyed national savings and pushed account-holders into falsely declaring themselves Shia. Thus has “Islamisation” contributed to hypocrisy and corruption. Today, the state which has the largest number of Islamic laws on its statute book is amongst the most corrupt in the world.
Tyrants and “democrats” born from the rib of General Zia are taking the state to its demise by the logic of their own religious opportunism. The Muslim League government has now prepared the grand finale by reviving the issue of ‘riba’ (bank interest). Prime minister Nawaz Sharif, not known for his economic wisdom, is about to cross the threshold of the profit-and-loss fraud imposed by General Zia. After the new law against ‘riba’ is enforced by the government, all savings accounts will become exposed to risk; all loans contracted on the basis of interest from abroad will be outlawed; and the resulting lack of public trust will take the economy to its final collapse.
The question is blowing in the wind: who will fashion a modern, rational state in Pakistan which can live at peace with itself and with the contemporary world?