Failed Perceptions

By Wajid Shamsul Hasan | April 2021

The situation is desperate in Pakistan. It could be branded as a failed or about to fail state without a direction. Not many take the writing on the wall seriously. Pakistan’s military establishment, overwhelmingly in-charge of the affairs of the state, dismissed it in its usual misplaced bravado. Scant attention is given to it by the ruling elite, except by a few individuals who have the vision and a sense of history or a couple of journalists like me who keep hammering about the writing on the wall of alarming portents. Professor D. Schuemann in his address at Brooklyn, New York on June 3, 1949, observed (Bangladesh became a reality in December 1971 just after 21 years of Pakistan’s creation):

“The state of Pakistan, (which) recently came into being in South East Asia, is a state manifest with enormous pitfalls unique to itself. Its existence is vulnerable, as time will show…In less than half a century, the state will collapse because of its people—who are born with chains of slavery, whose thoughts cannot see love of a free country and whose minds cannot function beyond the scope of personal selfish ends….”

While Professor Schuemann’s lethal forecast had its way as predicted by him when the country lay disintegrated on December 16, 1971 with the birth of Bangladesh, we spent a lot of time blaming our leaders for the tragic fate of Pakistan when the fact is that its disintegration came about under the heels of a military dictator and a military regime that refused to acknowledge and surrender to the rights and democratic aspirations of its people. It opted to lay its arms before a superior fighting force—the Indian army—rather than the democratic will of the masses.

It was no doubt a horrendously tragic event yet it left an inedible albatross permanently round our necks reminding us of the colossal shame. It drastically altered the partition plan imposed by the British who had served an ultimatum on the Quaid—“take it or leave it”. He had no choice and he accepted a “truncated” Pakistan. Being a man with a sublime faith in his people, he had believed that he would make the best of it—rather a model of a modern state for the entire Muslim Ummah by being a secular and liberal democracy in which religion shall have nothing to do with the business of the state and where its citizens will be equal—irrespective of their caste, creed or colour—to live their lives freely and practice their faiths.

Pakistan’s mission to develop into a democratic polity with an egalitarian society as envisaged by the Quaid was cast under a shadow of uncertainty soon after his death followed by the assassination of his trusted—Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan—who having survived an attempted military coup—was physically removed in October 1951. The nascent state—besides the fact that its civilian leadership neither had experience nor training to run a state—was challenged by a power troika comprising civil, military and judicial bureaucratic corps—trained by the British colonial masters to be the rulers. This troika lost no time in disenfranchising the majority of the population in the province of East Pakistan, having its strong base and roots in the Western wing.

The democratic aspirations of the people, as such, were derailed with a view to ultimately converting it into a garrison state. Its monolithic military establishment set itself the goal to making Pakistan serve its interests rather it being in the service of the nation. It believed as a matter of gospel faith in its self-generated perception that in view of the country’s hostile surroundings and varying geo-strategic compulsions—especially sharing a long border with India and Afghanistan—Pakistan at best can only be managed and run by the military, particularly when it viewed civilian leadership incompetent and democracy impractical. Being the de facto ruler, the military has ensured from 1947 to this day—a permanent and unaccountable access to all the national resources. Throughout—since inception---Pakistan has been spending 30 to 35 per cent of its national budget on defence. The institutional growth has obviously become parasitic—gnawing off the state-body to the extent that it is popularly held that countries have armies while Pakistan army has a country to serve its interests.

The jack booting of the democratic aspirations and institutions, denial of their right to vote a government of their choice, subversion of the constitutions that the generals took oath by, derailing of MAJ’s dream of a secular and liberal Pakistan by co-opting the religious parties as its “B” team and imposition of an overly oppressive centralized system of state management, reducing both the civil bureaucracy and higher judiciary into corps of its batmen, the military establishment has been responsible for the loss of hope or investment in the future among the masses. It was Islamabad’s step-motherly treatment and the growing sense of deprivation that has been responsible for frequent insurgencies in Balochistan and Sindh while it managed to get rid of East Pakistan by force when it realized that it had become a permanent basket case.

The truncated Pakistan that the British had conceded ceased to exist in December 1971. Pakistan’s military defeat in the Eastern wing and their loss of control in the Western wing were grounds good enough and logical too, for the usurped and exploited remaining smaller provinces to go for independence, especially when the centralized authority lay amorphous and both India and the erstwhile Soviet Union sitting next door, had assured people of Sindh, NWFP and Balochistan their support if they sought their right of self-determination. Balochistan, incidentally, had opted for independence soon after partition and tried also but was crushed by military actions. Their irredentist hopes could not be fruitful until now due to the strength of the 1973 Constitution that has provided binds stronger than the religion. How long our military would sustain this failed perception is difficult to forecast.

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Failed Perceptions

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