B.D. Sharma
Pakistan came into existence from the womb of negative thinking. Its creation divided the two segments of the society living together as brothers for centuries. With its birth a disaster fell on the hapless people of the sub-continent and lakhs of them were killed in the senseless violence and crores of them were uprooted from their hearths and homes. The newly formed country was such an ambiguous entity of two distantly situated parts that the renowned magazine Life predicted in its issue of 5 January 1948 that the new country would disintegrate sooner than later.
Despite this ominous prophesy, Pakistan had some advantages also to develop as a modern nation. No doubt there were grey areas in its eastern wing still its western wing had been bestowed with the bounties of Nature to give it a pedestal for progress. Majority of the people were sturdy and laborious. The soil of Punjab was one of the most productive in Asia and the irrigation network was a boon. The Agriculture University at Lyallpur and the Punjab University at Lahore were rated among the best in Asia and these glorious institutions were in a position to provide the technical knowhow and the managerial skills for smooth progress of that country.
Because of these advantages Pakistan overtook India in its GDP growth. Apart from our heterogeneity, our leaders adopted the socialistic pattern of development which did not pay us the desired dividends. Where we recorded a growth rate of about 3.50 percent, Pakistan showed a rate of about 5 percent till the eighties. During the late fifties and sixties she even recorded a growth rate of six percent. The Export Bonus Vouchers Scheme (1959) and tax incentives stimulated new industrial entrepreneurs and exporters. Some land reforms, consolidation of holdings and stern measures against hoarding were combined with rural credit programmes, improved seeds and fertilizers, all of which helped to boost agricultural production. Several infrastructural projects notably Tarbela & Mangla Dams were constructed. A new capital city near Rawalpindi came into being. Karachi was sometimes touted as economic role model around the world. Large number of Pakistanis started migrating to the West and the Arab countries comforting its foreign exchange position. Then in the eighties things started crumbling for Pakistan and despite liberal doses of economic aids from America the economic slowdown set in. We, on the other hand were able to start making progress particularly after 1991. Gradually our growth rate jumped to 7.17 percent against Pakistan’s 4.14 percent in 2014 (IMF World Economic Outlook April 2015). In 1914 the contribution to GDP by agriculture sector in India was 17.9 percent as against Pakistan’s 25.1 percent- a sign of a less developed economy. Per capita GDP of India jumped to 5855.306 from 566 dollars (1980 to 2014) whereas Pakistan’s position rose from 863.92 to 4736.25 dollars (on PPP basis). Obviously Pakistan’s economy was creaky and in the doldrums. For the onset of this decline in Pakistan, one has to scratch reasons in the philosophy of its origin and its subsequent history to find answers.
Pakistan was formed by forces of hatred. So the new country got overtaken by forces of religious intolerance, obscurantism and bigotry soon after its birth. These negative tendencies could be fought by liberal, progressive and modern forces generally guided by intellectuals, writers and men of letters who would spread a message of new and modern thinking. With songs of freedom struggle like ‘sarfroshiki Tamanna’, ‘Ab Hum to safar karte hain’ still resonating in their ears, the poets and writers proceeded to infuse vibrancy in the society. The All Pakistan Progressive Writers Association was formed in Pakistan in December 1947. This was, of course a Pakistani avatar of old pre-partition movement. These writers were left-oriented who could inspire people to attack social injustice and backwardness. Unfortunately their views were an anathema to the people in power and in the circumstances some of its members like the famous poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz landed in jail and the others like Sahir Ludhianvi left Pakistan to avoid a warrant of arrest and thought it safe to go back to India.
Despite this, Pakistan experienced some stints of liberalism and progressivism in its history but it was merely a drop in the ocean of bigotry and parochialism. Jinnah on the eve of birth of Pakistan tried to visualize a different Pakistan and pronounced in the Constituent Assembly that “You are free to go to your temples; …..to your mosques or to…. belong to any religion, caste or creed but that has nothing to do with the business of the state.” Jinnah espoused in the clearest possible terms his dream that the country would be tolerant, inclusive and secular yet this was not digested by the hawks amongst his followers who had been fed on poison of hatred all their lives. So in the succeeding years the country reeled under the influence of growing Islamic extremism and Taliban militancy.
The roots of democracy and liberalism did not go deep in the new country and it underwent a series of trials and tribulations. The country started to plunge into an imprecise, complex, obscure and controversial abyss of religious ideology. The Constituent Assembly adopted the Objectives Resolution on March,7 1949. This strengthened the divisive and fundamental forces. Then unfortunately the political leadership failed miserably to deliver the goods and this gave a subterfuge to Gen. Ayub Khan to take the reins of power in his hand. Though the country made good progress under him yet his dabbling into a war costed him dearly. The spirit of democracy had weakened and despite Mujib’s party winning majority, power was not handed over to it. This proved costly and the country broke in two parts. After a short stint of democracy under Bhutto, the army again snatched power. An evil spirit befell Pakistan in the person of Gen. Zia-ul- Haq, contemptuously labelled as the ‘KubbaJarnail’ (Hunchback General), by Hassan Nissar, the famous Pakistani commentator. He injected religious bigotry with a rare zeal in different spheres of life in Pakistan. There was instantaneous rise of Islamic militancy specifically with reference to 1980s when under Gen. Zia Pakistan became involved in proxy war in Afghanistan. Moreover, the army began to show its presence in every sphere of life and a Punjabi poet drew an apt picture when he coined a poetic sarcasm that ‘Pakistan chmaujan hi maujan/ Chaarepaassefaujan hi faujan ‘to describe the pre-eminence of army.
The consequences of army’s pre-dominance and its joining hands with the fundamentalists resulted in radicalization of Pakistan. Religious intolerance became not only a doctrine of clergy but an instrument of state policy. The Islamic fundamentalism so deeply seeped into the socio-political structures that the state became powerless to contain it. Majority of people did not understand that the religion of Islam and Islamic fundamentalism was not one and the same thing. The Islamic fundamentalism grew into a reactionary, non-scientific movement aimed at returning the society to a centuries old social set-up, defying all material and historical factors. Fundamentalism found its roots in the backwardness of society, social deprivation, a low level of consciousness, poverty and ignorance. Scientific consciousness was not allowed to grow. Even criminal-army nexus developed in Karachi and other big cities to give spread to its tentacles in many nefarious designs. Apart from four wars with its neighbour India, army unleashed a proxy war against its neighbour also. Innumerable groups, where names became irrelevant, were created to bleed its neighbour with 1000 cuts though the same shortly started to excoriate it also from within.
The ‘badhera’ and ‘Zamindar’ culture did not loosen the grip and these feudal lords enjoyed patronage of army and caused havoc with its socio-economic structure. They refused to pay tax and consequently about 0.5 per cent of population would pay tax, resulting in GINI ratio- a measure of income disparity, galloping to the mark of 50. With decline in the prices of oil, the remittances from the Arab countries have started dwindling. With external debt obligations surging to 72 billion dollars and with 105 rupees equalling a dollar, the financial position is becoming precarious day by day.
When America threatened to take Pakistan to Stone Age, Gen. Musharaf acquiesced to collaborating in fighting terrorism. But then a safe refuge was granted to Osama under the very nose of Pak army. In this way the toxic jelly state repeated its history of deceit, fraud and conspiracies. This hide-and-seek game on terrorism is drying up economic and military aid from America and so it started looking towards China. The embrace may be warm due to proposed Economic Corridor but then China is a hard nut to crack when question of free doses of aid comes. No doubt the Economic Corridor will facilitate trade between the two countries but it will also encourage export of trucks of terrorism by uncontrolled Jihadis from Pakistan to Xinjiang province of China. It shall strain the bonhomie shortly. Her scientists stole nuclear secrets from the West and then shared them with Gadhafi’s Libya and rogue North Korea thereby losing all credibility in the comity of nations.
Pakistan’s obsession with India shall continue to increase unproductive expenditure due to arms race. Its trade and tourism shall also continue to be adversely affected. Then its support to Kashmir is also losing its significance in the Western world as this support is being seen through the ugly and abhorrent faces of Lakhvi and Hafiz Syed by the Western world. Education is not being given the due importance and even the lowly 53 percent of literacy is not modern scientific and technological learning, the vehicle of progress. Modern education has been shifted to the periphery. With plurality shown the doors the alienation has not been restricted to the minorities only. In the words of Dalrymple, the famous historian, ‘the tolerant Sufi-Brelvi form of Islam is now out of fashion in the country increasingly overrun by the rise of the more hardline and politicised Wahhabi-Salafism’. On the other plane Pushtuns, Balochs, Sindhis and Mohajirs are also feeling alienated. Organic nationalism, in the words of economist Simon Kuznets, is missing in the Pakistani society. Sir Sultan Aga Khan made the single most important contribution to Muslim League and movement of Pakistan but today progeny of his Ismaili followers are being butchered ruthlessly. Pakistanis fail to understand that state of plurality and diversity is inherent in any society and it leads to strength. Purity and homogeneity particularly efforts to attain them shall end up in disaster. This is the morass in which Pakistan has sunk. And it is here that some misguided elements of our State want to push the people of Kashmir. They must understand that Pakistan’s decades of dabbling with Jihadis is coming back to destroy it. The truth has been well summed up by M J Akbar in his famous book ‘Tinderbox- the Past and Future of Pakistan’, “We are staring, transfixed, at havoc beyond repair.”
(The author is a former civil servant)
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