Pakistan has seen rapid change and frequent conflict in its 62 years. Its resilience is a testament to its people

Mustafa Qadri
guardian.co.uk, Friday 14 August 2009 19:00 BST

Karachi’s Saddar Town is the frenetic heart of Pakistan’s commercial capital. A retail hub where anything and everything from cameras to salwar kameez can be purchased, it was once the economic gateway into the northern reaches of British India. That legacy is still visible in Saddar’s fading colonial terraces, but the intricate wooden shutters are mostly gone and the Victorian entrances have been converted into street stalls. Today most are too busy trying to survive to notice the heritage.

Much the same could be said for the six decades that have followed independence.

Pakistan has seen rapid change in its 62 years of existence. At partition, the population of what was then West Pakistan (the people of East Pakistan took matters into their own hands in 1971 and created Bangladesh) was around 30 million. Today it is closer to 180 million. Pakistanis have been struggling to cope with the demographic explosion ever since.

The 33 long years of direct military rule and numerous wars have not helped, though Pakistanis have never lacked courage or a desire for genuine democracy. Each decade has seen its special dilemmas and surprises, none more frightening than the Talibanisation of the Pakhtun frontier and, possibly, beyond. From bulwark against communism to terrorist menace, the army has received a massive injection of American arms.

But no front line, real or imagined, has been more fateful than the state’s foundational moments. In 1940 the idea of Pakistan, a separate state for the subcontinent’s Muslims, was formally adopted by its leadership under the Lahore Resolution. Significantly, the resolution spoke of “mandatory safeguards … in the constitution for minorities … for the protection of their religious, cultural, economic, political, administrative and other rights”.

Mohammad Ali Jinnah, known as the father of Pakistan, championed this pluralism. In 1946 he remarked: “Religion is dear to us. All the worldly goods are nothing when we talk of religion. But there are other things which are very vital – our social life and our economic life, and without political power how can you defend your faith and your economic life?”

A year later, on 14 August 1947 – 62 years ago today – Pakistan was born.

Not all of colonial India’s Muslims accepted the notion of a separate Muslim state, but around 7 million, including an equal number of Hindus and Sikhs who were moving in the opposite direction, left their homes to join those already living in what is now Pakistan. Paradoxically, these peoples, now drawn upon sectarian lines, fell victim to communal violence at the very moment their new nations promised liberation.

“Pakistan was created on the basis of the two-nation theory,” explains Pervez Hoodbhoy from Qaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad, “a belief that Muslims and Hindus were separate peoples who could never live together”.

He adds: “The unstated assumption was that Muslims – by virtue of sharing a common faith – naturally constituted a nation and could live together harmoniously by virtue of that.”

But events since then – the civil war that created Bangladesh and the current Taliban insurgency to name just two – place that assumption under serious doubt.

History is not merely written by the great individual, no matter how much the powerful might think otherwise. But Mohammad Ali Jinnah holds a special place in the development of Pakistan. As ZH Zaidi wrote, “What distinguished Jinnah from his great contemporaries is that he was quite self-consciously a modern man – one who valued, above all, reason, discipline, organisation, and economy … [who] differed from other Muslim leaders in so far as he was uncompromisingly committed to substance rather than symbol, reason rather than emotion, modernity rather than tradition.”

It has proven difficult for Jinnah’s successors to live up to his credentials, though all invoke his name and image. “His ideals have been overlooked,” says historian Ayesha Jalal, “particularly the rule of law of which he was a fervent advocate.”

In any country, politics is rarely about the rule of law. In Pakistan, it has the added vice of being held hostage to individuals whose personal alliances shift so rapidly that recent events soon become historical footnotes leading to some of the most ironic displays of political drama – like the use, by one-time political prisoner President Asif Ali Zardari, of authoritarian laws from the British Raj to stifle public protest, or opposition leader Nawaz Sharif’s apparent championing of the recently reinstated chief justice despite his overt intimidation of the higher courts while prime minister in the 1990s.

“In such circumstances,” writes the historian Ian Talbot, “patronage alone can secure party cohesion and stability.” That may explain why the current executive has an unwieldy 60 cabinet ministers.

It is in opposition that Pakistani politics is at its best. Opposition transformed the Bhuttos into brave, virtuoso statesmen and women. When not in power, each political movement, even the Taliban, has looked to the abundance of ills that plague the nation to garner popular support. Once incumbent, however, all have been guilty of perpetuating the same vices. As a result, intrigues prevail while inequality and poverty remain entrenched.

“Pakistan is beset by conspiracy theories,” one analyst wrote derisively about the country recently. But western commentators tend to ignore the extent to which their own governments, especially those of the United Kingdom and United States, have stunted the development of democratic politics by favouring centres of concentrated power.

Pakistanis are deeply aware of this. According to an al-Jazeera poll, a staggering 59% of Pakistanis consider the US the greatest threat to the country. Pakistanis may too-readily look to the US to explain their country’s problems, but the world’s only superpower has never trusted them much either.

No postwar nation has been written off more regularly than Pakistan. That it survives remains a profound mystery to outside observers. That may partly explain the constant warnings about its impending collapse. The forecasts reflect a tendency to assume the worst about Pakistan, but its survival is a testament to the resilience of its people.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2009

]]> http://mustafaqadri.net/wp/articles/the-secrets-of-pakistans-survival/feed/ 0 http://mustafaqadri.net/wp/blog/fatas-hindus-migrate-to-india/ http://mustafaqadri.net/wp/blog/fatas-hindus-migrate-to-india/#comments Tue, 10 Mar 2009 14:18:17 +0000 mustafa http://mustafaqadri.net/wp/?p=418 A group of 35 Hindus, nearly half of them women, from Pakistan have crossed over to India and asked the government to allow them to settle in the country, Indian media reported Monday.

Inside there was a large square road encircling the temple whose unmistakable Hindu architecture peaked out from above a further ring of markets and walls. Inside the temple grounds were full of people and life. Most gathered to listen to a guru from North America, a slightly-built, bespectacled middle-aged man. Others languished on the ground or mingled. The atmosphere was colourful, energetic and wonderfully anonymous. A welcome relief to the open night streets of Karachi which everyone here seems a little afraid of these days. Despite my attempts to dress local I still stand out. It might be my pretentious spectacles. It could all, of course, just be my paranoia. But paranoia keeps you alive. (hmmm… I’m starting to sound like a B-grade Vietnam War movie narrator)

The guru was sitting on a thrown at one end of the complex. At all times he was being fanned by two young men. He didn’t speak a word of Hindi but his every utterance was dutifully translated by another man with a microphone. It was a brilliantly colonialist moment, the white man preaching the brown man’s faith to the brown man, but unfortunately I was not allowed to take any photos. Once my camera was revealed from my trusty backpack a man around my age came up and politely asked who I was.

I explained that I was a journalist from Australia interested in reporting on the Hindu community in Pakistan. He said unfortunately non-Hindus were not allowed in the temple grounds because of the guru’s visit. Even local press and the government are not allowed to report on the event. I guessed, after having spoken to several different people there, that part of the reason for the secrecy is a fear that fundamentalist Muslims will react violently. I can just imagine that even some people I know, although a minority, would conjure up conspiracy theories involving Mossad or RAW (Indian intelligence) funding Hare Krishnas to dilute Islam in Pakistan.

To be fair, however, a number of people I met said they had no experience of discrimination in Pakistan. Some were even quite successful businessmen or professionals and there is a Hindu MP in Islamabad.

After a brief chat with a spokesperson in his office, I was eventually allowed to walk around the temple grounds. It was well into the evening now and the guru had left the compound. People remained, however, and I was led to another large open area behind the first field immediately after the entrance to the temple complex. This area was darker but equally full of life. At one end was a closed room in which, I believe, was a statue where people worshipped. It was the holiest area of the entire complex and I was not allowed to enter. I mingled freely with people in the open area instead.

My aim was quite self-conscious. I wanted to learn about the Hindu experience of Pakistan. Many of the people I met were native Sindhis (Karachi is the capital of the province of Sindh. The main ethnic group in Sindh are the Sindhis. Benazir Bhutto was Sindhi). And yet although they have lived here long before Pakistan even existed, they are mostly less than second class citizens. It was a sobering moment, particularly since I have only recently returned from the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Today I visited the mandir again to speak to the local community leadership. They were again polite but quite keen to avoid talking about the Hindu community’s relations with the majority Muslim population. So I instead asked about their personal lives. Unsurprisingly, very little other than very statistical information was offered. “I have X number of kids, I work here,” and so on.

Afterward we visited a Hindu community next to a Mosque in downtown Karachi. The ride to that district was itself an experience. It was my first taste of Karachi peak hour traffic on this visit and our impatient taxi driver, a mountainous Phatan man with the bad habit of opening his door when the car was even momentarily stationary, ensured I didn’t dose off. But we eventually got there in one piece.

The Hindu community next to the mosque is routinely harassed by the police and members from the mosque’s congregation. Three months ago, bulldozers came and demolished two apartment buildings the community claims housed 100-150 people. They showed me photos of the bulldozing, police lynching some of the people and the gruesome aftermath. One young man had his head cracked open like a ripe, bloodied melon. It was sobering stuff. I’ll save the details for my news writes ups.

What I will say now is that they were very welcoming. And yet they also hoped that my visit would lead to some recourse to justice. That somehow me writing in a newspaper or website read by foreigners will eventually put an end to the violence they are experiencing. I repeatedly cautioned them that all I could do is tell people what is happening and that may not mean very much for them on the ground. One of the men, VJ, said he had faith in me because bagwan (god) had sent me to save them. At moments like that you feel like a total fraud, let me tell you now.

I hope to interview the Mulana who has apparently been encouraging Muslims to attack this Hindu community. But I didn’t think it wise or appropriate to meet him just after meeting the Hindu community. I’ll make a separate visit and lay on the faux religiosity. It’s worked before. I’ll also have to speak to local government and police officials as well as the landlord for the area. It should be an interesting week ahead of me.

Throughout today and yesterday evening my guide was a generous, big-hearted man named Lakshman who sweeps the floors of the comman areas to the apartment where I live. I tried on several occasions to give him cash but on each occasion he refused. I met his beautiful wife and children (yes they were literally quite beautiful!) and he even dropped me home last night. He’s a good man and I hope to repay his kindness before I leave.