IDENTITIES AND THE STATE IN PAKISTAN: A STUDY OF MENTALITY

Abstract

This paper examines Pakistan's identity as a state, a religious community, a developmental enterprise, and a primordial society. It argues that over time Pakistan's state and developmental identities have weakened while its religious and primordial identities have gained in strength. This change in the balance has grave implications for Pakistan in terms of the working of the state and its legitimacy in the eyes of its own people. There is therefore a need to rehabilitate the state and developmental identities at a functional level, which means investing in improving the quality of governance and policy planning in Pakistan over the long-term.

Notes

For an interesting view of the growth of Muslim nationalism see Masood Ashraf Raja, Constructing Pakistan: Foundational Texts and the Rise of Muslim National Identity, 1857-1947 (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2010). Raja contends, somewhat implausibly, that the loyalist attitude displayed by Syed Ahmad Khan was actually a form of resistance. In the long run, however, the modernism advocated by Syed Ahmad Khan did serve as the basis for Muslim resistance to both the British and the Hindu majority.

Mohammad Ali Jinnah's political career is taken as a classical example of this process of reassessment. Jinnah thus starts from a loyalist position, evolves into the ambassador of communal harmony, and then as he gains experience starts to question the attitude of the Hindu majority and the secularism of Congress. From this skepticism, Jinnah takes up the cause of Muslim identity and rights within the framework of a united India and, frustrated even in this, moves towards separatism and demand for separate Muslim states. Many biographical accounts of Jinnah's life and politics reflect this evolutionary process, but one that stands out by virtue of its theoretical rigour and the framework of charismatic leadership in which it situates Jinnah is Sikandar Hayat, The Charismatic Leader: Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah and the Creation of Pakistan (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2008).

A process of contention recently examined by Francis Robinson, Islam, South Asia and the West (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2007), and Samina Awan, Political Islam in Colonial Punjab: Majlis-i-Ahrar 1929-1949 (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2011). Both studies demonstrate that many conservative Muslims, especially the ulema, were as sceptical of the Muslim League's commitment to Islam as the Muslim League was sceptical of the Congress's commitment to secularism.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/world/20091122_pstan.pdf is the download link for the report in question (accessed 15 April 2012).

Aitzaz Ahsan, The Indus Saga and the Making of Pakistan (Lahore: Nehr Ghar Publications, 2001).

For a comprehensive treatment of the implications of these and other policies on the recent history of Pakistan and the region see Riaz Muhammad Khan, Afghanistan and Pakistan: Conflict, Extremism, and Resistance of Modernity (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2011). Particularly relevant is the discussion of failed attempts at reforming religious seminaries and the Red Mosque rebellion of 2007. Ibid., 245–257.

Jinnah's speeches and statements on the civil service can be found in Rana Saleem Iqbal, ed., The Quaid on Civil Servants: Speeches and Statements, October 1947 to August 1948 (Islamabad: National Documentation Centre, 2007).

For more on this see Ayesha Siddiqa, Red Hot Chili Peppers Islam – Is the Youth in Elite Universities in Pakistan Radical? (Islamabad: Heinrich-Boll-Stiftung, 2011). In this report Siddiqa shares her findings about attitudes towards religion and politics as well as society with reference to Pakistan's socioeconomic elite. The study, based on detailed questionnaires shared with 600+ students at top private-sector universities, provides a useful benchmark against which ‘liberal’ opinion in Pakistan can be gauged. What the study found was there were few substantive differences between the opinions of Pakistani youth studying in expensive private-sector institutions and those of the population at large. Thus, for instance, 88 per cent considered Islam their primary identity, 70 per cent regarded it correct to have Islam as the basis for a system of governance, 60 per cent agreed that the Government was right to consider Ahmedis as non-Muslims, 18 per cent regarded Shias as non-Muslim. On the political side, there was an overwhelming perception that politics was dirty and the army by comparison was clean. Clearly liberal Pakistan has long been eclipsed if even students from educated and well-off backgrounds with exposure to the rest of the world hold such conservative opinions.

Ilyas Chatta, Partition and Locality: Violence, Migration and Development in Gujranwala and Sialkot, 1947-1961 (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 45.

Ibid.

For two different views of Pakistan's economic development see Ishrat Hussain, Pakistan: The Economy of an Elitist State (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1999) and S. Akbar Zaidi, Issues in Pakistan's Economy (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2000). The picture that emerges from Hussain's examination of Pakistan's economy is that the state has for all practical purposes abandoned systematic efforts designed to improve quality of life in Pakistan. The picture that emerges from Zaidi's examination is that of an economy burdened by poor management and insufficient attention to development of its human resources and institutions.

Two very different but effective critiques of the epistemology of the US worldview in relation to the rest of the world are provided by Andrew Alexander, American and the Imperialism of Ignorance: US Foreign Policy since 1945 (London: Biteback Publishing, 2011) and John Lewis Gaddis, George F. Kennan: An American Life (New York City: The Penguin Press, 2011). Kennan felt that the United States should refrain from advocating prescriptions that it had no way of knowing would work, and compared US state orientation to a dinosaur – immense, muscular, but with a brain the size of a pin. Gaddis, George F. Kennan, p. 435.

To be fair, the planners seem to trying to make an effort of late to understand Pakistan's problems. This is reflected in part in the Framework for Economic Growth (Islamabad: Planning Commission of Pakistan, 2011) prepared under the direction of Nadeem-ul Haque. The Framework warns of anarchy if urgent remedial steps are not taken and wisely identifies implementation as the key obstacle to Pakistan's socioeconomic development.

For more on this see Ralph Braibanti, ‘Public Bureaucracy and Judiciary in Pakistan’ in Joseph LaPolambara, ed., Bureaucracy and Political Development (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963). Braibanti identifies the civilian bureaucracy as the premier state-building and economic development-oriented institution and sees in it sufficient solidarity to resist primordial pressures.

An anecdotal but perceptive and sympathetic account of Pakistan is provided by Anatol Lieven, Pakistan: A Hard Country (London: Allen Lane, Penguin Books, 2011). Lieven believes biraderi to be the key to Pakistan's backwardness and its resilience and thinks that the military is successful because it acts as a giant biraderi.

For more see Mohammad A. Qadeer, Pakistan: Social and Cultural Transformation in a Muslim Nation (London: Routledge, 2006). Qadeer identifies the competing influences of material modernization, political and cultural indigenization and ideological and religious Islamization, and contends that these divergent forces have made Pakistan harder to govern, even though in some respects Pakistan's economy has performed tolerably well.

For more see Alexander Evans, ‘The Utility of Informal Networks to Policy Makers’ in David Martin Jones, Ann Lane and Paul Schulte, eds., Terrorism, Security and the Power of Informal Networks (Northampton: Edward Elgar: 2010), pp. 13–27.