Author: Kanchan Gupta
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: January 9, 2011
URL: http://www.dailypioneer.com/309189/Moth-eaten-Pakistan-ruled-by-mullahs.html
Mohammed Ali Jinnah may have seen himself
as the 'sole spokesman' of Muslims in pre-partition India and the arbiter
of their destiny in 'the land of the pure' after he was gifted a 'moth-eaten
Pakistan' by the departing British rulers, but if truth be told, those who
anointed him Quaid-e-Azam had little time and even lesser patience for his
vision, such as it was or is made out to be by latter day interpreters of
Islamic separatism in the sub-continent. True, Jinnah had famously declared
that "Pakistan will not be a country ruled by mullahs with a divine mission";
it's only natural that someone who enjoyed ham sandwiches with his afternoon
coffee, had a taste for fine whisky, was fussy about the spats he wore and
the cigarettes he smoked, and held the unwashed masses in utter contempt would
find both faith and its extremities abhorrent, more so in shaping the affairs
of state or determining the public and private conduct of individuals.
It is equally true that to get his Pakistan,
Jinnah had shown little or no qualms in letting the Muslim League mobilise
support using both faith and its extremities. The Great Calcutta Killing of
1946 and the subsequent riots like those at Noakhali bear testimony to this
fact, as much as Jinnah's endorsement of the 'two-nation theory' which was
based on the presumed incompatibility between Muslims and Hindus: The two
could not live together in either peace or harmony. There was nothing secular
about this assertion, nor was it fuelled by issues of social compatibility
or political empowerment of Muslims; it was entirely communal and premised
on the need to preserve the Mussalman's separate religious identity. The scorn
with which Jinnah held Maulana Abul A'ala Maududi reflected his elitist bias;
nothing more, nothing less.
Those who tirelessly flaunt Jinnah's 'secular'
credentials are given to quoting from his August 11, 1947 speech in the Pakistan
Constituent Assembly whose members he assured that "in course of time
Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not
in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual,
but in the political sense as citizens of the state". Less than a year
later Jinnah imposed Urdu, a language in which he never spoke, leave alone
read or write, as the national language of Pakistan not because he thought
it would unite a geographically and culturally split country but because it
was as much a part of the Muslim identity as the achkan he took to wearing
in his new role. He no longer saw Islam as a matter of an individual's personal
faith but as the identity of his Pakistan.
Jinnah died without bequeathing his country
with a stable system of democratic governance or a republican Constitution
whose basic principles were inviolable. The constitutionalist-turned-rabble
rouser-turned Quaid-e-Azam left his Pakistan to the likes of Maududi for whom
the supremacy of Allah and the Quran in both private lives and public affairs
was non-negotiable; the Generals of Rawalpindi who believed the Army alone
was fit to rule Pakistan; and America which was looking for a client state
to further its strategic interest in South Asia. Maududi, who believed "everything
in the universe is 'Muslim' for it obeys god by submission to his laws",
wanted Islam to become the cornerstone of Pakistan as a 'theo-democracy' which,
as one of his critics explained, would be an "ideological state in which
legislators do not legislate, citizens only vote to reaffirm the permanent
applicability of god's laws, women rarely venture outside their homes lest
social discipline be disrupted and non-Muslims are tolerated as foreign elements
required to express their loyalty by means of paying a levy (jizya)".
In the six decades since its bloody (some
would say cursed) birth, Pakistan, or what remains of Jinnah's 'moth-eaten'
country, has moved closer to Maududi's 'theo-democracy' and steered clear
of the Quaid-e-Azam's hocus-pocus of separating the church from the state
and keeping the mullahs at bay which, he hoped, would leave the elite's role
in leading the country unchallenged and undiminished. The Jamaat-e-Islami
may not rule Pakistan, but its twisted vision of a brutal state and a cruel
society that together harshly enforce the "permanent applicability of
god's laws" is beginning to take shape and form. It's easy to blame Gen
Zia-ul-Haq for the Islamisation of Pakistan, but that would be tantamount
to suggesting that prior to his interpretation of Islam as a penal code and
Islamic Republic as a floggers' and executioners' paradise, Pakistan was a
secular state where religion was restrained to the zenana and faith practised
purdah. The socialism that Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto preached was as fraudulent
as the liberalism of Clifton. Through spells of military dictatorship and
civilian rule, Pakistan has evolved as a 'theo-democracy'. To deny that would
be to refuse to acknowledge a simple truth. We could couch it in language
that would distract us from the reality, but it would not change the reality
in any manner. That it is an imploding 'theo-democracy' is only matter of
detail, of greater consequence to the world than the practitioners of Maududi's
prescription.
Last Tuesday's murder of Punjab's flamboyant
Governor Salman Taseer, in a sense, demonstrates this point. More people outside
Pakistan are shocked by the killing than those in Pakistan: At home, the killer,
Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri, is being feted as a hero, a true keeper of the
faith. Salman Taseer was killed by his bodyguard, a member of Pakistan's elite
commando force, for demanding the scrapping of his country's hideous blasphemy
law - an amendment Bill has been introduced in the National Assembly but is
bound to be defeated. Worse, he declared his support for Asia Bibi, a poor,
illiterate Christian woman who has been sentenced to death for blasphemy -
Salman Taseer visited her in jail and posed for photographs. Qadri says he
found this intolerable and did what a true Muslim should do in such circumstances;
he is neither contrite nor repentant. Ironically, there has been little support
for Salman Taseer and even lesser criticism of Qadri's misdeed among those
who are held up as shining examples of 'liberal' Pakistanis in an increasingly
illiberal Pakistan. It is no less an irony that many of Qadri's supporters
are women.
This is not to suggest that the last of the
stray voices have been drowned in the tidal wave of Islamism sweeping through
Pakistan. Individuals who are horrified by the idea of living in a Pakistan
ruled by mullahs are outraged and have been giving vent to their feelings.
But as one commentator wrote, the battle against Islamism has been lost and
that's the grim reality. We could, of course, quibble over when exactly was
the battle lost. Was it the day Pakistan was born? Or was it when the first
pogrom, led by Maududi, against Ahmadiyas went unpunished? Was it lost when
Pakistanis acquiesced to Zia's Islamisation programme? Or when Pakistanis
justified their Government's trans-border jihad against India by not raising
their voice against the slaughter of innocents? We reap as we sow.
