The current political dramas, uncertainty and confusion seem to be extraordinary. But is this really that unusual?
History, if anything, has prepared us for the bizarre and the peculiar. I was therefore prompted to jog my memory and dig out snippets that remain semi-buried in my fallible mind.
Colonel Ilahi Bux, the personal physician of Quaid-e Azam M.A. Jinnah recounted in his little book, With the Quaid-e-Azam During His Last Days, how our executive machinery treated the Quaid when he returned to Karachi after his recuperation in Ziarat. This is a scene from Marquez, the head of state, Governor General and Pakistan’s real, and perhaps the only principled advocate lying in a broken ambulance on a road side and the Madar-i-Millat (mother–of–theà ¢â‚¬â€œnation), his sister, waving a copy of the newspaper to keep the heat and flies away! And this was no ordinary VIP. The rescue ambulance arrived hours later but the damage had been done.
Beyond belief? Yes.
The Quaid passed away in 1948, and his Prime Minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, was shot down by a “lunatic” in 1951. To date, we have no clue as to who hatched the conspiracy, with what motive and why the first Prime Minister was brutally murdered. The assassin was overpowered and killed in the melee that immediately followed the killing. Later the investigating officer’s plane went down with the case files. Thus, we shall never find out the truth; and that is extraordinary. Alas, there is no Oliver Stone here to produce a film on this assassination. Even Kafka, whose vision the Pakistani officialdom typifies, would have been shocked at such developments.Madar-i-Millat Fatima Jinnah’s radio address on Jinnah’s anniversary was censored due to a “technical” glitch. Later, she dared to challenge the Army Chief Ayub Khan in the 1965 Presidential race. Syed Sharifuddin Pirzada, another “extraordinary” legal phenomenon of Pakistan, has held time and again that Fatima Jinnah did not die a natural death but was murdered.ÂÂÂ
He could be wrong, but do we care?
The great Bengali Prime Minister, Husain Shaheed Suharwardy, believed in the future of a united Pakistan. A capable lawyer, politician and a man of letters, he never gave up even after losing his political space. And, what happened in 1963? Suharwardy was found dead in a Beirut hotel in mysterious circumstances. We are not graceful enough to remember him let alone determine the cause of his death. Extraordinary by all means.
Our history makers were not content with such magic-macabre realism. So, “we” decided to initiate army action against our most populous province in 1970. The West Pakistani elites (and this includes everyone and his uncle in the power circles) refused to hand over power to the majority party from the Eastern wing. So while blaming the Hindu teachers in Bengal and ridiculing the treacherous non–martial race, we were relieved to give away the one province that had in real terms struggled for Pakistan. There was a long period of amnesia and silence slightly stirred by the publication of the Hamood ur Rahman Commission Report (that exposed the army action) in 2000 and an apology tendered by General Musharraf in Dhaka later. UNESCO now celebrates the International Mother Language Day on February 21 every year in commemoration of the Bangla language riots of 1952. Ironies don’t shock us anymore.
In the 1970s we lived happily-ever-after under the ostensibly democratic rule of Mr Bhutto that culminated in his physical elimination through the judicial process. The basis of his sentence was evidence that sensible jurisprudence will consider unreliable and defective. The weekly Economist then ran a cover story titled “We Also Hang Our Prime Ministers.” Decades later, a Freudian remark of a Supreme Court judge (who later served as the Chief Justice) in a TV interview in 2004 failed to shock us when he said that this was kinda mistake. Doctrine of necessity stretched beyond the Kafka-esque limits!
The succeeding ruler, another General, proved to be even more peculiar. Having shaken the social and political foundations of the country for eleven years, Zia ul Haq left the world in bizarre circumstances: uniformed with stars, a copy of the Holy Book on his lap, a Jewish US Ambassador by his side, riding in an army plane and yet blown up in the summer heat of 1988. We added it to the layer of our tormented memories.
The film noir played during the decade of the 1990s starred “democratic” regimes playing hide and seek, displaying a wee-bit more maturity than high school governing bodies. Strange was the murder of a sitting Prime Minister’s brother in 1996; and to make matters worse, the PM herself was implicated in this gory act by none other than her self-appointed cronies!
Sordid as this was, the attack of political workers on the Supreme Court in 1997 made the Chief Justice leave his courtroom and hide. More mind-boggling was the split within the Supreme Court then, as judges passed judgments against each other with abandon. Extraordinary that a part of the current judiciary defenders’ brigade includes some of the stalwarts who ordered or ransacked the Supreme Court making Pakistan appear as a fiefdom from medieval history.
Let’s end with the extraordinary events of October 1999 when the Prime Minister and his close confidants apparently prepared a sub-jail for the serving military chief, without an inquiry of course, and actually believed that they could execute this Alice in Wonderland plan of removing and locking him up!
Welcome to Pakistan, Mr. Kafka.
Raza Rumi blogs at Jahane Rumi and writes for The Friday Times, where this was first published.
It is indeed a great article and very informative. Please don’t stop me to say this: I was in my teens when Zia Ul Haq sacked the gov, probably in class 9. All I saw was a supressed, hipocrate society while growing up. You have described many sad incidences, but my friend, the most wonderful that ever happened was when Zia Ul Haq died in the plane. The way he has screwed Pakistan, I strongly believe, noone has ever done. I also feel very ashamed to be called Pakistani when his son, Ijaz Ul Haq, is elected by our great people! When will a time come when we, the Pakistanies, will start learning lessons from our past history!!!
A couple of years ago I came across some CIA archives on country fact book pages that revealed that Americans were in touch with Jinnah months before the independence. It is hardly surprisingly as most countries with imperial designs look deep into future.
With the start of post WW-II cold war era between the two rivals, Pakistan along with Iran and Turkey was to serve as an important link of a “green chain� around the Red Bear. Perhaps the following few lines will provide some explanation to the some fundamental questions raised in this excellent post by Rumi.
While traveling to Lundi Kotal or Torkhum on winding roads of Khyber Pass on every turn I saw signs of different regiments of the British military however I was always intrigued by concrete barriers constructed in flat dried “nullahs� in between the mountains. Those barriers, my father once told me were constructed by British to prevent Russian heavy armor to cross into India. This fear of Russia and later USSR by the Western powers was to play a very unfortunate role in the history of Pakistan.
In the mid 1970s I sat through a presentation on Indus Left Bank road. This road was to keep the country together during the monsoon season, reduce the distance between the North and the South, and improve trade and lives of the people in two provinces. The design was based on California Highway Bearing Schedule…. Indeed an excellent four lane design with overpasses and ramps etc. But no funds (1.2 billion dollars) were available to construct it and the World Bank refused to give loan as it was feared that the USSR will eventually run over and get access to the warm waters of Indian Ocean. Even development in Baluchistan was hindered as it was perceived in Washington that any infrastructure put in place was to going to help the communists in the long run. (I visited Iowa State University in 1981 and came to know that the Indus highway was designed by a Pakistani graduate of Civil Engineering, and that his photo also hung in the department. I could not confirm it for lack of time and other commitments.)
Later, invasion of Afghanistan by USSR confirmed the fears of the “freedom loving� countries that the communists are going to march all the way to the Indian Ocean… Pakistani leadership was convinced by the US that they are next to be invaded and based on earlier active role of Soviet Union in the 1971 war, Pakistan once again volunteered to carry the burden of a brutal proxy war and has yet to recover.
Nevertheless I hope readers are getting a picture of how Pakistan got played as a pawn. Pakistan was always a banana republic but unlike its South American counterparts, Pakistan was on a longer leash because of its geography, distance from US and Chinese trump card.
If we had a strong democracy, we would have had a different fate which unfortunately for the near foreseeable future is sealed. This brings to mind a question i.e. is Musharaf really eager to stay in power or he is compelled to do so by the powers unknown to ordinary citizens? The game goes on!
Dear Kronstadter(!) and YLH
Many thanks for the comments. It is important, once in a while to look back and trace the unfortunate continuities of our existence…
tina,
Pakistan was not founded on Islam. It is a myth. It was a question of identity and its constitutional accomodation in United India. Had the religious faith of that identity been Buddhism… the course of events would still have been the same.
Modern Pakistan is a far cry from the ideal… it is no doubt a Kafkaesque dystopia. This is a brilliant article… thanks rumi.
No, we should not blame all our problems on religion. I was just saying like the others that Pakistan is not terribly unique, considering the broad canvas.
The debate about 1971 war aside, in Pakistan there has never been an Idi Amin, a Pol Pot, or even a General Pinochet. Given the often simmering tensions within the country, this has been an achievement all by itself (that is, avoiding the worst and most spectacular third world failures). I think people often don’t realize this.
However it is time for a better future. The current field of political/military power brokers is not very inspiring, let’s hope for some changes soon.
[quote comment="46392"]Personally, I think it is as absurd to blame all our problems on rekligion as it is to seek all our solutions in it. As someone has already said, at some point thi sbahana baazi on both sides has to end and we need to take responsibility.
[/quote]
Exactly, democracy is not a spectator sport.
Sorry for the double comment, but…
I was wrong to use the word “exposition” in my last comment, because, well, those issues you mentioned aren’t “exposed” anyhow. [:D]
But it’s a nice post.