Allies of Viceregalism

By Prof Dr. Sohail Ansari

Conceived and worded by Prof DR Sohail Ansari (originality of concepts and originality of words).

He believes that there can never be a zero scope for improvement and appreciates criticism if it is not for the sake of criticism.

All rulers since the birth of Pakistan conscientiously nurtured vice regal traditions and in the personality of Zia viceregalism found another ally, who questioned that whether an Islamic state could also be a parliamentary democracy.  (To Zia politics was means to pursue personal gains and virtually politics was not possible in country as Pakistan had no civil society and people were poor in knowledge and in material things. Having experienced rule of Bhutto it was impossible for him to imagine that the country’s work could be done in structured political circumstances. ‘By 1985 Zia revealed his willingness to re-create the central parliament and provincial legislatures. True to Pakistan’s vice regal tradition, the president would retain the extraordinary powers enjoyed by the colonial viceroy….the president would perform the duties of both head of state and head of government. Zia’s behavior was a direct response to the country’s stunted political process. he was as much a prisoner of the Pakistan experience as he was its judge and Jury…he did not emerge from nowhere. Zia was part of the Pakistan story, hardly its maker. He was an extension of a deeper past that intertwined with the age of the Mughals and the reign of the British Raj..) (1)

In consequence, the public was left untutored in the kind of vigilance usually needed to hold political leaders accountable. The subsequent education of people to accept democracy through meaningful participation in their political affairs was minimal.

Large number of Pakistani even began to take elections as an exercise in intimidation, outright fraud and largely irrelevant to their lives.

Legitimatization of the monarchical rule sanctified the submission to the head of state, thus fashioned Muslim political consciousness which was further reinforced by subjugation to colonial rule and measures of all rulers since 1947 to 1988, determining conception of the world and man’s place in it. People had been conditioned toward the non- acceptance of democracy; and not grown out of infantile dependence and irresponsibility.

Vice regal traditions had become the dominant element in social and political fabric when democracy visited Pakistan in 1988. Culturally, philosophically, psychologically Pakistan was inherently inimical to flowering of democratic ideals.

Conscientiously-crafted democratic approach on part of rulers could only wean nation off the Garden of Eden theory.  

1              Ziring ‘Pakistan in the Twentieth Century’, Pakistan, Oxford University Press, 1999, P 148