Pakistan was rush to judgment

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.

From the end of the 19^th century until independent the dominant theme of Britain’s mission in India was to keep order; Indians were not exposed values like pluralism, concept like popular sovereignty and representative government because of the different styles of the colonial rule and the different type of prevailing political culture in the mother country. ‘Long monarchical and colonial rule shaped in large part Muslim political consciousness and caused Muslim societies to evolve in the opposite direction __ toward the loss of individual autonomy and total submission to the community and the state.’ Pakistan’s political culture was naturally a strong product of its past, including its people’s earlier history under the British Raj’ (1).

Nation’s return therefore to military rule time and again was natural ‘Nation-states are the inevitable result of collapsed empires. Nation-states were spawned in the popular revolutions that challenged and defeated aristocratic and alien rule. Nation-states are vehicles or the realization of mass politics. Self-government, the inherent right of a citizenry to choose its leaders, to demand their accountability, and to establish the limits of their prerogatives, lies at the heart of the process defined as constitutionalism. But becoming a nation- state and being a nation state are not similar occurrences. How then is one to think of Pakistan as nation-state? Pakistan was removed from the womb of one of the most successful imperial system in human experience, but it began its life in an ambiance totally out of phase with its incubation. Born from an imperial mother, Pakistan was not genetically structured for the world of republics and federations that dominated the thinking of the post-world War II era. A clone of a yet untested species, its surrogate birth provided little if any nurturing, and virtually no guidance. Given existence as a nation-state, Pakistan was, from the beginning, the antithesis of such expression. The embryonic origins of the new entity were rooted in Islamic tradition and the country never escaped the legacy of its colonial past. Had Pakistan chosen monarchy instead of the inclusive nation-state, it would have been a more appropriate choice. Had the predominantly Muslim nation chosen theocracy in fashioning its political system that too would have been more in keeping with the nation’s exclusive self-image, The Muslim League leaders, however, the persons most responsible for the creation of Pakistan, rejected the distant as well as the most recent past for democracy……….but neither Jinnah nor any of his imminent circle was moved to lay out on paper the blue print for the state they intended to create….Jinnah opted for the more familiar colonial system, in major part of reading of independence, Pakistan was rush to judgment’(2)   

1. Michael Hudson, ‘Islam and Development’ Syracuse, Syracuse University Press, 1980, P3        

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