A line from a documentary film on Pakistan under Field Marshal Ayub Khan, produced by some western country, West Germany, if memory serves me right, has stayed in my mind though it is over 35 years since I saw it. The commentator had said: “Ayub Khan rules Pakistan’s seven crore people in the name of Allah.”
This was in the mid-60s. The country had been halved, thanks to generals Ayub and Yahya, and the population doubled due to the ceaseless efforts of many compatriots since then. The strength of people ruling or trying to rule the country in the name of Allah seems to have increased in proportion to the rise in population. This is thanks to the late dictator, General Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq.
He waged a long proxy war for the US in the name of Allah, and administered the country as God’s shadow on the piece of earth called Pakistan in every conceivable way, except that he did not adopt the title of Ameer-ul-Momineen. That was mighty wise of him because there was no dearth of admirers who wanted him to be the Almighty’s official representative in Pakistan, if not on the whole of the earth.
The line on Ayub Khan surfaced in memory because of a recent experience in Islamabad, the national capital, now under the liberal tutelage of General Pervaiz Musharraf who sent his first message to the world, mainly to western countries and specifically to the US, using the good offices of a pair of poodles he had in his arms. He was heralding good times with the assistance of that lovely pair of canine.
I was having lunch in one of the restaurants in the commercial area overlooking the shining new official and diplomatic vehicles speeding on the smooth surface of the double road that culminates in Constitution Avenue. We could get a glimpse of Islamabad’s life from our table next to a glass window. One could see the sprawling green backdrop in yonder hills and admire the bounties of God: the weather, summer caressing early autumn, delightful company of friends and deliciously cooked food.
Just when the world seemed an island of peace and tranquillity, the headwaiter disturbed our reverie. He came and started drawing the blinds — originally light-coloured but now dirt darkened, on the window. Whatever has happened, one of us asked, telling him that “we like the view, the sunshine, the people passing through the verandah and general life as seen through the glass-fitted window.” It is time for Friday prayers, he replied. Nobody could make anything of the answer. Asked to explain, he elaborated that the staff was going for prayers. We could still not fathom his approach. Having food in public at prayer time on a Friday looks improper, he declared.
One couldn’t make head or tail of his arguments, and we told him that it was still a good hour to prayer time, and if the management had such committed ideas, it better close down the joint for Friday prayers instead of serving guests. We prevailed on the headwaiter in the end. People on the next table had not liked the idea either and they, too, had the blinds removed.
Another such incident had happened years back. The venue was a theatre in Lahore screening a film with pronounced religious content. A gatekeeper entered the hall at one stage and asked everyone to stand up and recite the kalma. He went from seat to seat, just as some candidates are currently campaigning from door to door. Practically everyone complied, possibly fearful of a refusal’s consequences.
But little could be worse disservice to religion than asking spectators in a theatre to stand and recite kalma. This cannot be done these days. Considering the strong religious bias in our nudity and vulgarity-oriented cinema, people would be watching films in a standing posture much of the time.
The headwaiter had not come out of nowhere; he seemed very much a product of a long, uneducated and determined process of distorting religion and its values.
The label of ruling under the name of Allah did not fit Ayub Khan. He made many contributions to the detriment of society; at the top was setting up dictatorship in a country created on the waves of a democratic struggle based on a principled stand by that incomparable and committed democrat, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, and eroding the very foundations of Pakistan. Unleashing retrogressive designs on the populace was, however, not one of his achievements. That front was conquered by the holy warrior, Zia-ul-Haq.
General Zia had a problem by the name of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. He cunningly turned it into a problem of all political groups opposed to Bhutto. Many members of the Pakistan National Alliance that contested the 1977 elections, and later launched an agitation against alleged rigging, were not delectable on their own or even with the help of their parties, specifically religious groups.
They were happy to be ministers, even though the assignment was worth little other than a flag for the car, official residence, salary and certain facilities. They were not even rubber stamps as no powers were given to them. Zia certainly knew the quality and quantity of carrots sufficient for his pious companions.
The wily general discarded them once they had served their purpose. They had nowhere to go by then. Meanwhile, a crusade against communism had begun on Pakistan’s North-western borders. That gave the rightist political parties a chance to serve the cause of religion. What more could they ask for?
They had already received worldly rewards as ministers and when the honour was withdrawn from them, they could still strut around as people who had access to the highest level in Pakistan. The Afghanistan conflict was an opportunity to work for the hereafter, even if it included fighting some Muslim groups and killing them.
The war ended with the withdrawal of the Soviet Russian army. America’s ends were served with the demise of the Soviet Union as world power, leaving global supremacy entirely to the US. The wheel started turning in the opposite direction. They were left in a lurch when the aircraft of their patron saint was blown in a mid-air blast, the event widely regarded as the wages of General Zia for trying to exceed his mandate.
But he had led the rightist troops well and long enough to install them in a position of dominance, and leave the Pakistani society a hostage to their divine practices. The two political governments after the fall of Zia could not escape their pressures. Benazir Bhutto made a truce with some of them while Nawaz Sharif, who was earlier delivered to the maulvis by the powers that be, thought that he would liquidate them by taking over their mission. Mercifully for Pakistan, he failed.
But that did not hinder these element’s growth into aggressive groups, particularly on realizing that their support was needed in some sensitive policy areas and their zealousness, an euphemism for bigotry, was viewed by some important segments among the decision-makers as a vital tool in the pursuit of certain ends. However, 9/11 hit them hard, reducing them to more of a pulp than the debris of the Twin Towers in New York.
The campaign against terror devastated and humiliated these groups and made them look like toothless tigers — no reference to PML-N election symbol. The elections have offered them another opening and they formed an alliance, something unheard of in the past. The late politician, Ali Ahmed Talpur, once told me that when he was incarcerated in Hyderabad, along with some leaders of religious parties, they approached him one day, saying that everything about him was impeccable, except that he did not offer prayers.
He had replied that he would join them the day they followed a single imam; the religious leaders did not bother him in jail after that. Now, they have removed the hurdle of disunity in their ranks and formed Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal. No wonder the headwaiter was telling guests to eat in purdah because of Friday prayers.
A line from a documentary film on Pakistan under Field Marshal Ayub Khan, produced by some western country, West Germany, if memory serves me right, has stayed in my mind though it is over 35 years since I saw it. The commentator had said: “Ayub Khan rules Pakistan’s seven crore people in the name of Allah.”
