Pakistan: Historical Legacies, Contemporary Issues
By Dr Syed Jaffar Ahmed
Legacy Books
ISBN: 100000009731
280pp.

The idea of Pakistan presented in the 1940s was more like a piece of abstract art, which everyone could interpret in accordance with their individual wishes, hopes and aspirations. This abstractness extended to the role of religion in the proposed state too, where a segment believed that it would be a state where Sharia would reign supreme, while others visualised it as a Muslim majority nation-state with a secular outlook.

Perhaps this ambiguity had been maintained deliberately, so as to harness the widest possible support for the idea of Pakistan in a highly diverse Muslim population of the Subcontinent. With the passage of time some of the ambiguities of Pakistan’s birth era have gone away, but two controversies still persist. They are related to the role of religion in the affairs of state — ie should it be a secular or Islamic state — and the ideology of Pakistan.

Both these aspects have been discussed in the second edition of Dr Syed Jaffar Ahmed’s book Pakistan: Historical Legacies, Contemporary Issues. It may be noted that the first edition of the book was published in 2017, whose ‘Introduction’ was written by the late respected human rights activist and journalist I.A. Rehman. It is pertinent to state that Dr Ahmed is one of the prominent scholars of Pakistan Studies, who led the Area Study Centre for Pakistan at Karachi University for a long time.

The book is basically a compilation of his articles published in various newspapers (including Dawn), as well as research journals, on a wide array of subjects relating to Pakistan. The articles have been divided in four categories: ‘History’, ‘Democracy’, ‘Federalism and Provincial Autonomy’, and ‘Pakistan in Contemporary Times.’

The present edition has an added article titled ‘A Resounding ‘No’ to Theocracy’, in which the author argues that “secularism” was “inbuilt in Jinnah’s concept of nationhood right from the beginning.” In support of his contention, he cites Jinnah’s initial opposition to the scheme of separate electorates for Muslims in the pre-Partition legislative assemblies as well as his dislike for reservation of seats (or quota) in government employment for the “backward classes.” He quotes Jinnah saying that the “Mohammadan community should be treated in the same way as the Hindu community.”

A second edition of a book with an additional article delves into the prickly issues surrounding the state of Pakistan, in particular the ambiguity around the role of religion in the country

At a later stage, when Jinnah finally demanded Pakistan, he made it very clear that Pakistan would not be a theocracy. “By its very definition, theocracy is the opposite of secularism. So, when Jinnah said Pakistan would not be a theocracy, he was actually telling what it would be,” writes the author, implying that Jinnah wanted a secular Pakistan.

If there were still any ambiguity about the nature of the state, the author believes that Quaid-i-Azam removed it in his 11th August 1947 address, when he unequivocally declared that the state would have no role in matters relating to citizens’ religious beliefs. Dr Ahmed believes that aversion to ‘secularism’ in Pakistan was mainly due to wrongly translating the term as ‘atheism’, which was not the case.

In the same article, the author discusses the genesis and development of Pakistan’s ideology. He argues that, during the course of Pakistan’s history, “the state’s use of its ideological narrative to provide religious sanctions to its policies” has been essentially part of statecraft. He holds that the exercise has remained futile and has failed to achieve its objective of building nationhood, as the doctrine had been “constructed in disregard of the specific facts and realities of the country.”

He goes on to state that “the use of [the] ideological narrative became a more recurrent theme during the rule of General Yahya Khan, whose information minister General Sher Ali became the most vocal torchbearer of the ‘Ideology of Pakistan.’”

With the passage of time, this so-called ‘Ideology of Pakistan’ got strengthened to such an extent that the framers of the 1973 Constitution had to incorporate “more religious clauses than the previous constitutions.” In the subsequent Zia era, the state’s version of ideology was used to impose “strict repressive measures against democratic forces, women and the minorities,” he asserts.

Though the author’s arguments and interpretations are based on well-researched historical facts, still there are few points that require a little more elaboration. For instance, the proponents of Pakistan as an Islamic state point out that Jinnah never used the term ‘secularism’ to describe the nature of the state he was striving for even once in his long political career.

Even in his famous 11th August speech, he refrained from using the term secularism while highlighting the features of the emerging state. On the contrary, they point out that, most of the time, he emphasised Islamic identity while pleading the case for Pakistan.

It is also pertinent here to state that the Encyclopaedia Britannica defines ‘secularism’ as “a philosophical worldview that shows indifference towards or rejects religion as a primary basis for understanding and ethics, encapsulating but not identical to atheism.” One wonders how this definition would sit well with a country that came into existence explicitly on the basis of religion.

Similarly, regarding Pakistan’s ideology, one may again attribute the confusion to the changing stances of the Muslim leadership through various phases of evolution of their political thought. For instance, in the earlier part of his political career, Jinnah was known as the greatest advocate of Hindu-Muslim unity, a concept closer to secularism. However, in the subsequent phase, he demanded a country for the Muslims of India on the basis of their distinct religious identity.

Yet another turn came when the demand for the creation of Pakistan was acceded to, which in turn posed new challenges and raised a new set of questions, primarily regarding the validity or otherwise of the two-nation theory in the post-Independence period.

One such question was about the status of the almost equal number of Muslims left in India after the creation of Pakistan. It was asked: were they still a separate nation, apart from Hindus in post-Partition India? Or they were supposed to migrate to their newly created ‘nation-state’? It was in this backdrop that Quaid-i-Azam’s August 11 speech was delivered, wherein he went back to the secular notion in post-Partition India.

Perhaps, the matter would have settled there once and for all, had two factors not compelled the state to revert back to the notion of religious identity. One was the unresolved dispute on Kashmir, where Pakistan’s case for accession of that state mainly rested on the commonality of religious identity with the people of Kashmir.

The other reason was that the huge cultural diversity among the regions constituting Pakistan was viewed by the policymakers as a threat to Pakistan’s unity. In these circumstances, common religious identity was considered a unifying force for such a diverse society.

Overall, this is a good read, as it is through such intellectual exercises that the ambiguities about the idea and state of Pakistan would be removed in the due course of time.

The reviewer has written Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s biography and is a former vice-chancellor.

He can be reached at drshaikhma@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, February 9th, 2025