Liberal tradition in Pakistan

MR Altaf Hussain has recently alleged that those who had engineered the mayhem in Karachi on May 12 did what they did because they wanted to pit the “secular, democratic, and liberal” forces in the country against one another, implying that the MQM was one of them. That set me thinking about the liberal tradition in America and its status in Pakistani politics.

Liberalism is difficult to deal with because its substantive content, and therefore its meaning, have been changing over time. Keeping this caveat in mind, we begin with its basic assumption that the individual is prior to any kind of social unit — family, clan, tribe, community. This is not only a useful starting point in a theoretical formulation, it is also a “ground reality”. There had to have been a time when each individual had to rely exclusively on his own devices.

Units of social organisation, including eventually government, came into being when individuals got together, and by mutual consent, created them. The individual, then, has primacy over government and other social organs. They may exercise only as much authority as he and others have “delegated” to them. Individuals, together known as the “people,” being the principals and governments the agents, the latter are accountable to them.

The next basic assumption is that God has endowed man with “reason”, which is the capacity to distinguish right from wrong, and to make connections between ends and means. Man is potentially capable of knowing, without external guidance, what is good for him, and what he must do to get it. The intervention of outsiders, such as government and society, in his management of his affairs may then be minimal. In the initial phases of liberalism, this reasoning led to the conclusion that “that government is best which governs the least.”

This is the way the leading men in society thought during periods of relative peace and prosperity. John Locke in England, and later Thomas Jefferson in America, were the principal exponents of the above train of reasoning. Locke’s England was finally at peace after a long civil war, farmers were doing well, commerce was expanding and large-scale industry was emerging. It would be best to let the economic forces do their work without the government’s intervention. Locke was concerned with the propertied classes, not the poor of whom there were doubtless many in his day.

America in Jefferson’s time was a nation of property holders. Land was abundant and anybody who wanted it could have some except, of course, the black slaves. But Jefferson and others who formulated political theory did not have the blacks in mind.As industrial development proceeded in America, the urban poor surfaced, and by the third quarter of the 19th century their numbers ran into millions. Socialist “utopias” were written (e.g. Edward Bellamy’s 'Looking Backward’), calling for egalitarian systems of production and distribution. But “Social Darwinism” (expounded most notably by William Graham Sumner at Yale) remained the more prevalent doctrine, holding that the poor were poor because they were lazy and incompetent, that life was a struggle in which those who fell behind deserved to be eliminated, and that nobody owed anything to anyone else.

Liberalism and Social Darwinism shared the view that the laws of economics were inexorable, and that any interference with their working would be counter-productive. The stock market crashed in 1929. Many wealthy Americans went bankrupt overnight, industries and commercial houses shut down, and millions of workers lost jobs. Calvin Coolidge, who was president at the time, thought it was all a great pity, but that it was not the government’s function to do anything about it.

Then came President Roosevelt, who believed the government could and must act to relieve the widespread misery. His administration devised and implemented a whole series of measures to create jobs and “prime the pump” to revive the economy. These measures are collectively known as the “New Deal”. From then on liberalism has been identified with the state’s intervention in the economy and the larger society to secure the rights and promote the well-being of the deprived segments of society. These concerns have been a part, more or less, of the liberal outlook in American politics since 1933.

The intense privation that Americans suffered during the 1930s has not been seen again. The pressures for taking from the rich and giving to the poor are not as intense as they were then. Not only the wealthy but even the upper middle and middle classes are reluctant to pay higher taxes for the benefit of those who will not work even when some kind of work is available. In more recent times, the term “liberalism” has come to denote a predilection for unnecessary public spending. As a result, fewer than ever American politicians want to advertise their liberal persuasion.

In addition to the inclinations referred to above, American liberalism includes a strong commitment to secularism, liberty, equality before law, and democracy. This commitment has remained intact throughout American history. The same holds for liberalism in Britain and Western Europe.

It is now time to ask if we have liberals in Pakistan. In terms of the ingredients specified above, I think Mr M.A. Jinnah was a liberal. He was undoubtedly committed to the values of liberty, equality, and democracy and, regardless of what those who would rewrite and distort history may say, he was a secular-minded politician.

His successors in office and power did approve of the interventionist state. Considering that they did not hold a national election for 11 years, it is safe to say that they did not much care for democracy. Nor did they value liberty and equality before law when it came to dealing with their political opponents.

It is a well known fact that feudal lords in West Pakistan dominated the country’s governance. It is well known also that feudal attitudes and liberal values are mutually exclusive. A possible exception to this general trend may, however, be noted, and that was Mr H.S. Suhrawardy, an East Pakistani politician, who served as prime minister for about a year (1956-57). His liberal impulses did not get anywhere because of President Iskander Mirza’s manipulations of the nation’s politics.There is no need to refer to the country’s military rulers — Ayub Khan, Yahya Khan, Ziaul Haq, and Pervez Musharraf — in connection with liberalism. With the exception of Ziaul Haq, they may have been secular-minded, but none of them had any commitment to democracy, liberty and fundamental rights.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto came to power through a free and fair election. When it came to be his turn to hold an election (March 1977), his administration rigged it on a massive scale. In spite of authoritarian streaks in his personal character, he was willing to work with democracy as a political necessity. Liberty and equal protection of the law fell by the wayside so far as his actual or potential adversaries were concerned.

Benazir Bhutto was secular minded, but Nawaz Sharif was not. Neither of them was averse to democracy. Their popularity with voters, and their political fortunes, went up and down from one election to the next, but on the whole democracy worked for them reasonably well.

Their commitment to liberty and equality before law was, like that of Mr Z.A. Bhutto, tentative and conditional, for they too treated the opposition arbitrarily and lawlessly. Each initiated bogus criminal cases against the other, and each was accused of electoral malpractices in the four elections in which they participated. Since their removal from office, they have been swearing by democracy and the other liberal values. How liberal they will be if and when they are returned to office again remains to be seen.

Where else shall we look for liberal politicians in Pakistan? Abdul Wali Khan was a liberal, and the Awami National Party that he led for many years would seem to have had a liberal frame of mind. We can’t be more definitive, for he himself never held office in government, and his party had no more than a couple of brief spells in power as a coalition partner with others in the NWFP and Balochistan.

It is even harder to say anything about minor parties such as Asghar Khan’s Tehrik-i-Istaqlal and Imran Khan’s Tehrik-i-Insaf since their support base among voters is extremely limited as shown by their poor performance in elections.

If the Islamic parties ever reach the position where they are entitled to devise a political system for the country, they will probably institute their own version of democracy, which may not be anything like democracy as we understand it. They will allow liberty and equality “under the law”, but they will surely make laws that impose a variety of constraints upon the individual’s right to choose his lifestyle and his freedom of belief and expression. They are then not to be counted as liberals.

In the statement quoted earlier, Mr Altaf Hussain claimed that his party, the MQM, is secular, democratic, and liberal. What do we say to that? Secular it may be, but the rest of his claim is open to question. Everything that I have read about the MQM over the years, and everything I have seen or heard in the print and electronic media about the doings of this party’s cadres in Karachi on May 12, 2007, gives me the impression that it endorses physical violence as a legitimate means of waging politics. If that should prove to be the case, its claim of dedication to democracy, liberty, and rule of law would have to be rejected.

It has not been my intention to argue that liberalism is the only right way in politics. I have not addressed its relative merits. There is something to be said for conservatism also, and I may say it in a future article. At this point I shall say only that politics in Pakistan is basically illiberal.

The writer is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, US.
Email: anwarsyed@cox.net

Clerics, generals and civilian rule

FORUMS of democracy and human rights all over are debating how to bring about a truly representative government. At the same time, party leaders and caucuses are busy cutting deals towards the same end.

The lawyers have imparted a great impetus to this process by backing their pleadings in the Supreme Court with frequent inter-city cavalcades, unprecedented in that they are led by the Chief Justice of Pakistan — and never was the public ovation so spontaneous and sustained.

The debates, marches and intrigues all go to fuel rumours in the marketplace and gossip in the drawing rooms. Several private TV channels have given birth to a new generation of political pundits. People of all classes and vocations are putting across their viewpoint or venting their anger. The government had to learn it the hard and tragic way not to try to silence or stop them.

Vying with the opposition for attention to its achievements, the government has fallen back upon advertisements which cost a great deal but are more economical and less troublesome than herding crowds for presidential rallies.

Whatever their other stratagems all those who are debating or agitating for a more democratic dispensation agree, at least outwardly, that the path to it lies through a fair and free ballot supervised by an independent election commission.

How that can be made to happen is one troubling question but another more troublesome one, raised at a human rights forum recently held at Karachi, is how to keep the army out of the electoral process ahead and out of politics for all times to come. The second part of this dilemma is how to stop the politicians from inviting, or inducing, army commanders to enter the political fray.

Such indeed has been the history. Sardar Sherbaz Mazari, once an active player in politics and now a tragic spectator on the sidelines, who led the Karachi forum would bear it out that the army has been more often lured in by politicians rather than intruding on its own.Mazari’s buddy Nawab Akbar Bugti (who being secular to the bone could have been President Musharraf’s natural ally against the extremists) was bombed to death in the caves of Balochistan by the army only to save the puppet administration of the mullahs and Q Leaguers in the province. Going back in time, it was Z.A. Bhutto who invited the army to intervene in Balochistan in the seventies, and so did the governments before him, to resolve problems which were essentially political and economic.

Going further back in time to 1951, the Rawalpindi conspiracy case was the army’s first incursion in politics. No one had any idea of what the conspiracy was until Hasan Zaheer had the record of the case declassified when he was the cabinet secretary and after retirement went on to write its first and much acclaimed account.

In essence what Zaheer discovered was that it was no planned conspiracy but a mere outpouring of discontent over the ceasefire in Kashmir by some army officers led by a restive Gen Akbar Khan. Some left-leaning thinkers like poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz and Sajjad Zaheer joined them in their drawing-room discussions. In the background of the Cold War politics, to the intelligence agencies of the time it looked like a communist cabal conspiring to overthrow the government.

The trial of the conspiracy (that wasn’t) and the incarceration of its perpetrators (who indulged only in mental exertions) have left two lasting imprints on our lives: Faiz’s poignant poetry and the army’s involvement in politics. Barely three months after the judgment in the conspiracy trial was announced, the army was called out in Lahore to control sectarian riots.

The spring of 1953 marks the advent both of the clerics and generals in Pakistan’s politics. With the passage of time it has become a twin menacing stranglehold. Their relationship with the political parties ever since has been alternately marked by mutual back-scratching or blackmail.

How one wishes that somewhere down the years Pakistan had an army chief like Sam Manekshaw who told a nervous Indira Gandhi during the seventies, ‘Prime Minister, you don’t interfere in my affairs and I wouldn’t in yours.’

But then we didn’t have a prime minister like Indira Gandhi either to heed that advice. Despite great stresses, the army chief in India has never tried to stage a coup nor has the prime minister ever interfered with the army command. Here in Pakistan both have been habitually violating Manekshaw’s golden rule in much less stressful circumstances.

The conspiracy trial of 1951 and the sectarian disturbances of 1953 were both engineered by politicians to do down each other but unwittingly paved the way for Ayub Khan’s entry in politics. Hardly anyone then demurred, many acclaimed and went on to collaborate with him.

After the separation of East Pakistan, Z.A. Bhutto could have established an Indira-Manekshaw-like equation with the armed forces. Instead, he chose to dismiss all three chiefs of services and pulled up a grovelling Ziaul Haq ignoring four or five generals senior to him with Majid Malik at the top of the list to replace Gul Hassan, a soldier to the core. Then Bhutto also relieved Zafar Chaudhry halfway through his term as chief of air staff whom he himself had selected for the post. Air Marshal Chaudhry later recalled in his memoirs that he resigned protesting the prime minister’s continual interference in the command postings.

Like Bhutto, Nawaz Sharif appointed Pervez Musharraf (after dismissing a straight-talking Jehangir Karamat) as chief of army staff, ignoring his senior Ali Quli Khan. The reason for his choice, as Nawaz’s friends later disclosed or guessed, was that being a “rootless Mohajir” Musharraf would be more beholden to him than Ali Quli who, though a sword of honour winner, belonged to an influential Frontier clan. Neither Bhutto nor Nawaz Sharif could tame their chosen chiefs. Zia saw Bhutto to the grave, Musharraf has been content to exile Nawaz.

Between Zia and Musharraf the people have been made to endure two decades of Islamic and enlightened military rules. Musharraf’s rule may be less harsh than was Zia’s, as has been his treatment of his benefactor, and he and his generals may or may not come back but the prospects of the politics of justice and compassion coming back look dimmer than ever. Faiz, from the darkness of his jail cell of the fifties, however, keeps beckoning:

(‘The peddlers of the poison of oppression will not prevail today nor tomorrow. They may have extinguished the lamps in the bridal chamber but can they ever extinguish the moon in the sky?)

Divided and discredited civil structures have given the commanders a feeling of being saviours. The clerics think that the country was made for them to rule. The administrative services have all but ceased to exist. The police has passed under political control. If all of them together are unable to punish or pacify two hysterical clerics of Islamabad how can the army go back to the barracks? The civil cadres can establish their supremacy only through strong institutions.

The fatal mistake that Z.A. Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif made was to glorify themselves and to pamper or insult the generals. In the hour of crisis they were both at their total mercy. Presidents Fazal Elahi and Rafiq Tarar could have mediated or invoked the Supreme Court’s intervention, if they had the same standing as Radha Krishnan, Zakir Hussain, Zail Singh and Abdul Kalam in India. But they did not, not even remotely.

The plain truth is that if civil institutions remain in disarray and politicians pursue power only for personal gain, no government whatever its composition or mandate, would be able to deny the commanders or clerics a leading and permanent role in the country’s politics and administration.