In May 1974, a clash took place between a group of Ahmadiyya youth and members of the student-wing of the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) in the city of Rabwah. A week later, the leader of the opposition in the Punjab Assembly demanded that the Ahmadiyya be declared a minority. Soon, the opposition in the National Assembly moved a motion to discuss the incident in parliament. The law minister refused the motion stating that the issue was provincial.
Until June 4, 1974 the government used various tactics to keep the debate on the issue away from the parliament. The prime minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, maintained that the ‘90-year-old question’ (of whether the Ahmadiyya were Muslim or not) was a theological one and thus could not be discussed in parliament. According to Hussain, the prime minister asked religious parties that if this issue were so important, why had they not discussed it when the constitution was being framed (with their input) in 1973.
The speaker of the National Assembly stated that no debate can take place on the matter because the constitution had already defined the minorities. On June 14, the opposition called for a general strike. The strike turned violent in Punjab, killing dozens.
After threatening to use the military against the rioters, the PM finally appeared on TV and promised that he would allow the issue to be discussed in parliament. In his book, Hussain writes that the fact that the military was already engaged in fighting an insurgency in Balochistan, and the manner in which certain Ahmadiyya leaders based out of Pakistan began suggesting (via foreign media) that the Bhutto regime was incompetent, forced the prime minister to allow a debate.
A special parliamentary committee was formed to investigate the opposition’s demands. Theological experts from all Muslim sects in Pakistan, including those from the Ahmadiyya community, were invited for in-camera sessions with the committee.
Bhutto’s party, the PPP, had been overwhelmingly supported by the Ahmadiyya during the 1970 election. In 1972, Bhutto had even appointed new chiefs of air force and navy, both of whom were Ahmadiyya. According to Hussain, Bhutto continued efforts to neutralise the situation, but since Punjab was the PPP’s electoral bastion, violence in the province threatened his regime at the centre.
Rafi Raza, one of the authors of the 1973 constitution, wrote in his 1997 book ZA Bhutto and Pakistan that many members of PPP’s Punjab Assembly agreed to support the opposition on the issue after portions of the special committee’s report were ‘leaked’.
Raza wrote that certain ‘controversial statements’ made by the Ahmadiyya figureheads, during their meeting with the committee, turned the tide in the opposition’s favour. He didn’t mention exactly what these statements were.
After four months of debates and commotion, the bill to declare the Ahmadiyya a minority was allowed to be tabled. On September 7, 1974, it was passed. All parties — religious and secular — in the assemblies and the senate voted in its favour. Editorials of almost all newspapers commended the parliament for resolving the issue ‘peacefully’.
Yet, even though the government and the opposition declared that a 90-year-old issue had been resolved through democratic consensus, the fact is, this ‘resolution’ ended up opening a Pandora’s Box that the state and polity of Pakistan are still trying to shut.
This was a box from which sprang out not only religious and sectarian monstrosities, but also the question: exactly how adjustable should a constitution based on the enlightened model be? Is this adjustability actually a vulnerability?
Published in Dawn, EOS, December 22nd, 2019