ISLAMABAD, May 12: An academic discussion on nation building at the International Islamic University (IIU) here on Friday got mired in the causes of disintegration of Pakistan but ended in agreement that democracy was must for building a nation.

In his keynote address, IIU professor Dr Nazrul Islam of Bangladesh pointed out that many new states in Asia and Africa were facing problems in national integration but said the problems should be viewed as political development, nor political breakdown.

Even an integrated country like Britain had to deal with demands for greater autonomy from its Scot and Welsh populations, he said.

National integration was a slow process. Factors involved in the process - like national identity, the gap between the elite and the masses and the influence that the western educated class exerted on its social, political and economic institutions - did not necessarily move in one direction, the professor said.

It was his enunciation of the causes of disintegration of Pakistan however that ignited a controversy.

Pakistan, he said, provided a striking example of a new state that appeared to have achieved a high degree of national integration on the basis of religion and by focusing political attention on an external factor, India.

Yet, the country disintegrated because the 1956 constitution was not allowed to work, alienating the Bengali majority. And the military takeovers of 1958 and 1969 swept away all possibilities of reconciliation and integration, he argued.

“Today, Pakistan’s success or failure is directly dependent on her ability to respond to people’s rule since problems of democracy demand political solutions on universally tested touchstones,” said Dr Nazrul Islam.

However, Masud Mufti, Prof Shariful Mujahid and Sarfaraz Khan Qureshi among the discussants took issue with his views.

They held that while there were elements of truth in Dr Nazrul Islam’s discourse it “fell short of objectivity”.

Federal Minister Mahmud Ali refused to consider Dr Nazrul Islam a “foreigner” because, he said, Pakistan was broken “by Indian designs in a foreign conspiracy to harm the Islamic heritage of a number of Muslim countries”.

It was the duty of historians and intellectuals “to dig out the truth of (Pakistan’s) disintegration”, he said.

Pakistan and Bangladesh are one nation under two different governments, according to Federal Minister Mahmud Ali.

Masud Mufti, a retired bureaucrat, agreed that Pakistan had been a playground of undemocratic forces since 1947 but blamed the disintegration of 1971 on India.