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Friday, 03 Sep 2010
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Where we went wrong
The writer is a human resource consultant currently based in New York (aziz.akhmad@tribune.com.pk)
The other day I stumbled on an old song which went something like this: “My heart has lost its wind now/Broken like a dead sail/My love has drifted out to sea/We set the wrong course/And headed due north/That’s where we went wrong.” Obviously the song is about a relationship gone sour between two lovers but it might as well be describing Pakistan’s situation today, where the relationship between the state and its citizens has gone horribly wrong. The difference is, in the song the lovers recognise where they went wrong and if you listen to the whole song there is a desire to reclaim the relationship and reset the course. But not in our case.
So where did we go wrong? To attempt to answer the question, let me use an analogy of building a house. The Quaid-i-Azam gave us a piece of land and a building plan (on August 11, 1947) but unfortunately he did not live long enough to oversee the building process. The job fell to unskilled masons and what may best be described as daily-wage workers. They had neither vision, nor skill, nor the supervision of the architect; they were mainly interested in keeping their jobs and earning their wages.
They laid the first brick, so to speak, in the form of the Objectives Resolution, barely six months after the death of the Quaid, and it was laid askew. Regardless of the intentions of the authors, the resolution provided a foothold to clerics in mainstream politics, which, until then, was not available to them because of their opposition to the Quaid and the idea of Pakistan. They used their newfound position to pour venom and hatred into the body politic of Pakistan, choosing Ahmadis as their first target. Within two years riots were engineered against the Ahmadis, and mayhem broke loose in the country, mainly in Punjab, which led to the imposition of the first martial law, in 1953. Pakistan was barely seven years old then.
Justices Muhammad Munir and M R Kayani, in their exhaustive inquiry report on the Punjab riots, termed the Objectives Resolution a “hoax” which “not only does not contain even a semblance of the embryo of an Islamic State but its provisions, particularly those relating to fundamental rights, are directly opposed to the principles of an Islamic State” (p203). However, we continued raising the wall on the crooked foundation until it could not sustain itself, and it collapsed in 1971. We had a fresh opportunity to rebuild what was left of Pakistan, but did not bother to straighten the crooked foundation. In fact, we embedded the Objectives Resolution in the constitution of 1973 and laid a new course of bricks totally off the plumb line, in the form of constitutional amendments in 1974. By the time Ziaul Haq was done with the constitution, the building that was Pakistan certainly did not look pretty and was decidedly unsound. The regimes that followed tried to plaster the cracks and paint the facade but never really looked at the crooked rows of bricks in the foundation. The result is before us.
Shaikh Sa’di, the legendary Persian poet, summed it best: Khisht-e-awwal chun kunad maimaar kaj/Ta surayya me rawad meenaar kaj — When you lay the first brick askew, the wall will never be straight or sound, no matter how high you raise it.
Pulished in the Express Tribune, Jue 13th, 2010.
Reader Comments (11)
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well articulated. Hope the message sinks into the teaming milllions gone astray
We have forgotten our own history, and are complicit in its omission from textbooks and the educational curriculum. If only, we were taught his-tory as something to learn from, rather than a propaganda tool.
Jinnah’s Pakistan has fallen prey to the ultra-conservative clerics. All India Congress has infected, fatally, Jinnah’s Pakistan?
Prof. Aziz Akhmad,
Your search of “Where we went wrong” in the history of Pakistan is a praise worthy research. You rightly came to the conclusion that it lies in its foundation. The Persian verse of Sa’di is a strong argument in your favour.
By definition the founding stone (brick or cement!!), it is already chosen before the foundation of the building is laid. The demand of a separate country for Muslim Indians was due to the religious identity of Muslims. So, Pakistan exists because of Islam and it is the founding stone that the Founder chose.
The Founder started his reign as a Governor General with Liaqat Ali Khan as his Prime Minister and asked for a constitution where the Muslim origin of Pakistan be clearly indicated. The wish of the Founder was fulfilled by “Objectives Resolution” ‘OR). This OR is the founding stone of the constitution and not of the foundation of Pakistan.
The existence of Pakistan is based on Islam. Any religious country will always be a religious state: it can never be a Secular State. Pakistan will always be Fist Islamic and then any thing else but never a Secular State.
In an idealistic Islamic state the rights of the minorities should be the prime concern of the state.As I always say, it is the proper education which is lacking.
In any state ALL citizens should be equal, should have the same civil rights as well as the same responsibilities. It will be an ideal situation that in an Idealistic Islamic State it prevails the same situation.
But what is this “Idealistic Islamic State”?
For this one should know what is an “Idealistic Islam”?
Does this Islam exist in the “Holy Book” ?
I agree when Muhammad Ahsan Khan says that “in any state ALL citizens should be equal,should have the same civil rights as well as same responsibilities”……………. I wrote “Idealistic Islamic state” keeping in mind the only Ideal of all the muslims i.e.The Prophet (PBUH)and his era.Islam is in itself an Idealistic way of life for all human beings,but it is also a fact that there is no Islamic state practicing the real teachings of Islam.
Dr. Munawar Aziz
I do not agree when you say:
“The Prophet (PBUH)and his era.Islam is in itself an Idealistic way of life for all human beings,
According to the belief of Muslims, Islam may be considered to be an Idealistic way of life for all Muslim Beings but not to the whole Humanity. Arabs (Muslims) and Islam (any Religion) have no right to impose their Idealistic Belief to others.
Dear Mr.Muhammad Ahsan Khan
No body is forcing any body to follow any particular way of life,its a birth right of every body to choose the way he decides best for him.In the end it will be the God Al-Mighty’s decision which will be final.
Have a good day.
Dear Dr. Munawar Aziz
Once one is under the shelter of The God Almighty, no harm will come to him.
I wish you all the happiness and peace.
Sir,
May I compliment you on a fine, thought provoking, article. Your land and building analogy is brilliant, but may I add a little more detail to it, albeit from a slightly different perspective.
The land that we got–I am not sure the Quaid had the time to give us a plan, as you write–is founded on a major “fault line” (to use a Samuel Huntington phrase). There is a deep ravine toward one end of the land that divides (I) the bulk of simple Muslim folk living on one side, from (II) a small English-speaking governing class, of varying degrees of observant Islamicity (bordering on outright secularism) living on the other side. Also, the soil of this divided land is uneven: there is on both sides of the divide (A) a small bedrock of Arabic-language educated cultural elite: (1) the `ulama among natives–for short, no disrespect intended, and (2) the Islamicists–again, for short; the “clerics” in your language–among the anglophones); and (B) some softer soil, that tends to break away by emigration (to the Middle East, or to English-speaking countries, in search of better livelihood).
It is on this land and soil that a house must be built. The tragedy is not that the foundation was crooked (which it may have been); it is that all plans are for a one-pillar house: some people want that pillar to be located on the native portion of the land; others, on the anglophone portion; within both, some on the rocky portion; some, on softer ground. The solution, it seems to me, does not lie in one side prevailing over the others, but in building a multiple pillar house, in which we accomodate the preferences of all.
This solution is ruled out by current global politics, in which America’s global war has strengthened the say of the Muslim diaspora in the design of houses on distant Muslim lands–Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Palestine, etc.
In Pakistan, the diaspora solutions suffer from an acquired American tendency of wiping out the irreconcilables (from Native Americans to hardcore “Taliban”) rather than working out ‘win-win’ solutions. The diaspora design therefore gives undue weight to an aesthetics that are pleasing to the American eye, and not enough weight to what would be comfortable to the 175-plus million natives. It sees concessions to opposition as a “crooked” foundation, rather than an unstable one-pillar solution.
The diaspora must be persuaded to be more tolerant of the diversities that exist on this beautiful land, albeit a land with deep ravines. The influence of the diaspora on native lives may seem strange, but it is a fact that we must live with.
As Mohsin Bhopali said (in a different context):
Nayrangi-e siyasat-e dawran to daykhiye
Manzil unhayn mili jo shareek-e safar na thhay!
Or, as the natives might plead with the diaspora, in the words of Allams Iqbal:
Daykhta hay tu faqat saahil say razm-e khayr-o shar
Kawn tufaan kay tamanchey khha raha hay mayn, ke tu?