Religion becoming the governing philosophy in Pak neighborhood?

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The question asked in the title of this essay is important to answer for Pakistan. This I will do in the article that will follow in this space next week. Today, I will look at the way governance is understood in the country's neighborhood. Of the country's four neighbours, three have used religion in order to gain political legitimacy. China is the only neighbour that is using social and economic growth for attracting political support from the citizenry. The other three – Afghanistan, India and Iran – have turned to religion to provide the basis of governance. I will first write about the three states in the country's neighbourhood, before speculating about Pakistan's political future.

After a struggle that lasted for more than two decades and involved military actions by two superpowers: first what was then the Soviet Union and then followed by the United States. Moscow sent its troops in 1979 to save from collapse of the Communist regime it had installed in Kabul. The Soviet invasion was resisted by several Islamic groups called "mujahedeen" who came together and fought against Moscow's troops. After losing a large number of soldiers and spending a fortune to win the struggle, Mikhail Gorbachev, then the leader of Soviet Union, signed what history was to be called the "Geneva accord".

This was in 1989 which allowed Moscow to pull out its troops without being challenged by the Islamic fighters. The accord did not have any provision about the form of governance that would succeed the Soviet pullout. President Ziaul Haq, Pakistan's third military ruler, had told me in a meeting with him that he had used the provision in the Constitution that he had inserted before bringing civilian leadership into the government. Article 58-2(b) in the amended Constitution allowed the president to fire the prime minister and his entire cabinet and dissolve the national assembly. This he could do if he was not satisfied with the way the government was operating. He said he removed the government headed by Prime Minister Muhammad Khan Junejo after he had advised him not to sign the Geneva Accord before it was determined who would head the government in Kabul and how the new rulers would govern.

"By getting the Soviet Union to pull out its troops, a political vacuum would be created and the mujahedeen who had vanquished the Soviet Union would fall on one another," said Zia. History was to prove that he had made the correct prediction. After a prolonged internal struggle which also involved American intervention, Kabul was to be ruled by the Taliban. This was a group made up of the students who had been taught in the seminaries established in the tribal belt that lay between Afghanistan and Pakistan. "Taliban" is the Arabic word for students. The Taliban governed from Kabul after imposing what they believed was the right way to govern a Muslim-majority state. The most prominent part of Taliban's governance is the severe reduction in the status of women in the Islamic society.

Religion was also behind the movement that pushed out the ruling monarch from power in Iran and introduced a form of government in which clerics subscribing to Shiism became the rulers with total power. The clerics have an ayatollah as the supreme leader who is the ultimate decision-maker. When the ruler came under pressure from a religiously inclined population, the emperor fled from the country. That was the right moment for Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to return to the country he had left. In 1976, he flew back on a plane from Paris to Tehran and was greeted upon his arrival by a wildly enthusiastic crowd. He founded the Islamic State of Iran and appointed himself as the Supreme Leader. This system came into being when Emperor Reza Shah Pahlavi who had ruled over the country for decades was not able to control the rising religious movement that wanted a system of governance based on religion.

The founder of the state headed by Islamic clerics had a provision for selecting a new leader if the one who was the leader died. The successor when the founder died was chosen by a council of senior clerics. The council chose Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as the new supreme leader after the death of the founder. Following the tradition set by his predecessor, the new head of the state expressed disdain for Iran's pre-Islamic past, calling that a time of "illusion, not a source of pride that was afflicted by corruption and dictatorship". However, after attacks by Israel and the United States in the late spring of 2025, Khamenei gave a speech in which he repeatedly praised the country's "ancient civilisation" and boasted that Iran has "cultural and civilisational wealth" far greater than that of America. The verbal attack on the United States followed the American bombing of the sites where Iran was reported to be producing enriched uranium that could be used for making a nuclear bomb.

By stressing Iran's cultural rather than religious identity, Ayatollah Ali Khamanei "sought to rally a population that was not only rattled by the 12 days of Israeli strikes but that also has, in large measure, soured on the clerics who rule the Islamic republic and the religious ideology that defines how society is governed," wrote Yeganeh Torbati in an assessment of the Iranian situation for The Washington Post. "This new nationalist tone comes at a time when top officials have repeatedly cited what they say is 'national cohesion and unity', emerging in the country in response to the Israeli and U.S. strikes in June."

While developments in Afghanistan and Iran have brought religion into governance, India is also headed in that direction. Narendra Modi who had led the Hindu nationalist Bhartiya Janata Party, the BJP, to victory in the elections held in 2014 vowed to bring what he called "Hindutva" as the principle of governance. Modi was reelected in 2019 and 2024 and would govern India at least until 2029. By the end of his current term, he would have served in this position for 15 years, the second longest rule after Jawaharlal Nehru who was the founder of the independent state of India. Nehru was prime minster for 17 years. Nehru believed in an inclusive state that served India's very diverse population. Modi has opted to create a Hindu state in which those who subscribe to other religions will have a lower status.