Pakistan's Ideological Project A History

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Pakisans ideological project: A hisory

NADEEM F. PARACHA UPDATED Aug 02, 2015 05:06pm
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Pakistans ideological project: A history - Blogs - DAWN.COM
Genesis
Pakistan came into being in August 1947 on the back of what its founders called
the Two Nation Theory.
The
Theory was culled from the 19th Century writings of modernist Muslim reformers
in India who, after the collapse of the Muslim Empire in South
Asia, began to explain
the regions Muslims as a separate political and
cultural entity (especially compared to
the Hindu majority of India).
This
scholarly nuance, inspired by the idea of the nation-state first introduced in the
region by British Colonialists, gradually evolved into
becoming a pursuit to prepare a
well-educated and resourceful Muslim middle-class in the region.
Eventually, with the help from sections of the Muslim landed elite in India, the
emerging Muslim middle-classes turned the idea into a movement for a separate
Muslim homeland in South Asia comprised of those areas where the Muslims were in
a majority.
This is what we today understand to be the Pakistan Movement.
However,
when the countrys founding father, Muhammad Ali Jinnah - a westerneducated lawyer and head of the All India Muslim League (AIML) -
navigated the
Movement towards finally reaching its goal of carving out
a separate Muslim
homeland in South Asia, he was soon faced with an awkward fact: There were almost
as many Muslims (if not more) in India than there were in the newly created Muslimmajority country of Pakistan.
Jinnah was conscious of this fact when he delivered his first major address at the new
countrys Constituent Assembly on August 11, 1947.
Though during the Movement some factions of his party (especially in the Punjab and
the former NWFP) had tweaked the Two
Nation Theory to also mean that the Muslims
of India desired an Islamic State, Jinnah was quick to see the contradiction in this
claim
simply because millions of Muslims had either been left behind in India
or had
refused to migrate to Pakistan.
Islam during the Movement was largely used as a cultural and quasi-ethnic proposition
to furnish and flex the Muslims separate nationhood claims. It was never used as a
doctrinal roadmap to construct a theocratic State in South Asia.
In his August 11 speech Jinnah clearly declared that in Pakistan the state will have
nothing to do with the matters of the faith
and Pakistan was supposed to become a
democratic Muslim-majority nation
state.
Within the Muslim community in Pakistan were various Muslim sects and sub-sects
with their own understanding and interpretations of the faith. Then the country also
had multiple ethnicities, cultures and languages.
Keeping all this in mind, Jinnahs speech made good sense and exhibited a remarkable
understanding
of the complexities that his new country had inherited.
But many
of his close colleagues were still in the Movement mode. Not only because
the Pakistan Movement was a fresh memory but also because when the Muslim
League became the first ruling party of the country, it had to constantly evoke faith in
places like the Khyber Pukhtunkhwa (former NWFP) where the Pukhtun nationalists
had refused to join Pakistan.
Also,
another region, Kashmir, having a Muslim majority but an aristocratic Hindu
regime, had controversially opted to stay out of the Pakistan federation.
So a number of League members thought that with his August 11 speech, Jinnah was a
bit too hasty in discarding the relegious
factor and opting to explain the new country
as a multicultural Muslim-majority state even though these leaders too had had very
little idea exactly what would be the ideological make-up of the country.
Jinnah died in 1948 leaving behind a huge leadership vacuum in a country that had
apparently appeared on the map a lot sooner
than it was anticipated to by even those
who had been striving hard for
its creation.
The leadership of the founding party, the Muslim League, was mostly made up of
Punjabs landed gentry and Mohajir (Urdu-speaking) bourgeoisie elite. The
bureaucracy was also dominated by
these two communities, whereas the army had an
overwhelming Punjabi majority.
Either the multi-cultural connotations of Jinnahs speech were not entirely understood
by his immediate colleagues or were simply sidelined by them.

These connotations somewhat threatened the Leagues leadership because the
Bengalis of East Pakistan were the majority ethnic group in the new country and the
democratic recognition of multiculturalism and ethnic diversity of Pakistan would
have automatically translated into Bengalis becoming the main ruling group.
After
Jinnah had promptly watered down the religious aspects of the Pakistan
Movement, the Leagues leadership that followed his unfortunate death in
1948,
decided to reintroduce these aspects to negate the multicultural tenor of Jinnahs
speech.
Jinnah addressing the Constituent Assembly (August 11, 1947).
But things in this respect get even more complicated when one
is reminded of how it
was actually Jinnah who triggered the first serious expression of ethnic turmoil in
Pakistan.
In March 1948 Jinnah delivered two speeches in Dhaka (the largest city of the
Bengali-dominated East Pakistan). The speeches were delivered in English

and were
made at the height of a raging debate within the ruling Muslim
League on the question
of the countrys national language.
Bengali
leadership in the League had purposed the Bengali language on the basis
that
Bengalis were the largest ethnic group in Pakistan.
However,
the partys Mohajir members led by one of Jinnahs closest colleagues,
Liaquat Ali Khan (who was also Pakistans first Prime Minister), disagreed by
claiming that Pakistan was made on the demands of a hundred
million Muslims (of
India) and that the language of these Muslims was Urdu.
Of course, it was conveniently forgotten that quite a large section of these millions of
Urdu-speaking Muslims had been left behind in India and that at the time of Pakistans
inception, Urdu was spoken by less than 10 percent Pakistanis.
Faced with this dilemma and aggressively pushed by the arguments of Prime Minister
Liaquat Ali Khan to declare Urdu as the national language, Jinnah arrived in Dhaka
and in
his two speeches there insisted that indeed Urdu was to become the countrys
national lingua franca.
Bengalis went on strike and held widespread demonstrations, but Urdu did become the
national language.
Dhaka, East Pakistan: A large number of people gather (to protest) at the site of a road sign that was changed
from Bengali to Urdu.
The Bengalis resentment found immediate sympathisers within other non-Punjabi and
non-Mohajir ethnic communities.
Sindhi,
Pukhtun (and eventually, Baloch) intelligentsia were alarmed by the way
the
state and government had treated the Bengalis demands, and foresaw
the same
happening to their own languages and cultures.
The government, instead of anticipating future fissures in the country on ethnic lines,
became even more myopic and wallowed in its self-serving naivety about using faith
as a slogan that was supposed to dissolve ethnic nationalism among the Muslim
majority of the country.
Slogans
underlined by faith might have worked to haphazardly pull together the
Muslim minority of various ethnicities of India during the Pakistan Movement; there
was no guarantee that it would be able to do the same in
a country where the same
Muslims had become an overwhelming majority.
Ideally
a system and constitution advocating democracy should have been worked out
to facilitate and streamline the political and cultural participation of all ethnicities in
the nation-building process.
But
this wasnt done. After Jinnahs demise, political and cultural expressions of
ethnicity were immediately treated as being threats to the unity of the nation.
Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan, though steeped in the modernist Muslim tradition of
Sir Syeds Aligarh School of Thought, was, however, willing to continue to use
religion selectively to maintain the cherished unity of the Muslim majority of Pakistan.
He wasnt the son of the soil. Meaning, unlike most Sindhis, Pukhtuns, Punjabis,
Baloch and Bengalis, Liaquat was born outside of what eventually became Pakistan
and didnt have a large constituency based on language and ethnicity in the new
country.
So
it is understandable why the notion of Islam being a unifying factor was important
to him, as well as to most other Mohajirs of the country.
Liaquat Ali Khan, Pakistans first Prime Minister.
But the question was what kind of Islam?

This question
hadnt really mattered during the Pakistan Movement in which the
Muslims of South Asia were agitating as a minority. But then, when a large part of this
minority became a majority in Pakistan, the historical, political and theological
divisions and crevices between this majoritys many sects and sub-sects began to seem
starker than before.
The Muslim League, bred on the theories of Muslim nationalism that evolved from the
scholarly works of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, and philosopher and poet, Muhammad
Iqbal, had understood all the Muslim sects and sub-sects of South Asia to be a
community united by various doctrinal and political commonalities and a rich history
of conquest, and scientific and cultural achievements.
After lamenting the decadent state the Muslim community had slipped into after
the
fall of the Muslim Empire in India, these men pointed towards a renewed and updated
look at Islam. Such an exercise to them would help revive the political, social and
economic vitality of the community.

To
men like Liaquat Ali Khan, Pakistan was to be explained as the organic
culmination and natural result of what Sir Syed and (especially) Iqbal had been
contemplating and advocating.
It was to make all ethnicities and sectarian differences secondary compared to the
precepts of Pakistani nationhood.
But what exactly was this nationhood about?
A good part of the answer first came from a man, who during the Pakistan Movement
had actually denounced Jinnah.
Islamic scholar and founder of the Jamat-e-Islami (JI), Abul Ala Maududi, was not an
Islamic cleric.
He
was a well-read and prolific journalist and author. Though his commentaries in this
respect were highly conservative, his was a radical
conservatism because not only did
he challenge the Muslim nationalism of the likes of Jinnah (claiming nationalism had
no place in Islam); he even managed to offend many scholars belonging to Sunni subsects by accusing them of being wedged in ancient clerical traditions, and distorting
the true message of Islam through unsavoury innovations.
To
him the Muslims renewal as a political and cultural force depended not
on Muslim
nationalism but on an evolutionary process across all Muslim societies in which the
people were to be Islamised from below so that they could be prepared for Islamic
laws (Shariah) imposed from above (the state).
So it was ironic when Liaquat and his aides, after
being confronted by the grumblings
of ethnic nationalists, agreed to adopt a portion of Maududis thesis on Political Islam
while passing the
1949 Objectives Resolution in the Constituent Assembly.
The Resolution was supposed to be an outline of what the final constitution of the
country should look and sound like and also what Pakistani nationhood should be
about.
Just a year and a half after Jinnah had described Pakistan to be a pluralistic Muslimmajority state, the Resolution declared Pakistan to be an Islamic entity.
Maududis
JI decided to end its boycott of conducting politics in Pakistan after the
Resolution, despite the fact that the Resolution did not translate into meaning that the
government would begin to legislate Shariah laws immediately (or was even willing
to).
The government might have thought that it had successfully defined the finer points of
Pakistani nationhood through the Resolution, but things in this context got even more
complex.
In 1951, Liaquat Ali Khan was assassinated and in 1954 vicious riots erupted in
Punjab against the Ahmadiyya
community when JI and another party, the Majlis-eAhrar, demanded that the community be declared non-Muslim (for holding heretical
views).
The
military had to be called in and it crushed the riots with an iron hand. It arrested a
number of JI and Ahrar leaders and Maududi was sentenced to hang for inciting the
riots. The judgement was later reversed.
General Azam Khan in Lahore: He planned and oversaw the crushing of the 1953 anti-Ahmadiyya riots in
the Punjab.
In 1956, the Constituent Assembly (made up of indirectly elected members of the

Muslim League and the Republican Party), got down
to finally author the countrys
first constitution.
In the constitution, the non-Punjabi and non-Mohajir ethnic nationalists were appeased
with the promise of direct elections based on adult franchise, while the religious
parties were given the space to define Pakistan as an Islamic Republic.
Whereas most activists and politicians on the left and ethnic nationalists werent
entirely happy with the contents of the Constitution, Maududi readily exhibited his
satisfaction
by declaring it to be sufficiently Islamic.
Members of the Constituent Assembly debating the 1956 Constitution.
In 1957 most of the detractors came together in the left-wing

National Awami Party
(NAP) and were confident that the party was in a good position to win the most seats
in the promised direct elections (that were to be held in 1958).
But in late 1958, President Iskandar Mirza, who wasnt happy with the Constitution
nor with the potential of parties like NAP to win the election, colluded with the
military chief, Ayub Khan, and dismissed the assembly and imposed the countrys first
Martial Law.
Mirza had described the 1956 Constitution as the selling of Islam for political ends.
But
soon after the imposition of Martial Law, Mirza was dismissed by Ayub and
forced to leave the country. Ayub, as Chief Martial Law Administrator, became the
sole centre of power in the country.
The chiefs of the armed forces with President Iskandar Mirza after the 1958 Martial Law. Mirza was soon
removed by Ayub Khan (right) and sent into exile.
Ayub wasted no time in exhibiting his disgust at what had transpired in the countys
politics after Jinnahs death, and got down to completely scrapping whatever that had
emerged as Pakistani nationhood in the preceding decade and took it upon himself to
once and for all give a definitive shape to Pakistani nationalism.
Society 1947-1950
A group of people raising the Pakistani flag one day after Pakistan came into being on August 14, 1947.
Eid prayers in Karachi, 1948.
Boy Scouts in Jinnah Caps in Karachi, 1949.
Men and women labourers working on the construction of a building in Karachi, 1951.
A British tourist trying out traditional shoes at a shop in Swat (NWFP) in 1952.
Students relax at a medical college in Lahore (1953).
A wedding ceremony in Lahore (1954).
A locust attack in Karachi (1956).
Famous Pakistan cricketer, Fazal Mahmood, signing autographs for fans in Lahore (1954.
Pakistani film actresses, Sabiha Khanam and Zeenat, doing a photo shoot in 1954.
Controversial Urdu short-story writer, Sadat Hassanh Manto in Lahore.
Pakistani sprinter, Abdul Khalique (left), on his way to winning Pakistans first international gold medal in
athletics. He won this honour in the 1959 Commonwealth Games in the 100 meters dash.
An early fleet of planes of Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) lined up at the Karachi Airport.
A participant films a festival in Karachi (1958).
The great debate

Ayub Khan was a practicing Muslim but almost entirely secular in his political and
social outlook. He claimed that he wanted to liberate the
spirit of religion from
superstition and move forward under the forces of modern sciences and knowledge.
Understanding that a nation-state requires powerful myths to base its justification on,
Ayub became the first Pakistani head of state to overtly use the state to devise a more
holistic national ideology.
He formed the Advisory Council on Islamic Ideology (ACII) and the Islamic Research
Institute and populated both with liberal Islamic scholars.
Imagining
himself to be a Pakistani Kamal Ataturk and a Muslim de Gaulle, Ayub
posed to express Jinnahs vision of Pakistan. To him, this vision was about a modern
Muslim-majority state with a strong economy (based on heavy industry) and a sturdy
military that would not only protect the countrys borders but its ideology as well.
Ayub relaxing at an arts exhibition in Karachi a month after he took power through a military coup in 1958.
Incensed by his policies and the fact that he was getting most of these sectioned by the
ACII, the religious parties finally moved
in to directly challenge him.
Political parties had been banned by Ayub but he lifted the ban in 1962. The parties on
the left such as the National Awami Party (NAP) opposed him for his overt capitalist
manoeuvres, his regimes more-than-close relationship with the United States, and his
insistence on refusing to entertain the demands of the Sindhi, Baloch, Bengali and
Pusktun nationalists for decentralisation, democracy and provincial autonomy.
The religious parties, especially the Jamat-i-Islami (JI), largely focused their
opposition on Ayubs modernisation policies.
Ayub offering a toast to Pak-Indonesia friendship with famous Indonesian leader, Sukarno.
Rather uncannily, by attempting to mould a national ideology,

Ayub gave JI the idea
to take the concept and turn it on its head.
The
term Pakistan Ideology was nowhere in the founders speeches during the
creation
of Pakistan in 1947. And nor was the Urdu expression, Nazriya-e-Pakistan (Pakistan
Ideology).
When
Ayubs 1962 Constitution highlighted his regimes understanding of Pakistani
nationhood to mean being a Muslim-majority state where a modern and reformist
spirit of Islam would guide the countrys politics and society, the JI opposed it.
It was at this point that the term Nazriah-e-Pakistan
emerged. It is largely believed
that it was first used by the JI that suggested that the Pakistan Ideology should be
squarely based on policies constructed through the dictates of Muslim holy scriptures
and should strive to turn Pakistan into becoming an Islamic State because it
was on the
basis of religion that the country had separated from the rest of India.
Of course, very little was mentioned in this context by the JI about the fact that the
party had opposed the creation

of Pakistan, and had described the Muslim League as a
westernised and pseudo-Muslim party.
A newspaper report (from DAWN) on the banning of the Jamat-e-Islami by the Ayub regime. The ban was,
however, overturned by the Supreme Court.
The debate as to exactly what kind of a vision drove Jinnah to demand a separate
Muslim country in South Asia and what should constitute Pakistani culture and
nationhood hit a peak in the late 1960s.
In 1967, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto formed the socialist Pakistan
Peoples Party (PPP), and
the Sindhi, Baloch, Pusktun and Bengali nationalists accelerated their agitation for
provincial autonomy.
To
the JI the story of Pakistan began not during the Pakistan Movement, but with the
invasion of Sindh by Arab commander, Muhammad bin Qasim, in
the 8th Century CE
who defeated the regions Hindu ruler, Raja Dahir.
On the other hand, incensed by Ayubs version of Pakistani nationhood and as well as
by JIs Nazriah-e-Pakistan,
Sindhi scholar and nationalist leader, GM Syed, went to
the extent of declaring Sindhi culture squarely at odds with the Pakistani states
understanding of Islam and nationhood. He also insisted that to the Sindhis,
Muhammad bin Qasim was the usurper and Raja Dahir the hero.
GM Syed
The PPP saw itself being pulled into the debate when, after witnessing the ascendency
of leftist parties in Pakistan in the late 1960s, the JI declared that socialism was an
anti-Islam ideology akin to

atheism.
Prominent intellectuals in the PPP and those sympathetic
to its cause, specially Hanif
Ramay, Safdar Mir and poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz, retaliated (though pro-PPP magazines)
by first emphasising the JIs pre-1947 anti-Jinnah rhetoric, and then suggesting that
Pakistani nationhood and culture were multi-ethnic and multicultural and best served
by democracy and socialism.
The JIs founder and Islamic scholar, Abul Ala Maududi, saw the leftist and liberal
Pakistani
political organisations and cultural outfits as Trojan Horses through which
they had infiltrated the Pakistani society, government and polity to erode Pakistans
Islamic character.
Abul Ala Maududi
Interestingly, as the movement by leftist political parties, trade unions and student
groups against the Ayub regime gained momentum in the
late 1960s, Ayubs
Information Ministry had already begun to mend fences with the JI.
By the time Ayub resigned in 1969 and handed over power to General Yahya Khan,
the JI rebounded to become an ally of the regime.
A pro-Bhutto leftist student rally in Karachi in 1968. Such rallies demanded the ouster of the pro-US Ayub
regime and the imposition of Socialism.
General Yayas Information Ministry tried to use the JI to blunt the leftists
unprecedented push against the military regime.
As Ayubs idea of Pakistani nationhood dwindled, the JI made its concept of Nazriahe-Pakistan
one of the main planks of its election manifesto for the 1970 General
Election (the first in Pakistan based on adult franchise).
During
the 1970 election campaign the JI appealed to the voters to defeat the left and
ethnic-nationalist parties because they were a threat to the ideology of Pakistan.
But in the election, the JI and most other conservative parties were routed by the PPP
and NAP (in West Pakistan) and by the Bengali nationalist party, the Awami League
(in East Pakistan).
Yet again the project of moulding an ideology of Pakistan acceptable to all Pakistanis
had hit a dead-end. However, after
the 1970 election, it seemed that the idea of
Pakistani nationhood being advocated by left parties was to prevail.
It may as well have had Pakistan not gone to war with India in 1971 and then lose its
Eastern Wing.
Shiekh Mujeebur Rhemans Awami League had won the highest number of seats in
the 1970 election (albeit all in East Pakistan).
Bengali nationalist leader, Shiekh Mujeeb, adressing an election rally in Dhaka (1970).
In theory his party should have been invited by Yahya to form Pakistans first
popularly elected government.
But
the military regime and Bhuttos PPP pointed at Mujeebs anti-Pakistan
rhetoric
and suggested that he would use the Parliament to separate East Pakistan from the rest
of the country on the basis of Bengali nationalism.
A delay in the handing over of power to Awami League saw the eruption of a fullscale civil war in East Pakistan.
Thousands
of Bengalis lost their lives in the conflict as the Yahya regime employed
brutal tactics to stem the Bengalis march towards independence.
Acts of brutality were also committed by the militant wings of the Bengali nationalists,
as well as against military personnel, non-Bengali residents of East Pakistan and those
Bengalis who
were accused of collaborating with the Pakistan Army.
Thousands of Bengalis crossed over into Indian Bengal as refugees. Though India was
by now backing the militant Bengali nationalists, it was in December
1971 that it fully
entered the battlefield.

East Pakistan became
the independent republic of Bangladesh. In late December 1971
a group of military officers forced Yahya Khan to resign and hand over power to Z
A.
Bhutto.
Society 1960-70
A scooter-rickshaw riding across a road in Karachi in 1960.
Pakistan hockey team is greeted on the runway of the Karachi Airport after winning the 1960 Olympic
Hockey title in Rome.
Eid prayers at Lahores Badshahi Mosque (1959).
A man in Lahore prepares to leave for his office on his bike (1961).
Stewardesses of the Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) in 1961.
Children line up to receive food and medicines donated by the US in Chittagong (East Pakistan) in 1961.
A sprawling slum in Karachi (1960).
People buying snacks for Iftaar in Karachi during the 1961 Ramazan.
Tourists sunbathe at a Karachi beach in 1962.
The inside of Lahores famous Pak Tea House (1963). During the 1950s and 1960s this caf was regularly
frequented by famous Urdu poets, writers, journalists, political activists and intellectuals.
A Pakistani man about to board a flight to London in 1964. At the time Pakistanis got
their visas on arrival in most European countries.
Workers building the Mangla Dam near Jhelum River (1963). It is still one of the biggest dams in Pakistan.
A classical dancer performs her art during the first ever television transmission in Pakistan in November
1964.
A Pepsi factory on the outskirts of Karachi (1964).
Madam Noor Jehan recording her famous national song, Ay Watan Kay Shajeelay Jwanaoun at EMIPakistans studios in Karachi during the 1965 Pak-India war.
Children at a fishing village near the Hawks Bay Beach in Karachi (1966).
Scenes from the famous Urdu film, Arman (1966).
Karachis busy financial district in 1967.

Pakistans newest city, Islamabad, under construction in 1966. It was made the countrys capital in 1967.
Two girls in a village in Punjab (1967).
An article in the National Geographic magazine about a traditional Pakistani wedding (1968).
A conductor of a bus that ran from Peshawar to Kabul (and back) waits for passengers in Peshawar (1967).
Tourists and locals enjoy dinner and drinks at Karachis Beach Luxury Hotel during the 1969 News Years
eve.
Famous Pakistan TV actor, Shakeel, at a Karachi restaurant in 1970.
An uneasy consensus
Bhuttos party, the PPP, that had swept the 1970 election in former West Pakistans
two largest provinces, Punjab and Sindh, on a socialist manifesto, and formed the
government at the centre and in the mentioned provinces.
Another left-wing party, the National Awami Party (NAP)
that had won a number of
seats in the former NWFP and Balochistan was able to form coalition governments in
these provinces.
The first phase of the Bhutto regime (1972-74) was dominated by the radical left-wing
of the PPP. However, since Pakistan found itself reeling from
an expensive war, a
demoralised army, and fears that India may go on to
fan separatist movements in the
NWFP and Balochistan, his government sanctioned a project to mould an ideological
narrative that would help the state redeem the floundering belief in a united Pakistan.
Bhutto speaking at a rally in Karachis Nishtar Park.
It is believed that the narrative was first and foremost devised to uplift the morale of
the army. But by late 1972 it began to make its way into school text books as well.
In a nutshell, the narrative went something like this: West Pakistan was always the real
Pakistan because its a cohesive and seamless region that runs from north to south
along the mighty Indus River. This regions population had predominately been
Muslim (ever since the 12th Century), and though it may have a number of ethnicities,
its population has largely remained
aloof from the happenings in Indias ancient seat
of power in Delhi, and had similar views on Islam.
This conveniently meant that the Bengali-majority East Pakistan that lay thousands of
miles away from West Pakistan was an unnatural part of what had appeared on the
map as Pakistan in 1947.
In 1972 the study of Pakistan Studies, a subject that exclusively dealt with the history
and culture of the country, was introduced and then made compulsory for school and
college students.
But in the early 1970s it was still very much a work-in-progress.
In
1973, the PPP government organised a large conference in which some of the
countrys leading intellectuals, historians and scholars were invited. They were
requested to debate and thrash out a nationalist narrative that could then be turned into
a state ideology and imposed through legislative means and school text books.
Though the Bhutto regime was populist and posing to be socialist, in 1973 it managed
to get a consensus from all the parties to unveil a new constitution that reintroduced
Pakistan as an Islamic Republic.
Bhutto speaking to a guest at a state dinner after the National Assembly passed the 1973 Constitution.
The JI and other religious parties had explained the breakup of Pakistan in 1971 as a
consequence of its rulers failing to turn the country into an Islamic state and thus
giving leftists and ethnic nationalists enough reason and space to dictate terms and
harm the unity
of the country.
The second half of the Bhutto regime (1974-77) saw the slowing down of its socialist
projects and the declining influence of PPPs socialist and Marxist ideologues in the
policy-making
process.
The regimes capitulation in the event of the agitation
and the demands of the religious
parties to declare the Ahamadiyya community as a non-Muslim minority was at least

one symptom of Bhuttos rightward shift.
By the 1977 election, the PPP had all but eliminated the word socialism from its
manifesto. Its regime, elected on
a relatively radical socialist program in 1970, had
(within a matter of
five years), become a somewhat odd mixture of nationalist
populism and an equally populist expression of Political Islam.
Bhutto it seems had sensed the Islamic revival taking place across the Muslim world
after the 1973 Arab-Israel War. Though the war had ended in a stalemate, oil-rich
Arab monarchies enjoyed a sudden rise in profits after they slowed down oil
production and greatly jacked-up petroleum prices.
The profits gave the oil-producing Arab countries power to influence Muslim regimes
that did not have the fortune of owning vast
oil fields.
Saudi Arabia hardly played a role in the matters of Pakistan before 1973. But after
1973, Bhuttos Pakistan began to court the oil-rich Saudi monarchy, hoping to fatten
Pakistans struggling economy with hearty hand-outs from its wealthy Muslim
brethren (Petro Dollars).
But, the money came with a condition.

The Saudi monarchy was a
passionate proponent of a rather puritanical strand of
Islam. It had alarmingly seen the rise of socialist regimes in Egypt, Iraq, Yemen,
Algeria, Sudan, Somalia and Pakistan.
After 1973 when Saudi Arabia began to pump in huge amounts of money into Muslim
countries, with the money also came allusions and nudges to undermine leftist
ideologies and kick-start an intellectual and political exercise to Islamise
governments and societies according to the Saudis interpretation of the faith.
Fiery Marxist leader, Miraj Mohammad Khan, speaking at a PPP rally. He was ousted from the party in
1974.
Arab monarchies had struggled to stay afloat against the onslaught and rise of
progressive Arab nationalism in the 1950s and 1960s. And in spite of the fact that
most of them were allies of Western
powers, these monarchies were also conscious of
Western political ideas
trickling into the minds of their citizens, especially the younger
lot.
From
1973 onwards a huge amount of Petro Dollars began to be disbursed and
distributed among Muslim academics, intellectuals, governments and religious leaders.
What began to emerge from this exercise was a Political Islam that was antisocialism/communism and anti-Zionism, but (curiously) pro-West, pro-monarchy and
with a healthy bank balance!
Saudi monarch, King Faisal with ZA Bhutto at the Lahore Airport (1974).
Bhutto, apart from trying to appease the religionist lobby by reintroducing certain
clauses in the 1973 Constitution, and then giving revisionist narratives a run across
Pakistan Studies books, then moved in to appease his new-found Saudi friends and
donors.
Since by now the Pakistan Ideology had begun to place Pakistans historical roots
in
lands from where Arab horsemen had invaded India in the 8th Century,
it was decided
that the Arabic language too, should be adopted and taught in schools.
Bhutto felt secure in the belief that he was successfully keeping his left and liberal
constituencies satisfied along
with the conservative religious sections of the society
and also Pakistans new Arab donors.
So it must have come as a rude shock to him when in December 1976 a nine-party
alliance of religious and other anti-Bhutto parties united under the umbrella of the
Pakistan National Alliance (PNA).

The alliance geared up to face Bhuttos PPP in the 1977 election. And it was only
when the PNA used the words Nizam-e-Mustafa
(The Prophets System) as its main
slogan, that it became apparent that
the Bhutto regimes experiments in the still elusive
territory of the Pakistan Ideology had actually ended up providing his opponents the
space and idea to use religion as an effective electoral tool.
Another
factor that Bhutto might have undermined was that Saudi Arabia was not only
cultivating relations with the Bhutto regime, it was also on very good terms with
religious parties, such as the JI.
The PPP went on the defensive because according to Bhuttos analysis it was the
Islamic revival factor that now needed to be fought for and grabbed.
The
word Islam outnumbered the word socialism in the partys new manifesto and for
the first time religion became the focal point of debate and discussion during an
election in Pakistan.
Cover of a March 1977 Urdu magazine with pictures of PNA leaders and rally.
The PPP trounced the PNA in the National Assembly election. The PNA cried foul
and accused the Bhutto regime of rigging the polls. The truth was that the regime had
rigged only a handful of seats (in the
Punjab) and would have won the election
anyway.
But Bhutto wanted to change the countrys parliamentary system into a Presidential
one and for that he desired a big majority in the National Assembly.
The PNA refused to contest the Provincial Assembly elections and instead began a
protest movement that soon turned violent.

PNA
supporters - mostly made up of urban middle-class youth and supported by the
industrialist and trader classes that were greatly stung by the Bhutto regimes wayward
socialist manoeuvres - poured out onto the streets.
Surprised by the tenacity of the protesters, Bhutto began emergency talks with the
PNA leadership.
The
ironic aspect of the movement was that when the PNA and the protesters began to
use religious symbolism and slogans, these were culled from what the Bhutto regime
had inducted into school text books.
A PNA protest rally in Rawalpindi being led by members of the student-wing of the Jamat-e-Islami (1977).
But since both the PNA and the PPP were going on and on about
Islam without ever
bothering to explain exactly how they were planning to turn a religion based on moral
and social codes into a functioning political and economic system, this eyewash was
addressed by another eyewash.
In April 1977 the Bhutto regime met with the main religious leaders of the PNA
belonging to the JI, Jamiat Ulema Islam (JUI) and Jamiat Ulema Pakistan (JUP) and
agreed to make Friday the weekly holiday instead of Sunday (as was the case in Saudi
Arabia). He also agreed to ban the consumption and sale of alcoholic beverages (to
Muslims) and close down all nightclubs and bars.
But this did not
save him from receiving another shock. In July 1977, his own General
toppled his regime in a reactionary military coup and promptly arrested him.
General Ziaul Haq was handpicked by Bhutto, in spite of having a history of being
highly conservative. Bhutto was assured by the
outgoing Army Chief, General Tikka
Khan, that Zia was completely apolitical and subservient.
When he imposed the countrys third Martial Law, Zia took the PNAs Nizam-eMustafa
rhetoric and turned it into a draconian and then a legislative ideological
project, giving the whole concept of the Pakistan Ideology its starkest religious aspect
thus far.
Zia announcing the implosion of Martial Law (July, 1977).
Bhutto was hanged in April 1979 through a sham trial, political parties were banned,
and perhaps for the first time, the Pakistan Ideology was consolidated into becoming
official state policy.
Society 1971-77
Pakistani model and actress, Rakshanda Khatak, on the set of the 1971 Urdu film,
Operation Karachi.
Pakistan playing against Germany in the hockey finals of the 1972 Munich Olympics.
Pakistani painter and sculptor, Sadequain, drawing a portrait of a fan during an arts festival in Lahore
(1972).
Visiting US astronauts of Apollo 17 being carried in a motorcade across the Saddar area in Karachi in 1973.
A bus for tourists in Peshawar (1973).
Two women at Karachis Clifton Beach (1972).
A club band in Karachi (1973).
People at a mela (local festival) in the ancient city of Sindh, Thatta (1973).
An eastern classical and folk music gathering in Lahore (1973).
Students take a smoke break at the canteen of the Punjab University in Lahore (1973).
Karate students in Karachi (1973). Popularity of Judo and Karate rose with the popularity of Bruce Lee films.
The ruksati ceremony at a wedding in Karachi in 1973.
Hippie tourists mingle with the locals at an eatery in Ziarat, Balochistan (1974).
A young boy fills the tank of his dads motorbike as a girl walks towards her school in Lahore (1974).
Poster of an Iranian pop group that toured Pakistan in 1974.
Students learning English at a modern language institute in Karachi in 1974.
A Pakistani Jazz and club band shooting a scene for the 1974 Urdu film Dhamaka. The film was scripted by
famous Urdu spy novelist, Ibn-e-Safi.
Karachis largest working-class area Lyari in 1975.
Students outside the Arts Lobby of the Karachi University in 1974.
A screen shot of PTVs live telecast of the Pakistan-India Hockey World Cup final in 1975.
Eid prayers in Lahore (1974).
Pakistan cricket captain, Mushtaq Mohammad and fast bowler Imran Khan celebrate Pakistans first Test
match victory on Australian soil (1976).
Spectators watching a Pakistan-England Test match at Lahores Gaddafi Stadium (1977).
Special Blue Planes introduced by PIA in 1977 for its flights to Europe. They were discontinued in the
1980s.
An old woman reciting the holy book in Lahore, 1977.
A German tourist outside a legal hashish store in the North Waziristan area of Pakistan (1976).
Special coins that were minted in 1976 to mark the 100th birth anniversary of the founder of the nation,
Mohammad Ali Jinnah.
Pop singer, Alamgir, with famous comedian, Moin Akhtar in Karachi (1977).
The grand concoction

The initial model for Zias so-called Islamisation project was based on Maulana
Maududis theories on the subject.
Zia began a project to enforce Nizam-e-Mustafa, marking a major shift from Pakistan's
predominantly Anglo-Saxon laws.
Religion
was the perfect kind of excuse for a dictator to flex his muscles at the time,
especially in a country where the middle-classes and upstarts who had travelled to oil-
rich Arab countries had confused the power of the Petro-Dollar with the power of the
strands of the faith that they came into contact with there.
Maududis concept of the Pakistan Ideology that had been battered by the voters in
1970 and then mutated into meaning something closer to Bhuttos equally convoluted
Islamic Socialism, fell into the hands of Zia who gave it his own twist.
But,
he not only made it a part of school text books, he also began to express it
through draconian laws that he described as being Islamic.
Law
after law based on a particular understanding of the faith was rolled out, so much
so that by the time of his death in 1988, the 1973 Constitution, that had originally been
a product of pluralistic intent, became the enshrinement of certain laws and clauses
that till this day give a constitutional cover to what are indeed acts of bigotry.
An anti-Zia journalist being publically flogged in Rawalpindi (1979).
After toppling the Z. A. Bhutto government in July 1977, Zia almost immediately got
down to the business of radically transforming the ideological complexion of Pakistan,
changing it from being a democratic Muslim majority state (as envisioned by its
founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah), into peddling it as a state that was supposedly
conceived as a theocratic entity.
In 1979, Zia and his ideological

partners hit a brick wall when they couldnt endorse
their revisionist narrative with any of the sayings and speeches of Jinnah.
As a first step, Zia banned the mention (in the media and school text books) of
Jinnahs famous speech that he made to the Constituent Assembly on August 11,
1947.
Zias information ministry spent days on end studying Jinnahs speeches and sayings
to dig out anything that could be
used to endorse Zias version of Pakistans
emergence.
They came up with nothing, until one fine day Zia (in 1983) enthusiastically
announced the discovery of Jinnahs personal diary.
While
talking to his ministers, Zia claimed that in the newly discovered personal
diary of the founder, Jinnah had spoken about having a powerful Head of State (read:
dictator), and the dangers of parliamentary democracy. He conveniently concluded
that Jinnahs views were very close to having an Islamic system of government.
The
right-wing section of the Urdu press and state-owned TV and radio gave lavish
coverage to the event, even publishing a page from the supposed diary.
But, alas, the euphoria around the farce was short-lived. Two of Jinnahs close
associates and direct participants of the Pakistan
Movement, Mumtaz Daultana and K
H. Khurshid, rubbished Zias claims by saying there never was such a diary.
After this, a group of senior
intellectuals from the Quaid-e-Azam Academy also
denied that such a diary ever existed in the Academys archives.
An anti-Zia procession being led by a 5-year-old kid in 1985. The kid, Faraz Wahlah, was actually arrested
by the cops and held behind bars for hours!
Police attack an anti-Zia rally held by a radical womens organisation in Lahore (1984).
Whats even curious is the fact that once his claims were trashed, not only did Zia
never mention anything about the supposed diary ever again, a number of Urdu
newspapers that had splashed the dramatic discovery went completely quiet.
In desperation, the regimes information ministry simply ended up advising PTV and
Radio Pakistan to only use those quotes of Jinnah that had the word Islam in them.
Zia playing golf in Islamabad, 1986.
DAWN cartoonist Zahoor mocks how (ever since the 1980s) some leaders have tried
to Islamise Jinnah.
The practice only stopped with Zias controversial demise in August 1988 and Jinnah
was finally spared the false beard Zia kept pining on the founders otherwise shaven
chin.
Nevertheless, no civilian government has dared alter or expunge the so-called piety
laws planted in the Constitution by the Zia regime. The fear of being declared antiPakistan Ideology overrides the will to neutralise these
laws.
Thus, in the last two decades, whole generations of educated, middle-class, young
Pakistanis have grown up believing that a theocratic state was Jinnahs main aim, and
that the so-called Pakistan Ideology emerged from the days of the Pakistan Movement.
Of course, many have also continued to oppose these views and moves.
A supporter mourns at Zias funeral in 1988. Zia died in a controversial plane crash in August 1988.
Society 1978-88
One of the first waves of Afghan refugees arriving in Pakistan after Soviet forces occupied Afghanistan in
1979.
Indian ghazal singer, Jagjit Singh, performing at Lahores Shalimar Garden in 1979.
Young children beat the heat by taking a dip in the bogy washing area of Peshawar Railway Station in 1980.
Pakistani cricketers at a party in 1979 (From Left): Sadiq Mohammad, Abdul Qadir, Mudassar Nazar and
Imran Khan. Wasim Raja is standing behind Qadir.
A scene from super hit Punjabi film, Maula Jat (1979). The film herald in the rise of Punjabi films and the
collapse of Urdu cinema.
A busy street in Bahawalpur, 1980.
The LP cover of Nazia and Zoheb Hassans first album, Disco Dewane (1980).
Future US President, Barak Obama, at a Pakistani friends house during his visit to
Pakistan in 1981. Obama was a college student at the time.
A 1980 model of the VCR. This machine became immensely popular across Pakistan in the 1980s.
Pakistan hockey squad after winning the 1982 Hockey World Cup.
A street at a slum in Karachi, 1984.
A fishing boat and its owner in Karachis Kimari area, 1984.
A busy shopping street in Karachi, 1985.
Actors Rahat Kazmi and Marina Khan in the popular PTV serial, Tanhaiyaan (1985).
Pakistani cricketer, Mohsin Khan, with Bollywood actress Reena Roy in 1986.
Karachis Sahrah-e-Faisal in 1983.
A heroin addict in Karachi, 1985. Heroin sale and addiction shot up dramatically
in Pakistan across the 1980s. By the mid-1980s, Pakistan had the second highest
number of heroin addicts.
Guest Afghan insurgents hold a press conference in Peshawar in 1985.
Hosts of PTVs marathon transmission during the 1988 general election.
The idea that ate itself

During his 11-year rule, Zia furthered the project of the Pakistan Ideology and turned
it into a dogma that explained Pakistan as a unique emergence in the Muslim world
that was conceived to become a bastion of faith driven entirely by divine laws.
What made it a dogma (that
was aggressively proliferated through school textbooks
and propaganda),
was that it refused to recognise the multi-ethnic and multi-sectarian
make-up of the country and, instead, offered a rather convoluted, rigid and artificial
understanding of the faith.
This ended up promoting
inelastic and entirely myopic strands of the faith, pushing
them from the fringes of society into the mainstream and in the process, retarding
the
natural evolution of Pakistans multicultural ethos and polity.
It
also ended up offending various Muslim sects and sub-sects, creating serious
sectarian tensions. It also alienated the minorities.
But
Zias manoeuvres in this context were a culmination of what began as an
ambitious project in the 1950s. The project reached its limits during the Zia regime.
The shape that it finally took was so inflexible that it could not adapt to the rapid
political changes that followed after the end of the Cold War (in 1989) and during the
emergence of the severe forms of religious extremism and terrorism that engulfed the
country after 9/11.
It can thus be suggested that the project is now facing a serious crises. It cannot be
stretched any further. It ate itself after devouring everything that could have halted the
political and social retardation that it triggered over the decades.
Thats
why today, Pakistans ruling and military establishments and intelligentsia are
now trying to replace it with a thinking that would directly challenge the doctrinal
rigidity and the political and cultural
isolation the so-called ideology ended up
promoting and encouraging.
Pakistans
existentialist status is in dire need of a fresh new narrative a narrative
that should have begun where Jinnahs first speech to the Constituent Assembly had
left off.
Society & Politics 1989-2015
Three times boxing heavy weight champion, Mohammad Ali, visits a college in Lahore during his 1988 trip
to Pakistan.
Supporters of the PPP celebrate the partys victory in the 1988 election in Karachis Lyari area. A poster of
the then PPP chairperson, Benazir Bhutto, can also be seen. She became the first ever woman Prime Minister
in the Muslim world.
A building in Karachi draped in a massive MQM flag during the 1988 elections. The party swept the polls in
the city.
Cover of the first album by Pakistani pop band, Vital Signs (released in 1989). The success of the album
kick-started a vibrant pop scene in the country that lasted well into the 1990s.
World No: 1 and 2, Jahangir Khan (right) and Jansher Khan (left) battle it out in the final of an international
squash tournament in Karachi (1990).
A 1990 billboard in Lahore eulogising Mian Nawaz Sharif. He became PM in 1990.
American cyclists in Swat, 1990.
A poster of the 1991 film, International Gorillay which portrayed controversial

author Salman Rushdie, as a man out to destroy Pakistan.
Kids enjoy a round of gola gunda (snow ice-cream) at Karachis low-income Orangi area in 1992.
Pakistan wins the 1992 Cricket World Cup.
Famous TV actress Atiqua Odho on the cover of the March 1993 Urdu monthly, Khawateen Digest.
Pakistan wins the 1994 Hockey World Cup.
Morgues in Karachi pile up with bodies as the conflict between MQM and the state intensifies in 1996.
A teacher and student at a government school in Lahore (1996).
Australian TV commentator, Ian Chappell, interviews Sri Lankan captain after PM Bhutto hands him the
trophy of the 1996 Cricket World Cup. The final of the event took place at Lahores Qaddafi Stadium.
Lady Diana with Jemima Khan (former wife of Imran Khan) and Imran Khan during her trip to Lahore in
1997.
An armed man at a rally of a sectarian outfit in Lahore (1998).
Poster of Ajoka Theatres 1998 stage play, Bala King, that addressed the rise of sectarian and gang violence
in Pakistan.
Soldiers climb the gates of the PTV headquarters in Islamabad during General Parvez Musharrafs 1999
military coup.
A crumbling cinema in Peshawar in 2001.
A street in Rawalpindi in 2002.
An anti-US rally in Peshawar after American forces invaded Afghanistan in 2002.
The 2003 Lux Style Awards in Karachi.
A Pakistani snow leopard was gifted to New Yorks Bronx Zoo in 2006.
Rubble of a an apartment block that collapsed in Islamabad during the devastation 2005 earthquake in the
countrys northern areas.
Nawaz Sharif returns to Pakistan in 2007 after he was flown into exile by the Musharraf regime.
DAWNs headline the morning after former PM and chairperson of the PPP was assassinated in Rawalpindi
in December 2007.
Islamabads Marriot Hotel goes up in flames after it was attacked by suicide bombers belonging to extremist
outfits (2008).
Women members of Islamabads controversial Lal Masjid (2007).
Police guard a polling station in Lahore during the 2008 elections.

Pakistan win the 2009 Cricket T20 World Cup.
Soldiers move towards the spot in Lahore where extremists attacked the visiting Sri Lankan cricket team in
2009.
Youth celebrate Pakistans Independence Day in Lahore (2009).
A member of the Pakistan womens cricket team pads up in Lahore (2010).
Two kids kiss a pigeon in a working class area of Lahore (2011).
Gangsters in Karachis poverty-stricken Lyari area (2012).
A road in Rawalpindi lined up with posters during the 2013 election. The elections were swept by Nawaz
Sharifs PML-N.
A car bomb goes off in Karachi just before the 2013 election. Extremist outfits regularly attacked members
of MQM, PPP and ANP during the election campaign.
Wreckage left behind by an extremist attack on a school in Peshawar (2014). Dozens of students lost their
lives.
A rally against extremists in 2014.
An anti-extremism rally in Islamabad (2014).
Pakistan military begin clearing and securing areas infested by extremist groups after the government and the
parliament gave a go-ahead to the armed forces to begin one of the largest anti-terrorism operations in the
country (2015).
Pakistan military chief, General Raheel Sharif, who is the main architect of the militarys widespread
operation against terrorism, meets some students of the school that was earlier attacked by militants.
References
Afnan Khan, The Threat of Pakistans Revisionist Text (The Guardian, 18 May,
2009).
Stephen Alter, Amritsar to Lahore: a journey across the India-Pakistan border (Penn
Sylvania Press, 2002 ) p.22
Maneesha Tikar, Across the Wagah (Bibliophile South Asia, 2004) p.210
Neelam Hussain, Samiya Mumtaz, Samina Choonara, Politics of Language (Simorgh
Publication, 2005) p.162
T Rahman, Government Policies & The Politics of Teaching Urdu in Pakistan
(Annual Urdu Studies, 2002).
Amy Bik May Tsui, James W. Tollefson, Language Policy, Culture and Identity in
Asian Contexts (Routledge, 2007) pp.244, 245.
Thomas Oberlies, Pali: A Grammar of the Language of theTheravda Tipiaka
(Walter de Gruyter, 2001).
Ayesha Jalal, Self and sovereignty: Individual & Community in South Asia Islam
Since 1870 (Routledge, 2002) pp.174,175,176
Manas Chatterji, B. M. Jain, Conflict & Peace in Asia, (Emerald Group Publishing,
2008) p.251
Irfan Ahmad, The Transformation of Jamat-e-Islami (Princeton University Press,
2009) p.6
Abul Ala Maududu, The Islamic Law & Constitution (Islamic Books, 1986).
Selig S. Harrison, Paul H. Kreisberg, Dennis Kux, India & Pakistan: The First Fifty
Years (Cambridge University Press, 1999) p.47
GS Bhargava, Pakistan in Crises (Vikas Publications, 1971) p.75
John L. Esposito, Islam & Politics (Syracuse University Press 1998 ) pp.120-121
Husain Haqani, Pakistan: Between the Mosque & Military (Carneige, 2010) p.43
Martin E. Marty, R. Scot, Fundamentalisms Observed (University of Chicago Press,
1998) p.474
Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Culture and Identity (Oxford University Press, 2005).
Saadia Toor, The State of Pakistan (Pluto Press, 2005) pp:112-115
KK Aziz, The Murder of History (Renaissance Publishing House, 1998) p.111
Martin E. Marty, R. Scot, Fundamentalisms Observed (University of Chicago Press,
1998) p.473
Ishtiaq Ahmed, State, Nation & Ethnicity in Contemporary South Asia (Continuum
International Publication, 1998) p.284
A Zubair, The Silent and the Lost (Pacific Breeze Publishers, 2010) p.321
Strategic Digest Vol: 3 (Institute of Defence Studies & Analyses, 1973) p.16
Aitzaz Ahsan, The Indus Saga (Roli, 2005).
Dr. Mubarek Ali, Interviews & Comments (Fiction House, 2004) p.66
Zaid Haider, The Ideological Struggle For Pakistan (Hoover Institution Press, 2010)
p.16
Thomas Borstelmann, 1970s: A New Global History From Civil Rights to Economic
Inequality (Princeton University Press, 2011) p.267
Rubina Saigol, Radicalisation of State & Society in Pakistan (Heinrich Boll Stiftung)
p.10
Walid Phares, The War of Ideas (Macmillan, 2007).
Vali Reza Nasr, Islamic Leviathan (Oxford University Press, 2001) p.80
Mubashir Hassan, The Miraj of Power: An Inquiry into the Bhutto Years - 1971-77
(Oxford University Press, 2000) pp.299-300
Khaled Ahmed, Pakistan Behind The Ideological Mask (Vanguard, 2001).
The Political Economy of Pakistan: 1947-85 (Taylor & Frances, 1988) p.180
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56 COMMENTS
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Nadeem F. Paracha is a cultural critic and senior columnist for

Dawn Newspaper
and Dawn.com. He has also authored a book on the social history of Pakistan
called, End of the Past.
He tweets @NadeemfParacha
The views expressed by this writer and commenters below do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the Dawn Media
Group.
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COMMENTS (56) CLOSED

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NEWEST
TAHIR A-JUL 31, 2015 01:39PM

"In his August 11 speech Jinnah clearly declared that in Pakistan the state will have
nothing to do with the matters of the faith and Pakistan was supposed to become a
democratic Muslim-majority nation state."
ZINDABAD - Long live the legacy of Jinnah and DOWN with bent ideologies that
have followed since his death. Our future has been hijacked by a few who did not want
Pakistan in the first place. The energies and passion of a young nation have been
diverted to a different agenda altogether.
RECOMMEND
37
SUBH-JUL 31, 2015 01:42PM

One of the best and well written articles on Pakistan history for last few decades
RECOMMEND
36
AI-JUL 31, 2015 02:03PM

We will rise, Inshallah. Pakistan Zindabad!
BEST
BEST
RECOMMEND
19
SAQIB-JUL 31, 2015 02:07PM

My Pakistan, my heaven. Long may you live.
RECOMMEND
12
SAJID ALI-JUL 31, 2015 02:09PM

There is a slight correction: in one of the picture captioned "American cyclists in Swat,
1990.", its actually not swat but village Gulmit in upper Hunza Valley.
RECOMMEND
13
FEROZ-JUL 31, 2015 02:19PM

Dreaming of the past will not help, what kind of a future is being built to bequeath for
future generations is far more relevant.
RECOMMEND
18
AFATQIAMAT-JUL 31, 2015 02:39PM

The National narratives has
been re-vised and re-constructed so many times... that the
REAL narrative has been lost in the quagmire of distortions based on selective facts ,
half truths , distortions , deceptions and often absolute lies .. from the reason of
Pakistan to what happened afterward...
RECOMMEND
11
SWAGATAM-JUL 31, 2015 02:49PM

Spellbound..... wonderful writing.... thank you sir, i am from ur neighboring country
though, but yes you made my day....
RECOMMEND
28
AHA-JUL 31, 2015 03:14PM

The passing the 1949 Objectives Resolution in the Constituent Assembly ended the
Pakistan of Jinnah. The seeds of the misery we live in today were sowed that day.
RECOMMEND
23
MUHAMMAD USMAN HABIB-JUL 31, 2015 03:41PM

Such a brief overview of Pakistan's 67 Years. Remarkable.
RECOMMEND
14
M. MALIK-JUL 31, 2015 04:09PM

I prefer the Pakistan from the 1947 to 1980s!! After that, it was all downhill!
RECOMMEND
24
VLP-JUL 31, 2015 04:15PM

Excellent article... the pictures actually tell the journey of Pakistan...
RECOMMEND
11
TARIQ K SAMI-JUL 31, 2015 04:53PM

You should write a book. Just put them down like this one, pictures and all, rather more
pictures.
RECOMMEND
MOHSIN-JUL 31, 2015 05:11PM

I am not a good English reader. I would love and wish and expect an in-depth analysis
of this piece by Doctor Safdar Mehmood sb., please..! If he approve it all - I will be the
MOST admiring of the writer.
But One thing I wish to salute to the contributor is the superb collection (and to me like
putting river in a pouch) are the beautiful thought-refreshing photographs - Amazing !!!
Many thanks.
RECOMMEND
12
ARSLAN-JUL 31, 2015 05:17PM

Amazing article with pictures. Shows the backwards transition very well. Jinnah's
vision of Pakistan was partly realised during Ayub's era, also known as Golden Years
of Pakistan. Other rulers have done both good and terrible for the
country. At least now
we have a General who is adamant to root out extremism from our soil.
RECOMMEND
BEENA SIDDIQUI-JUL 31, 2015 05:24PM

History is a thing which can be easily manipulated , so here is the case in point ...
Jinnah was Quaid e Azam just to remind everyone to at least Respect him by calling
him so . Nobody else here is worthy of this respect now adays.
RECOMMEND
DIVESH-JUL 31, 2015 05:39PM

Wonderful article- a narration of the evolution of radicalised ideologies and the
distortion of history in Pakistan. It is heart warming to see the bold approach of media
to look inside them selves and address the most complex of issues.
Kudos to Dawn and
the journalist. I hope this leads to a national debate and correction of the educational
material.
RECOMMEND
MIMI SUR-JUL 31, 2015 05:58PM

Colorful days to black&white days.
RECOMMEND
PAKONE-JUL 31, 2015 06:12PM

Forget "naya Pakistan"! Can
we have purana (pre-1977) Pakistan back please?? A
beautiful country ravaged and abused by a handful of mullahs who combined never get
more than total 10% of the vote since 1947 in any election yet hold the most sway in
state and national affairs decisions!! SAD!
RECOMMEND
22
JR-JUL 31, 2015 07:11PM

Thank you.
RECOMMEND
11-JUL 31, 2015 08:08PM

Every Youth of Pakistan must
read this once in life time article.
How country has
transformed from modern ear infant Pakistan to present one.Also there is 22 times word
INDIA appears in article, never it meant
for hatred.
The summary is:

Thus, in the last two decades, whole generations of educated, middleclass, young Pakistanis have grown up believing that a theocratic
state was Jinnahs
main aim, and that the so-called Pakistan Ideology emerged from the days of the
Pakistan Movement.
RECOMMEND
10
IFTIKHAR KHAN-JUL 31, 2015 08:46PM

The trend towards more role of Islam in society and governance was not specific to
Pakistan. Some blame it on petro-dollars while others point to the Arabs defeat in 1967
Arab-Israel war but Islamization gained momentum across the Muslim countries. Even
the immigrant Muslim population of western countries is not spared despite no statesponsored manipulation of society towards Islamization. At present, no reversal of the
trend is in sight.
RECOMMEND
CHANDRA SHEKAR-JUL 31, 2015 10:39PM

Wonderfully written article!!!! A must for everyone who is interested in the history of
the sub-continent. I hope and pray that our neighbours to the West regroup, join their
hands with India and see the the whole of South Asia become economically very
prosperous. We share a common history, language and culture. Same ethnicity (genetic
pool), cultural ethos.....Different religion is just an accident of history (mostly brought
by Turkish marauding invaders to the sub-continent), but our cultural and moral
compass is the same....I really enjoyed reading this article, and I hope
to read more
from this author in future....
RECOMMEND
I PATRIOT-JUL 31, 2015 10:41PM

This is must read article for all Pakistanis to understand the transformation of their
country from a multicultural, multi ethnic and pluralistic one to a theocracy. Sad
transformation to what could have become a powerful nation with a dynamic
population and great natural resources.
RECOMMEND
EUROSTAR77-AUG 01, 2015 12:34AM

1960's looked like a real cool period in Pakistan, full of hope, life and nation
building
East-Bengal, seperated by a 1000 miles hostile territory, should never had been
part of Pakistan to start with.
Noted Lady Diana, Apollo crew and the future presiden Obama's visit
We Pakistan ARE better off with our independence and seperation from
Hindustan where we are, believe it or not, masters of our own
We still have Pakistan, we still have a formidable defence force and
we still have
our ideological fundation intact...which means we can and
will rise again.
RECOMMEND
MANISH MISHRA-AUG 01, 2015 12:51AM

Wonderful and spellbound article.One thing is very clear that we have many identities
as a human being and religion is just one of them and if any individual or state clings to
just one, then the linguistic,ethnic,racial identities start colliding with one another and
as a result disharmony is created. We must celebrate diversity and state must not be
theocratic and religion is a personal matter and must be a choice of individual for
personal evolution .World over functioning democracies have resolved this matter.
Pakistani civil society must resolve this and celebrate the diversity.The Great Mughal
Emperor Akbar had shown the path long back.I am optimist and have full faith that the
new generation of Pakistan will
rise to the occasion. I am from the other side of the
border and i salute to the intellectual acumen of the writer.
Hats off to the writer once
again.
RECOMMEND
12
KUMAR-AUG 01, 2015 01:07AM

Thank you very much for an extremely informative article. I have taken the liberty to
email it to my family members, without your permission.
- kumar - mumbai
RECOMMEND
MAHISHASHURA-AUG 01, 2015 01:34AM

Why have there been so much trouble about national identity in Pakistan? It is because
any identity adopted by one group would complete negate the claims of another group.
The other country where there are similar continuous arguments about the
state's
identity is Israel. Orthodox versus conservative and reformist Jews constantly argue the
same thing in that country.
RECOMMEND
DR. EMILE UNJOM-AUG 01, 2015 01:36AM

The tragedy of Pakistan is that there was none after Quaid E Azam to carry his vision
forward while
the ethnic complexities coupled with religious perceptions along with the
powerful political houses played a part as if everyone was keen on having a piece of the
pie as much and as big even at the cost of the country and the expense of religion.
Today there is no narrative that offers hope of unity for a fragmented nation on grounds
of religion, culture, ethnicities, politics and sects. There has to be a reinterpretation of

our earlier past to carve a narrative that augers well for the future otherwise the hope is
not on the horizon while new challenges are rising and emerging.
RECOMMEND
DK-AUG 01, 2015 02:12AM

This is Great! From the story and the accompanying pictures Pakistan seems to have
been a really
cool and great nation 35 years ago. It is almost like we could divide the
last 68 years Pakistan's history. The awesome pre-mullah years and the terrible postmullah years.
Hopefully Pakistanis can go back to being cool people, that would be a win-win for the
whole world.
RECOMMEND
NJ01-AUG 01, 2015 03:25AM

Pakistan looked beautiful at
that time because it was just separated from own
motherland India! You can see a big difference between an old Pakistan and a new
Pakistan.
RECOMMEND
MAJID-AUG 01, 2015 03:45AM

"Pakistans existentialist status is in dire need of a fresh new narrative a narrative
that should have begun where Jinnahs first speech to the Constituent Assembly had left
off."
RECOMMEND
SANMAY GANGULY-AUG 01, 2015 04:03AM

Certainly a very well written article and helped understanding the political evolution of
the country.
RECOMMEND
Z-AUG 01, 2015 04:30AM

A HUGE thanks for doing this
NFP! I learned a lot about my country. Thanks for all
the research in putting this piece together. You are a living example of how Pakistan is
and will make a comeback on a national, societal and ideological level.
Great piece!
Waiting for your next one! I am actually 1989-2015 lol.

p.s: you mixed PTI coming into politics. I think that will and is playing a huge role in
the future dynamics of Pakistan.
RECOMMEND
MUSA-AUG 01, 2015 07:04AM

Welldone Sir!
RECOMMEND
KRISHNA-AUG 01, 2015 08:02AM

What a wonderful narration of events !!! Kudos to the authors clarity and understanding
of sequence
of events that took place since the state's formation to the present time.
RECOMMEND
SRIDHAR RAGHUNATHA RAO-AUG 01, 2015 08:04AM

A very beautiful introspective analysis. I am one of those who firmly believe that
Jinnah was more secular than most of the leaders who claim to be secular. Now at this
point of time in2015, if we look back, it is a sad story of how Jinnah's dream did not
materialize right from his last days. Muslims left behind in India, Muslims migrated to
new Nation Pakistan, Muslims of several cultural and ethnic backdrops who were
already living, practically every group nurtures a sense of being let down and are
unhappy. Circumstances lead one prominent group to break out to form a separate
Nation. Their feelings and sentiments are stoked by politicians, either for or against, to
achieve their personal ends. This is the sorry and unfortunate state of general public.
Living together, with mutual respect and understanding between each other, is the only
TRUE answer. Thanks.
RECOMMEND
RAMU-AUG 01, 2015 08:26AM

What a critical analysis of the hitory of Pakistan. I hope Jinna's Pakistan will rise again.
I like to visit Pakistan before I die.
RECOMMEND
ASIF KHAN-AUG 01, 2015 08:52AM

A well researched article but does not identify clear reasons for the decline of our
country, namely ignoring East Pakistan, delay in framing constitution, rather strange
decision of declaring Urdu as national language etc.
RECOMMEND
CANDID-AUG 01, 2015 09:24AM

Ok, I would like to break the good news here! When nations start realizing about their
capabilities and what they have achieved in the past, that is the beginning of the new
era. We have lived in disappointment and frustration for too long. Today's Pakistan, is
much different from what it was 15-20 years ago. We
are already past the dark ages and
I am sure everyone of us is able to see the light at end of the tunnel. Every one of us,
whether its the security forces, government and people in general are striving to reach
that bright end.
RECOMMEND
MUHAMMAD IMRAN YOUSAFZAI-AUG 01, 2015 09:53AM

So, Zia regime changed the history!!
RECOMMEND
RJ-AUG 01, 2015 10:11AM

This conveniently meant that
the Bengali-majority East Pakistan that lay thousands of
miles away from West Pakistan was an unnatural part of what had appeared on the map
as Pakistan in 1947.
RECOMMEND
ADIL KHAN-AUG 01, 2015 11:10AM

I am glad that Paracha Sahib
has changed his tone about Ayub Khan and ZAB Bhutto,
as he was way too kind towards ZAB and gave little credit to Ayub Khan'w Golden Era
of the
Sixties as photos of that period speak for themselve. Ayub Khan was a practising
Muslim but he kept his faith to himself, and wanted to build
a progressive and modern
Pakistan - with which he was doing pretty well
until a brash young politician with a
huge ego and aspiration messed it
all up by his hollow sloganeering and bedding with
whoever and whatever
to stay in power. Imagine a socialist calluding with Islamists to
ban Ahmadis and any liberal activities so that he could gain their support to remain at
the top. Where did it get in the end? Khuda Ghari Bukush. Where it got Pakistan even
after 40 years is another story.
RECOMMEND
FARHAN NAZIR-AUG 01, 2015 11:27AM

A good effort . It revitalised my memories. I have been and am part of the later arena.
RECOMMEND
RANDOM-AUG 01, 2015 11:53AM

" Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive"
RECOMMEND
SURESH GOSWAMI-AUG 01, 2015 01:58PM

@pakone if we see pictures from 1947 to till date, it is very clear that old pakistan was
better than today...bcoz it was based on plurality and on faith...clearly shows that
INDIA and Pakistan look same in old times...people are same....India chose different
path and pakistan chose
diff path...hence the situation is so confused in pakistan..still
not late...we can start afresh...we need to build human societies and not hinud-muslimchristain ......we are here to make this world better, not to distroy..thanks to
Author...who put this journey beautifully...i wish
for old past days come back..
RECOMMEND
KD-AUG 01, 2015 02:02PM

Wonderful insight into the 68 year old history of Pakistan.
RECOMMEND
SURESH GOSWAMI-AUG 01, 2015 03:32PM

@nj01 Pakistan should see India as a Friend not Enemy...it would solve lot of
problems...dont move towards arab world..you can see the situation there
now...same
would happen if not checked right now...India is always a friendly country and
progressing to become the world power.. but it looks that since Pakistan has become
close friend to China...it would further create problems for themselves and others...
RECOMMEND
DR. AKASH DUBE-AUG 01, 2015 06:50PM

Really... Spellbound to see this article. See because you have presented the pictures in a
way it wins the heart. Pakistan was a part of India. How it can be underdeveloped, how
it can be having so extremists population, two brothers can never come up with
differences in just 67 years. Im an Indian but this article made me feel the pain of the
Pakistani youth. A revolution should take place under the current army cheif. It may
transform the nation. Beautifully written ur article was. A praise from this Indian
dentist.
RECOMMEND
I.M-AUG 01, 2015 08:25PM

This was a wonderful, truly educating read. I loved how the photographs illustrated
what the author wrote. Also, the identification of linguistic discrimination in East
Pakistan as one of the root causes of the civil war in 1971 is not something I've come
across too often. So, kudos for talking about the aspects that are more often than not
deemed as unimportant and hence, ignored.
All the details of how the curriculum for Pakistan Studies is what it
is now was
enlightening. You reminded me that, if not for one amazing P.St teacher I had, I would
never have learned that Jinnah never wanted Pakistan to be a theocratic state. We really
do need to teach our kids about Jinnah - as he was - at school. Since the govt is adamant
to teach the subject right up to the university level, they should be pushed to do it right
at least. The bit about Bhutto, Saudi Arab's influence, Zia's 'Islamisation' - to talk about
all of it in one succinct article is a considerable feat.
On a side note, please correct the caption of the TV drama pic with Rahat Kaazmi. The
still is not from 'Tanhaaiyan' but from the serial Dhoop Kinare.
RECOMMEND
ALI KHAN-AUG 01, 2015 08:48PM

@Feroz It's not about dreaming about a glorious past but rather putting black and white
together so future generations can judge for themselves what leads to where.
Tremendous effort NFP. If Pakistan does claw its way back from the giant hypocrite
hole of religious dogma then NFP will be remembered as the few lone voices of sanity
RECOMMEND
DR HANIF-AUG 01, 2015 09:19PM

brilliant analysis
RECOMMEND
HABIB-AUG 02, 2015 01:48AM

excellent pictorial history...very different from Pakistan studies version....but missed
fatima jinnah election in 1960s
RECOMMEND
RED-AUG 03, 2015 10:43AM

@Feroz There are no dreams of the past in this article- there have been nightmares
revisited to see
the wrong turns made to come to todays sorry state, and looking at these
would help shed light on what directions to avoid to make the future better
RECOMMEND
IBRAHIM SAEED-AUG 03, 2015 11:25AM

Thank you NFP. I cannot even
describe how grateful I am that you have put this
together and set the record straight. I long for time, when we can return to Jinnah's
Pakistan.
RECOMMEND
SICK OF YOU-AUG 07, 2015 02:02AM

Didn't start tearing up until the pics after the early 90s began rolling in. I was born and
am living through the most frustrated time Pakistan has ever experienced.
RECOMMEND
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