KARACHI: Steps such as implementing the 18th constitutional Amendment and protecting the judiciary can help in defusing the different tensions that beset Pakistan.

This was stated by French scholar Christophe Jaffrelot during a panel discussion after delivering his talk on the salient features of his book The Pakistan Paradox: Instability and Resilience at the Alliance Francaise here on Monday.

Mr Jaffrelot, who is a research director at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, said his book was an attempt at identifying the variables explaining the political trajectory of Pakistan. He said he had focused on three types of tensions, some of which existed even before the inception of the country.

The first tension that he mentioned was between a centralised unitary nation-state and ethno-linguistic federation. He said it began even before Pakistan came into being in the form of the Aligarh Movement initiated by Urdu-speaking groups of north India for a separate Muslim land because they feared they would lose their status. Subsequently, when the Muslim League demanded a separate electorate, in 1940 M. A. Jinnah promised that the provinces would be sovereign.

The problem arose after 1947 with the concept of the nation-state and the fact that Urdu was considered a unifying factor. It alienated many regional leaders, especially from Bengal, and another partition happened. He, on a positive note, said there was no reason those issues couldn’t be resolved.

‘The role played by Bhutto needs to be scrutinised’

The second tension that Mr Jaffrelot spoke on was between democratic and autocratic rules, not coinciding with civil-military relations. The two (democrats and autocrats) had come to power every 10 years alternately. No prime minister was allowed to rule fully, he said. “There’s a democratic process but not complete democracy,” he commented. However, he said, the facade of democracy had enabled the governments to get IMF money and American support.

He said all civilians were not democrats. He called it a ‘legacy of the Jinnah pattern’ as Mr Jinnah was the governor-general of Pakistan as a civilian and there was no democracy at the time because he had to build Pakistan from scratch. He argued that the ruling elite of Pakistan (civil or military) came from a miniscule group so that the interest of that class was protected. He ascribed the issue to the absence of land reform and to the fact that the balance of fiscal reform was not checked. At the same time, he said, there were democratic trends which were noteworthy. For example, he said, when in 1968-69 students took to the streets and removed Ayub Khan. “There’s been resilience of democratic impulses at regular intervals,” he said.

Mr Jaffrelot pointed out that the third tension he had discussed in his book was about the question that what kind of Islam should there be in the country. He said there was no consensus on Islamic identity that Pakistan would adhere to. It was a pre-partition question since during the Aligarh movement Sir Syed wanted a modern approach to defend the Muslims (a territorial ideology) whereas in 1867 the Deoband seminary started that wanted to go back to the roots of Islam and to become part of the Ummah.

He said all the constitutions of Pakistan (1956,1973) were secular; but the turning point came in the 1970s when Zulfikar Ali Bhutto took some decisions. “The role played by Bhutto needs to be scrutinised,” he said.

Adding an extra point to the three tensions he had touched upon, Mr Jaffrelot briefly talked about the external factors in both instability and resilience in Pakistan [Jinnah sending his emissaries to the US; the US did not support Pakistan in 1965; the tilt towards China; Iran and Saudi Arabia’s proxy wars in the region etc]. On the topic of the rise of Islamic forces in the 1990s, he put that down to the surge in anti-American sentiment after 9/11.

After the lecture, taking part in the panel discussion Dr Saeed Shafqat (director of the Centre for Public Policy and Governance, Lahore) appreciated the fact that the title of the book had the word ‘paradox’ in it and not ‘predicament’. He lauded the fact that despite so many challenges Pakistan faced there was a deeper understanding about the country and about its ‘unavoidable geopolitical contexts’.

Editor of the Express Tribune Kamal Siddiqi said the book was an honest appraisal of what happened in our history. He said we didn’t have time for retrospection and were so caught up in small things that we failed to see the larger picture. He urged the journalists to read the book. He, like Dr Shafqat, asked the author a few questions related to his lecture.

In response to the questions put to Mr Jaffrelot by the other two panelists, the French scholar said both had used the word ‘hope’ in their comments which was synonymous with the word ‘options’. He said implementing the 18th Amendment could defuse the tensions he had spoken about, along with some other steps such as protecting the judiciary. As for religious policy, he said no respect for religious diversity was a recipe for civil strife.

Published in Dawn, September 22nd , 2015

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