This year marks Pakistan’s 70th year of existence. It will also mark another milestone though not as joyous as the country’s birthday: the 40th anniversary of Pakistan’s longest and most controversial dictatorship. 

On July 5, 1977, Gen Zia, after toppling a civilian set-up, appeared on TV to deliver a long speech. A few weeks later he was back on TV to talk about the initial pious policies he had implemented. During this speech, he suddenly cut away from his written speech, looked up into the camera and claimed that he knows why most people have stopped watching Pakistan Television (PTV): “Mujhay pata hai loag ab PTV kyun nahi daikhtay. Chirryan jo urr gain [I know why some people have stopped watching PTV now. All the birds have flown].”

At once a list was drawn by the new Information Ministry banning a number of actors, actresses, producers and playwrights from appearing on PTV. The list also contained names of certain Pakistani films, songs and PTV plays that were not allowed a rerun because they were either labelled as ‘obscene’ and ‘vulgar’ or ‘politically subversive.’

Gen Zia sowed the seeds that have now begun to sprout

For example, songs like Naheed Akhtar’s Tuturu Turu Tara Tara and Alamgir’s Daikha Na Tha were judged to be ‘obscene,’ while plays such as Shaukat Siddiqui’s Khuda Ki Basti (God’s Colony, a 1974 play based on Siddiqui’s novel about poverty and crime in Karachi’s slums) were not allowed a rerun because the new censor board thought the play glorified socialism, an ideology that the new regime saw as ‘atheistic’.

The ministry of information also ordered the destruction of all recorded speeches of former prime minister Z. A. Bhutto from the PTV archives and video library. It also disallowed the usage of the words  ‘jamhooriat’ (democracy) and ‘socialism’ in plays, talk shows and news bulletins on PTV and Radio Pakistan.

Most urban middle and lower-middle-class Pakistanis began adjusting to the changing cultural and political paradigm, largely depoliticising themselves in the process. Perhaps this was a defence mechanism to ward off questions of social morality in an era of outward exhibition of religious piety and a behind-the-scenes materialism. Stark social and political fissures began to emerge within these classes.

After a decade of populism and ideological tussles of the 1970s, urban Pakistan saw itself embracing a form of anarcho-capitalism enjoined (and justified) by a convoluted strain of puritanical faith. The contradictions were consciously repressed, with much of urban society preferring pragmatism to deal with the changing scenario, convincing itself that its material survival now depended on its active engagement with the emerging zeitgeist, no matter how contradictory it might have seemed to the society’s old middle-class sensibilities.

The era of populist, social and political extroversion had finally come to a close, giving way to a need to hide one’s political and social self in an era of sweeping religious propagation and reactive legislation that was directly opposed to Ayub Khan’s modernist impulses and Bhutto’s populist bearings. This can be located in how the Pakistani society responded to a curious episode which unfolded in 1979.

In July 1979, America’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) announced that its ‘Skylab’ satellite that had been orbiting the planet since 1973 had developed a fault and was expected to fall over earth. Nasa was not sure exactly where it will crash, but experts believed that the burly satellite was likely to fall either over Australia or over the Indian subcontinent. Though the same experts also stated that the satellite would start to burn after entering the earth’s atmosphere and most probably end up in the sea, the story took a life of its own in Pakistan.

The state-owned PTV started to run regular bulletins on the latest whereabouts of Skylab, usually read by Azhar Lodhi, a newscaster who would go on to become a ubiquitous presence on PTV across the Zia years. Lodhi would maintain a sombre tone in the bulletins and then start to punctuate them with equally sombre pleas for prayers.

Suddenly, most Pakistanis, who till then had taken the affair lightly, now began applying apocalyptic overtones while speaking (to PTV and newsmen) about the event. Many, including members of the urban middle-classes, even went to the extent of wondering whether the fall of Skylab (on Pakistan) may announce the beginning of Qayamat or the Day of Judgment  Skylab eventually fell on July 12 over the ocean and the deserts of Australia and the episode was quickly forgotten. The apocalyptic outlook that it had triggered in society, however, lingered and worked in favour of the Zia dictatorship. Pakistani society — especially the urban middle-classes — became even more stoic and introverted in the face of the rapid political, social and cultural changes that had begun to take shape from 1977 onwards. 

 When General Zia toppled the Bhutto regime in July 1977, he had promised to hold fresh elections within 90 days. Instead, he went on to rule the country as a military dictator for 11 years. Zia began to wipe away the political and societal imprints of the Ayub and Bhutto regimes and introduced a number of draconian laws (in the name of faith) and changes in Pakistani society.

Zia’s dictatorship was showered with millions of dollars and riyals by the United States and Saudi Arabia who wanted him to turn Pakistan into a launching pad for an insurgency against Soviet forces in Afghanistan (he eventually complied).

The economic boom Pakistan experienced under Zia ran parallel to the mushrooming of anarcho-capitalism and a two-fold growth in institutional corruption and crime. Between 1977 and 1983, his regime also faced multiple movements led by left-leaning and progressive political parties. By the mid-1980s, the violence triggered by these movements was dwarfed by vicious conflicts between various ethnic groups.

It was also in the mid-1980s that the extremist and sectarian organisations formed by the state to fuel the mujahideen insurgency in Afghanistan began to turn inwards. They would go on to become a major issue for Pakistan in the coming decades.

By the time of Zia’s demise in 1988, Pakistani society stood considerably transformed. Interestingly, all that was sowed during this period would not come into full fruition till after Zia’s demise. These seeds would begin to sprout events and effects from which the country is yet to recover.

Published in Dawn, EOS, June 18th, 2017