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1
Pakistan
Failed State
Shiv Sastry
2
COPYLEFT LICENCE
Licence is hereby granted to make as many copies of
this book as needed, and for the book to be
distributed to anyone free of charge on condition that
no modifications are made and no profit is made from
the sharing of this work.
3
Dedicated to the memory of my cousin,
late Wg Cdr. Kukke Suresh, VrC
4
FOREWORD
The reason for writing this book is explained in the
first chapter. Once I had collected the reference
material it took me only three months to write the book.
It then took me two years to refine and release the book
as a freely downloadable e-book.
I must take this opportunity to thank members of the
forum at www.bharat-rakshak.com for their invaluable and
selfless help in digging up material that served as
references for this book.
Furthermore I wish to thank the dozen or so people who
helped me proof read the book and came up with useful
suggestions. Prominent among these are ramana, acharya,
kgoan and sudhir.
Shiv
January 20, 2007
5
CHAPTERS
1 Why Pakistan? Page 6
2 The people of Pakistan Page 14
3 Education Page 20
4 Industries and Economy of Pakistan Page 35
5 Pakistani psyche general observations Page 43
6 Women and Minorities of Pakistan Page 65
7 Partition and the two-nation theory Page 71
8 Islam and Pakistan Page 80
9 Attitudes toward India and Indians Page 93
10 The Pakistani Army Page 99
11 Kashmir, plebiscite, Wars and genocide Page 117
12 Provinces and Assorted Fragments Page 131
13 Pakistan, Jihad and Terrorism Page 135
14 The Government and criminal activity Page 147
15 Pakistan - Failed state Page 160
Appendix 1 Page 174
Appendix 2 Page 177
Appendix 3 Page 180
Appendix 4 Page 183
References Page 186
6
Chapter 1
WHY PAKISTAN?
Why write about Pakistan?
Pakistan is a huge, populous and diverse nation that has
the curious distinction of having been suddenly born in
1947, and it has been an aggressive and implacable
neighbor of India.
Most Indians do not understand Pakistan or Pakistanis.
Many tend to look at the similarities and remark,
"Pakistanis are just like us". That may appear true but
it is important to understand that Pakistanis do not feel
like Indians and do not like to say "Indians are just
like us". In fact Pakistanis have spent all those decades
since independence trying to show how Pakistan is not
like India. And in the intervening years Pakistan,
Pakistani institutions and Pakistanis have developed
certain unique and recognizable defining features. While
these features have been noted time and again by
innumerable people in a large number of books, newspaper
reports and magazines, no effort been made to collect
this information and put it all together between the
covers of a single book.
More that anything else, this book can be considered a
Review of the literature on Pakistan. In the field of
medical research, a Review of the literature is often
used to collect and collate information about a disease
from various sources. Such a review collects up all the
available information about a given disease from all the
medical papers available on the subject and consolidates
the information in one document. That document then
serves as a comprehensive reference point for information
about the subject.
7
This book is a collection and review of what has been
written about Pakistan in various sources over many
years. It is a summary of the experiences and
descriptions of many people who have reported or written
about Pakistan. The book carries many direct quotes from
various authors and these quotes are in italics, while
the sources from which the quotes have been taken are
listed in the reference section at the end of the book.
There are a few things that Indian readers should keep in
mind while reading this book.
First, referring to Pakistan does not mean that we are
obliquely referring to Indian Muslims. Indians often
become embarrassed or angry in discussions about Pakistan
and Pakistanis. Indians who talk about Pakistan or Islam
are often considered to be opponents of secularism and
tolerance, and are sometimes called saffron sympathisers.
For this reason Pakistan and Islamic extremism emanating
from Pakistan have almost been taboo subjects in India,
not to be discussed by secular non-Muslim Indians, lest
they should hurt the sentiments of Muslims in India. An
automatic and needless mental connection is made between
the subject of Pakistan and the Muslims of India. This is
both unfortunate and unfair to Indian Muslims. Today,
Indian Muslims are quite different from Pakistanis, and
it is an insult to Indian Muslims to refer to them as
being associated with Pakistan.
Vir Sanghvi, the managing editor of the Hindustan Times
has written about this (1):
At a sub-conscious level, some Indians make the
simplistic assumption that because (nearly) all
Pakistanis are Muslims, so all Muslims must be Pakistanis
in their hearts. This is an obvious logical fallacy and
it is also deeply insulting to all Indian Muslims -
8
including Zaheer Khan and Irfan Pathan who are setting
out for Pakistan, determined to keep the Indian flag
flying on the cricket field, to say nothing of the
thousands of Muslims who have died fighting Pakistan.
It requires a deliberate act of mental re-orientation for
non-Muslims in India to learn to talk about Pakistanis
without equating them with Indian Muslims. This vestigial
thought process remains in many Indian minds like a dark
cloud, a hangover from partition, and that is
unfortunate. Pakistan is Pakistan, a separate nation, and
Pakistanis are Pakistanis, not Indians. Pakistanis are no
longer Indians. Indians are Indians, not Pakistanis.
Muslims in India are not Pakistanis, they are Indians.
Confusion and misunderstanding in Indian attitudes more
than five decades after independence are certainly a
factor in the Indian inability to develop a coherent
Pakistan policy.
Another point to note is that no discussion or
description of Pakistan can even begin to be meaningful
without considering the role that Islam plays on the mind
of the Pakistani. Here again, we must remember that when
we speak of Pakistan and Islam we are not referring to
Indian Muslims and the vastly different way in which
Islam has evolved in India since independence. One of the
purposes of this book is to show precisely what has been
done with Islam in Pakistan. The situation and attitudes
of Muslims in India are no longer comparable to those in
Pakistan. There are many assumptions and misconceptions
that need to be reviewed, and these will become clear in
subsequent chapters.
As the Indian economy forges ahead there is an increasing
constituency of Indians who feel that Pakistan is a small
problem that can be ignored, and call for an avoidance of
what seems to be an Indian obsession with Pakistan. But
9
Pakistan cannot be ignored by India for many reasons.
The events of independence and partition had a deep
effect on the Indian psyche. The appearance of the new
nation Pakistan as a neighbor, with people who were
brothers and compatriots until very recently created a
complex conflict, a love-hate relationship that affected
Indian society. With Pakistani leaders attempting to
speak for the Muslims in India, many non-Muslim Indians
got polarized mainly into two groups, neither of whom
were able to look upon Indian Muslims as they should have
been looked at, as Indians like everyone else. One group
of Indians began to view their Muslim compatriots with
hostility as recessed Pakistanis who were always seen
cheering for Pakistan in cricket matches. Another group
of Indians took the opposite viewpoint that Indian
Muslims, unless treated in an especially favorable and
kind manner, would somehow feel upset enough to want to
side with Pakistan. Pakistan has thus had a great impact
on Hindu-Muslim relations in India, and has put a great
strain on the ancient Indian tradition of tolerance and
pluralism.
Apart from the deep mental scar that partition left on
the Indian psyche, the importance of Pakistan lies in its
extreme hostility to India. In the first 55 years after
independence, the Indian armed forces have had to fight
wars on eight occasions (2). In five of those wars armed
forces from Pakistan have been the adversary that Indian
civilians and Indian soldiers have had to face. Four of
these conflicts are discussed in chapter 11, and the
fifth engagement with Pakistan still continues at the
time of writing, with the infiltration of armed
terrorists from Pakistan into India as part of a lowgrade
war to bleed India (chapter 12). From 1965, the
Indian armed forces and paramilitary have had to expand
to keep pace with the massive build up and continuing
10
assaults from Pakistan.
Indians cannot afford to forget the lessons that can be
learned from events like the India-China conflict of
1962, or the naive policy of appeasement of Adolf Hitler
followed by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain.
Unilateral pacifism displayed by one nation state when
another nation shows every sign of being ready for war is
a policy that begs for defeat and disaster. No matter how
well intentioned and peaceable a nation state may be, the
presence of a belligerent neighbor is a signal that
military strength must be adequate to meet any aggressive
intent, and if necessary take the battle into the
aggressor's territory. But this build up must not come in
the way of urgently needed development and modernization.
A policy of ignoring Pakistan's military intent and might
would be a formula for a disaster of unimaginable
proportions, while a policy that puts too much emphasis
on hurriedly delivering a total military defeat on
Pakistan could divert too large a proportion of meager
resources towards a war machine. That is one of the
mistakes that Pakistani leaders committed, and India
would do well to learn from that.
By studying what Pakistan has done, or has not done since
independence, Indians have a lot to learn. It is still
possible for Indians to make the mistakes Pakistanis have
made. Pakistan has made a whole tapestry of errors that
Indians can choose to repeat or avoid. Overconfidence,
underestimation of problems and hurdles, blindness to the
impact of religious discrimination, discrimination
against minorities and maldistribution of wealth,
ignoring corruption, a population explosion and social
inequity, and attempting to play great power games in the
absence of a matching military-industrial-economic
capability are some of the mistakes that Pakistan has
made, mistakes that India could still make.
11
Finally, every attempt has been made in this work to
avoid direct comparisons between India and Pakistan,
except where it is unavoidable. There is a very important
reason for that, and it requires elaboration. Although
both India and Pakistan started off as having been part
of one nation in the pre-Independence era, the two
entities cannot really be compared. India is four times
larger than Pakistan in land area and currently has a
population that is over seven times the size of
Pakistan's population. This means that all numbers and
figures relating to India are automatically bigger than
those of Pakistan.
To illustrate why a direct comparison between India and
Pakistan can be misleading we need to use an analogy:
Imagine India to be a box with 100 eggs in it, but 30 of
those eggs are broken. Imagine Pakistan to be a smaller
box with 10 eggs in it, and 5 of those eggs are broken. A
direct comparison will show that the India box has 30
broken eggs, and the Pakistan box has only 5 broken eggs,
and it would seem that the India box is in a far worse
shape, with many more broken eggs. But what is hidden
from this comparison, is that the India box has 70 intact
eggs while the Pakistan box has only 5 intact eggs.
Direct comparisons of numbers regarding Pakistan and
India are misleading because of the difference in size,
but Pakistani leaders have persistently tried to hide
problems within Pakistan such as poverty and illiteracy
by saying that India has more problems than Pakistan. All
references to Pakistani problems are referred to by
Pakistani spokespersons as South Asian problems, South
Asian poverty, South Asian hunger, and South Asian
illiteracy. All that this does is to hide the magnitude
of the problems in Pakistan, and hide the chronic
12
mismanagement of Pakistan.
India and Pakistan do share many of the same problems,
but a comparison of the real figures between India and
Pakistan shows that Pakistan is not doing well, and is
falling behind, even though the number of people who are
poor in Pakistan, and the number of people requiring
education in Pakistan are far smaller than the number in
India.
Pakistan's task should have been easier, but Pakistan is
failing even to achieve a smaller task. For every child
that Pakistan educates, India has to educate seven
children in order to "match Pakistan". But India is not
merely matching Pakistan, it has moved ahead in literacy
and is racing ahead in other parameters. A direct
comparison of numbers will not reveal this and such
direct comparisons are useful only to hide Pakistan's
increasing problems.
And while these figures get worse, a quick comparison of
the Pakistani armed forces and the Indian armed forces is
illustrative of what the two countries have been doing
since Independence. With India having a population that
is seven times as big as that of Pakistan, the Indian
army should have been at least three or four times the
size of the Pakistan army. But that is not the case; the
Indian army is less than one and a half times as big as
the Pakistani army. That is because, since independence
India has spent relatively more on development and less
on defence while Pakistan has spent almost everything on
arms and very little on development.
Pakistan of course was amply aided by other nations, but
these details will be discussed later. In this book we
will examine the state that Pakistan has got itself into
and deal with how it got into its current crisis. In 2007
13
Pakistan is not in an enviable state. Anyone who has
wished for anything bad to happen to Pakistan is likely
to find great joy in the condition that Pakistan has
reached.
14
Chapter 2
THE PEOPLE OF PAKISTAN
Pakistan is currently estimated to have between 160 and
170 million people. Pakistan's internal turmoil prevented
a routine census from taking place in 1991, but it was
finally conducted in 1998. Pakistan's population is
currently thought to be increasing at the rate of between
2.1% and 2.8% per year. Nobody knows exactly, but even at
the lower estimate 8000 children are being born every day
in Pakistan, or one Pakistani is born every 10 seconds.
Some estimates say that Pakistan's population will double
to over 300 million, by the year 2050.
The Pakistani paper the Jang reported in September 2003
(3):
Pakistan's population will swell to 349 million by year
2050, making it the fourth most populated country in the
world
The report goes on to say:
The population growth has caused an eight-time increase
in the unemployment...With almost one third of the
population living in abject poverty, 54 million people do
not have access to safe drinking water ... 53.5 million
are illiterates. The population explosion has led to the
shortage of educational facilities, health services,
housing units, food, living space, arable land and clean
water
The vast majority of Pakistanis are villagers, living in
rural areas. The "average Pakistani" is poor and
uneducated. According to some estimates, 70% of the
population of Pakistan is uneducated, and education among
women is very low since few women are allowed to acquire
15
an education in a society that believes the women should
not be seen in public places, mixing with strangers.
These facts may seem surprising considering the smartly
dressed, well spoken Pakistani men and women that one may
see on television. But that is another curious hidden
fact about Pakistan.
The "smartly dressed, well spoken Pakistani men and women
that one may see on television" form a small, wealthy
elite group that have been described by the expression
"Rich, Anglophone, Pakistani Elite". As the description
suggests, they are rich, they speak English and they form
the elite, the cream of Pakistani society. They actually
form a very small minority, numbering perhaps 25,000 in
all. Most of the wealth, land and industries of Pakistan
are said to be concentrated among about 43 top families
of Pakistan, who, along with top army officers, form the
cream of Pakistan(4).
In an editorial in the Indian Express that appeared on
January 28th 2002, VP Dutt wrote:
Another fundamental flaw is the very narrow social base
of the ruling elite. Pakistan is ruled by four interest
groups or their coalition: military, bureaucracy, the
feudal lords and the industrial barons. Making up the
nucleus of these four interest groups, it is believed,
are a dozen corps commanders, nearly 2,000 landlords
owning more than half the cultivable land, a cadre of
nearly 1,000 officers and less than 50 industrial
families. It is they who own Pakistan and rule in the
name of the people.
A report in the Jang (5) on Dec 5th 2003 says:
Top 20 per cent of the population has 50 per cent of
16
national income, while the bottom 20 per cent has only 6
percent,
The Rich Anglophone Pakistani Elite have a great
influence on the image of Pakistan abroad. The elite of
Pakistan come from rich, feudal landowning families as
well as from the armed forces. They drive the Pajeros and
the Mercedes-Benz cars of Pakistan, and they own much of
the land, with some feudal lords owning over 20,000 acres
of land in a Pakistan that is full of impoverished
people. Their children go to the best schools in
Pakistan, and often study abroad in the best institutions
of the US and UK, such as Harvard, Oxford and Cambridge.
On October 2nd 2001, the New York Times carried a report
about Pakistan:
In the cities, the turn of a street corner can seem to be
time travel between centuries. Wide boulevards clogged
with expensive cars become narrow lanes where shrouded
women carry jugs of water on their heads. About 75
percent of all Pakistanis reside in rural areas. Most are
sharecroppers, eking out a subsistence. In some areas,
feudal families still hold sway, making private laws and
operating private jails. While the wealthy send their
children to college in America or Britain, many of the
poor are deprived of even an elementary education. The
literacy rate is below 40 percent. A fifth of Pakistan's
government schools are "ghosts," with buildings but no
students or teachers
A third curious anomaly of Pakistan is the almost
complete absence of a "middle class". The middle class in
Pakistan have been estimated as being about 10 to 12
million in total (6,7) forming about 8% of the
population. The contrast with India now is stunning with
estimates of the middle class in India forming about 25
17
to 30% of the population. A large middle class is an
indicator of the development of a society from the
traditional feudal pattern into a more modern society.
The old feudal structure of society which Pakistan still
retains, consists of a small, very rich elite governing a
large mass of poor people. A large middle class is an
essential component of a 'modern' state and its absence
marks a feudal state.
A large middle class creates a society in which people
have the economic clout to break the economic
stranglehold of a rich elite and ensure that their rights
are looked after. A report by Pakistani researcher
Masooda Bano carried in the News International Pakistan
on 31st August 2001 said:
Pakistan's middle class is shrinking while India's middle
class is growing. More and more people in Pakistan are
slipping in to poverty. This is a dangerous trend as the
middle class is the backbone for any progressive society.
On top of that the rising of the fundamentalist groups in
Pakistan is a fact, which the nation cannot keep denying
anymore.
Nine out of ten Pakistanis are poor and uneducated. Less
than one out of ten belongs to the middle class and a
very small number are extremely rich. Fitting in
perfectly well with these facts are other items of
information about the life of Pakistanis. The whole of
Pakistan has only about 400,000 cars. Pakistan has only 3
million TV sets, for a population of 145 million. (8,9)
We can thus define the "average Pakistani". The average
Pakistani is an illiterate and poor Muslim. Being a
Muslim is important to the Pakistani citizen because it
brings a semblance of order to his otherwise miserable
and unenviable existence.
18
Religion also helps to define the psyche of the
Pakistani, which is dealt with in chapter 5.
Paradoxically, religion also helps in the survival of the
rich, tyrannical and corrupt leaders of Pakistan. Islam
teaches its followers to accept their lives as being preordained
by God, and, as a result of this belief, the
poor and deprived Pakistani does not question or complain
about his miserable life. This stoic acceptance has
allowed the rapacious elite and the resource-swallowing
army of Pakistan to carry on with their atrociously rich
lifestyles and blatant corruption for decades, without
having to be answerable to an angry or demanding
population.
19
20
Chapter 3
EDUCATION
Through the 1950s and 1960s, Pakistan was believed to be
a leading light among developing nations, and the
unquestioned technological leader among "Islamic nations"
A closer look at the facts suggests that this was only an
impression created by the fortuitous alliance between the
suave, English speaking Pakistani elite and the postworld
war superpower, the United States of America, and
the world's most powerful media apparatus that came with
the US.
Development and technology require education. Most people
who take education for granted tend to forget the highly
organized and civilized system that needs to be set up
for an underdeveloped nation to build up a group of
educated citizens who can serve as the pioneers of
development.
For example, imagine a small town or village that needs a
school. A building is required, with electricity for
light bulbs. Teachers are needed and for this the teacher
himself must be educated - a separate education system
must exist to have a supply of teachers. The people of
the village or town need to understand the value of
sending their children to be educated in school as
opposed to keeping them at home for help in the fields or
other work.
The low literacy rate in Pakistan is an indicator of the
facts that these fundamental investments have been
ignored or sidelined for decades. The precise manner in
which lack of education and a runaway increase in
population affects a country needs to be understood by
leaders in power. But it appears that a series of
21
Pakistani leaders have never really understood how the
twin facts of population explosion and lack of education
feed upon each other leading to the population-illiteracy
cycle getting worse at a faster and faster rate as time
passes, making it increasingly difficult to catch up.
A report on reforming education in Pakistan on NBC said
(10):
Two years ago, the Pakistani government tried to estimate
how many schools it would take to handle the 8 million
kids of primary age not in class now. "The numbers that
came up is 8,500 primary schools. That's the kind of
numbers we needed two years earlier. They can become
10,000 in 2004, maybe more," said Zubaida Jalal,
Pakistan's minister for education.
In the 20th century, rapid advances in the development and
application of vaccination of people against killer
diseases like smallpox and diphtheria led to a
significant reduction in the number of children dying
from these diseases. Effective means were developed to
reduce complications and deaths during pregnancy and
childbirth, and simple treatments were devised to save
lives in cases of deadly killer diarrheas. Until these
developments occurred, populations in many countries
remained relatively stable, because the number of people
dying was approximately equal to the number of babies
being born. But once these scientific changes affected
human society, populations began to rise rapidly. The
UNFPA has recognized this and says in a report on
Pakistan:
The major contributing factor to population growth has
been the sustained gap between low mortality and high
fertility levels for the last three decades or so. As a
result, Pakistan has today a very young population
22
structure, with 43 per cent below the age of 15 and 63
per cent below the age of 25.
Populations grow by what is called "geometric
progression". That means that if a population of 1
million people doubles to 2 million in ten years, it will
double to 4 million in a further ten years, and then
become 8 million in ten more years and so on. In fifty
years, a population of 1 million can increase to 32
million. If the original 1 million people lived in a
poor, developing country that is barely able to feed and
provide employment for 1 million people, it will have to
look after 32 million people just fifty years later.
Unless a great deal of money and effort is put into
planning for population growth such as food production,
healthcare and education, a rapid rise in population
typically leads to more hunger, more poverty, more
diseases from malnutrition and more unemployment. That
means more people who are unhappy and have reason to be
angry.
This is exactly what is happening in Pakistan (11,12).
The population has increased by 50 million people in the
last 15 years and the number of poor has doubled.
All these extra people have to have food and
opportunities for employment, and they need to be
educated regarding the importance of birth control and
family planning, since that is essential for slowing down
the population explosion.
Unfortunately Pakistan's leaders have never put in the
required amount of money and effort into education of the
Pakistani masses. Generations of Pakistanis have been
born into poverty and deprivation without the knowledge
or the means to slow down population growth or earn a
living though a modern job from a modernizing economy.
23
A report in the San Francisco Chronicle (13) in Oct 2002
on the state of education in Pakistan states:
According to government statistics for this year, the
literacy rate is 49 percent overall, 61.3 for men and
36.8 for women .. putting Pakistan among the 20 least
literate countries, according to World Bank's World
Development Index. A government study commissioned last
year demonstrated a clear cause-and- effect relationship
between the lack of basic education and increasing
poverty.
A study of education in Pakistan reveals many reasons to
be concerned, and few reasons to be happy.
The state of education in Pakistan was described by
Raymond Bonner in the New York Times on 31st March 2002:
Pakistan's literacy rate ranks below that of countries
like Haiti, Rwanda and Sudan, according to the most
recent United Nations Development Program report...
Pakistan's most recent budget sets aside $107 million for
education, compared with $2 billion for the military.
Madrassa education in Pakistan:
Over large areas of Pakistan, the lack of schools was
made up to some extent by madrassas or Islamic schools.
Madrassas exist in all nations with a Muslim population,
but what is taught in a madrassa can vary significantly
depending on the country and government. The madrassas of
Pakistan have played a prominent role in making Pakistan
the unstable, recessed theocratic state that it is today.
Columnist ABS Jafri wrote in the Dawn (14):
24
...in Sindh province we have more than a quarter of a
million students in the religious Madaris. In Karachi
alone there are well over 226,000 children in these
religious seminaries.. In the whole of the province there
are only 1,500 middle schools. Compare this with 869
Madaris in Karachi alone.
Nadeem Iqbal, writing for the Asia Times reported (15):
Currently there are some one million to 1.7 million
students enrolled in madrassas in Pakistan, most of them
between the ages of five to 18 and from poor families.
According to Dr. Tariq Rahman, Professor of Linguistics
and South Asian Studies, Quaid-i-Azam University,
Islamabad, Pakistan had only 137 madrassas in 1947. Dr.
Rahman writes of Pakistani madrassas (16):
In 1950 there were 210 of them while in 1971 they
increased to 563. Nowadays there are at least 7000 of
them.
After the 1971 war of liberation of Bangladesh, the
process of making Pakistanis more Islamic, the so called
Islamization of Pakistan was given impetus. It was
initiated by Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, and the
Pakistani General Zia ul Haq who removed Bhutto in a coup
and later hanged him, accelerated the process. The exact
number of madrassas cannot be known because of the lack
of registration or census.
Analyst Alexei Alexiev writes(17):
While no official nation-wide study of these madrassas
exists, estimates of their overall number range between
25
10,000 and 20,000; unregistered seminaries may add
another 10,000 to the total. As for the number of
students, here the estimate ranges from a conservative
half-million to over 2 million. (By comparison, some 1.9
million Pakistani children reportedly attended primary
schools in 2002.)
In 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, and this
gave the US an opportunity to utilize its Cold War
alliance with Pakistan to battle the Soviet invasion. The
US pumped in large amounts of money and arms into
Pakistan, much of it channeled via Saudi Arabia. The
Saudi connection enabled the setting up of a vast number
of madrassas in Pakistan. Because of the great poverty
and lack of schools in Pakistan, madrassas were a natural
attraction for the average Pakistani, as being schools
that adhered to Islamic values while feeding and housing
students, and taking over the burden of looking after one
or more sons from a large, poor and ill-fed Pakistani
family.
Pamela Constable, a columnist for the Washington Post
wrote on 20th September 2001 (18), just days after the
attacks on the World Trade Center in New York:
In recent years, however, a number of religious parties
and groups have been rapidly gaining influence throughout
Pakistani society. Based in thousands of mosques and
Islamic academies called madrassas, they spread their
message in part by offering services, especially low-cost
education, that millions of poor Pakistani families
cannot obtain any other way.
The name madrassa merely connotes a school. Aijazz Ahmed
wrote about madrassas in the Asia Times (19) in January
2003:
26
Madrassas were introduced about 300 years ago on the
Indian subcontinent by then Muslim monarchs and rulers to
produce a bureaucracy capable of running the day-to-day
affairs of state, especially in terms of financial and
legal issues, according to the wishes and pleasure of the
king.
Ahmed continues:
Professor Dr Manzoor, a renowned scholar, writer and
researcher, comments that nowadays many madrassas have
taken an unfortunate direction. "The new role of the
madrassas and [the influence] of religious elements has
added nothing but hatred against non-Muslims and
different sects of Islam. Although some major schools
produced better results and play their role for religious
harmony, many inject the poison of extremism,
sectarianism and ignorance and have become a source of
increasing ignorance and religious intolerance in
Pakistani society."
At he best of times, the normal curriculum in madrassas
did not offer a well rounded education that included
maths, science and information technology. The subjects
were frozen 300 years ago, and included logic, Arabic
literature and grammar, and Koranic teachings.
But during the Cold War, the number of madrassas
burgeoned rapidly and tens of thousands were set up
offering only a narrow interpretation of Islam in which
young people were indoctrinated into the concept of a
violent jihad against unbelievers, and taught to believe
that death on the battlefield fighting against the
enemies of Islam such as the Soviet Union would ensure
eternal paradise for the Islamic fighters.
The preparation of young men for jihad and death in the
27
battlefield was surely very useful and convenient to
provide an endless supply of soldiers to fight in
Afghanistan, and such fighters under the name Taliban
took over when the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan. But
even after this, the madrassas that had supplied all
these fanatical men did not close down, and indeed could
not be closed down. The curriculum teaching jihad did not
change either. Having nowhere else to go, thousands of
madrassa trained students in Pakistan collected up, ready
for jihad in any part of the world, including Kashmir,
Bosnia, Chechnya, the Philippines, Indonesia, Palestine,
Iraq and Turkey.
Pamela Constable wrote in the Washington Post:
During the 1980s, some radical Sunni groups in Pakistan
sent young men to fight in Afghanistan against Soviet
occupation, and many members of the Taliban graduated
from their madrassas. More recently, a...number of
Islamic students have been sent to fight against Indian
troops in Kashmir..
In addition, Pakistan columnist Khaled Ahmed wrote in the
Friday Times in November 21-27, 2003:
What better example than the one found in Pakistan whose
private armies interfered in Central Asia and China with
public acclaim? Let's take a look at the Harkat al-Jahad
al-Islami, Pakistan's biggest jihadi militia
headquartered in Kandahar before it was scattered by the
Americans. The Harkat was one of the militias boasting
international linkages. It called itself 'the second line
of defence of all Muslim states' and was active in Arakan
in Burma, and Bangladesh, with well organised seminaries
in Karachi, Chechnya, Sinkiang, Uzbekistan and
Tajikistan. Its fund-raising was largely from Pakistan,
but an additional source was its activity of selling
28
weapons to other militias
Schools in Pakistan:
Education in Pakistani schools outside of madrassas is
not available to most Pakistanis. But even in the few
schools that exist, the curriculum is deeply flawed. The
following quotes are taken from an in depth study of what
Pakistani school children are being taught in a
compilation entitled The Subtle Subversion - The State
of Curricula and Textbooks in Pakistan by A.H. Nayyar and
Ahmed Salim (20):
Madrassas are not the only institutions breeding hate,
intolerance, a distorted world view, etc. The educational
material in the government run schools do much more than
madrassas. The textbooks tell lies, create hate, incite
for jehad and shahadat, and much more.
...children are now taught that the history of Pakistan
starts from the day the first Muslim set foot in India.
History and Pakistan studies textbooks rarely mention
the ancient and non-controversial cultures of the Indus
valley (Moenjodaro, Harrappa and Kot Diji), and
completely bypass the entire Buddhist and Hindu periods
of history. They suddenly jump to the advent of Mohammed
bin Qasim in India and treat it as the beginning of
history... this structuring is to make children regard
the Muslim part of the history as the .. most significant
part.'
From about 1972 onwards, history taught in Pakistan was
detached from history as we know it.
Quoting further from the Nayyar and Salim report:
29
Four themes emerge most strongly..
1. ... Pakistan is for Muslims alone;
2. ...Islamiat is to be forcibly taught to all the
students, whatever their faith, including a compulsory
reading of Qur'an;
3. that Ideology of Pakistan is to be internalized as
faith, and hate be created against Hindus and India;
4. and students are to be urged to take the path of Jehad
and Shahadat (martrydom).
Associated with the insistence on the Ideology of
Pakistan has been an essential component of hate against
India and the Hindus...the existence of Pakistan is
defined only in relation to Hindus, and hence the Hindus
have to be painted as black as possible.
Curriculum documents ask the following as the specific
learning objectives:
The child should be able to understand the Hindu and
Muslim differences...India's evil designs against
Pakistan ..Hindu has always been an enemy of Islam.
The class II Urdu book has a lesson on "Our Country", the
first sentences of which read: Our country is Pakistan.
...Pakistan is an Islamic country. Here Muslims live.
Muslims believe in the unity of Allah. They do good
deeds.
The Class 6 book says: Who am I? I am a Muslim. I am a
Pakistani...you are a Muslim and your religion is Islam.
A book lists "Acchi baten" (good deeds). Among them:
"Good people are those who read the Qur'an and teach the
Qur'an to others" implying that those of another faith
cannot be good people.
30
Other things taught in state school texts:
After the partition of the subcontinent the Hindus and
Sikhs started a properly planned campaign of exploiting
the Muslims.. as a result of which the Hindu and Sikh
enemies of mankind killed and dishonoured thousands, nay
hundreds of thousands of women, children, the old and the
young with extreme cruelty and heartlessness.
And Pakistani children are taught about war as follows:
Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto introduced a full two-year course on
'Fundamentals of War' and 'Defence of Pakistan' for class
XI and XII respectively.In the 'Fundamentals of War'
themes like objects and causes, conduct, nature, modern
weapons, operations, principles ethics, the means short
of war and modern Warfare were thoroughly discussed.
...The subject of hate in Pakistani educational material
is Hindu and India, reflecting both the perceived sense
of insecurity from an 'enemy' country, and an attempt to
define one's national identity in relation to the
'other'. The first serves the military and the second the
political Islamists.
In another article on Pakistani education AH Nayyar wrote
(21):
The class 4 text book states: The religion of the Hindus
did not teach them good things -- Hindus did not respect
women...
Another book tells the students:
Hindus worship in temples which are very narrow and dark
places, where they worship idols. Only one person can
enter the temple at a time. In our mosques, on the other
31
hand, all Muslims can say their prayers together.
For another, the Hindus as a monolith were always
cunning, scheming, and conspiring to deprive the Muslims
of their due rights.. The Hindus always desired to crush
the Muslims as a nation. Several attempts were made by
the Hindus to erase the Muslim culture and civilization
...
If the Hindus had any national aspirations then these
were clearly a sign of their prejudices, while if the
Muslim kings and invaders plundered Hindu temples then
presumably they did so with very noble intentions.
The experience of colonialism is described in a textbook
as a British-Hindu conspiracy: The British joined forces
with the Hindus to bring harm to the Muslims. Muslims
tried in every way to maintain good relations with the
British and Hindus, but they did not allow it to be so.
Regarding history as taught to Pakistani children Kamila
Hyat wrote in the Jang in August 2003 (22):
.. the terrible events that led to the breaking away of
East Pakistan and the creation of Bangladesh are never
mentioned...
Members of the generation who grew up after 1971 often
have no idea at all of what issues underpinned the civil
war or why it took place. The genocide committed in the
territory that now constitutes Bangladesh .. are hardly
ever discussed or even spoken off on passing within the
Pakistan of today.
Pervez Hoodbhoy, a Pakistani scientist writes (23):
At the completion of Class-V, the child should be able to
32
...
"Make speeches on Jehad and Shahadat"
"Understand Hindu-Muslim differences and the resultant
need for Pakistan."
"India's evil designs against Pakistan."
Hoodbhoy goes on to say in the same article:
A moronic, incompetent, self-obsessed, corrupt, and
ideologically charged education bureaucracy today
squarely blocks Pakistan's entry into the 21st century.
It is clear from this that it is not only the madrassas
that offer a curriculum of hatred to Pakistani children.
Even children who study in Pakistani state schools imbibe
a curriculum of discrimination and hate.
The real worry in having such a faulty educational system
that actively encourages hatred is that millions of
Pakistani children are growing up to be adults thinking
that India and Indians exist to subjugate Muslims and
should be hated for that. There seems to be no way in
which a child in Pakistan can grow up without fearing or
hating India in particular and non-Muslims in general.
This mindset cannot be wiped out overnight. The problem
is so serious that the Pakistani government must be
engaged and encouraged to change the curriculum in
Pakistani schools. It is surprising that faults in an
education system that may have such great an impact on
Indian-Pakistani relations in future are not being
addressed at all at the highest governmental level in
India.
Meanwhile, in the first sign that a glimmering of
realization of the consequences of a curriculum of hate,
an acknowledgment of the existence of a biased curriculum
33
and a call for change was made by Pakistani Federal
Minister for Education Ms Zobaida Jalal in a statement
published in the Pakistan Tribune online in March 2004
(24):
a committee has been constituted to work out
recommendations for deletion of material from curricula
which is aimed at fomenting hatred against India adding
that the committee will submit its recommendations within
a month. Several social organizations have raised
objection that hatred is fanned against India through the
curricula of educational institutions in Pakistan.
Government has set up a committee to look into the matter
and send its recommendations within a month
But such change cannot come easily in Pakistan. More than
half of Pakistan's population of nearly 170 million are
thirty years old or younger and have been exposed to a
hate-India curriculum from childhood. As a result these
people are likely to form a strong body of anti-India,
anti-Hindu opinion for decades to come. Besides there is
strong opposition to change. In a sternly worded reaction
to the idea of reform of the hate curriculum, the
influential director of the Pakistan Institute of
Strategic Studies, Dr. Shireen Mazari accused the authors
of the report on Pakistan's biased school books as being
biased and having been written for the handsome payment
the authors received (25):
Dr. Mazari, commenting on the Nayyar report said:
the authors take exception to the fact that the present
curriculum documents suggest that children should be able
to understand the Hindu-Muslim differences and the need
for the creation of Pakistan. The authors' warped logic
is that knowing the differences breeds hatred! So one
should really do away with inculcating the rationale
34
behind the struggle for Pakistan! Of course, there is no
doubt that some of the texts do denigrate the Hindus but
this should not be a pretext for not creating an
awareness of the differences that led to the creation of
Pakistan.
In the same article, Dr. Mazari dismissed criticism of
madrassas as having an anti-Islam motive - a time honored
diversion used by the Pakistani elite to deflect
criticism (see chapter 8). Dr. Mazari's words:
"Also, with the madrassahs now a central target of the
West, Islam seems to have also become fair game.
With influential Pakistanis opposing change in the
curriculum, efforts at change are in serious danger of
being quashed even before they commence.
35
Chapter 4
INDUSTRIES AND ECONOMY OF PAKISTAN
In a report about the Pakistani economy, economist
Sreedhar states (26):
Pakistan's economy during the past fifty years can be
described as a classic example of a case where artificial
prosperity was maintained by heavy doses of foreign aid
and overseas remittances of Pakistanis...Easy and cheap
availability of goods and services through foreign aid
discouraged the development of a large scale indigenous
industry. At another level, Pakistan failed to do even
the basics of economic development which most of the
developing countries have done.
More than fifty years after independence, Pakistan
remains primarily an agricultural economy. Not a single
wrist-watch, scooter or motorcycle has appeared on the
international market with a Made in Pakistan label on it.
This level of industrial technology in Pakistan is in
keeping with the overall picture of Pakistan as a nation
in which almost 70% of the people are illiterate.
Goods manufactured in Pakistan are mostly no more complex
than bicycles, sports goods such as footballs and cricket
balls, clothes, textiles and agricultural products like
sugar. Pakistan has survived for over 50 years giving the
impression that it is somehow a powerhouse in its depth
and breadth of manufacturing and industrial capacity.
That is far from the truth.
Still, a sophisticated Pakistani public relations machine
has managed to build up the idea, at least in the minds
of Indians, that Pakistani industry is producing some
state of the art high technology goods. It is worth
looking at some of these items and Pakistani claims in
36
some detail. In keeping with the Pakistani psyche of
according the highest importance to the armed forces
Pakistani claims of high technology indigenous
manufacture have revolved around armament, specifically
missiles and Pakistan's nuclear program.
Pakistani spokespersons never tire of speaking of
Pakistan's indigenous missiles - given names like Hatf,
Ghauri and Shaheen. These brave names may perhaps be
essential for national pride, but even a cursory search
of authoritative sources shows that Pakistan's Hatf,
Ghauri and Shaheen missiles are Chinese M-9 or M-11
missiles, or North Korean No-Dong missiles (27).
The idea is not to downplay the considerable risk that
Pakistan's missiles pose to India and other nations, but
to point out the compulsion that Pakistani authorities
have to maintain a facade of indigenous production for
items that are widely known to be imported. The most
likely reason for maintaining this charade of indigenous
development of missiles is to obscure the fact that
dangerous, nuclear capable missiles are being supplied by
countries like China and North Korea to Pakistan ignoring
international treaties that forbid such exports.
In a detailed report on Pakistani missiles from NTI -
Nuclear Threat Initiative, a private body aimed at
studying the risk of nuclear conflict it was reported
that (28):
Pakistan is still dependent on China for specialty
materials, guidance systems, and other critical missile
components...Pakistan will remain dependent on North
Korea for importing complete liquid engines, or at least
their major component parts, as well as the liquid
propellants to fuel its missiles
37
Even more peculiar is Pakistan's nuclear program. The
strong Pakistani insistence that the program is entirely
indigenous is contradicted by the facts. A news report
about this in a New Zealand news portal reads (29):
The father of Pakistan's atom bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan,
worked at the Urenco uranium enrichment facility in the
Dutch city of Almelo in the 1970s.
After his return to Pakistan he was convicted in absentia
of nuclear espionage by an Amsterdam court..He has
acknowledged he did take advantage of his experience of
many years of working on similar projects in Europe and
his contacts with various manufacturing firms."
A report from the Netherlands, from which Abdul Qadeer
Khan got his designs for Uranium enrichment says Khan
received a MSc degree in metallurgy from Delft in 1967
and later stole nuclear secrets from his Dutch employer,
helping Pakistan develop its first nuclear bomb...In
1976, Khan suddenly left Europe before his espionage was
detected. Back home in Pakistan, then Prime Minister
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto gave Khan the job of organizing
Pakistan's nuclear program
Pakistan can hardly be expected to publicly proclaim that
the Father of Pakistan's nuclear program stole the
technology. Experts have argued that it does not matter
if Pakistan's atomic bombs are stolen or made in
Pakistan. They are a serious risk either way. This is
true, but it is important to place on record the fact
that the designs were stolen and not the result of some
prolonged research effort in Pakistan.
The designs that Abdul Qadeer Khan obtained from the
URENCO labs were for centrifuges. Centrifuges are devices
that are used to rotate something at high speed to
38
separate out heavier from lighter components. For
example, a rotating centrifugal dryer in a washing
machine is a centrifuge that separates water from clothes
and makes wet clothes much more dry. Obtaining
centrifuges was necessary for Pakistan to start enriching
Uranium. Uranium occurs naturally primarily in two forms,
the heavier U238 and lighter U235. The latter, U235 is
needed for nuclear bombs but occurs in very small
quantities mixed with U238. For this reason Uranium needs
to be enriched to get material that contains 90% or more
of U235, which can then be used for making a nuclear
bomb. Several techniques exist for this and Pakistan
chose the route of Uranium enrichment by centrifuges
using the technology stolen by Qadeer Khan from the
URENCO labs.
But making a nuclear bomb goes far beyond merely
enriching Uranium. Making a workable and reliable nuclear
bomb requires further technology. Indian analyst
K.Subrahmanyam quotes Nobel Laureate Abdus Salam as being
skeptical about Pakistani ability to actually produce a
working nuclear bomb. Subrahmanyam goes on to indicate
similar skepticism of Pakistani ability in Indian
scientific circles by saying (30):
Their scepticism was based on their judgement that
Pakistan did not have the critical mass of scientific and
engineering talent necessary for the project.
This is where Pakistan's role as a Cold War ally of the
US and its role in helping China and the US get closer
came in handy. China provided Pakistan with the necessary
technology to make its nuclear bomb. It is widely
reported that China gave to Pakistan the complete design
of a nuclear bomb that it had tested in 1964 (31).
One week after the Indian nuclear tests of May 1998, and
39
a one week before the official Pakistani nuclear test an
announcement was made at a G8 meeting that Pakistan had
tested a nuclear device. It is said that the device
failed to detonate. After this there was a flurry of
activity when Pakistani officials visited China. The next
week, on the 28th of May 1998, Pakistan conducted a
nuclear test in Chagai. Some experts believe that the
device tested was a ready made device provided to
Pakistan by China after the failure of an earlier test.
During this period mysterious news reports surfaced that
Plutonium was detected in the atmosphere over Chagai in
Pakistan (32). Since Pakistani bomb designs were Uranium
based ones, there is no way Plutonium could have
appeared. If the Plutonium story is true, it lends
credence to the theory that Pakistan may actually have
tested a ready made Chinese nuclear device.
At the time of writing this, the father of Pakistan's
nuclear program, Abdul Qadeer Khan stands discredited and
accused of selling equipment and the plans for Uranium
enrichment centrifuges to Libya, Iran and North Korea, in
exchange for missiles from North Korea and great personal
wealth for himself. It appears that this was done with
the knowledge and tacit approval of the military
government of Pakistan, and its army chiefs of staff
(chapter 13). News reports indicate that Pakistan's
nuclear program was based on a network of clandestine
imports from a network of proliferators personally built
up by Abdul Qadeer Khan, funded by unlimited financial
support from the Pakistani government, as well as from
Libya and other sources. It seems clear that Pakistan's
entire nuclear weapons manufacturing program was based on
a clandestine black-market of contacts with companies all
over the world who produced components that could not be
fashioned in Pakistan.
Pakistan does not currently produce any fighter, bomber
40
or civilian aircraft and does not have a noteworthy
aerospace research or design team. But in 1981 Pakistan
imported the entire assembly line for the manufacture of
a 1969 vintage Swedish designed, single engine, two
seater trainer aircraft from Sweden. The aircraft,
called the Saab Supporter in Sweden is assembled in
Pakistan under the name Mushshak. Another trainer
aircraft that Pakistan became involved in is a Chinese
designed K-8 jet trainer. Current reports indicate that
the trainers will be manufactured in China, and not in
Pakistan.
Pakistan's industrial sophistication today is arguably
not much higher than that of Britain in the early 20th
century, but Pakistan has continuously maintained,
possibly for domestic consumption that it is a leader in
many technologies. This pretence probably does Pakistan
more harm than anyone else. Pakistani leaders, convinced
by the exaggerated claims of their own countrymen have
allowed their nation to lapse into a state of
underdevelopment in which Pakistan is now being compared
with the other countries at the bottom of the development
ladder, such as Haiti and Rwanda.
On March 31st 2002, a report in the The New York Times
stated, Barely a third of Pakistan's population is
literate, Even using a very low standard, the State
Department said in its most recent human rights report.
Pakistan's literacy rate ranks below that of countries
like Haiti, Rwanda and Sudan, according to the most
recent United Nations Development Program report.
Furthermore A UNDP report in 2003 ranked Pakistan a low
138th, in a list of 174 countries (33).
Pakistan's labor force is growing at the rate of 2.4% per
year, but the number of unemployed people in Pakistan is
rising at more than twice that rate - 6% (34). The
41
Pakistan Human Condition report of 2003 says that between
1998-99 and 2000-01, population increased by 6 million
people (4.46 per cent), while the population of the poor
during the period under review increased by 10 per cent.
The report warns that population is shifting from upper
poverty bands to lower ones, showing a decline in their
welfare level
On February 5th 2003, the San Francisco Chronicle
reported: Pakistan's powerful military has ruled the
country for more than half of the nation's 56-year
history, fully integrating itself into every facet of the
economy and draining state coffers with generous benefit
plans for its officers....corrupt military officers have
siphoned off more than $1.2 billion in the last 10 years
to purchase such amenities as land, mansions and luxury
cars, according to a recent report by Pakistan's auditor
general.
A large number of reports speak of all the economic
problems that Pakistan has (35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40) Some
of these problems, regarding industries and poverty have
been listed above. But many other factors contribute to
the decrepit state of the Pakistani economy. Aid and loan
money has been constantly misused for personal gain by
the Pakistani army, army run businesses and private
enterprise due to rampant corruption at the highest
places. There is an extremely wealthy class of Pakistani
at the top of the economic pyramid and this class
includes Army Officers as well as feudal landowners -
some owning as much as 45,000 acres of land. In the
Punjab province, one percent of the landowners own 26
percent of the land.
One report (36) says only one million Pakistanis pay tax
in a country of over 150 million people. The Karachi
Stock Exchange has trading in only about 30 stocks - with
42
over 700 other stocks listed for tax advantages. The
Exchange is run by a handful of crooked brokers and scams
are rampant. The same report goes on to say, Estimates of
the size of the country's black-market economy, which
includes everything from underground banking to narcotics
to the smuggling of consumer goods, range up to 100% of
the so-called formal sector. That ratio "is probably the
most severe" of any country in the world, says Muhammad
Mansoor Ali, one of Pakistan's leading economists. "It is
essentially a parallel economy."
The number of such damning reports is enormous, and they
help build up a picture of Pakistan as a country of
predominantly poor people, whose number is increasing by
the year as the population rises. Governing these people
is a small elite of wealthy, corrupt and self-serving
army officers and feudal lords who literally rule over
their subjects like medieval kings. The population is
kept busy with jihad, being told that India is forever
planning to attack Pakistan and kill all Muslims, while
the rulers of Pakistan build up their personal fortunes
and protect their lucre with an army whose upper ranks
are like a Mughal court, while the lower ranks are the
bodyguards to protect the powerful from both external
enemies and opponents within Pakistan.
43
Chapter 5
PAKISTANI PSYCHE - GENERAL OBSERVATIONS
Very few studies exist on the subject of the mind of the
Pakistani or the Pakistani psyche. Pakistan has been too
low on the priority of sociologists and psychologists,
while most Indians, including Indian leaders and
strategists have been content with describing Pakistanis
as being "Just like us" - i.e. just like Indians.
Pakistanis, like all other people, display the usual
range of human behavioral patterns: joy, sorrow, anger,
pain and other emotions which are indistinguishable from
anyone else on an individual level. But groups of
thousands or millions of people anywhere in the world,
who live together in nations tend to develop certain
unique patterns of behavior based on the stresses,
experiences and history of their particular society.
Sometimes these unique patterns of behavior are very
difficult to recognise, because the behavior is very much
like that of anyone else. Even so, it is worth
recognizing minor differences because this knowledge has
some value in understanding behavior, and in negotiation
and reaching agreements.
For example, communication between cultures becomes
difficult if negotiators from different cultures cannot
understand each others' behavior. A deep understanding of
Japanese culture was required before international
agreements could be reached with Japan on the issue of
whaling and protection of endangered species of whales.
Some cultures, such as Japanese culture have been well
studied (41). The important role of saving face and
avoiding shame is well recognised, and must be taken into
account in negotiation. Another well known example of the
consequences of an inability to understand cultural
nuances comes from a transcript of a telephone
44
conversation in Arabic between Egyptian President Gamel
Abdel Nasser and King Hussein of Jordan when Egyptian
forces were being defeated by Israeli forces in 1967. The
cultural need to avoid shame forced Nasser to state that
his forces were fighting well against their enemy, but
King Hussein was unable to understand the nuances by
which Nasser hinted that his forces were being defeated.
That left Hussein, and Jordan unprepared for their defeat
in the war subsequently (42).
There are few studies of unique behavioral patterns among
Pakistanis. But such patterns do exist, and their
importance must not be underestimated. In his testimony
to the United States' Senate Committee on Foreign
Relations in January 2004 (43) Stephen Cohen, speaking on
India-Pakistan relations quoted a Pakistani army officer
saying how important the question of pride was in
Pakistani actions relating to India.
In the words of one Pakistani officer, the army
understands it cannot wrest Kashmir from India, but it
cannot turn its back on a 55 year struggle. At stake is
its pride, and it literally calls the shots
But the subject of a specific and defined Pakistani mind
has not gone unnoticed among Indian observers. J. N.
Dixit, former Indian foreign secretary has spoken of the
psychological hurdles that come in the way of Indian and
Pakistani relations. These are listed in a review of his
book (44):
Dixit identifies a series of Pakistani traits that refuse
to live amicably with India. First, "artificially
nurtured memories of Muslim superiority and a
subconscious desire to rectify the unfair arrangements of
partition". Second, a certain envy Pakistanis would not
acknowledge openly about the failure of their civil
45
society to solidify democratic and tolerant traditions in
comparison to an India where khakis and bayonets follow
popularly elected representatives. Third, assumption by
Pakistan of the role of protector and overseer of the
welfare of Indian Muslims, who in the words of Maulana
Azad, could be exploited from forces across the border
owing to their "socio-political schizophrenia" since
partition. Fourth, avenging the military defeat of 1971,
which is a formal objective declared in the official
oath-taking ceremony of every Pakistani officer-cadet
when he graduates. Fifth, irrational faith in the
"profound capacity for commitment to jihad amongst the
momin", as was publicly declared by Foreign Minister
Gauhar Ayub Khan at a press conference in Delhi. Sixth,
confidence that Pakistan's nuclear weapons program is an
instrumentality to further geopolitical objectives in
Kashmir. Seventh, widespread belief in the Pakistani
establishment and media circles that India is getting
exhausted in Kashmir and would not be able to hold on to
it for long (a presumption of Musharraf in Kargil).
Eighth, and most significantly, "the unarticulated
ambition and hope that if India broke up, Pakistan will
emerge as the strongest and most powerful political
entity in South Asia".
Of course, in 1947 and a few years after that it would
have been perfectly valid and accurate to describe
Pakistanis as being just like Indians. But after over
50 years of being a separate nation with different threat
perceptions, problems and priorities, and with 75 % of
present day Pakistanis having been born after 1947, it
can easily be observed that there are certain behavioral
characteristics that can be called Purely Pakistani There
is, in effect a Pakistani psyche or a Pakistani mindset,
that is separate from the old Indian identity.
It is useful to be aware of this in dealing with Pakistan
46
as a nation and in predicting Pakistani responses to
events. There are certainly some parallels in Pakistani
behavior to Arab behavior described by Raphael Patai in
his seminal book on The Arab Mind (42). These
similarities are striking, and the most likely
explanation is the internalization of Arab culture in
Islam, leading to a degree of Arabization of behavior
among devoutly Islamic people such as some Pakistanis who
have actively sought to reject their earlier Indian
culture (see chapter 9).
Certain types of behavior stand out among Pakistanis and
are best demonstrated by studying examples of statements
and actions by prominent Pakistani leaders and
spokespersons. It would be wrong to assume that every
Pakistani displays all the characteristics described
here. No single characteristic is unique to Pakistanis
alone, but careful observations of Pakistani statements
and actions show that a sufficiently large proportion of
Pakistanis, especially their leadership, display one or
more of the following characteristics to make them
recognizable as general guidelines to Pakistani psyche.
Certain statements and actions are repeated time and
again, and a pattern can be seen in the way Pakistanis
react to people and events.
Hospitality and generosity:
The characteristic of being extremely hospitable and
generous to guests has stood Pakistanis and Pakistan in
good stead. No visitor to Pakistan goes away without
being touched by this, and this characteristic has been
used to good effect by Pakistan over the years.
An article in the American magazine, The Weekly Standard
had this to say in its Nov 5th 2001 edition:
47
..the attractive character of elite Pakistani officials.
Compared with their haughty Indian and chaotic Afghan
neighbors, Pakistani VIPs are often wittier, warmer, and
more knowledgeable about the insider gossip of U.S.
politics. American diplomats and spooks often have a good
deal of fun with their Westernized Pakistani
counterparts. As one congressional staffer, who
frequently visits south-central Asia, succinctly put it,
"I like 'em; the Indians are jerks."
A series of Western writers and prominent people have
been hosted and feted in Pakistan, and have later served
as honorary ambassadors for Pakistan in the Western
media.
One prominent example is the famous American pilot, Chuck
Yeager, who was a guest of the Pakistan Air Force (PAF)
and who later went on to write paeans about the PAF For
many years after the PAF was comprehensively defeated in
successive wars with India, Yeager's words of praise of
the Pakistan Air Force continued to be quoted,
maintaining a reputation for the PAF that extended far
beyond its real performance.
Pakistani hospitality has charmed a large number of
prominent writers to write positively about Pakistan, and
some have gone as far as to make needlessly hostile and
malicious references to India in their writings despite
strong evidence that their words are misinformed at best,
and often just plain wrong. Prominent among people who
have written warm words for Pakistan are writers like
Brian Cloughley, Eric Margolis and John Fricker.
As recently as June 2002, the Washington Post reported:
It was mid afternoon Tuesday, and Anwar Mahmood,
48
Pakistan's information secretary, was on the phone
discussing with an underling how to keep more than 100
foreign journalists happy for the rest of the week...if
it keeps the reporters satisfied, he figured, it's worth
the $3,000 it will cost his ministry to rent the plane
from Pakistan International Airlines...The Pakistani
government, eager to make its voice heard, has ordered
foreign embassies to expedite visas for
journalists...Five times in the past month, the
Information Ministry has rented air-conditioned buses to
carry journalists to the Line of Control... There they
are treated to hour-long military briefings, complete
with maps, displays of Indian mortar shells -- and tea
sandwiches served on trays by white-gloved soldiers. You
won't get such hospitality from the Indian army.
Honour and Dignity:
The need to maintain honour and dignity is a fundamental
pillar in the mind of the Pakistani. It is often more
important to maintain honour and avoid shame than
anything else. At a rural, tribal level in Pakistan,
maintenance of honour often relates to women and doubts
about fidelity or adultery. Death, in the form of an
honour killing is often the sentence carried out on a
woman who is thought to have shamed the family. David
Pryce Jones has written (45) that the key to
understanding some Islamic societies is to recognise the
need for acquisition of honour, pride, dignity, respect,
and the converse avoidance of shame,disgrace, and
humiliation. The powerful codes of shame and
honour...enforce identity and conformity of behaviour.
Everything is permitted in order to safeguard the family
or tribal honour, lying, cheating, and even murder.
49
But honour and dignity play an equally important role
among the richer and apparently liberated Pakistani elite
rulers of Pakistan. The need to maintain honour and avoid
the perceived national shame of appearing weak in front
of India has led to the sacrificing of all developmental
effort towards arms purchases to pursue military parity
with India. Stephen Cohen's quote of a Pakistan army
officer's words in this regard has already been alluded
to at the beginning of this chapter.
The importance of honour is evident from the words used
by US deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage after a
meeting with the President of Pakistan, General Musharraf
on the 6th of June 200246) ..I would note that the
conversations we had with President Musharraf made it
very clear to me that he wants to do everything that he
can to avoid war... Of course he wants to do this,
keeping intact the honour and dignity of the nation and
the armed forces,...
On 14th March 2003, General Musharraf, military leader of
Pakistan said about Pakistan's nuclear weapons
aspirations (47) "We only want the deterrence capability
to preserve our honour and dignity."
The need to maintain honour and avoid shame by Pakistani
military commanders goes to the extent of suppressing any
news of a defeat or setback suffered by the military,
while insisting that victory was always achieved. A brief
study of the way Pakistan's wars with India have been
reported in Pakistan are illustrative of this.
The 1965 war with India started with the infiltration of
Pakistani special forces into Kashmir for sabotage and to
incite acts of violence. As the conflict evolved war
broke out over a wide front and by the time a cease fire
50
was declared both India and Pakistan had captured small
areas of each other's territory. Significantly, Indian
forces were well within striking range of the Pakistani
city of Lahore, with Indian troops in the towns on the
outskirts of Lahore, and Pakistani General Ayub Khan's
plans to take Srinagar were foiled. But the 1965 war has
always been portrayed from the Pakistani side as a war in
which attacking Indian forces were defeated. The need to
maintain honour and dignity is so important to the
Pakistani, that any available fact may be either picked
up or selectively forgotten in order to save face and
maintain the pretence of victory.
In 1971, the triumph of an East Pakistan (now Bangladesh)
based political party in an election would have meant
that a Bengali, Sheikh Mujibur Rehman would have become
Prime Minister of Pakistan. This was disliked by the West
Pakistani Punjabi dominated army of Pakistan, who
commenced a genocide in East Pakistan. Millions of
refugees poured into India to escape this. In a
humanitarian move, Indian forces entered East Pakistan
and defeated the Pakistani military and a new nation,
Bangladesh, was born. More than ninety thousand
Pakistani soldiers were taken prisoner of war. The Indian
victory, unparalleled since the German Blitzkrieg that
overran Poland was described by historian Brigadier
Shelford Bidwell (48) as follows:
The operations of 1971 finally dispelled any vain dreams
that the 'sword-arm' of old India could, despite its
numerical inferiority, sweep aside the armies of the
effete Hindus and win another battle of Panipat outside
the walls of Delhi. Not an Indian brigade had to be moved
West. General Jagjit Singh Aurora's daring concentric
attack on East Pakistan went forward uninterrupted and on
16 December he received the surrender of the Pakistani
commander in Dacca.
51
The ignominious defeat of the Pakistan armed forces in
1971 and the formation of Bangladesh almost went
unreported in Pakistan. An editorial in the Pakistani
newspaper The Jang recalled the 1971 reports in Pakistan
(49):
So great was the ignorance and absence of principles in
West Pakistan that the government of the day had the
temerity to issue a disgraceful statement casually
mentioning that "by agreement between local commanders,
fighting had ceased in East Pakistan and that Indian
troops had entered Dacca."
Pakistani children are not taught about the 1971 war.
Mistakes made by the Pakistan army in the war were never
investigated or made public, neither were the failures
admitted or analysed. Some of the defeated Generals in
that war even received gallantry awards and honours in
later years. The Pakistani need to maintain honour and
dignity at the expense of truth is a fault that has done
Pakistan no good. It may even be a characteristic that
can be used to predict Pakistani behavior or provoke
desired responses from Pakistanis, when used in a psy-ops
role.
The Kargil conflict of 1999 ended with the rapid
withdrawal of Pakistani forces facing rout. By the time
the withdrawal started the Indian forces had wiped out
almost the entire Northern Light Infantry of the Pakistan
army. Nawaz Sharif, who was Prime Minister of Pakistan
during this conflict, said in an interview to the Weekly
Independent from his place of exile in Saudi Arabia,
..when the battle began, the whole Northern Infantry was
blown up and 2,700 soldiers were martyred and hundreds
were injured. The death toll exceeds even that of the
52
1965 and 1971 full-scale wars.
But the only history that is acknowledged by Pakistan is
that the Kargil conflict was a great victory for
mujahideen who held the Indian army at bay. Pakistanis do
not admit the involvement of their armed forces, and yet
do not explain how the Pakistan army withdrew from the
conflict zone if they were not involved. In doing this,
face has been saved and honour retained by the Pakistani
army, but it is difficult to imagine how the Pakistani
army can learn critical lessons from a disastrous war if
the sole aim of its officer class is the save face and
maintain honour and dignity
An explanation exists for the tendency of the Pakistani
elite and officer class to protect each other's honour
even after embarrassing or disastrous events. A study of
Pakistani society and kinship patterns (50) notes that
the household is the primary unit for kinship and the
male descendants, (the biradari) are under pressure to
maintain a picture of unity, because disunity means
dishonour. A quote from the study says:
There is considerable pressure for patrilineal kin to
maintain good relations with one another. Biradari
members who quarrel will try to resolve their differences
before major social occasions so that the patrilineage
can present a united front to the village.
It has been observed that Pakistan itself is ruled by a
small group of between 22 and 43 families (4). With the
entire ruling apparatus of Pakistan under control of a
small group of family units, the family obligations of
Pakistani society to avoid shame creates the need for
whitewashing military disasters and other mistakes. The
deeply Islamic fervor of the average Pakistani comes in
handy here as all errors and defeats can be explained
53
away as God's will - an explanation that most devout
Pakistanis will accept without question.
It is possible that the Pakistani need to maintain honour
and dignity and somehow appear equal or superior to India
was understood and exploited by Indian leaders in 1998,
when India conducted a series of nuclear weapon tests,
breaking a 24 year self-imposed moratorium.
Even before the 1998 tests Pakistan was widely
acknowledged to possess nuclear weapons. Pakistan need
not have tested immediately after India's tests. If
Pakistan had not tested, it would have put India in a
very tight situation, with international censure and
sanctions, while Pakistan could have basked in the
sympathy it would surely have got for having an
aggressive nuclear neighbor in India.
But the need to save Pakistani honour was too great after
the Indian tests. The national sense of shame in being
unable to publicly match India was so intense that Prime
Minister Nawaz Sharif acknowledged that he would not
survive unless he sanctioned nuclear tests by Pakistan.
Pakistan did test a nuclear device of its own two weeks
after India's tests and although there is some
controversy about the real origin of the device tested by
Pakistan, the test greatly diluted the international
attention that India was getting after its tests, and put
the spotlight on Pakistan, a spotlight that has only
become brighter after the September 11th 2001 terrorist
attacks in the US.
Rhetoric and Hyperbole:
The Pakistani need for the maintenance of honour and
avoidance of shame ideally involves and outright military
54
victory. When such victory is not possible or unlikely,
the war needs to be continued verbally to avoid shame.
Every accusation is made to show that an adversary is
cowardly, weak and untruthful, with Pakistanis being
courageous, righteous and heading for victory.
Such hyperbole seems to be necessary psychological
support for the Pakistani mind, although it often sounds
hollow and unconvincing. Only a total victory or a
mediator leading to a solution on Pakistani terms can
maintain honour enough to allow such hyperbole to die
down. David Pryce Jones has described the connection
between honour, shame and rhetoric (45): Honour makes
life worth living whereas shame is a living death. Shame
and honour involve publicity; success involves bragging,
and shame means public humiliation.
Stemming directly from this rhetoric and hyperbole is the
decades old campaign of misinformation that Pakistan has
maintained about itself, its armed forces, its wars and
about India. The degree of misinformation is astonishing,
but easy to understand in the light of the deep Pakistani
need to maintain honour and avoid shame.
For example, wars are never lost, and any defeats are
temporary setbacks. Arms built under licence are always
shown as indigenous. Ballistic missiles imported from
China and North Korea are repainted and given Pakistani
names to be flaunted as missiles designed and
manufactured in Pakistan. Indians are always depicted as
being conniving and scheming, never as courageous and
honourable. The Indian armed forces are always referred
to by Pakistan as being weak and dishonourable and always
accused of raping and murdering civilians. Indian leaders
are often referred to as scheming high caste Brahmins or
Banias who are plotting to either dominate or eliminate
people of all other religions and social groups.
55
An example of this tendency can be seen in a two part
article on the events of 1971 that appeared in the online
edition of the Pakistani paper the Jang as recently as
2004, written by a former Pakistani army officer,
Brigadier Anjum (51, 52). In a farcical and fanciful
description Brigadier Anjum does not say a word about the
1971 elections in Pakistan that were won by the East
Pakistani Awami league party, and denies the well
documented genocide of ethnic East Pakistani Bengalis by
West Pakistani troops (chapter 11). Anjum's explanation
of why reports of genocide by Pakistani troops are false
is as follows:
Senator Edward Kennedy, having a pro-India prejudice
..addressed a press conference in New Delhi to say that
he was convinced that Pakistan army had committed
genocide in East Pakistan. This was enough to disparage
Pakistan Army
Brigadier Anjum makes this record of India's role:
India with a mission in hand to destroy Pakistan was
first to demolish its basis..
The Indian intervention to stop the genocide by Pakistani
troops is described in the following way:
it was an act of military piracy at the highest level to
destroy the professional propriety of soldiers who were
on lawful duty...The interference of Indian army in East
Pakistan was a well thought out conspiracy hatched by
India and vociferously backed by the Soviet Union
Many sources (53, 54, 55) have documented the surrender
of 90,000 Pakistani troops in East Pakistan at the end of
the 1971 war. Brigadier Anjum records his version of
56
history as:
The number of combatant soldiers out of the 90.000 socalled
prisoners of war was just over forty thousands.
The rest of PoWs were civilians and their families,
mostly children.
The need to appear superior to and better than India is
fundamental for the Pakistani. That is what justifies the
formation and existence of Pakistan. Accepting that India
and Indians may be in any way better than Pakistan is
deeply dishonourable and shameful to the Pakistani. The
feeling threatens the very existence of Pakistan and is a
feeling that must avoided at all cost.
Disputes and mediation:
Pakistani leaders have initiated war against India mainly
when they have assessed India as being weak. On every
occasion, the Pakistani assessment of Indian weakness has
led to a situation in which Pakistan is faced with
military defeat. But to the Pakistani leadership, an
offer of peace by any party is considered as a sign of
weakness. Courage and a willingness to fight are
honourable, and offering peace is a sign of cowardice and
an unwillingness to fight.
When faced with a situation in which Pakistan is the
weaker party, the need to maintain honour and avoid shame
requires that Pakistan must not sue for peace by directly
negotiating with India. This calls for the introduction
of a mediator or middleman. It is cowardly to call for
peace directly, but it is honourable to agree to peace
when mediated by a respected third party, which avoids
the need for defeat and dishonour. Any concessions that
Pakistan is forced to make can be conveniently blamed on
57
the mediating party. The important need here is for
Pakistani leaders to appear to be strong and retain their
honour in front of their own people. It does not matter
if anyone else considers that Pakistan was defeated, weak
or dishonoured as long as the Pakistani people see their
leaders as having pulled off some kind of victory, and
are not seen as having lost their honour to the weaker
party India.
This explains the tendency that Pakistani leaders have to
call for third party mediation in settling a dispute
between India and Pakistan by appealing to the US, the
UN, the International community or any other third party
rather than facing shame by negotiating for settlement
directly with India. In the Kargil conflict, when
Pakistani forces were facing rout, the Pakistani Prime
Minister Nawaz Sharif demanded an audience with President
Clinton of the US and then ordered withdrawal of the
remnants of the Pakistani forces to give the appearance
that it was not a clear defeat, but a respected third
party's request from President Clinton of the US that
made a triumphant Pakistan pull back from defeating
India.
Because talk of peace is considered to be a sign of
weakness, it is likely that peace offers from India have
been misinterpreted by Pakistani leaders. Indian peace
initiatives are seen as a sign of weakness, which must be
met with threats and demands for concessions. But an
India that appears to be showing weakness by talking
about peace mystifies Pakistan by refusing third party
mediation. For India, third party mediation is
unacceptable in what is essentially a bilateral dispute
with Pakistan. This confuses and angers the Pakistani
leadership, because on the one hand India appears weak to
them by asking for peace, but on the other hand India
refuses third party mediation which a weak nation should
58
accept with gratitude to save its own face.
One more factor that must be taken into account in
negotiation with Pakistan is that Pakistan may fail to
honour prior agreements as it has done with the UN
resolutions and the subsequent Simla agreement of 1972
with India. It is possible that Pakistani leaders
consider all agreements and treaties as temporary
instruments to buy time. When faced with the stark choice
of being with America, or against America after the
September 11th 2001 terrorist attacks on the US, President
General Musharraf explained to his people in a speech in
Urdu that his aligning with the US would be a temporary
alliance with the devil. In support of this plan General
Musharraf used the analogy of the charter of Madina and
the treaty of Hudaibiya signed by the Prophet Mohammad in
his September 19th 2001 speech (56).
The Martial Mind:
One of the enduring myths to have come out of Pakistan is
that Pakistanis are somehow a martial race - with
military tradition in their blood, with the courage and
valor that such a military tradition suggests being
somehow enshrined in the Pakistani's genes.
General Ayub Khan who led Pakistan into the 1965 war with
India had boasted that One Pakistani soldier is equal to
six Indian soldiers The genesis of this attitude is
interesting.
In 1857, soldiers of the British Indian army rose up in a
rebellion in what is now known as the first war of Indian
Independence. That rebellion was eventually quelled by
the British with troops mainly from the Punjab
particularly Muslim troops from what is now the Pakistani
59
Punjab, assisted by Pashtun troops. After this event, the
British greatly changed the composition of the Indian
army forces, by recruiting mainly Muslim Punjabi troops
and Pashtun troops from the North Western parts of preindependence
India, which are now part of Pakistan. These
troops were subsequently in the thick of all the
campaigns that Imperial Britain was fighting. The British
gradually began to refer to these groups as martial
races. Retired Pakistani army Major Agha Humayun Amin
wrote about the Pakistani army feeling of martial
superiority (57):
The "Martial Races Theory" in reality was an Imperial
gimmick to boost the ego of the cannon fodder. Various
British writers like Philip Mason frankly admitted that
the real reason for selective recruitment was political
reliability in crisis situations, which the Punjabis had
exhibited during the 1857-58 Bengal Army rebellion.
Pakistan the nation was formed with the belief that its
army was, from the beginning, somehow superior by virtue
of its being composed of martial races. Maj. Amin goes on
to write:
The Pakistani nation had been fed on propaganda about
martial superiority of their army...the Pakistani GHQ
placed entire reliance on the Superior Valour and Martial
Qualities of the Pakistani (Punjabi and Pathan Muslim
soldier) vis a vis the Hindu Indian soldier, as proved in
1965 war and felt that somehow, in the next war to
miracles would occur and the Pakistan Army would do well
Hard as it may be for a rational thinking person to
believe, Pakistani military adventurism has been guided
by a firm belief in the innate racial superiority of the
Pakistani soldier and supported by a belief that Pakistan
and Pakistanis are somehow performing Allah's will and
60
that God would therefore be on their side no matter how
preposterous or ill advised the action.
Positive Self-image:
One remarkable feature noticeable among Pakistanis,
especially Punjabi Pakistanis is an extremely good and
positive self-image of themselves and their people. Their
self-esteem is unshakable to the extent that no factor is
allowed to get in the way of identifying themselves as
superior and excellent.
Hamid Hussain wrote of Pakistani military officers' selfimage
in Pakistan's defence journal (58):
these military officers also have dangerously selfexaggerated
opinion of their capacities both in terms of
defence of the country's frontiers and their ability as
an organized body to fix all problems of the society.
Confidence in one's abilities, pride and constant
struggle to excel professionally are essential elements
of a good officer's corps. The problem starts when these
positive traits are stretched to unrealistic limits,
which now enter the zone of grandiose ideas and selfrighteousness.
A good self-image can be a useful personality attribute
if it is not carried to extreme lengths in which all
others are considered inferior. Unfortunately that has
occurred among Pakistan's elite, to the detriment of
Pakistan. Former Prime Minister of Pakistan, Benazir
Bhutto, herself a Sindhi, recalls having been taught as a
child that West Pakistanis are tall, fair-complexioned
and eat wheat, while East Pakistanis (Bengalis) are
short, dark-complexioned and eat rice. The East
Pakistanis were held in contempt by West Pakistanis.
Major Amin writes(57):
61
the generals were convinced that the Bengali was too meek
to ever challenge the martial Punjabi or Pathan
Muslim..The Bengalis were despised as non martial by all
West Pakistanis.
This contempt with which West Pakistanis viewed their own
countrymen contributed to the secession of East Pakistan
and the formation of Bangladesh in 1971. In one of the
few elections held in Pakistan, the 1971 elections gave a
thumping majority to the Awami League, an East Pakistan
based political party headed by a Bengali, Sheikh Mujibur
Rehman. If the results of these elections had been
carried through to their logical conclusion, Mujibur
Rehman and his party should have formed the government of
Pakistan in Islamabad. But the Punjabi generals of the
Pakistani army, who considered themselves superior to the
short, dark and non-martial Bengalis could not face the
idea of being ruled by an inferior Bengali as Prime
Minister. The results of the election were annulled and
martial law was clamped in East Pakistan. A subsequent
genocide of over three million East Pakistanis led to the
Indian military intervention in East Pakistan, and the
liberation of Bangladesh.
If Bengali Muslim East Pakistanis were considered
racially inferior by West Pakistanis, it is not
surprising to note that Pakistanis have considered
themselves racially superior to the "dark, ugly"
Hindustani Indians. This feeling was a carry over from
the pre-Independence days when the British relied on the
martial race for their army recruits. Maj. Amin writes,
To Kiplings contemporaries, the taller and fairer a
native, the better man he was likely to be
A visible symbol of the contempt with which Indians are
taught to be regarded in Pakistan can be seen from some
62
Pakistani textbooks for small children to learn the Urdu
alphabet. The word kafir means unbeliever, but in the
Pakistani context it is a derogatory term for a non-
Muslim. Children's alphabet books carry the word kafir as
an example of a word that starts with the Urdu equivalent
of the letter k. Associated with the word is a picture of
a kafir - which is often the picture of a Hindu of a
Sikh. Even today, in the 21st century it is possible to
visit Pakistani chat-rooms and discussion fora on the
Internet to find references to Indians as short, dark,
ugly, weak or cowardly.
Stemming from the self-image of the Pakistani is his
sense of entitlement. Spokespersons for Pakistan never
tire of pointing out that Pakistan is not getting its
due. Pakistan is always portrayed as being just, fair and
sacrificing, and that India, the US or the world owe
Pakistan a lot more that it is getting. At every step,
Pakistan is said to have already done, or already given
more than necessary and that the onus is on the other
party to pay Pakistan back for services rendered and
sacrifices made.
Islamic overlay in Pakistani behavior:
The obvious question is "Why would anyone's religion make
his behavior different or peculiar?" It is better to
answer the question than ignore it and assume that
religion has, or does not have any bearing on behavior.
Arab scholar Raphael Patai, in his seminal work on Arab
psyche (42) lists a few characteristics of Arab
personality that arise from Islamic beliefs. From the
profound application of Islamic beliefs among Pakistanis,
63
it seems that the same characteristics can be seen among
Pakistanis, with evidence of the same in their behavior.
One powerful Islamic belief is that of predestiny; the
belief that all events are predestined or decided
beforehand by God and cannot be avoided or changed in any
way. Patai quotes this Islamic belief as the requirement
that Man has no choice but to go through the course of
events, which have been written down for him in God's
Book to the smallest detail. Not even in everyday life
can a man do anything, either to hasten or otherwise
influence events.
These beliefs are referred to in the words kismat and
naseeb that occur in Urdu, but stem from Arabic and
Persian respectively.
The average, poor uneducated Pakistani believes that his
life is pre-ordained by Allah to be the way it is, and
that he will be rewarded for his piety in an afterlife
with an assured place in a well-stocked heaven. The
average citizen's life may be lived in poverty in
someone's service because that is what God has willed for
him and attempting to change that would be against the
will of God. For this reason, the average Pakistani is
unlikely to revolt against his lot in life, or even to
try to fight to make it better. He will do what his
feudal master, local lord, or religious leader tells him
to do, so long as it does not go against his Islamic
conscience.
The docility of the average Pakistani in day-to-day life
is probably beneficial to the stability of feudal
Pakistani society, but does not augur well for
development. Development requires effort and change and
the belief in predestiny rules that conditions and events
that the Pakistani experiences in life are ordained by
64
Allah to be as they are and must not be changed or
tampered with in any way.
Such beliefs also make the average Pakistani male citizen
a prime candidate for motivation into leading a life as
an Islamic warrior. Such a life is tempting because it
meets all his human and psychological requirements. He is
well looked after during the indoctrination and training
period, and any subsequent violence he takes part in
would ensure for him a respected place in his society as
an Islamic warrior, or ensure a place in heaven if he
were, as is quite likely, to die in action.
Unless there is a fundamental and deep rooted effort
within Pakistan to change the relationship of the
Pakistani with his religion, a relationship deliberately
cultivated by the Pakistani elite for their own ends,
there can be virtually no hope of achieving a sea-change
in the internal situation of Pakistan, and the external
consequences of that.
65
Chapter 6
WOMEN AND MINORITIES OF PAKISTAN
With 108 men for every 100 women in Pakistan (59), the
women of Pakistan could probably be called a minority, to
be counted along with other minorities of Pakistan such
as Shia Muslims, Ahmedis, Hindus and Christians.
The state of Pakistani women has a powerful bearing on
the condition of Pakistan. For example, two out of three
women in Pakistan are uneducated. The importance of this
fact lies in that many studies show that poverty,
malnutrition and child labor are higher in societies
where the women are uneducated.
Pakistani women's rights activist Ameera Javeria, in an
article entitled To be a woman in Pakistan is to ask for
a life of subservience (60) wrote:
Pakistani women continue to be victims of an unjust
society rooted in history and tradition. Lack of
awareness about their rights and their need for education
has added to their predicament. Most Islamic communities
are averse to the idea of giving women social status
equal to that of men. That a strong feudal elite still
rules the roost in the vast countryside is a major
impediment to enlightenment and democracy, while a
powerful clergy rejects all notions of equality and
freedom for women. Those women who rebel by asserting
their rightful place in society are punished and
considered immoral; many have been the victims of
domestic violence, rape, and murder.
Another report (50) on Pakistani society says this about
women:
A woman's life is difficult during the early years of
66
marriage. A young bride has very little status in her
husband's household; she is subservient to her mother-inlaw
and must negotiate relations with her sisters-inlaw....
A wife gains status and power as she bears sons.
Sons will bring wives for her to supervise and provide
for her in her old age. Daughters are a liability, to be
given away in an expensive marriage with their virginity
intact. Therefore, mothers favor their sons.
A gender bias toward boys is clear from this description.
With girls being a liability to be given away after
marriage, education of girls has a low priority in
Pakistan. Among some groups it is believed that education
of girls leads to immorality.
The woman of the family is considered fundamental to
maintaining the honour of the family group. A woman must
be chaste and subservient to the man, and failure to do
this can lead to dishonour a crime punishable by death.
honour killings in which a father or a brother kill a
woman for having dishonoured the family are common in
Pakistan.
A report on family violence in Pakistani society (61)
says:
(sic)The Male dominant society of Pakistan with strong
sense of complete " Mastery " feel's pride to Dictate his
terms of Physical and Mental Torture to his Wife, Sister,
or Daughter in front of other adult and small members of
the family.
Particularly egregious is the Hudood ordinance - a law
that is in effect in Pakistan. One of the purposes of the
Hudood ordinance is apparently to discourage extramarital
sex. An explanation of how this law is applied can be
seen in the following quote (62):
67
Since the passage of the Hudood Ordinance in 1979 under
the military government of Zia al Haq, "zina" or extramarital
intercourse, has been considered a crime against
the state in Pakistan...this law often prescribes cruel
and devastating punishments, such as whipping or stoning
the individual(s) in question, and explicitly
discriminates against women...the Hudood Ordinance has
legally blurred the distinction between rape and
extramarital sex, resulting in the imprisonment and/or
physical punishment of numerous women who have come
forward with charges of rape without witnesses.
Consequently, many rape victims are deemed criminals in a
Pakistani court of law.
Pakistan is stuck in a vicious circle in which the elite
corner all the resources, leaving little for education of
the poor. And among this class the women are the worst
off, uneducated and discriminated; and this leads to
further poverty and degradation in society. No force in
Pakistan seems to have the wisdom, will or power to
change this.
Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan is said to
have had a vision for Pakistan in which people of all
religions in Pakistan would co-exist. In his 11th August
1947 speech to the constituent assembly of Pakistan,
Jinnah said (63):
You may belong to any religion or caste or creed - that
has nothing to do with the business of the state ... in
the course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus and
Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious
sense, because that is the personal faith of each
individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the
state."
68
A few months later, in 1948, Jinnah reiterated his
vision:
We have many non-Muslims-Hindus, Christians and Parsis
... but they are all Pakistanis. They will enjoy the same
rights and privileges as any other citizens and will play
their rightful part in the affairs of Pakistan."
But Jinnah's vision for Pakistan died with Jinnah.
Pakistan's record in the treatment of its religious
minorities is shameful and unapologetic.
In his landmark paper (64), possibly the first scientific
statistical analysis of the question of ethnic cleansing
in Pakistan, researcher Sridhar notes:
..almost 89% of the minorities in West Pakistan were
ethnically cleansed, i.e. killed, converted or driven out
of the country. Almost 54% of the minority population
ended up as refugees in India, while a very high 35% of
the minority population is simply unaccounted for. These
are people who were likely killed or converted into
Islam.
Population researcher P.H. Reddy has noted that at the
time of formation of Pakistan, there were over 20 million
non-Muslims in the areas that formed Pakistan mostly
Hindus. After the migration of partition, approximately 7
million non-Muslims remained in what is now West Pakistan
making up approximately ten per cent of the population of
West Pakistan. In the years since independence,
Pakistan's population has more than doubled to nearly 150
million, but only three per cent, or 4.5 million people
are non Muslims in modern day Pakistan. About half of
that number are Hindus and the other half are Christian.
In simple terms, in 56 years since independence the
69
population of Muslims in Pakistan went up from about 60
million to 145 million, while the population of non-
Muslims fell from 7 million to 4.5 million. Hindus formed
the largest minority in Pakistan at independence and
their number has reduced to around 1.5 million.
In November 2002, the Times of India (65) quoted Noor Naz
Agha, a prominent Pakistani lawyer and rights activist as
saying:
Minorities are not safe in Pakistan. Recently, several
attacks have been made on churches, hospitals, even on
human rights organisations. And several people have been
killed,"
The treatment of religious minorities in Pakistan leaves
a lot to be desired. The problem stems from an attitude
that Pakistan is for Sunni Muslims alone, and people of
other religions, and even Shia Muslims are to be looked
upon with contempt. The discrimination extends to
derogatory references to non-Islamic people in school
textbooks, as noted in chapter 3.
M.H. Aksari, writing in the Pakistani paper Dawn (66)
said,
The former Indian foreign secretary, J.N. Dixit,
recalling his days as ambassador in Islamabad says that
once when he called on a Pakistani friend, the latter's
six-year old daughter on discovering that Dixit was a
Hindu skipped around the table chanting 'Hindu Kutta',
'Hindu Kutta.'
Hindu Kutta means Hindu Dog. But it is not Hindus alone
who are discriminated against in Pakistan. Over the years
the Pakistan army leadership has encouraged a
70
particularly intolerant Islamic mindset to prevail and
thrive in Pakistan. Shia Muslims in Pakistan are
subjected to terrorist attacts and discrimination, and
the Ahmediya sect have been declared as non-Muslims in
Pakistan for their beliefs. Pakistan is busy changing
Islam to suit the needs of a small elite.
The role of the Pakistani army leaders in this is clear
from a report that was carried in the paper Dawn in
November 2003 (67).
Ziaul Haq actively encouraged this misguided Islamic
fervour...Ziaul Haq's advice led to widespread religious
riots ... Many people, mostly Shias, were killed and
their houses burnt. The local administration did little
to control the situation. A foreign diplomat, who
happened to be travelling by road from Skardu to
Islamabad a couple of days after all this started, told
me that he saw houses en-route burning and that the route
provided a spectacle of war and destruction.
There is a movement in Pakistan to have Shias declared
non-Muslim. Following a massacre of Shia Muslims in a
Pakistani mosque on the Islamic holy day of Moharram in
2004, senior analyst B. Raman wrote about anti-Shia
hostility in Pakistan (68):
The last years of the Zia regime saw the Shias of Gilgit
come out with a demand for a separate Shia State
consisting of Gilgit and the Shia majority areas of
Punjab and the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP). They
wanted the Shia state to be called the Karakoram Province
and remain part of a confederation of Pakistan. The Zia
regime crushed the Shia movement ruthlessly. In August
1988, the Pakistan Army inducted a large Sunni tribal
force from the NWFP and the Federally-Administered Tribal
Areas (FATA), led by Osama bin Laden, into Gilgit and it
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massacred hundreds of Shias and crushed their revolt.
The hatred of the Shias for Osama bin Laden and his Al
Qaeda dates from this period.
Successive governments in Pakistan, mostly military, but
civilian as well, have consistently fought and opposed
anyone and everyone, foreign nations as well as their own
people. The only things that have been preserved intact
and untouched in Pakistan are the power and wealth of the
elite of the army, a few businessmen and the feudal lords
and their allies, the preachers of a narrow brand of
Sunni Islam, who are responsible for a rising tide of
Islamic fundamentalism.
72
Chapter 7
PARTITION AND THE TWO-NATION THEORY
When Indians and Pakistanis meet, one is struck by their
similarity. Indians are fond of saying "Pakistanis are
just like us" but one will find that Pakistanis do not
tend to say "Indians are just like us". Being different
from Indians is a fundamental requirement that defines
the Pakistani.
Before India was partitioned in 1947, some of the Muslim
elite in India, who were later to go to Pakistan,
considered themselves the descendants of the Mughals who
had ruled vast tracts of India. When the British were set
to leave India, it was realised by these real or
perceived descendants of Mughals that in a democratic
India, they would not automatically regain control of the
lands they had lost to the British. The demand for a
separate nation was a natural extension of this Mughal
mindset. This group of individuals formed a migrant
nation.
The Weekly Standard reported in October 2001 (69):
Created on August 15, 1947, from the northern, primarily
Muslim provinces of British India, Pakistan isn't really
a nation-state. It is a geographic expression of an ageold
Islamic ideal: Muslims should not, if at all
possible, live under non-Muslim rule. Living under the
all-mighty British was unpleasant for many.. Living under
the far more numerous Hindus, whom the Muslim Mogul
dynasty had dominated for centuries before the arrival of
the English, was worse. For the English-educated Muslim
elite, it was intolerable.. Gandhi's Indian democracy was
going to be Hindu, so a Muslim "Land of the Pure"--the
literal meaning of Pakistan--was essential to protect and
nurture the faithful.
73
MB Naqvi wrote in the Jang of Pakistan (70):
Historically the majority of Muslims, originally lowcaste
Hindus, affected a superiority complex, especially
in Northern India. They feared being falling down into
the vast assimilative sea of Hindudom surrounding them
wherein they will be at the bottom of social heap. May be
they would be punished for former uppishness and for real
or imagined wrongs. That explained their demonstrative
adherence to Islam, which is what distinguished them from
Hindus. Their religious exhibitionism and a superiority
complex led to emphases on differences with Hindus and
regarding themselves as rulers' kith and kin deserving
privileges and safeguards -- the leitmotif of preindependence
Indian Muslim politics.
Others' refusal to accept Muslims demands, calculated to
preserve imagined privileges, angered them and an
adversarial attitude vis-a-vis Hindus developed. Muslims
thus demanded weightage - actually equality of treatment
with Hindus - reservations and separate electorate. These
came from, and strengthened, two traits: first, not to
accept democracy's implications, especially the equality
with Hindus. The second was to depend on a ruling or
hegemonic power to get them their due.
But Pakistan was not formed merely by people with this
Mughal mindset. Another root of partition lay with the
defeat of the Turkish Caliphate by the British in 1918.
When that occurred, Muslims all over the world, and
certainly in pre-independence India attempted to go back
to their Islamic roots. One of the consequences was that
they discouraged their children from attending secular
schools, and encouraged education in Islamic schools,
madrassas. The end of the Caliphate was a symbolic blow
to Muslims who has grown up to look at the Islamic empire
74
as extending from Arabia in the center to North Africa in
the West, Southern Europe to the North and Central Asia,
India and South East Asia to the East. The Caliph was the
symbolic head of this empire, although he by no means
controlled even a fraction of that empire. The word
Caliph means deputy in Arabic, and the first Caliph had
been appointed by the Prophet Mohammad, and the end of
the Caliphate was the end of a long line of Caliphs that
extended from antiquity.
A concept in Islam speaks of a dar ul Islam, a house of
Islam - a house or a group of followers of Islam, and a
dar ul harb or house of war, consisting of unbelievers -
people who were not followers of Islam. Inherent in the
concept of dar ul harb was that Islam, and Muslims would
always be under threat in the dar ul harb. The concept
probably dates back to the early years of Islam, when
there was a central but rapidly expanding Islamic empire,
around which were lands with non-Muslims who were at war
with the followers of the new religion. For Muslims who
could not have their way with separate representation in
pre-independence India, staying in India would be
tantamount to living under subjugation in the dar ul
harb, a completely unacceptable situation, The demand for
a separate state for Muslims only was a logical extension
of this thought process.
The Friday Times had this to say (71):
In India, Muslim existence was deemed a kind of
permanent emergency (dar-ul-harb) and migration was
considered an option in the defiance of British raj.
Allama Iqbal, the poet who composed the popular Indian
patriotic song Saare Jahaan se achcha, Hindustan hamara
later paradoxically endorsed the need for a separate
nation for Muslims (72):
75
Allama Iqbal asserted that there is only one nation
opposed to the Muslim Umma, and that is the nation of
non-Muslims! In other words, the world is divided into
two camps, the Muslims and Non-Muslims.
Another key player in the call for Pakistan was Maulana
Maududi, the ideological founder of Pakistan (73):
(The) Pakistan Movement was based on the theory that
Muslims are entirely separate people from Hindus in every
respect... This theory is popularly known as two-nation
theory. Under the leadership of Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali
Jinnah, the movement, in less than a decade gave birth to
Pakistan The man who is most credited as an intellectual
force behind the two-nation theory and a front against
united Indian nationalism is Maulana Abul Ala Maududi.
A third factor that contributed to the formation of
Pakistan was the political power aspiration of Mohammad
Ali Jinnah who saw in the formation of the new nation of
Pakistan a ready made constituency of Muslims, in
addition to power and glory for himself and the new
nation.
The result, as eloquently documented by Rajiv Malhotra,
was (74):
Without any concrete 'dispute' between Hindus and
Muslims, the logic that prevailed was that Muslims
require segregation of political and social life in order
to be in compliance with the demands of sharia. The Two-
Nation Theory was a manifestation of the doctrine of darul-
islam versus dar-ul-harb.
With Islam, and Islamic reasons being the basis for the
formation of Pakistan, Pakistanis have, right from the
76
beginning, been taught to regard themselves as Muslims
first and foremost, and as opposed to being citizens of
the nation, Pakistan. Pakistan was supposed to be a
homeland for Muslims of India and its formation was
pushed through by the groups who wanted it, over the
wishes of other groups, including some such as the
Jamaat-i-Islami who did not favor the formation of
Pakistan.
Not much thought was put into whether a state based on
religion alone would be able to survive. With Jinnah as
leader the heady success of nation formation in 1947 was
enough. Pakistan had come into existence. It was Islamic.
It was not Indian. It was a victory of Islam over the
British and the Hindus. The fact of being Pakistani
brought with it a liberal dose of pride, satisfaction,
honour and dignity. For the new Pakistanis India was a
land of kafirs, unbelievers. It was a land of
superstition, discrimination, hunger and poverty. A
nation in decline. Pakistan would not be like India.
Pakistan would be progressive, strong and Islamic. And
Pakistan would claim to represent the Muslims who had
stayed behind in India. Pakistan would represent Islam
itself it would be a leading light of Islam in the world.
It was the first Islamic state to be created in the
modern era ab initio.
Although the purpose of this book is to present a study
of Pakistan after partition, it would not be out of place
to mention briefly the civilizational effect that
partition had on India. When studied over centuries,
civilizations can often be seen to behave like live
beings. In civilizational terms, the splitting up of
British India into modern India and Pakistan can be
compared to an act of auto-amputation. This is a
condition in which a live human body spontaneously
discards and casts off a dead or diseased part, such as a
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toe or a fingertip so that the body itself can survive
and not be affected by the disease that damaged the toe
or finger. For India partition was akin to that - a
civilizational auto-amputation.
In one convulsive act, the people of the Indian
subcontinent agreed to place all the people who wanted to
live and work in a united India in one place, and and all
the people who did not wish to live and work in India
were placed in Pakistan.
Strange as it may sound, this tumultuous self-mutilating
act was a profoundly democratic one, in which those who
wanted to opt out of India were allowed to opt out, and
those who wanted to stay, stayed. The actual act of
partition was accompanied by horrifying suffering and
death, but after five decades the memories of the pain
are beginning to fade; more than two-thirds of the
population of India having been after 1947, after the
painful events of partition. It is easier for these
younger Indians to see that for India, partition was not
so much an act of separation of all Hindus from all
Muslims, but it merely segregated a sub-group of Indians
who did not want to co-exist with other Indians. The vast
majority of Indians rooted for India and worked for
India.
Pakistanis did not see things that way. They saw
themselves as Muslims, and Pakistani leaders assumed that
the Muslims remaining in India would automatically rise
up and revolt, and that India would fragment and break.
They were wrong. The initial fragmentation and breaking
that occurred at partition, continued in Pakistan, with
the formation of Bangladesh. Pakistan had filled itself
with people whose intent was less to live and work in
harmony, and more to live away from some group or the
other.
78
It was only after the formation of Pakistan that all the
assumptions made about Islam as a unifying concept began
to break down. There were contradictions at every turn.
The 15 million mohajirs who migrated to Pakistan from
India were not welcomed. But they were educated and held
all the important bureaucratic posts. The mohajirs found
that their survival in Pakistan would be made easier by
creating and maintaining an India scare - a phobia
against the scheming Hindu who was out to subjugate or
kill all Muslims. The mohajirs, the Muslim elite of India
who had migrated to Pakistan were in an ideal position to
concoct any stories they wished about the bestial Hindus
they had left behind.
Apart from the mohajirs was the other half of Pakistan,
East Pakistan, with its people, the Bengalis. The fact
that East Pakistani Bengalis were Muslim did not help to
stop the West Pakistani disdain for the short, dark, fish
and rice-eating Bengali, as opposed to the tall, fair,
wheat eating Pakistani Punjabi. The possibility of
democracy in Pakistan brought with it the threat of a
short, dark, rice-eating Bengali becoming Prime Minister
of Pakistan. That would have been totally unacceptable to
the Pakistani Punjabi. Punjabis made up 90% of the
Pakistani army, and the army had no intention of seeing
its Punjabi dominance being subordinate to the inferior
Bengali.
This complex web of factors kept Pakistanis from uniting
with each other but the Islam argument was used for
unity. Any threat, and any setback to Pakistan, even when
caused by internal politics and mismanagement was blamed
on India. India and Indians were continuously and
bitterly accused of being anti-Pakistan and anti-Muslim.
It was drummed into ordinary Pakistanis that they must be
good Muslims, and while Pakistanis struggled to meet the
79
standards set for them, the ruling elite lived as they
pleased.
In his book, Among the Believers(75), Nobel Prize winning
author V.S. Naipaul describes travels through Pakistan,
and records interviews with a diverse group of
Pakistanis. A repeated observation that comes out is that
the ordinary Pakistani citizen is under pressure to be a
good Muslim. The Pakistani citizen is judged by whether
he is a good Muslim or not. Every act or event in
Pakistan has to be seen through the prism of whether it
is Islamic or not. One of the problems that crops up from
this is the definition of "Who is a good Muslim?".
Naipaul says, To be a devout Muslim was always to have
distinctive things to do; it was to be guided constantly
by rules; it was to live in a fever of the faith and
always to be aware of the distinctiveness of the faith.
And Pakistanis believed that this was all that was
needed. It was only necessary for everyone to be a good
Muslim, and everything else would look after itself.
After all Islam had given them a nation. It would now
provide for that nation.
80
Chapter 8
ISLAM AND PAKISTAN
In the end, it could perhaps be said that Islam was too
big for Pakistan to keep as its private domain. Pakistan
was unable to grab and hold Islam as though Islam and
Pakistan were one and the same.
To be sure, Pakistani leaders, for decades behaved as
though Pakistan was Islam and Islam was Pakistan. Even
before independence, Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan had
called the flag of his political party, the Muslim League
as the Flag of Islam and had said you cannot separate the
Muslim League from Islam. (76). A very popular slogan in
Pakistan was, "Pakistan ka matlab kya, La ilaha
illallah". The slogan combines a few words taken from the
the Islamic call to prayer La ilaha illallah - meaning
there is no God but God and attaches those words to
Pakistan to make the meaning What does Pakistan mean
there is no God but God - implying that Pakistan and
Islam are one and the same.
But this charade could only last a few years before the
fallacies began to show.
It is endlessly and erroneously repeated that Pakistan
was formed for the Muslims of the Indian subcontinent.
This is a shameful piece of fiction that needs to be set
right. Pakistan was formed for some, and not all Muslims
of the Indian subcontinent.
Demographer P.H. Reddy noted in the Times of India on 8th
April 2003 (77):
According to the 1941 census, out of a total of 435
districts in undivided India, there were 76 in which more
than 50 per cent of the people were Muslims. Based on
81
this demographic fact, the Sir Cyril Radcliffe's Boundary
Commission allotted these 76 districts to Pakistan. The
76 Muslim-majority districts were grouped together in two
clusters. One cluster was in north-west India and the
other in north-east India. Western Pakistan comprised the
north-west part of the sub-continent and Eastern Pakistan
comprised eastern part of Bengal and one district in
Assam...In 1951, Muslims numbered 3.54 crore, making up
9.9 per cent of the total population of India.
Over the centuries Islam reached a balance with the
cultures of the people who adopted Islam. Arab culture
had existed in Arabia for centuries before Islam was
born, and Arab culture adopted and internalized Islam,
which was born in Arabia. Egyptians live in peace with
their past, and do not seek to deny the ancient, pre-
Islamic Egyptian civilization of Pharaohs who built the
Pyramids. An entire literature and culture of Islam
developed in Persia, using the Persian language. Islam
spread peacefully into Indonesia and was absorbed and
rationalized by the local culture.
Similarly Islam developed and flowered in India with its
own unique literature, arts and architecture produced by
an intermingling of two rich cultures. The formation of
Pakistan sought to deny this vibrant entity. Jinnah
exploited a cleavage in Indian society to proclaim:
Hindus and Muslims belong to two different religious
philosophies, social customs, literature", "to two
different civilizations", that they "derive their
inspiration from different sources of history"... (with)
different epics, different heroes and different
episodes." "We wish our people", he declared, "to develop
to the fullest our spiritual, cultural, economic, social
and political life in a way that we think best and in
consonance with our own ideals and according to the
82
genius of our people."
Perhaps Jinnah did not mean to strip Pakistan of the rich
culture that Islam had developed in its centuries of
interaction in India (78).
But the leaders of the new Pakistan who took over after
Jinnah died in 1948, certainly felt that Pakistan should
be stripped of all its connections with India. In an
experimental and unparalleled act of ignorance, Pakistan
was deliberately set on the path of being an orphan,
culture-less nation. Pakistan was not Arabic; it was not
Egyptian or Persian; it was not Indonesian, but it was
definitely not going to be Indian any more. The India
connection had to be stripped clean, leaving Pakistan
purely Islamic. Islamic, for Muslims alone, free from
India or any Indian roots. Indian culture had to be
actively cleaned out of the minds of millions of
Pakistani citizens - a culture of centuries was to be
washed clean, and nobody had any idea of what would
replace the void. The only thing people knew was that
Pakistanis would have to be Islamic, and good Muslims.
The formation of Pakistan was considered a great victory.
But there were inconsistencies and contradictions right
from the beginning and the confusion has remained to this
day.
Was Pakistan a nation for Muslims only? But why did
Jinnah say:
..we have many non-Muslims - Hindus, Christians, and
Parsis - but they are all Pakistanis. They will enjoy the
same rights and privileges as any other citizens... You
are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are
free to go to your mosques or to any other places of
worship in this State of Pakistan...You will find that in
83
course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus and
Muslims would cease to be Muslims.. (76)
Was Pakistan a nation for all Muslims of the Indian
subcontinent? If so, Pakistan had failed at birth, as the
majority of Muslims chose to remain in India.
Was Pakistan the leader of all Islamic nations, an
example for Islamic nations to follow as the leader of
the ummah, a modern day Caliphate? But if that was the
case Pakistan should not have had any boundaries. That is
indeed what some Pakistani Islamists believe:
Muslims all over the world must realize that
nationalism is kufr, and that the modern nation-states
are a creation of that period in history when Muslims
were defeated and dominated by kufr. (79) (kufr refers to
unbelievers i.e. People who are not Islamic.)
Pakistani leaders, in their confusion as to what Pakistan
was and what it should do, ended up trying to make
Pakistan take all the routes that it could possibly take
simultaneously. And like a man whose arms and legs are
being pulled apart by horses moving in different
directions, parts of Pakistan, and social and ethnic
groups of Pakistan have all headed in different
directions, resulting in the chaos that Pakistan is
today.
Pakistani leaders claimed that they, and Pakistan, were
purely Islamic, and represented Islam. Islam was and
still remains the ultimate excuse, the lever that is used
in Pakistan to justify anything. For Pakistan, Islam has
served as a tool to be used when convenient, to get aid,
or to deflect blame or to accuse an adversary of
misdeeds. As long as Pakistani leaders hid behind the
Islam excuse for their actions, nobody could question
84
them. After all, Pakistan was Islamic, and therefore
anything that Pakistan did, from waging wars, avoiding
elections, genocide, corruption could not be criticized
by anyone. Any criticism of Pakistan was criticism of
Islam. If Pakistan obtained military and economic aid
from the US, it was because Islam was naturally anticommunist.
India did not dare question Pakistani claims
no matter how preposterous or obscene they were, because
Pakistan was Islamic. Opposing Pakistan was anti-Islamic.
And in this manner, instead of consolidating and unifying
the new state of Pakistan, its leaders set about using
Islam to divert attention to India, and to meddle with
Indian territory and Indian Muslims. India was the source
of all problems; the enemy of Pakistan, and therefore the
enemy of Islam. The India problem had to be solved, and
that took priority over everything else in Pakistan, be
it development, democracy or common sense. The threat
from India became the common denominator for all
Pakistani actions, for postponing elections and for
postponing development of Pakistan indefinitely. And
conveniently, aid and funds poured into Pakistan in the
early years as part of US aid to Pakistan as a cold war
ally. As long as the money kept coming in, there was no
pressure to change policy. India could be fought and
opposed, the people of Pakistan could be kept busy, and
elections postponed. Money and the economy were not a
problem. Allah (God), who had given Pakistan to the
faithful, was providing funds and arms via the US. India
would be defeated. Pakistan could do no wrong.
But as repeated Pakistani assaults against India failed,
Islam could not fail. Pakistanis had failed the faith.
They were not Islamic enough they had to strive to be
better Muslims. They had to starve, sacrifice and allow
their army to get stronger, so that Islam could be upheld
against India, the number one threat to Pakistan, and
85
therefore to Islam. No method was ruled out, no sacrifice
could be too great in opposing India, because opposing
India meant devotion to Islamic ideals. Muslims in
Kashmir, and later all the Muslims in India would be
rescued from Hindu tyranny by Pakistan.
Islam gradually became the tool, the prop, used in
Pakistan to make every opinion or move. The Islam card
was used by everybody in Pakistan to suit their own
purpose. The Pakistani elite, migrants from India,
holding all the important government posts, saw their
positions threatened by the prospect of elections which
would unseat them in favor of locals. Elections were a
threat that had to be postponed or canceled and an
imaginary threat to Islam was invoked. In his essay on
the role of the power structure in Pakistan (80),
Mohammad Waseem wrote:
Muslim migrants from East Punjab and further East in
India shaped the psyche of the new nation along feelings
of insecurity at the hands of India, commitment to
Islamic ideology and the need to unite against all
odds...the migrant elite...dreaded the prospects of their
exit from power in the event of elections.
A report in Pakistan's Friday Times (81) carried this
scathing message on the role of the migrant elite in
using Islam:
On Feb 21, 1952 the historic Bengali language movement
erupted spontaneously all over East Bengal...it remained
a major potential challenge. Foolishly our ruling elite,
instead of going some way to meet Bengali demands,
thought they could isolate the Bengali nationalists by
raising religious slogans of Islamic ideology and Islamic
identity to counter Bengali anger.
86
The army of Pakistan was initially subservient to the
government. After 1971 Zia-ul-Haq started a campaign of
Islamization of the Pakistani army, and strengthened the
process of Islamization of Pakistan started by Zulfikar
Ali Bhutto, whom Zia had deposed in a coup. Rajiv
Malhotra wrote (74):
Islamic texts are being introduced into Pakistani
military training. Middle ranking officers must take
courses and examinations on Islam. There are even serious
attempts under way to define an Islamic military
doctrine, as distinct from the international military
doctrines, so as to fight in accordance with the Koran.
And as Islam was stirred into the mindset of the
Pakistani army, the army started seeing Islam in more and
more of its actions. Columnist Hamid Husain has this to
say about Islamization of the Pakistan army (58):
Brigadier Gulzar Ahmad explaining the role of celestial
powers to lessen his troop casualties in 1965 war stated,
'There was a hidden hand deflecting the rounds'..General
Mahmud Ahmad during Pakistani ambassador's conference
reprimanded the ambassadors for not relying on the
intercession of Providence while analyzing Pakistan's
Afghan policy. Another compelling reason to be very
cautious about overuse of religion is to avoid seeping of
sectarian tendencies into the armed forces.
Finally, for the mullahs (Islamic scholars) of Pakistan,
anything less than an Islamic state in Pakistan was a
threat. Only in an Islamic state could mullahs be
influential and prominent. Pluralism or Western-style
democracy was incompatible with the mullah's world view,
and they supported every measure to make Islam the basis
of the existence of all Pakistanis. M. A. Hussain wrote
(82):
87
Imam, Mozin, Mo-alim, Maulavi, etc...have a vested
interest in establishing an Islamic state where they are
locus of power and have tremendous scope for employment.
It explains why even those Ulamas and Maulavis (like
Moulana Maudoodi), who had opposed Jinnah, went to
Pakistan as they saw no role in India for themselves.
With everyone in Pakistan, the people, the bureaucracy
and government, the army and the mullahs seemingly being
in agreement with each other on the question of the
Islamic status of Pakistan, there really should have been
no problem. Everything should have fallen in place, and
gone without a hitch.
But that did not happen. Every group in Pakistan needed
Islam only for their narrow self interest. The idea of an
Islamic state seemed noble enough, but making it reality
was easier said than done.
The Ideal Islamic state existed at the time of the
Prophet Mohammad. The desire for an ideal Islamic state
has been described as follows (83):
The quest for it reflects the desire to model Muslim
politics on the original Islamic community in Medina,
which remains to this day the blueprint for a genuinely
Islamic society. No Muslim polity has measured up to the
combination of piety and social justice achieved by the
Medinese community...But trying to replicate the Medinese
polity remains an ideal.
When the Prophet Mohammad died in AD 632, he left behind
a tradition, but there were no written guidelines on how
a state should be run. In the absence of such guidelines,
Islamic people often ended up being controlled by the
nearest strongman. The men who controlled the sword,
88
controlled the ulema (scholars) and the people.
Tamara Sonn, a Professor of religious studies, wrote
(84):
(The Prophet) Muhammad's prophetic mantle was not
inherited by his successors, and he did not leave behind
a specific political system or designate a successor...In
general, the Prophet's successors were expected to be
personally pious and to behave according to the guidance
left by the Prophet, but there were no formal criteria
for determining the community's leadership or judging its
legitimacy.
Succession of leadership among Islamic people has been a
bone of contention ever since that time. And Pakistan is
no exception.
In a report on the relationship of the mullahs and the
military in Pakistan by the International Crisis Group,
(a non-profit multinational organization committed to
resolving conflict) the introduction carries the
following quote (85):
The Muslim state in India was a theocracy...In theory the
sultan's authority in religious matters was limited by
the holy law of the Qu'raan and no sultan could clearly
divorce religion from politics. But in practice the
Muslim sultan of India was a perfect autocrat and his
word was law. The real source of the sultan's authority
was military strength, and this was understood and
acquiesced in...by the soldiers, the poets and the ulema
of the age.
The precedent of the strongman - the military ruler
taking absolute control over Islamic people had already
existed in Mughal India, and was implemented and
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perpetuated in Pakistan. The Pakistan army was invited to
take power, liked it, and held on to power. Other forces
in Pakistan who wanted power and influence, such as the
politicians, bureaucrats and the ulema used the army, or
reached some accommodation with the army. And it was all
done in the name of Islam.
Anything that Pakistan did was done in the name of Islam.
It was done, Pakistani leaders claimed, to uphold Islam
and represent Islam. It was to be assumed by all who were
watching that Pakistan itself was the embodiment of
Islam. After all Pakistan was formed for Islam. Criticism
of Pakistan was criticism of Islam. Pakistani leaders
were always right, always Islamic and they compelled
their people to be more and more Islamic.
Gradually the non-Muslim minorities of Pakistan were
squeezed out (chapter 6) They had no role in Islamic
Pakistan. East Pakistanis their minds poisoned by India
according to some West Pakistani commentators, revolted,
seceded and formed Bangladesh (chapter 11). This blow to
Pakistan was explained on the basis of Pakistan not being
Islamic enough. More and more Islamic laws had to be
passed and implemented. The sharia, zakat, and the Hudood
ordinance were brought in. Islamic fervor, it was
implied, would solve all of Pakistan's problems, and put
and end to the people's misery.
The effort to make Pakistan purely Islamic has been
described by V.S Naipaul in his book "Among the
believers"(75)
This Islamic state couldn't simply be decreed; it had to
be invented, and in that invention faith was of little
help. Faith, at the moment, could only supply the simple
negatives that answered emotional needs: no alcohol, no
feminine immodesty, no interest in the banks. But soon in
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Pakistan these negatives were to be added to: no
political parties, no parliament, no dissent, no law
courts. So existing institutions were deemed to be un-
Islamic and undermined or undone; the faith was asserted
because only the faith seemed to be whole; and in the
vacuum only the army could rule.
However, the army, the rulers and influential people of
Pakistan did not have to be all that Islamic. Pure Islam
was for the hoi-polloi, the serfs and underlings. The
elite stayed rich, and the army became richer, and their
modern, liberal lifestyle conveyed the impression of a
progressive society to Western aid givers. Pakistan's
alliance with the U.S., ensured that foreign aid poured
in and the economy of the wealthy in Pakistan boomed. The
rich got money, the army got weapons, while the poor of
Pakistan got madrassas (Islamic schools) to ensure that
they became more Islamic.
The mullahs of Pakistan were doubly happy. The burgeoning
of madrassas and ensured that they would have jobs and
influence. They took charge of the madrassas with gusto
and preached with fervor. They preached jihad, Jihad
against the enemies of Islam. In order to be good
Muslims, Pakistanis were urged to do jihad - not the
internal, self correcting jihad of the Koran, but the
external violence of the Generals and their games of
military domination. More and more Pakistanis were needed
to fight Pakistan's wars. Men were needed to fight India.
Men were needed to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
The army brass, getting richer, needed men to do their
fighting, and the mullahs, secure and happy in their
newly funded madrassas, ensured the delivery of any
number of men to fight for Pakistan, for Islam.
Each Islamic jihadi, brought up with fervor in a
madrassa, was ready to die for a cause, ready to embrace
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and accept the guaranteed benefits of dying in jihad in
an afterlife to be enjoyed in a well-stocked heaven.
And as these men prepared for and died fighting for the
cause that they had been told was Islamic - the people
who trained them and sent them to die the army and the
mullahs, got fatter, and more powerful.
This glorious scene became Pakistan's version of Islam.
Rich generals doing office jobs while men from the poor
classes with little to live for were trained,
indoctrinated and prepared for death; their families
accepting that the death of their son would bring glory
and honour. The Islam of Pakistan's mullahs, in league
with lazy Generals, aiding the Generals' wars, preaching
an Islam that would keep the mullahs comfortable in this
life, while their wards and students were encouraged to
seek the pleasures of an afterlife, obtainable only by
violence and death.
As the institutions of Pakistan failed in this unique and
unorthodox concept of a nation, the faith Islam, grew
stronger.
In a remarkably prescient passage Naipaul observes (75),
The state withered, but faith didn't. Failure only led
back to the faith. The state had been founded as a
homeland for Muslims. If the state failed it wasn't
because the dream was flawed, or the faith flawed; it
could only be because men had failed the faith. And in
that quest of the Islamic absolute the society of
believers, where every action was instinct with worship
men lost sight of the political origins of their
state...Extraordinary claims began to be made for
Pakistan: it was founded as the land of the pure; it was
to be the first truly Islamic state since the days of the
Prophet and his close companions
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The average Pakistani citizen was coerced or co-opted by
putting Islam first. Pakistan, it was stressed, was
created by Muslims for Muslims. Every Pakistani had to
strive to be a good Muslim. To be Pakistani was to be a
good Muslim. Muslim clerics, the mullahs and the ulema
were necessarily allowed to exercise spiritual control
over the Pakistani masses to ensure that Pakistan
remained adequately and properly Islamic in all arenas.
It was drummed in that this was necessary because India
was always there to swallow up Pakistan. India had been
held in check only by God and the Pakistani army, which
presented itself as the savior, 'the army of Islam,'
upholding the faith and protecting Pakistan. Co-opting
the Pakistani citizen under the Islam banner eminently
served the interests of the rich and corrupt elite of
Pakistan in maintaining their grip and preserving their
business and territorial interests. And the Pakistani
state died. In his characteristically astute manner V.S,
Naipaul concludes (75):
Step by step, out of its Islamic striving, Pakistan had
undone the rule of law it had inherited from the British,
and replaced it with nothing
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Chapter 9
ATTITUDES TOWARDS INDIA AND INDIANS
Career diplomat-turned-politician Mani Shankar Aiyer
served as India's first Consul General in Karachi, and he
has published his collected writings on Pakistan in a
book entitled Pakistan Papers (86). Aiyer says that the
best definition for Pakistani is "One who is not Indian".
Pakistanis define their identity as being non-Indian, and
go on further to define themselves as pure Muslims.
Pakistan itself means "Land of the Pure" and Pakistani
identity has been sought to be defined on the basis that
Pakistan is a land of pure Muslims. In their effort to
ensure that Pakistanis are not Indian, Pakistani
authorities have done everything in their power to
discourage any Pakistani from displaying cultural traits
that are seen as Indian in character, and encouraged the
replacement of that culture by an invented Islamic
culture. This experiment is unique in the world. No other
nation has attempted to so totally reject its existing
culture while retaining only the faith or religion.
In his book, Among the Believers, (75) Naipaul quotes the
words of a man describing Pakistan. I will tell you the
story of this country in two sentences. In the first
quarter of this century the Hindus of India decided that
everything that was wrong had to do with foreigners and
foreign influence. Then in the second quarter, the
Muslims of India woke up. They had a double hate. They
hated the foreigners and they hated the Hindus. So the
country of Pakistan was built on hate and nothing else.
The predominant Pakistani attitude toward India is
hatred. The birth, and survival of Pakistan required the
rejection of all that was Indian. But Mani Shankar Aiyer
has recognised a gradual change of attitudes to India
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among Pakistanis. Up until 1971 it was hate and contempt,
but after 1971, Pakistani attitudes have changed to hate
and fear. Aiyer writes (86):
..all but the most blind Pakistani today looks back on
what happened to his country in 1971 at the hands of
India as a great defeat; till 1971 he looked back on what
happened .. as a great victory.
Aiyer continues:
From 1947 to 1971 the general belief (in Pakistan) was:
'hans hans ke liya tha Pakistan,
lad lad ke lengey Hindustan'
We got Pakistan with a triumphant smile
We fill fight and take Hindustan (India)
Myths about a single Muslim soldier being the equal of
four, or ten or whatever number of Kafirs was widely
believed; it was put about and accepted implicitly that
in a matter of days, perhaps hours, the flag of Islam
would be imparted on the ramparts of the Red Fort.
Columnist Hamid Hussain describes the Pakistani army
officer corps' attitude toward Indians prior to the 1965
war (58):
The general despise (sic) of Hindus and doubting their
capacity of able (sic) to give a good fight was almost
universal
Over the years, India struggled but improved; while
Pakistan split up and tottered. And hatred of India grew.
Dislike and distrust of India became an industry in
Pakistan. Like life itself, which evolved from simple
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one-celled organisms into a multitude of life forms, huge
Banyan trees, fragrant flowers, tigers, elephants,
insects and men, hatred of India was nurtured to evolve,
grow and metamorphose into a multitude of reasons and
justifications.
Pakistanis evolved a plethora of reasons to hate India.
The act of partition at independence left Pakistanis with
a small moth-eaten nation. This was a source of
resentment to many elite Pakistanis who had left
everything in India to be in Pakistan. For these people
nothing would be better than exacting revenge for their
lost lives. It was worth defeating India for this reason
alone. For others, India was a hateful nation of people
who caused the trauma of partition. Hatred and mistrust
of India was the reason for the creation of Pakistan.
Pakistan existed because Muslims would be suppressed in
India, and opposition to India was the reason for
Pakistan's birth. India was the enemy, to be fought,
defeated and brought to its knees.
Hatred for India and Indians has been made into a
national purpose, a national obsession in Pakistan, with
active hatred being taught in Pakistani schools as
described in Chapter 3.
In an article written for Pinnacle magazine (87), Brig.
Raychaudhuri sums up Pakistani attitudes to India:
This shattering of the psychological indoctrination,
based on assumed religious superiority, makes it
difficult for the Pakistanis to accept the reality of
India's intrinsic superiority in size and economy. The
fact that in 1965 and also in Kargil it was the Moslems
of India who alerted the country is too insulting to
believe. The cup of Pakistani hatred brims over and
India, in the Pakistani mindset, is the cause of their
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nation('s) deprivations..
Pakistanis were poor because of Indian aggression.
Pakistan could not develop because of India. Furthermore,
hatred of India was needed as the justification for the
wealth of the Pakistan army, and for the health of army
businesses surviving on state handouts. India had to be
hated to keep Pakistanis in line, to make them more
Islamic, to make them good Muslims. Pakistanis had to be
good Muslims to survive; they had to give up Indianness,
because India was there to subjugate or kill all Muslims,
just like India was accused of killing or raping 30,000
or 70,000 or whatever number of people in Kashmir. And as
India grew stronger, hatred and fear of India had to grow
stronger, and Islamic fervor had to be increased to
oppose India.
As recently as December 2003, a retired Colonel of the
Pakistan Army wrote the following accusations against
India (88):
There is a long list of other hostile Indian actions
against Pakistan, some of which are:
"¢ Indian usurpation of Jammu and Kashmir, the
continued occupation of that state against the will of
its people, and the merciless killing of thousands of
innocent Kashmiris by the Indian occupation forces;
"¢ Constant efforts to destabilize Pakistan through
its agents, who are always at work to create
disgruntlement in Pakistan's smaller provinces;
"¢ Conducting terrorist activities in various parts
of Pakistan to exploit ethnic and religious differences;
"¢ Developing Pakistan-specific nuclear and
conventional arsenal, thus forcing this country to enter
into a suicidal arms race with the consequent irreparable
damage to its economy;
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"¢ Keep bullying Pakistan by concentrating Indian
armed forces on its borders and on the Line of Control in
Kashmir on trumped up grounds, having previously imposed
three wars on Pakistan.
Expecting an enemy with such a criminal record to change
its heart overnight and become friendly toward us is
nothing but inanity.
And while some Pakistanis have reacted to India with this
degree of hatred and suspicion, others try to urge
Pakistan to virtually move out of the Indian subcontinent
into Central Asia or even the Middle East. Ahmad Quraish
wrote in the Pakistani paper the Nation (89):
...the following steps are necessary:
"¢ Political: Pakistan's...ministries must...deemphasize
Pakistan's inclusion in South Asia and play up
Pakistan's role in Central and West Asia.
"¢ Cultural: Islamabad's cultural cooperation with
West Asian and Central Asian countries must be
revitalized..
"¢ Changing the name of Pakistan's national
monetary unit .. by adopting either the Riyal or the
Dinar..instead of the Rupee, which has exclusive Indian
connotations.
"¢ Educational: The other major facets of
Pakistan's identity - the Arab, Persian, Turkic and
Central Asian - must be emphasized in our schoolbooks. If
this requires drafting new books on Pakistan studies, so
be it, and these must be compulsory reading for Pakistani
students
It is both ludicrous and sad to see Pakistani loathing
for India covering the full spectrum - from the perigee
of wanting to occupy and subjugate parts of India, to the
apogee of wiping out memories of India, even denying
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Pakistan's links with India and claiming imagined links
with Central and West Asia. And all this while Indian
children are taught to recognise Pakistanis as just like
us.
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Chapter 10
THE PAKISTANI ARMY: POWER AND GLORY IN THE FAMILY
The word Army for the Pakistan army is a pitifully
inadequate description for an organization that does
vastly more, and has diversified into more ventures than
most armies in the world could dream of doing. Calling
the Pakistan army by that name is akin to describing a
30-course meal as a light snack. There is almost no
activity in Pakistan that the army is not involved in
doing, and there is no group in Pakistan or among
Pakistan's neighbors that the Pakistani army has not
fought, antagonised or disagreed with. But yet, the
Pakistani army leads a charmed existence, being admired
by most of Pakistan, although that has begun to change
recently.
Time and time again, and from many sources, one can find
people who have made the quote: Pakistan is not a nation
with an army; it is an army with a nation
Of course, the Pakistani army started off as a regular
army, with soldiers, guns, generals, tanks and valor. But
its tentacles have spread into politics, power, industry,
business, religion, terrorism, fighting by proxy, crime,
greed, deception, lucre and self preservation. How the
Pakistani army changed from a regular army into this
Hydra-headed monster has an interesting history.
It has been noted in an earlier chapter (Chapter 5) that
due to historic reasons dating from the 1857 war of
Indian independence, the British increasingly recruited
people from the Northwest of undivided India, which
included a large number of Punjabi Muslims from the area
that was to later become Pakistan. Because of their
loyalty and docility under British leadership, these
troops began to be known as hailing from a martial race
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(57). Thus the Pakistani army was dominated by Punjabis,
who began to see themselves as being of a superior
martial race.
Apart from the predominance of Muslim Punjabis in the
Pakistani army, several other unique observations can be
made about the Pakistani province of Punjab (West Punjab)
at the time of independence and partition(80).
"¢ Punjab was the most populous province of
Pakistan.
"¢ Pakistani Punjab was militarized because of the
large number of Punjabis in the military,
"¢ As part of the settlement of retired army
personnel, vast tracts of land in West Punjab had been
awarded to them.
"¢ 70% of the voters in Pakistani Punjab had some
connection with the military
"¢ Punjab itself was partitioned so a lot of army
personnel had relatives or friends in Punjab who were
affected by the events of partition.
"¢ Pakistani army units from Punjab were tasked
with the protection of civilians in the post-partition
violence, so the personnel in these army units served
both as protectors of the civilians as well as sufferers
as their villages or families were affected during
partition.
"¢ Punjabi units were also utilised in Pakistan's
unsuccessful attack to wrest Kashmir from India in 1947.
For these reasons, the military in Pakistan was not
merely the military, but had political clout as well as
political opinions, especially a deep hatred for India.
The military also actually owned a lot of land because of
the policy of settling retired soldiers by gifting land.
The Punjabi dominated army also considered itself a
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martial race with superior fighting and leadership
qualities compared to the East Bengalis (East Pakistanis)
who were considered effeminate, and the Hindu Indians.
The army, having been tasked to protect Pakistanis during
partition began to consider itself as the protector and
savior of Islam. All these tendencies were present or had
set in shortly after independence in 1947.
But there was an additional factor that led to the
induction of the Pakistani army into the role of absolute
rulers of Pakistan.
The areas that constituted West Pakistan were largely
rural, and apart from the Punjabi dominated Army, there
were not many educated local people to make up the
bureaucrats, legal experts, engineers and technocrats
that were required in the government of the new Pakistan.
These posts were filled by the educated elite migrants
from British India, largely mohajirs and Punjabis. These
people suddenly had a nation to lead, a new nation,
Pakistan - one of the biggest countries on earth. It was
a victory for them, and for Islam. They were not about to
fritter away that victory by allowing power to pass into
the hands of the more numerous uneducated locals in
democratic elections, in the same way as they would later
refuse to hand over power, and the rule of Pakistan to a
Bengali party from faraway East Pakistan. After all, the
reason these migrants had left India was precisely
because they feared democracy attenuating their
privileges.
Democracy was inconvenient for the ruling elite of
Pakistan. It was also inconvenient for the feudal lords
in Pakistan, who stood to lose their lands and influence.
And democracy also brought with it the danger that the
more numerous Bengalis, considered an inferior race,
might actually end up ruling all of Pakistan. Besides
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these facts, the migrant elite faced some resistance from
the locals in West Pakistan, who had to give up space and
resources to the migrants from India.
The ruling elite of Pakistan therefore had a deep vested
interest in not handing power to the people of Pakistan.
And what better way to do that than to declare a threat
to Pakistan, and to Islam itself, from their huge
neighbor India. Elections were constantly postponed and
the civilian authority used the Army to stay in power
until the first bloodless military coup of 1958. And
although that was the first year that the Pakistani army
officially came into power, the army nevertheless had
shared power with the elite in Pakistan for nearly a
decade before that.
A report from the International Crisis Group (53) has
this to say:
In the first decade of Independence, Pakistan was
nominally a parliamentary democracy but civil bureaucrats
ruled the state with the military as junior partner. No
elections were held ..the President had power to dismiss
the Prime Minister and used it liberally. (Governor-
General Iskander) Mirza...ruled in league with Army
Chief, general Mohammad Ayub Khan. Dispensing even with
the pretence of democracy, Ayub ousted Mirza and imposed
martial law in October 1958
The military coup by Gen Ayub Khan was a watershed of
sorts as it marked the first step by the Pakistani
military to gain and retain control of Pakistan. In the
period from 1958 to 1971 the Pakistan Army gradually
consolidated its hold on power in Pakistan, and stopped
being a junior partner to the civil bureaucracy in
government. It seems virtually certain that no single
individual in the Pakistani army could have been a
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strongman without the connivance and cooperation of the
Punjabi and feudal lord dominated military brass of the
Pakistani army. The Pakistani army is like a close-knit
fraternity, a family or brotherhood, a biradari, that
protects its own from harm and disrepute, while ensuring
that its interests, be they power, finances or honour are
not harmed. It is a cooperative system, rather than power
handed down from a single supremo.
Pakistani security analyst Ayesha Siddiqa-Agha writes
(90):
It is important to note that Pakistan's armed forces
especially the army operates like a fraternity. In this
environment, severe punishments to individuals or
extraordinary treatment of a similar nature are viewed as
undermining the morale of the institution. Sidelining
undesirable individuals or rewarding others discreetly
is, thus, a preferred choice.
Ayub exercised total control of Pakistan before, during
and after 1965 when he launched and lost a war with
India. The Army replaced Ayub Khan when it was sensed
that popular opposition to Ayub Khan would harm the
Army's interests, and General Yahya Khan, who oversaw the
splitting away of East Pakistan and the formation of
Bangladesh after the worst defeat that the Pakistani
armed forces have ever faced replaced him.
The International Crisis Group's paper on democracy in
Pakistan (53) refers to the Pakistani Army's role in this
period as follows:
Fearing that its defeat would translate into popular
demands for accountability, the (army) high command
transferred power to Zulfikar Ali Bhutto..The military's
defeat in the 1971 war with India had, however, been
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limited to East Pakistan. Despite 93,000 prisoners of war
in India, its infrastructure in the West was untouched.
Military leaders quickly recouped losses and closed ranks
against perceived civilian threats to their personal and
institutional interests
It is clear that even as early as 1971 the Pakistan Army
had enough of a vested interest in retaining power in
Pakistan to pretend to hand over power to a civilian
government in order to maintain the reputation and
interests of the Pakistan army from public scrutiny and
accountability. In fact a damning report on the actions
and defeat of the Pakistani army in the 1971 war, the
Hamoodur Rehman report was never made public until a copy
was obtained and published by the Times of India.
All military governments in Pakistan, including the one
currently headed by General Musharraf have grabbed power
to save Pakistan and bring in a sound democratic system.
But the Pakistani army has always grabbed power from
elected governments or prevented democracy from actually
being established, and have prevented all attempts to
check the finances or power of the military in any way.
It is informative to look at the perquisites, businesses
and non-military interests of the Pakistan army that are
so keenly protected and preserved.
The army ensures that its officer class live in great
style and luxury. A report in the Washington Post in 2002
(91) described army life in the following words:
The officer class in Pakistan has always had a strong
sense of entitlement stemming from its dominant role in
defending the country and in running it... One of the
fanciest clubs in Karachi is the Defense Housing
Authority County and Golf Club, a sparkling new facility
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with lush fairways, a two-story driving range and a
gracious stone clubhouse overlooking an inlet of the
Arabian Sea. Active-duty military personnel can join the
club for an initiation fee of $16, compared with $9,166
for civilians, according to the club's fee schedule
The same paper goes on to say:
the military also rewards its senior officers by
allowing them to purchase agricultural and urban land
from the army's vast inventory of real estate at prices
far below market value...One of Pakistan's most coveted
addresses, for example, is the blandly named Army Housing
Scheme II...in the upscale Karachi suburb of Clifton. A
gated community protected by paramilitary troops, the
development consists of spacious, Mediterranean-style
villas grouped around a playground and an elaborately
landscaped Japanese-style garden. Nearby are clothing
boutiques, jewelry stores, restaurants and a yoga studio
Describing the decrepit and run-down state of most
schools in Pakistan, the Washington Post goes on to
compare that with a Pakistani army run school:
Geared toward preparation for the competitive O Level
exams required by British universities, the handsome
school is an educational showpiece whose computer,
physics and biology labs would not seem out of place in
an American suburb
There are an enormous number of news media reports of the
money and businesses that the Pakistani army controls.
The Independent of London described the contrast between
a Pakistani army establishment and the rest of Pakistan
(92):
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Outside in the street, Afghan refugees and Pakistan's
urban poor root through garbage tips and crowd on to
soot-pumping buses to work in sweatshops and brick
factories. Inside, behind the ancient, newly painted
cannons and battalion flags, rose bushes surround welltended
lawns and officers' messes decorated with polished
brass fittings. No rubbish litters this perfect world of
discipline. Why should anyone living here want a return
to corrupt democracy?
A report in the online edition of the Pakistani newspaper
Dawn said (93):
The perks don't end here: military personnel are entitled
to a 50 per cent discount on air and rail fares as well
as cinema tickets. Their children have a quota at most
public universities, and serving and retired officers are
routinely inducted into civilian jobs.
The Pakistan Weekly reported (94):
..in relation to country's per capita income Pakistani
senior military officers are one of the best paid in the
world. No other career, with equivalent academic
qualifications and so little productivity produces
comparable personal affluence as that of the officer
cadre of the Pak military....
Where does the money for all this come from?
A report in the Daily Times of Pakistan in August 2002
says, All countries have armies, but in Pakistan the army
has a country. Defense expenditures consume between onethird
and one-half of the national budget. In recent
decades, senior military officers have been transformed
into powerful landlords through grants of choice
agricultural lands and real estate. Retired officers head
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many, if not most, public corporations. This garrison
economy is increasingly unsustainable, as Pakistan's poor
multiply and the economy falters.
Part of the army's wealth is from the extremely high
defence budget that Pakistan has maintained for decades,
at the expense of all other expenditure and all other
groups in Pakistan. The excuse for the high defence
expenditure has been the external threat from India, but
the army ensures great personal wealth for its serving
and retired personnel especially those of the higher
ranks, and those seen as cooperative people who toe the
line.
The News International, Pakistan reported on Sunday
September 09, 2001:
As a % of GDP, from among the poorest of countries ..
Pakistan, at 4.4% of GDP, spends the highest on defence.
Shaheen Sehbai wrote in the Weekly Independent in 2002
(95),
For decades almost 35 to 40 per cent of Pakistan's
revenues have been going into un-audited and noquestions-
asked defence budget.
For this report and other reports on the activities of
the Pakistani army, Shaheen Sehbai, former editor of the
English language daily the News was threatened by the
army and forced to flee Pakistan and live in exile (96).
The high defence budget is not the only source of income
for the luxury loving Pakistani army. It also controls a
huge business empire. In her study of the Pakistan
military's economic activities, security analyst Dr.
Ayesha-Siddiqa Agha describes why the businesses were
108
started in the first place (90).
..the military's business empire in Pakistan was created
to guarantee welfare of retired and serving personnel. It
was a pattern inherited from the pre-independence days.
The Pakistani army's business enterprises were started
for the welfare of retired personnel. Initially only the
army had its businesses, with a small quota for the Air
Force and Navy. Later these two branches started off
their own businesses, and the vast enterprise has grown
to gargantuan proportions. They are not necessarily
profitable, but they survive on government subsidies and
grants; competition is scared off by military threats,
and the senior employees make fat salary packets, safe
from accountability and questions.
The four key armed-forces run business organizations in
Pakistan are The Fauji Foundation, the Army Welfare
Trust, the Shaheen Foundation and the Bahria Foundation.
The Fauji Foundation's businesses include sugar mills,
cereal and corn, Natural gas, plastics, fertilizer,
cement, power and education and healthcare. The Fauji
foundation's assets have grown from Pakistani Rs. 152
million in 1970, to 9,800 million according to Dr.
Siddiqa-Agha, and employs 6 to 7 thousand military
personnel, mostly in middle and upper management
positions.
The Army Welfare Trust has 26 projects including farms,
stud farms, fish farms, rice and sugar mills, cement
factories, pharmaceuticals, shoes, wool, hosiery, travel
agencies, aviation, commercial complexes, banking,
insurance and security with many bearing the name Aksari.
Aksari aviation was set up merely to accommodate retired
army helicopter pilots who could not get a job in the
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private sector.
Not to be outdone, the Pakistan air force established the
Shaheen foundation which is now involved in air
transportation, cargo, airport services, pay TV, FM
radio, insurance, knitwear and commercial complexes.
That left Pakistan's smallest force, the navy, to start
its own venture, the Bahria Foundation in 1981. The
Bahria Foundation deals in commercial complexes, trading,
construction, a travel agency, paints, deep sea fishing,
dredging, ship breaking, salvage and even a university.
There is no nation in the world whose armed forces are
involved in as many non-military business ventures as the
Pakistan armed forces. Banking, insurance, commercial
complexes and radio stations are ventures that do not
obviously appear to be an essential part of the armed
forces of any nation and would not be justifiable in any
other nation on earth. But they are normal and routine
for the Pakistani armed forces. Like a core business
that has diversified, the Pakistani armed forces have
diversified into fields well outside the mandate of an
armed force.
Dr. Farrukh Saleem, a freelance Pakistani columnist wrote
in the Pakistani daily Jang (97):
Fauji Cereal has been part of my daily breakfast for as
long as I can remember. The only wrapping that Fauji
Cereal ever uses comes from Fauji Poly Propylene
Products. During my days at the village, milk use to come
from the nearby Okara Military Farms, the 17,000-acre
dairy, meat and grain-producing project. The only sugar
that I ever liked was either from the four Fauji Sugar
Mills or Army Welfare Sugar Mills. Not too long ago, my
wife wanted to build a house. I didn't want to be
110
anywhere but in one of the six Askari Housing Schemes.
The only cement I will use is Fauji Cement. I wish I was
right next to Fauji Kabirwala Power Company because I
hate the power that Wapda comes out with. The paint for
my house must come from no one but Bahria Paints. Fauji
also owns and operates Fauji Corn Complex, FONGAS, Fauji
Fertilizer Company, Fauji Jordan Company, Fauji Oil
Terminal Company Project and Mari Gas Company.
The army also operates what is called the National
Logistic Cell (NLC) which is a trucking and
transportation giant in Pakistan, employing thousands of
serving and retired army personnel. The web page of the
NLC describes its army connection euphemistically as a
unique logistic based Public Sector Organisation which
has [a] blend of corporate culture and Army's
discipline. (98)
With the military in government, and the defence ministry
manned by retired military officers, the military run
businesses of Pakistan are above all accountability.
In her study of the Army's businesses, Dr. Ayesha
Siddiqa-Agha makes a scathing indictment(90):
The top management of the armed forces jealously guard
their interests. Over the years the interests have
narrowed down from the greater benefit of the institution
to the personal welfare of the generals. A feature
peculiar to a number of cases is, the ventures were
started not based on any feasibility study but on the
whims of the top management to accommodate certain highranking
officers.
The businesses run by the Pakistani armed forces are
marked by inefficiency, corruption and self-interest, and
are preserved by intimidation that scares away
111
competitors or people who try to question their
activities. Corruption in running these businesses has
been noted by Siddiqa-Agha and others (96):
"When you dig into them, you find out they are
inefficient, and there is evidence of corruption,"
Siddiqa-Agha said. "There is also evidence of corruption
linked to monopolization of government contracts.
In another report in August 2002, the South Asia Tribune
reported (99):
..a list of over 100 armed forces men who allotted to
themselves at least 400 or more acres of prime land in
Bahawalpur, heart of Punjab, "to defend it from the
enemy," at the throw away rate of Rs 380 per acre (US
Dollars Six & 50 cents). The list is only of one
District. Such lists exist all over Punjab and Sindh
where a new breed of landlords has already been created
through similar allotments...This conversion of generals
into landlords also explains why no serious effort has
been made by the military to introduce land reforms in
the country, which could cure many political and social
imbalances in the Pakistani society.
An online report in the Crescent International revealed a
list of Pakistani billionaires and millionaires with
accounts in Swiss banks. Nearly half the billionaires
were from the army or close relatives of senior army
personnel.
With this degree of money, wealth and power, the Pakistan
army's main problem shifts away from the defence of
Pakistan to the defence of their own wealth and power.
Which wealthy army general living in the lap of luxury
would want to give up his good life for the hardship and
travails of war? Besides, the risk to this life is not so
112
much from an attack by India, but by anger and opposition
to the corrupt and wealthy army from the desperately poor
people of Pakistan, a staggering 85% of whom live on less
than US $2 per day (100).
Increasingly under pressure within Pakistan for their
greed the Pakistani army has used Islam and the external
threat from India to retain their power and wealth. The
people must be more Islamic, because the sacrifice of
jihad is required to fight India. Poverty and destitution
in Pakistan are because India is trying to attack
Pakistan and kill Muslims. This Islamization of Pakistan
and the Pakistani army accelerated after the 1971 defeat
of the Pakistani army by India in the war of liberation
of Bangladesh.
Pakistani journalist Najam Sethi noted in an article in
the Friday Times of Pakistan (101):
Pakistan
Failed State
Shiv Sastry
2
COPYLEFT LICENCE
Licence is hereby granted to make as many copies of
this book as needed, and for the book to be
distributed to anyone free of charge on condition that
no modifications are made and no profit is made from
the sharing of this work.
3
Dedicated to the memory of my cousin,
late Wg Cdr. Kukke Suresh, VrC
4
FOREWORD
The reason for writing this book is explained in the
first chapter. Once I had collected the reference
material it took me only three months to write the book.
It then took me two years to refine and release the book
as a freely downloadable e-book.
I must take this opportunity to thank members of the
forum at www.bharat-rakshak.com for their invaluable and
selfless help in digging up material that served as
references for this book.
Furthermore I wish to thank the dozen or so people who
helped me proof read the book and came up with useful
suggestions. Prominent among these are ramana, acharya,
kgoan and sudhir.
Shiv
January 20, 2007
5
CHAPTERS
1 Why Pakistan? Page 6
2 The people of Pakistan Page 14
3 Education Page 20
4 Industries and Economy of Pakistan Page 35
5 Pakistani psyche general observations Page 43
6 Women and Minorities of Pakistan Page 65
7 Partition and the two-nation theory Page 71
8 Islam and Pakistan Page 80
9 Attitudes toward India and Indians Page 93
10 The Pakistani Army Page 99
11 Kashmir, plebiscite, Wars and genocide Page 117
12 Provinces and Assorted Fragments Page 131
13 Pakistan, Jihad and Terrorism Page 135
14 The Government and criminal activity Page 147
15 Pakistan - Failed state Page 160
Appendix 1 Page 174
Appendix 2 Page 177
Appendix 3 Page 180
Appendix 4 Page 183
References Page 186
6
Chapter 1
WHY PAKISTAN?
Why write about Pakistan?
Pakistan is a huge, populous and diverse nation that has
the curious distinction of having been suddenly born in
1947, and it has been an aggressive and implacable
neighbor of India.
Most Indians do not understand Pakistan or Pakistanis.
Many tend to look at the similarities and remark,
"Pakistanis are just like us". That may appear true but
it is important to understand that Pakistanis do not feel
like Indians and do not like to say "Indians are just
like us". In fact Pakistanis have spent all those decades
since independence trying to show how Pakistan is not
like India. And in the intervening years Pakistan,
Pakistani institutions and Pakistanis have developed
certain unique and recognizable defining features. While
these features have been noted time and again by
innumerable people in a large number of books, newspaper
reports and magazines, no effort been made to collect
this information and put it all together between the
covers of a single book.
More that anything else, this book can be considered a
Review of the literature on Pakistan. In the field of
medical research, a Review of the literature is often
used to collect and collate information about a disease
from various sources. Such a review collects up all the
available information about a given disease from all the
medical papers available on the subject and consolidates
the information in one document. That document then
serves as a comprehensive reference point for information
about the subject.
7
This book is a collection and review of what has been
written about Pakistan in various sources over many
years. It is a summary of the experiences and
descriptions of many people who have reported or written
about Pakistan. The book carries many direct quotes from
various authors and these quotes are in italics, while
the sources from which the quotes have been taken are
listed in the reference section at the end of the book.
There are a few things that Indian readers should keep in
mind while reading this book.
First, referring to Pakistan does not mean that we are
obliquely referring to Indian Muslims. Indians often
become embarrassed or angry in discussions about Pakistan
and Pakistanis. Indians who talk about Pakistan or Islam
are often considered to be opponents of secularism and
tolerance, and are sometimes called saffron sympathisers.
For this reason Pakistan and Islamic extremism emanating
from Pakistan have almost been taboo subjects in India,
not to be discussed by secular non-Muslim Indians, lest
they should hurt the sentiments of Muslims in India. An
automatic and needless mental connection is made between
the subject of Pakistan and the Muslims of India. This is
both unfortunate and unfair to Indian Muslims. Today,
Indian Muslims are quite different from Pakistanis, and
it is an insult to Indian Muslims to refer to them as
being associated with Pakistan.
Vir Sanghvi, the managing editor of the Hindustan Times
has written about this (1):
At a sub-conscious level, some Indians make the
simplistic assumption that because (nearly) all
Pakistanis are Muslims, so all Muslims must be Pakistanis
in their hearts. This is an obvious logical fallacy and
it is also deeply insulting to all Indian Muslims -
8
including Zaheer Khan and Irfan Pathan who are setting
out for Pakistan, determined to keep the Indian flag
flying on the cricket field, to say nothing of the
thousands of Muslims who have died fighting Pakistan.
It requires a deliberate act of mental re-orientation for
non-Muslims in India to learn to talk about Pakistanis
without equating them with Indian Muslims. This vestigial
thought process remains in many Indian minds like a dark
cloud, a hangover from partition, and that is
unfortunate. Pakistan is Pakistan, a separate nation, and
Pakistanis are Pakistanis, not Indians. Pakistanis are no
longer Indians. Indians are Indians, not Pakistanis.
Muslims in India are not Pakistanis, they are Indians.
Confusion and misunderstanding in Indian attitudes more
than five decades after independence are certainly a
factor in the Indian inability to develop a coherent
Pakistan policy.
Another point to note is that no discussion or
description of Pakistan can even begin to be meaningful
without considering the role that Islam plays on the mind
of the Pakistani. Here again, we must remember that when
we speak of Pakistan and Islam we are not referring to
Indian Muslims and the vastly different way in which
Islam has evolved in India since independence. One of the
purposes of this book is to show precisely what has been
done with Islam in Pakistan. The situation and attitudes
of Muslims in India are no longer comparable to those in
Pakistan. There are many assumptions and misconceptions
that need to be reviewed, and these will become clear in
subsequent chapters.
As the Indian economy forges ahead there is an increasing
constituency of Indians who feel that Pakistan is a small
problem that can be ignored, and call for an avoidance of
what seems to be an Indian obsession with Pakistan. But
9
Pakistan cannot be ignored by India for many reasons.
The events of independence and partition had a deep
effect on the Indian psyche. The appearance of the new
nation Pakistan as a neighbor, with people who were
brothers and compatriots until very recently created a
complex conflict, a love-hate relationship that affected
Indian society. With Pakistani leaders attempting to
speak for the Muslims in India, many non-Muslim Indians
got polarized mainly into two groups, neither of whom
were able to look upon Indian Muslims as they should have
been looked at, as Indians like everyone else. One group
of Indians began to view their Muslim compatriots with
hostility as recessed Pakistanis who were always seen
cheering for Pakistan in cricket matches. Another group
of Indians took the opposite viewpoint that Indian
Muslims, unless treated in an especially favorable and
kind manner, would somehow feel upset enough to want to
side with Pakistan. Pakistan has thus had a great impact
on Hindu-Muslim relations in India, and has put a great
strain on the ancient Indian tradition of tolerance and
pluralism.
Apart from the deep mental scar that partition left on
the Indian psyche, the importance of Pakistan lies in its
extreme hostility to India. In the first 55 years after
independence, the Indian armed forces have had to fight
wars on eight occasions (2). In five of those wars armed
forces from Pakistan have been the adversary that Indian
civilians and Indian soldiers have had to face. Four of
these conflicts are discussed in chapter 11, and the
fifth engagement with Pakistan still continues at the
time of writing, with the infiltration of armed
terrorists from Pakistan into India as part of a lowgrade
war to bleed India (chapter 12). From 1965, the
Indian armed forces and paramilitary have had to expand
to keep pace with the massive build up and continuing
10
assaults from Pakistan.
Indians cannot afford to forget the lessons that can be
learned from events like the India-China conflict of
1962, or the naive policy of appeasement of Adolf Hitler
followed by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain.
Unilateral pacifism displayed by one nation state when
another nation shows every sign of being ready for war is
a policy that begs for defeat and disaster. No matter how
well intentioned and peaceable a nation state may be, the
presence of a belligerent neighbor is a signal that
military strength must be adequate to meet any aggressive
intent, and if necessary take the battle into the
aggressor's territory. But this build up must not come in
the way of urgently needed development and modernization.
A policy of ignoring Pakistan's military intent and might
would be a formula for a disaster of unimaginable
proportions, while a policy that puts too much emphasis
on hurriedly delivering a total military defeat on
Pakistan could divert too large a proportion of meager
resources towards a war machine. That is one of the
mistakes that Pakistani leaders committed, and India
would do well to learn from that.
By studying what Pakistan has done, or has not done since
independence, Indians have a lot to learn. It is still
possible for Indians to make the mistakes Pakistanis have
made. Pakistan has made a whole tapestry of errors that
Indians can choose to repeat or avoid. Overconfidence,
underestimation of problems and hurdles, blindness to the
impact of religious discrimination, discrimination
against minorities and maldistribution of wealth,
ignoring corruption, a population explosion and social
inequity, and attempting to play great power games in the
absence of a matching military-industrial-economic
capability are some of the mistakes that Pakistan has
made, mistakes that India could still make.
11
Finally, every attempt has been made in this work to
avoid direct comparisons between India and Pakistan,
except where it is unavoidable. There is a very important
reason for that, and it requires elaboration. Although
both India and Pakistan started off as having been part
of one nation in the pre-Independence era, the two
entities cannot really be compared. India is four times
larger than Pakistan in land area and currently has a
population that is over seven times the size of
Pakistan's population. This means that all numbers and
figures relating to India are automatically bigger than
those of Pakistan.
To illustrate why a direct comparison between India and
Pakistan can be misleading we need to use an analogy:
Imagine India to be a box with 100 eggs in it, but 30 of
those eggs are broken. Imagine Pakistan to be a smaller
box with 10 eggs in it, and 5 of those eggs are broken. A
direct comparison will show that the India box has 30
broken eggs, and the Pakistan box has only 5 broken eggs,
and it would seem that the India box is in a far worse
shape, with many more broken eggs. But what is hidden
from this comparison, is that the India box has 70 intact
eggs while the Pakistan box has only 5 intact eggs.
Direct comparisons of numbers regarding Pakistan and
India are misleading because of the difference in size,
but Pakistani leaders have persistently tried to hide
problems within Pakistan such as poverty and illiteracy
by saying that India has more problems than Pakistan. All
references to Pakistani problems are referred to by
Pakistani spokespersons as South Asian problems, South
Asian poverty, South Asian hunger, and South Asian
illiteracy. All that this does is to hide the magnitude
of the problems in Pakistan, and hide the chronic
12
mismanagement of Pakistan.
India and Pakistan do share many of the same problems,
but a comparison of the real figures between India and
Pakistan shows that Pakistan is not doing well, and is
falling behind, even though the number of people who are
poor in Pakistan, and the number of people requiring
education in Pakistan are far smaller than the number in
India.
Pakistan's task should have been easier, but Pakistan is
failing even to achieve a smaller task. For every child
that Pakistan educates, India has to educate seven
children in order to "match Pakistan". But India is not
merely matching Pakistan, it has moved ahead in literacy
and is racing ahead in other parameters. A direct
comparison of numbers will not reveal this and such
direct comparisons are useful only to hide Pakistan's
increasing problems.
And while these figures get worse, a quick comparison of
the Pakistani armed forces and the Indian armed forces is
illustrative of what the two countries have been doing
since Independence. With India having a population that
is seven times as big as that of Pakistan, the Indian
army should have been at least three or four times the
size of the Pakistan army. But that is not the case; the
Indian army is less than one and a half times as big as
the Pakistani army. That is because, since independence
India has spent relatively more on development and less
on defence while Pakistan has spent almost everything on
arms and very little on development.
Pakistan of course was amply aided by other nations, but
these details will be discussed later. In this book we
will examine the state that Pakistan has got itself into
and deal with how it got into its current crisis. In 2007
13
Pakistan is not in an enviable state. Anyone who has
wished for anything bad to happen to Pakistan is likely
to find great joy in the condition that Pakistan has
reached.
14
Chapter 2
THE PEOPLE OF PAKISTAN
Pakistan is currently estimated to have between 160 and
170 million people. Pakistan's internal turmoil prevented
a routine census from taking place in 1991, but it was
finally conducted in 1998. Pakistan's population is
currently thought to be increasing at the rate of between
2.1% and 2.8% per year. Nobody knows exactly, but even at
the lower estimate 8000 children are being born every day
in Pakistan, or one Pakistani is born every 10 seconds.
Some estimates say that Pakistan's population will double
to over 300 million, by the year 2050.
The Pakistani paper the Jang reported in September 2003
(3):
Pakistan's population will swell to 349 million by year
2050, making it the fourth most populated country in the
world
The report goes on to say:
The population growth has caused an eight-time increase
in the unemployment...With almost one third of the
population living in abject poverty, 54 million people do
not have access to safe drinking water ... 53.5 million
are illiterates. The population explosion has led to the
shortage of educational facilities, health services,
housing units, food, living space, arable land and clean
water
The vast majority of Pakistanis are villagers, living in
rural areas. The "average Pakistani" is poor and
uneducated. According to some estimates, 70% of the
population of Pakistan is uneducated, and education among
women is very low since few women are allowed to acquire
15
an education in a society that believes the women should
not be seen in public places, mixing with strangers.
These facts may seem surprising considering the smartly
dressed, well spoken Pakistani men and women that one may
see on television. But that is another curious hidden
fact about Pakistan.
The "smartly dressed, well spoken Pakistani men and women
that one may see on television" form a small, wealthy
elite group that have been described by the expression
"Rich, Anglophone, Pakistani Elite". As the description
suggests, they are rich, they speak English and they form
the elite, the cream of Pakistani society. They actually
form a very small minority, numbering perhaps 25,000 in
all. Most of the wealth, land and industries of Pakistan
are said to be concentrated among about 43 top families
of Pakistan, who, along with top army officers, form the
cream of Pakistan(4).
In an editorial in the Indian Express that appeared on
January 28th 2002, VP Dutt wrote:
Another fundamental flaw is the very narrow social base
of the ruling elite. Pakistan is ruled by four interest
groups or their coalition: military, bureaucracy, the
feudal lords and the industrial barons. Making up the
nucleus of these four interest groups, it is believed,
are a dozen corps commanders, nearly 2,000 landlords
owning more than half the cultivable land, a cadre of
nearly 1,000 officers and less than 50 industrial
families. It is they who own Pakistan and rule in the
name of the people.
A report in the Jang (5) on Dec 5th 2003 says:
Top 20 per cent of the population has 50 per cent of
16
national income, while the bottom 20 per cent has only 6
percent,
The Rich Anglophone Pakistani Elite have a great
influence on the image of Pakistan abroad. The elite of
Pakistan come from rich, feudal landowning families as
well as from the armed forces. They drive the Pajeros and
the Mercedes-Benz cars of Pakistan, and they own much of
the land, with some feudal lords owning over 20,000 acres
of land in a Pakistan that is full of impoverished
people. Their children go to the best schools in
Pakistan, and often study abroad in the best institutions
of the US and UK, such as Harvard, Oxford and Cambridge.
On October 2nd 2001, the New York Times carried a report
about Pakistan:
In the cities, the turn of a street corner can seem to be
time travel between centuries. Wide boulevards clogged
with expensive cars become narrow lanes where shrouded
women carry jugs of water on their heads. About 75
percent of all Pakistanis reside in rural areas. Most are
sharecroppers, eking out a subsistence. In some areas,
feudal families still hold sway, making private laws and
operating private jails. While the wealthy send their
children to college in America or Britain, many of the
poor are deprived of even an elementary education. The
literacy rate is below 40 percent. A fifth of Pakistan's
government schools are "ghosts," with buildings but no
students or teachers
A third curious anomaly of Pakistan is the almost
complete absence of a "middle class". The middle class in
Pakistan have been estimated as being about 10 to 12
million in total (6,7) forming about 8% of the
population. The contrast with India now is stunning with
estimates of the middle class in India forming about 25
17
to 30% of the population. A large middle class is an
indicator of the development of a society from the
traditional feudal pattern into a more modern society.
The old feudal structure of society which Pakistan still
retains, consists of a small, very rich elite governing a
large mass of poor people. A large middle class is an
essential component of a 'modern' state and its absence
marks a feudal state.
A large middle class creates a society in which people
have the economic clout to break the economic
stranglehold of a rich elite and ensure that their rights
are looked after. A report by Pakistani researcher
Masooda Bano carried in the News International Pakistan
on 31st August 2001 said:
Pakistan's middle class is shrinking while India's middle
class is growing. More and more people in Pakistan are
slipping in to poverty. This is a dangerous trend as the
middle class is the backbone for any progressive society.
On top of that the rising of the fundamentalist groups in
Pakistan is a fact, which the nation cannot keep denying
anymore.
Nine out of ten Pakistanis are poor and uneducated. Less
than one out of ten belongs to the middle class and a
very small number are extremely rich. Fitting in
perfectly well with these facts are other items of
information about the life of Pakistanis. The whole of
Pakistan has only about 400,000 cars. Pakistan has only 3
million TV sets, for a population of 145 million. (8,9)
We can thus define the "average Pakistani". The average
Pakistani is an illiterate and poor Muslim. Being a
Muslim is important to the Pakistani citizen because it
brings a semblance of order to his otherwise miserable
and unenviable existence.
18
Religion also helps to define the psyche of the
Pakistani, which is dealt with in chapter 5.
Paradoxically, religion also helps in the survival of the
rich, tyrannical and corrupt leaders of Pakistan. Islam
teaches its followers to accept their lives as being preordained
by God, and, as a result of this belief, the
poor and deprived Pakistani does not question or complain
about his miserable life. This stoic acceptance has
allowed the rapacious elite and the resource-swallowing
army of Pakistan to carry on with their atrociously rich
lifestyles and blatant corruption for decades, without
having to be answerable to an angry or demanding
population.
19
20
Chapter 3
EDUCATION
Through the 1950s and 1960s, Pakistan was believed to be
a leading light among developing nations, and the
unquestioned technological leader among "Islamic nations"
A closer look at the facts suggests that this was only an
impression created by the fortuitous alliance between the
suave, English speaking Pakistani elite and the postworld
war superpower, the United States of America, and
the world's most powerful media apparatus that came with
the US.
Development and technology require education. Most people
who take education for granted tend to forget the highly
organized and civilized system that needs to be set up
for an underdeveloped nation to build up a group of
educated citizens who can serve as the pioneers of
development.
For example, imagine a small town or village that needs a
school. A building is required, with electricity for
light bulbs. Teachers are needed and for this the teacher
himself must be educated - a separate education system
must exist to have a supply of teachers. The people of
the village or town need to understand the value of
sending their children to be educated in school as
opposed to keeping them at home for help in the fields or
other work.
The low literacy rate in Pakistan is an indicator of the
facts that these fundamental investments have been
ignored or sidelined for decades. The precise manner in
which lack of education and a runaway increase in
population affects a country needs to be understood by
leaders in power. But it appears that a series of
21
Pakistani leaders have never really understood how the
twin facts of population explosion and lack of education
feed upon each other leading to the population-illiteracy
cycle getting worse at a faster and faster rate as time
passes, making it increasingly difficult to catch up.
A report on reforming education in Pakistan on NBC said
(10):
Two years ago, the Pakistani government tried to estimate
how many schools it would take to handle the 8 million
kids of primary age not in class now. "The numbers that
came up is 8,500 primary schools. That's the kind of
numbers we needed two years earlier. They can become
10,000 in 2004, maybe more," said Zubaida Jalal,
Pakistan's minister for education.
In the 20th century, rapid advances in the development and
application of vaccination of people against killer
diseases like smallpox and diphtheria led to a
significant reduction in the number of children dying
from these diseases. Effective means were developed to
reduce complications and deaths during pregnancy and
childbirth, and simple treatments were devised to save
lives in cases of deadly killer diarrheas. Until these
developments occurred, populations in many countries
remained relatively stable, because the number of people
dying was approximately equal to the number of babies
being born. But once these scientific changes affected
human society, populations began to rise rapidly. The
UNFPA has recognized this and says in a report on
Pakistan:
The major contributing factor to population growth has
been the sustained gap between low mortality and high
fertility levels for the last three decades or so. As a
result, Pakistan has today a very young population
22
structure, with 43 per cent below the age of 15 and 63
per cent below the age of 25.
Populations grow by what is called "geometric
progression". That means that if a population of 1
million people doubles to 2 million in ten years, it will
double to 4 million in a further ten years, and then
become 8 million in ten more years and so on. In fifty
years, a population of 1 million can increase to 32
million. If the original 1 million people lived in a
poor, developing country that is barely able to feed and
provide employment for 1 million people, it will have to
look after 32 million people just fifty years later.
Unless a great deal of money and effort is put into
planning for population growth such as food production,
healthcare and education, a rapid rise in population
typically leads to more hunger, more poverty, more
diseases from malnutrition and more unemployment. That
means more people who are unhappy and have reason to be
angry.
This is exactly what is happening in Pakistan (11,12).
The population has increased by 50 million people in the
last 15 years and the number of poor has doubled.
All these extra people have to have food and
opportunities for employment, and they need to be
educated regarding the importance of birth control and
family planning, since that is essential for slowing down
the population explosion.
Unfortunately Pakistan's leaders have never put in the
required amount of money and effort into education of the
Pakistani masses. Generations of Pakistanis have been
born into poverty and deprivation without the knowledge
or the means to slow down population growth or earn a
living though a modern job from a modernizing economy.
23
A report in the San Francisco Chronicle (13) in Oct 2002
on the state of education in Pakistan states:
According to government statistics for this year, the
literacy rate is 49 percent overall, 61.3 for men and
36.8 for women .. putting Pakistan among the 20 least
literate countries, according to World Bank's World
Development Index. A government study commissioned last
year demonstrated a clear cause-and- effect relationship
between the lack of basic education and increasing
poverty.
A study of education in Pakistan reveals many reasons to
be concerned, and few reasons to be happy.
The state of education in Pakistan was described by
Raymond Bonner in the New York Times on 31st March 2002:
Pakistan's literacy rate ranks below that of countries
like Haiti, Rwanda and Sudan, according to the most
recent United Nations Development Program report...
Pakistan's most recent budget sets aside $107 million for
education, compared with $2 billion for the military.
Madrassa education in Pakistan:
Over large areas of Pakistan, the lack of schools was
made up to some extent by madrassas or Islamic schools.
Madrassas exist in all nations with a Muslim population,
but what is taught in a madrassa can vary significantly
depending on the country and government. The madrassas of
Pakistan have played a prominent role in making Pakistan
the unstable, recessed theocratic state that it is today.
Columnist ABS Jafri wrote in the Dawn (14):
24
...in Sindh province we have more than a quarter of a
million students in the religious Madaris. In Karachi
alone there are well over 226,000 children in these
religious seminaries.. In the whole of the province there
are only 1,500 middle schools. Compare this with 869
Madaris in Karachi alone.
Nadeem Iqbal, writing for the Asia Times reported (15):
Currently there are some one million to 1.7 million
students enrolled in madrassas in Pakistan, most of them
between the ages of five to 18 and from poor families.
According to Dr. Tariq Rahman, Professor of Linguistics
and South Asian Studies, Quaid-i-Azam University,
Islamabad, Pakistan had only 137 madrassas in 1947. Dr.
Rahman writes of Pakistani madrassas (16):
In 1950 there were 210 of them while in 1971 they
increased to 563. Nowadays there are at least 7000 of
them.
After the 1971 war of liberation of Bangladesh, the
process of making Pakistanis more Islamic, the so called
Islamization of Pakistan was given impetus. It was
initiated by Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, and the
Pakistani General Zia ul Haq who removed Bhutto in a coup
and later hanged him, accelerated the process. The exact
number of madrassas cannot be known because of the lack
of registration or census.
Analyst Alexei Alexiev writes(17):
While no official nation-wide study of these madrassas
exists, estimates of their overall number range between
25
10,000 and 20,000; unregistered seminaries may add
another 10,000 to the total. As for the number of
students, here the estimate ranges from a conservative
half-million to over 2 million. (By comparison, some 1.9
million Pakistani children reportedly attended primary
schools in 2002.)
In 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, and this
gave the US an opportunity to utilize its Cold War
alliance with Pakistan to battle the Soviet invasion. The
US pumped in large amounts of money and arms into
Pakistan, much of it channeled via Saudi Arabia. The
Saudi connection enabled the setting up of a vast number
of madrassas in Pakistan. Because of the great poverty
and lack of schools in Pakistan, madrassas were a natural
attraction for the average Pakistani, as being schools
that adhered to Islamic values while feeding and housing
students, and taking over the burden of looking after one
or more sons from a large, poor and ill-fed Pakistani
family.
Pamela Constable, a columnist for the Washington Post
wrote on 20th September 2001 (18), just days after the
attacks on the World Trade Center in New York:
In recent years, however, a number of religious parties
and groups have been rapidly gaining influence throughout
Pakistani society. Based in thousands of mosques and
Islamic academies called madrassas, they spread their
message in part by offering services, especially low-cost
education, that millions of poor Pakistani families
cannot obtain any other way.
The name madrassa merely connotes a school. Aijazz Ahmed
wrote about madrassas in the Asia Times (19) in January
2003:
26
Madrassas were introduced about 300 years ago on the
Indian subcontinent by then Muslim monarchs and rulers to
produce a bureaucracy capable of running the day-to-day
affairs of state, especially in terms of financial and
legal issues, according to the wishes and pleasure of the
king.
Ahmed continues:
Professor Dr Manzoor, a renowned scholar, writer and
researcher, comments that nowadays many madrassas have
taken an unfortunate direction. "The new role of the
madrassas and [the influence] of religious elements has
added nothing but hatred against non-Muslims and
different sects of Islam. Although some major schools
produced better results and play their role for religious
harmony, many inject the poison of extremism,
sectarianism and ignorance and have become a source of
increasing ignorance and religious intolerance in
Pakistani society."
At he best of times, the normal curriculum in madrassas
did not offer a well rounded education that included
maths, science and information technology. The subjects
were frozen 300 years ago, and included logic, Arabic
literature and grammar, and Koranic teachings.
But during the Cold War, the number of madrassas
burgeoned rapidly and tens of thousands were set up
offering only a narrow interpretation of Islam in which
young people were indoctrinated into the concept of a
violent jihad against unbelievers, and taught to believe
that death on the battlefield fighting against the
enemies of Islam such as the Soviet Union would ensure
eternal paradise for the Islamic fighters.
The preparation of young men for jihad and death in the
27
battlefield was surely very useful and convenient to
provide an endless supply of soldiers to fight in
Afghanistan, and such fighters under the name Taliban
took over when the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan. But
even after this, the madrassas that had supplied all
these fanatical men did not close down, and indeed could
not be closed down. The curriculum teaching jihad did not
change either. Having nowhere else to go, thousands of
madrassa trained students in Pakistan collected up, ready
for jihad in any part of the world, including Kashmir,
Bosnia, Chechnya, the Philippines, Indonesia, Palestine,
Iraq and Turkey.
Pamela Constable wrote in the Washington Post:
During the 1980s, some radical Sunni groups in Pakistan
sent young men to fight in Afghanistan against Soviet
occupation, and many members of the Taliban graduated
from their madrassas. More recently, a...number of
Islamic students have been sent to fight against Indian
troops in Kashmir..
In addition, Pakistan columnist Khaled Ahmed wrote in the
Friday Times in November 21-27, 2003:
What better example than the one found in Pakistan whose
private armies interfered in Central Asia and China with
public acclaim? Let's take a look at the Harkat al-Jahad
al-Islami, Pakistan's biggest jihadi militia
headquartered in Kandahar before it was scattered by the
Americans. The Harkat was one of the militias boasting
international linkages. It called itself 'the second line
of defence of all Muslim states' and was active in Arakan
in Burma, and Bangladesh, with well organised seminaries
in Karachi, Chechnya, Sinkiang, Uzbekistan and
Tajikistan. Its fund-raising was largely from Pakistan,
but an additional source was its activity of selling
28
weapons to other militias
Schools in Pakistan:
Education in Pakistani schools outside of madrassas is
not available to most Pakistanis. But even in the few
schools that exist, the curriculum is deeply flawed. The
following quotes are taken from an in depth study of what
Pakistani school children are being taught in a
compilation entitled The Subtle Subversion - The State
of Curricula and Textbooks in Pakistan by A.H. Nayyar and
Ahmed Salim (20):
Madrassas are not the only institutions breeding hate,
intolerance, a distorted world view, etc. The educational
material in the government run schools do much more than
madrassas. The textbooks tell lies, create hate, incite
for jehad and shahadat, and much more.
...children are now taught that the history of Pakistan
starts from the day the first Muslim set foot in India.
History and Pakistan studies textbooks rarely mention
the ancient and non-controversial cultures of the Indus
valley (Moenjodaro, Harrappa and Kot Diji), and
completely bypass the entire Buddhist and Hindu periods
of history. They suddenly jump to the advent of Mohammed
bin Qasim in India and treat it as the beginning of
history... this structuring is to make children regard
the Muslim part of the history as the .. most significant
part.'
From about 1972 onwards, history taught in Pakistan was
detached from history as we know it.
Quoting further from the Nayyar and Salim report:
29
Four themes emerge most strongly..
1. ... Pakistan is for Muslims alone;
2. ...Islamiat is to be forcibly taught to all the
students, whatever their faith, including a compulsory
reading of Qur'an;
3. that Ideology of Pakistan is to be internalized as
faith, and hate be created against Hindus and India;
4. and students are to be urged to take the path of Jehad
and Shahadat (martrydom).
Associated with the insistence on the Ideology of
Pakistan has been an essential component of hate against
India and the Hindus...the existence of Pakistan is
defined only in relation to Hindus, and hence the Hindus
have to be painted as black as possible.
Curriculum documents ask the following as the specific
learning objectives:
The child should be able to understand the Hindu and
Muslim differences...India's evil designs against
Pakistan ..Hindu has always been an enemy of Islam.
The class II Urdu book has a lesson on "Our Country", the
first sentences of which read: Our country is Pakistan.
...Pakistan is an Islamic country. Here Muslims live.
Muslims believe in the unity of Allah. They do good
deeds.
The Class 6 book says: Who am I? I am a Muslim. I am a
Pakistani...you are a Muslim and your religion is Islam.
A book lists "Acchi baten" (good deeds). Among them:
"Good people are those who read the Qur'an and teach the
Qur'an to others" implying that those of another faith
cannot be good people.
30
Other things taught in state school texts:
After the partition of the subcontinent the Hindus and
Sikhs started a properly planned campaign of exploiting
the Muslims.. as a result of which the Hindu and Sikh
enemies of mankind killed and dishonoured thousands, nay
hundreds of thousands of women, children, the old and the
young with extreme cruelty and heartlessness.
And Pakistani children are taught about war as follows:
Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto introduced a full two-year course on
'Fundamentals of War' and 'Defence of Pakistan' for class
XI and XII respectively.In the 'Fundamentals of War'
themes like objects and causes, conduct, nature, modern
weapons, operations, principles ethics, the means short
of war and modern Warfare were thoroughly discussed.
...The subject of hate in Pakistani educational material
is Hindu and India, reflecting both the perceived sense
of insecurity from an 'enemy' country, and an attempt to
define one's national identity in relation to the
'other'. The first serves the military and the second the
political Islamists.
In another article on Pakistani education AH Nayyar wrote
(21):
The class 4 text book states: The religion of the Hindus
did not teach them good things -- Hindus did not respect
women...
Another book tells the students:
Hindus worship in temples which are very narrow and dark
places, where they worship idols. Only one person can
enter the temple at a time. In our mosques, on the other
31
hand, all Muslims can say their prayers together.
For another, the Hindus as a monolith were always
cunning, scheming, and conspiring to deprive the Muslims
of their due rights.. The Hindus always desired to crush
the Muslims as a nation. Several attempts were made by
the Hindus to erase the Muslim culture and civilization
...
If the Hindus had any national aspirations then these
were clearly a sign of their prejudices, while if the
Muslim kings and invaders plundered Hindu temples then
presumably they did so with very noble intentions.
The experience of colonialism is described in a textbook
as a British-Hindu conspiracy: The British joined forces
with the Hindus to bring harm to the Muslims. Muslims
tried in every way to maintain good relations with the
British and Hindus, but they did not allow it to be so.
Regarding history as taught to Pakistani children Kamila
Hyat wrote in the Jang in August 2003 (22):
.. the terrible events that led to the breaking away of
East Pakistan and the creation of Bangladesh are never
mentioned...
Members of the generation who grew up after 1971 often
have no idea at all of what issues underpinned the civil
war or why it took place. The genocide committed in the
territory that now constitutes Bangladesh .. are hardly
ever discussed or even spoken off on passing within the
Pakistan of today.
Pervez Hoodbhoy, a Pakistani scientist writes (23):
At the completion of Class-V, the child should be able to
32
...
"Make speeches on Jehad and Shahadat"
"Understand Hindu-Muslim differences and the resultant
need for Pakistan."
"India's evil designs against Pakistan."
Hoodbhoy goes on to say in the same article:
A moronic, incompetent, self-obsessed, corrupt, and
ideologically charged education bureaucracy today
squarely blocks Pakistan's entry into the 21st century.
It is clear from this that it is not only the madrassas
that offer a curriculum of hatred to Pakistani children.
Even children who study in Pakistani state schools imbibe
a curriculum of discrimination and hate.
The real worry in having such a faulty educational system
that actively encourages hatred is that millions of
Pakistani children are growing up to be adults thinking
that India and Indians exist to subjugate Muslims and
should be hated for that. There seems to be no way in
which a child in Pakistan can grow up without fearing or
hating India in particular and non-Muslims in general.
This mindset cannot be wiped out overnight. The problem
is so serious that the Pakistani government must be
engaged and encouraged to change the curriculum in
Pakistani schools. It is surprising that faults in an
education system that may have such great an impact on
Indian-Pakistani relations in future are not being
addressed at all at the highest governmental level in
India.
Meanwhile, in the first sign that a glimmering of
realization of the consequences of a curriculum of hate,
an acknowledgment of the existence of a biased curriculum
33
and a call for change was made by Pakistani Federal
Minister for Education Ms Zobaida Jalal in a statement
published in the Pakistan Tribune online in March 2004
(24):
a committee has been constituted to work out
recommendations for deletion of material from curricula
which is aimed at fomenting hatred against India adding
that the committee will submit its recommendations within
a month. Several social organizations have raised
objection that hatred is fanned against India through the
curricula of educational institutions in Pakistan.
Government has set up a committee to look into the matter
and send its recommendations within a month
But such change cannot come easily in Pakistan. More than
half of Pakistan's population of nearly 170 million are
thirty years old or younger and have been exposed to a
hate-India curriculum from childhood. As a result these
people are likely to form a strong body of anti-India,
anti-Hindu opinion for decades to come. Besides there is
strong opposition to change. In a sternly worded reaction
to the idea of reform of the hate curriculum, the
influential director of the Pakistan Institute of
Strategic Studies, Dr. Shireen Mazari accused the authors
of the report on Pakistan's biased school books as being
biased and having been written for the handsome payment
the authors received (25):
Dr. Mazari, commenting on the Nayyar report said:
the authors take exception to the fact that the present
curriculum documents suggest that children should be able
to understand the Hindu-Muslim differences and the need
for the creation of Pakistan. The authors' warped logic
is that knowing the differences breeds hatred! So one
should really do away with inculcating the rationale
34
behind the struggle for Pakistan! Of course, there is no
doubt that some of the texts do denigrate the Hindus but
this should not be a pretext for not creating an
awareness of the differences that led to the creation of
Pakistan.
In the same article, Dr. Mazari dismissed criticism of
madrassas as having an anti-Islam motive - a time honored
diversion used by the Pakistani elite to deflect
criticism (see chapter 8). Dr. Mazari's words:
"Also, with the madrassahs now a central target of the
West, Islam seems to have also become fair game.
With influential Pakistanis opposing change in the
curriculum, efforts at change are in serious danger of
being quashed even before they commence.
35
Chapter 4
INDUSTRIES AND ECONOMY OF PAKISTAN
In a report about the Pakistani economy, economist
Sreedhar states (26):
Pakistan's economy during the past fifty years can be
described as a classic example of a case where artificial
prosperity was maintained by heavy doses of foreign aid
and overseas remittances of Pakistanis...Easy and cheap
availability of goods and services through foreign aid
discouraged the development of a large scale indigenous
industry. At another level, Pakistan failed to do even
the basics of economic development which most of the
developing countries have done.
More than fifty years after independence, Pakistan
remains primarily an agricultural economy. Not a single
wrist-watch, scooter or motorcycle has appeared on the
international market with a Made in Pakistan label on it.
This level of industrial technology in Pakistan is in
keeping with the overall picture of Pakistan as a nation
in which almost 70% of the people are illiterate.
Goods manufactured in Pakistan are mostly no more complex
than bicycles, sports goods such as footballs and cricket
balls, clothes, textiles and agricultural products like
sugar. Pakistan has survived for over 50 years giving the
impression that it is somehow a powerhouse in its depth
and breadth of manufacturing and industrial capacity.
That is far from the truth.
Still, a sophisticated Pakistani public relations machine
has managed to build up the idea, at least in the minds
of Indians, that Pakistani industry is producing some
state of the art high technology goods. It is worth
looking at some of these items and Pakistani claims in
36
some detail. In keeping with the Pakistani psyche of
according the highest importance to the armed forces
Pakistani claims of high technology indigenous
manufacture have revolved around armament, specifically
missiles and Pakistan's nuclear program.
Pakistani spokespersons never tire of speaking of
Pakistan's indigenous missiles - given names like Hatf,
Ghauri and Shaheen. These brave names may perhaps be
essential for national pride, but even a cursory search
of authoritative sources shows that Pakistan's Hatf,
Ghauri and Shaheen missiles are Chinese M-9 or M-11
missiles, or North Korean No-Dong missiles (27).
The idea is not to downplay the considerable risk that
Pakistan's missiles pose to India and other nations, but
to point out the compulsion that Pakistani authorities
have to maintain a facade of indigenous production for
items that are widely known to be imported. The most
likely reason for maintaining this charade of indigenous
development of missiles is to obscure the fact that
dangerous, nuclear capable missiles are being supplied by
countries like China and North Korea to Pakistan ignoring
international treaties that forbid such exports.
In a detailed report on Pakistani missiles from NTI -
Nuclear Threat Initiative, a private body aimed at
studying the risk of nuclear conflict it was reported
that (28):
Pakistan is still dependent on China for specialty
materials, guidance systems, and other critical missile
components...Pakistan will remain dependent on North
Korea for importing complete liquid engines, or at least
their major component parts, as well as the liquid
propellants to fuel its missiles
37
Even more peculiar is Pakistan's nuclear program. The
strong Pakistani insistence that the program is entirely
indigenous is contradicted by the facts. A news report
about this in a New Zealand news portal reads (29):
The father of Pakistan's atom bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan,
worked at the Urenco uranium enrichment facility in the
Dutch city of Almelo in the 1970s.
After his return to Pakistan he was convicted in absentia
of nuclear espionage by an Amsterdam court..He has
acknowledged he did take advantage of his experience of
many years of working on similar projects in Europe and
his contacts with various manufacturing firms."
A report from the Netherlands, from which Abdul Qadeer
Khan got his designs for Uranium enrichment says Khan
received a MSc degree in metallurgy from Delft in 1967
and later stole nuclear secrets from his Dutch employer,
helping Pakistan develop its first nuclear bomb...In
1976, Khan suddenly left Europe before his espionage was
detected. Back home in Pakistan, then Prime Minister
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto gave Khan the job of organizing
Pakistan's nuclear program
Pakistan can hardly be expected to publicly proclaim that
the Father of Pakistan's nuclear program stole the
technology. Experts have argued that it does not matter
if Pakistan's atomic bombs are stolen or made in
Pakistan. They are a serious risk either way. This is
true, but it is important to place on record the fact
that the designs were stolen and not the result of some
prolonged research effort in Pakistan.
The designs that Abdul Qadeer Khan obtained from the
URENCO labs were for centrifuges. Centrifuges are devices
that are used to rotate something at high speed to
38
separate out heavier from lighter components. For
example, a rotating centrifugal dryer in a washing
machine is a centrifuge that separates water from clothes
and makes wet clothes much more dry. Obtaining
centrifuges was necessary for Pakistan to start enriching
Uranium. Uranium occurs naturally primarily in two forms,
the heavier U238 and lighter U235. The latter, U235 is
needed for nuclear bombs but occurs in very small
quantities mixed with U238. For this reason Uranium needs
to be enriched to get material that contains 90% or more
of U235, which can then be used for making a nuclear
bomb. Several techniques exist for this and Pakistan
chose the route of Uranium enrichment by centrifuges
using the technology stolen by Qadeer Khan from the
URENCO labs.
But making a nuclear bomb goes far beyond merely
enriching Uranium. Making a workable and reliable nuclear
bomb requires further technology. Indian analyst
K.Subrahmanyam quotes Nobel Laureate Abdus Salam as being
skeptical about Pakistani ability to actually produce a
working nuclear bomb. Subrahmanyam goes on to indicate
similar skepticism of Pakistani ability in Indian
scientific circles by saying (30):
Their scepticism was based on their judgement that
Pakistan did not have the critical mass of scientific and
engineering talent necessary for the project.
This is where Pakistan's role as a Cold War ally of the
US and its role in helping China and the US get closer
came in handy. China provided Pakistan with the necessary
technology to make its nuclear bomb. It is widely
reported that China gave to Pakistan the complete design
of a nuclear bomb that it had tested in 1964 (31).
One week after the Indian nuclear tests of May 1998, and
39
a one week before the official Pakistani nuclear test an
announcement was made at a G8 meeting that Pakistan had
tested a nuclear device. It is said that the device
failed to detonate. After this there was a flurry of
activity when Pakistani officials visited China. The next
week, on the 28th of May 1998, Pakistan conducted a
nuclear test in Chagai. Some experts believe that the
device tested was a ready made device provided to
Pakistan by China after the failure of an earlier test.
During this period mysterious news reports surfaced that
Plutonium was detected in the atmosphere over Chagai in
Pakistan (32). Since Pakistani bomb designs were Uranium
based ones, there is no way Plutonium could have
appeared. If the Plutonium story is true, it lends
credence to the theory that Pakistan may actually have
tested a ready made Chinese nuclear device.
At the time of writing this, the father of Pakistan's
nuclear program, Abdul Qadeer Khan stands discredited and
accused of selling equipment and the plans for Uranium
enrichment centrifuges to Libya, Iran and North Korea, in
exchange for missiles from North Korea and great personal
wealth for himself. It appears that this was done with
the knowledge and tacit approval of the military
government of Pakistan, and its army chiefs of staff
(chapter 13). News reports indicate that Pakistan's
nuclear program was based on a network of clandestine
imports from a network of proliferators personally built
up by Abdul Qadeer Khan, funded by unlimited financial
support from the Pakistani government, as well as from
Libya and other sources. It seems clear that Pakistan's
entire nuclear weapons manufacturing program was based on
a clandestine black-market of contacts with companies all
over the world who produced components that could not be
fashioned in Pakistan.
Pakistan does not currently produce any fighter, bomber
40
or civilian aircraft and does not have a noteworthy
aerospace research or design team. But in 1981 Pakistan
imported the entire assembly line for the manufacture of
a 1969 vintage Swedish designed, single engine, two
seater trainer aircraft from Sweden. The aircraft,
called the Saab Supporter in Sweden is assembled in
Pakistan under the name Mushshak. Another trainer
aircraft that Pakistan became involved in is a Chinese
designed K-8 jet trainer. Current reports indicate that
the trainers will be manufactured in China, and not in
Pakistan.
Pakistan's industrial sophistication today is arguably
not much higher than that of Britain in the early 20th
century, but Pakistan has continuously maintained,
possibly for domestic consumption that it is a leader in
many technologies. This pretence probably does Pakistan
more harm than anyone else. Pakistani leaders, convinced
by the exaggerated claims of their own countrymen have
allowed their nation to lapse into a state of
underdevelopment in which Pakistan is now being compared
with the other countries at the bottom of the development
ladder, such as Haiti and Rwanda.
On March 31st 2002, a report in the The New York Times
stated, Barely a third of Pakistan's population is
literate, Even using a very low standard, the State
Department said in its most recent human rights report.
Pakistan's literacy rate ranks below that of countries
like Haiti, Rwanda and Sudan, according to the most
recent United Nations Development Program report.
Furthermore A UNDP report in 2003 ranked Pakistan a low
138th, in a list of 174 countries (33).
Pakistan's labor force is growing at the rate of 2.4% per
year, but the number of unemployed people in Pakistan is
rising at more than twice that rate - 6% (34). The
41
Pakistan Human Condition report of 2003 says that between
1998-99 and 2000-01, population increased by 6 million
people (4.46 per cent), while the population of the poor
during the period under review increased by 10 per cent.
The report warns that population is shifting from upper
poverty bands to lower ones, showing a decline in their
welfare level
On February 5th 2003, the San Francisco Chronicle
reported: Pakistan's powerful military has ruled the
country for more than half of the nation's 56-year
history, fully integrating itself into every facet of the
economy and draining state coffers with generous benefit
plans for its officers....corrupt military officers have
siphoned off more than $1.2 billion in the last 10 years
to purchase such amenities as land, mansions and luxury
cars, according to a recent report by Pakistan's auditor
general.
A large number of reports speak of all the economic
problems that Pakistan has (35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40) Some
of these problems, regarding industries and poverty have
been listed above. But many other factors contribute to
the decrepit state of the Pakistani economy. Aid and loan
money has been constantly misused for personal gain by
the Pakistani army, army run businesses and private
enterprise due to rampant corruption at the highest
places. There is an extremely wealthy class of Pakistani
at the top of the economic pyramid and this class
includes Army Officers as well as feudal landowners -
some owning as much as 45,000 acres of land. In the
Punjab province, one percent of the landowners own 26
percent of the land.
One report (36) says only one million Pakistanis pay tax
in a country of over 150 million people. The Karachi
Stock Exchange has trading in only about 30 stocks - with
42
over 700 other stocks listed for tax advantages. The
Exchange is run by a handful of crooked brokers and scams
are rampant. The same report goes on to say, Estimates of
the size of the country's black-market economy, which
includes everything from underground banking to narcotics
to the smuggling of consumer goods, range up to 100% of
the so-called formal sector. That ratio "is probably the
most severe" of any country in the world, says Muhammad
Mansoor Ali, one of Pakistan's leading economists. "It is
essentially a parallel economy."
The number of such damning reports is enormous, and they
help build up a picture of Pakistan as a country of
predominantly poor people, whose number is increasing by
the year as the population rises. Governing these people
is a small elite of wealthy, corrupt and self-serving
army officers and feudal lords who literally rule over
their subjects like medieval kings. The population is
kept busy with jihad, being told that India is forever
planning to attack Pakistan and kill all Muslims, while
the rulers of Pakistan build up their personal fortunes
and protect their lucre with an army whose upper ranks
are like a Mughal court, while the lower ranks are the
bodyguards to protect the powerful from both external
enemies and opponents within Pakistan.
43
Chapter 5
PAKISTANI PSYCHE - GENERAL OBSERVATIONS
Very few studies exist on the subject of the mind of the
Pakistani or the Pakistani psyche. Pakistan has been too
low on the priority of sociologists and psychologists,
while most Indians, including Indian leaders and
strategists have been content with describing Pakistanis
as being "Just like us" - i.e. just like Indians.
Pakistanis, like all other people, display the usual
range of human behavioral patterns: joy, sorrow, anger,
pain and other emotions which are indistinguishable from
anyone else on an individual level. But groups of
thousands or millions of people anywhere in the world,
who live together in nations tend to develop certain
unique patterns of behavior based on the stresses,
experiences and history of their particular society.
Sometimes these unique patterns of behavior are very
difficult to recognise, because the behavior is very much
like that of anyone else. Even so, it is worth
recognizing minor differences because this knowledge has
some value in understanding behavior, and in negotiation
and reaching agreements.
For example, communication between cultures becomes
difficult if negotiators from different cultures cannot
understand each others' behavior. A deep understanding of
Japanese culture was required before international
agreements could be reached with Japan on the issue of
whaling and protection of endangered species of whales.
Some cultures, such as Japanese culture have been well
studied (41). The important role of saving face and
avoiding shame is well recognised, and must be taken into
account in negotiation. Another well known example of the
consequences of an inability to understand cultural
nuances comes from a transcript of a telephone
44
conversation in Arabic between Egyptian President Gamel
Abdel Nasser and King Hussein of Jordan when Egyptian
forces were being defeated by Israeli forces in 1967. The
cultural need to avoid shame forced Nasser to state that
his forces were fighting well against their enemy, but
King Hussein was unable to understand the nuances by
which Nasser hinted that his forces were being defeated.
That left Hussein, and Jordan unprepared for their defeat
in the war subsequently (42).
There are few studies of unique behavioral patterns among
Pakistanis. But such patterns do exist, and their
importance must not be underestimated. In his testimony
to the United States' Senate Committee on Foreign
Relations in January 2004 (43) Stephen Cohen, speaking on
India-Pakistan relations quoted a Pakistani army officer
saying how important the question of pride was in
Pakistani actions relating to India.
In the words of one Pakistani officer, the army
understands it cannot wrest Kashmir from India, but it
cannot turn its back on a 55 year struggle. At stake is
its pride, and it literally calls the shots
But the subject of a specific and defined Pakistani mind
has not gone unnoticed among Indian observers. J. N.
Dixit, former Indian foreign secretary has spoken of the
psychological hurdles that come in the way of Indian and
Pakistani relations. These are listed in a review of his
book (44):
Dixit identifies a series of Pakistani traits that refuse
to live amicably with India. First, "artificially
nurtured memories of Muslim superiority and a
subconscious desire to rectify the unfair arrangements of
partition". Second, a certain envy Pakistanis would not
acknowledge openly about the failure of their civil
45
society to solidify democratic and tolerant traditions in
comparison to an India where khakis and bayonets follow
popularly elected representatives. Third, assumption by
Pakistan of the role of protector and overseer of the
welfare of Indian Muslims, who in the words of Maulana
Azad, could be exploited from forces across the border
owing to their "socio-political schizophrenia" since
partition. Fourth, avenging the military defeat of 1971,
which is a formal objective declared in the official
oath-taking ceremony of every Pakistani officer-cadet
when he graduates. Fifth, irrational faith in the
"profound capacity for commitment to jihad amongst the
momin", as was publicly declared by Foreign Minister
Gauhar Ayub Khan at a press conference in Delhi. Sixth,
confidence that Pakistan's nuclear weapons program is an
instrumentality to further geopolitical objectives in
Kashmir. Seventh, widespread belief in the Pakistani
establishment and media circles that India is getting
exhausted in Kashmir and would not be able to hold on to
it for long (a presumption of Musharraf in Kargil).
Eighth, and most significantly, "the unarticulated
ambition and hope that if India broke up, Pakistan will
emerge as the strongest and most powerful political
entity in South Asia".
Of course, in 1947 and a few years after that it would
have been perfectly valid and accurate to describe
Pakistanis as being just like Indians. But after over
50 years of being a separate nation with different threat
perceptions, problems and priorities, and with 75 % of
present day Pakistanis having been born after 1947, it
can easily be observed that there are certain behavioral
characteristics that can be called Purely Pakistani There
is, in effect a Pakistani psyche or a Pakistani mindset,
that is separate from the old Indian identity.
It is useful to be aware of this in dealing with Pakistan
46
as a nation and in predicting Pakistani responses to
events. There are certainly some parallels in Pakistani
behavior to Arab behavior described by Raphael Patai in
his seminal book on The Arab Mind (42). These
similarities are striking, and the most likely
explanation is the internalization of Arab culture in
Islam, leading to a degree of Arabization of behavior
among devoutly Islamic people such as some Pakistanis who
have actively sought to reject their earlier Indian
culture (see chapter 9).
Certain types of behavior stand out among Pakistanis and
are best demonstrated by studying examples of statements
and actions by prominent Pakistani leaders and
spokespersons. It would be wrong to assume that every
Pakistani displays all the characteristics described
here. No single characteristic is unique to Pakistanis
alone, but careful observations of Pakistani statements
and actions show that a sufficiently large proportion of
Pakistanis, especially their leadership, display one or
more of the following characteristics to make them
recognizable as general guidelines to Pakistani psyche.
Certain statements and actions are repeated time and
again, and a pattern can be seen in the way Pakistanis
react to people and events.
Hospitality and generosity:
The characteristic of being extremely hospitable and
generous to guests has stood Pakistanis and Pakistan in
good stead. No visitor to Pakistan goes away without
being touched by this, and this characteristic has been
used to good effect by Pakistan over the years.
An article in the American magazine, The Weekly Standard
had this to say in its Nov 5th 2001 edition:
47
..the attractive character of elite Pakistani officials.
Compared with their haughty Indian and chaotic Afghan
neighbors, Pakistani VIPs are often wittier, warmer, and
more knowledgeable about the insider gossip of U.S.
politics. American diplomats and spooks often have a good
deal of fun with their Westernized Pakistani
counterparts. As one congressional staffer, who
frequently visits south-central Asia, succinctly put it,
"I like 'em; the Indians are jerks."
A series of Western writers and prominent people have
been hosted and feted in Pakistan, and have later served
as honorary ambassadors for Pakistan in the Western
media.
One prominent example is the famous American pilot, Chuck
Yeager, who was a guest of the Pakistan Air Force (PAF)
and who later went on to write paeans about the PAF For
many years after the PAF was comprehensively defeated in
successive wars with India, Yeager's words of praise of
the Pakistan Air Force continued to be quoted,
maintaining a reputation for the PAF that extended far
beyond its real performance.
Pakistani hospitality has charmed a large number of
prominent writers to write positively about Pakistan, and
some have gone as far as to make needlessly hostile and
malicious references to India in their writings despite
strong evidence that their words are misinformed at best,
and often just plain wrong. Prominent among people who
have written warm words for Pakistan are writers like
Brian Cloughley, Eric Margolis and John Fricker.
As recently as June 2002, the Washington Post reported:
It was mid afternoon Tuesday, and Anwar Mahmood,
48
Pakistan's information secretary, was on the phone
discussing with an underling how to keep more than 100
foreign journalists happy for the rest of the week...if
it keeps the reporters satisfied, he figured, it's worth
the $3,000 it will cost his ministry to rent the plane
from Pakistan International Airlines...The Pakistani
government, eager to make its voice heard, has ordered
foreign embassies to expedite visas for
journalists...Five times in the past month, the
Information Ministry has rented air-conditioned buses to
carry journalists to the Line of Control... There they
are treated to hour-long military briefings, complete
with maps, displays of Indian mortar shells -- and tea
sandwiches served on trays by white-gloved soldiers. You
won't get such hospitality from the Indian army.
Honour and Dignity:
The need to maintain honour and dignity is a fundamental
pillar in the mind of the Pakistani. It is often more
important to maintain honour and avoid shame than
anything else. At a rural, tribal level in Pakistan,
maintenance of honour often relates to women and doubts
about fidelity or adultery. Death, in the form of an
honour killing is often the sentence carried out on a
woman who is thought to have shamed the family. David
Pryce Jones has written (45) that the key to
understanding some Islamic societies is to recognise the
need for acquisition of honour, pride, dignity, respect,
and the converse avoidance of shame,disgrace, and
humiliation. The powerful codes of shame and
honour...enforce identity and conformity of behaviour.
Everything is permitted in order to safeguard the family
or tribal honour, lying, cheating, and even murder.
49
But honour and dignity play an equally important role
among the richer and apparently liberated Pakistani elite
rulers of Pakistan. The need to maintain honour and avoid
the perceived national shame of appearing weak in front
of India has led to the sacrificing of all developmental
effort towards arms purchases to pursue military parity
with India. Stephen Cohen's quote of a Pakistan army
officer's words in this regard has already been alluded
to at the beginning of this chapter.
The importance of honour is evident from the words used
by US deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage after a
meeting with the President of Pakistan, General Musharraf
on the 6th of June 200246) ..I would note that the
conversations we had with President Musharraf made it
very clear to me that he wants to do everything that he
can to avoid war... Of course he wants to do this,
keeping intact the honour and dignity of the nation and
the armed forces,...
On 14th March 2003, General Musharraf, military leader of
Pakistan said about Pakistan's nuclear weapons
aspirations (47) "We only want the deterrence capability
to preserve our honour and dignity."
The need to maintain honour and avoid shame by Pakistani
military commanders goes to the extent of suppressing any
news of a defeat or setback suffered by the military,
while insisting that victory was always achieved. A brief
study of the way Pakistan's wars with India have been
reported in Pakistan are illustrative of this.
The 1965 war with India started with the infiltration of
Pakistani special forces into Kashmir for sabotage and to
incite acts of violence. As the conflict evolved war
broke out over a wide front and by the time a cease fire
50
was declared both India and Pakistan had captured small
areas of each other's territory. Significantly, Indian
forces were well within striking range of the Pakistani
city of Lahore, with Indian troops in the towns on the
outskirts of Lahore, and Pakistani General Ayub Khan's
plans to take Srinagar were foiled. But the 1965 war has
always been portrayed from the Pakistani side as a war in
which attacking Indian forces were defeated. The need to
maintain honour and dignity is so important to the
Pakistani, that any available fact may be either picked
up or selectively forgotten in order to save face and
maintain the pretence of victory.
In 1971, the triumph of an East Pakistan (now Bangladesh)
based political party in an election would have meant
that a Bengali, Sheikh Mujibur Rehman would have become
Prime Minister of Pakistan. This was disliked by the West
Pakistani Punjabi dominated army of Pakistan, who
commenced a genocide in East Pakistan. Millions of
refugees poured into India to escape this. In a
humanitarian move, Indian forces entered East Pakistan
and defeated the Pakistani military and a new nation,
Bangladesh, was born. More than ninety thousand
Pakistani soldiers were taken prisoner of war. The Indian
victory, unparalleled since the German Blitzkrieg that
overran Poland was described by historian Brigadier
Shelford Bidwell (48) as follows:
The operations of 1971 finally dispelled any vain dreams
that the 'sword-arm' of old India could, despite its
numerical inferiority, sweep aside the armies of the
effete Hindus and win another battle of Panipat outside
the walls of Delhi. Not an Indian brigade had to be moved
West. General Jagjit Singh Aurora's daring concentric
attack on East Pakistan went forward uninterrupted and on
16 December he received the surrender of the Pakistani
commander in Dacca.
51
The ignominious defeat of the Pakistan armed forces in
1971 and the formation of Bangladesh almost went
unreported in Pakistan. An editorial in the Pakistani
newspaper The Jang recalled the 1971 reports in Pakistan
(49):
So great was the ignorance and absence of principles in
West Pakistan that the government of the day had the
temerity to issue a disgraceful statement casually
mentioning that "by agreement between local commanders,
fighting had ceased in East Pakistan and that Indian
troops had entered Dacca."
Pakistani children are not taught about the 1971 war.
Mistakes made by the Pakistan army in the war were never
investigated or made public, neither were the failures
admitted or analysed. Some of the defeated Generals in
that war even received gallantry awards and honours in
later years. The Pakistani need to maintain honour and
dignity at the expense of truth is a fault that has done
Pakistan no good. It may even be a characteristic that
can be used to predict Pakistani behavior or provoke
desired responses from Pakistanis, when used in a psy-ops
role.
The Kargil conflict of 1999 ended with the rapid
withdrawal of Pakistani forces facing rout. By the time
the withdrawal started the Indian forces had wiped out
almost the entire Northern Light Infantry of the Pakistan
army. Nawaz Sharif, who was Prime Minister of Pakistan
during this conflict, said in an interview to the Weekly
Independent from his place of exile in Saudi Arabia,
..when the battle began, the whole Northern Infantry was
blown up and 2,700 soldiers were martyred and hundreds
were injured. The death toll exceeds even that of the
52
1965 and 1971 full-scale wars.
But the only history that is acknowledged by Pakistan is
that the Kargil conflict was a great victory for
mujahideen who held the Indian army at bay. Pakistanis do
not admit the involvement of their armed forces, and yet
do not explain how the Pakistan army withdrew from the
conflict zone if they were not involved. In doing this,
face has been saved and honour retained by the Pakistani
army, but it is difficult to imagine how the Pakistani
army can learn critical lessons from a disastrous war if
the sole aim of its officer class is the save face and
maintain honour and dignity
An explanation exists for the tendency of the Pakistani
elite and officer class to protect each other's honour
even after embarrassing or disastrous events. A study of
Pakistani society and kinship patterns (50) notes that
the household is the primary unit for kinship and the
male descendants, (the biradari) are under pressure to
maintain a picture of unity, because disunity means
dishonour. A quote from the study says:
There is considerable pressure for patrilineal kin to
maintain good relations with one another. Biradari
members who quarrel will try to resolve their differences
before major social occasions so that the patrilineage
can present a united front to the village.
It has been observed that Pakistan itself is ruled by a
small group of between 22 and 43 families (4). With the
entire ruling apparatus of Pakistan under control of a
small group of family units, the family obligations of
Pakistani society to avoid shame creates the need for
whitewashing military disasters and other mistakes. The
deeply Islamic fervor of the average Pakistani comes in
handy here as all errors and defeats can be explained
53
away as God's will - an explanation that most devout
Pakistanis will accept without question.
It is possible that the Pakistani need to maintain honour
and dignity and somehow appear equal or superior to India
was understood and exploited by Indian leaders in 1998,
when India conducted a series of nuclear weapon tests,
breaking a 24 year self-imposed moratorium.
Even before the 1998 tests Pakistan was widely
acknowledged to possess nuclear weapons. Pakistan need
not have tested immediately after India's tests. If
Pakistan had not tested, it would have put India in a
very tight situation, with international censure and
sanctions, while Pakistan could have basked in the
sympathy it would surely have got for having an
aggressive nuclear neighbor in India.
But the need to save Pakistani honour was too great after
the Indian tests. The national sense of shame in being
unable to publicly match India was so intense that Prime
Minister Nawaz Sharif acknowledged that he would not
survive unless he sanctioned nuclear tests by Pakistan.
Pakistan did test a nuclear device of its own two weeks
after India's tests and although there is some
controversy about the real origin of the device tested by
Pakistan, the test greatly diluted the international
attention that India was getting after its tests, and put
the spotlight on Pakistan, a spotlight that has only
become brighter after the September 11th 2001 terrorist
attacks in the US.
Rhetoric and Hyperbole:
The Pakistani need for the maintenance of honour and
avoidance of shame ideally involves and outright military
54
victory. When such victory is not possible or unlikely,
the war needs to be continued verbally to avoid shame.
Every accusation is made to show that an adversary is
cowardly, weak and untruthful, with Pakistanis being
courageous, righteous and heading for victory.
Such hyperbole seems to be necessary psychological
support for the Pakistani mind, although it often sounds
hollow and unconvincing. Only a total victory or a
mediator leading to a solution on Pakistani terms can
maintain honour enough to allow such hyperbole to die
down. David Pryce Jones has described the connection
between honour, shame and rhetoric (45): Honour makes
life worth living whereas shame is a living death. Shame
and honour involve publicity; success involves bragging,
and shame means public humiliation.
Stemming directly from this rhetoric and hyperbole is the
decades old campaign of misinformation that Pakistan has
maintained about itself, its armed forces, its wars and
about India. The degree of misinformation is astonishing,
but easy to understand in the light of the deep Pakistani
need to maintain honour and avoid shame.
For example, wars are never lost, and any defeats are
temporary setbacks. Arms built under licence are always
shown as indigenous. Ballistic missiles imported from
China and North Korea are repainted and given Pakistani
names to be flaunted as missiles designed and
manufactured in Pakistan. Indians are always depicted as
being conniving and scheming, never as courageous and
honourable. The Indian armed forces are always referred
to by Pakistan as being weak and dishonourable and always
accused of raping and murdering civilians. Indian leaders
are often referred to as scheming high caste Brahmins or
Banias who are plotting to either dominate or eliminate
people of all other religions and social groups.
55
An example of this tendency can be seen in a two part
article on the events of 1971 that appeared in the online
edition of the Pakistani paper the Jang as recently as
2004, written by a former Pakistani army officer,
Brigadier Anjum (51, 52). In a farcical and fanciful
description Brigadier Anjum does not say a word about the
1971 elections in Pakistan that were won by the East
Pakistani Awami league party, and denies the well
documented genocide of ethnic East Pakistani Bengalis by
West Pakistani troops (chapter 11). Anjum's explanation
of why reports of genocide by Pakistani troops are false
is as follows:
Senator Edward Kennedy, having a pro-India prejudice
..addressed a press conference in New Delhi to say that
he was convinced that Pakistan army had committed
genocide in East Pakistan. This was enough to disparage
Pakistan Army
Brigadier Anjum makes this record of India's role:
India with a mission in hand to destroy Pakistan was
first to demolish its basis..
The Indian intervention to stop the genocide by Pakistani
troops is described in the following way:
it was an act of military piracy at the highest level to
destroy the professional propriety of soldiers who were
on lawful duty...The interference of Indian army in East
Pakistan was a well thought out conspiracy hatched by
India and vociferously backed by the Soviet Union
Many sources (53, 54, 55) have documented the surrender
of 90,000 Pakistani troops in East Pakistan at the end of
the 1971 war. Brigadier Anjum records his version of
56
history as:
The number of combatant soldiers out of the 90.000 socalled
prisoners of war was just over forty thousands.
The rest of PoWs were civilians and their families,
mostly children.
The need to appear superior to and better than India is
fundamental for the Pakistani. That is what justifies the
formation and existence of Pakistan. Accepting that India
and Indians may be in any way better than Pakistan is
deeply dishonourable and shameful to the Pakistani. The
feeling threatens the very existence of Pakistan and is a
feeling that must avoided at all cost.
Disputes and mediation:
Pakistani leaders have initiated war against India mainly
when they have assessed India as being weak. On every
occasion, the Pakistani assessment of Indian weakness has
led to a situation in which Pakistan is faced with
military defeat. But to the Pakistani leadership, an
offer of peace by any party is considered as a sign of
weakness. Courage and a willingness to fight are
honourable, and offering peace is a sign of cowardice and
an unwillingness to fight.
When faced with a situation in which Pakistan is the
weaker party, the need to maintain honour and avoid shame
requires that Pakistan must not sue for peace by directly
negotiating with India. This calls for the introduction
of a mediator or middleman. It is cowardly to call for
peace directly, but it is honourable to agree to peace
when mediated by a respected third party, which avoids
the need for defeat and dishonour. Any concessions that
Pakistan is forced to make can be conveniently blamed on
57
the mediating party. The important need here is for
Pakistani leaders to appear to be strong and retain their
honour in front of their own people. It does not matter
if anyone else considers that Pakistan was defeated, weak
or dishonoured as long as the Pakistani people see their
leaders as having pulled off some kind of victory, and
are not seen as having lost their honour to the weaker
party India.
This explains the tendency that Pakistani leaders have to
call for third party mediation in settling a dispute
between India and Pakistan by appealing to the US, the
UN, the International community or any other third party
rather than facing shame by negotiating for settlement
directly with India. In the Kargil conflict, when
Pakistani forces were facing rout, the Pakistani Prime
Minister Nawaz Sharif demanded an audience with President
Clinton of the US and then ordered withdrawal of the
remnants of the Pakistani forces to give the appearance
that it was not a clear defeat, but a respected third
party's request from President Clinton of the US that
made a triumphant Pakistan pull back from defeating
India.
Because talk of peace is considered to be a sign of
weakness, it is likely that peace offers from India have
been misinterpreted by Pakistani leaders. Indian peace
initiatives are seen as a sign of weakness, which must be
met with threats and demands for concessions. But an
India that appears to be showing weakness by talking
about peace mystifies Pakistan by refusing third party
mediation. For India, third party mediation is
unacceptable in what is essentially a bilateral dispute
with Pakistan. This confuses and angers the Pakistani
leadership, because on the one hand India appears weak to
them by asking for peace, but on the other hand India
refuses third party mediation which a weak nation should
58
accept with gratitude to save its own face.
One more factor that must be taken into account in
negotiation with Pakistan is that Pakistan may fail to
honour prior agreements as it has done with the UN
resolutions and the subsequent Simla agreement of 1972
with India. It is possible that Pakistani leaders
consider all agreements and treaties as temporary
instruments to buy time. When faced with the stark choice
of being with America, or against America after the
September 11th 2001 terrorist attacks on the US, President
General Musharraf explained to his people in a speech in
Urdu that his aligning with the US would be a temporary
alliance with the devil. In support of this plan General
Musharraf used the analogy of the charter of Madina and
the treaty of Hudaibiya signed by the Prophet Mohammad in
his September 19th 2001 speech (56).
The Martial Mind:
One of the enduring myths to have come out of Pakistan is
that Pakistanis are somehow a martial race - with
military tradition in their blood, with the courage and
valor that such a military tradition suggests being
somehow enshrined in the Pakistani's genes.
General Ayub Khan who led Pakistan into the 1965 war with
India had boasted that One Pakistani soldier is equal to
six Indian soldiers The genesis of this attitude is
interesting.
In 1857, soldiers of the British Indian army rose up in a
rebellion in what is now known as the first war of Indian
Independence. That rebellion was eventually quelled by
the British with troops mainly from the Punjab
particularly Muslim troops from what is now the Pakistani
59
Punjab, assisted by Pashtun troops. After this event, the
British greatly changed the composition of the Indian
army forces, by recruiting mainly Muslim Punjabi troops
and Pashtun troops from the North Western parts of preindependence
India, which are now part of Pakistan. These
troops were subsequently in the thick of all the
campaigns that Imperial Britain was fighting. The British
gradually began to refer to these groups as martial
races. Retired Pakistani army Major Agha Humayun Amin
wrote about the Pakistani army feeling of martial
superiority (57):
The "Martial Races Theory" in reality was an Imperial
gimmick to boost the ego of the cannon fodder. Various
British writers like Philip Mason frankly admitted that
the real reason for selective recruitment was political
reliability in crisis situations, which the Punjabis had
exhibited during the 1857-58 Bengal Army rebellion.
Pakistan the nation was formed with the belief that its
army was, from the beginning, somehow superior by virtue
of its being composed of martial races. Maj. Amin goes on
to write:
The Pakistani nation had been fed on propaganda about
martial superiority of their army...the Pakistani GHQ
placed entire reliance on the Superior Valour and Martial
Qualities of the Pakistani (Punjabi and Pathan Muslim
soldier) vis a vis the Hindu Indian soldier, as proved in
1965 war and felt that somehow, in the next war to
miracles would occur and the Pakistan Army would do well
Hard as it may be for a rational thinking person to
believe, Pakistani military adventurism has been guided
by a firm belief in the innate racial superiority of the
Pakistani soldier and supported by a belief that Pakistan
and Pakistanis are somehow performing Allah's will and
60
that God would therefore be on their side no matter how
preposterous or ill advised the action.
Positive Self-image:
One remarkable feature noticeable among Pakistanis,
especially Punjabi Pakistanis is an extremely good and
positive self-image of themselves and their people. Their
self-esteem is unshakable to the extent that no factor is
allowed to get in the way of identifying themselves as
superior and excellent.
Hamid Hussain wrote of Pakistani military officers' selfimage
in Pakistan's defence journal (58):
these military officers also have dangerously selfexaggerated
opinion of their capacities both in terms of
defence of the country's frontiers and their ability as
an organized body to fix all problems of the society.
Confidence in one's abilities, pride and constant
struggle to excel professionally are essential elements
of a good officer's corps. The problem starts when these
positive traits are stretched to unrealistic limits,
which now enter the zone of grandiose ideas and selfrighteousness.
A good self-image can be a useful personality attribute
if it is not carried to extreme lengths in which all
others are considered inferior. Unfortunately that has
occurred among Pakistan's elite, to the detriment of
Pakistan. Former Prime Minister of Pakistan, Benazir
Bhutto, herself a Sindhi, recalls having been taught as a
child that West Pakistanis are tall, fair-complexioned
and eat wheat, while East Pakistanis (Bengalis) are
short, dark-complexioned and eat rice. The East
Pakistanis were held in contempt by West Pakistanis.
Major Amin writes(57):
61
the generals were convinced that the Bengali was too meek
to ever challenge the martial Punjabi or Pathan
Muslim..The Bengalis were despised as non martial by all
West Pakistanis.
This contempt with which West Pakistanis viewed their own
countrymen contributed to the secession of East Pakistan
and the formation of Bangladesh in 1971. In one of the
few elections held in Pakistan, the 1971 elections gave a
thumping majority to the Awami League, an East Pakistan
based political party headed by a Bengali, Sheikh Mujibur
Rehman. If the results of these elections had been
carried through to their logical conclusion, Mujibur
Rehman and his party should have formed the government of
Pakistan in Islamabad. But the Punjabi generals of the
Pakistani army, who considered themselves superior to the
short, dark and non-martial Bengalis could not face the
idea of being ruled by an inferior Bengali as Prime
Minister. The results of the election were annulled and
martial law was clamped in East Pakistan. A subsequent
genocide of over three million East Pakistanis led to the
Indian military intervention in East Pakistan, and the
liberation of Bangladesh.
If Bengali Muslim East Pakistanis were considered
racially inferior by West Pakistanis, it is not
surprising to note that Pakistanis have considered
themselves racially superior to the "dark, ugly"
Hindustani Indians. This feeling was a carry over from
the pre-Independence days when the British relied on the
martial race for their army recruits. Maj. Amin writes,
To Kiplings contemporaries, the taller and fairer a
native, the better man he was likely to be
A visible symbol of the contempt with which Indians are
taught to be regarded in Pakistan can be seen from some
62
Pakistani textbooks for small children to learn the Urdu
alphabet. The word kafir means unbeliever, but in the
Pakistani context it is a derogatory term for a non-
Muslim. Children's alphabet books carry the word kafir as
an example of a word that starts with the Urdu equivalent
of the letter k. Associated with the word is a picture of
a kafir - which is often the picture of a Hindu of a
Sikh. Even today, in the 21st century it is possible to
visit Pakistani chat-rooms and discussion fora on the
Internet to find references to Indians as short, dark,
ugly, weak or cowardly.
Stemming from the self-image of the Pakistani is his
sense of entitlement. Spokespersons for Pakistan never
tire of pointing out that Pakistan is not getting its
due. Pakistan is always portrayed as being just, fair and
sacrificing, and that India, the US or the world owe
Pakistan a lot more that it is getting. At every step,
Pakistan is said to have already done, or already given
more than necessary and that the onus is on the other
party to pay Pakistan back for services rendered and
sacrifices made.
Islamic overlay in Pakistani behavior:
The obvious question is "Why would anyone's religion make
his behavior different or peculiar?" It is better to
answer the question than ignore it and assume that
religion has, or does not have any bearing on behavior.
Arab scholar Raphael Patai, in his seminal work on Arab
psyche (42) lists a few characteristics of Arab
personality that arise from Islamic beliefs. From the
profound application of Islamic beliefs among Pakistanis,
63
it seems that the same characteristics can be seen among
Pakistanis, with evidence of the same in their behavior.
One powerful Islamic belief is that of predestiny; the
belief that all events are predestined or decided
beforehand by God and cannot be avoided or changed in any
way. Patai quotes this Islamic belief as the requirement
that Man has no choice but to go through the course of
events, which have been written down for him in God's
Book to the smallest detail. Not even in everyday life
can a man do anything, either to hasten or otherwise
influence events.
These beliefs are referred to in the words kismat and
naseeb that occur in Urdu, but stem from Arabic and
Persian respectively.
The average, poor uneducated Pakistani believes that his
life is pre-ordained by Allah to be the way it is, and
that he will be rewarded for his piety in an afterlife
with an assured place in a well-stocked heaven. The
average citizen's life may be lived in poverty in
someone's service because that is what God has willed for
him and attempting to change that would be against the
will of God. For this reason, the average Pakistani is
unlikely to revolt against his lot in life, or even to
try to fight to make it better. He will do what his
feudal master, local lord, or religious leader tells him
to do, so long as it does not go against his Islamic
conscience.
The docility of the average Pakistani in day-to-day life
is probably beneficial to the stability of feudal
Pakistani society, but does not augur well for
development. Development requires effort and change and
the belief in predestiny rules that conditions and events
that the Pakistani experiences in life are ordained by
64
Allah to be as they are and must not be changed or
tampered with in any way.
Such beliefs also make the average Pakistani male citizen
a prime candidate for motivation into leading a life as
an Islamic warrior. Such a life is tempting because it
meets all his human and psychological requirements. He is
well looked after during the indoctrination and training
period, and any subsequent violence he takes part in
would ensure for him a respected place in his society as
an Islamic warrior, or ensure a place in heaven if he
were, as is quite likely, to die in action.
Unless there is a fundamental and deep rooted effort
within Pakistan to change the relationship of the
Pakistani with his religion, a relationship deliberately
cultivated by the Pakistani elite for their own ends,
there can be virtually no hope of achieving a sea-change
in the internal situation of Pakistan, and the external
consequences of that.
65
Chapter 6
WOMEN AND MINORITIES OF PAKISTAN
With 108 men for every 100 women in Pakistan (59), the
women of Pakistan could probably be called a minority, to
be counted along with other minorities of Pakistan such
as Shia Muslims, Ahmedis, Hindus and Christians.
The state of Pakistani women has a powerful bearing on
the condition of Pakistan. For example, two out of three
women in Pakistan are uneducated. The importance of this
fact lies in that many studies show that poverty,
malnutrition and child labor are higher in societies
where the women are uneducated.
Pakistani women's rights activist Ameera Javeria, in an
article entitled To be a woman in Pakistan is to ask for
a life of subservience (60) wrote:
Pakistani women continue to be victims of an unjust
society rooted in history and tradition. Lack of
awareness about their rights and their need for education
has added to their predicament. Most Islamic communities
are averse to the idea of giving women social status
equal to that of men. That a strong feudal elite still
rules the roost in the vast countryside is a major
impediment to enlightenment and democracy, while a
powerful clergy rejects all notions of equality and
freedom for women. Those women who rebel by asserting
their rightful place in society are punished and
considered immoral; many have been the victims of
domestic violence, rape, and murder.
Another report (50) on Pakistani society says this about
women:
A woman's life is difficult during the early years of
66
marriage. A young bride has very little status in her
husband's household; she is subservient to her mother-inlaw
and must negotiate relations with her sisters-inlaw....
A wife gains status and power as she bears sons.
Sons will bring wives for her to supervise and provide
for her in her old age. Daughters are a liability, to be
given away in an expensive marriage with their virginity
intact. Therefore, mothers favor their sons.
A gender bias toward boys is clear from this description.
With girls being a liability to be given away after
marriage, education of girls has a low priority in
Pakistan. Among some groups it is believed that education
of girls leads to immorality.
The woman of the family is considered fundamental to
maintaining the honour of the family group. A woman must
be chaste and subservient to the man, and failure to do
this can lead to dishonour a crime punishable by death.
honour killings in which a father or a brother kill a
woman for having dishonoured the family are common in
Pakistan.
A report on family violence in Pakistani society (61)
says:
(sic)The Male dominant society of Pakistan with strong
sense of complete " Mastery " feel's pride to Dictate his
terms of Physical and Mental Torture to his Wife, Sister,
or Daughter in front of other adult and small members of
the family.
Particularly egregious is the Hudood ordinance - a law
that is in effect in Pakistan. One of the purposes of the
Hudood ordinance is apparently to discourage extramarital
sex. An explanation of how this law is applied can be
seen in the following quote (62):
67
Since the passage of the Hudood Ordinance in 1979 under
the military government of Zia al Haq, "zina" or extramarital
intercourse, has been considered a crime against
the state in Pakistan...this law often prescribes cruel
and devastating punishments, such as whipping or stoning
the individual(s) in question, and explicitly
discriminates against women...the Hudood Ordinance has
legally blurred the distinction between rape and
extramarital sex, resulting in the imprisonment and/or
physical punishment of numerous women who have come
forward with charges of rape without witnesses.
Consequently, many rape victims are deemed criminals in a
Pakistani court of law.
Pakistan is stuck in a vicious circle in which the elite
corner all the resources, leaving little for education of
the poor. And among this class the women are the worst
off, uneducated and discriminated; and this leads to
further poverty and degradation in society. No force in
Pakistan seems to have the wisdom, will or power to
change this.
Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan is said to
have had a vision for Pakistan in which people of all
religions in Pakistan would co-exist. In his 11th August
1947 speech to the constituent assembly of Pakistan,
Jinnah said (63):
You may belong to any religion or caste or creed - that
has nothing to do with the business of the state ... in
the course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus and
Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious
sense, because that is the personal faith of each
individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the
state."
68
A few months later, in 1948, Jinnah reiterated his
vision:
We have many non-Muslims-Hindus, Christians and Parsis
... but they are all Pakistanis. They will enjoy the same
rights and privileges as any other citizens and will play
their rightful part in the affairs of Pakistan."
But Jinnah's vision for Pakistan died with Jinnah.
Pakistan's record in the treatment of its religious
minorities is shameful and unapologetic.
In his landmark paper (64), possibly the first scientific
statistical analysis of the question of ethnic cleansing
in Pakistan, researcher Sridhar notes:
..almost 89% of the minorities in West Pakistan were
ethnically cleansed, i.e. killed, converted or driven out
of the country. Almost 54% of the minority population
ended up as refugees in India, while a very high 35% of
the minority population is simply unaccounted for. These
are people who were likely killed or converted into
Islam.
Population researcher P.H. Reddy has noted that at the
time of formation of Pakistan, there were over 20 million
non-Muslims in the areas that formed Pakistan mostly
Hindus. After the migration of partition, approximately 7
million non-Muslims remained in what is now West Pakistan
making up approximately ten per cent of the population of
West Pakistan. In the years since independence,
Pakistan's population has more than doubled to nearly 150
million, but only three per cent, or 4.5 million people
are non Muslims in modern day Pakistan. About half of
that number are Hindus and the other half are Christian.
In simple terms, in 56 years since independence the
69
population of Muslims in Pakistan went up from about 60
million to 145 million, while the population of non-
Muslims fell from 7 million to 4.5 million. Hindus formed
the largest minority in Pakistan at independence and
their number has reduced to around 1.5 million.
In November 2002, the Times of India (65) quoted Noor Naz
Agha, a prominent Pakistani lawyer and rights activist as
saying:
Minorities are not safe in Pakistan. Recently, several
attacks have been made on churches, hospitals, even on
human rights organisations. And several people have been
killed,"
The treatment of religious minorities in Pakistan leaves
a lot to be desired. The problem stems from an attitude
that Pakistan is for Sunni Muslims alone, and people of
other religions, and even Shia Muslims are to be looked
upon with contempt. The discrimination extends to
derogatory references to non-Islamic people in school
textbooks, as noted in chapter 3.
M.H. Aksari, writing in the Pakistani paper Dawn (66)
said,
The former Indian foreign secretary, J.N. Dixit,
recalling his days as ambassador in Islamabad says that
once when he called on a Pakistani friend, the latter's
six-year old daughter on discovering that Dixit was a
Hindu skipped around the table chanting 'Hindu Kutta',
'Hindu Kutta.'
Hindu Kutta means Hindu Dog. But it is not Hindus alone
who are discriminated against in Pakistan. Over the years
the Pakistan army leadership has encouraged a
70
particularly intolerant Islamic mindset to prevail and
thrive in Pakistan. Shia Muslims in Pakistan are
subjected to terrorist attacts and discrimination, and
the Ahmediya sect have been declared as non-Muslims in
Pakistan for their beliefs. Pakistan is busy changing
Islam to suit the needs of a small elite.
The role of the Pakistani army leaders in this is clear
from a report that was carried in the paper Dawn in
November 2003 (67).
Ziaul Haq actively encouraged this misguided Islamic
fervour...Ziaul Haq's advice led to widespread religious
riots ... Many people, mostly Shias, were killed and
their houses burnt. The local administration did little
to control the situation. A foreign diplomat, who
happened to be travelling by road from Skardu to
Islamabad a couple of days after all this started, told
me that he saw houses en-route burning and that the route
provided a spectacle of war and destruction.
There is a movement in Pakistan to have Shias declared
non-Muslim. Following a massacre of Shia Muslims in a
Pakistani mosque on the Islamic holy day of Moharram in
2004, senior analyst B. Raman wrote about anti-Shia
hostility in Pakistan (68):
The last years of the Zia regime saw the Shias of Gilgit
come out with a demand for a separate Shia State
consisting of Gilgit and the Shia majority areas of
Punjab and the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP). They
wanted the Shia state to be called the Karakoram Province
and remain part of a confederation of Pakistan. The Zia
regime crushed the Shia movement ruthlessly. In August
1988, the Pakistan Army inducted a large Sunni tribal
force from the NWFP and the Federally-Administered Tribal
Areas (FATA), led by Osama bin Laden, into Gilgit and it
71
massacred hundreds of Shias and crushed their revolt.
The hatred of the Shias for Osama bin Laden and his Al
Qaeda dates from this period.
Successive governments in Pakistan, mostly military, but
civilian as well, have consistently fought and opposed
anyone and everyone, foreign nations as well as their own
people. The only things that have been preserved intact
and untouched in Pakistan are the power and wealth of the
elite of the army, a few businessmen and the feudal lords
and their allies, the preachers of a narrow brand of
Sunni Islam, who are responsible for a rising tide of
Islamic fundamentalism.
72
Chapter 7
PARTITION AND THE TWO-NATION THEORY
When Indians and Pakistanis meet, one is struck by their
similarity. Indians are fond of saying "Pakistanis are
just like us" but one will find that Pakistanis do not
tend to say "Indians are just like us". Being different
from Indians is a fundamental requirement that defines
the Pakistani.
Before India was partitioned in 1947, some of the Muslim
elite in India, who were later to go to Pakistan,
considered themselves the descendants of the Mughals who
had ruled vast tracts of India. When the British were set
to leave India, it was realised by these real or
perceived descendants of Mughals that in a democratic
India, they would not automatically regain control of the
lands they had lost to the British. The demand for a
separate nation was a natural extension of this Mughal
mindset. This group of individuals formed a migrant
nation.
The Weekly Standard reported in October 2001 (69):
Created on August 15, 1947, from the northern, primarily
Muslim provinces of British India, Pakistan isn't really
a nation-state. It is a geographic expression of an ageold
Islamic ideal: Muslims should not, if at all
possible, live under non-Muslim rule. Living under the
all-mighty British was unpleasant for many.. Living under
the far more numerous Hindus, whom the Muslim Mogul
dynasty had dominated for centuries before the arrival of
the English, was worse. For the English-educated Muslim
elite, it was intolerable.. Gandhi's Indian democracy was
going to be Hindu, so a Muslim "Land of the Pure"--the
literal meaning of Pakistan--was essential to protect and
nurture the faithful.
73
MB Naqvi wrote in the Jang of Pakistan (70):
Historically the majority of Muslims, originally lowcaste
Hindus, affected a superiority complex, especially
in Northern India. They feared being falling down into
the vast assimilative sea of Hindudom surrounding them
wherein they will be at the bottom of social heap. May be
they would be punished for former uppishness and for real
or imagined wrongs. That explained their demonstrative
adherence to Islam, which is what distinguished them from
Hindus. Their religious exhibitionism and a superiority
complex led to emphases on differences with Hindus and
regarding themselves as rulers' kith and kin deserving
privileges and safeguards -- the leitmotif of preindependence
Indian Muslim politics.
Others' refusal to accept Muslims demands, calculated to
preserve imagined privileges, angered them and an
adversarial attitude vis-a-vis Hindus developed. Muslims
thus demanded weightage - actually equality of treatment
with Hindus - reservations and separate electorate. These
came from, and strengthened, two traits: first, not to
accept democracy's implications, especially the equality
with Hindus. The second was to depend on a ruling or
hegemonic power to get them their due.
But Pakistan was not formed merely by people with this
Mughal mindset. Another root of partition lay with the
defeat of the Turkish Caliphate by the British in 1918.
When that occurred, Muslims all over the world, and
certainly in pre-independence India attempted to go back
to their Islamic roots. One of the consequences was that
they discouraged their children from attending secular
schools, and encouraged education in Islamic schools,
madrassas. The end of the Caliphate was a symbolic blow
to Muslims who has grown up to look at the Islamic empire
74
as extending from Arabia in the center to North Africa in
the West, Southern Europe to the North and Central Asia,
India and South East Asia to the East. The Caliph was the
symbolic head of this empire, although he by no means
controlled even a fraction of that empire. The word
Caliph means deputy in Arabic, and the first Caliph had
been appointed by the Prophet Mohammad, and the end of
the Caliphate was the end of a long line of Caliphs that
extended from antiquity.
A concept in Islam speaks of a dar ul Islam, a house of
Islam - a house or a group of followers of Islam, and a
dar ul harb or house of war, consisting of unbelievers -
people who were not followers of Islam. Inherent in the
concept of dar ul harb was that Islam, and Muslims would
always be under threat in the dar ul harb. The concept
probably dates back to the early years of Islam, when
there was a central but rapidly expanding Islamic empire,
around which were lands with non-Muslims who were at war
with the followers of the new religion. For Muslims who
could not have their way with separate representation in
pre-independence India, staying in India would be
tantamount to living under subjugation in the dar ul
harb, a completely unacceptable situation, The demand for
a separate state for Muslims only was a logical extension
of this thought process.
The Friday Times had this to say (71):
In India, Muslim existence was deemed a kind of
permanent emergency (dar-ul-harb) and migration was
considered an option in the defiance of British raj.
Allama Iqbal, the poet who composed the popular Indian
patriotic song Saare Jahaan se achcha, Hindustan hamara
later paradoxically endorsed the need for a separate
nation for Muslims (72):
75
Allama Iqbal asserted that there is only one nation
opposed to the Muslim Umma, and that is the nation of
non-Muslims! In other words, the world is divided into
two camps, the Muslims and Non-Muslims.
Another key player in the call for Pakistan was Maulana
Maududi, the ideological founder of Pakistan (73):
(The) Pakistan Movement was based on the theory that
Muslims are entirely separate people from Hindus in every
respect... This theory is popularly known as two-nation
theory. Under the leadership of Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali
Jinnah, the movement, in less than a decade gave birth to
Pakistan The man who is most credited as an intellectual
force behind the two-nation theory and a front against
united Indian nationalism is Maulana Abul Ala Maududi.
A third factor that contributed to the formation of
Pakistan was the political power aspiration of Mohammad
Ali Jinnah who saw in the formation of the new nation of
Pakistan a ready made constituency of Muslims, in
addition to power and glory for himself and the new
nation.
The result, as eloquently documented by Rajiv Malhotra,
was (74):
Without any concrete 'dispute' between Hindus and
Muslims, the logic that prevailed was that Muslims
require segregation of political and social life in order
to be in compliance with the demands of sharia. The Two-
Nation Theory was a manifestation of the doctrine of darul-
islam versus dar-ul-harb.
With Islam, and Islamic reasons being the basis for the
formation of Pakistan, Pakistanis have, right from the
76
beginning, been taught to regard themselves as Muslims
first and foremost, and as opposed to being citizens of
the nation, Pakistan. Pakistan was supposed to be a
homeland for Muslims of India and its formation was
pushed through by the groups who wanted it, over the
wishes of other groups, including some such as the
Jamaat-i-Islami who did not favor the formation of
Pakistan.
Not much thought was put into whether a state based on
religion alone would be able to survive. With Jinnah as
leader the heady success of nation formation in 1947 was
enough. Pakistan had come into existence. It was Islamic.
It was not Indian. It was a victory of Islam over the
British and the Hindus. The fact of being Pakistani
brought with it a liberal dose of pride, satisfaction,
honour and dignity. For the new Pakistanis India was a
land of kafirs, unbelievers. It was a land of
superstition, discrimination, hunger and poverty. A
nation in decline. Pakistan would not be like India.
Pakistan would be progressive, strong and Islamic. And
Pakistan would claim to represent the Muslims who had
stayed behind in India. Pakistan would represent Islam
itself it would be a leading light of Islam in the world.
It was the first Islamic state to be created in the
modern era ab initio.
Although the purpose of this book is to present a study
of Pakistan after partition, it would not be out of place
to mention briefly the civilizational effect that
partition had on India. When studied over centuries,
civilizations can often be seen to behave like live
beings. In civilizational terms, the splitting up of
British India into modern India and Pakistan can be
compared to an act of auto-amputation. This is a
condition in which a live human body spontaneously
discards and casts off a dead or diseased part, such as a
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toe or a fingertip so that the body itself can survive
and not be affected by the disease that damaged the toe
or finger. For India partition was akin to that - a
civilizational auto-amputation.
In one convulsive act, the people of the Indian
subcontinent agreed to place all the people who wanted to
live and work in a united India in one place, and and all
the people who did not wish to live and work in India
were placed in Pakistan.
Strange as it may sound, this tumultuous self-mutilating
act was a profoundly democratic one, in which those who
wanted to opt out of India were allowed to opt out, and
those who wanted to stay, stayed. The actual act of
partition was accompanied by horrifying suffering and
death, but after five decades the memories of the pain
are beginning to fade; more than two-thirds of the
population of India having been after 1947, after the
painful events of partition. It is easier for these
younger Indians to see that for India, partition was not
so much an act of separation of all Hindus from all
Muslims, but it merely segregated a sub-group of Indians
who did not want to co-exist with other Indians. The vast
majority of Indians rooted for India and worked for
India.
Pakistanis did not see things that way. They saw
themselves as Muslims, and Pakistani leaders assumed that
the Muslims remaining in India would automatically rise
up and revolt, and that India would fragment and break.
They were wrong. The initial fragmentation and breaking
that occurred at partition, continued in Pakistan, with
the formation of Bangladesh. Pakistan had filled itself
with people whose intent was less to live and work in
harmony, and more to live away from some group or the
other.
78
It was only after the formation of Pakistan that all the
assumptions made about Islam as a unifying concept began
to break down. There were contradictions at every turn.
The 15 million mohajirs who migrated to Pakistan from
India were not welcomed. But they were educated and held
all the important bureaucratic posts. The mohajirs found
that their survival in Pakistan would be made easier by
creating and maintaining an India scare - a phobia
against the scheming Hindu who was out to subjugate or
kill all Muslims. The mohajirs, the Muslim elite of India
who had migrated to Pakistan were in an ideal position to
concoct any stories they wished about the bestial Hindus
they had left behind.
Apart from the mohajirs was the other half of Pakistan,
East Pakistan, with its people, the Bengalis. The fact
that East Pakistani Bengalis were Muslim did not help to
stop the West Pakistani disdain for the short, dark, fish
and rice-eating Bengali, as opposed to the tall, fair,
wheat eating Pakistani Punjabi. The possibility of
democracy in Pakistan brought with it the threat of a
short, dark, rice-eating Bengali becoming Prime Minister
of Pakistan. That would have been totally unacceptable to
the Pakistani Punjabi. Punjabis made up 90% of the
Pakistani army, and the army had no intention of seeing
its Punjabi dominance being subordinate to the inferior
Bengali.
This complex web of factors kept Pakistanis from uniting
with each other but the Islam argument was used for
unity. Any threat, and any setback to Pakistan, even when
caused by internal politics and mismanagement was blamed
on India. India and Indians were continuously and
bitterly accused of being anti-Pakistan and anti-Muslim.
It was drummed into ordinary Pakistanis that they must be
good Muslims, and while Pakistanis struggled to meet the
79
standards set for them, the ruling elite lived as they
pleased.
In his book, Among the Believers(75), Nobel Prize winning
author V.S. Naipaul describes travels through Pakistan,
and records interviews with a diverse group of
Pakistanis. A repeated observation that comes out is that
the ordinary Pakistani citizen is under pressure to be a
good Muslim. The Pakistani citizen is judged by whether
he is a good Muslim or not. Every act or event in
Pakistan has to be seen through the prism of whether it
is Islamic or not. One of the problems that crops up from
this is the definition of "Who is a good Muslim?".
Naipaul says, To be a devout Muslim was always to have
distinctive things to do; it was to be guided constantly
by rules; it was to live in a fever of the faith and
always to be aware of the distinctiveness of the faith.
And Pakistanis believed that this was all that was
needed. It was only necessary for everyone to be a good
Muslim, and everything else would look after itself.
After all Islam had given them a nation. It would now
provide for that nation.
80
Chapter 8
ISLAM AND PAKISTAN
In the end, it could perhaps be said that Islam was too
big for Pakistan to keep as its private domain. Pakistan
was unable to grab and hold Islam as though Islam and
Pakistan were one and the same.
To be sure, Pakistani leaders, for decades behaved as
though Pakistan was Islam and Islam was Pakistan. Even
before independence, Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan had
called the flag of his political party, the Muslim League
as the Flag of Islam and had said you cannot separate the
Muslim League from Islam. (76). A very popular slogan in
Pakistan was, "Pakistan ka matlab kya, La ilaha
illallah". The slogan combines a few words taken from the
the Islamic call to prayer La ilaha illallah - meaning
there is no God but God and attaches those words to
Pakistan to make the meaning What does Pakistan mean
there is no God but God - implying that Pakistan and
Islam are one and the same.
But this charade could only last a few years before the
fallacies began to show.
It is endlessly and erroneously repeated that Pakistan
was formed for the Muslims of the Indian subcontinent.
This is a shameful piece of fiction that needs to be set
right. Pakistan was formed for some, and not all Muslims
of the Indian subcontinent.
Demographer P.H. Reddy noted in the Times of India on 8th
April 2003 (77):
According to the 1941 census, out of a total of 435
districts in undivided India, there were 76 in which more
than 50 per cent of the people were Muslims. Based on
81
this demographic fact, the Sir Cyril Radcliffe's Boundary
Commission allotted these 76 districts to Pakistan. The
76 Muslim-majority districts were grouped together in two
clusters. One cluster was in north-west India and the
other in north-east India. Western Pakistan comprised the
north-west part of the sub-continent and Eastern Pakistan
comprised eastern part of Bengal and one district in
Assam...In 1951, Muslims numbered 3.54 crore, making up
9.9 per cent of the total population of India.
Over the centuries Islam reached a balance with the
cultures of the people who adopted Islam. Arab culture
had existed in Arabia for centuries before Islam was
born, and Arab culture adopted and internalized Islam,
which was born in Arabia. Egyptians live in peace with
their past, and do not seek to deny the ancient, pre-
Islamic Egyptian civilization of Pharaohs who built the
Pyramids. An entire literature and culture of Islam
developed in Persia, using the Persian language. Islam
spread peacefully into Indonesia and was absorbed and
rationalized by the local culture.
Similarly Islam developed and flowered in India with its
own unique literature, arts and architecture produced by
an intermingling of two rich cultures. The formation of
Pakistan sought to deny this vibrant entity. Jinnah
exploited a cleavage in Indian society to proclaim:
Hindus and Muslims belong to two different religious
philosophies, social customs, literature", "to two
different civilizations", that they "derive their
inspiration from different sources of history"... (with)
different epics, different heroes and different
episodes." "We wish our people", he declared, "to develop
to the fullest our spiritual, cultural, economic, social
and political life in a way that we think best and in
consonance with our own ideals and according to the
82
genius of our people."
Perhaps Jinnah did not mean to strip Pakistan of the rich
culture that Islam had developed in its centuries of
interaction in India (78).
But the leaders of the new Pakistan who took over after
Jinnah died in 1948, certainly felt that Pakistan should
be stripped of all its connections with India. In an
experimental and unparalleled act of ignorance, Pakistan
was deliberately set on the path of being an orphan,
culture-less nation. Pakistan was not Arabic; it was not
Egyptian or Persian; it was not Indonesian, but it was
definitely not going to be Indian any more. The India
connection had to be stripped clean, leaving Pakistan
purely Islamic. Islamic, for Muslims alone, free from
India or any Indian roots. Indian culture had to be
actively cleaned out of the minds of millions of
Pakistani citizens - a culture of centuries was to be
washed clean, and nobody had any idea of what would
replace the void. The only thing people knew was that
Pakistanis would have to be Islamic, and good Muslims.
The formation of Pakistan was considered a great victory.
But there were inconsistencies and contradictions right
from the beginning and the confusion has remained to this
day.
Was Pakistan a nation for Muslims only? But why did
Jinnah say:
..we have many non-Muslims - Hindus, Christians, and
Parsis - but they are all Pakistanis. They will enjoy the
same rights and privileges as any other citizens... You
are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are
free to go to your mosques or to any other places of
worship in this State of Pakistan...You will find that in
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course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus and
Muslims would cease to be Muslims.. (76)
Was Pakistan a nation for all Muslims of the Indian
subcontinent? If so, Pakistan had failed at birth, as the
majority of Muslims chose to remain in India.
Was Pakistan the leader of all Islamic nations, an
example for Islamic nations to follow as the leader of
the ummah, a modern day Caliphate? But if that was the
case Pakistan should not have had any boundaries. That is
indeed what some Pakistani Islamists believe:
Muslims all over the world must realize that
nationalism is kufr, and that the modern nation-states
are a creation of that period in history when Muslims
were defeated and dominated by kufr. (79) (kufr refers to
unbelievers i.e. People who are not Islamic.)
Pakistani leaders, in their confusion as to what Pakistan
was and what it should do, ended up trying to make
Pakistan take all the routes that it could possibly take
simultaneously. And like a man whose arms and legs are
being pulled apart by horses moving in different
directions, parts of Pakistan, and social and ethnic
groups of Pakistan have all headed in different
directions, resulting in the chaos that Pakistan is
today.
Pakistani leaders claimed that they, and Pakistan, were
purely Islamic, and represented Islam. Islam was and
still remains the ultimate excuse, the lever that is used
in Pakistan to justify anything. For Pakistan, Islam has
served as a tool to be used when convenient, to get aid,
or to deflect blame or to accuse an adversary of
misdeeds. As long as Pakistani leaders hid behind the
Islam excuse for their actions, nobody could question
84
them. After all, Pakistan was Islamic, and therefore
anything that Pakistan did, from waging wars, avoiding
elections, genocide, corruption could not be criticized
by anyone. Any criticism of Pakistan was criticism of
Islam. If Pakistan obtained military and economic aid
from the US, it was because Islam was naturally anticommunist.
India did not dare question Pakistani claims
no matter how preposterous or obscene they were, because
Pakistan was Islamic. Opposing Pakistan was anti-Islamic.
And in this manner, instead of consolidating and unifying
the new state of Pakistan, its leaders set about using
Islam to divert attention to India, and to meddle with
Indian territory and Indian Muslims. India was the source
of all problems; the enemy of Pakistan, and therefore the
enemy of Islam. The India problem had to be solved, and
that took priority over everything else in Pakistan, be
it development, democracy or common sense. The threat
from India became the common denominator for all
Pakistani actions, for postponing elections and for
postponing development of Pakistan indefinitely. And
conveniently, aid and funds poured into Pakistan in the
early years as part of US aid to Pakistan as a cold war
ally. As long as the money kept coming in, there was no
pressure to change policy. India could be fought and
opposed, the people of Pakistan could be kept busy, and
elections postponed. Money and the economy were not a
problem. Allah (God), who had given Pakistan to the
faithful, was providing funds and arms via the US. India
would be defeated. Pakistan could do no wrong.
But as repeated Pakistani assaults against India failed,
Islam could not fail. Pakistanis had failed the faith.
They were not Islamic enough they had to strive to be
better Muslims. They had to starve, sacrifice and allow
their army to get stronger, so that Islam could be upheld
against India, the number one threat to Pakistan, and
85
therefore to Islam. No method was ruled out, no sacrifice
could be too great in opposing India, because opposing
India meant devotion to Islamic ideals. Muslims in
Kashmir, and later all the Muslims in India would be
rescued from Hindu tyranny by Pakistan.
Islam gradually became the tool, the prop, used in
Pakistan to make every opinion or move. The Islam card
was used by everybody in Pakistan to suit their own
purpose. The Pakistani elite, migrants from India,
holding all the important government posts, saw their
positions threatened by the prospect of elections which
would unseat them in favor of locals. Elections were a
threat that had to be postponed or canceled and an
imaginary threat to Islam was invoked. In his essay on
the role of the power structure in Pakistan (80),
Mohammad Waseem wrote:
Muslim migrants from East Punjab and further East in
India shaped the psyche of the new nation along feelings
of insecurity at the hands of India, commitment to
Islamic ideology and the need to unite against all
odds...the migrant elite...dreaded the prospects of their
exit from power in the event of elections.
A report in Pakistan's Friday Times (81) carried this
scathing message on the role of the migrant elite in
using Islam:
On Feb 21, 1952 the historic Bengali language movement
erupted spontaneously all over East Bengal...it remained
a major potential challenge. Foolishly our ruling elite,
instead of going some way to meet Bengali demands,
thought they could isolate the Bengali nationalists by
raising religious slogans of Islamic ideology and Islamic
identity to counter Bengali anger.
86
The army of Pakistan was initially subservient to the
government. After 1971 Zia-ul-Haq started a campaign of
Islamization of the Pakistani army, and strengthened the
process of Islamization of Pakistan started by Zulfikar
Ali Bhutto, whom Zia had deposed in a coup. Rajiv
Malhotra wrote (74):
Islamic texts are being introduced into Pakistani
military training. Middle ranking officers must take
courses and examinations on Islam. There are even serious
attempts under way to define an Islamic military
doctrine, as distinct from the international military
doctrines, so as to fight in accordance with the Koran.
And as Islam was stirred into the mindset of the
Pakistani army, the army started seeing Islam in more and
more of its actions. Columnist Hamid Husain has this to
say about Islamization of the Pakistan army (58):
Brigadier Gulzar Ahmad explaining the role of celestial
powers to lessen his troop casualties in 1965 war stated,
'There was a hidden hand deflecting the rounds'..General
Mahmud Ahmad during Pakistani ambassador's conference
reprimanded the ambassadors for not relying on the
intercession of Providence while analyzing Pakistan's
Afghan policy. Another compelling reason to be very
cautious about overuse of religion is to avoid seeping of
sectarian tendencies into the armed forces.
Finally, for the mullahs (Islamic scholars) of Pakistan,
anything less than an Islamic state in Pakistan was a
threat. Only in an Islamic state could mullahs be
influential and prominent. Pluralism or Western-style
democracy was incompatible with the mullah's world view,
and they supported every measure to make Islam the basis
of the existence of all Pakistanis. M. A. Hussain wrote
(82):
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Imam, Mozin, Mo-alim, Maulavi, etc...have a vested
interest in establishing an Islamic state where they are
locus of power and have tremendous scope for employment.
It explains why even those Ulamas and Maulavis (like
Moulana Maudoodi), who had opposed Jinnah, went to
Pakistan as they saw no role in India for themselves.
With everyone in Pakistan, the people, the bureaucracy
and government, the army and the mullahs seemingly being
in agreement with each other on the question of the
Islamic status of Pakistan, there really should have been
no problem. Everything should have fallen in place, and
gone without a hitch.
But that did not happen. Every group in Pakistan needed
Islam only for their narrow self interest. The idea of an
Islamic state seemed noble enough, but making it reality
was easier said than done.
The Ideal Islamic state existed at the time of the
Prophet Mohammad. The desire for an ideal Islamic state
has been described as follows (83):
The quest for it reflects the desire to model Muslim
politics on the original Islamic community in Medina,
which remains to this day the blueprint for a genuinely
Islamic society. No Muslim polity has measured up to the
combination of piety and social justice achieved by the
Medinese community...But trying to replicate the Medinese
polity remains an ideal.
When the Prophet Mohammad died in AD 632, he left behind
a tradition, but there were no written guidelines on how
a state should be run. In the absence of such guidelines,
Islamic people often ended up being controlled by the
nearest strongman. The men who controlled the sword,
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controlled the ulema (scholars) and the people.
Tamara Sonn, a Professor of religious studies, wrote
(84):
(The Prophet) Muhammad's prophetic mantle was not
inherited by his successors, and he did not leave behind
a specific political system or designate a successor...In
general, the Prophet's successors were expected to be
personally pious and to behave according to the guidance
left by the Prophet, but there were no formal criteria
for determining the community's leadership or judging its
legitimacy.
Succession of leadership among Islamic people has been a
bone of contention ever since that time. And Pakistan is
no exception.
In a report on the relationship of the mullahs and the
military in Pakistan by the International Crisis Group,
(a non-profit multinational organization committed to
resolving conflict) the introduction carries the
following quote (85):
The Muslim state in India was a theocracy...In theory the
sultan's authority in religious matters was limited by
the holy law of the Qu'raan and no sultan could clearly
divorce religion from politics. But in practice the
Muslim sultan of India was a perfect autocrat and his
word was law. The real source of the sultan's authority
was military strength, and this was understood and
acquiesced in...by the soldiers, the poets and the ulema
of the age.
The precedent of the strongman - the military ruler
taking absolute control over Islamic people had already
existed in Mughal India, and was implemented and
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perpetuated in Pakistan. The Pakistan army was invited to
take power, liked it, and held on to power. Other forces
in Pakistan who wanted power and influence, such as the
politicians, bureaucrats and the ulema used the army, or
reached some accommodation with the army. And it was all
done in the name of Islam.
Anything that Pakistan did was done in the name of Islam.
It was done, Pakistani leaders claimed, to uphold Islam
and represent Islam. It was to be assumed by all who were
watching that Pakistan itself was the embodiment of
Islam. After all Pakistan was formed for Islam. Criticism
of Pakistan was criticism of Islam. Pakistani leaders
were always right, always Islamic and they compelled
their people to be more and more Islamic.
Gradually the non-Muslim minorities of Pakistan were
squeezed out (chapter 6) They had no role in Islamic
Pakistan. East Pakistanis their minds poisoned by India
according to some West Pakistani commentators, revolted,
seceded and formed Bangladesh (chapter 11). This blow to
Pakistan was explained on the basis of Pakistan not being
Islamic enough. More and more Islamic laws had to be
passed and implemented. The sharia, zakat, and the Hudood
ordinance were brought in. Islamic fervor, it was
implied, would solve all of Pakistan's problems, and put
and end to the people's misery.
The effort to make Pakistan purely Islamic has been
described by V.S Naipaul in his book "Among the
believers"(75)
This Islamic state couldn't simply be decreed; it had to
be invented, and in that invention faith was of little
help. Faith, at the moment, could only supply the simple
negatives that answered emotional needs: no alcohol, no
feminine immodesty, no interest in the banks. But soon in
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Pakistan these negatives were to be added to: no
political parties, no parliament, no dissent, no law
courts. So existing institutions were deemed to be un-
Islamic and undermined or undone; the faith was asserted
because only the faith seemed to be whole; and in the
vacuum only the army could rule.
However, the army, the rulers and influential people of
Pakistan did not have to be all that Islamic. Pure Islam
was for the hoi-polloi, the serfs and underlings. The
elite stayed rich, and the army became richer, and their
modern, liberal lifestyle conveyed the impression of a
progressive society to Western aid givers. Pakistan's
alliance with the U.S., ensured that foreign aid poured
in and the economy of the wealthy in Pakistan boomed. The
rich got money, the army got weapons, while the poor of
Pakistan got madrassas (Islamic schools) to ensure that
they became more Islamic.
The mullahs of Pakistan were doubly happy. The burgeoning
of madrassas and ensured that they would have jobs and
influence. They took charge of the madrassas with gusto
and preached with fervor. They preached jihad, Jihad
against the enemies of Islam. In order to be good
Muslims, Pakistanis were urged to do jihad - not the
internal, self correcting jihad of the Koran, but the
external violence of the Generals and their games of
military domination. More and more Pakistanis were needed
to fight Pakistan's wars. Men were needed to fight India.
Men were needed to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
The army brass, getting richer, needed men to do their
fighting, and the mullahs, secure and happy in their
newly funded madrassas, ensured the delivery of any
number of men to fight for Pakistan, for Islam.
Each Islamic jihadi, brought up with fervor in a
madrassa, was ready to die for a cause, ready to embrace
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and accept the guaranteed benefits of dying in jihad in
an afterlife to be enjoyed in a well-stocked heaven.
And as these men prepared for and died fighting for the
cause that they had been told was Islamic - the people
who trained them and sent them to die the army and the
mullahs, got fatter, and more powerful.
This glorious scene became Pakistan's version of Islam.
Rich generals doing office jobs while men from the poor
classes with little to live for were trained,
indoctrinated and prepared for death; their families
accepting that the death of their son would bring glory
and honour. The Islam of Pakistan's mullahs, in league
with lazy Generals, aiding the Generals' wars, preaching
an Islam that would keep the mullahs comfortable in this
life, while their wards and students were encouraged to
seek the pleasures of an afterlife, obtainable only by
violence and death.
As the institutions of Pakistan failed in this unique and
unorthodox concept of a nation, the faith Islam, grew
stronger.
In a remarkably prescient passage Naipaul observes (75),
The state withered, but faith didn't. Failure only led
back to the faith. The state had been founded as a
homeland for Muslims. If the state failed it wasn't
because the dream was flawed, or the faith flawed; it
could only be because men had failed the faith. And in
that quest of the Islamic absolute the society of
believers, where every action was instinct with worship
men lost sight of the political origins of their
state...Extraordinary claims began to be made for
Pakistan: it was founded as the land of the pure; it was
to be the first truly Islamic state since the days of the
Prophet and his close companions
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The average Pakistani citizen was coerced or co-opted by
putting Islam first. Pakistan, it was stressed, was
created by Muslims for Muslims. Every Pakistani had to
strive to be a good Muslim. To be Pakistani was to be a
good Muslim. Muslim clerics, the mullahs and the ulema
were necessarily allowed to exercise spiritual control
over the Pakistani masses to ensure that Pakistan
remained adequately and properly Islamic in all arenas.
It was drummed in that this was necessary because India
was always there to swallow up Pakistan. India had been
held in check only by God and the Pakistani army, which
presented itself as the savior, 'the army of Islam,'
upholding the faith and protecting Pakistan. Co-opting
the Pakistani citizen under the Islam banner eminently
served the interests of the rich and corrupt elite of
Pakistan in maintaining their grip and preserving their
business and territorial interests. And the Pakistani
state died. In his characteristically astute manner V.S,
Naipaul concludes (75):
Step by step, out of its Islamic striving, Pakistan had
undone the rule of law it had inherited from the British,
and replaced it with nothing
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Chapter 9
ATTITUDES TOWARDS INDIA AND INDIANS
Career diplomat-turned-politician Mani Shankar Aiyer
served as India's first Consul General in Karachi, and he
has published his collected writings on Pakistan in a
book entitled Pakistan Papers (86). Aiyer says that the
best definition for Pakistani is "One who is not Indian".
Pakistanis define their identity as being non-Indian, and
go on further to define themselves as pure Muslims.
Pakistan itself means "Land of the Pure" and Pakistani
identity has been sought to be defined on the basis that
Pakistan is a land of pure Muslims. In their effort to
ensure that Pakistanis are not Indian, Pakistani
authorities have done everything in their power to
discourage any Pakistani from displaying cultural traits
that are seen as Indian in character, and encouraged the
replacement of that culture by an invented Islamic
culture. This experiment is unique in the world. No other
nation has attempted to so totally reject its existing
culture while retaining only the faith or religion.
In his book, Among the Believers, (75) Naipaul quotes the
words of a man describing Pakistan. I will tell you the
story of this country in two sentences. In the first
quarter of this century the Hindus of India decided that
everything that was wrong had to do with foreigners and
foreign influence. Then in the second quarter, the
Muslims of India woke up. They had a double hate. They
hated the foreigners and they hated the Hindus. So the
country of Pakistan was built on hate and nothing else.
The predominant Pakistani attitude toward India is
hatred. The birth, and survival of Pakistan required the
rejection of all that was Indian. But Mani Shankar Aiyer
has recognised a gradual change of attitudes to India
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among Pakistanis. Up until 1971 it was hate and contempt,
but after 1971, Pakistani attitudes have changed to hate
and fear. Aiyer writes (86):
..all but the most blind Pakistani today looks back on
what happened to his country in 1971 at the hands of
India as a great defeat; till 1971 he looked back on what
happened .. as a great victory.
Aiyer continues:
From 1947 to 1971 the general belief (in Pakistan) was:
'hans hans ke liya tha Pakistan,
lad lad ke lengey Hindustan'
We got Pakistan with a triumphant smile
We fill fight and take Hindustan (India)
Myths about a single Muslim soldier being the equal of
four, or ten or whatever number of Kafirs was widely
believed; it was put about and accepted implicitly that
in a matter of days, perhaps hours, the flag of Islam
would be imparted on the ramparts of the Red Fort.
Columnist Hamid Hussain describes the Pakistani army
officer corps' attitude toward Indians prior to the 1965
war (58):
The general despise (sic) of Hindus and doubting their
capacity of able (sic) to give a good fight was almost
universal
Over the years, India struggled but improved; while
Pakistan split up and tottered. And hatred of India grew.
Dislike and distrust of India became an industry in
Pakistan. Like life itself, which evolved from simple
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one-celled organisms into a multitude of life forms, huge
Banyan trees, fragrant flowers, tigers, elephants,
insects and men, hatred of India was nurtured to evolve,
grow and metamorphose into a multitude of reasons and
justifications.
Pakistanis evolved a plethora of reasons to hate India.
The act of partition at independence left Pakistanis with
a small moth-eaten nation. This was a source of
resentment to many elite Pakistanis who had left
everything in India to be in Pakistan. For these people
nothing would be better than exacting revenge for their
lost lives. It was worth defeating India for this reason
alone. For others, India was a hateful nation of people
who caused the trauma of partition. Hatred and mistrust
of India was the reason for the creation of Pakistan.
Pakistan existed because Muslims would be suppressed in
India, and opposition to India was the reason for
Pakistan's birth. India was the enemy, to be fought,
defeated and brought to its knees.
Hatred for India and Indians has been made into a
national purpose, a national obsession in Pakistan, with
active hatred being taught in Pakistani schools as
described in Chapter 3.
In an article written for Pinnacle magazine (87), Brig.
Raychaudhuri sums up Pakistani attitudes to India:
This shattering of the psychological indoctrination,
based on assumed religious superiority, makes it
difficult for the Pakistanis to accept the reality of
India's intrinsic superiority in size and economy. The
fact that in 1965 and also in Kargil it was the Moslems
of India who alerted the country is too insulting to
believe. The cup of Pakistani hatred brims over and
India, in the Pakistani mindset, is the cause of their
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nation('s) deprivations..
Pakistanis were poor because of Indian aggression.
Pakistan could not develop because of India. Furthermore,
hatred of India was needed as the justification for the
wealth of the Pakistan army, and for the health of army
businesses surviving on state handouts. India had to be
hated to keep Pakistanis in line, to make them more
Islamic, to make them good Muslims. Pakistanis had to be
good Muslims to survive; they had to give up Indianness,
because India was there to subjugate or kill all Muslims,
just like India was accused of killing or raping 30,000
or 70,000 or whatever number of people in Kashmir. And as
India grew stronger, hatred and fear of India had to grow
stronger, and Islamic fervor had to be increased to
oppose India.
As recently as December 2003, a retired Colonel of the
Pakistan Army wrote the following accusations against
India (88):
There is a long list of other hostile Indian actions
against Pakistan, some of which are:
"¢ Indian usurpation of Jammu and Kashmir, the
continued occupation of that state against the will of
its people, and the merciless killing of thousands of
innocent Kashmiris by the Indian occupation forces;
"¢ Constant efforts to destabilize Pakistan through
its agents, who are always at work to create
disgruntlement in Pakistan's smaller provinces;
"¢ Conducting terrorist activities in various parts
of Pakistan to exploit ethnic and religious differences;
"¢ Developing Pakistan-specific nuclear and
conventional arsenal, thus forcing this country to enter
into a suicidal arms race with the consequent irreparable
damage to its economy;
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"¢ Keep bullying Pakistan by concentrating Indian
armed forces on its borders and on the Line of Control in
Kashmir on trumped up grounds, having previously imposed
three wars on Pakistan.
Expecting an enemy with such a criminal record to change
its heart overnight and become friendly toward us is
nothing but inanity.
And while some Pakistanis have reacted to India with this
degree of hatred and suspicion, others try to urge
Pakistan to virtually move out of the Indian subcontinent
into Central Asia or even the Middle East. Ahmad Quraish
wrote in the Pakistani paper the Nation (89):
...the following steps are necessary:
"¢ Political: Pakistan's...ministries must...deemphasize
Pakistan's inclusion in South Asia and play up
Pakistan's role in Central and West Asia.
"¢ Cultural: Islamabad's cultural cooperation with
West Asian and Central Asian countries must be
revitalized..
"¢ Changing the name of Pakistan's national
monetary unit .. by adopting either the Riyal or the
Dinar..instead of the Rupee, which has exclusive Indian
connotations.
"¢ Educational: The other major facets of
Pakistan's identity - the Arab, Persian, Turkic and
Central Asian - must be emphasized in our schoolbooks. If
this requires drafting new books on Pakistan studies, so
be it, and these must be compulsory reading for Pakistani
students
It is both ludicrous and sad to see Pakistani loathing
for India covering the full spectrum - from the perigee
of wanting to occupy and subjugate parts of India, to the
apogee of wiping out memories of India, even denying
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Pakistan's links with India and claiming imagined links
with Central and West Asia. And all this while Indian
children are taught to recognise Pakistanis as just like
us.
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Chapter 10
THE PAKISTANI ARMY: POWER AND GLORY IN THE FAMILY
The word Army for the Pakistan army is a pitifully
inadequate description for an organization that does
vastly more, and has diversified into more ventures than
most armies in the world could dream of doing. Calling
the Pakistan army by that name is akin to describing a
30-course meal as a light snack. There is almost no
activity in Pakistan that the army is not involved in
doing, and there is no group in Pakistan or among
Pakistan's neighbors that the Pakistani army has not
fought, antagonised or disagreed with. But yet, the
Pakistani army leads a charmed existence, being admired
by most of Pakistan, although that has begun to change
recently.
Time and time again, and from many sources, one can find
people who have made the quote: Pakistan is not a nation
with an army; it is an army with a nation
Of course, the Pakistani army started off as a regular
army, with soldiers, guns, generals, tanks and valor. But
its tentacles have spread into politics, power, industry,
business, religion, terrorism, fighting by proxy, crime,
greed, deception, lucre and self preservation. How the
Pakistani army changed from a regular army into this
Hydra-headed monster has an interesting history.
It has been noted in an earlier chapter (Chapter 5) that
due to historic reasons dating from the 1857 war of
Indian independence, the British increasingly recruited
people from the Northwest of undivided India, which
included a large number of Punjabi Muslims from the area
that was to later become Pakistan. Because of their
loyalty and docility under British leadership, these
troops began to be known as hailing from a martial race
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(57). Thus the Pakistani army was dominated by Punjabis,
who began to see themselves as being of a superior
martial race.
Apart from the predominance of Muslim Punjabis in the
Pakistani army, several other unique observations can be
made about the Pakistani province of Punjab (West Punjab)
at the time of independence and partition(80).
"¢ Punjab was the most populous province of
Pakistan.
"¢ Pakistani Punjab was militarized because of the
large number of Punjabis in the military,
"¢ As part of the settlement of retired army
personnel, vast tracts of land in West Punjab had been
awarded to them.
"¢ 70% of the voters in Pakistani Punjab had some
connection with the military
"¢ Punjab itself was partitioned so a lot of army
personnel had relatives or friends in Punjab who were
affected by the events of partition.
"¢ Pakistani army units from Punjab were tasked
with the protection of civilians in the post-partition
violence, so the personnel in these army units served
both as protectors of the civilians as well as sufferers
as their villages or families were affected during
partition.
"¢ Punjabi units were also utilised in Pakistan's
unsuccessful attack to wrest Kashmir from India in 1947.
For these reasons, the military in Pakistan was not
merely the military, but had political clout as well as
political opinions, especially a deep hatred for India.
The military also actually owned a lot of land because of
the policy of settling retired soldiers by gifting land.
The Punjabi dominated army also considered itself a
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martial race with superior fighting and leadership
qualities compared to the East Bengalis (East Pakistanis)
who were considered effeminate, and the Hindu Indians.
The army, having been tasked to protect Pakistanis during
partition began to consider itself as the protector and
savior of Islam. All these tendencies were present or had
set in shortly after independence in 1947.
But there was an additional factor that led to the
induction of the Pakistani army into the role of absolute
rulers of Pakistan.
The areas that constituted West Pakistan were largely
rural, and apart from the Punjabi dominated Army, there
were not many educated local people to make up the
bureaucrats, legal experts, engineers and technocrats
that were required in the government of the new Pakistan.
These posts were filled by the educated elite migrants
from British India, largely mohajirs and Punjabis. These
people suddenly had a nation to lead, a new nation,
Pakistan - one of the biggest countries on earth. It was
a victory for them, and for Islam. They were not about to
fritter away that victory by allowing power to pass into
the hands of the more numerous uneducated locals in
democratic elections, in the same way as they would later
refuse to hand over power, and the rule of Pakistan to a
Bengali party from faraway East Pakistan. After all, the
reason these migrants had left India was precisely
because they feared democracy attenuating their
privileges.
Democracy was inconvenient for the ruling elite of
Pakistan. It was also inconvenient for the feudal lords
in Pakistan, who stood to lose their lands and influence.
And democracy also brought with it the danger that the
more numerous Bengalis, considered an inferior race,
might actually end up ruling all of Pakistan. Besides
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these facts, the migrant elite faced some resistance from
the locals in West Pakistan, who had to give up space and
resources to the migrants from India.
The ruling elite of Pakistan therefore had a deep vested
interest in not handing power to the people of Pakistan.
And what better way to do that than to declare a threat
to Pakistan, and to Islam itself, from their huge
neighbor India. Elections were constantly postponed and
the civilian authority used the Army to stay in power
until the first bloodless military coup of 1958. And
although that was the first year that the Pakistani army
officially came into power, the army nevertheless had
shared power with the elite in Pakistan for nearly a
decade before that.
A report from the International Crisis Group (53) has
this to say:
In the first decade of Independence, Pakistan was
nominally a parliamentary democracy but civil bureaucrats
ruled the state with the military as junior partner. No
elections were held ..the President had power to dismiss
the Prime Minister and used it liberally. (Governor-
General Iskander) Mirza...ruled in league with Army
Chief, general Mohammad Ayub Khan. Dispensing even with
the pretence of democracy, Ayub ousted Mirza and imposed
martial law in October 1958
The military coup by Gen Ayub Khan was a watershed of
sorts as it marked the first step by the Pakistani
military to gain and retain control of Pakistan. In the
period from 1958 to 1971 the Pakistan Army gradually
consolidated its hold on power in Pakistan, and stopped
being a junior partner to the civil bureaucracy in
government. It seems virtually certain that no single
individual in the Pakistani army could have been a
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strongman without the connivance and cooperation of the
Punjabi and feudal lord dominated military brass of the
Pakistani army. The Pakistani army is like a close-knit
fraternity, a family or brotherhood, a biradari, that
protects its own from harm and disrepute, while ensuring
that its interests, be they power, finances or honour are
not harmed. It is a cooperative system, rather than power
handed down from a single supremo.
Pakistani security analyst Ayesha Siddiqa-Agha writes
(90):
It is important to note that Pakistan's armed forces
especially the army operates like a fraternity. In this
environment, severe punishments to individuals or
extraordinary treatment of a similar nature are viewed as
undermining the morale of the institution. Sidelining
undesirable individuals or rewarding others discreetly
is, thus, a preferred choice.
Ayub exercised total control of Pakistan before, during
and after 1965 when he launched and lost a war with
India. The Army replaced Ayub Khan when it was sensed
that popular opposition to Ayub Khan would harm the
Army's interests, and General Yahya Khan, who oversaw the
splitting away of East Pakistan and the formation of
Bangladesh after the worst defeat that the Pakistani
armed forces have ever faced replaced him.
The International Crisis Group's paper on democracy in
Pakistan (53) refers to the Pakistani Army's role in this
period as follows:
Fearing that its defeat would translate into popular
demands for accountability, the (army) high command
transferred power to Zulfikar Ali Bhutto..The military's
defeat in the 1971 war with India had, however, been
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limited to East Pakistan. Despite 93,000 prisoners of war
in India, its infrastructure in the West was untouched.
Military leaders quickly recouped losses and closed ranks
against perceived civilian threats to their personal and
institutional interests
It is clear that even as early as 1971 the Pakistan Army
had enough of a vested interest in retaining power in
Pakistan to pretend to hand over power to a civilian
government in order to maintain the reputation and
interests of the Pakistan army from public scrutiny and
accountability. In fact a damning report on the actions
and defeat of the Pakistani army in the 1971 war, the
Hamoodur Rehman report was never made public until a copy
was obtained and published by the Times of India.
All military governments in Pakistan, including the one
currently headed by General Musharraf have grabbed power
to save Pakistan and bring in a sound democratic system.
But the Pakistani army has always grabbed power from
elected governments or prevented democracy from actually
being established, and have prevented all attempts to
check the finances or power of the military in any way.
It is informative to look at the perquisites, businesses
and non-military interests of the Pakistan army that are
so keenly protected and preserved.
The army ensures that its officer class live in great
style and luxury. A report in the Washington Post in 2002
(91) described army life in the following words:
The officer class in Pakistan has always had a strong
sense of entitlement stemming from its dominant role in
defending the country and in running it... One of the
fanciest clubs in Karachi is the Defense Housing
Authority County and Golf Club, a sparkling new facility
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with lush fairways, a two-story driving range and a
gracious stone clubhouse overlooking an inlet of the
Arabian Sea. Active-duty military personnel can join the
club for an initiation fee of $16, compared with $9,166
for civilians, according to the club's fee schedule
The same paper goes on to say:
the military also rewards its senior officers by
allowing them to purchase agricultural and urban land
from the army's vast inventory of real estate at prices
far below market value...One of Pakistan's most coveted
addresses, for example, is the blandly named Army Housing
Scheme II...in the upscale Karachi suburb of Clifton. A
gated community protected by paramilitary troops, the
development consists of spacious, Mediterranean-style
villas grouped around a playground and an elaborately
landscaped Japanese-style garden. Nearby are clothing
boutiques, jewelry stores, restaurants and a yoga studio
Describing the decrepit and run-down state of most
schools in Pakistan, the Washington Post goes on to
compare that with a Pakistani army run school:
Geared toward preparation for the competitive O Level
exams required by British universities, the handsome
school is an educational showpiece whose computer,
physics and biology labs would not seem out of place in
an American suburb
There are an enormous number of news media reports of the
money and businesses that the Pakistani army controls.
The Independent of London described the contrast between
a Pakistani army establishment and the rest of Pakistan
(92):
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Outside in the street, Afghan refugees and Pakistan's
urban poor root through garbage tips and crowd on to
soot-pumping buses to work in sweatshops and brick
factories. Inside, behind the ancient, newly painted
cannons and battalion flags, rose bushes surround welltended
lawns and officers' messes decorated with polished
brass fittings. No rubbish litters this perfect world of
discipline. Why should anyone living here want a return
to corrupt democracy?
A report in the online edition of the Pakistani newspaper
Dawn said (93):
The perks don't end here: military personnel are entitled
to a 50 per cent discount on air and rail fares as well
as cinema tickets. Their children have a quota at most
public universities, and serving and retired officers are
routinely inducted into civilian jobs.
The Pakistan Weekly reported (94):
..in relation to country's per capita income Pakistani
senior military officers are one of the best paid in the
world. No other career, with equivalent academic
qualifications and so little productivity produces
comparable personal affluence as that of the officer
cadre of the Pak military....
Where does the money for all this come from?
A report in the Daily Times of Pakistan in August 2002
says, All countries have armies, but in Pakistan the army
has a country. Defense expenditures consume between onethird
and one-half of the national budget. In recent
decades, senior military officers have been transformed
into powerful landlords through grants of choice
agricultural lands and real estate. Retired officers head
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many, if not most, public corporations. This garrison
economy is increasingly unsustainable, as Pakistan's poor
multiply and the economy falters.
Part of the army's wealth is from the extremely high
defence budget that Pakistan has maintained for decades,
at the expense of all other expenditure and all other
groups in Pakistan. The excuse for the high defence
expenditure has been the external threat from India, but
the army ensures great personal wealth for its serving
and retired personnel especially those of the higher
ranks, and those seen as cooperative people who toe the
line.
The News International, Pakistan reported on Sunday
September 09, 2001:
As a % of GDP, from among the poorest of countries ..
Pakistan, at 4.4% of GDP, spends the highest on defence.
Shaheen Sehbai wrote in the Weekly Independent in 2002
(95),
For decades almost 35 to 40 per cent of Pakistan's
revenues have been going into un-audited and noquestions-
asked defence budget.
For this report and other reports on the activities of
the Pakistani army, Shaheen Sehbai, former editor of the
English language daily the News was threatened by the
army and forced to flee Pakistan and live in exile (96).
The high defence budget is not the only source of income
for the luxury loving Pakistani army. It also controls a
huge business empire. In her study of the Pakistan
military's economic activities, security analyst Dr.
Ayesha-Siddiqa Agha describes why the businesses were
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started in the first place (90).
..the military's business empire in Pakistan was created
to guarantee welfare of retired and serving personnel. It
was a pattern inherited from the pre-independence days.
The Pakistani army's business enterprises were started
for the welfare of retired personnel. Initially only the
army had its businesses, with a small quota for the Air
Force and Navy. Later these two branches started off
their own businesses, and the vast enterprise has grown
to gargantuan proportions. They are not necessarily
profitable, but they survive on government subsidies and
grants; competition is scared off by military threats,
and the senior employees make fat salary packets, safe
from accountability and questions.
The four key armed-forces run business organizations in
Pakistan are The Fauji Foundation, the Army Welfare
Trust, the Shaheen Foundation and the Bahria Foundation.
The Fauji Foundation's businesses include sugar mills,
cereal and corn, Natural gas, plastics, fertilizer,
cement, power and education and healthcare. The Fauji
foundation's assets have grown from Pakistani Rs. 152
million in 1970, to 9,800 million according to Dr.
Siddiqa-Agha, and employs 6 to 7 thousand military
personnel, mostly in middle and upper management
positions.
The Army Welfare Trust has 26 projects including farms,
stud farms, fish farms, rice and sugar mills, cement
factories, pharmaceuticals, shoes, wool, hosiery, travel
agencies, aviation, commercial complexes, banking,
insurance and security with many bearing the name Aksari.
Aksari aviation was set up merely to accommodate retired
army helicopter pilots who could not get a job in the
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private sector.
Not to be outdone, the Pakistan air force established the
Shaheen foundation which is now involved in air
transportation, cargo, airport services, pay TV, FM
radio, insurance, knitwear and commercial complexes.
That left Pakistan's smallest force, the navy, to start
its own venture, the Bahria Foundation in 1981. The
Bahria Foundation deals in commercial complexes, trading,
construction, a travel agency, paints, deep sea fishing,
dredging, ship breaking, salvage and even a university.
There is no nation in the world whose armed forces are
involved in as many non-military business ventures as the
Pakistan armed forces. Banking, insurance, commercial
complexes and radio stations are ventures that do not
obviously appear to be an essential part of the armed
forces of any nation and would not be justifiable in any
other nation on earth. But they are normal and routine
for the Pakistani armed forces. Like a core business
that has diversified, the Pakistani armed forces have
diversified into fields well outside the mandate of an
armed force.
Dr. Farrukh Saleem, a freelance Pakistani columnist wrote
in the Pakistani daily Jang (97):
Fauji Cereal has been part of my daily breakfast for as
long as I can remember. The only wrapping that Fauji
Cereal ever uses comes from Fauji Poly Propylene
Products. During my days at the village, milk use to come
from the nearby Okara Military Farms, the 17,000-acre
dairy, meat and grain-producing project. The only sugar
that I ever liked was either from the four Fauji Sugar
Mills or Army Welfare Sugar Mills. Not too long ago, my
wife wanted to build a house. I didn't want to be
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anywhere but in one of the six Askari Housing Schemes.
The only cement I will use is Fauji Cement. I wish I was
right next to Fauji Kabirwala Power Company because I
hate the power that Wapda comes out with. The paint for
my house must come from no one but Bahria Paints. Fauji
also owns and operates Fauji Corn Complex, FONGAS, Fauji
Fertilizer Company, Fauji Jordan Company, Fauji Oil
Terminal Company Project and Mari Gas Company.
The army also operates what is called the National
Logistic Cell (NLC) which is a trucking and
transportation giant in Pakistan, employing thousands of
serving and retired army personnel. The web page of the
NLC describes its army connection euphemistically as a
unique logistic based Public Sector Organisation which
has [a] blend of corporate culture and Army's
discipline. (98)
With the military in government, and the defence ministry
manned by retired military officers, the military run
businesses of Pakistan are above all accountability.
In her study of the Army's businesses, Dr. Ayesha
Siddiqa-Agha makes a scathing indictment(90):
The top management of the armed forces jealously guard
their interests. Over the years the interests have
narrowed down from the greater benefit of the institution
to the personal welfare of the generals. A feature
peculiar to a number of cases is, the ventures were
started not based on any feasibility study but on the
whims of the top management to accommodate certain highranking
officers.
The businesses run by the Pakistani armed forces are
marked by inefficiency, corruption and self-interest, and
are preserved by intimidation that scares away
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competitors or people who try to question their
activities. Corruption in running these businesses has
been noted by Siddiqa-Agha and others (96):
"When you dig into them, you find out they are
inefficient, and there is evidence of corruption,"
Siddiqa-Agha said. "There is also evidence of corruption
linked to monopolization of government contracts.
In another report in August 2002, the South Asia Tribune
reported (99):
..a list of over 100 armed forces men who allotted to
themselves at least 400 or more acres of prime land in
Bahawalpur, heart of Punjab, "to defend it from the
enemy," at the throw away rate of Rs 380 per acre (US
Dollars Six & 50 cents). The list is only of one
District. Such lists exist all over Punjab and Sindh
where a new breed of landlords has already been created
through similar allotments...This conversion of generals
into landlords also explains why no serious effort has
been made by the military to introduce land reforms in
the country, which could cure many political and social
imbalances in the Pakistani society.
An online report in the Crescent International revealed a
list of Pakistani billionaires and millionaires with
accounts in Swiss banks. Nearly half the billionaires
were from the army or close relatives of senior army
personnel.
With this degree of money, wealth and power, the Pakistan
army's main problem shifts away from the defence of
Pakistan to the defence of their own wealth and power.
Which wealthy army general living in the lap of luxury
would want to give up his good life for the hardship and
travails of war? Besides, the risk to this life is not so
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much from an attack by India, but by anger and opposition
to the corrupt and wealthy army from the desperately poor
people of Pakistan, a staggering 85% of whom live on less
than US $2 per day (100).
Increasingly under pressure within Pakistan for their
greed the Pakistani army has used Islam and the external
threat from India to retain their power and wealth. The
people must be more Islamic, because the sacrifice of
jihad is required to fight India. Poverty and destitution
in Pakistan are because India is trying to attack
Pakistan and kill Muslims. This Islamization of Pakistan
and the Pakistani army accelerated after the 1971 defeat
of the Pakistani army by India in the war of liberation
of Bangladesh.
Pakistani journalist Najam Sethi noted in an article in
the Friday Times of Pakistan (101):