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Conclusion
The lesson of the Pakistan experience is that much of what occurred might have been avoided if, in the beginning, constitution making had succeeded. As the Indian experience shows, the most difficult and divisive issues of representation and reorganization of the federal system to accommodate linguistic demands were accomplished under the leadership of Nehru and the Congress party through constitutional means.65 Consensus on the Islamic nature of the Pakistani state during the first phase of constitution making would have provided an overarching national identity re-quired for state building and democratic development. Such a consensus would have made the critical difference in building agreements on the mechanics of government, the system of representation, the distribution of powers and the nature of federalism. Pakistan's physical division and the mutual suspicion between Punjabis (the dominant group in the west) and the Bengalis (possessing the numerical majority in the east) posed the most serious impediment to constitutional consensus. A loose federation, as the Bengali leadership demanded, held forth the possibility of keeping ethnic differences submerged within the larger identity of Islam. Given the illogical nature of Pakistan's physical construction, its eventual break-up might have been unavoidable whatever the constitutional consensus. An existing constitutional arrangement might not have prevented its disintegration, but it could have saved the people the bitterness of a civil war. The political failure of modernists was their inability to understand that the appeal to their coreligionists in undivided India made the eventual demand for an Islamic state in Pakistan irrepressible. Moreover, the lack of constitutional propriety in their political behavior, their subversion of the constitutional process and support for civil-military oligarchy delegitimized their vision for the country. Zia ul-Haq's personal beliefs aside, his adoption of a program of Islamization drew support from the majority of Muslim citizens. This majority could not relate to the elevated arguments of the liberal opposition, which was Westernized in political outlook and resistant to the traditional orthodoxy of the ulama. Islamization drew its strength from the majority Muslim population and was consistent with the idea that a political system must draw upon the core values of its people in order to be viable and representative. It is too soon to draw long-term conclusions regarding the process of transforming the Islamic order into representative democracy through parliamentary elections after Zia ul-Haq's death. The dismissal of Benazir Bhutto's government in 1990 was indicative of the persistence of an authoritarian tendency within the civil-military bureaucracy. But the renewal of politics after long periods of enforced disability, as well as the emergence of political parties representing regional and ethnic interests within the national body politics, can only be viewed as healthy developments. Ethnic grievances are frequently reflective of disparity in the political system, of a lack or inadequacy of representation. It is likely that ethnic conflicts at varying levels of intensity will persist, as all of it cannot be resolved-nor is it desirable if the means required are highly repressive and become counterproductive. The ideal remains not to obliterate ethnicity, but rather to find an institutional means for accommodation. Thus, a constitutional system based on a broad consensus is a prerequisite to provide institutions with legitimacy. The process is circular. It will be useful here to recall Aristotle's definition of a constitution as "the arrangement of powers in a state, especially of the supreme power, and the constitution makes the government.66 In this classic definition, and in subsequent discussions ever since, constitutionalism reflects a government based on laws and not in any way a modification of human nature and politics bringing about a cessation of conflicts among individuals and within society. Any revision or readjustment of constitutional authority to changing needs and circumstances, as we find, for instance, in the politics of Canada in recent years, is as much a part of constitutionalism as is the occasional recourse to force to maintain authority over national jurisdiction when a minority seeks to secede, as in the United States of the nineteenth century or, in more recent times, in modern India. However, what distinguishes the process of revision (Canada) or the use of force (India) from those such as in the repeated imposition of martial law in Pakistan, is the prior existence of a constitutional order based on a broad consensus and the absence of such an order that makes political contest resemble a Hobbesian political hell. In our time, especially given the experience of fascism in the first half of this century, democracy has come to mean constitutional government resting on the will of the people. Democracy may have been a contestable idea, as Arblaster has discussed in a useful study,67 or, as C. B. Mac-pherson pointed out, democracy "used to be a bad word" until lately.68 But while today democracy has become the undisputed idea in the realm of politics for good government, for it to be distinguished from mob rule or demagoguery it must be founded on a constitutional consensus that restricts the powers of those in authority and protects the rights of individuals from arbitrary state power. Finally, as is so clear in the case of Pakistan though substantively no different than in other mature societies, democracy or more precisely constitutional democracy remains a never-quite-finished project, but instead remains open and requires each generation to reexamine its working and extend its promise as stated in its essential documents. To conclude, the promise of constitutional democracy in Pakistan in recent years looks more promising than ever before. The national parliamentary election of October 1990 brought a coalition of Islamic and conservative parties, known as the Islamic Democratic Alliance, to form the government. The most significant aspect of the event was the transfer of power from one civilian government to another without military interference, a first in nearly four decades of tormented national politics. This process was repeated in October-November 1993 when Benazir Bhutto, following a general election, was able to bring together enough parliamentary support to form a new government at the center. The entrenchment of this process holds out the promise of the eventual consolidation of representative democracy in Pakistan. It is quite likely that the divisive constitutional debates of earlier decades between modernists and traditionalists have been resolved. In addition, the amended constitution of 1973 reflects, in the broadest sense, the religious and cultural values upon which the country was founded. While ethnic conflict remains a disturbing feature of Pakistani politics, its constitutional and democratic evolution as an Islamic state holds that extraethnic appeal for its citizens that, as a movement in undivided India, it did for Muslims. Just as ethnic differences were submerged in a larger religiocultural loyalty to establish a Muslim-majority state in the subcontinent, as an Islamic state Pakistan may finally succeed in entrenching the constitutional mechanisms described in the 1973 constitution and accommodate its ethnic diversity within a democratic polity. 
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