The transfer of power meant that the "steel frame" of the British administration in undivided India-the Indian civil service and the army upon which the viceregal system rested-were not dismantled but rather inherited by the successor states. In independent India, the institutions of the civil service and the army were provided with a new legitimacy, after the enactment of the constitution in November 1949, and were brought under the supervision of elected politicians. In Pakistan, however, as constitutionalism floundered the viceregal system, with its attendant institutions of civil and military services, flourished.
The main characteristic of the viceregal system, according to K. B. Sayeed, was that "matters pertaining to the Central Government were under the control of the Governor-General in Council.
8 In other words, the governor-general could overrule the majority of the legislature. The Government of India Act of 1935 provided extensive executive powers to the governor-general, who was unchecked by the federal legislative assembly-he answered only to the British parliament through the secretary of state for India, and his office represented the retention of dyarchy in the Government of India Act signifying the colonial status of India under the Crown.
9 While the Independence Act of 1947 placed constitutional and legislative responsibility in the constituent assembly, it retained the full plenitude of reserved powers as described in the Government of India Act with the representative of the Crown until a new constitution was enacted. Jinnah's choice to be governor-general and head of state, instead of prime minister and head of government, had the unintended consequence of politically reinforcing the viceregal system. However, Jinnah believed, as he indicated in early 1948, that the viceregal system would last only until a new constitution was enacted within "eighteen months or two years.
10
Jinnah's authority was ultimately extralegal. He was the Quaid-i-Azam, the Great Leader, a title bestowed by Indian Muslims and later adopted via a motion in Pakistan's constituent assembly. His charismatic authority could not be passed on. Unfortunately, the inability of political leaders to reach a constitutional consensus entrenched the negative features of the viceregal system and permitted the unchecked growth of the civil-military bureaucracy under the protective autocratic powers of the viceregal head of state. The dismissal of Khawaja Nazimuddin's ministry in April 1953, following anti-Ahmadiya riots in Punjab, and the dissolution of the constituent assembly in October 1954 by Governor-General Ghulam Mohammed were demonstrations of viceregal powers and symptomatic of the increasing control of the levers of government by the civil-military bureaucracy. Both Ghulam Mohammed and Iskander Mirza, as occupants of the viceregal office, came from the civil and military services of British India's imperial administration. Their contempt for the political process and politicians was shared by Pakistan's civil-military elite and reinforced by the politicians' failure and indecision to deal with public disorder, as in the anti-Ahmadiya agitations, and the inability to reach a constitutional consensus. Ghulam Mohammed dissolved the first constituent assembly, and Iskander Mirza decided to remove the politicians and end the charade of parliamentary government by inviting the army to take power in October 1958.
The entrenchment of the civil-military bureaucracy in the administration of the country meant, in practical terms, the marginalization of regional political representation at the center and the increasing dominance of one region and ethnic group over the rest. Punjab provided the largest cadre of military recruits among Muslims in British India, and this pattern continued in Pakistan.
11 Similarly, senior civil servants were from Punjab or from the muhajir group (Muslim emigrants from post-1947 India whose ethnic origins were outside of the territorially demarcated boundaries of the new state). In terms of population, the province of East Bengal, renamed East Pakistan, constituted more than half of Pakistan but, at the time of partition, had less than 1 percent of representation in what became the Pakistan army.
12 In the higher ranks of the central secretariat, there were no civil servants from East Pakistan.
13 The bulk of the army, with its officer corps amounting to 77 percent, came from Punjab, and nearly 20 percent came from the North West Frontier Province (NWFP).
14 Hence, the provision of government during the first decade through the viceregal system supported by the civil-military bureaucracy, and then after 1958 with the first military administration to be repeated following the coups of 1969 and 1977, came to be viewed (justifiably) by the rest of the country as Punjabi hegemony over all other ethnic groups.
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