[Islam-Online- Politics]

At the conclusion of his biographical study of the military leader, Altaf Gauhar chides Ayub Khan's detractors and apologists. Ayub Khan is held responsible by his critics for undermining Pakistan's democratic evolution, while his defenders blame politicians for corrupting the institutions of government and the political process that Pakistan inherited from the British. Gauhar suggests that both views are erroneous, because Ayub's constitutional failure reflected the "fundamental problem of reconciling the Islamic doctrines, as enunciated by Muslim jurists, with the democratic concepts and demands of the modern age.54 This continues to be the constitutional and political challenge for the Muslim world, as the particular experience of Pakistan illustrates. Ayub Khan's failure reflected the inability of both modernists and traditionalists to work out creatively an appropriate balance between "reconstructing" the essentials of Islam and discarding the non-essential baggage of Muslim history that has been made obsolete by the scientific and industrial revolutions of the past two centuries. The failure also underscored the requirement that any "reconstruction," however modest, must be brought about democratically to be meaningful and perceived and accepted as legitimate.
Since Ayub Khan, increasing demands for an Islamic state have been made in Pakistan, in Bangladesh, and across the Muslim world. This is a populist demand sustained by an increasingly sophisticated understanding that the secular-nationalist agenda of postcolonial leaders has led to a nightmare of broken promises concerning socioeconomic development, equity, and justice throughout the Muslim world. Moreover, the demand for an Islamic state is also a demand for a political system in which the leaders are accountable, in which the arbitrary nature of political power is limited by laws, in which Islam (as the bonds of a civil society) takes precedence over the Islam of those who command the state. The irony of Pakistan's experiment in guided democracy was that those who brought about the fall of Ayub Khan and benefitted most from it, namely, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, never learned the lesson of the Ayub era that an individual should not become identified excessively with the regime. It was an oversight for which both of them paid with their lives.
Mujib mistakenly identified Bengali nationalism as an essentially secular ideology. The secular orientation of Bengali nationalism reflected the pre-1971 condition of national politics in Pakistan. In the broader context of South Asian politics and an independent Bangladesh, Bengali nationalism reverted to affirming the national identity of Bengali Muslims as being partly based on religion. Nationalism in this instance illustrated what Alavi has described in the broader case of Pakistan: that ethnic identity is not entirely predetermined, that it can at one time reflect language as the basis of ethnicity and at another time it can be religion, and that language and religion are not exclusive and, quite often, are joined together.55
Mujib sought a secular-democratic future for the new state and, accordingly, Bangladesh's 1972 constitution defined the framework of state policy in terms of nationalism, socialism, democracy, and secularism without any reference to Islam.56 This secularist approach was consistent with the history of the AL from its origin as a secular-oriented party representing Bengali subnationalism within a united Pakistan. Mujib's ideology, or Mujibism to his followers, reflected the urban middle class values of traders, petty government officials, small landowners, and intellectuals. The secessionist war radicalized politics and pushed forward the agenda of the more left-wing parties for reforms favoring the landless and land-poor peasants who formed the bulk of the country's population.57 Mujib attempted to contain the radical agenda of the left, of those who were once his allies, through a limited policy of nationalization and a broadly based secular-nationalist coalition. But he was discredited as the leader of a regime that came to be viewed widely as corrupt, inept, and authoritarian. His gruesome end in August 1975 marked the limits of his brand of populism. Mujib's murder was an act of a few disgruntled junior officers in the army; the repudiation of Mujib as the father of the nation by a great majority of disenchanted Bangladeshis reflected tragically the extent of his political failure after having received, only a few years earlier, massive and unprecedented support from Bengalis across the country.58
The pressure to restore a balance between religious sentiment and the secularist value of ethnolinguistic nationalism reduced Mujib's party, the AL, from majority to minority status within a few years of the creation of Bangladesh. This pressure benefitted the anti-AL majority by containing the radical left, beginning with the military regime of General Ziaur Rahman and followed by that of General Ershad.59 Ziaur Rahman asserted Bangladeshi nationalism as being one identified with the state and its Muslim-majority population instead of, as Mujib did, Bengali nationalism denoting ethnicity based on language. Ershad took popular sentiment into his political calculation and, in 1988, amended the constitution so that Islam could be declared the state religion. The difficult process of nation building and making representative democracy work was renewed with the resignation of Ershad in December 1990 and the election of February 1991, in which Ziaur Rahman's party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, led by his widow Begum Ziaur Rahman, formed a center-right government. The result of the 1991 election and the political trend since then suggest the constitutional divisiveness of Bangladeshi politics may have been put behind with the modification of the state's secular-nationalist ideology and the reaffirmation of Islam to reflect a broad national consensus.
Bhutto's fate was as tragic as Mujib's. He rode the anti-Ayub sentiments of the urban middle classes, as well as the populist emotions of the rural poor, trade unionists, and student organizations for economic reforms, to power in a divided Pakistan. It was his refusal to accept the results of the December 1970 election, in which the AL had won the majority and thus had strengthened the military's inclination to repudiate an election it had organized. Bhutto's stand at that critical moment was consistent with two decades of maneuvering by West Pakistan's political leaders, especially those who belonged to the Punjabi-muhajir nexus, to deny East Pakistan majority representation at the center. The defeat of the Pakistan military in December 1971 toppled Yahya Khan's martial law government, which Bhutto had joined as deputy prime minister. On the basis of popular support, Bhutto assumed power in the wake of Pakistan's defeat and dismemberment, but his government lacked any legal foundation that could confer upon it constitutional legitimacy. The martial law imposed by Yahya Khan had also abrogated the constitution of 1962 and, therefore, the withdrawal of the military from power left a constitutional void at the center. Bhutto did not withdraw the emergency provisions by which the martial law government had operated, but rather chose to enact, with the support of the members of the central legislative assembly elected in December 1970 from the four provinces of former West Pakistan, an interim constitution in April 1972. It was a return to the viceregal system under the India Act of 1935.60
Bhutto, however, succeeded in getting a new constitution prepared and passed by the central legislative body within a year. The 1973 constitution was the fifth to be drafted and the third to be promulgated in Pakistan's brief history. It rearranged the political map of Pakistan by establishing a federal structure consisting of four provinces and a quasipresidential form of government with a bicameral legislature.61 The Islamic provisions of the earlier attempts in constitution making were incorporated with a few new additions. Islam was declared the state religion (Article 2), and an Islamic Council was established on constitutional authority and its functions were described in Articles 227-231. Again the intent was made public that, gradually, Pakistan's legal structure would conform to Islamic principles and that this process would be guided by the council. In Article 3, it was stated that the responsibility of the state is to end exploitation in society and, in an ironic twist of words reflecting Bhutto's play with Marxist language, the fundamental principle of egalitarianism was declared to be "from each according to his ability, to each according to his work." This was reflective of his rhetoric of Islamic socialism that galvanized the support of the urban and rural poor behind the PPP in 1970 and again in 1977. He was politically and temperamentally adept at working both ends of the political spectrum, of joining socialistic rhetoric to his eclectic reading of Islam, and bending at the same time to contain his right-wing traditional Islamic opposition, as in the case of declaring the Ahmadiya sect to be non-Muslim.
Following the PPP's landslide victory in the national and provincial elections of March 1977, Bhutto was toppled by the military in July 1977 in the wake of a countrywide opposition movement. The opposition charged that the election results were rigged. The confrontation turned violent and set the stage for the military to reimpose martial law, remove Bhutto from office, and eventually try him for the murder of a political opponent. He was found guilty and hanged.62 But Bhutto's constitution, though amended, survived him. The military did not, as on earlier occasions, abrogate the 1973 constitution. This seemingly minor fact is significant, because the constitution has proven by its longevity that the main principles of ideology and government it provides are now generally accepted by the people. This means that although constitutional consensus has come late in Pakistan, political energy can henceforth be directed as it was in India, to working out the details of democratic politics within an accepted framework of rules about power sharing, representation, rights, and duties.

Politic Next Back End