Is it Taboo
to Question the Two -Nation Theory?
By Karamatullah K.
Ghori
Canada
Over the past 57 years of
an independent Pakistan, we have spawned a number
of ‘holy cows’ that must not be touched
or trifled with, or else we’d lose our faith.
But perhaps the most sacred of these ‘holy
cows’ is the two-nation theory that was,
without doubt, the bedrock on which the concept
of Pakistan was built. That concept, or ideology,
shorn of all its trappings and sophistry was simply
this: the Muslims of India under British colonialism
were a nation apart from its majority Hindu population,
and thus entitled to have a landmass of their
own in order to live in its confines according
to their distinct religion, culture and traditions.
The core of this ideology was its emphasis of
‘all the Indian Muslims’ being one
nation, without any distinction of provincial
or state (the princely states of India) affiliation.
However, the independent state of Pakistan itself
scuttled this core principle when, early in 1949,
it imposed restrictions on the immigration of
Muslims from India, thus shutting its doors on
those who were late in making up their mind about
Pakistan. But hardly anyone took umbrage at this
early hemorrhage of Pakistan’s raison d’etre
as the monumental task of building a new state
from scratch occupied all attention.
But the birth of Bangladesh as a state independent
of Pakistan, in 1971, after a bloody and messy
civil war, virtually sounded the death knell of
the sacred two-nation theory. The Bengalis of
East Pakistan had been forced to claim a state
of their own based, entirely, on their sense of
attachment to their own piece of land.
Religion had nothing to do with the birth of Bangladesh.
However, the forced separation of the twins —
East and West Pakistan — did prove beyond
any shade of doubt that religion wasn’t
a sufficient reason for disparate peoples to stick
to each other and stand on one platform.
In other words, Bangladesh knocked the bottom
from under the barrel of Pakistan, draining all
its legitimacy, in the process, from the heady
concoction of the two-nation theory.
So why is it that although the bogey of the two-nation
theory, or concept, was swept into the choppy
waters of the Bay of Bengal after so much innocent
blood had been spilled in the name of its defense,
it is still taboo in Pakistan’s ruling circles
for anyone to question the validity of that defunct
concept? Why is it that anyone expressing a different
opinion from the officially sanctified version
of the two-nation theory being still sacrosanct
and untouchable is instantly lampooned as heretic
and ‘disloyal’ to the founding philosophy
of Pakistan?
The answer to this question is simple: the ruling
elite, or oligarchy, in Pakistan finds it convenient
to keep flogging the dead horse of the two-nation
theory. It provides the oligarchs — the
feudals, the Bonapartist generals, the scheming
bureaucrats and other soldiers-of-fortune —
to use it as a foil, a fig leaf, to justify their
chokehold over Pakistan.
The grab for Pakistan’s power center began
quite early in the day, soon after the reality
of Pakistan became unbeatable and irresistible.
The first to come on board the ship of Pakistan
were those very same feudals who had earlier been
part and parcel of forces hostile to the idea
of Pakistan; this was truer in the province than
anywhere else where the anti-Pakistan Unionist
Party held the sway until the election of 1946.
But the feudals didn’t jump the Unionist
ship because it was sinking; they clambered on
board the Pakistan boat because they were desperate
to safeguard their vested interests in the new
state. Those interests should’ve had no
place in a secular Pakistan — the ideal
of its founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah. A secular
and genuinely democratic Pakistan would’ve
had no room for exploitative feudalism tethered
to the culture of loot and plunder under colonialism.
The mullahs, next in line to gatecrash into Pakistan,
were also opposed, tooth and nail, to the concept
of Pakistan. They had decried Jinnah as only half-a-Muslim
and debunked his scheme of a homeland for the
Muslims of India as ‘kafiristan’.
However, the feudals and the mullahs struck common
cause in Pakistan to guard their respective turfs
and gradually monopolize its power center to poach
on all of Pakistan. They were helped on the way
by ambitious Bonapartist generals whose mental
fixation with colonial exploitation and chicanery
encouraged them to disdain the new country’s
politicians and politics. The mealy mouthed and
Machiavellian bureaucrats, whose core was steeped
in colonial administration, became the willing
cohorts in the shenanigans of Pakistan’s
oligarchy in order to stake their own share in
the spoils of power.
The two-nation theory was latched on to by this
ruling elite because of its overt religious content.
Pakistan’s archaic feudal system that spawned
a culture of serfdom became an easy hunting ground
for the feudals to keep their serfs groveling
in penury and misery. On the other hand, the mullah
capitalized on the country’s abysmally low
literacy to keep the layman perpetually obsessed
with divine punishment if the mullah wasn’t
deferred to.
Along the way, this thieving cabal realized that
it wouldn’t have its fill of power and exploitation
with East Pakistan still on board.
The Eastern part of Pakistan didn’t have
feudalism or suffer from a robber-baron syndrome
of clerical oppression. It was, compared to the
Western half, more enlightened, open and secular.
It also had a much keener sense of political awareness;
after all, that’s where the Muslim League
was born in 1906.
Because of all these ‘unsavory’ features,
East Pakistan became a mill around the neck of
West Pakistan’s ruling elite. They decided,
therefore, to cut it loose and be rid of it for
good. The Fall of Dhaka fulfilled their dream;
what followed is history needing no repetition.
The bogey of the two-nation theory is vital for
the ruling oligarchy of Pakistan to be kept alive;
it’s the mantra the incantation of which
is essential to keep the people of Pakistan in
hock to the rulers. The orthodox clergy in Pakistan
that disdained the idea of Pakistan before its
birth now swears by it. The Bonapartes of GHQ
in Rawalpindi claim to be the guardians of the
state’s physical as well as ideological
frontiers; they’re untouchables and anyone
questioning their despotic hold on the reins of
political power must be pilloried, instantly,
as anti-Pakistan. The feudals, hogging Pakistan’s
elected, or nominated, parliaments are hands-in-glove
in this rampant loot; legions of corrupt bureaucracy
and police are at their beck and call to keep
perceived or potential ‘trouble-makers’
at bay.
That’s how the political chessboard has
been arranged in Pakistan. The country’s
minuscule intelligentsia, never a threat to the
merchants and dispensers of power, are disillusioned
and in disarray; their ranks have steadily thinned
over the past three decades. A sliver of Pakistani
intelligentsia has sought refuge in the West but
remains mentally fixated with what goes on back
home in the land where they were never permitted
to strike roots. They keep shooting arrows in
the wind. But their darts can do no harm to the
power brokers in Islamabad secure in their fortresses.
(The author is a former ambassador of Pakistan)
