The Guardian

 

Is It Taboo to Question the Two-Nation Theory?
By Karamatullah K. Ghori
Canada

Over the past 76 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 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 and a career diplomat)