PAKISTAN will be sixty-two years old this week. As usual, the leaders will extend their customary homage to Mr M.A. Jinnah, the founder of the country, and Quaid-i-Azam to the people. Unlike the past, more questions are being asked what has gone wrong in relation to the hopes that were shared by all in 1947. The tradition of democracy has remained fragile, terrorism in the name of Islam is rampant, corruption is on the rise, and some centrifugal tendencies have emerged.

It is natural, therefore, to point a finger at the ruling class which has provided leadership to the country for the last six decades, their mode of governance and their failure to build a sustained institutional framework for the country. There has been a remarkable continuity among those who have served as movers and shakers in the political regimes, both pseudo-democratic and those based on military rule. We need to focus our attention, therefore, on the nature of the social formation that has dominated the country.

Recently, a collection of short stories was published under the title In other Rooms, Other Wonders (Norton, 2009), written by Daniyal Mueenuddin, a Pakistan-American, who has returned to Pakistan as an aspiring writer, but also to manage the estate (as he calls it) in southern Punjab, owned by his father, a well-known senior civil servant with distinguished record in the earlier political administrations.

With a novelist’s insight and a seasoned writer’s pen, he portrays the hidden world of feudal masters, their servants, hangers on.

The women in the stories use their devices to prey upon men, the ones from the upper class to keep their status, and those from the lower class trying to climb the ladder, only to be pushed back in the battle of the gender. Among his other characters are corrupt farm managers, and spoiled children of the wealthy landlords.

In a recent interview published in the New York Times (Sabrina Tavernice, July 25, 2009) he claims not to act as a landlord, and he treats his workers fairly. In general, he suggests, that the cast of characters is changing.

Powerful servants, for example, are becoming part of politics; sons of spiritual leaders take over district administration. And religious groups are emerging, with mullahs and fundamentalist Deobandis in the forefront. Meanwhile poverty is becoming endemic.

The question that arises from these stories and his other writings is why a small elite controls vast areas of land more than sixty years after Pakistan was established.

How it all came about has now been confirmed in several scholarly works. Early in the twentieth century, for example, “hereditary proprietors” were added to the definition of ‘zamindara’ by the colonial officers. The Land Alienation Act in this context contributed directly to the promotion of the privileged land class. Then, there was settlement of new irrigated lands in Punjab; all these factors directly impinged on politics and the economy in the later years.

What constraints were then faced by Pakistan after independence on its ability to institute a meaningful land reform in the country? It is an important question as it has direct bearing on how the country’s governance has been affected by this fact. This question prompts us to revisit the Pakistan Movement.

When Mr Jinnah was persuaded in 1934 to return to India by Mr Liaquat Ali Khan, Muslim League was still a gentlemen’s club, and its conventions could not muster even a quorum to conduct its business. The situation changed completely in 1937, when as a result of the Act of 1935, as a step towards self-

government, provincial legislatures were elected in the country. The Unionist Party ruled over Punjab, but in most other provinces including the NWFP the Indian National Congress was able to form ministries. With regard to the agenda of the Hindu-dominated provincial governments, a clash of cultures and language developed, especially between the elite groups of the two communities in the province of UP. The perceived and real grievances of Muslims gave a boost to the Muslim League, and paved the way to Lahore Resolution in 1940.

The urban middle classes in the areas which were to form part of north-west and north-east autonomous states as envisaged in the Lahore Resolution had started to rally, to borrow the phrase from Ayesha Jalal, behind the sole spokesman for a separate Muslim nation. It was essential, however, to win the province of Punjab completely in order to accomplish this goal. The controversial Sikandar-Jinnah pact (Sir Sikandar Hayat Khan was premier of Punjab) had made an attempt to pave the way for support from the landed interests in the province. More effective campaign was needed, however, to make Muslim League victory possible.

David Gilmartin of North Carolina State University and Ian A. Talbot, a British historian, have thrown some light on how the strategy for the victory was mobilised. Professor Gilmartin in his remarks made recently at an event organised by the Pakistan Study Centre, Punjab University, quoted to have said that the Movement had emphasised unity of Islam transcending biradari and locality. In his earlier detailed study (Religious leadership and the Pakistan Movement in the Punjab, Modern Asian Studies, 1979, reprinted in Mushirul Hasan’s, India’s Partition, 2001) he explains succinctly how religious support for the Movement was organised in Punjab.

It was to win over the sajjada nashins to the cause. They had developed religious influence centred on the shrines. And they had ambivalent feelings towards secular tendencies of the Unionist Party

With the emergence of Muslim League, sajjada nashins saw the opportunity to put rural politics on a more solid religious foundation. The sweeping victory gained by the Muslim League in 1946 elections vindicated the efforts made by the League high command in this regard. This victory was, however, a call for a new religious order by them, not for any repudiation of the landed aristocracy.

But it did leave the important question un-answered: how to define this new religious system, and about the future of landlordism.

While Gilmartin’s analysis gives a glimpse about social structure in southern Punjab, the emphasis placed by Talbot (The growth of the Muslim League in the Punjab, 1937-46, Journal of Commonwealth and Contemporary Politics, 1982) explains the crucial part played by landlords and pirs, and the related kinship groups to mobilise support for the League. The momentum gained by the Muslim League during this period had convinced many landlords that if they did not join, they would lose the last opportunity to maintain their access to patronage and power. He concludes: ‘The Punjab Muslim League’s success demonstrates how much more important ‘traditional’ social and religious networks may be in mobilisation of political support than has been recognised by existing theories.’

Punjab now was ready to move forward with new names in the landed-aristocracy such as Daultanas and Mamdots, leaving behind Khizr Hayat Tiwana, and the legacy of Sir Sikandar Hayat Khan. In the context of the situation, the Punjab Muslim League was confronted with Hobson’s choice, to face the reality concerning the social structure in the area. But there was rapport between the Quaid and the masses, never witnessed before, even though he could speak but little vernacular; this is how this writer remembers the mood as a student activist during 1945-47. The north-west India was part of what Hamza Alvi calls the colonial legacy of the British rule. The objective was to extract maximum revenue from land, to promote local interests who would strengthen defence considerations of the rule and, as Mustafa Kamal Pasha has suggested in his writings, the backwardness of the region facilitated colonial capitalism. With Presidencies of Calcutta, Madras and Bombay becoming centres of industrial and financial development, Sindh and the Punjab became agricultural hinterland.

The main question then is why feudalistic pattern has remained frozen in the rural life of Pakistan for the last six decades, as delineated by Daniyal Mueenuddin, profoundly affecting the political economy of the country.

Z.A. Bhutto with a solid rural base was able to build his new People’s Party with the help of his urban colleagues and a balance had developed in the focus of the party regarding the problems of Pakistan until he started to lean more heavily towards waderas and sajjada nasheens. He nevertheless made an effort to introduce modest land reform but it became entangled in court challenges and fatwas until General Ziaul Haq closed that chapter.