Battle of ideas

[HASEEB ANSARI]

Battle of ideas
By Arif Azad

THE ideological battle lines drawn in the aftermath of Pakistan’s creation continue to haunt us even today. One recent example of this came when needless fuss was kicked up over the Quaid’s Aug 11 speech. Those raising the controversy contended that the speech, exhorting the freedom of worship, did not exist, that it was a figment of the liberal-secularist’s imagination.

This brazen denial of a foundational speech which enshrined the founder’s vision for a secular, tolerant, pluralist Pakistan constitutes a new low in the ongoing battle of ideas. It’s not for the first time that this has happened. In fact, this intervention is part of a debate about the nature and direction of evolving Pakistani policy since independence.

The debate comprises different and divergent interpretations of the genesis of Pakistan. Those on the right say the sole purpose of Pakistan’s creation lay in turning Pakistan into an Islamic state. In this conception Pakistan was a full-blooded Islamic state or nothing; the founder of the Jamaat-i-Islami thought the Muslim League-created Pakistan fell short of the ideal.

Scholar Hamza Alavi located the mainsprings of the genesis of Pakistan in the desire of an economically declining class of the UP-based Muslim salariat to form Pakistan with a view to recovering its lost status in a new state which offered unfettered opportunities. During the 1980s, Benazir Bhutto endorsed this viewpoint when she traced the origin of the idea of Pakistan to the desire of economically backward Muslims to throw off the monetary hegemony of non-Muslims.

The latter two viewpoints are broadly espoused by the liberals, the democrats and the secularists in Pakistan. Meanwhile, the conservative school comprises religious political parties and their vociferous supporters in the right-wing media, academia and religious conservatives in the wider society. This formation has held sway from its ground-breaking success in the Objectives Resolution to the homogenised, Sunni-leaning state we see today.

Each crop of rulers has contributed to the rise of the right in one way or another. Pakistan’s first military dictator, Ayub Khan, despite being personally liberal, ended up strengthening the right and suppressing the left. This resulted from his personal decision to clamber aboard the US anti-communist bandwagon in order to ensure the supply of military equipment to the struggling Pakistan Army, as indicated by writer Shuja Nawaz This required suppression of the left and other social democratic forces at home on the pattern of McCarthyism in the US. As well as emasculating the left and non-left liberal opposition he also pacified the religious right lobby by sacking Prof Fazul Rehman, a modernist Islamic scholar, from directorship of the Islamic Research Institute.

A brief interlude was the election of Z.A. Bhutto in 1971 on the back of brewing social movements. Yet, like Ayub, Bhutto too capitulated to right-wing demands by declaring Ahmadis non-Muslim and banning alcohol (the PPP kept alive this trend in its latest stint in power when it banned YouTube to pacify the religious right.)

Gen Zia picked up where Ayub Khan had left off: he translated Ayub’s tactical policy of promoting Pakistan as a frontline state against ‘infidel’ Russia into reality. What began with Ayub became a full-fledged ummah mission with Zia. The old dream of Pakistan as a citadel of Islam at last came to fruition with an army of foreign jihadis trooping into Pakistan and Afghanistan to fight the communist infidels.

Important developments flowed from this policy. Internally Pakistan became a state subscribing to a narrow version of Sunni Islam, with external actors getting increasingly enmeshed in Pakistani politics. Textbooks and curriculum were radically shaped to fit this vision. Out went civics and ethics (central to nurturing citizenship ethos, tolerance and pluralism). Instead, Pakistan Studies and Islamiat were stressed.

Zia’s dictatorial rule seemed like an eternity before a case of exploding mangoes intervened to terminate this experiment. But the toxic effects of this period have radiated to all areas of national life.

The holdovers of the Ziaist period are in the vanguard of resurrecting the ‘Pakistan is a citadel of Islam’ narrative. For this purpose, some have thought it necessary to suppress and demonise the Aug 11 speech.

Although these extreme reactions to the speech are triggered by a particular vision of politics, the country should move on given the multiple crises facing it. Denial is meant to drag us back. It should not be allowed to obstruct us in the task of re-imagining a Pakistani state based on equality, fairness and justice for its entire citizenry irrespective of its confessional affiliations.

More than six decades on, we are still enmeshed in hair-splitting ideological debate and looking away from the bigger task of rethinking our state. We must come out of our ideological trenches, pull up our socks, roll up our sleeves and remake Pakistan so that it is fit for the 21 century.

The writer is a freelance contributor.