‘Pakistan didn’t have a Nehru to build democracy’

 

‘Pakistan didn’t have a Nehru to build democracy’

Imran Khan, in a TV interview with Barkha Dutt some years ago, when she was with the NDTV, said that, unlike India, ‘Pakistan didn’t have a Nehru to build democracy’. Prophetic words. However, when the opportunity came his way, Imran Khan failed to ensure Pakistan developed into a stable democracy. To understand the current political crisis in Pakistan, it is necessary to know a bit about the personal lives of Jinnah -the man who bent on dividing India- and flamboyant Imran Khan. Both of them, liberal secularists, not Islamic fundamentalists, had compromised with ethical principles, to realize their political ambitions.

 

My Work Quaid-e-Azam- a translation of biographical novel ‘Pratinayak’, based on the life of Muhammad Ali Jinnah- gives a vivid account of Jinnah’s life and work.  When it was decided that Jinnah would go to London to study the law, his mother insisted that he should get married before sailing to London, as she thought that “Once a young son was tied down to the marital vows, he would think a hundred times before straying.” So, Jinnah married his cousin Amibai, aged 14, in 1892, when he was around 16 years. She died a year later.

 

His second marriage, 25 years later, was the most controversial. A teenage beautiful girl Rattanbai Petit (known as Ruttie) was infatuated by Jinnah, rather Jinnah seduced her into a romantic relationship. She was the fashionable only daughter of his friend Sir Dinshaw Petit-a member of an elite Parsi community of Bombay. The Petits were an extremely anglicized family that strove to be fully British in manner, dress, language, diet, and customs.  When her father learnt that Jinnah was intending to marry her, he was shocked. He moved the High Court to prevent him from marrying her. However, in 1918 when Ruttie turned 18 years, Jinnah married her much against the stiff opposition by the Parsi community and prominent Muslim religious leaders. He was 42 years old- 24 years older than her, three years younger than her father. He converted her to Islam when he himself had no attachment to Islam.  Ruttie was disowned by her parents. She had subsequently separated from Jinnah, lapsed into depression and died in 1929, when she was just 29 years old. 

 

Jinnah practiced double standards when it came to his daughter Dina’s marriage in 1938. He opposed to her getting married to a Parsi-born Neville Wadia. He was “worried that if his daughter married a Parsi, at a time when the political situation was fluid the position that he commanded among the millions of the Muslims in the country would be jeopardized. The Viceroy accorded him the status of a supreme leader of the Muslims…treated on par with Gandhi…The Muslims, who had been under the clutches of the Mullahs and the Maulvis, now accepted him as their sole supreme leader.…would never tolerate this marriage...If that happened, he would lose everything”. M .C, Chagla, in his autobiography Roses in December, recalls how "Jinnah, in his usual imperious manner, told her that there were millions of Muslim boys in India, and she could have chosen anyone. Reminding her father that his wife (Dina's mother Rattanbai), had also been a non-Muslim and a Parsi as well, the young lady replied: there were millions of Muslim girls in India. Why did you not marry one of them?” And when she married Neville Wadia, Jinnah disowned her. She did not visit him during his lifetime, but attended his funeral.

 

Jinnah, when he died in September 1948, left the infant state orphan that had no visionary enlightened leader to nourish. Bernard Shaw, in his letter to Prime Minister Nehru dated September 18,1948 suggested: “If he has no competent successor you will have to govern the whole Peninsula”. After the assassination of the first Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan in 1951, Pakistan never achieved political stability; nor succeeded in establishing a working democracy.  No elected Prime Minster was ever allowed to complete the full five-year term. The elected governments were either dislodged by military coups or dismissed on the charges of corruption, plunging the country into a perpetual state of insecurity and political instability.  More than half the years of its 75 years existence, Pakistan was ruled by the army.

 

Pakistan reached a stage, where elected governments owe their survival to the army and the judiciary. The military is the wealthiest commercial player. In her book Military Inc, Ayesha Siddiqa- a military analyst with a PhD in War Studies from King's College, London-   says:

 

“Pakistan is a state run by its army and intelligence service… the power of the military has transformed Pakistani society, where the armed forces have become an independent class. The military is entrenched in the corporate sector...Pakistan's companies and its main assets are in the hands of a tiny minority of senior army officials. The military is one of Pakistan’s largest landowners, controlling about 11.58 million acres of land. It is involved in a range of profitable activities- wheat storage, fertilizer production, oil and gas exploration and production, sugar, rice and ginning mills, fish farms and bicycle manufacturing plants. These and many other commercial ventures have made the military financially independent from other branches of the State.”

 

Field Marshal Ayyub Khan, who seized the Presidency from Iskandar Mirza in a military coup in 1958, had abolished the constitutional government in 1956 and established a ‘preventive autocracy’. Subsequently, the military staged coups in 1977 and 1999, resulting in the unconstitutional and unceremonious dismissal of elected Prime Ministers and the breakdown in the constitutional functioning.  It is not only the military that has contributed to the unstable parliamentary form of government; the judiciary also contributed to the fragility of elected Prime Ministers. Earlier in October 1954, Governor General Gulam Muhammad dissolved the Constituent Assembly and dismissed the East Pakistan Prime Minister who enjoyed a majority in Parliament, and the Federal Court upheld the dissolution.

 

In 1977, the army chief Ziaul Haq, unseated Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, in a military coup, declared the martial law, got Bhutto- the first elected Prime Minister- arrested and imprisoned on the alleged charge of murdering a political rival. He was executed in 1979. The Supreme Court not only found the military coup to be legal, but also did not prevent the execution of Bhutto. Then teaching at Ramnarain Ruia College, Bombay, I couldn’t believe that a Prime Minister could be hanged to death on such a trumped-up charge. It was clear the direction in which Pakistan was heading.

 

In 1996, President Farooq Leghari dismissed the government of Benazir Bhutto on the ground of corruption and incompetence. In October 1999, the chief of the army General Pervez Musharraf, in a bloodless coup de ’tat, unseated Prime Minister Nawaz Shariff, suspended the Constitution and declared the martial law. It was during his rule that Benazir was assassinated, the people accusing his involvement in the conspiracy to assassinate her.

 

A three-time Prime Minister Nawaz Shariff was disqualified by the Supreme Court in 2017 from holding public office over the so-called ‘Panama Papers ‘case, forcing Sharif to step down. Imran Khan and his party- Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf- moved the Supreme Court charging Sharif was not ’honest’ as warranted by Article 62(1)(f) of the 1973 constitution, and the Court upheld the charge. On many occasions, the apex court was accused of attempting a ‘judicial coup’.

 

It is in this background that we should understand Imran Khan’s ascendancy to power in 2018. It is important to know the person. He had numerous relationships with women during his bachelor life.  He was known as a’ hedonistic bachelor’ and a playboy who was active on the London nightclub circuit. His many girlfriends- called 'mysterious blondes' - were unknown. His first girlfriend, Emma Sergeant, an artist and the daughter of British investor Sir Patrick Sergeant, introduced him to socialites. He had a daughter with the heiress Sita White. In 1995, at the age of 43, following the footsteps of Jinnah, Imran married 21-year-old Jemima Goldsmith, 22 years younger than him. They have two sons. They divorced in 2004, ending the nine-year marriage. In 2015, he married Reham Khan -a British-Pakistani journalist- who divorced him subsequently. She alleges in her autobiography that he has four other children out of wedlock, some of whom had Indian mothers. In 2018, Imran had married his spiritual mentor (murshid) Bushra Bibi. She wears burqa, covering from head to toes and the face completely, in the public.

 

This is Imran Khan, a liberal secularist embracing religious fundamentalism to realize his political ambition, akin to the founder of Pakistan; a willy-nilly politician who compromised with moral values in pursuit of power. His losing the vote of confidence in the National Assembly on April 10,2022 and Shehbaz Sharif taking over as the Prime Minister, heading  the biggest  coalition government in the country's history representing multiple parties and groups with conflicting and mutually exclusive ideologies, are an indication of Pakistan returning to the familiar pattern. Pakistan is under the grip of power-hungry corrupt politicians, the highly ambitious politicized military having vested interest, and the judiciary that is willing to play partisan politics, rather than upholding the constitution and the rule of law.  Does democracy have a future in Pakistan?  Will the generals ever withdraw to the barracks? Building a nation is not the same as dividing a country. It needs a benevolent leadership.