Beyond Normal

As a country having come into being on the ideology of Islam, negating all sorts of ethnic and geographic confines, Pakistan's internal divide on religious, cultural, ethnic and political fronts has become a new normal. While we observe this new nation in the events leading up to 14 August 1947 ignoring every form of dissonance to achieve the sole aim of a separate homeland, it is all the more discomforting to know that right after the partition of India, residents of this Ideological State started falling prey to dissensions on myriad issues. Pakistan, unlike India back then, tried to leverage its geo-political position to garner support from across the world but the sudden disappearance of the Quaid-e-Azam and Liaqat Ali Khan from the political landscape left a space which was aptly filled in by bigwigs from bureaucracy and myopic politicians. A structure based on a weak parliamentary democracy coupled with an ambitious bureaucracy and a strong military – at least in terms of organisation – and mounting national, regional and international challenges provided stratum for the military to be dragged into a mire from which it has hitherto not been able to come out.

So why we came to brink of this situation? What went wrong that stifled our growth as a democratic country? Why we still are trying to deal with the turf wars within various influential segments of the State? What does the future hold for us?

Let us try to find our answers to these questions.

          First of all, we should know that difference of opinion is a common denominator for change in society. If this were not the case, development would not have been engendered in this world. But what is more important is the way we have to express that difference of opinion. As the maxim goes: “We do not need to agree all the time, so long as we agree on the ground rules of how we will disagree,” we should understand how to disagree on issues of national importance. This is the cornerstone to understand the whole situation where we actually went wrong in our initial history as a young nation.

          Why I am stressing that is because we observe, right after the death of two most influential leaders in the beginning, Pakistan was surrendered by opportunists of all hue and colour. The resulting mire was such that we could not get out of it anyway. As I mentioned in the very beginning of this writing that Pakistan is such a nation which is not a homogenous entity based on clear lines of religion, sect or ethnicity; that makes it vulnerable to many problems as well. The succeeding leaders were marked by nepotism, chicanery and selfishness who could not resist the urge for power and more power. Case in point, Ghulam Muahammd, who was the Governor General of Pakistan was clever enough to fiddle with the system to his own benefit. It may come as a surprise for some that he was a career bureaucrat who ascended to the top slot through sheer manoeuvring. His time as the Governor General saw no betterment in the system and he could not free his nation from the clutches of the colonial vestiges. He and his immediate successors saw it as a routine to run the country as they liked. The result was opportunism and turmoil which was the omen for a change. And so the Army stepped in.

          The Army’s top-brass eschewed the common way of running a strategically important South-Asian country. They sidelined the protagonists of the older regimes and took everything into their hands. It must not come as a surprise that it was the so-called military dictatorship which brought in the best of foreign investment and kept the dangers of the fault-lines from blowing out of proportion. The masses were happy and the country was progressing. But then came to the fore the idea of popular politics which brought in the mobilisation of the masses on the basis of the same fault-lines which the Army was hardly trying to keep under their thumb. The language movement by the Bengalis and Islamisation ideals of the religion-based political parties muzzled the growth of the country and one after the other such gimmicks were played to avoid focusing on real issues which had made the country stand on the precipice.

          It should be noted however that the bureaucracy kept the country functioning largely because Army wanted it to function as a potent force and not be a colonial vestige. But once again it is to be noted that politically ambitious leaders brought in their cronies to ruin the sanctity of bureaucracy – and it still goes on, sadly. We may blame anyone for the slow growth of our country but it is to be seen that despite all sorts of dissentions, we have come a long way and have kept the country in a considerably stable state. Let’s hope we can hold on to the notion of a united nation for eternity.

           We have long awaited the progress and development in real sense. Our institutions are trying hard to keep their turf-wars under the carpet and focus on the real change we all want to see. Although it is normal to see institutions fighting amongst each other but we have to see beyond normal and for this to happen we must remain united; not once but always.