Global Watch | Why Pakistan is a fundamentally flawed nation-state

The current mess in Pakistan where political parties, judiciary and armed forces are pitted against one another in a complex matrix isn’t going to resolve in the near future. In fact, it is going to get worse as the malaise has been too deeply rooted in Pakistan. Pakistan is a fundamentally flawed nation state and nothing demonstrates it more than how Pakistan treated its ‘founder’, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, and Chaudhary Rahmat Ali, the man who coined the acronym Pakistan! First about Jinnah. Pakistanis called him Qaid-e-Azam and consider him to be the founder of their country in 1947. But behind all these words of praise, they have tried to hide the dark reality of how they ill-treated Jinnah and his sister Fatima both. Tilak Devasher gives an account of the last moments of Jinnah in Pakistan at the Helm. On 11 September 1948, Jinnah, weighing barely 70 pounds and suffering from cancer of the lungs, was carried on a stretcher aboard the Governor General’s Viking for the flight from Quetta to Karachi. There was no one to receive him at Mauripur airport (Karachi’s military airport) barring his military secretary Col Geoffrey Knowles and an army ambulance, sans any nurse. The diplomatic corps had not been informed about his arrival, which was the norm, whenever Jinnah landed in Karachi so that he was received in the approved official way. The ambulance would break-down halfway to his residence and it took Col Knowles two hours to fetch another from the local Red Cross. Meanwhile, Jinnah was stranded on the road for two hours in an ‘oppressive’ ambulance that completely exhausted him. No one knew that Jinnah was in the stranded ambulance. His pulse was weak and irregular. Jinnah was to die later that night. ‘The tragic manner of his death was compounded by his last rites. A Twelver Shia, following his conversion from the Ismaili sect, Jinnah had to have two separate funerals-one according to the Sunni rituals in the open and the other before that according to Shia norms in his home.’ Jinnah’s sister Fatima wrote a book in 1955, My Brother, in which she was critical of the then Pakistani leadership. The book was allowed to be published only in 1987. She was not allowed for two years to address the Pakistani public after Jinnah’s death. However, on Jinnah’s third death anniversary, she was allowed to speak on Pakistan’s official radio. As she broke down while speaking about the ‘ambulance incident’, the broadcast was immediately cut off. Now about Choudhury Rahmat Ali. He, along with three other students, had coined the term Pakistan in a four-page pamphlet titled ‘Now or Never’. The word ‘PAKISTAN’ was actually an acronym for a region that comprised Punjab, Afghania (North West Frontier Province, Kashmir, Sindh and Balochistan). Ali had gone to England to educate himself at Cambridge. He also met Jinnah in 1934. KK Aziz writes in Rahmat Ali: A Biography that when Rahmat Ali came to Pakistan in 1948 after the Partition he was absolutely disillusioned by the attitude of politicians, corruption and lack of vision among Pakistani leadership. All he could see was people at the helm of affairs were least concerned about governance and their only priority was to make money and get powerful and influential positions within the establishment. Later Rahmat Ali was hounded by the Pakistani establishment and he was forced to leave Pakistan. He came back to England realising the blunder that was committed in the name of creating Pakistan. He never went back to Pakistan again and three-years later died a lonely death in 1951. Rahmat Ali is not the only one who died such a lonely death in exile. In 1958, General Iskander Mirza imposed martial law as President of Pakistan but within three weeks there was another coup by Ayub Khan and Mirza was asked to pack his bags and leave Pakistan. Devasher has given an account of the appalling state of affairs in Pakistan’s polity that has now become almost the most repeated script in its political theatre. ‘After the Coup, Mirza and his wife were first flown to Quetta and then on 2 November 1958 to London. They carried with them only their personal belongings while their personal effects were confiscated and shared among the army brass. A US intelligence report dated 3 November, 1958 noted how shabbily the Pakistani establishment treated Mirza who was also the last Governor General of Pakistan.’ The Mirzas paid for their own transportation. They were made to pay ten rupees each for their passports. Such was his plight that Mirza didn’t even have money to tip the porter or pay for his hotel upon arrival in London.’ In London Mirza lived in penury and died in penury. He didn’t have enough money for his medical treatment. Heads of some European countries, the Shah of Iran and some old friends helped him to survive in a small flat in London where he kept a very low profile. When Ayub Khan’s regime was overthrown by Yahya Khan, Mirza tried to come back to Pakistan but his request was outrightly rejected without giving any reason. Mirza died on his birthday 13 November, 1969. He wasn’t accorded any state funeral by Pakistan. The Shah of Iran then ordered his boy to be brought to Tehran where he was accorded a state funeral by the Iranian government. The Pakistani establishment didn’t allow his first wife and their children to leave the country and attend his funeral. When Mirza died, all he had left behind was 859 British pounds in capital cash and 80 pounds in income. In a nutshell, Pakistan, since its inception, has struggled to observe the basic norms of civility in its public life. Leaders and political parties hound each other as a bureaucratic-military nexus took over the state of Pakistan right from the beginning. Ayub Khan, who is considered to be the first military ruler, had written in a paper in the Foreign Affairs journal in 1960 how Islam should become the fulcrum for the existence of Pakistan. And that is how from the 1960s onwards the radical Islamic clergy was nurtured by the military to counter any opposition. Democracy and civilised discourse are alien ideas for Pakistan because of the path it has taken since its formation. Devasher quotes an interesting anecdote which not only aptly explains the anarchy in Pakistan’s polity but also tells that what is happening with Imran Khan is nothing new. ‘Asif Zardari’s (Pakistan’s current Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto’s father) case is a fascinating study of the Pakistan political system. When Benazir became Prime Minister for the first time in 1988, he moved into the PM’s house; when she was dismissed in 1990, he went from the PM’s house to jail. When she returned to power in 1993, he went from jail to the PM’s house; and in 1996 when she was dismissed for a second time, he went back to jail. When the PPP won the 2008 elections after the assassination of Benazir, he moved into the President’s House and all cases against him were slowly settled’. The writer, an author and columnist, has written several books. He tweets @ArunAnandLive. Views expressed are personal. Read all the Latest News , Trending News , Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook , Twitter and Instagram .