It is also a great misfortune that we could not produce any other great leader of the calibre of the Quaid-e-Azam. The leaders who held the reins of the nation after him were mostly mediocre, lukewarm and seasonal politicians with no vision of the great destiny of the nation. Instead of contributing anything positive to the cause of nation building, they made politics a dirty pool of stagnant water fraught with all sorts of conceivable maladies and impurities.The creative potential of the nation got eclipsed in the absence of any favourable opportunities for its actualisation and development. A gloomy sense of frustration and pessimism pervaded the national psychology and the gulf between the ruling elite and the ruled masses widened to an appalling extent in view of the deepening process of polarisation and disintegration in the socio-economic structure of society. The Quaid had strongly thundered against the exploitation of the common man by landlords and capitalists: ‘There are millions and millions of our people who hardly get one meal a day. Is this civilisation? Is this the aim of Pakistan? If that is the idea of Pakistan I would not have it.’ But the layman, being intolerably suppressed under the load of ruthless exploitation of feudal lords and capitalists, got bitterly disenchanted and skeptical of everything around him and started entertaining the nation that the creation of Pakistan was false and unjustified since it gave him nothing but destitution, squalor, joblessness, corruption and tormenting sense of deprivation and insecurity.
The leftist or the so-called progressive forces in the country marched forward in battalions to exploit this situation to their benefit as well as to fill the void that had taken place in the psychology of the nation, by the inculcation of the socialist ideal of a ‘classless society’. Naturally this slogan of a ‘classless society’ or at least provision of the basic necessities of life ‘Bread, clothing and lodging’ had a peculiar charm and fascination for the down-trodden and the poverty-stricken masses in the changed political scenario.In addition to a programme of radical economic reforms, the leftist intellectuals managed to provide a new ideological orientation to the country in the light of the Marxist theory of class struggle and dialectical materialism which undeniably amounted to the falsification of the Two Nation Theory was the root cause of and the only justification for the creation of Pakistan. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto emerged, as a powerful mouthpiece of socialism on the political horizon of the country and enforced, in the midst of universal tumult and fury, his policy of nationalisation but the large-scale bureaucratic embezzlement of national resources plus the peculiar condition of a feudal set-up foiled the scheme altogether and no durable and substantial change took place at the grassroots level. Bhuttoism met the same tragic in Pakistan as Stalinism in the former Soviet Russia.On the other hand, the rightist forces or the defenders of the status quo assumed a purely conservative and reactionary character and managed to consolidate the prevalent socio-economic structure based on the suzerainty of feudal lords, Bonapartists, bureaucrats, capitalists and the clergy ‘against all the winds of change and revolution. Ziaism was the true symbol of the juxtaposition of all the diverse elements of anti-Bhutto and conservative sections of society.
The policies adopted by Ziaul Haq to check the mounting tide of Bhuttosim further precipitated the process of fragmentation and threw the nation into the morass of a host of conflicting nationalities based on divers’ ethnic, regional, linguistic and sectional interests. The name of Islam was brazen-facedly used merely as a slogan to hoodwink the ignorant masses as well as to get a moral support and justification for the unjustifiable enforcement of military equipped to create an atmosphere of violence, hatred and intolerance all over the country.
A great fact is disclosed in the maxim: ‘Nations perish where vision fails’. The same tragedy befell us as our political demagogues too lost sight of the true ideal of national consolidation and development since too engrossed all along they were to play second fiddle to the colonial policy of their white masters by dragging the hydra headed monster of ethnic, sectional, sectarian and regional loyalties into the arena of national politics.
Instead of adopting a policy of self-reliance and setting out the ideal of economic self-sufficiency by exclusively banking upon national resources and formulating policies and priorities in the light of our own objective conditions, an obnoxious, and a highly condemnable ‘Aid culture’ or ‘the concept of loan-based development’ was promoted and the fate of the nation laid as hostage to the international economic parasites like World Bank, IMF and of course America.
We miserably failed to indigenes the so-called process of development and prosperity in both agricultural and industrial sectors by blindly accepting the West-oriented development schemes as role models in complete disregard of the specific demands of our own socio-economics structure and the evolutionary principles of social dynamics. VIPism (agricultural, bureaucratic and industrial elitism) brazen-facedly fed on ‘Aid culture” engulfed the moral idealism of the nation like a dragon so vibrant at the time of Pakistan’s establishment but also heartlessly snatched even the last piece of bread due for too many hungry stomachs in the country.
What the good came out of their borrowed development prescriptions unwisely thrust upon us by our economic godfathers except the large-scale concentration of national wealth and resources into a few hands and the deprivation of teeming millions of even the basic necessities of life? Could a national character emerge or the interests of the various segment of society converge on a single point in such a highly compartmentalised and class-conscious society almost inextricably divided into camps of ‘the haves’ and ‘the have-nots’?The so-called economic reforms put into force during Ayub era outwardly gave an ostentatious show of overall national prosperity and this era, therefore, being called ‘an era of development’ due to large-scale industrialisation in the country but as a matter of fact, it cleverly camouflaged the blood-sucking and parasitic nature of these reforms by enriching and rewarding a few selected families at the expense of the whole nation.The old happy days of empty slogans and electrifying declamations are fast approaching their end under repeated public frustrations and disenchantments; now something concrete and substantial will have to be undertaken by our political pharaohs to restore the confidence of the masses and to ensure the survival of the country if they are truly committed and dedicated to Pakistan and the lofty cause of the Quaid.
By: Muhammad Yasir Kayani
Jahangir's World Times First Comprehensive Magazine for students/teachers of competitive exams and general readers as well.
