{"id":3381,"date":"2015-12-07T11:16:44","date_gmt":"2015-12-07T06:16:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/jwt2015\/?p=3381"},"modified":"2017-08-02T16:41:00","modified_gmt":"2017-08-02T11:41:00","slug":"the-struggle-for-pakistan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/pakistan-affairs\/the-struggle-for-pakistan\/","title":{"rendered":"THE STRUGGLE FOR PAKISTAN"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/a>Pakistan\u2019s best-known historian, Ayesha Jalal, is back with a new book: \u201cThe Struggle For Pakistan: A Muslim Homeland and Global Politics.\u201d This book essentially synthesises much of Jalal’s earlier work that by all accounts is rich and comprehensive. In short, the new book presents an overview of Pakistan\u2019s progression as a national security state, a lop-sided federation to its current existential woes fuelled by state-sponsored Islamisation. Jalal acknowledges that the country’s Islamic identity was not enough to hold it together and the continued cycles of military rule turned it into a polity that cannot provide full citizenship rights to all Pakistanis.<\/p>\n

This emphasis on citizenship is an important perspective that Jalal has brought forth to a global reader, who views the country as an epicentre of terror and blowing itself as a jihadi state. As the premier scholar on the country’s founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Jalal refers to the origins of Pakistan as a \u201ctruncated \u2026 moth-eaten and mutilated state\u201d in the most peculiar circumstances of 1940s and the breakdown of power-sharing schemes that were deliberated in that decade. Lord Mountbatten\u2019s ominous sentence marked the start: \u201cAs far as Pakistan is concerned, we are putting up a tent. We can do no more.\u201d And even today in many parts of the country, the tent exists without a responsive state structure. Sixty-seven years later, Pakistan is a country of 200 million people with no local governments that can assure accountable services (including security) to its citizens.<\/p>\n

Pakistan\u2019s insecurity is rooted in that phase when it was widely projected that it may just collapse under the burden of its inherent contradictions. Over 40 million Muslims stayed in India; its two wings were 1,000 miles apart and the task of creating a nation-state was even more onerous given the diversity \u2014 ethnic, linguistic and religious \u2014 of the new state. Nearly 25 per cent of Pakistanis in 1947 were non-Muslims (today only four to five per cent are). The perennial debate on Pakistan’s national identity has not ended.<\/p>\n

Unlike its \u2018other\u2019 \u2014 India \u2014 Pakistan could not develop workable institutions of participatory democracy and pursued a policy of centralising power through a strong civil-military bureaucracy. Through the course of the book, Jalal also contextualises Pakistan\u2019s geography and its alliance with the US. Militancy, argues Jalal, is not an outcome of Pakistan\u2019s alliances but through the insecurity vis-a-vis India. By 1958, Pakistan had turned into a martial state (elaborately detailed in an earlier work by Jalal, The State of Martial Rule) and the future trajectory has been that of militarism, which manifests in 2015 in the form of parliament amending the Constitution to accommodate military tribunals. It would seem a contradiction but not when viewed in light of civilian failures and the continued domination of the military over the decades.
\nThere are few books that trace Pakistan\u2019s contemporary history in a readable fashion. Jalal, therefore, has presented all the arguments and key developments from the imposition of martial law by President Iskander Mirza in 1958, the rise of Ayub Khan, the 1971 civil war and creation of Bangladesh, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto\u2019s populism and the damaging decades of 1980s and 1990s that shape today\u2019s Pakistan and its woes.<\/p>\n

Jalal\u2019s new book has a few insights for Pakistan\u2019s elite that they need to imbibe for course correction: first, each military rule instead of strengthening state authority has weakened it. Second, civilian failures have contributed to the perpetual dominance of the military. Third, weak or absent federalism has been harmful for the country and there is no alternative to giving voice and power to the diverse constituents of the Pakistani state. Fifth, blaming the US for Pakistan’s choices in the 1960s, 1980s and 2000s is only a partial story. Sixth, the \u2018cynical\u2019 use of \u201cIslamism\u201d by an otherwise secular elite has been disastrous. Lastly, there is an ongoing struggle in the country reflected through artistic revival and cultural expression, which indicates that a robust society is creating change despite the rigid world view and conduct of the state.<\/p>\n

She adds: \u201cThe burgeoning of a popular culture in the midst of state-sponsored Islamisation and terrorism is a remarkable feat for Pakistan.\u201d Jalal cites the historical resistance mounted by folklore as a form of dialogue between the rulers and the ruled. As a historian, she notes the globalisation of Pakistani music, literature and the arts as markers of the \u2018moderation versus extremism\u2019 battle that is underway. Quite sensibly, she does not overplay this but these creative impulses cannot be discounted while documenting the story of today\u2019s Pakistan.<\/p>\n

But there are few omissions in the book. For instance, the extent of radicalisation that society has espoused as a result of national ideology framed by the ruling elite gets a mention, but not in sufficient detail. Jalal tries to be dispassionate about the nature and quantum of Islamic identity that is inherent to the idea of Pakistan and its various manifestations today. Is there a scope for redesign of Islamic nationalism and if not, could it remain valid for regional cultures and identities that refuse to submerge? The case of Balochistan, for example, is a classic case of resistance to the centralised ideology of Pakistan.<\/p>\n

Most of the arguments in the book are found in Jalal\u2019s earlier works. But in The Struggle For Pakistan, they merge and provide a useful background to the global audience to Pakistan\u2019s complex history. The book is accessible and stylistically marks a departure from Jalal\u2019s earlier academic works as she makes an effort to reach out to lay readers. She discounts that Pakistan is going to disappear from the map of the world or get buried under its own weight. This is where her work assumes significance compared with other accounts of Pakistan that are far more unflattering about its future. Will Pakistan break with its past trends is a question that remains partially unanswered by the book. But then historians cannot serve as oracles or analysts. The answer to this question lies with the military and the opportunistic political class that refuse to show any signs of freedom from the curse of history. In a country where the discipline of history has vanished and replaced by state propaganda, Jalal\u2019s book is a layered account that aims to undertake a much-needed correction of \u2018national\u2019 histories.<\/p>\n

Reviewed by: Raza Rumi<\/strong><\/p>\n

Courtesy: The Express Tribune<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pakistan\u2019s best-known historian, Ayesha Jalal, is back with a new book: \u201cThe Struggle For Pakistan: A Muslim Homeland and Global Politics.\u201d This book essentially synthesises much of Jalal’s earlier work that by all accounts is rich and comprehensive. In short, the new book presents an overview of Pakistan\u2019s progression as a national security state, a …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":149,"featured_media":3382,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2840,2],"tags":[8477,3077,3079,3078,3076],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3381"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/149"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3381\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}