Magnificent Delusions (5 page)

After his death in September 1948 Jinnah's successors faced difficulty convincing their countrymen that Pakistani nationalism could be completely secular. To maintain the momentum generated during the political campaign that led to Pakistan's independence, the country's first prime minister, Liaquat Ali Khan—often referred to only as “Liaquat” due to the common occurrence of his last name, Khan—introduced the concept of a national ideology. With this, Pakistan's Islamic identity would be an “ideological safeguard” protecting its territorial integrity and preventing internal disputes and disruption. Khan went on to describe Pakistan's ideology as the Islamic way of life, rooted in “faith, tradition and belief which has been a part of man's heritage for over thirteen hundred years.”
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He argued that this ideology had unified the Indian Muslims in seeking Pakistan and would likewise enable Pakistan to emerge as an effective, functional state.

Parallel to the emphasis on Islam as a national unifier ran the argument that Hindus were eager to avenge centuries of Muslim rule over the subcontinent and sought to eliminate Muslim identity. Although communal violence during partition had equally affected Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims, Pakistani officials and writers chose to present that violence as being targeted only at Muslims. Liaquat described the mayhem as the sacrifice of India's Muslims for the creation of Pakistan, as an editorial in
Dawn
claimed that “hundreds of thousands” of Muslims “were forcibly converted to Hinduism almost simultaneously with the attainment of independence by the Hindus after a thousand years of slavery.”
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Jinnah delivered a speech that called for religion to be relegated to the private domain, but his words had little effect on the passions that had been aroused in the populace to create Pakistan, emotions that were continuously reinforced to consolidate its statehood after
independence. A year after it was delivered, the government republished Jinnah's inaugural speech but excised the portion that spoke of citizens ceasing to be Muslims or Hindus in a political sense. After all, Pakistan was soon on its way to becoming an Islamic state, not just a homeland for Muslims seeking to avoid being a permanent minority in post-British India.

The need to justify their country at an ideological level was only one part of the challenge Pakistan's founding fathers faced; they also needed resources to sustain the country. Although some men like Liaquat and Abol Hasan Ispahani gifted some of their property to the new state and had no plans of returning to India, for several years after independence some of Pakistan's elite acted as if their country was temporary. For instance, Jinnah told India's Prime Minister Nehru, through India's ambassador to Pakistan, that he wanted his house in Bombay kept in good condition so that he could retire there.
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Pakistan's first ambassador to India, Muhammad Ismail, assumed his responsibilities without migrating to Pakistan and at one point claimed that he had not ceased to be an Indian national by becoming Pakistan's diplomatic representative.
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And well-to-do Muslim politicians and officials went back and forth, trying to figure out where their careers might prosper more; some wanted to become Pakistani without losing the benefits of being Indian. It took several years for Pakistan to define its citizenship laws in regard especially to migrants or Indian refugees.

The partition plan provided only seventy-two days for transition from British rule to full independence, and communal rioting consumed most of that time. The hasty drawing of boundaries, division of civil and military services, and apportioning of assets were particularly detrimental to Pakistan. As one Pakistani official later put it, Pakistan, “unlike India, inherited neither a capital nor government nor the financial resources to establish and equip the administrative, economic and military institutions of the new state.”
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Pakistan also had virtually no industry, and the major markets of its agricultural products were in India. The non-Muslim entrepreneurial class that had dominated commerce in the areas now constituting Pakistan either fled or transferred its capital across the new
border. Uncertainties about Pakistan's survival as well as communal violence further exacerbated this flight of capital, shrinking the already narrow revenue base of the new country. Further, the Reserve Bank of India held the Pakistan government's monetary assets, and given the atmosphere of hostility between Congress and Muslim League partisans, the division and transfer of assets was by no means a smooth process.

Pakistan's earliest government officials feared their new country's economic strangulation and saw a “Hindu design to force Pakistan to its knees.” The Congress party that led independent India had opposed the idea of Pakistan, so its leaders were certainly not eager to help the new state. Indian assurances that their reluctant acceptance of partition did not reflect a desire to undo it by force were not believed in Pakistan.

Upon partition Pakistan had received 30 percent of British India's army, 40 percent of its navy, and 20 percent of its air force. Its share of revenue, however, was a meager 17 percent, leading to concerns about the new state's ability to pay for all its armed forces. Within days of independence Pakistan was concerned about its share of India's assets, both financial and military. India's decision to delay transferring Pakistan's share of assets further increased the bitterness of partition.

Gandhi, the father of modern India, recognized the importance of containing that bitterness in India-Pakistan relations. Because of this, he went on a fast in January 1948, demanding that Pakistan's share of the monetary assets be paid. But the terms of the partition did not fully satisfy Pakistanis. They felt—and the new state's leaders exacerbated this—that the Indians as well as the British had deliberately created additional problems for the new country while dividing the assets and especially in demarcating the border.

Among the contentious issues born out of the partition was that of the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir. Pakistanis expected the Kashmir region, given its Muslim majority, to be rightfully part of the new Muslim-majority country. When that did not happen, a sense of grievance immediately took root. This provided grounds for Pakistan's leaders to convert the Hindu-Muslim divide of the
prepartition era into a permanent Pakistan-India rivalry and justified retaining Pakistan's large military inherited from colonial rule and expending the bulk of the country's meager resources on defense. It also further fed the sense of Muslim victimhood that had led Muslims to demand Pakistan in the first place.

During the British Raj 562 princely states had retained varying degrees of administrative independence through treaties with Britain that had been concluded during the process of colonial penetration. Jammu and Kashmir was one of them. The treaty relationships conferred “paramountcy” on the British and, in most cases, control over defense, external affairs, and communications. But the end of the Raj marked the end of paramountcy, and at the time of partition the British asked these states' rulers to choose between India and Pakistan, taking into consideration geographical contiguity and the wishes of their subjects.

Because of Kashmir's contiguity with Pakistan and its Muslim majority, Pakistan's leaders anticipated that it would join the new Muslim country. But the state's ruler at the time of partition, Maharajah Hari Singh, a Hindu, sought to retain independence even though a segment of his Muslim subjects wanted Kashmir to join Pakistan.

Some scholars argue that Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, had thought through a grand strategy for the princely states, including a design to ensure that Jammu and Kashmir would be a part of the independent Indian Union. Having a Muslim-majority state in India would also help highlight that country's secular character. For the exact opposite reason, however, Pakistan needed Kashmir to prove the rationale for partition.

Most Pakistani leaders and scholars as well as some Western authors implicate the last British Viceroy, Lord Louis Mountbatten and members of his staff in a plot to draw the partition boundary so that Kashmir would abut both India and Pakistan. Further, under the partition plan the province of Punjab was to be divided between India and Pakistan on grounds of contiguity and its religious majority.

The Boundary Commission, led by British judge Sir Cyril Radcliffe, awarded two Muslim-majority
tehsils
(subdivisions) in
Gurdaspur district to India, providing overland access to Kashmir from India. Had the map of the Punjab been drawn differently, Kashmir could have ended up with road access only to Pakistan and a natural mountainous frontier with India, which would have precluded any effective Indian claim on the princely state.

But the chaotic condition of government in the newly born state of Pakistan left little room for planning grand strategy. Pakistanis felt that the Boundary Commission cheated them. The concern about the future of Kashmir was addressed by supporting the pro-Pakistan All Jammu and Kashmir Muslim Conference, which led an agitation against the Maharajah. Pashtun tribesmen were hastily trained in Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province to enter Kashmir, with support from Pakistani military officers.

The fact that a British general headed the new Pakistani army limited the scope for a declaration of war against the ill-equipped forces of a British-allied Maharajah. The Indians, however, sought support from Kashmir's most popular Muslim leader at the time, Shaikh Abdullah, who did not share Jinnah's vision of Pakistan.

Thus, Pakistan's first move in Kashmir was to announce Jihad by unofficial forces. An unconventional war was started on the assumption that the Kashmiri people would support the invading tribal
lashkar
(unstructured army) and that the Maharajah's forces would be easily subdued. Little, if any, thought had been given to the prospect of failure or to what might happen if the Indian army got involved in forestalling a Pakistani fait accompli.

However, the Kashmir Maharajah did seek Indian military help and signed the Instrument of Accession with India to secure military assistance. India's prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, sent in Indian troops to fend off the Azad (Free) Kashmir forces. The Indian army then secured the capital, Srinagar, and established control over the Kashmir valley and most parts of Jammu and Ladakh before a UN-sponsored cease-fire.

The battle over Kashmir so early after independence transformed the ideological confrontation between Muslims and Hindus of which Jinnah often spoke into a military conflict. Within months of independence Pakistan was at war with India. To this day Pakistan disputes
Hari Singh's accession to India, arguing that it was not the result of a voluntary decision and that he was not competent to accede to India because he had signed a standstill agreement with Pakistan earlier.

Ideologues argued that Pakistan should put off normal relations with India “until and unless the Kashmir issue has been settled.”
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By and large this stance has endured ever since. As a result, the state of virtually permanent war with India helped Pakistan's British-trained generals and civil servants establish their dominance over politicians who lacked any real experience in government.

In addition to Kashmir the issue of Pashtunistan, involving Afghanistan, further justified Pakistan's maintenance of the inherited large military. During the nineteenth century Britain and Russia competed for influence in Central Asia in what came to be known as the “Great Game” of espionage and proxy wars. Britain feared that the Russian empire would expand southward, threatening its control over India, the “jewel in the British crown” that had been progressively acquired at great expense over more than a century.

The two empires settled on recognizing Afghanistan as a buffer between them, thus saving them from military confrontations with each other. Previously, the British had lost precious lives in their effort to directly control Afghanistan. But by accepting a neutral and independent Afghan Kingdom, they sought to pass on the burden of subduing some of the lawless tribes to a local monarch, albeit with British economic and military assistance.

In 1893 a British civil servant, Sir Mortimer Durand, drew Afghanistan's frontier with British India, which representatives of both governments agreed upon. The border, named the Durand Line, divided Pashtun tribes living in the area intentionally so as to prevent them from becoming a nuisance for the Raj. On their side of the frontier the British created autonomous tribal agencies that British political officers controlled with the help of tribal chieftains whose loyalty was ensured through regular subsidies. The British used force to put down the sporadic uprisings in the tribal areas but generally left the tribes alone in return for stability along the frontier.

Adjacent to the autonomous tribal agencies were the “settled” Pashtuns who lived in towns and villages under direct British rule.
Here, too, the Pashtuns were divided between the Northwest Frontier province (NWFP) and British Balochistan, which did not enjoy the status of being a full province under British rule. Although Muslim, the Pashtuns generally sided with the cause of anti-British Indian nationalism and were both late and reluctant to embrace the Muslim separatism of the All-India Muslim League's campaign for Pakistan.

Pashtun leader Abdul Ghaffar Khan launched the
Khudai Khidmatgaar
(Servants of God) movement, known as the Red Shirts because of their uniform, and supported the Indian National Congress. In fact, the association between the Red Shirts and the Congress was so close that Ghaffar Khan became known as the “Frontier Gandhi.” Even when the 1946 election saw the emergence of the Muslim League as the representative of Muslims throughout British India, Ghaffar Khan's Red Shirts and the Congress remained the dominant political force among Pashtuns and controlled the elected provincial government in Pakistan's northwest.