Even another Pakistani General with a modern outlook could have overthrown Mr Bhutto, tried him on an equally serious charge on the strength of equally flimsy evidence, changed the composition of the Lahore High Court to secure the former Prime Minister’s conviction, ignored the mercy petitions on his behalf and executed him. This would have given that regime a bad name abroad, alienated from it the sympathy of Indian Muslims, divided the people of Pakistan and cast a long and dark shadow over its future. But Mr Bhutto’s execution on the orders of the mullah in khaki invests it with a special significance. Indeed, it may not be much of an exaggeration to say that Pakistan is at the end of its tether and it does not know which way to turn.
If it is accepted, as it must be, that Mr Bhutto was the cleverest and the most articulate champion of modernisation Pakistan has produced – General Ayub Khan was a moderniser but he was not so articulate and clever – and that General Zia-ul-Haq is the only religious bigot to have reached the top position in that country, the judicial murder of the former by the latter becomes the symbol of the defeat of the forces of modernisation and the ascendancy of those of obscurantism. The consequences of such a development can only be disastrous.
Too Far
On the face of it, it might appear that I am stretching the point too far. After all, so it can be argued. Mr Bhutto was not the only moderniser in Pakistan. There are many others, especially in the top echelons of the military-cum-civilian establishment that rules in Islamabad. But they are now leaderless and the struggle against the forces of obscurantism has become much too complex to be led by someone who does not possess Mr Bhutto’s charisma and intellectual skill. Indeed, he himself had found it necessary to yield to bigotry on the issues of the status of the Ahmediyas – they were declared to be outside the pale of Islam when he was still the Prime Minister of Pakistan – and of prohibition.
Similarly, while it can be said with some justification that General Zia is not representative of the army officer corps and that he may well be overthrown if the pro-Bhutto elements manage to keep up the pressure, it will not be easy for his successor, however well disposed towards modernisation, to reverse the process he has set in motion towards the establishment of the so-called Nizam-e-Islam. The successor can remove the Shariah laws General Zia has enforced only at the risk of bringing the mobs out into the streets and a repetition in some form of the recent events in Iran. The mullahs are influential in Pakistan, especially in the countryside. They have tasted power, even if through an army General, and they are not going to return easily to their previous modest status.
General Zia is a witless man; he does not possess political skill; and he has failed to fulfil his promise to hold elections in the past. As such it is possible that some other General or group may out-manoeuvre him and get rid of him. But it is not inconceivable that he enjoys considerable support among the junior officers and soldiers who as a rule in Pakistan come from more traditional social backgrounds. The right-wing religious parties are also firmly ranged behind him and they may well be able to drum up sufficient support for him to discourage potential coupists.
The General can run into trouble irrespective of whether or not he honours his latest promise to hold elections on November 17. In the event of a poll, Mr Bhutto’s supporters can, in one guise or another, win a majority in Pakistan’s two main provinces – West Punjab and Sind. And in the event of his putting off the elections once again, he can alienate some of those political leaders and elements who have cooperated with him in eliminating Mr Bhutto and they may unleash an agitation which he may find difficult to suppress. But this argument should also not be pushed too far. Elected representatives of the people of Pakistan cannot, regardless of their party affiliations, repudiate the concept of Nizam-e-Islam in view of its emotional appeal for most Muslims and undo the measures General Zia has enforced in that regard – the chopping off of hands for theft, and so on.
Implicit in the above assessment is the statement that the process of modernisation cannot be pushed in Pakistan, as in most other Muslim countries, with the willing support and co-operation of the people. Only General Ayub Khan at the height of his power and popularity in 1961 could, for instance, issue and enforce the Muslim Family Laws Ordinance which made polygamy virtually impossible and regulated other aspects of family life like divorce, minimum age of marriage and registration of marriages. Mr Bhutto ran what a colleague has described as a one-man democracy. But even in that framework, he found himself under irresistible pressure on the question of the status of the Ahmediyas.
Elite
This is not to say that Pakistan is about to lapse into medievalism. It is not. The relatively modernised elite is too large and influential to be quickly overwhelmed. But the push towards modernisation has been greatly slowed down, if not halted, and the position is not likely to change for the better in the foreseeable future.
It is in a sense tempting to add that this denouement is the logical culmination of the movement that led to the establishment of Pakistan in 1947. Two points may be made in this connection. First, the demand was based on the assumption, widely shared among the Muslims in north India in the pre-partition period, that they possessed a distinct culture which they could protect and promote only if they had a separate state of their own. Secondly, though the active leadership of the movement was provided by the Western-educated Muslims, who by virtue of their late start in education found themselves at a disadvantage vis-à-vis their Hindu compatriots, and the landlords constituted the single biggest element in the top councils of the Muslim League, the ulema played a vital role in mobilising support for the demand for partition. The ulema genuinely believed in the possibility of an Islamic state based on the Shariah and they have continued to press the case for such a state in Pakistan since its formation in 1947.
The view that the relative eclipse of the modernist elements and the ascendancy of the obscurantist ones was unavoidable in Pakistan can also be said to be reinforced by another fact. After the country’s break-up and the formation of Bangladesh in 1971, it was not possible even for Mr Bhutto to mobilise support for himself, his party and government on the basis of a “hate India” campaign. He could no longer persuade his people to believe that it was possible to establish power parity with, if not superiority over, India and to seize Kashmir. But there is no fatal inevitability about such things.
Popular
Mr Bhutto’s radicalism had caught on among the people. He had mismanaged affairs in that he had alienated many of his supporters by his high-handedness, arbitrariness and arrogance and he had failed to keep his opponents disunited. But he remained the country’s most popular leader and he would have won the March 1977 elections by a comfortable majority even if he had not indulged in, or acquiesced in, rigging. And even if it is accepted that he would have lost a fair election, he could have avoided rigging, as Mrs. Gandhi did at about the same time. Finally, it was not inevitable that there would be a coup in July 1977 or that a thoroughly obscurantist General would be the army chief of staff at that critical moment.
But irrespective of whether the ideology is religious in character, as in the case of Israel, Pakistan and now Iran, or secular, as in that of communist countries, it produces a trap which a wise leadership can avoid but cannot easily escape from if it is once caught. If anything, the stranglehold of religion is stronger than that of a secular “faith”, however messianic and utopian. For while in the latter case, the people ask for demonstrable evidence of its validity in the form of results like improvement in living standards and greater personal freedoms, in the former, faith is its own reward unless, of course, a catastrophe like a foreign occupation overwhelms the country or the regime becomes thoroughly corrupt, inefficient and cruel at the same time. Pakistan is now so trapped. It is difficult to say when it will come out of it.
It is possible that the army leadership is split on Mr Bhutto’s execution or that governmental authority has been greatly weakened as a result of it or that the ethnic and linguistic minorities will try and take advantage of the enfeeblement and incompetence of Islamabad. These are important issues. But the basic problem is quite different. Pakistan is bogged down in bigotry and obscurantism. The state which the Muslim intelligentsia set up to serve as a haven for itself is threatening to become a prison house.
The Times of India, 11 April 1979