It would seem self-evident that, as a Muslim homeland built in the name of Islam, Pakistan would be better equipped than most states to define the role of Islam in national politics. Yet, the debate on the place of Islam in national life has raged on, muddied by the claims and counter-claims of its many protagonists. As a result, the two ideas — Pakistan and Islam — have remained unclear to most people in the country.
That it should continue to do so is in very large measure a reflection, if not a symptom, of the ideological confusion at the heart of a state still trapped in myths of its own making. All states rely on myths, which they nurture to lend meaning to the imagined political community. What is peculiar to Pakistan is that the myths so carefully cultivated to sustain the national edifice turned out after independence to be embarrassments that needed to be shrouded from view or embellished in ways that made them more palatable.
So it was that the carefully cultivated myth of Pakistan as a ‘nation’ of Muslims ill at ease with Indian secularism came to weigh heavily upon the country’s first generation of leaders. Prompted by their own (often ill-defined) secular leanings, they chose to reconcile their quest for a modern constitutional framework based on religion by claiming that Islam was not a mere religion (as was Hinduism) but the blueprint for a comprehensive social and political order capable of adapting to the modernity of nationalism. In doing so, they drew heavily on an established modernist tradition of Indo-Muslim thinking that aimed to free Islam from the pre-modern associations commonly attached to religion.
At the head of this campaign was Muhammad Iqbal, who though significantly more radical in his thinking than his predecessors Sayyid Ahmed Khan and Amir Ali, like them proclaimed modernity to be Islam’s birthright. But this claim was also implicit in Jinnah’s understanding of Islam as modern. As Metcalf has observed, while Jinnah’s cosmopolitanism inclined him (like Nehru) to regard religion as archaic, what singled him out from his secular-minded peers in Congress was the claim that ‘Islam was not a religion’ — a view he then used to buttress the claim in March 1940 that ‘the Muslims were a nation, not a religion’. He declared, ‘the problem of India is not of an inter-communal character but manifestly of an international one and it must be treated as such.’ Nor, he later added, were Islam and Hinduism ‘religions in the strict sense of the word’ — they were two ‘nations’.
Jinnah, no romantic soon realised that, while the principles of Islam might appeal represent a panacea for the resolution of the Muslim national question, they were unlikely to help address the real shortcomings of Muslim society. These shortcomings were brutally exposed at Partition, when Muslims (like others) demonstrated that the primeval impulses of their religion remained dangerously in place. By August 1947 Jinnah was forced to recognise that, whatever the national claims on behalf of Islam, he could not tame the Islamic tiger. In his famous inaugural speech to the first meeting of the Constitutional Assembly, he appeared to acknowledge the damaging effects flowing from the use of religious rhetoric to justify his demand for Pakistan. ‘You will find,’ he observed, ‘that in the course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus, and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual but in the political sense as citizens of the state.’
Many have since interpreted this extraordinary re-statement of Jinnah’s vision as evidence of his unequivocal preference for a secular state — although he did not, significantly, go as far as to use the word secular. But Jinnah’s speech also fuelled fears among others, who wondered whether he had reneged on his commitment to the new country’s founding ideology — the two nation theory. While neither claim has ever been decisively established, what it suggested was that Jinnah, having mobilised Islam’s vote-winning potential, now sought to curb its destructive power by confining religion to the private sphere. It would set the tone for future battles over conflicting conceptions of Pakistan.
Holy battles for Islam in Pakistan
These tensions first surfaced in the constitution-making process, which extended for almost a decade, and culminated in the country’s first constitution in 1956. This period was dominated by debates, the most sustained of which centred on the role of Islam in the new state. In and of itself, this was perhaps not unusual for a country with an overwhelming Muslim majority. But instead of the confidence that was expected to flow from this distinct Muslim identity, the process was dogged by uncertainties. Binder, one of the most perceptive observers of Pakistan’s constitutional endeavours in these early years, concluded that ‘nowhere has the element of democratic nationalism been so weak, the desire for an Islamic constitution so generally admitted, and the cleavage between the Western-educated and the ulama so wide’. Divisions that have since been cast as ones between ‘traditionalists’ and ‘modernists’ — if not between ‘fundamentalists’ and ‘secularists’ — were by no means hard and fast distinctions. On the contrary, they often masked a more diffuse Islamic romanticism that cut across the political spectrum, making the task of fleshing out Pakistan’s identity as a modern Muslim state even more difficult.
Jinnah’s own prevarication did little to clear the confusion. In a speech to Sind Bar Association in Karachi on 25 January 1948, he even seemed ready to abandon his earlier stance, which had called for religion to be kept out of politics, and denouncing as ‘mischief’ attempts to ignore ‘Shari’at Law’ as the basis of Pakistan’s constitution. While few would deny that these inconsistencies were to be expected from Jinnah, who by that time was consumed by fatal ill-health, they set an unfortunate precedent for his successors. Many have since used the ambiguity cultivated by Jinnah to negotiate their own positions and, in doing so, have continued the legacy of a movement that under Jinnah himself came to represent all things to all men.
The Objective Resolution passed in March 1949, which has served as a preamble for all three of Pakistan’s constitutions (1956, 1962 and 1973), was symptomatic of this ambiguity. Though regarded as the country’s ‘constitutional Grundnorm’, its endorsement was marred by a discord that demonstrated the fragility of the consensus underpinning the new state. This became plain during clashes on the floor of the Constituent Assembly, where the gulf separating Pakistan’s secularising elite and its men of religion marked the onset of a battle that rumbles on today. At issue was how best to provide a constitutional niche for Islam that recognised its importance in the creation of the state while containing its influence in dictating policy and framing laws.
The country’s dominant, governing elite in these early years was drawn mainly from the urban professional classes of north-central India. Though they represented a formidable presence in Pakistan, their lack of local roots meant that few could do without some form of Islamic legitimation. But such legitimacy came at a price, which involved compromising the secular objectives with which these classes were closely associated. The religious lobby (consisting of both the ulama and religious parties), although seemingly vigorous in style and rhetoric, was also constrained. Many of its members had been vocal critics of Jinnah’s scheme for a separate Muslim state, which few believed was intended to be an Islamic state. The religious lobby was soon seduced when Jinnah, having failed to obtain constitutional concessions from Congress, provided an Islamic government to mobilise the hitherto tepid support of the Muslim-majority provinces of Punjab and Bengal. Nevertheless, many still harboured reservations about Pakistan — reservations compounded both by fears of Jinnah’s instinctively secular preferences as well as by concerns that support for a territorial support was tantamount to rejecting the primacy of the universal Muslim community defended by classical Islam.
These reservations were not confined to the traditional men of religion, the ulama. Indeed it has been argued that ‘the idea of making Pakistan an Islamic state began with the politicians and not with the ulama’. Among them were Islamist politicians, who were closely allied to the Jamaat-i-Islami, which acted as the main catalyst to ensure that Islamic concerns would be taken into account by lawmakers entrusted with the 1956 Constitution. These efforts, which were also instrumental in persuading the ulama to join the fray in support of an Islamic constitution, were finally rewarded with the adoption of the 1949 Objectives Resolution. Projected at the time by the Jamaat as a decisive victory for its campaign in support of an Islamic constitution, it has since come also to be regarded by many historians as the first in a series of major concessions secured by the Jamaat from the country’s secular leadership. Just how far lawmakers themselves accepted these claims remains unclear, but what is not in doubt is that the promulgation of the Resolution pointed conclusively to the growing political muscle of the religious lobby. The alliance between the Jamaat and the religious establishment represented by the ulama, although uneasy, was succesful in leaving its stamp on the Resolution.
Reference books:
Kalampedia 