How does Pakistans post-independence adoption and use of a modern administrative

and governmental system interface with the idea of Pakistan as an Islamic nation?

Internal Assignment for paper HIST0903; course instructor: Prof. Soumen Mukherjee;
topic decided in consultation with course instructor.

By Anashya Ghoshal, Roll No.: 17, MA 2 nd Year; Department of History, Presidency

University
____________

Introduction: The Question

Recent articles in The Express Tribune1 and Dawn2 have once again brought into sharp focus

the burning issue of Pakistans identity crisis, something that it has been struggling with since

its inception. At the core of this identity crisis is, as Farzana Shaikh says, the nations

ambiguous relationship to Islam.3 Indeed, Pakistans career as a postcolonial nation has to a

great degree been defined by this deep existential and ideological uncertainty, which are

embodied in the following questions: is Pakistan to be a modern democratic nation-state? To

what degree should Islam play a part in governmental decision-making and day-to-day

administration? Should the ulema have any power in government, and, if so, what should

circumscribe those powers? What does it mean for Pakistan to be an Islamic republic, vis--

vis her neighbours? That is, should Pakistan take its place among the other nations of the

world? And if so, how ought it to take it, especially if Pakistan is Islamic, which, if anything,

claims to have universal validity and the sole channel to the Divine prerogative? 4 These
1 Farrukh Khan Pitafi, Pakistans Identity Crisis, The Express Tribune, January 16, 2016
(published online on January 15, 2016). Available online at:
http://tribune.com.pk/story/1028210/pakistans-identity-crisis-2/. Last accessed: 9/10/2016.
2 Discussing Pakistans religious identity crisis (authors name not available), Dawn, April
17, 2016. Available online at: http://www.dawn.com/news/1252621. Last accessed:
9/10/2016.
3 Farzana Shaikh, Making Sense of Pakistan, New York: Columbia University Press, 2009:
Introduction.
4 And claims to be a complete system for conducting human affairs. Although, in this
particular case, the transformation of Islamic societal consciousness into the demand for a
separate nation is not at all linear or simple; the links that do exist are tenuous and the
intellectual genealogies are nebulous. The demand for Pakistan should not and cannot be seen

1
questions have not been answered satisfactorily or palatably either during the course of

Pakistans post-independence history or by Pakistans founding fathers, although, of course,

answers to these questions of interface have been negotiated.

(One may quite reasonably ask: why the founding fathers, specifically? While this is a

problem that deserves to be looked into in some detail, suffice it for the moment to say that,

quite apart from the fact that it was they who bequeathed to the world the modern state of

Pakistan, founding it and designing it, and thereby establishing a causal chain, intellectual-

cultural, political, and administrative the founding fathers in Pakistan continue to enjoy an

honour and importance accorded them that would be unwise to overlook. For instance, in his

January 2002 speech against Islamic terrorism on Pakistani soil, Musharraf cited Allama

Iqbal and Md. Ali Jinnah to support his policy of ridding Pakistan of religious extremism and

transforming it into a progressive Islamic state.5)

On the question of the founding fathers, it is important to mention that Jinnah, the Quaid-e-

Azam (Great Leader), himself said different things at different times about the relationship

as a straightforward political expression of notions of Islamic community. Nation,

community, region, and religion these terms have in the hands of such people as Shah
Waliullah, Sayyid Ahmed of Rae Bareilly, Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, Syed Amir Ali, Allama
Iqbal, and Maulana Maududi have undergone such transformations and engagements that it
becomes very difficult for the historian to tease out just what led to what. See Shaikh,
Making Sense: Introduction for a historical as well as historiographical overview. Also see
Ayesha Jalal, The Struggle for Pakistan, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2014: pp. 12-27.
5 Do we want Pakistan to become a theocratic state? Do we believe that religious education alone is enough
for governance or do we want Pakistan to emerge as a progressive and dynamic Islamic welfare state? The
verdict of the masses is in favour of a progressive Islamic state. This decision, based on the teaching of the Holy
Prophet (Peace Be Upon Him) and in line with the teachings of Quaid-e-Azam and Allama Iqbal will put
Pakistan on the path of progress and prosperity. And also this extract: Sects and different schools of thought in
Islam have existed since long. There is nothing wrong with intellectual differences flowing from freedom of
thought as long as such differences remain confined to intellectual debates. Look at what this extremist minority
is doing? They are indulging in fratricidal killings. There is no tolerance among them. Quaid-e-Azam declared
that Pakistan belonged to followers of all religions; that every one [sic] would be treated equally. However, what
to speak of other religions, Muslims have started killing each other. Referred to is his major policy speech of
January 12, 2002, the full text of which had been made available by the New York Times on the same day: an
online version is available indefinitely at: http://archive.is/2qCSV.

2
of Islam to Pakistan, and thus, implicitly, of Pakistans raison dtre and this was long after

Jinnahs conversion to the Two-Nation Theory after his sustained contact with Iqbal. 6 In his

1940 Presidential address to the Muslim League at Lahore, Jinnah said that he found it

difficult to understand why his Hindu friends failed to understand the true nature of Islam and

of Hinduism. He stressed that these were not religions in the strict sense of the word, but

[were], in fact, different and distinct social orders, each having different religious

philosophies, social customs, and literature[s]. They [could] neither intermarry nor interdine

together, and indeed they belong[ed] to two different civilisations [...] based mainly on

conflicting ideas and conceptions. It was a dream, he contended, to say that they could ever

evolve a single nationality; and [t]o yoke together two such nations under a single state, one

as a numerical minority and the other as a majority, must lead to growing discontent, and

[the] final destruction of any fabric that may be so built up for the government of such a

state.7 However, three days before Pakistans independence, on 11th August, 1947, Jinnah

was saying:

You are free, free to go to your temples; you are free to go to your
mosques or to any other places of worship in this state of Pakistan. You
may belong to any religion or caste or creed that has nothing to do with
the business of the state. [...] We are starting in the days when there is
no discrimination, no distinction between one caste or creed and
another. We are starting with this fundamental principle that we are all
citizens and equal citizens of one state. [...] you will find that in 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.8

6 See the letters sent by Iqbal to Jinnah in 1937: G. Allana, Pakistan Movement Historical
Documents, Karachi: Department of International Relations, University of Karachi, 1969: pp.
129-133. See also Riffat Hassan, The Concept of Pakistan and Iqbals Philosophy, Iqbal
Congress Papers, Vol. II, Nov. 1983: pp. 283-303.
7 Md. A. Jinnah, Address by Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah at Lahore Session of
Muslim League, March, 1940, Islamabad: Directorate of Films and Publishing, Ministry of
Information and Broadcasting, Government of Pakistan, Islamabad, 1983: pp. 5-23.
8 G. Allana, Pakistan Movement Historical Documents: pp. 407-411.

3
While these two episodes have to be read in their context,9 it is clear that such a reading was

not done, as we learn that subsequent reproductions of the speech had the portion that said

that it was not the states business what religion a citizen belonged to redacted. 10 However, as

we know, Jinnah was to die very soon, leaving a gaping hole in the intellectual and political

leadership of the new Pakistani nation. Ayesha Jalal says 11 that the political direction that

Pakistan subsequently took was the result of a combination of factors: the loss of such

revered leadership, the first of the wars with India, which set a precedent for the increasing

importance of the Army in domestic politics,12 and, more generally, a struggle for power

between the state and the Islamists, which was the political-cum-intellectual arena in which

Pakistans attempts at answering the questions fundamental to its existence would play out

over the years.13 And the subsequent attempts at acquiring an answer to the question of the

idea of Pakistan as an Islamic nation with a modern state would take the form, very roughly,

of manipulation of the Islamists by the state, and vice versa.14

It is with keeping such a backdrop of questions and confusions and negotiations at answers in

mind that we ask our broad, overarching question: how does Pakistans post-independence

9 And Ayesha Jalal does so. Cf. Jalal, Struggle for Pakistan: pp. 52-54.
10 Ardeshir Cowasjee, In the Name of Religion?, Dawn, October 5, 2003. Online version
available indefinitely at: http://archive.is/fnnfA.
11 Jalal, Struggle for Pakistan: ch. 3.
12 And in this first pitting of the civil leadership against the military over the issues of, first
Kashmir vis--vis India, and, second, the role that Pakistan was supposed to play in the Cold
War, another precedent was set for the newly independent state. See Jalal, Struggle for
Pakistan: pp. 78-82.
13 S. P. Cohen, The Idea of Pakistan, Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution Press,
2004: chs. 2 & 3. For a history that focuses on this struggle in recent years, see Owen Bennett
Jones, Pakistan: The Eye of the Storm,
14 Abdus Sattar Ghazali, Islamic Pakistan: Illusions & Reality, Hayward, CA: Eagle
Enterprises, 1999 (1999 electronic edition used; first published in Islamabad by the National
Book Club in 1996): passim (but especially chs. I-IV).

4
adoption and use of a modern administrative and governmental system interface with the idea

of Pakistan as an Islamic nation? (With the follow-up questions: Does that signal a surrender

to the principles of modernity, or is it simply an act of political expediency? Or is it indicative

of a possible transformation of the modern state structure into a nizam? That is, could we

read this as an adoption of the governmental techne embodied in the modern state structure to

the services of Islam for the eventual transformation of the state of Pakistan into a Muslim

Zion?)

Of course, it is impossible to provide even a partially satisfactory answer to this question in

so short a space. Nor can this question be dealt with as-is historically, because the ideas of

Islamic nation and modern administrative and governmental system have themselves been

throughout the course of Pakistans history been challenged and recast, multiple times, by

scholars and politicians; there is no Platonic entity of Islamic nation vis--vis that of the

modern state (admittedly, these entities might exist; but in any case, the Platonic world of

Forms is not directly accessible to us). The role of human agency in this interfacing is

foremost. So what we shall attempt is a case study to see what answers may be had to the

question posed above: that of the internal policies and politics of General Zia ul-Haq

(President of Pakistan from 1977 to 1988) the only one of Pakistans military rulers who

could be called a dictator insofar as those relate to the role of Islam in the identity and

administration of Pakistan, focusing on two things: one, and primarily, Shariazation, or

Islamisation, the centerpiece of his governmental policies, and two, and secondary, his

strategic alliance with Maulana Maududi and the Jamaat-e-Islami.

Due to constraints of space, we shall have to skip over much of the internal and external

political and intellectual backdrop of Zia, as well as leaving out the genealogies of Maududi

5
and the Jamaat; we will not be able to provide many details about Zias regime; however, we

shall choose quotes from Zia that will allow a not-so-fuzzy picture of what an answer to the

question posed above could be, from which, if to it is added a careful reading of the sources

cited in the footnotes, a much clearer answer can emerge.

General Zia ul-Haq and the Nizam-e-Mustafa

Although claims as to whether Zia was a bigot in his early years differ, 15 it is a fact, as

General Khalid Mahmud Arif who had served as Zias Chief of Staff says, that [i]t was a

matter of faith with [Zia ul-Haq] to combine politics with religion and [to] govern an Islamic

country in accordance with the dictates of the Quran and Sunnah.16 Within days of assuming

power, Zia began the process of turning the nation into one guided by the dictates of the

Quran and the Sunnah. This of course had nothing to do with the reason for the coup detat of

5th July, 1977, which had ousted Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, which was to resolve the impasse

between the Pakistan Peoples Party and the Pakistan National Alliance over the fairness of

the March 1977 general elections. Some of the earliest actions of Zias regime were to orient

Pakistans animating national ideology firmly in the direction of Islamisation. On coming to

power, Zia was to declare that he had committed himself and Pakistan to Nizam-e-Mustafa,17

that is, the Social Order of the Prophet: Pakistan which was created in the name of Islam

will continue to survive only if it sticks to Islam. That is why I consider the introduction of

[an] Islamic system as an essential prerequisite for the country. 18 This joining of identities is

15 General K. M. Arif, Khaki Shadows: Pakistan 1947-1997, Karachi: Oxford University

Press, 2001: p. 143.
16 Ibid.
17 Gilles Kepel, Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam, New York: I. B. Tauris, 2006 (first
published 2002): pp. 100-101.
18 Quoted in Ian Talbot, Pakistan: A Modern History, New York: St. Martins Press, 1999: p.
251.

6
important, as it demonstrated a particular form of answer to the question posed above: that of

the transformation of Pakistan into an Islam nizam. Indeed, Hussain Haqqani quotes the

American William Eric Gustafson on the degree of nizam-isation (for the lack of a better

word) that had been achieved under Zia by the end of 1978:

A general Islamic tone pervades everything, obviously much influenced

by the President, who has performed both Umra and Haj [pilgrimages
to Mecca] this year. Government letters are now to begin with
Bismillah, invoking the name of Allah, the merciful and benevolent.
A state enterprise advertises for a manager who should be a God
fearing and practicing Muslim. Floggings are common. Television has
been greatly changedto the accompaniment of public protest in the
letters-to-the-editors column of the newspapers. Total closure of eating
and drinking places between sunup and sunset marked Ramzan, the
holy month of fasting, and no tea was served in business establishments
or offices, private or public. There has been adverse comment about the
Islamization. An Arab observer has called it petro-Islam, and Hanif
Ramay, a former PPP stalwart who has started the Musawat Party, said
that the type of Islamic system being introduced was nothing short of
theocracy. Jinnahs stand in favor of a secular state finds its way into
letters to the editors . . . On December 2 [1978] (the first of Muharram,
the beginning of the Hijri year 1399) came the long promised
announcement of the first steps toward Islamization of the laws.
Islamic laws on theft, drinking, adultery, and the protection of freedom
of belief are to be enforced from the twelfth of Rabiul-Awwal (in
February 1979), the birthday of the Prophet [Muhammad]. The
government will constitute provincial Shariat benches at the High
Court level and an Appellate Shariat Bench at the Supreme Court level.
These Islamic courts will decide whether any law is partly or wholly
un-Islamic, and the government will be obliged to change the law. The
period for compliance is not specified in the Ordinance. The Shariat
benches will also be able to examine laws even if no case is brought
before them . . . Simultaneously with the legal measures, Zia
announced the first steps toward an Islamic economy . . . Final steps
toward an economy free of the curse of usury, said Zia, will come as
soon as the experts are able to find a practicable solution.19

It is important to understand what reasons Zia himself gave for initiating this process and to

see that in the light of Zias alliance with the Jamaat. Speaking to the sympathetic British

journalist Ian Stephens on the topic of his attention to Islamisation despite the pressing

economic problems that Pakistan was facing, Zia said:

19 W. Eric Gustafson, Pakistan 1978: At the Brink Again? Asian Survey, vol. 19, no. 2,
February 1979: pp. 161-62. Quoted in Hussain Haqqani, Pakistan: Between Mosque and
Military, New York: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2010 Kindle edition used
(first published by the same publisher in 2005): ch. 4 (page numbers unavailable on Kindle
edition).

7
 The basis of Pakistan was Islam. The basis of Pakistan was that the
Muslims of the sub-continent are a separate culture. It was on the two-
nation theory that this part was carved out of the subcontinent as
Pakistan. And in the last 30 years in general but more so in the last
seven years there has been a complete erosion of the moral values of
our society. You will hear that Pakistan is full of corruption today. In
spite of one-and-a-half years of Martial Law, corruption is at large,
people are dishonest; they want to make money overnight. All this is
not my feeling but fact. The moral fiber of the society has been
completely broken and this was done basically in the last seven and a
half years. Mr. Bhuttos way of flourishing in this society was by
eroding its moral fiber. [...] He eroded the moral fiber of the society by
pitching the students against the teachers, sons against the fathers,
landlords against the tenants, and factory workers against the mill
owners. [...] The economic ills of the country are not because Pakistan
is incapable of economic production. It is because Pakistanis have
been made to believe that one can earn without working. [...]
Therefore, to my mind the most fundamental and important basis for
the whole reformation of society is not how much cotton we can grow
or how much wheat we can grow. Yes, they are in their own place
important factors; but I think it is the moral rejuvenation which is
required first and that will have to be done on the basis of Islam,
because it was on this basis that Pakistan was formed. [...] We are
going back to Islam not by choice but by the force of circumstances. If
we had chosen we might as well have stayed with India. What was
wrong with that? [...] It is not because of anything other than our
cultural and moral awareness that in Islam is our only salvation. [...]
Islam from that point of view is the fundamental factor. It comes before
wheat and rice and everything else. I can grow more wheat; I can
import wheat but I cannot import the correct moral values. 20 [italics
added]

This is very important, as it highlights the delineations of the interface between the state of

Pakistan and the idea of Pakistan as an Islamic nation according to Zia, who believed, as is

clear, that the state of Pakistan ought to be Islamic itself, for in that was its reason for

existence. What this meant in legislation can be seen, among other things, in the replacement

of parts of the Pakistan Penal Code with the 1979 Hudood Ordinances. 21 The passing of the

Ninth Amendment Bill, too, was very important. 22 Politically, this meant Zias alliance with

the Jamaat-e-Islami, whose theologians and scholars had, under the guidance of their founder

20 President Zia ul-Haqs interview to Ian Stephens, January 6, 1979, in President of

Pakistan General Mohammad Zia ul-Haq-Interviews to Foreign Media, vol. II, Islamabad:
Government of Pakistan, undated: pp. 2-6.
21 Martin Lau, Twenty-Five Years of Hudood Ordinances A Review, Washington and
Lee Law Review, Vol. 64, Issue 4, 2007: Article 2.

8
and spiritual leader Maulana Maududi,23 applied themselves with great zeal as the Zia

regimes ideological arm. Maududi himself said that Zias regime was a renewal of the

covenant between Pakistan and Islam.24

This pertains once again to the question that we asked, as it talks of a resolution of Pakistans

identity crisis by using Islam as the primary national identifier and identifier of the states

economic, organisational and social disposition. In other words, Pakistan was to be at once

an Islamic republic and an Islamic state. The res publica of Pakistan was to be Islam.

Conclusion: An Answer?

The death of Zia ul-Haq in a plane crash in 1988 saw the return of democracy in Pakistan;

but the ten years of his rule had set Pakistan upon a course, both domestically and externally,

that has resulted in Pakistan being called a failed state, and a further series of coups. But

how does this case study help us answer our question? To the broad question of how

Pakistans existence as a modern state interfaces with the idea of Pakistan as an Islamic

nation, Zias career says, in keeping with our observation that central to such negotiations is

the element of human agency, that the state of Pakistan can be reimagined and rescued from

22 Especially this: In the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, hereinafter

referred to as the Constitution, in Article 2, after the word Pakistan, at the end, the words
and the Injunctions of Islam as laid down in the Holy Quran and Sunnah shall be the
supreme law and source of guidance for legislation to be administered through laws enacted
by the Parliament and Provincial Assemblies, and for policy making by the Government
shall be added. Text made available by: https://pakistanconstitutionlaw.com/9th-amendment-
bill/. Last accessed: 11/10/2016.
23 Haqqani says that Zia was inspired by Maududi. Cf. Haqqani, Between Mosque and
Military: ch. 4. Maududis ideas on the Islamic state are very important as well. Cf. Shaikh,
Making Sense: pp. 33-34. Also see Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, Mawdudi and the Making of
Islamic Revivalism, New York: Oxford University Press, 1996: pp. 82-106.
24 Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, Islamic Opposition to the Islamic State: The Jamaat-e-Islami,
1977-88, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 25, No. 2, May 1993: pp. 263-
264.

9
the results of political expediency and the imperatives of modernity, and be recast as an

Islamic state, which would be the truest instantiation of the nation of Pakistan.

For, as a Pakistani interviewee said to the New York Times, [i]f we are not Muslims, what

are we? Second-rate Indians?25

____________

WORD COUNT: 2743, not including footnotes.

25 Michael T. Kaufman, Pakistans Islamic Revival Affects All Aspects of Life, New York
Times, October 13, 1980. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?
res=990DE3D61F3BE732A25750C1A9669D94619FD6CF&legacy=true. Access through
purchase only.

10