This too was Pakistan (1947-71): Response to Nadeem Paracha’s “Also Pakistan"

By Abdul Nishapuri on the website Let Us Build Pakistan

Nadeem F. Paracha’s history of Pakistan in the four part series in daily Dawn suffers from an error of exclusion. It is the history of Pakistan’s upper-middle classes in an urban setting where lifestyle choices imply that somehow Pakistan was more liberal in the past.  It also reduces Pakistan to a (mainly) Punjabi-Muhajir urban upper-middle class landscape – like the plays of Fatima Surayya Bajia, Hasina Moin and Ashfaque Ahmed or romantic writings of Shafique-ur-Rehman and Nasim Hijazi.

The pictures in NFP columns tell a story of an upper middle class whose “liberal” membership has shrunk.  Simultaneously, it also reinforces the myth that there is a tiny bulwark of upper-middle class activists who are protecting Pakistan from complete Talibanisation - as long as their literary festivals, social media melas and fashion shows are well funded by foreign consulates and donor agencies.

In terms of strategy, “liberals” tactics are very similar to the post-9/11 strategy of General Musharaf.  In the first half of the last decade, this strategy was employed to the hilt by Musharaf in trying to convince the West that he and the army under him represent the last stand against the Taliban.  Of course, now the whole world knows the dual policy of Pakistan’s military establishment of officially opposing the Taliban but protecting and sponsoring  them and their local Jihadi affiliates at the ground level. Plausible deniability was taken to a new level by Pakistan’s military establishment. Similarly, it is commonly known that several of Pakistan’s “noted liberals” including but not limited to Najam Sethi, Ejaz Haider and their predecessors in the past have played a questionable role in undermining democratic governments in Pakistan.

What NFP has presented in this series is only a limited remembrance of Pakistan from an elitist, upper-middle class perspective. If a narrow window of Pakistani society can be described as Pakistan, rest assured such Pakistan exists even today within its typical confines, e.g., five star hotels, private beaches, civil society melas, literary festivals, aman ki asha events etc in secluded luxury hotels or private residences.

What NFP did not describe is how the country was shaping itself right from its inception when Jinnah and his close comrades authorized military take over of Balochistan, despatch of Pashtun and Punjabi mercenaries to Kashmir, dismissal of Dr. Khan’s government in NWFP and suppression of Bangla language. In 1948 and beyond we saw a repeat of similar events, e.g., when Jinnah’s funeral was refused to be led by a Shia cleric, when Objectives Resolution was passed by Pakistan’s first legislative assembly thus formalizing the ascendancy of Sunni Islam, when anti-Ahmadiyya riots took place in streets of Lahore and other cities of Pakistan. NFP also did not mention the fact that long before General Zia’s Islamization, one of the bloodiest massacres of Shias took place in Terhi Sindh in 1963. That too was Pakistan.

Romanticizing of Pakistan from an upper-middle class lens is a great thing to write and read and we are not challenging the fact that confines of the upper-middle class lifestyle have relatively reduced in the past few decades courtesy General Zia, Zakir Naik, Farhat Hashmi, Imran Khan etc, however, that lifestyle featuring several elements of social hedonism is still available and enjoyed by the select elite.

The photos and narrative also reinforce the upper-middle class narrative that the seeds of extremism, intolerance and hypernationalism were sown during Bhutto’s time and harvested by Zia ul Haq.  Unfortunately, this selective narrative excludes the role of Pakistan’s urban elites (eg Rana Liaquat Ali Khan, Qudratullah Shahab, Altaf Gauhar etc) who silently watched the destruction of a pluralist society and the resulting rampant extremism while their own socio-economic interests were taken good care of.

The seeds of extremism in Pakistan were not planted by Zia or Bhutto but were there much earlier and should be highlighted.  Today, Pakistan’s Shia Muslims are undergoing a slow-motion genocide which is deliberately being misrepresented or ignored by the urban elites who have positioned themselves as the “Endangered Liberal Species”. Such elites have largely participated in inexplicable silence on the massacre of at least 19000 Shia Muslims in Pakistan in the last few decades.

1947: A country created on the basis of communal hatred and othering

Pakistan was a country created on the basis of communal hatred and exclusion. The bloodshed was only natural in 1947-48 at the time of partition...
Read more: http://criticalppp.com/archives/222082