Many years back, in a dusty, little bookshop near the British Museum in London, I came across a true collector’s treasure: A multi-volume compilation of official reports on “The Indian Sepoy Mutiny” of 1857. It had been compiled by the British authorities in India in the aftermath of the uprising termed a ‘War of Independence’ in our terminology and comprised incredibly detailed reports from cities, districts, and tehsils, sent in by civil and military officers across the country, describing the events in their areas during this immense uprising. Naturally, the largest volumes were those of Delhi, Meerut, Lucknow, and Calcutta – the major centres of action. But there were also several, albeit slimmer volumes from the Punjab districts – to my surprise because, firstly, the ‘martial races’ of my home province had, by and large, been used to suppress the Revolt elsewhere. Secondly, the Punjab had been the last region taken over by the British and was annexed as late as 1849. And yet, a mere eight years later, a complete infrastructure of ACs, DCs, XENs, Magistrates, Judges, Military Cantonments, etc – all the appurtenances of the Empire in India – had been designed and put in place, sufficient to be able to produce such detailed reports of events during this time of upheavals.
The achievement, if you think about it, is really impressive. The British Babu, both civilian and military, and his Indian subordinates, were indeed awesome creatures. And so have been their successors, the post-colonial civilian and military Babus who manipulate the levers of real, grassroots power in this country. The point to appreciate is that both politicians and bureaucrats are concerned with the exercise of Power; therefore, both are Politicians. The distinction, then, is between those who exercise Power because the people have elected them to do so, and those non-elected functionaries to whom the actual tasks of government are delegated.
Samuel Huntingdon acclaimed Ayub Khan as "That Solon, that Lycurgus, that great institution-builder"!
In the best of worlds, this works perfectly well. Alas, Pakistan, along with a number of other Third World countries, was not among the best cases. Here, an unelected civil-military oligarchy had taken upon itself to periodically dethrone their elected constitutional masters.
The first time this happened was less than six years after the country came into existence, when Khwaja Nazimuddin was dismissed by the bureaucrat-turned-Governor General Malik Ghulam Mohammed. This oligarch appointed former diplomat Muhammad Ali Bogra as Premier, heading a cabinet of so-called ‘experts’, the first of such ill-conceived contrivances in the nation’s history, and incorporating Lieutenant-General Ayub Khan and Major-General Iskander Mirza. In 1954, the hapless Bogra was removed from office by Ghulam Mohammed, reappointed after promising to ‘behave’ and then removed again in April 1955.
With the death of Malik Ghulam Mohammed, Iskander Mirza, the next oligarch, became Governor-General and then, with the promulgation of the 1956 Constitution, assumed the Presidency. Abrogating the not yet implemented Constitution, President Mirza declared martial law. Three weeks later, in a midnight coup, Ayub packed Mirza off to London.
Iskander Mirza proposes a toast for the Portugese president in Lisbon - Image Credit - Doc Kazi on Flickr
This self-proclaimed Field Marshal’s regime was noteworthy for its efficiency in governance, when the trains ran on time, for the first and last time in this country’s history. Ayub’s was the archetypal post-colonial military despotism, which many others in Africa and Asia would rush to emulate. Nehru’s ‘neutral’ India was effectively a Soviet ally; therefore, a Cold War United States poured its largesse into Ayub’s Pakistan. US academicians like Gustav Papanek and Samuel Huntington became almost oriental in their eulogies. The former extolled the ‘robber barons’ of Pakistan’s business elite who, in collaboration with an increasingly corrupt bureaucracy, built a heavily protected industrial base. The latter, more recently notorious for his post-Cold War ‘Clash of Civilisations’ fantasising, acclaimed Ayub Khan as “That Solon, that Lycurgus, that great institution-builder”!(!??!) In point of fact, the Field Marshal’s governmental style, although effective, was highly centralised and personal, scarcely that of an institution-builder.
Despite his mammoth errors, his heavy-handed authoritarianism, his elitist contempt for his fellow countrymen, his disgustingly racist attitude towards the inhabitants of our former Eastern Wing (now Bangladesh), this Oligarch is regarded with respect by many, who still characterise his time as a ‘golden page’ in our history books. But his achievements (like those of other personalised rulers) did not extend beyond his personal reach. The extent of his effectiveness inevitably became inadequate. The edifices he built around himself crumbled. Such nation-building concepts as federalism, fundamental rights, one-man-one vote, universal suffrage, sovereignty of parliament, judicial independence and a free press were dismissed everywhere, or violently suppressed (Remember the Nawab of Kalabagh?). Then came the inevitable reaction. A massive, near-revolutionary series of protests and uprisings brought about the collapse of Ayub’s regime.
Ayub Khan, seen here with JFK, was hailed by Cold Warriors as a visionary
The vacuum was filled by another Oligarch. General Yahya Khan’s two-and-a-half years in power were something of an adventure. The dissolution of One Unit, the LFO, restoration of parliamentary government, adult franchise, a new education policy, a new labour policy, the first general elections — these were heady times, an adrenalin-pumping ride on the roller coaster of a political amusement park. But then the script went sour, the intellectually dishonest producer lost control. Political adventure disintegrated into disaster: the cyclone, political standoff, military action, massacres, civil war, international war, shameful dismemberment. The calamity approached the scale of 1947, with close to a million dead, ten million homeless, and a nation dismembered and humiliated.
Enough of a disaster? There would be worse to come. In 1977, tearing up the Constitution, the General with the comedian’s moustache and hooded executioner’s eyes ended the flawed Bhutto interregnum. The eleven-year-long darkness of Zia’s rule now descended upon us. It was the script of a horror story: brutality, public floggings, so many executions (“I will never exercise my right of granting pardon”), people strung up and hanged on public television, kidnappings, blood, murders, drug trafficking, and the weaponisation of society. Intolerance and sectarianism were nurtured and brought to dreadful bloom. Bigotry and violence became national characteristics. There was nothing small about all that was happening. And we are still living with the consequences...Or dying of them?
Fast forwarding to 1999, we come to the most recent of our uniformed institution-destroyers, the last (we must pray) of an illegitimate line. To enunciate the litany of Musharraf’s ‘reign of error’ is redundant. That self-appointed Emperor was transparently without clothes from day one. His period had neither the magnitude of Ayub’s time nor the great evil of the Zia years. More dangerously still, the country’s very sovereignty was bartered away to terrorists and insurgents, with rebel clerics defying the law, Islamist terrorists and American spies separately running rampant, and the Tehrik-e-Taliban operating proto-governments in Orakzai, Bajaur, Khyber, both Waziristans, Malakand, and even Swat. This has all happened so recently! Have we already forgotten?
The purpose of this quick historical survey was to remind us that, however corrupt, pathetic, or just plain inept the performances of our elected politicos have been, the periods when the unelected Oligarchs have held unquestioned, unrestricted power have not only been bad; they have been disastrous. We need to look back at the past, before we descend again to tragedy. Or just plain farce. Or something far worse.
In a not too different context, the great German author Bertolt Brecht wrote:
