Our chequered history does not show that we have ever valued our freedom. For this painful situation, our bureaucratic, military, and elected civilian leaders and their partners in power – the so-called elite comprising industrialists, big traders, landlords, and feudal chiefs – are more culpably responsible than the vastly deprived and marginalised population of Pakistanis. These rulers kept the masses deprived of the basic needs of life and denied them the opportunities to eke out a dignified livelihood. Even after seven decades of independence, over 45 per cent of the population, shamefully, lives in poverty.
Democracy was destroyed soon after the demise of the Quaid-e-Azam. The adoption of the Objectives Resolution as the preamble of the Constitution was a direct attack on the secular polity of this multi-religious and multi-cultural country. No direct elections on the basis of adult franchise were held in the country until 1970. The indirect elections were tailored to the needs of the ruling elite to keep themselves in power. The direct elections in the Eastern Wing of the country in the early 1950s, resulting in the crushing defeat of the Pakistan Muslim League, alarmed the ruling elite of West Pakistan to abandon the democratic path altogether.
The subsequent ten elections in the country from 1970 to 2018 were made controversial by the mainstream political parties charging each other with collusion with the security establishment, rigging elections, and acquiring power through the back door. The performance of the ruling elite in both the executive and the opposition has never been above board. Generally, they have been unabashedly making hay when the sun shone. We witnessed paupers turn into billionaires just after one or two stints in power. They weakened the legislature, attacked the judiciary, politicised the bureaucracy, and relegated anti-graft institutions to the periphery to get away with their plunder.
Pakistan deserved fairer treatment. It saved us from the subjugation, mendacity, and oppression of the bigoted majority community in the Subcontinent
The fallout of this free-for-all plunder on the people was very harmful. Society came to believe that nothing would happen to the powerful elite; the laws of the country were operative for the prosecution and persecution of the underprivileged in the lower and middle classes. Politics acquired the client-patron form, with the poor people looking to the ruling demigods for crumbs – a menial job, a petty contract, and protection from the oppressive police, or at best, a posting or transfer.
Pakistan deserved fairer treatment. It saved us from the subjugation, mendacity, and oppression of the bigoted majority community in the Subcontinent. What an ungrateful nation we are! Ambassador Afrasiab Hashmi has done wonderful research to show us how the British imperialists, in collaboration with the majority community, precipitated the decline of the Muslims in every field, particularly in education, superior services, trade, and other professions of life.
From 1857 to 1947, there were 3,100 graduates from Calcutta University, with only 57 Muslims. No Muslim was in the Senate or Syndicate of it. Out of 895 examiners, only nine were Muslim. Back in 1937–1947, Dhaka University produced only 17 Muslim Bachelor of Science graduates. In Punjab University in 1921, there were 25 faculties with 19 Muslims out of 102 members. In 1933, there were nine Muslims out of 68 professors; in 1942, 16 Muslims out of 82. In Government College Lahore in 1928, out of 45 professors, there were five Muslims – three Arabic and two Persian teachers. There were no Muslims in other faculties. In 1917, there were 42 professors in King Edward College, out of whom only three were Muslims.
In 1930, Hindu schools were three times more than Muslim schools. In 1901, there were 957 judges in Bengal with only nine Muslims. In 1933, Bengal had 1,048 gazetted officers, of whom the Muslims were only 45. Similarly, the share of Muslims in the Indian Civil Service from Bengal and the North-Western Provinces – Sindh, Punjab, Balochistan, and NWFP was quite negligible. In 1947, there were 980 ICS officers with 101 Muslims. Their share in 1984 was reduced to less than 2 per cent in India.
The Times of India reported in September 1993 that the share of Muslims in the Indian Central Secretariat was less than 1 per cent. The data of the same year showed that in Andhra Pradesh, out of 2,358 civil servants, only 270 were Muslims; in Assam, out of 3,135, the Muslims were 225; in Bihar, out of 6,617, Muslims were 359; in Haryana, out of 877, the Muslims were only six. West Bengal had 136 Muslims out of 4,782 civil servants. The strength of the Delhi Police in 1993 was 50,934. Despite the concentration of Muslims in the capital, only 1,120 Muslims were in the Delhi Police. In Haryana Police, Muslims numbered only 271 out of 28,718.
With the advent of Pakistan, we became the masters of our destiny and the resources the country possessed, despite gross instances of injustice, discrimination, and inequity perpetrated against the small federating units or East Bengal by the misguided political, economic, and administrative policies of the ruling elite. Pakistan is not an exceptional case in discriminatory policies favouring a dominant majority community. The nations’ evolutionary history is full of such contentious instances.
There is no denying the fact that the earlier wrongs have been gradually corrected to a greater extent through the constitutional and political process since 1970, despite disruptions. The provincial autonomy question was addressed by the Eighteenth Amendment. Today, the small federating units are governed by their elected representatives, manned by their own administrative officers; they have rights over their resources and freedom to utilise them for development.
The country will be unable to forge ahead as a progressive state unless we overcome our weaknesses as a nation. We have unabashedly sunk into vices unheard of in civilised societies – dishonesty, falsehood, forgery, trickery, inhumanity, profiteering, hoarding and adulteration, pilferage of national resources including gas and electricity, tax evasion, and whatnot. These are the signs of a crumbling society. We still have time to revert to our sublime faith, which turned the heathen Saracens into a great nation at par with the Roman and Sassanid Empires