Why Pakistan Never Became Democratic

For every beneficial outcome, modern India’s commentariat, is  in a motivated hurry to credit British (and the West in general) and blame Indian leadership for every injurious development.

Tuesday, April 27, 2004 | Muhammad Zahoor’s CARTOON | via Daily Times | Click for image.

Bad Sector

From August 15th, 1947, till January 26th, 1950, India had no constitution, laws, or an elected government. Thus for a brief period, short of 30 months, India Government ruled by decree.

Consensus prevailed.

Going by contemporary narratives, Nehru drove the pace of constitution building. Known detractors of the Indian nation, like Homi Mody were invited into the Constituent Assembly – itself headed by a leader of the dispossessed, Dr.Ambedkar.

RK Laxman’s cartoon celebrating India’s Constitution writing and implementaion, while the world was busy writing off India …

Talking heads of the Y2K generation claim that the Indian nation, constitution, parliamentary notions, democratic mechanisms were all a gift of the British.

Merits of the British Raj

First, if the British were so good, why have they not been able to save their home economy?

Care to remember that British ideas of democracy, freedom, were all for show to the subject races? Indian subjects had no representation, redress, were inveigled into sham consultations, as the Indian economy sank into a morass of debt, stagnation, poverty, disease and famines.

This was the true inheritance from the British.

Even though some reports suggest that this was a 1950’s cartoon, it was probably before January 26th 1950, when the Indian Constitution was adopted by the Indian Constituent Assembly. ToI suggests that this was a 1948 cartoon. | Copyright – Children’s Book Trust; source and courtesy – outlookindia.com | Click for source image.

KM Munshi, India’s food minister travelled the world over, seeking food aid. In New York, he described India’s precarious situation as ‘ship-to-mouth.’ Indian Railway infrastructure was in tatters. Ghastly accidents occurred with numbing regularity. India built the entire system of Railways that we see today, over the next 40 years.

MN Roy (founder of Indian Communism), Homi Mody (industrialist) represented realism of the time.

At that time in history, it seemed pragmatic to support the Raj.

A little further

While on the subject of British legacies and inheritances, next door Pakistan had exactly the same inheritance as India.

The Pakistani experience on constitution writing is illustrates the ‘value’ of the British legacy.

There will be many commentaries, to explain Pakistan’s lurch from crisis to crisis, dictatorship-to-dictatorship.

A recent article in Pakistan’s The Dawn makes for interesting reading.

Cartoon by Zahoor

Prime Minister Liaqat Ali is accredited with a number of ground breaking contributions. He decided to ally with the US in the Cold War divide; quashed a coup attempt by communists; promoted General Ayub to the highest rank and fought a war with India over Kashmir to name just a select few. His government ruled on ad hoc basis under temporary laws as it could not formulate and build a consensus on a constitution for the country

They could not dig out a monarchy to rule the country nor could they install a Caliph. The constitution has to be based on democracy. But the problem was that Meerut was now in India. The most powerful Prime Minister serving for one of the longest periods in the history of Pakistan had no constituency in the country to contest elections from. A committed democrat and an active parliamentarian, he knew well that he and his political class had no, or at best a very shaky, future under a democracy. In contrast, Bacha Khan’s was a completely secure political position. It was impossible to democratically uproot him from his constituency. He had voters, volunteers and diehard loyalists.

The ad hoc powers were thus used to change the rules of the game.

Six months after the death of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Prime Minister Liaqat Ali Khan moved the Objective Resolution in the Constituent Assembly that introduced Islam as the raison d’être of the new country. Religion was pitched against ones linguistic and cultural identity and faith was made to rival political interests. Those loving their culture, defending their language and demanding their democratic and political rights on these bases became heretics conspiring against the last citadel of Islam in the Subcontinent. Ideological boundaries of the country became more important than the limits of electoral constituencies and principles of democracy were contrasted to injunctions of Islam as defined by the select ulema.

Bacha Khan who enjoyed a hard earned and unflinching popular support in a vast constituency went down in our official gazettes as an anti-Pakistan traitor. Red Shirts were hounded and hunted. Politicians were jailed and elections were rigged.

By declaring the entire country as one constituency and setting ones perceived Islamic credentials as the only qualification, Liaqat Ali Khan tried to create a constituency for his class – the politically insecure Muslim elite that had migrated from the Muslim minority provinces of India. But ironically, they could not sustain their hold on this constituency for long. Within a decade they were outdone by the Army in the game they had pioneered. They were declared incapable of defending the citadel of Islam. The army took over the ‘responsibility’ of keeping the country united in the name of Islam and secure from the conspirators who had strong democratic constituencies in the country.

via The Two-Muslim theory | DAWN.COM.

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Making of the Indian Constitution

The cartoon of BR Ambedkar which created a parliamentary furore was sketched by cartoonist Shankar, as he was popularly called.

Even though some reports suggest that this was a 1950’s cartoon, it was probably before January 26th 1950, when the Indian Constitution was adopted by the Indian Constituent Assembly. ToI suggests that this was a 1948 cartoon. | Copyright – Children’s Book Trust; source and courtesy – outlookindia.com | Click for source image.

The school textbook cartoon of BR Ambedkar which created a furore in parliament on Friday was sketched by cartoonist Keshav Shankar Pillai.

Shankar, as he was popularly called, later founded the publishing house, Children’s Book Trust, in 1957. He made cartoons for newspapers and his magazine, Shankar’s Weekly, started in 1948. The government of India honoured him with Padma Shri in 1956, Padma Bhushan in 1966 and Padma Vibhushan in 1976.

The controversial cartoon was probably first published in 1948 and has been a part of NCERT’s (National Council Of Educational Research And Training) Class XI textbook in Tamil Nadu since 2006. The cartoon is credited to Children’s Book Trust.

It shows Ambedkar, a Dalit leader and creator of the Indian Constitution, seated on a snail with ‘Constitution’ written on it and India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, whipping the snail. (via Shankar made the Ambedkar-Nehru cartoon in 1950s – Hindustan Times).

What would Babasaheb Ambedkar tell his ‘followers’? | Cartoon by Surendra; May 11, 2012; source & courtesy – thehindu.com | Click for larger image.

Up to speed

In a short period of less than 30 months, India wrote and implemented its constitution. It has been been a rather pliable constitution getting amended a number of times – and yet has been upheld and respected by all the extensions of the State.

Unlike Pakistan.

Now … or when?

After the boycott of the Simon Commission, from 1927, and the death of Lala Lajpat Rai (Nov 17, 1928), it was clear (especially to the British) that their days were numbered. Britain enacted The Government of India Act, first in 1919 and then in 1935. Some Indians have claimed the Indian Constitution is nothing original – based on the Government of India Act, 1935, by the British Raj.

This a claim not even worth examining, since this Government of India act, 1935, has been in public domain for more than 75 years. Pakistan had as much right to it as India did.

Why could Pakistan do nothing with it.

Documents do not make a country work! People do!! (Cartoon by Sabir Nazar; Courtesy – http://www.dailytimes.com.pk.).

Get up … and get on!

In fact Pakistan’s Constituent Assembly dragged this Constitution-making exercise till October 1956.

Cut back to 1956 Pakistan.

Remember that 1956 was also the year when Pakistan became a republic – and the first constitution of Pakistan was adopted. Governor General Sahibzada Sayyid Iskander Ali Mirza (a Shia Muslim from Bengal, direct descendant of Mir Jaffer) became the first President of the Pakistani Republic.

Two years later, in October 1958, President Iskander Mirza staged a coup d’état and dismissed the constitution. Shortly afterwards General Ayub Khan deposed Iskandar and declared himself president. These shenanigans started the tradition of Army rule in Pakistan.

To an emerging Pakistan, after a 9 year struggle to write a constitution, two years later, the Army declared that the Constitution was worthless piece of paper. Another Constitution was written in 1962, and then a third.

The Shankar cartoon that was included in school textbooks which raised a furore in the Indian Parliament | Source and courtesy – outlookindia.com | Click for source image.

Looking back

In the last 250 years, just 6 countries succeeded with Republican democracy without a significant breakdown in the first 50 years. Of the six, Sri Lanka (pop. 200 lakhs) Switzerland (pop. 80 lakhs), Israel (pop. 75 lakhs) and Singapore (pop. 50 lakhs) are tiny countries to generate any valuable data, models, norms or precedents. In any other day, age and society, the republican-democracy model would have been laughed off – and not studied by millions.

America became one of the first successful republican democracies – from 1789, when George Washington became the first elected President of USA. 70 years later, the strains were showing – North versus South. America was on the verge of Civil War – the main cause of which was the desire of the Southern states to remain independent (due to tariff issues) or at best as a loose confederation – not a federal union (actually slavery was a side issue).

Israel, (propped up by massive US aid) is another country which has been a republican democracy for more than 50 years. Switzerland (with guaranteed neutrality from the European powers) is another in modern history to survive 50 years of republican democracy.

The reason why India’s Republican Democracy works is because Indian genius has made it work. It is the commitment to make the system work, which is why the system is working.

Though some may cavil about how well (?) it works!

Coming to this cartoon, Shanker’s Weekly was a permanent fixture in subscriptions at my home, till its demise in the 1970s. Though respected in its time, it hardly made money.

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