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Pakistan
Constitutional Beginnings
At independence Jinnah was the supreme authority. An accomplished
politician, he won independence for Pakistan within seven years
of the Lahore Resolution and was hailed by his followers as the
Quaid-i-Azam (Great Leader). As governor general, he assumed the
ceremonial functions of head of state while taking on effective
power as head of government, dominating his prime minister, Liaquat
Ali Khan (the Quaid-i-Millet, or Leader of the Nation). To these
roles, he added the leadership of the Muslim League and the office
of president of the Constituent Assembly.
Although Jinnah had led the movement for Pakistan as a separate
Muslim nation, he was appalled by the communal riots and urged
equal rights for all citizens irrespective of religion. Jinnah
died in September 1948--only thirteen months after independence--leaving
his successors to tackle the problems of Pakistan's identity.
Jinnah's acknowledged lieutenant, Liaquat Ali Khan, assumed leadership
and continued in the position of prime minister. Born to a Punjabi
landed family, Liaquat used his experience in law to attempt to
frame a constitution along the lines of the British Westminster
system of parliamentary democracy. He failed in large part because
neither the Muslim League nor the Constituent Assembly was equipped
to resolve in a parliamentary manner the problems and conflicts
of the role of Islam and the degree of autonomy for the provinces.
Liaquat's term of office ended when he was assassinated in Rawalpindi
in October 1951. He was replaced by Khwaja Nazimuddin, who stepped
down as governor general; Nazimuddin was replaced as governor
general by Ghulam Mohammad, the former minister of finance.
The Muslim League, unlike Congress, had not prepared itself for
a postindependence role. Congress had constitutional, economic,
social, and even foreign policy plans in place before independence
and was ready to put them into effect when the time came. The
Muslim League was so preoccupied with the struggle for Pakistan
that it was poorly prepared for effective government. Its leaders
were largely urban professionals whose political base was mainly
in areas that were in India. In the areas that had become Pakistan,
its base was weak. Landlords with ascriptive and inherited privileges
were uncomfortable with procedures of decision making through
debate, discussion, compromise, and majority vote. The Muslim
League was a party with little grassroots support, a weak organizational
structure, powerful factional leaders, and decisions made at the
top. Although Ghulam Mohammad tried to exercise the "viceregal"
power that Jinnah had used so powerfully as governor general,
concern for office and the fruits of power were more important
to most of the politicians than the evolution of ideology or the
implementation of mass programs. The effect of this lack of direction
was shown most clearly when the Muslim League was routed in the
1954 election in East Pakistan by the United Front--mainly a coalition
of the Awami League and the Krishak Sramik Party, led by two one-time
Muslim League members, Hussain Shahid Suhrawardy and Fazlul Haq,
who ran on an autonomist platform. Other parties established during
this period included the leftist National Awami Party (a breakaway
from the Awami League), which also supported provincial autonomy.
Islamic parties also made their appearance on the electoral scene,
most notably the Jamaat-i-Islami.
The Muslim League was held responsible for the deterioration
of politics and society after independence and had to answer for
its failure to fulfill people's high expectations. There was a
rising level of opposition and frustration and an increasing use
of repressive laws inherited from the British or enacted by Pakistan
that included preventive detention and rules prohibiting the gathering
of more than five persons. In 1949 the Public and Representative
Office Disqualification Act (PRODA) allowed the government to
disqualify persons found guilty of "misconduct," a term that acquired
a broad definition. In 1952 the Security of Pakistan Act expanded
the powers of the government in the interests of public order.
The armed forces also posed a threat to Liaquat's government,
which was less hostile toward India than some officers wished.
In March 1951, Major General Mohammad Akbar Khan, chief of the
general staff, was arrested along with fourteen other officers
on charges of plotting a coup d'état. The authors of what became
known as the Rawalpindi Conspiracy were tried in secret, convicted,
and sentenced to imprisonment. All were subsequently released.
Pakistan's first Constituent Assembly was made up of members
of the prepartition Indian Constituent Assembly who represented
areas that had gone to Pakistan. The body's eighty members functioned
as the legislature of Pakistan. As a constitution-making body,
the assembly's only achievement was the Objectives Resolution
of March 1949, which specified that Pakistan would be Islamic,
democratic, and federal. But the assembly could not reach agreement
on how these objectives would take form, raising fears among minorities
and concern among East Bengalis. Other important matters remained
equally problematic-- the division of executive power between
the governor general and the prime minister; the distribution
of power between the center and the provinces; the balance of
power, especially electoral, between the two wings; and the role
of Islam in the government. With the 1951 assassination of Liaquat,
resolution of these issues became unlikely.
During the years after Liaquat's assassination, none of these
problems were resolved, and a major confrontation occurred between
the governor general, Ghulam Mohammad, a Punjabi from the civil
service, and the prime minister, Nazimuddin, a former chief minister
of united Bengal and now chief minister of East Bengal. Ghulam
Mohammad, who relished the trappings of dominance earlier held
by Jinnah, asserted his power by declaring martial law in 1953
in Punjab during disturbances involving the Ahmadiyyas, a small
but influential sect considered heterodox by orthodox Muslims,
and a year later by imposing governor's rule after the Muslim
League defeat in East Bengal, not permitting the United Front
to take office. When Nazimuddin attempted to limit the power of
the governor general through amendments to the Government of India
Act of 1935--then still the basic law for Pakistan, as altered
by the India Independence Act of 1947-- Ghulam Mohammad unceremoniously
dismissed him in April 1953, and then the following year appointed
his own "cabinet of talents," dismissing the Constituent Assembly.
The so-called cabinet of talents was headed by Mohammad Ali Bogra,
a minor political figure from East Bengal who had previously been
Pakistan's ambassador to the United States. Significantly, the
cabinet also included both military and civil officials. Chaudhuri
Mohammad Ali, who had been head of the Civil Service of Pakistan,
became minister of finance. General Mohammad Ayub Khan became
minister of defense while retaining his post as commander in chief
of the army. Major General Iskander Mirza, a military officer
who was seconded to civilian posts, including becoming governor
of East Bengal when Ghulam Mohammad imposed governor's rule on
that province, became minister of home affairs. The cabinet thus
provided an opportunity for the military to take a direct role
in politics. Ghulam Mohammad was successful in subordinating the
prime minister because of the support of military and civil officers
as well as the backing of the strong landed interests in Punjab.
The facade of parliamentary government crumbled, exposing the
military's role in Pakistan's political system to public view.
The revived Constituent Assembly convened in 1955. It differed
in composition from the first such assembly because of the notable
reduction of Muslim League members and the presence of a United
Front coalition from East Bengal. Provincial autonomy was the
main plank of the United Front. Also in 1955, failing health and
the ascendancy of General Iskander Mirza forced Ghulam Mohammad
to resign as governor general. He died the following year.
In 1956 the Constituent Assembly adopted a constitution that
proclaimed Pakistan an Islamic republic and contained directives
for the establishment of an Islamic state. It also renamed the
Constituent Assembly the Legislative Assembly. The lawyer-politicians
who led the Pakistan movement used the principles and legal precedents
of a nonreligious British parliamentary tradition even while they
advanced the idea of Muslim nationhood as an axiom. Many of them
represented a liberal movement in Islam, in which their personal
religion was compatible with Western technology and political
institutions. They saw the basis for democratic processes and
tolerance in the Islamic tradition of ijma (consensus
of the community) and ijtihad (the concept of continuing
interpretations of Islamic law). Most of Pakistan's intelligentsia
and Westernized elites belonged to the group of ijma
modernists (see Religious Life , ch. 2).
In contrast stood the traditionalist ulama, whose position was
a legalistic one based on the unity of religion and politics in
Islam. The ulama asserted that the Quran, the sunna
(see Glossary), and the sharia provided the general principles
for all aspects of life if correctly interpreted and applied.
The government's duty, therefore, was to recognize the role of
the ulama in the interpretation of the law. Because the ulama
and the less-learned mullahs (Muslim clerics) enjoyed influence
among the masses, especially in urban areas, and because no politician
could afford to be denounced as anti-Islamic, none dared publicly
to ignore them. Nevertheless, they were not given powers of legal
interpretation until the Muhammad Zia ul-Haq regime of 1977-88
(see Zia ul-Haq and Military Domination, 1977-88; Early Political
Development , ch. 4). The lawyer-politicians making decisions
in the 1950s almost without exception preferred the courts and
legal institutions they inherited from the British.
Another interpretation of Islam was provided by an Islamist movement
in Pakistan, regarded in some quarters as fundamentalist. Its
most significant organization was the Jamaat-i-Islami, which gradually
built up support among the refugees, the urban lower middle-class,
and students (see Jamaat-i-Islami , ch. 4). Unlike the traditional
ulama, the Islamist movement was the outcome of modern Islamic
idealism. Crucial in the constitutional and political development
of Pakistan, it forced politicians to face the question of Islamic
identity. On occasion, definitions of Islamic identity resulted
in violent controversy, as in Punjab during the early 1950s when
agitation was directed against the Ahmadiyyas. In the mid-1970s,
the Ahmadiyyas were declared to be non-Muslims by the government
of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto (1971-77) and the Organization of the Islamic
Conference (OIC), based in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia.
During the 1950s, however, the fundamentalist movement led by
Maulana Abul Ala Maududi, the founder and leader of the Jamaat-i-Islami,
succeeded only in introducing Islamic principles into the 1956
constitution. A nonjudiciable section called the Directive Principles
of State Policy attempted to define ways in which the Islamic
way of life and Islamic moral standards could be pursued. The
principles contained injunctions against the consumption of alcohol
and the practice of usury. The substance of the 1956 clauses reappeared
in the 1962 constitution, but the Islamist cause was undefeated.
Sharia courts were established under Zia, and under Prime Minister
Mian Nawaz Sharif in the early 1990s, the sharia was proclaimed
the basic law of the land.
Data as of April 1994
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