06 October 2001 Saturday 18 Rajab 1422
A nation divided
By Irfan Husain
A CRISIS unites most countries, cementing cracks and pulling people together behind the government. In Pakistan, however, the opposite has happened, with the current predicament exposing and widening many of the seismic faultlines that already existed.
Every society has divisions and differences, and they usually contribute to a creative ferment; however, when they become unmanageable, they can be devastating as they erode cohesion and destabilize the government. Years of poor governance, misguided policies and disastrous leadership have created deeper and more numerous disparities and divergences than we can handle. Just how is Pakistani society divided? Let us count the ways...
First and foremost, and crucially relevant to the current crisis, is the division between those angry, bearded faces the world sees on TV screens demonstrating against the US and General Musharraf, and for the Taliban, and the rest of the country that does not want to be isolated and lumped together with our benighted neighbour. Estimates of the relative strength of these two groups vary, with General Musharraf placing their numbers at "not more than 15 per cent of the population." In fact, religious parties have never won more than 5 per cent of the national vote, and have never sent over six members to the National Assembly at any one time.
Nevertheless, their organization, fervour and sheer ferocity make them a formidable force. Willing to face police batons and bullets, their aggressive zeal has paralyzed and toppled governments in the past. One reason, of course, why they take to the streets at the drop of a hat in large numbers is that very few of them actually work. Unemployed and generally unemployable, these fanatical shock-troopers are increasingly armed and very dangerous.
In a crude way, this schism between the holy warriors and the moderate mainstream reflects the struggle that has been going on between ultra-orthodoxy and reform in Islam for centuries. Although this split started nearly a thousand years ago, it acquired greater momentum with the defeat of Muslim forces at the hands of infidel Europeans from Vienna to Plassey. Those refusing to permit ijtihad (interpretation; reasoning) argued that the Muslims had lost favour with God because of their feeble faith, and if Islam was to regain its lost glory, it should return to the fundamentals. The reformers, on the other hand, sought to use the West's tools of education, science and reason to compete. One look at the pathetic state of the Islamic world today will indicate whose views have prevailed. Nevertheless, the tension between the two schools of thought is reflected in open or underground conflict in most Muslim nations.
In Pakistan, the fissures are even more numerous and complex as Shias and Sunnis, and Barelvis and Deobandis fight it out polemically and with Kalashnikovs. Theological debate and street warfare have divided the country along sectarian faultlines. Here again, a relatively few fanatics have held the country hostage. But successive governments have tolerated (and in Zia's case, encouraged) these extremists with the result that literally hundreds of Shias have been gunned down in broad daylight without any serious action being taken against the killers.
In this poisonous atmosphere of hatred and intolerance, it was inevitable that the minorities would be marginalized. Despite Mr Jinnah's promise of equality and protection to non-Muslims, they have been progressively pushed into a corner. The writing on the wall appeared when the Ahmadis were declared non-Muslim during Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's rule in the seventies; Zia drove the last nail into the minorities' coffin through his deeply divisive separate electorates that prevented non-Muslims from voting for local candidates of mainstream parties. This law has effectively disenfranchised the minorities.
The blasphemy law has made it possible to jail and prosecute people, usually non-Muslim, on the most frivolous grounds. The recent death sentence awarded to Dr Yunus for informing his students of the obvious truth that before the advent of Islam, Muslim practices were not followed, shows how prone this law is to abuse.
Then we are divided by gender. If you go to any South Asian country, you are first struck by how many women are visible in the streets, going about their daily business. In Pakistan, on the other hand, they have been steadily incarcerated in their homes. The other day, I asked Fateh, my fisherman friend, why the women in his village did not play a more active role helping their husbands and fathers. He replied that he remembered a time when they did go out on boats, helped haul in the catch, clean the fish and salt them. But over the years, they have tended to stay home. As a kid, I too recall seeing my mother cycle off to her civil defence meetings in the early years of Pakistan. In the fifties, my girl cousins used to ride bikes to get to Kinnaird College in Lahore. This would be unthinkable today.
One reason why we are so susceptible to divisive tendencies is the lack of education, with less than half the population being literate. But even the educated are divided between the vast majority that has gone through the mediocre public educational system, and the privileged minority that attended private schools and colleges, and is at home in the English language. For the unfortunate former group, most doors are shut as the top jobs in the public and private sectors are reserved for the elite that is fluent in English.
Provincialism and ethnic divisions continue to undermine our unity even after 54 years of independent existence. The three smaller provinces resent the dominance of Punjab, and even within provinces, tensions divide Sindhis and Mohajirs in Sindh, Balochs and Pashtuns in Balochistan and Punjabis from the Saraiki-speaking southern belt in Punjab. Then there are over two million Afghans, many of whom were raised here and are indistinguishable from Pakistani Pashtuns, specially as they carry Pakistani ID cards and passports. Many of those currently demonstrating against the government are Afghan refugees.
It goes without saying that like every other country, Pakistan is divided by class and wealth. But here, the inequalities are greater than in most other societies. From the vulgar opulence of houses in the so-called 'Defence Housing Societies' in major cities to the hovels a stone's throw away, there is a social and economic gap that no civilized society should accept or tolerate. While we are hardened to these cruel disparities, foreigners are invariably shocked by them.
So when we organize and mark officially inspired 'solidarity days', we need to remember that ultimately, we are a nation divided by more elements than those that hold us together.
© The DAWN Group of Newspapers, 2001