McGill Journal of Political Studies 2014 April, 2014 | Page 68

government and repressing demands for a
federal system or provincial self-rule32.”
It was thought that because Islam
was such a strong unifying factor preindependence, that it could maintain its
unifying factor post-independence that
would cut across ethnic lines. The first
problem with this approach manifested
itself into the centralisation of the state. This
centralisation infringed upon ethnic identity
and was discriminatory against some ethnic
groups, as in the case of (former) East
Pakistan. “This desire to create ‘one nation,
one language, one religion’ (a common slogan
in Pakistani political life) has manifested
itself in an effort to suppress local, ethnolinguistic identities by the state,” claims
Pande, “and a related effort to replace these
identities with a national identity rooted in
Islam33.”
After a civil war in 1971, Pakistan lost
its east wing, which is now independent
Bangladesh. The Bengalis in East Pakistan
made up the majority of the population at
the time, but because of their distance from
the capital, they were largely discounted in
terms of political and military power34. The
Punjabi elite in Islamabad excluded the
East Pakistanis from the power structure.
The Bengalis were also economically
exploited by the West Pakistani elites. The
Bengali language was not recognized as
an official language even though Bengalis
at that time constituted a major part of
Pakistan. Such ethnic and socio-economic
discrimination against the Bengali people
aggravated tensions, and agitations arose in
East Pakistan over sectional bias, neglect,
insufficient allocation of resources, and
national wealth. The final straw occurred in
1971, when the Awami Muslim League of
East Pakistan won outright parliamentary
majority but faced strong resistance by the
West Pakistani central government to their
right to form a government. This sowed the

seeds that ignited Bengali nationalism and
ploughed the way for the emergence of a
strong secessionist movement, which, with
the help of Indian intervention, saw the
creation of an independent Bangladesh after
a civil war in 1971.
The example of the separation of East
Pakistan (now Bangladesh) is illustrative
of how the problem of multiple ethnicities,
heterogeneous society, and provincial
autonomy was handled in Pakistan.Moreover,
“while officially the political centre strongly
de-emphasized ethnic identity as a political
factor, in reality its policies strengthened
it35.” While the bureaucratic and military
centre was established in West Pakistan, the
majority of the (then) Pakistani population
was living in East Pakistan. The ‘One-Unit’
ideology would integrate the provinces in
West Pakistan into one political unit which
was hoped to balance the demographic
strength of East Pakistan. This had two
results: the attempt to form a coalition of
all the non-Bengalis against the Bengalis
and the elimination of the possibility of
provincial autonomy or federalism in West
Pakistan36. It demonstrated the dominance
of the Punjabi elite which was unwilling
to give up their power, even when a mass
civil war broke out. From Dhaka, the war
was clearly seen through ethnic lenses, as
a war between a Punjabi army and Bengali
population.
For the Balochis, Sindhis and Pashtuns
in West Pakistan, the secession and
subsequent independence of Bangladesh
had two implications. On one hand, it
proved that it was possible for a successful
ethno-nationalist movement to take place.
This further intensified their own beliefs
and identities and strengthened their
identities. On the other hand, the loss of
the Bengal region weakened their political
strength against the central government37.
For the political elites in West Pakistan, the

secession in Bangladesh further solidified
Punjabi dominance, as the Bengali
counterweight was no longer in the picture.
They also became less tolerant of the calls
for autonomy from the other ethnic groups
and starting “responding with stronger
and swifter repression of secessionist
sentiment38.”
The central government learnt no lesson
from the Bengali partition. Instead of
realising that the true essence of the issue
lay in the question of autonomy along
ethnic lines and the balancing of economic
shares in the country, the political leadership
assumed that the rest of West Pakistan
could be kept intact through continued
centralisation and cultivation of an identity
based on the fusion of Islam and Pakistani
nationalism. It was assumed that Islam
would somehow “replace” or at least relegate
the ethnic identities. If anything, the loss of
East Pakistan showed that Islam was not
able to overcome ethnic animosities, and
that religion was not enough of a reason to
prevent Bangladesh from leaving Pakistan.
It was that defeat which actually spurred
serious government efforts towards strategic
use of political Islam.

Ibid.
33
Pande, “Islam in the National Story,” 42.
34
Khan, “Ethnicity, Islam and National Identity,” 170.

35

Hippler, “Problems of Culture,” 9.
36
Ibid., 10.
37
Ibid.

39

32

68 | McGill Journal of Political Studies 2014

1971-Present: Islamization and Rise of
Sectarianism
It was not until the War of 1971 of East
Pakistan, and the consequent secession
which formed Bangladesh, that the nature
of Pakistani national identity came into
question: what element could keep the
country and its people together? Ayub
Khan’s mostly secular regime39 was thought
to be the cause for the separation, so the
state felt it only natural to fly the flag of
Islam higher, which would encompass the
masses under its faith system. The political
leadership in its eventual aim of keeping
the country ‘intact’ started to aggressively
Hurst, “Pakistan’s Ethnic Divide,” 194.
Katherine Ewing, “The Politics of Sufism: Redefining the Saints of Pakistan,” The Journal of Asian Studies,
vol. 42, no. 2 (February 1983): 258-259.
38

cultivate an Islamic brand of Pakistani
nationalism. There is absolutely no doubt
that the 1973 constitution was a giant
stride towards fusion of religion to matters
of state40. More than anything else, it also
set the future constitutional direction of
the country. The East Pakistan debacle
also raised the question that had haunted
Pakistan from the very beginning: If Islam
is to be the basis of the state, whose Islam
will be followed and how?
Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto of the Pakistan
People’s Party (PPP) took over in 1971. He
offered a modernist and egalitarian view of
a socialist Islam as a response to the identity
crisis post-1971. This outlook was rivaled by
that of the religious Jamat-e-Islami party,
which called for the integration of the
Sharia, specific Islamic practices, in state
law and administrative affairs. They believed
that the reason East Pakistan was lost was
because the leaders had betrayed the cause
of Islam. Thus, the war of 1971 became a
rallying point for many Pakistani citizens to
look to their Islamic roots for an ideological
cure, which is something that General Zia
ul-Haq later takes advantage of. The loss of
East Pakistan made the central government
keener to promote an Islamic identity
in hopes that it would hold the country
together. It was also the start of escalating
sectarian tension in the country.
Under the pressure of the Islamic political
parties in Pakistan in the 1971 election,
Zulfiqar Bhutto went on to declare the
minority Ahmeddiyah community as nonMuslim, and thus second-class citizens. This
declaration was significant in two aspects:
first, it marked the beginning of sectarianism
in Pakistan41, and second, this Islamist
victory set up the grounds for General Zia’s
military coup which took down Zulfiqar
Ali Bhutto’s “un-Islamic” regime. General
Zia ul-Haq displaced Bhutto in a military
Kalim Bahadur, Democracy in Pakistan: Crises and
Conflicts (New Delhi: Har-Anand Publications, 1998),
315-316.
41
Rais, “Identity Politics and Minorities,” 118.
40

The Failure of Civic Nationalism in Pakistan | Azhar | 69