RELIGIOUS MINORITIES IN PAKISTAN Jinnah’s vision

 

 

 

                             RELIGIOUS MINORITIES IN PAKISTAN Jinnah’s vision,

  and the basis forits undoingJinnah’s vision of a democraticPakistan
In the 1930s and 1940s, the demand for a separate Mus-lim state evolved as a focal point for converging socio-economic forces, varying from economic improvement tocultural and intellectual renaissance. For the emergingMuslim elite in British India, Pakistan would offer acohesive, binding force, enabling disparate Muslim com-munities to break free of permanent bondage to anoverpowering majority.10To the landless peasants, it rep-resented a utopia, and for others it held the promise of atrans-regional Muslim identity in a revivalist sense.11Pakistan was envisioned as a progressive, democraticand tolerant society, which, while retaining a Muslimmajority, would give equal rights to its non-Muslim citi-zens. Without calling it a secular state, Jinnah and hismodernist Muslim colleagues believed that Pakistanwould improve its people’s socio-economic conditions,and that people of all faiths and practices would continueto live as equal citizens.12On 11 August 1947, in his oft-quoted speech to the first Constituent Assembly ofPakistan, Jinnah said:‘... You are free; you are free to go to your temples,you are free to go to your mosques or to any otherplaces of worship in the State of Pakistan. You maybelong to any religion or caste or creed – that hasnothing to do with the business of the State ... We arestarting with this fundamental principle: that we areall citizens and equal citizens of one State. Now, Ithink we should keep that in front of us as our idealand you will find that in course of time Hinduswould cease to be Hindus and Muslims would ceaseto be Muslims, not so in the religious sense becausethat is the personal faith of each individual, but inthe political sense as citizens of the state.’This is considered to be the charter of Pakistan and sum-mation of Jinnah’s views on the role of religion and thestate. Many of his colleagues shared his vision, unlikeseveral Muslim religio-political parties in India who feltthat the idea of Pakistan was an anathema because secularand ‘Westernized’ Muslims were fielding it. However, the Indian Muslim majority voted for the Jinnah-led MuslimLeague.13But, over the succeeding decades, especially in the 1970s and 1980s, the Pakistani state, rather thanguaranteeing equal rights and equal opportunities to itsMuslim and non-Muslim citizens, began to encourage obscurantist forces. Why this major shift happened is ofcritical importance. There are several scholarly opinions about this changein Pakistani official and societal attitudes. According tosome, the demand for Pakistan hinged on Muslim majorityprovinces and used Islamic symbols, thus retaining a Mus-lim majoritarian bias. This is a powerful argument: despitethe Muslim League’s assurances to minorities, its Muslim credentials were pronounced both during the colonial and national periods. Another view considers the enduring con-test between the religious and the liberal positions regarding nationalism. Like the Muslim League and otherIslamic parties such as Jamaat-i-Islami (JI), the Indian National Congress was arrayed against the HinduMahasabah and other such fundamentalist groups. The weakening of modernist forces from inertia, exhaustion ordisarray, allowed rival forces to seek power. As with the Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in India, the Islamicist forces in Pakistan have rewritten South Asian history to suittheir religious views. Others see the rise of unilateralism over pluralism as being due to economic and political rea-sons. To such analysts, the masses’ continued economic and political disempowerment has given the opposing forces away in as they are proposing an alternative, however sim-plistic, to the ‘Westernized’ elements. A further opinionsees the roots of xenophobia as embedded in the nature and aspirations of South Asia’s middle classes, for whom region-al and sectarian identifications remain paramount. Others look to the role of individuals like Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Zia ul-Haq, among others, who coopted and encourage dobscurantist forces – either to seek legitimacy or simply togenerate a following. Finally, the globalists may see political Islam re-emerging as the rallying point to counter the over-powering forces of Westernism.Pakistan’s shift from a Jinnahist to a more Jihadi(Islamic fundamentalist) course has nothing inevitableabout it, as most of its people still believe in tolerance and coexistence and would like to revert to the originaldream.14Since 1947, the acrimonious Indo-Pakistani rela-tionship has seriously affected inter-community relationships. While Muslim anger was directed against Hindus in Pakistan, in India, Muslims have been per-ceived as scapegoats by Hindu fundamentalists. In this exclusionary process of nationalism(s), other communities have been deeply affected, including Christians in bothcountries, and Ahmadis and Shias in Pakistan . Yet the concept of majoritarianism is fal-lacious, as both Islam and Hinduism are not monolithic.In Pakistan, the growing emphasis on ‘Muslimness’ hasnot only caused justifiable concern among non-Muslims,but the intra-Muslim ideological divides have also becomemore apparent, finding ‘enemies from within’