Sign in with your library card Please enter your library card number. Search within The Creation of Pakistan. You do not currently have access to this article Login Please login to access the full content. Subscribe Access to the full content requires a subscription. Oxford University Press. Sign in to annotate. Yet the public also greeted this agreement with some cautious hope.
Nobody who agreed to the plan realised that partition was unleashing one of the worst calamities of the 20th century. Only weeks later, the full scale of the tragedy was apparent. The north-eastern and north-western flanks of the country, made up of Muslim majorities, became Pakistan on 14 August The rest of the country, predominantly Hindu, but also with large religious minorities peppered throughout, became India.
Sandwiched between these areas stood the provinces of Bengal in the east and Punjab in the north-west , densely populated agricultural regions where Muslims, Hindus and Punjabi Sikhs had cultivated the land side by side for generations. The thought of segregating these two regions was so preposterous that few had ever contemplated it, so no preparations had been made for a population exchange.
Some measure of transfer will come about in a natural way … perhaps governments will transfer populations. Once more, this is a matter not so much for the main parties as for the local authorities living in the border areas to decide. However, people took fright and, in the face of mounting violence, took matters into their own hands.
Refugees started to cross over from one side to the other in anticipation of partition. The borderlines, announced on 17 August — two days after independence — cut right through these two provinces and caused unforeseen turmoil.
Perhaps a million people died, from ethnic violence and also from diseases rife in makeshift refugee camps. The epicentre was Punjab, yet many other places were affected, especially Bengal often overlooked in the commemorations , Sindh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Kashmir and beyond.
Lahore — heir to the architecture of Mughal, Sikh and British rule, and famed for its poets, universities and bookshops — was reduced in large quarters to rubble.
In Amritsar, home of the Golden Temple, and also known for its carpet and silk weavers, it took more than five years to clear the wreckage. There were more than refugee camps all over the subcontinent, 70, women had suffered sexual violence and the issue of the princely states, especially Kashmir, remained unresolved. Many hopes had been cruelly dashed. The act of partition set off a spiral of events unforeseen and unintended by anyone, and the dramatic upheavals changed the terms of the whole settlement.
The stories make us flinch. Bloated and distorted bodies surfacing in canals months after a riot, young pregnant women left dismembered by roadsides. Up to 15 million people left their homes to begin a new life in India or Pakistan, and by September the formal exchange of population across the Punjab borderlines had become government policy.
Basic Democracies code was founded on the premise of Khan's diagnosis that the politicians and their "free-for-all" type of fighting had had ill effect on the country. The Basic Democracies institution was then enforced justifying "that it was democracy that suited the genius of the people. Consequently the Basic Democracies system did not empower the individual citizens to participate in the democratic process, but opened up the opportunity to bribe and buy votes from the limited voters who were privileged enough to vote.
By giving the civil bureaucracy the chosen few a part in electoral politics, Khan had hoped to bolster central authority, and largely American-directed, programs for Pakistan's economic development. But his policies exacerbated existing disparities between the provinces as well as within them.
Which gave the grievances of the eastern wing a potency that threatened the very centralized control Khan was trying to establish. In West Pakistan, notable successes in increasing productivity were more than offset by growing inequalities in the agrarian sector and their lack of representation, an agonizing process of urbanization, and the concentration of wealth in a few industrial houses. In the aftermath of the war with India, mounting regional discontent in East Pakistan and urban unrest in West Pakistan helped undermine Ayub Khan's authority, forcing him to relinquish power in March By that time the country had been under military rule for thirteen of its twenty-five years of existence.
This second military regime emphasized the extent to which the process of centralization under bureaucratic and military tutelage had fragmented Pakistani society and politics. The general elections of on the basis of adult franchise revealed for the first time ever in Pakistan's history how regionalism and social conflict had come to dominate politics despite the efforts at controlled development.
The Awami League, led by Mujibur Rahman, campaigned on a six-point program of provincial autonomy, capturing all but one seat in East Pakistan and securing an absolute majority in the national assembly. In West Pakistan the Pakistan People's Party, led by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, had a populist platform that stole the thunder from the Islamic parties the Muslim League, the oldest political party captured no more than a few seats and emerged as the largest single bloc.
The prospect of an Awami Leagues government was a threat to politicians in West Pakistan who in conspiracy with the military leadership prevented Mujibur from taking the reins of power. This was the final straw for the east wing who was already fed up with the their under-representation in all sectors of the government, economic deprivation and then the suppression of the democratic process.
An armed rebellion in East Pakistan engendered all of these frustrations, which caused Indian military intervention to crush it. Pakistan was now involved in its third war with India, thus clearing the way for the establishment of Bangladesh in The dismemberment of Pakistan discredited both the civil bureaucracy and the army, General Yahya Khan was left no choice but to hand all power over to the Pakistan's People's Party PPP who saw the formation of a representative led by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.
Bhutto's electoral strength, however, was confined to the Punjab and Sind, and even there it had not been based on solid political party organization. This, together with the PPP's lack of following in the North-West Frontier Province and Baluchistan, meant that Bhutto could not work the central apparatus without at least the implicit support of the civil bureaucracy and the military high command. The constitution made large concessions to the non-Punjabi provinces and provided the blueprint for a political system based on the semblance of a national consensus.
But Bhutto failed to implement the federal provisions of the constitution. He relied on the coercive arm of the state to snuff out political opposition and by neglecting to build the PPP as a truly popular national party.
The gap between his popular rhetoric and the marginal successes of his somewhat haphazard economic reforms prevented Bhutto form consolidating a social base of support.
Thus, despite a temporary loss of face in the civil bureaucracy and the army remained the most important pillars of the state structure, instead of the citizens of Pakistan who were still struggling to be recognized in the democratic process. Violent urban unrest gave the army under General Zia-ul Haq the pretext to make a powerful comeback to the political arena, and on July 5, Pakistan was placed under military rule yet again and the Constitution was suspended. Upon assuming power General Zia banned all political parties and expressed his determination to recast the Pakistani state and society into an Islamic mold.
In April Bhutto was executed on murder charges and the PPP's remaining leadership was jailed or exiled. By holding nonparty elections and initiating a series of Islamization policies, Zia sought to create a popular base of support in the hope of legitimizing the role of the military in Pakistani politics.
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December caused Zia's regime to receive international support as a stable government bordering Soviet territory. Although Pakistan had now formally disentangled its self from both SEATO and CENTO and joined the nonaligned movement, was regarded by the West as an important front-line state and is a major recipient of American military and financial aid. Despite a string of statistics advertising the health of the economy, murmurs of discontent, though muffled, continued to be heard.
On December 30, , after confirming his own position in a controversial "Islamic" referendum, completing a fresh round of nonparty elections of the provincial and national assemblies, and introducing a series of amendments to the constitution, Zia finally lifted martial law and announced the dawn of a new democratic era in Pakistan.
This new democratic era was just as turbulent as Pakistan's previous political history. Major political parties called for a boycott the election due to the non-party bias platform. In absence of political parties the candidates focused on local issues that superseded the majority of the candidates affiliations to particular parties.
The Pakistani people were obviously interested in participating in the democratic process and disregarded the urge to boycott, President Zia first initiative was to introduce amendments to the constitution that would secure his power over the parliamentary system.
The eighth amendment turned out to be the most detrimental to the people's faith in the democratic system. Now the president could possess complete control and power to take any step, which he felt was necessary to secure national integrity. For the next twelve years the presidents used this amendment to expel a number of prime ministers from their post, mainly due to either personal struggles or insecurity over shift in power. Following the election, Muhammad Khan Junejo was nominated as the prime minister, who had a unanimous vote of confidence by the National Assembly.
Junejo seemed to be a promising component to the Pakistani government; he fostered a smooth transition from the army to civil authority, which generated optimism about the democratic process of Pakistan.
For the first of his years in office, Junejo was able to strike a balance between establishing the parliamentary credentials as a democratic body and maintaining President Zia's blessing. He developed the five-point program that aimed at improving development, literacy rate, eliminating corruption and improvement of the common man's lot. He was as well improving foreign policy abroad and was grappling a major budgetary deficit from the heavy expenditure of the martial law regimes.
But on May 29th President Zia dissolved the National Assembly and removed the prime minister under the article b of the Constitution. He claimed that Jenejo was conspiring against him in order to undermine his position; he blamed the National Assembly of corruption and failure to enforce Islamic way of life.
The opposition parties were in support of Zia's decision because it worked in their benefit, providing an early election. They demanded elections to be schedule in ninety days in accordance with the constitution. President Zia interpreted this article of the constitution differently. He felt he was required to announce the election schedule in ninety days while the elections could be held later.
Simultaneously he wanted to hold the elections on a non-party basis as he had in , but the Supreme Court upheld that this went against the spirit of the constitution. Political confusion ensued as a result of Zia's proposal to postpone the elections to re-structure the political system in the name of Islam. There was fear that Zia may impose martial law and the Muslim League became split between supporters of Zia and Junejo.
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