PURIFYING THE LAND OF THE PURE
Pakistan's religious minorities
Farhanaz Ispahani
HarperCollins
254 pages; Rs 499
Jogender Nath Mandal was a Dalit leader who had supported the Muslim League in its quest for a separate homeland in the hope of getting better treatment for his kinsmen who had long suffered at the hands of upper-caste Hindus.
He was appointed to Pakistan's first cabinet by the country's founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, to signal that people will not be discriminated against on the basis of their religion in the newly-independent Muslim-majority country. In fact, Jinnah, a Shia, had also nominated an Ahmadi and several Shias to the cabinet. In his vision, Pakistan was to be a secular state where all citizens would enjoy equal rights.
Yet, in May 1950, Mandal, the law minister, confidentially told an Indian reporter that most Hindus in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) felt they had no place in the country and had made up their mind to leave. "I have asked them to wait for a few weeks more and that I too am prepared to accompany them to India," he said. Eventually, Mandal did relocate to India.
Jinnah's lofty vision could not hold for long. Gradually but steadily, Pakistan transited into a hardliner state, turning against not just Christians and Hindus, but also Shias and Ahmadis. There have been incessant attempts to "purify" the land of the pure, often with violent and tragic consequences for its own people.
Farhanaz Ispahani captures this transformation admirably in her book, a scholarly work that will help understand the turbulence one sees in Pakistan.
According to Ms Ispahani, Pakistan's Islamic identity was reinforced after 1971 when Bangladesh seceded from it. The humiliating defeat it suffered at the hands of India made the country seek solace in religion. The trend gained momentum after Zia-ul-Haq seized power through a military coup in 1977 and called himself "soldier of Islam" in his very first public speech.
Thus, madrasas proliferated, religious instruction on television multiplied, invocation of god became commonplace in government correspondence, and space was created in offices during work hours to offer prayers. Worse was the rewriting of text books with the idea of bringing up a new generation wedded to the idea of Islam. The results were disastrous: People were introduced to religious bigotry at an early age.
Sharia punishments were introduced for four offences: Intoxication, theft, adultery and making false allegations. Non-Muslims were exempted from permission and were issued permits for "reasonable quantities" of alcohol for private consumption, and were forbidden from getting drunk in public. The creation of sharia courts meant that the opinion of mullahs now had legal sanction. The genie was out of the bottle.
This was also the time that Jinnah was given a complete makeover. His photographs in Western suits were replaced with those with him in sherwani, an outfit the leader wore rarely. Mention of his August 1947 speech, where he said that religion would have nothing to do with the business of the state, was banned in the media. Biographies that talked of his Western ways had the "offending" pages removed. By the end of it, Zia and his ilk had painted Jinnah as one of their own: A pious Muslim dedicated to the cause of the religion.
The worst sufferers of majoritarian aggression in Pakistan seem to be the Ahmadis. Though there were cases of discrimination against them, this mistrust and dislike was institutionalised in 1984 when Zia promulgated an ordinance that made it impossible for the Ahmadis to practise their faith.
The ordinance barred them from performing azaan (the call to prayer) and from describing their place of worship as Mosque. They were firmly put in the category of non-Muslims. Moreover, it put them at the mercy of the majority community. An orthodox Muslim could walk up to the police station and lodge a complaint that an Ahmadi had offended his religious feeling, which was enough for the police to arrest the Ahmadi.
Zia's persecution of the religious minorities failed to raise any protest in the West because he was at the frontline of the war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. The West needed him in order to contain its arch rival, so all his misdemeanors were overlooked. The suffering minorities were left to their own devices.
The religious fundamentalism stoked by Zia refused to die down after his death in 1988 and the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989. Those who were at the forefront of Zia's Islamisation drive, the Inter-Services Intelligence and the religious leaders, had tasted immense power and were reluctant to give it up. Subsequent civilian governments realised quickly how deeply entrenched these elements were in the power hierarchy.
The situation turned from bad to worse. It was only after 9/11 that the world became alive to the extremism brewing in Pakistan. If English cricketer Ian Botham had in the 1980s called Pakistan "the kind of place you would like to send your mother-in-law to", a reference to the puritan and joyless days of Zia, Western commentators now started to describe it amongst the most dangerous places on earth.
This isn't what Jinnah had in mind.
