THE PAKISTAN PARADOX
Christophe Jaffrelot
Random House
688 pages; Rs 799
Christophe Jaffrelot joins the ranks of several scholars who in recent years have sought to explain the resilience of Pakistan despite its many symptoms as a failing state. Steve Cohen explored this theme in his Idea of Pakistan and, more lately, in The India-Pakistan Conundrum: Shooting for a Century. Pakistan: A Hard Country by Anatol Lieven, sought to identify the more stable social and cultural continuities that hold the country together. Mr Jaffrelot's impressively thick volume of some 650 pages covers much the same ground but is undoubtedly more comprehensive, more granular and nuanced, particularly in its treatment of the well-springs of the Pakistani state with its several contradictory and un-reconciled impulses.
In Part One, titled "Nationalism without a Nation - and Even without a People," the book explores the psyche of the Muslim elite, defeated and dislodged by British colonial rule but retaining its sense of entitlement and superiority vis-à-vis the ordinary people, in particular the Hindu community. The most influential elements of this aristocratic elite lived in north India, in particular Uttar Pradesh, and spoke Urdu but were a minority. This elite led the movement for Pakistan but the provinces that would constitute the new country, with Muslim majorities, were originally marginal to the movement. The current plight of the Mohajirs, or those who migrated to the new state which they had helped create as a homeland for the sub-continent's Muslims, is the ultimate irony of the history. It is the lingering sense of entitlement, of having been the ruling class and deserving at least parity with the largely Hindu neighbour, that explains both the authoritarian predilections of the Pakistani elite and its perennial hostility to India.
Part One also analyses the tension between the concept of a unified homeland for Muslims of the sub-continent and the reality of the significant ethnic and linguistic divisions among the constituent units of the new state. The centralisation of political authority was an inevitable consequence to keep centrifugal tendencies in check. The Indian "threat" was useful in resisting regional autonomy. Later, the Muslim identity as the basis of the Pakistani state gave way to Islam as the key marker.
In Part Two, titled "Neither Democracy nor Autocracy", Mr Jaffrelot analyses the twists and turns in Pakistan's journey towards civilian democracy. The serial alterations between civilian rule and military dictatorship are analysed with considerable insight and it emerges that they represent less a clash between democracy and autocracy and more a variation in political processes through which a narrow civilian-military elite seeks to retain its monopoly over power and the instruments of state. As Mr Jaffrelot points out, "civilians and the military decidedly cannot be associated with two different categories that could be qualified respectively as liberal-democratic and conservative-authoritarian."
This is an important insight since in India we often pose the military-civilian and democracy-authoritarian binary as the prevailing contradiction in Pakistan, or the "good boy-bad boy" categorisation. The book sets out ample evidence to demonstrate the constant violations of the democratic principle by civilian leaders and their willingness to dramatise the Indian "threat" to mute liberal or dissenting voices. Despite appearances, the military-civilian elite shares a broad consensus over retaining its privileged status in society and using the tools of anti-Indianism and Islamism to buttress this status.
Part Three - "Islam: Territorial Ideology or Political Religion" - is perhaps the most interesting and, despite its cautious language, the most depressing section of the book. The author analyses the deep-rooted ambivalence in Pakistan towards the role of Islam in the formation of national identity. As Mr Jaffrelot points out, "Two schools with still shifting contours stand in opposition: one handed down from Jinnah and the Muslim League viewed Islam as an identity marker compatible with a form of secularism (which therefore respected religious minorities); the other, dominated by the clerics, embodied an Islamic vision in which non-Muslims - including Ahmadis - were bound to become second class citizens."
What we see currently in Pakistan is the unmistakeable prevalence of the latter school. It is reflected in the growing Sunni-Shia divide, the increasing attacks on religious minorities and the insidious mainstreaming of jihadism that threatens to mute the remaining liberal voices in Pakistani society. One unintended consequence of a highly unequal and stratified society is that Islamic and fundamentalist organisations may have become the source of solace and support for the deprived masses. The state may be able to co-opt some of these, and this is clearly the case, as of now, with the Lashkar-e-Toiba. But these groups can become violently antithetical and that is exemplified by the Pakistani Taliban. This leads Mr Jaffrelot to observe that "the sectarian conflict probably represents a more serious existential threat to Pakistan's unity than any other". In other words, the Pakistan Paradox may well resolve itself in a manner that would undermine, perhaps terminally, the resilience of the Pakistani state, which seems to intrigue political analysts.
Mr Jaffrelot does touch on another source of Pakistan's resilience and that is the "clientism" that has become its hallmark. So far it is the US that has provided the economic and financial wherewithal for the state to keep itself afloat. But this largesse has extracted a price in terms of the erosion of sovereignty and self-esteem. This phase of clientism may be coming to an end, but a new clientism, this time in relation to China, appears ready to supplant the old.
It would have been worthwhile for Mr Jaffrelot to examine this dimension of Pakistan's resilience in greater detail because the intersection of the domestic and the external is a crucial component of that country's contemporary history. The India factor has also not been examined independently as a variable, through the Indian "threat" is taken as a self-evident element. It is perhaps a more complex variable than has been described in the book.
Mr Jaffrelot's book is a useful and perceptive addition to recent literature analysing Pakistan and its political, social and economic dynamics. It is certainly worth reading as a comprehensive diagnostic of the Pakistan Paradox. Much of the available literature on Pakistan has focussed on the external aspects of its polity. Mr Jaffrelot rightly delves into the domestic dynamics and this makes it a valuable source of reference.
The reviewer is a former foreign secretary and currently chairman, RIS and senior fellow, CPR
