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April 2009
In the words o the country’s rst prime min-ister, Liaquat Ali Khan, Pakistan is the “hearto Asia.”
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Located at the crossroads betweenthe Middle East and South and Central Asia,Pakistan has indeed proved the truth o these words throughout its history. oday, withneighboring Aghanistan in dire straits, many are looking to Pakistan in search o solutionsto Aghanistan’s problems, among them U.S.Deense Secretary Robert Gates, who hasrepeatedly said that Aghanistan cannot bestabilized without simultaneously tacklingthe challenges o Pakistan.
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 Analysts have identied two groups o is-sues acing Pakistan:Political problems (unstable and ineec-tive democratic institutions; the closed na-ture o Pakistan’s elite, which makes it hard toachieve broad national consensus; the armedorces’ and security agencies’ excessive inu-ence on the political process; and weak gov-ernment control o the tribal areas bordering Aghanistan and Iran);International security problems (ensuringthe saety o nuclear weapons, technology andmaterials; the presence o international terror-
isam ad  pas f pasa’spa Dm
peter topychkAnov
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National ientity remains a very serious issue in Paistan toay. Tere as never been a clear answer to te question oow many nations live witin te country — one or more.
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Te constitutional process, accompanie by tensions in communal relations, bears witness to serious ieological ier-ences in society over te role religion soul play in social an political lie.
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Paistan’s Islamization, troug giving traitional Muslim stanars legal orce, as not been complete, but many tra-itional stanars ave now been written into law an ave tus become an integral part o te country’s political anlegal system.
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Solutions to Paistan’s problems soul be base on compreensive approaces tat avoi experiments wit Islam —one o te ounations o Paistan’s stateoo — an empasize aministrative, social, economic, an security issues.
Summar
v.11
ssu 2
BrieFinG
MOSCOW CENTER
CARNEGIE
 
2BRIEFING [ VOL. 11 ISSUE 2 ]
ist groups in the country); regional security issues (the unresolved problem o Kashmir;the dispute with India over the division o theIndus River’s water resources; the unresolvedissue o the Aghan-Pakistani border; the activi-ties o regional extremist and terrorist groupson Pakistani and Kashmiri territory); and do-mestic security issues (anti-government activi-ties by terrorist and extremist groups; conictsbetween Sunni and Shiite religious groups;separatist tendencies, not yet very widespread,among Baluchis and Pashtuns).In addition, Pakistan aces serious socialand economic problems.It is clear that in order to stabilize Aghanistanand guarantee international and regional secu-rity in general, Pakistan needs to be a unitedand stable state with an eective government,so as to prevent terrorist and extremist organi-zations rom inuencing the Pakistani publicand carrying out their activities both insideand outside the country. As ar as those or-ganizations themselves are concerned, many studies interpret their ideologies as a distortiono Islam,
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which is a veiled way o recogniz-ing the link between the religion’s undamentalrole in the country’s social and political lie andthe spread o terrorism and extremism. Tisinterpretation sometimes produces recom-mendations to reduce the role o Islam in thecountry’s lie, or example, in the educationalsystem, which supposedly osters extremism.But a look back through Pakistan’s history shows that these views are one-sided, and thussuch recommendations are debatable.
o a  w?
Pakistan appeared on the world map in 1947,as a result o the Muslim League’s struggle ora Muslim state. Te party’s ideology was basedon the theory that India was home to twonations — Hindus and Muslims. But ater theestablishment o the Pakistani sovereign state,its leader, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, tried tointroduce the idea o a single Pakistani nation,saying, “Hindus would cease to be Hindus andMuslims would cease to be Muslims, not inthe religious sense, because that is the personalaith o each individual, but in the politicalsense as citizens o the State.”
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 Ater Jinnah died in 1948, Prime MinisterLiaquat Ali Khan assumed the reins. OnMarch 7, 1949, he presented the ObjectivesResolution on constitutional organization toPakistan’s Constituent Assembly, which hadthe task o adopting the country’s constitu-tion. Te resolution stated that Pakistan must“observe in ull the principles o democracy,reedom, equality, tolerance and social justice,as required by Islam, must give adequate guar-antees or minorities to reely practice theiraith and develop their cultures, and must ad-equately protect the lawul interests o minori-ties and backward and oppressed classes.”
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It is worth noting that the need to comply with theprinciples listed is based on the requirementso Islam. Liaquat Ali Khan did not see any contradiction between prioritizing Islam andupholding basic democratic principles. As hestated on May 3, 1950, “We pledge our loy-alty to the principles o democracy, reedom,equality, tolerance and social justice in accord-ance with Islam. Tis does not mean theocracy.Islam does not imply that the clergy has theleading role… No, our concept o democ-racy is even more comprehensive than the onebased on universal surage and government by the majority. We call all o this the Islamic way o lie, and we adhere to it because, as Muslims, we cannot ollow any other ideology.”
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But in practice, the priority given to Islamin social and political lie can lead to restric-tions on the basic rights and reedoms o non-Muslim citizens. Tis was the line taken by  Abul Ala Mawdudi, leader o the Jamaat-e-Islami (Te Islamic Society). In his view, re-strictions on non-Muslims’ social and politicalactivities were justied by the need to preserve
Pete Topchknov
is a juniorresearcer at Moscow StateUniversity’s Institute oAsian an Arican Stuiesan coorinator o teCarnegie Moscow Center’sNonprolieration Program.
Te author is deeply grateul to Proessor Vladimir N. Moskalenko, Chie Researcher at the Institute o Oriental Studies o the Russian Academy o Sciences, or his helpul comments on the drat o the Brieng.
 
ISLAM ANd ThE PAThS OF PAkISTAN’S POLITICAL dEVELOPMENT3
internal peace and ensure religious minori-ties’ security.
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He thought that non-Muslimsshould not play important roles in Pakistanand, in particular, should not be allowed tohold senior government posts. Tis ideology clearly divides citizens into two categories.It was not just Mawdudi’s supporters whosaw the potential or the division o Pakistanisociety into Muslim and non-Muslim groups with dierent statuses in Liaquat Ali Khan’s res-olution. It raised concerns among the religiousminorities (Hindus, Parsees and Christians), whose members held almost 20% o the seatsin the Constituent Assembly. One o them, Jogendra Nath Mandal, Pakistan’s rst justiceand labor minister, was deeply disappointed by the resolution’s pro-Islamic character. He sentthe Prime Minister a letter o resignation, in which he stated, in particular: “Muslim Leagueleaders are repeatedly making declarations thatPakistan is and shall be an Islamic State. Islamis being oered as the sovereign remedy orall earthly evils....In that grand setting o theShariat, Muslims alone are rulers while Hindusand other minorities are jimmies [rom Arabicdhimmis, members o other aiths, living in aMuslim state] who are entitled to protection ata price.”
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In 1952, Bhupendra Kumar Datta,another member representing the Hindu mi-nority in the Constituent Assembly, calledattention to the incompatibility between theidea o an Islamic state and the institution o parliamentary democracy.
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Te religious minorities’ criticism o theconcept o an Islamic state highlights two re-lated issues: its compatibility with the prin-ciples o democracy, and the possible divisiono society into Muslims and non-Muslimsthat implementation o this concept couldentail in practice. In a society based on thisconcept, the community, with broad religiousautonomy and partial legal and economic au-tonomy, would be the basic unit o society,like the millet in the Ottoman Empire. At thesame time, the status o non-Muslim com-munities could be lower than that o Muslimcommunities. Tis raises the question o Pakistani citizens’ identity: who are they —rst Pakistanis and then Muslims, Christians,Hindus, etc., or the other way round?Te religious actor has played the centralrole in the search or a national identity inPakistan. Te Muslim League’s response tothe identity question was its slogan o theearly 1950s: “One Nation, One State, OneLanguage”. Islam and the Urdu language weredened as the oundations o the Pakistanination (two other components made up thestate ideology: Kashmir as an inalienable parto Pakistan, and the armed orces as the guar-antee o the country’s development and integ-rity).
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Te Muslim League’s slogan signaleda retreat rom the principles advocated by Muhammad Ali Jinnah.Te choice o Urdu as one o the nation’scornerstones was not supported by members o the Hindu minority, who were unhappy thatthe Bengali language had not been grantedthe status o an ofcial state language, along with Urdu. In February 1948, DhirendraNath Datta, a member o the Constituent Assembly rom East Bengal, proposed rec-ognizing Bengali as the state language, as ac-cording to his estimates it was spoken by themajority o the country’s people (64%). Tecountry’s leaders saw this proposal, supportedin the Constituent Assembly by Hindus aloneat the beginning, as a sign o disloyalty to thestate and an attempt to split the unity o thecountry’s Muslims, that is, the Pakistani na-
pasa’s s sws a gg  isam a b mbd w a dma ssmf gm, as w as w a auaagm. idga  a a b mda adada fms, as s  as w a  g.
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