Sharat Sabharwal
Speaking to an audience in Islamabad in 2010 as High Commissioner of India, I assailed Pakistan’s policy of holding lucrative trade and economic linkages with India hostage to progress on the resolution of intractable issues such as J&K and Siachen. To bolster my point, I said that gone were the days of ideological orientation of foreign policies, which were increasingly shaped by economic considerations. During the question and answer session, someone asked me how Pakistan could abandon its founding ideology of the two-nation theory. I replied that they were welcome to hold on to the two-nation theory if it gave them some solace, but they would know that it was belied by a large number of Muslims having chosen to make India their home in 1947 and it had been finally put to rest with the creation of Bangladesh in 1971.
Seven years later, I wonder whether I overstated my case in claiming that the two-nation theory had been put to rest, for the hatred and intolerance that underpinned it have survived and continue to thrive not only in Pakistan but also in India. Speaking to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan on August 11, 1947, Jinnah said, “You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or any other place of worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion, caste or creed – that has nothing to do with the business of the State.”
Having created Pakistan on the basis of religion, he should have known better. He did not live long enough to steer the course of the new state, but I have no doubt that even if he had, the result would not have been very different from what we see today. Within six months of his death, the Pakistan Constituent Assembly adopted an Objectives Resolution which provided, inter alia, that sovereignty over the entire universe belonged to “Allah Almighty above” and the authority which He had delegated to the state of Pakistan, through its people for being exercised within the limits prescribed by Him was a sacred trust. It also provided that the Muslims would be enabled to order their lives in accordance with the teachings and requirements of Islam “as set out in the Holy Quran and Sunnah.” These provisions, however, failed to build a lasting consensus in Pakistan because as the country moved forward, it became increasingly contentious to define the branch or school of Islam that would govern Pakistan.
Having relegated religious minorities to the status of second class citizens by declaring Islam as the state religion, the Pakistani state failed to keep its Muslims together. Zulfiqar Bhutto succumbed to religious extremists in getting a resolution passed by the Parliament in 1974 to declare Ahmadis as ‘non-Muslim’. Another faultline to emerge was the traditional Shia-Sunni divide, which got accentuated after the Iranian revolution and the tussle between Iran and Saudi Arabia for the loyalty of Muslims the world over. The state under Zia turning increasingly to Wahabi Islam also placed the Shias at a disadvantage. With free availability of arms and ammunition in Pakistan because of the ‘Afghan jihad’, the Shia-Sunni rift has resulted in widespread sectarian killings from time to time. The violence, initially perpetrated from both sides of the divide, has gradually turned into a one-sided killing of Shias by Sunnis, with the former getting increasingly marginalised.
The process of division eventually engulfed the Sunnis by aggravating the fault-line between Deobandis and Barelvis. The latter, though the majority among Sunnis, were for a long time at the receiving end of the violence perpetrated by the Deobandis, who were recipients of large-scale funds from Arab countries and more prone to picking up the gun. Shrines frequented by Barelvis were attacked by the adherents of Deobandi/Wahabi Islam. However, Barelvis have not been immune to extremism. A former Pakistan Punjab Governor, Salman Taseer, was assassinated by his Barelvi bodyguard because he had spoken in favour of a Christian woman accused of blasphemy. More recently, the ‘Tehreek-e-Labaik Ya Rasool Allah’, a Barelvi extremist organisation, laid a prolonged siege to the Pakistani capital and left only following intervention by the army.
The Pakistani state has remained dysfunctional as a result of the civil-military discord and the stranglehold of the army, its obsession with and adversarial posture towards the much bigger neighbour – India – and the growing sectarian divide and religious extremism. The last factor is the consequence of the hatred and intolerance that laid the foundation of the Pakistani state through the two-nation theory.
The above state of affairs in Pakistan is well known and extensively written about in India. Because of our anger at Pakistan’s hostility, we look at the dysfunctionality and the resultant misfortunes of Pakistan with a degree of schadenfreude, but fail to draw the precious lesson that the Pakistani experience offers. It is that intolerance and hatred, once let loose in the name of ‘us’ vs ‘them’, know no bounds and invariably rip apart the most cohesive-looking ‘us’ groups, leaving violence and misery in their trail, which eventually afflict not only the originally targeted ‘them’ group, but also those targeting them. The lesson is particularly valuable for a multi-religious, multi-cultural and multi-lingual country like India. Having been the victim of the hatred and intolerance underlying the two-nation theory once, we ignore this lesson at our own peril.
Who says there is no advantage to
having Pakistan as our neighbour!