Pakistan Is Victim Of Its Own Ideology

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Pakistan: Victim of Its Own Ideology Arif Mohammed Khan* The crisis Pakistan is facing today is not essentially rooted in bad economic policies or poor fiscal management. Pakistan is a victim of its own ideology that seeks to discriminate against its own citizens on the ground of religion and keep the country divided internally. Today, Pakistan does not have a sizeable non-Muslim population and there is no explanation as to what happened to the vanishing millions. However, the intolerant radical mindset has become so strong that now Pakistan is witness to an all-out war among various Muslim sects, which does not spare even the mosques, where Friday congregational prayers can be conducted peacefully only under military cover. The author contends that the deeprooted hatred and animosity against India that springs from Pakistan ideology has distorted its worldview and does not allow it to see things in proper perspective.

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tlantic Council, a very powerful think tank of the USA, published a report under the title of A Comprehensive Policy for Pakistan in February 2009. The report received not only wide coverage in the media, but was also largely acted upon by the US administration and the donor countries who met in Tokyo last month to

extend required financial assistance to Pakistan to help it recover from the present crisis. A perusal of the Atlantic Council report shows that in studying the crisis in Pakistan, they have taken several other background factors into consideration but while formulating their recommendations to overcome the crisis they have mainly focused on the recipe of economic assistance. The gravity of the crisis has been repeatedly emphasized in the report, and urgent remedial action recommended. The enormity of the threat can be appreciated from the fact that the 44-page report has used word ‘urgent’ more than ten times.

*Arif Mohammed Khan is a former Union Cabinet Minister. 20 Eternal India, June 2009

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The report says that “the Pakistan government has between 6 to 12 months to put in place and implement security and economic policies or face the very real prospect of considerable domestic and political turbulence”. The recent rioting in several Pakistani towns on account of shortage of food and energy has been cited to underline the need to take immediate corrective steps. It says that the “time available to do the job of turning around the economy and polity is months not years and the requirements of Pakistan if it is to succeed is assessed to be much greater than the assistance it is receiving now”. The salient features of the report are as following: 1. The raging militancy inside Pakistan is threatening not only the stability of both Afghanistan and Pakistan but of the whole South Asia region, particularly India where the terrorists carried out an attack in November 2008. The dire threats to the security and economy of Pakistan have put its existence as a democratic and stable State in peril. 2. But the report has shown confidence in the manpower and infrastructural capability of Pakistan to turn the corner, provided it is helped with necessary tools and financing urgently. The immediate support and assistance from international

“The raging militancy inside Pakistan is threatening not only the stability of both Afghanistan and Pakistan but of the whole South Asia region, particularly India where the terrorists carried out an attack in November 2008.” community in general and the United States in particular can help Pakistan turn back from the brink. The report has further underlined that a secure, stable and prospering Pakistan is in the best interests of the international community. 3. While pleading for early and effective assistance the report also emphasizes that the assistance needs to be based on ‘focused policy changes and disciplined implementation by the Pakistan government, with adequate oversight to ensure that Pakistan can do the job’. 4. Specifically, the report has recommended a “total of $4-5 billion above the (Biden)-Kerry-Lugar proposals” and out of this, about $3 billion are earmarked for the economic and social sectors directly. For security forces, both military and law enforcement, about $1 billion are earmarked and it has been proposed to utilise at least 20 per cent of these

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funds for training and deployment of an additional 15,000 police force within the next six months. 5. The report cites Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari as saying that “we (meaning Pakistan and the USA and NATO) are losing the battle to keep Pakistan stable, peaceful and prosperous”. The report has also quoted a senior military office as saying that “if Pakistan fails, the world fails”. 6. Pakistan is described as a ‘country under siege’, shaken by terror incidents like 2008 bombing of Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, attack on anti-terror Police Headquarters and the upsurge in suicide and bomb attacks. The country has almost lost control of the border city of Peshawar and Swat is slipping into the hands of militants. The encounters between the militants and military are costly in terms of loss of life and rising number of refugees who have become uprooted from their areas. 7. The report has mentioned the hostility between Pakistan and India at more than one place. It recognises the need on the part of Pakistan to take more effective action against terrorists operating from its soil and directing their attacks against India. At the same time, it has said that the Indian

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reactions to the Mumbai attack has reinforced the Pakistan Army’s traditional view of India as a major threat and detracts them from the battle against the insurgents and this explains the posting of substantial portion of the Pakistan Army on its Eastern border. This is despite the publicly stated view of Director General of Inter-Services Intelligence that “terrorism and not India is the main threat today”. 8. The report gives expression to serious concern about the security of nuclear weapons in the face of the surge of the radical religious extremists. It says that contrary to the feeling of the senior officials, many Americans, including members of the Congress, have apprehensions and want reassurance, if not proof of their safe storage. They equally feel concerned about the transport of stored nuclear

The Atlantic Council report cites Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari as saying that “we (meaning Pakistan and the USA and NATO) are losing the battle to keep Pakistan stable, peaceful and prosperous”. The report has also quoted a senior military office as saying that “if Pakistan fails, the world fails”.

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waste and enriched uranium that could be used for ‘dirty’ bombs. 9. The report acknowledges the fragility of the civilian government in so far as the country does not have effective governing institutions and established structure for decisionmaking on national security and raises question about the capability of the government to survive its term. It says the answer will depend on how the government tackles the burning economic issues and the militant insurgency in border areas. The situation is fraught with danger as the concept of peaceful transfer of power is alien to Pakistani political ethos. 10. The report grudgingly accepts that the American and Pakistani forces are pursuing divergent objectives. The US aim is to finish al-Qaeda but Pakistan is more interested in quelling the insurgency in its border province. The radicals pursued by Pakistan are different from American targets. The situation has become murkier on account of Pakistan’s old ties with these radical groups whom it had used against the Soviet forces in Afghanistan and later in Kashmir. The report admits that Pakistan is still using some groups of radicals against others and turning a blind eye to the Afghan Taliban.

The report gives expression to serious concern about the security of nuclear weapons in the face of the surge of the radical religious extremists. It says that contrary to the feeling of the senior officials, many Americans, including members of the US Congress, have apprehensions and want reassurance, if not proof of their safe storage. 11. Questions have also been raised about the accountability of some $10 billion of coalition support funds made available to the Pakistan Army since 2001. It has been surmised that the reason Pakistan is not coming forward with the account is that well over two-third of this money has gone to fund programmes other than those it was meant for. The report has discussed in detail the religious extremist threat emanating from Pakistan and has urged the Pakistan government to do more to neutralise and control terrorist organisations operating from its soil. But surprisingly, it has totally ignored the necessity of countering ideological support to terrorism which has come to be recognised by the international policy community as a vital priority in Eternal India, June 2009 23

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the overall efforts to combat terrorism worldwide. The report has pleaded to make generous financial assistance available to Pakistan but has singularly failed to identify the ideological and policy postures of Pakistan that have bred and promoted terrorism and the need to restructure its ideology and policies. As a consequence, the report has not considered it necessary to recommend attachment of any strings of policy reform with the provision of financial assistance. Strengthening of the security establishment and provision of stringent punishment can help in addressing the terrorists’ threat temporarily, but as long as the ideological and attitudinal support is not effectively countered, the potential for terrorism shall continue to plague unabated. Strangely, the Atlantic Council’s report is totally silent on this important aspect of combating terrorism. Since 1979, that is, after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Pakistan has provided all kind of backing, including ideological support, to extremist/terror outfits. The terrorists were trained inside Pakistan under the supervision of senior military and CIA officials. According to a leading Pakistani journalist, Ahmed Rashid, an estimated 80,000 to 1,00,000 Pakistani youth were

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trained to fight between 1994 and 1999. According to him, “These battlehardened militants now gravely threaten Pakistan’s own stability, and the support the Taliban receives from Pakistan’s Deobandi network, quite separate from military supplies it gets from the government, ensures even greater Taliban penetration into Pakistani society.” It is clear that the extremist groups in Pakistan have mobilised a large numbers of adherents and supporters and reached a critical mass, and now it has become very difficult to disrupt their synergy. A willful overlooking of state of affairs that fosters and promotes terrorism has made religious extremism so widely diffused in Pakistani society that now the threat has become almost uncontrollable. It is true that the economy of Pakistan is in serious trouble, but what needs to

The report says that US aim is to finish al-Qaeda but Pakistan is more interested in quelling the insurgency in its border province. The radicals pursued by Pakistan are different from American targets. The situation has become murkier on account of Pakistan’s old ties with these radical groups.

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The report has pleaded to make generous financial assistance available to Pakistan but has singularly failed to identify the ideological and policy postures of Pakistan that have bred and promoted terrorism and the need to restructure its ideology and policies. be understood is that the failing economy is largely the result of policies that arose from the ideology of religious hatred that Pakistan has pursued since Independence. Pakistan was the outcome of a movement that asserted that Hindu and Muslim religious communities of India followed not only different religious faiths but their secular orientations and interests were also different, incompatible and antagonistic and they cannot live together peacefully. The communal hatred generated by the Partition movement was so enormous that its legacy still haunts the subcontinent. The Atlantic Report itself while commenting on the Partition of India says that “the ensuing arrangement was both bloody and inherently unstable. Vivid memories remain, in both India and Pakistan, of the mass movement of peoples, family separations and slaughter that caused at

least half a million and possibly twice as many deaths”. It must be remembered that the Partition scheme, as originally agreed, had no provision for the transfer of population but the overall environment that was created forced millions to leave their homes and hearths and flee across the border. The founder of Pakistan soon realised that systematic organisation of hatreds can help a political movement to succeed but it is injurious to the growth of a healthy polity. The man who, from 1940, was pursuing the theory of “Hindu Muslim incompatibility to live peacefully as one nation”, changed his tone after the demand for Partition was accepted and told Doon Campbell of Reuter that the “new State would be a modern democratic State, with sovereignty resting in the people and the members of the new nation having equal rights of citizenship regardless of their religion, caste or creed”. While inaugurating the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan on August 11, 1947, he declared that: “If we want to make this great State of Pakistan happy and prosperous we should wholly and solely concentrate on the well-being of the people, and specially of the masses and the poor. If you will work in co-operation, forgetting the past, burying the hatchet, you are bound to succeed. If you change your past and work together in a spirit that

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every one of you, no matter to what community he belongs, no matter what relations he had with you in the past, no matter what is his colour, caste or creed, is first, second and last a citizen of this State with equal rights, privileges and obligations, there will be no end to the progress you will make. I cannot emphasise it too much. We should begin to work in that spirit and in course of time all these angularities of the majority and minority communities – the Hindu community and the Muslim community – because even as regards the Muslims you have Pathans, Punjabis, Shias, Sunnis and so on and among the Hindus you have Brahmins, Vaishnavas, Khatris, also Bengalis, Madrasis and so on – will vanish. Indeed if you ask me this has been the biggest hindrance in the way of India to attain its freedom and independence and but for this we would have been free peoples long ago. No power can hold another nation and specially a nation of 400 million souls in subjection; nobody could have conquered you, and even if it had happened, nobody could have continued its hold on you for any length of time but for this (Applause). Therefore, we must learn a lesson from this. You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other places of worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed – that has nothing to do with the business of the State (Hear, hear).”

Mr. Jinnah did not live long and

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It is clear that the extremist groups in Pakistan have mobilised a large numbers of adherents and supporters and reached a critical mass, and now it has become very difficult to disrupt their synergy. passed away on September 11, 1948, about a year after Pakistan came into existence. Notwithstanding all the solemn declarations made by Mr. Jinnah, the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan adopted an ‘Objective Resolution’ on March 12, 1949, that clearly defined the cleavages among the rights of the citizens of Pakistan on religious lines. In fact, the first Constituent Assembly of Pakistan was dissolved without fulfilling the task of making the Constitution that was assigned to it, but the Objective Resolution it adopted clearly laid the ideological foundation of a theocracy that would subsequently stifle all democratic, secular and liberal aspirations of the people of Pakistan. The Objective Resolution of 1949, which for all practical purposes became the most important Constitutional provision and benchmark for all future legislation, was full of concepts that contradicted each other and worked at cross-purposes. For instance, in the first

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Notwithstanding all the solemn declarations made by Mr. Jinnah, the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan adopted an ‘Objective Resolution’ on March 12, 1949, that clearly defined the cleavages among the rights of the citizens of Pakistan on religious lines. graph, the resolution talked of sovereignty belonging to the God Almighty, and in the second, it resolved to frame a Constitution for the sovereign State of Pakistan. Further, the resolution declared that in Pakistan “Muslims shall be enabled to order their lives in the individual and collective spheres in accordance with the teachings and requirements of Islam as set out in the Holy Quran and the Sunnah”.

The resolution mentioned the principles of democracy, freedom, equality, tolerance and social justice but qualified the provision by saying that these principles shall be observed as enunciated by Islam. This about-face was defended by the Prime Minister of Pakistan on March 7, 1949 in the following words: “The state is not to play the part of a neutral observer, where the Muslims may be merely free to profess and practice their religion, because such an

attitude on the part of the state would be the very negation of the ideals which prompted the demand of Pakistan, and it is these ideals which should be the cornerstone of the state which we want to build.”

Some members of the Constituent Assembly were aghast at this resolution that gave a theocratic orientation to the Constitution. S.C. Chattopadhyay from East Pakistan opposed the resolution and said: “So long we had an idea that the Constitution would be based on the eternal principles of equality, democracy and social justice. We thought that religion and politics would not be mixed up. That was the declaration of Quaid-eAzam in this House. But the resolution before us has a religious basis”.

Another member B.C. Mandal made a very powerful and moving presentation on March 9, 1949 and pleaded with the Prime Minister to rise above the current environment that was full of communal prejudices and sentiments and look into the future of the new dominion. He named country after country to show that progress can be ensured by consolidating national unity and not by dividing people into religious compartments. He reminded the Assembly of the solemn declaration of Jinnah that Pakistan would be a secular State and administered a clairvoyant warning that by adopting this resolution “we are going to commit a serious

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blunder, a very serious blunder and we is are going to do something which unprecedented in the history of the world”.

All these warnings were ignored and the resolution was adopted. The first fallout was the demand raised by a religious outfit called Majlis-e-Ahrar on May 1, 1949 to declare the followers of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (popularly known as Ahmadi community) as a nonMuslim minority and removal of the Ahmadis, including Sir Zafrullah Khan, the then Foreign Minister, from all key posts in the Pakistani establishment. Soon thereafter, almost all the religious organisations representing various Muslim sects, including those Ulema (religious scholars) who were members of the Board of Talimat-iIslamia, a body constituted by the government to advise the Constituent Assembly on religious issues and who were drawing fat salaries and allowances, joined hands to bring pressure on the government to accept the demands regarding the Ahmadis and started holding big public meetings and rallies to press the issue. Finally, the Ulema organised an All Pakistan Muslim Parties Convention in Karachi from January 16 to 18, 1953. On January 21, 1953, a deputation of the Ulema met Prime Minister Khwaja Nazimuddin and delivered an ultimatum

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The Objective Resolution, for all practical purposes, became the most important Constitutional provision and benchmark for all future legislation. It was full of concepts that contradicted each other and worked at cross-purposes. to the effect that if within a month the Ahmadis were not declared a nonMuslim minority and Chaudhri Zafrullah Khan, and other Ahmadis occupying key posts in the State not removed from their offices, the Action Committee would resort to Direct Action. The Pakistan government on February 27, 1953 decided to reject the ultimatum and ordered the arrest of prominent members of the Action Committee. Following the arrests, large-scale disturbances and riots broke out in Punjab in the first week of March 1953, which continued till the middle of April 1953. The disturbances became so menacing that at several places, the military had to be called in. In Lahore, Martial Law was proclaimed, which remained in force till the middle of May 1953. The disturbances caused heavy loss of human lives and property and led to the fall of two governments, that at the

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Centre and in Punjab. On June 19, 1953, the Governor of Punjab constituted a Court headed by Justice M. Munir for holding a public inquiry into the disturbances. The 387page report of the Court of Inquiry is unique in the sense that it examined not only the incidents of violence and loot but also went into the ideological and doctrinal aspects for determining the nature of the ‘Islamic State’, the definition of a ‘Muslim’ who can be distinguished from others while deciding about the difference in the status of Muslims and non-Muslims in an Islamic State. On the ideological and doctrinal aspects, the Court of Inquiry examined the Ulema and other representatives of the Muslim organisations. This part of the inquiry covered religion,

“The state is not to play the part of a neutral observer, where the Muslims may be merely free to profess and practice their religion, because such an attitude on the part of the state would be the very negation of the ideals which prompted the demand of Pakistan, and it is these ideals which should be the cornerstone of the state which we want to build.”

philosophy, science, ethics, attributes of God, anthropomorphism, reason and revelation, exegetics, cosmology, creation, time and space, origin and destination of man, aim and object of life, functions of the State and the Church, sovereignty, democracy and theocracy. Though the report of the Munir Commission is now more than fifty-five years old, but an objective and dispassionate perusal of the report reveals that the menace of religious extremism threatening the existence of Pakistan and security of the region is not something that has grown overnight. The ideological seeds of radical religious extremism were sown and nurtured in the early years have now bloomed into the poisonous cacti of terrorism. The answers of the Ulema to the questionnaire of the Commission forced Justice Munir to remark that a response to the cleric attitude “can make or mar the new State of Pakistan and entirely change the future course of history”. Justice Munir Commission leaves no doubt that the religious extremism in Pakistan has drawn upon the Constitutional documents for ideological support and sustenance. The report has named a number of clerics who “claimed that the demands followed as a corollary from the

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The first fallout of the Objective Resolution was the demand raised by a religious outfit called Majlis-e-Ahrar on May 1, 1949 to declare the followers of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (popularly known as Ahmadi community) as a non-Muslim minority and removal of the Ahmadis, including Sir Zafrullah Khan, the then Foreign Minister, from all key posts in the Pakistani establishment. Objectives Resolution which had been passed by the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan on March 12, 1949”. And further “everyone has taken it for granted that the demands were the result of the ideology on the strength of which the establishment of an Islamic State in Pakistan was claimed and had been promised from certain quarters”. Since the concept of an Islamic State presupposes “a fundamental distinction between the rights of Muslim and non-Muslim subjects, and one distinction which may at once be mentioned is that the nonMuslims cannot be associated with the business of administration in the higher sphere. Therefore if the Ahmadis were not Muslims but kafirs, they could not occupy any of the high offices in the State, and as a deduction from this proposition two of the demands required

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the dismissal of Chaudhri Zafrullah Khan and other Ahmadis who were occupying key positions in the State, and the third required the declaration of Ahmadis as a non-Muslim minority to ensure that no Ahmadi may in future be entrusted with any such position in the State”.

The report further says that since this is an issue of great importance for the future of Pakistan, we have “with the assistance of the Ulema, gone closely into the conception of an Islamic State and its implications which we now proceed to state”. At this stage the report cites two quotations, one from Allama Iqbal and the other from the Founder of Pakistan, M.A. Jinnah. While pleading for autonomous Muslim states in 1930, this is what Allama Iqbal had said: “Nor should the Hindus fear that the creation of autonomous Muslim States will mean the introduction of a kind of religious rule in such States. The principle that each group is entitled to free development on its own lines is not inspired by any feeling of narrow communalism.”

Then the report refers in detail to the speech of Mr. Jinnah that he had delivered on the occasion of the inauguration of the Constituent Assembly on August 11, 1947 in which he had left no room for any doubt that his vision of Pakistan was a modern secular democracy where all citizens regardless of their religion or race shall

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enjoy equal status. After referring to these two speeches, the Commission asked the Ulema whether this concept of State was acceptable to them. The report says that each one of those who were examined emphatically replied in the negative, including the Ahrar who before Partition were with the Congress and had opposed the demand for Pakistan. The Jamaat-e-Islami representative Maulana Amin Ahsan Islahi went to the extent of describing the idea of a secular State as creature of Devil. “None of the ulama can tolerate a State which is based on nationalism and all that it implies; with them MILLAT and all that it connotes can alone be the determining factor in State activity”.

The Ulema with one voice asserted that Quaid-i-Azam’s concept of a modern national State became obsolete with the passing of the Objectives Resolution on March 12, 1949. It is interesting to note that despite their strong unanimous opposition to the concept of modern nation State, no two Ulema agreed either on the fundamentals of an ideal Islamic State or some precedent of an Islamic State in Muslim history. As has been stated earlier, this Court of Inquiry was constituted in the wake of violent agitation for declaration of Ahmadis as a non-Muslim minority. The court thus considered it essential

Though the report of the Munir Commission is now more than fifty-five years old, but an objective and dispassionate perusal of the report reveals that the menace of religious extremism threatening the existence of Pakistan and security of the region is not something that has grown overnight. first to establish the definition of a Muslim so as to distinguish others as non-Muslims. The report says that this question was put to the Ulema and before referring to their detailed answers, it observes that “we cannot refrain from saying here that it was a matter of infinite regret to us that the ulama whose first duty should be to have settled views on this subject, were hopelessly disagreed among themselves”.

So it was not only on the question of the nature of the Islamic State that there was no unanimity among the clerics but even on the definition of a Muslim their views were totally at variance with each other. The report says that that “If the ulama of the various sects believed the Ahmadis to be kafirs, they must have been quite clear in their minds not only about the grounds of such belief but also about the definition of a Muslim because the claim that a certain person or

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community is not within the pale of Islam implies on the part of the claimant an exact conception of what a Muslim is. The result of this part of the inquiry, however, has been anything but satisfactory, and if considerable confusion exists in the minds of our ulama on such a simple matter, one can easily imagine what the differences on more complicated matters will be.”

Since no two Ulema agreed on the definition of a Muslim, the Commission was constrained to remark that: “if we attempt our own definition as each learned divine has done and that definition differs from that given by all others, we unanimously go out of the fold of Islam. And if we adopt the definition given by any one of the ulama, we remain Muslims according to the view of that Alim but Kafirs according to the definition of everyone else”.

At this stage, the Court of Inquiry also examined the question of apostasy as it involved the right of non-Muslims to preach and propagate their religion. The report said that on this question, the Ulema were unanimous that in an Islamic State, apostasy is punishable with death. Therefore, according to this doctrine, Chaudhri Zafrullah Khan, if he has not inherited his present religious beliefs but has voluntarily elected to be an Ahmadi, must be put to death. After recording the views of the Ulema, the report raises the question of various fatwas issued by the proponents

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Pleading for autonomous Muslim states in 1930, Allama Iqbal had said: “Nor should the Hindus fear that the creation of autonomous Muslim States will mean the introduction of a kind of religious rule in such States. The principle that each group is entitled to free development on its own lines is not inspired by any feeling of narrow communalism.” of one sect against the adherents of another sect holding them to be kafir. It mentions a fatwa issued by all the teachers of Deoband, holding that all Shias are kafirs and apostates and various other fatwas issued by the Deobandis and Barelvis describing each other as kafirs and apostates. The report wonders as to what would be the fate of other clerics if one of them comes to hold reins of power in Pakistan. The report said that “Net result of all this is that neither Shias nor Sunnis nor Deobandis nor Ahl-iHadith nor Barelvis are Muslims and any change from one view to the other must be accompanied in an Islamic State with the penalty of death if the Government of the State is in the hands of the party which considers the other party to be Kafirs. And it does not require much imagination to judge of the consequences of this doctrine when it is remembered that no two ulama have

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agreed before us as to the definition of a Muslim”.

It is at this stage that the report referred to various Quranic verses ensuring freedom of religion to reject the cleric views on apostasy. During this inquiry on ideological aspects, the Commission also raised the question of the reciprocity of discrimination on religious grounds and asked if the ideology on which an Islamic State is desired to be founded in Pakistan will give rise to some adverse consequences for the Muslims who are living in countries with nonMuslim majorities. The Commission recorded the statements of almost all the representatives of the Muslim religious organisations and they unanimously averred that they did not care for what happened to the Muslims abroad as long as they could establish an Islamic State in Pakistan. The Chief of Jamaat-eIslami, Maulana Maudoodi, was more categorical on this question when he affirmed that: “I should have no objection even if the Muslims of India are treated as shudras and mlechhas and Manu’s laws are applied to them, depriving them of all share in the Government and the rights of a citizen”.

It should be clear from the aforementioned discussion that the crisis Pakistan is facing today is not

Despite their strong unanimous opposition to the concept of modern nation State, no two Ulema agreed either on the fundamentals of an ideal Islamic State or some precedent of an Islamic State in Muslim history. essentially rooted in bad economic policies or poor fiscal management. Pakistan is a victim of its own ideology that seeks to discriminate against its own citizens on the ground of religion and keep the country divided internally. Today, Pakistan does not have a sizeable non-Muslim population and there is no explanation as to what happened to the vanishing millions. However, the intolerant radical mindset has become so strong that now Pakistan is witness to an all-out war among various Muslim sects, which does not spare even the mosques where Friday congregational prayers can be conducted peacefully only under military cover. School and college textbooks are overloaded with hate literature and the madrasas are functioning as nurseries for producing and promoting religious, radical extremism. A.H. Nayyar, a leading Pakistani educationist, has said that: “Madrasas have become a source of hate filled propaganda against other sects and

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the sectarian divide has become sharper and more violent”.

In 1947, Pakistan had barely 245 madrasas while today it has more than 10,000 registered madrasas. The number of unregistered madrasas is only a matter of surmise. The deep-rooted hatred and animosity against India that springs from Pakistan ideology has distorted its worldview and does not allow it to see things in proper perspective. According to a report published in Daily Times on November 26, 2008, more Karachi residents die each month due to contaminated water than all the Pakistani soldiers killed in combat with India since 1947. Yet, a former Director of ISI, Hameed Gul, a popular face on Pakistan TV channels, asserts that the Indo-Pak conflict is “based on one reality, that is,

they impugn the teaching of the revealed word”. Indian religious and civilisational ethos are identified not just with tolerance but with “universal acceptance of One Truth and its diverse manifestations” and to accuse India of impugning that Truth is either the height of ignorance or deliberate mischief. There is no silver bullet solution to the problems and threats that Pakistan is facing but one thing is certain. The generous financial assistance as advocated by the Atlantic Council and made available by the United States and other donor countries can help Pakistan only temporarily. In the long term, it needs to discredit and de-legitimise religious extremism and that will require offloading of a lot of historical baggage and restructuring of its ideology and doctrines.

Perceiving the Past “The past is perceived in different ways by different cultures. Methods of interpreting, recording, managing and protecting the past also differ between cultures... The way people define their existence, their world view and their creation stories, and how they value, interpret, manage and transmit their past will continue to be handed on from generation to generation.” Hirini Matunga In Sacred Sites, Sacred Places

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