Understanding Pakistan Project

Athar Osama June 25th, 2007

By: Athar Osama 

“In all [the] matters the Qauid-e-Azam, with failing health and fits of impatience over details, had to rely more and more upon the Prime Minister, whose statesmanship grew with increasing responsibilities. Hence the death of the Great Leader, less than thirteen months after the creation of Pakistan, was not so shattering a blow as had been feared. There was a Joshua to Succeed the Mosses”.  (The Times of London, Oct. 17, 1951, quoted in Sayeed, 1960)

Up until the death of the Quaid, the real power resided within the office of the Governor General and, with his towering and awe-inspiring personality, the Prime Minister, while being the constitutional head of government, deferred to him. With the death of the Quaid, however, the balance of power shifted to where the constitution suggested that it should i.e. in the Office of the Prime Minister.

With this great power also came great responsibility. While Quaid’s one year in office as the Governor General was a time of merely keeping up with the tumultous events that had overtaken Pakistan during that first year of its existence, Liaquat found himself having to define the government of Pakistan and take policy initiatives. While Liaquat may not have been able to resolve many of Pakistan’s early problems, he was definitely able to show independence of mind and policy in his three or more years in office. Several questions have emerged about Liaquat’s premiership:

• What was the role of Liaquat Ali Khan in the Kashmir saga, especially given that Liaquat accepted the initial ceasefire with India? Did Liaquat adopt the right course on India or did he sold out the Kashmir cause, as has been alleged by his critics? Was Liaquat a dove, a realist, or a foreign policy hawk?
• What was Liaquat’s vision about constitutional progress in Pakistan? Did Liaquat have a real plan for delivering first constitution of Pakistan–albeit at a much relaxed timescale–or did, like many other politicians of his time, preferred to avoid opening the can of worms that Constitution had become?
• What was Liaquat’s position on several of the questions that were central to constitiutional development, namely, the role of religion in Pakistan, the inter-provincial relations, and center-provice relations etc.?
• Did Liaquat make the right choice by adopting a pro-western policy for Pakistan (and in the process snubbing the Soviet Union)? Did he act independently in doing so or was he pressured into doing so by powerful elements within the state?

We will make an attempt to address some of these questions this week. Due to the tremendous scale of challenges faced during Liaquat’s premiership in political, constitutional, and foreign policy realms, we have divided this article into two pieces. We will discuss Liaquat’s immediate challenges (Kashmir etc.) and political problems in this piece and follow up with constitutional issues (especially, Objectives Resolution) and other foreign policy initiatives (especially, Liaquat-Nehru Pact) on Thursday (June 28, 2007).

The Making of the Quaid-e-Millat

Quaid-e-Azam’s death so early in the process created a vacuum that only an undisputed leader could have filled. Quaid-e-Azam had, in his life, nominated Liaquat Ali Khan as his clear successor and had called him his “right hand”. In addition to serving as the Secretary of the All-India Muslim League, Liaquat Ali Khan has also been credited with convincing the Jinnah to return to India from United Kingdom and lead the struggle for Muslim independence in the 1930s.

In addition, Liaquat Ali Khan’s credentials as an able administrator—and a leader—had been established and polished during his brief tenure as India’s first non-British Finance Minister just prior to Independence. Under the terms of a power sharing agreement between Muslim League and Congress after the 1946 elections, Muslim League and Congress were to share the portfolios in the central government under the viceroy. In the division of the portfolios, the finance ministry was awarded to Muslim League—purportedly as a means to embarrass the League rather than anything else.

Chaudhary Mohammad Ali, in “The Emergence of Pakistan”, describes the circumstances surrounding this decision. In pre-partition India, Hindus had complete dominance over most of the country’s financial industry and a Muslim was hardly considered qualified for the job to lead the finance ministry. Congress had reportedly plotted to give Muslim League the finance ministry on the pretext that the League nominee for the post—whoever it would be—would not be able to deliver the goods thus proving the League incapable of governing the country.

Quaid nominated Liaquat Ali Khan to the job who performed remarkably by most standards. Liaquat delivered an outstanding “pro-poor” budget during war time and had it passed by the Congress dominated Cabinet that created tremendous out roar among the wealthy Hindu classes which not only achieved a political victory—perhaps unintended at that time—for the League by establishing Muslim League egalitarian credentials and exposing Congress’ rhetoric but also considerably weakened Congress’ financial support at a crucial time in the independence movement (Kazimi, 2003). Liaquat’s performance was such masterful that he automatically became the prime candidate for the job of the Prime Minister. 

There was another possible reason for Quaid’s selection of Liaquat as his successor. Lawrence Ziring, in his “Enigma of Pakistan’s Political Development”, speculates that the Quaid may have also considered the fact that Liaquat himself did not belong to either East or West Pakistan and hence may have been more neutral toward the country’s provincial issues (Ziring, 1980). Regardless of the specific motivations, the nation rallied around the Quaid’s wishes and proclaimed Liaquat Ali Khan the Qauid-e-Millat (Leader of the Nation).

Khwaja Nazimuddin, the “mild and malleable” Governor of East-Bengal, was sworn in as the second Governor General of the country and it was expected that he would serve as a strictly constitutional Governor General (Sayeed, 1960, p. 306). Unlike his predecessor, the new Governor General was not to have the portfolio of States and Frontier Regions and was not to preside over Cabinet and sub-committee meetings. Under the new rules of business, all important matters with the exception of mercy petitions were to be submitted to Governor General through the Prime Minister (Sayeed, 1960, p. 307). It was generally accepted constitutional tradition that the Prime Minister’s advice was considered to be binding on the Governor General.

Dealing with Immediate Crises

Liaquat’s true reign as the all-powerful prime minister did not begin on a happy note. The day Quaid-e-Azam died, India attacked Hyderabad—one of the last holdouts of the partition saga—and forcibly annexed it against the wishes of its ruler, the Nizam. With the Kashmir already in the state of a military deadlock—Pakistan Army regulars had advanced into the state as early as in May, 1948 and had failed to gain any significant ground—and Hyderabad now gone as well, the country’s vulnerability from the military standpoint was painfully apparent.

None of the two countries could have afforded the military deadlock to continue for a long time as it was taxing on the economic wellbeing of the two nascent countries, more so on Pakistan than on the much bigger India. The August 13, 1948 United Nations’ Resolution that brought about United Nations’ Commission for India and Pakistan (UNCIP) did not create an immediate ceasefire and the issue continued to linger. During the fall of 1948, Indian military adopted a much more aggressive posture and achieved some tactical victories. On December 11, 1948, the UNCIP made some recommendations to bring about a ceasefire between the two countries. With limited military options remaining on the table, Pakistan accepted the recommendations and a ceasefire came into effect on January 1, 1949.

Besides these military considerations, however, some serious political considerations must have also played a part in Liaquat’s decision calculus. Leonard Binder, in a highly critical “Religion and Politics in Pakistan” notes:

“Pakistan has always been rather confident about the outcome of a free plebiscite in Kashmir. Consequently, India’s admitted readiness to consult the wishes of the inhabitants of Kashmir once hostilities ended was an important factor in Liaquat’s decision to accept the cease-fire proposal. On January 5, 1949, the UNCIP added provisions for a plebiscite to its August 13 resolution, and both sides accepted these resolutions as a basis for settling the dispute.”   (Binder, 1963, p.136)

Liaquat is often criticized for his peaceful stance towards India on the matter of Kashmir. His harshest critics claim that by de-escalating the crisis and accepting a ceasefire, he handed over a strategic opportunity to India at the time when the Indian army was in a retreat. His supporters often claim that it would have been impossible for Pakistan’s nascent army and airforce to wrest the control of Kashmir from India through purely military means—a fact that has been borne out by the 60-year old history of the conflict since.

While Liaquat had adopted peaceful course to resolving the Kashmir Issue, he had done so with tremendous political resolve and diplomatic tenacity and had exposed the duplicity and deceitfulness of India’s Kashmir policy. For example, one of Nehru’s early contentions for not withdrawing Indian troops from Kashmir was that they serve to protect India’s security until the plebiscite was held. In January 1951, the Prime Minister Meeting in the British Commonwealth Conference put three alternative before the two countries: (i) the maintenance of Commonwealth forces at Commonwealth’s expense before and during plebiscite, (ii) a joint force of Pakistani and Indian troops under a common command in occupation during the plebiscite, and (iii) a local Kashmiri force raised by the plebiscite administrator for security, enabling all forces, regular or irregular, to be withdrawn. Liaquat accepted all alternatives. Nehru rejected them all, thus, in the words of Reza Kazimi:

“[making] the right and wrong of the dispute…glaringly apparent to the Prime Ministers of the British Commonwealth”.  (Kazimi, 2003, p. 313)

Another favorite of Pundit Nehru’s alternatives was to propose a “No-War Declaration, with negotiation, arbitration, or mediation as the means to resolve the Kashmir dispute. When Liaquat took him at his word and proposed arbitration. Nehru replied that the Kashmir dispute was a non-justicable political issue”. (Kazimi, 2003, p. 312).

As he did so, however, he also simultaneously did his best in strengthening and uniting the country’s armed forces. In mid-July 1951, for instance, India amassed ninety percent of its army on Pakistan’s borders. The crisis, in the words of Liaquat’s biographer, was diffused not because Liaquat was able to counter the claims of Nehru on the political-diplomatic field, but because “the nation was united and the armed forces were strengthened.” (Kazimi, 2003, p.314). 

In the Eye of a Political Storm

On the political side as well, Liaquat was facing considerable challenges in dealing with the political crises that had already begun forming even during the life of the Quaid. While the Quaid—with his stature and the unquestionable loyalty he received from his contemporaries—was able check these from becoming full-blown crises, Liaquat had to really deal with them. Liaquat managed to secure and continue to exercise the authority of the central government despite leading a very fractious “coalition of the willing”.

On the one hand, were the problems of the provincial governments—many of which were still legacies of the pre-partition days and hence somewhat hostile to the League—and on the other hand, were the disagreements within the Muslim League itself. The Constituent Assembly was an archaic animal created for the purpose of providing Muslim representation under a British set-up and had become quite unrepresentative since then. There was little consensus between the representatives of various provinces in the Constituent Assembly (e.g. West Pakistani provinces seldom voted en-block) and Liaquat was quite dependent upon Bengali members—many of whom were Hindus—and his migrant colleagues from India for his own survival.

Pakistan’s political problems in these early days were many fold. Despite the amount of effort that Quaid had put into building grass roots support for the Muslim League in the areas that were to become Pakistan, the latter was a patchwork of various—often diverse—interests. These politicians—essentially provincial leaders—Ayub Khoro in Sindh, Dr. Khan Sahib in NWFP, and Sardar Shaukat Hyat in Punjab, among others, had parochial provincial and feudal interests that were seen as a hindrance in building a strong central government as was envisioned by the Quaid-e-Azam. With the exception of a handful, the Muslim League’s central leadership comprised of migrants from what was now India, and found it hard to hold their own without a real constituency in Pakistan.

The second factor that brought about these political problems may have been Liaquat’s own leadership style. Sayeed (1960) describes Liaquat Ali Khan as “affable by nature [who] seldom antagonized anybody” (Sayeed, 1960, p. 203). He goes on to state that:

“Liaquat Ali Khan had a plodding mind. He was by no means half as brilliant as the Quaid who could grasp the essentials of a situation and reach decisions quickly. Liaquat had the habit of sleeping over things until he saw the light after a great deal of cogitation… In Cabinet meetings, he would sometimes allow his colleagues to drift and digress into irrelevances. Those who have taken a charitable view of this say that he believed in letting people get things off their chests. But unfortunately people in Pakistan are often impressed by more imperious manners. Liaquat’s tolerance and manners were often taken as signs of weakness…However it is seldom that a country is blessed with a succession of brilliant leaders. Perhaps after Jinnah’s death, Pakistan needed more than anything else the tact and patience of Liaquat to consolidate what had been achieved and to compose the differences that were arising between the various provincial groups” (Sayeed, 1960, p. 304-5).

While Sayeed (1960) may be justified in the credit it gives to Liaquat, the style of his leadership had the effect of promoting ruptures and friction within the central cabinet itself as various members openly disagreed with the majority opinion and brought these disagreements into the public. This sense of weakening unity among the central cabinet may have also given wind to similar tendencies in the provinces.

In Punjab, for instance, the differences between the Chief Minister and one of his cabinet ministers had grown into a full-fledged crisis. Using authority enacted under Section 92A, the West Punjab government was dissolved on January 24, 1949. The members of the legislative assembly in Punjab had divided themselves into two equal groups—one led by the Chief Minister, the Khan of Mamdot, who wanted the current set up to carry on and the other led by Mian Mumtaz Daultana—the President of Muslim League in West Punjab—seeking to oust the current ministry.

The sacking of the provincial government in Punjab, according to many observers, was the beginning of the end of parliamentary democracy in Pakistan. The dissolution of the assembly, the imposition of Governor rule, and usurpation, by the central government, of the rightful powers of the provincial government, would become regular features in Pakistan’s later political history.

In January of 1949, the central government passed the Public and Representatives Offices (Disqualification) Bill (PRODA) in the Constituent Assembly. The resulting Act provided that a person found guilty of “mis-conduct” under the Act will be disqualified from holding office for a period not exceeding ten-years by the order of the Governor General. A special central police force was created under the Government of India Act to execute the act. PRODA quickly became the instrument of choice for removal of corrupt public officials from office but also, most probably, for the suppression of political dissent. Some of its more high-profile victims were, among others, the Khan of Mumdot (ex-Chief Minister of Punjab), and Mr. M. A. Khoro (Chief Minister of Sindh).

Reading about the political discourse of that time, one comes off with this odd—though not unusual, given Pakistan’s later history—feeling that the central government believed that “good government was better than representative government” and that Pakistan was too burdened with difficulties and challenges (and legacies of the partition) to make representative institutions work for them. Some also expressed the notion that provincial politics was too immature to be tolerated hence, perhaps, depriving it of the opportunity to mature either. The public opinion, as well, seems to have supported this [the center’s] view rather than that of the provincial leaders. For example, commenting on the imposition of Section 92A in West Punjab, the Pakistan Times wrote:

“A selfish pack of men who have for the last 18 months revelled in people’s misery and mocked the nobility of freedom have been asked to quit. We congratulate the Governor General of Pakistan on this bold and wise step”. (Sayeed, 1960, p. 359)

The Civil Military Gazette said the following about the same matter:

“All men of goodwill in the West Punjab—and in Pakistan—will breathe a sigh of relief this morning, when they learn [of] the abrogation of Provincial Autonomy in the West Punjab and the promulgation of Governor’s Rule under Section 92 of the Constitution.” (Sayeed, 1960,p.359)

In an ironic way, the Muslim League that had fought so hard for provincial autonomy under the British Raj, gave up that cherished goal when it found itself at the helm of affairs at the center. Their individual merits aside, these incidents not only forewarned of worse things to come but also set dangerous precedents in the country’s politics (Tinker, 1962, p.73).

We will look at the constitutional issues–especially the passage of and debate around the Objectives Resolution and other foreign policy considerations of Liaquat’s Premiership on Thursday…

• History in a Nutshell