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2. MOHAMMAD WASEEM
Political Conflict in Pakistan
First published in the United Kingdom in 2021 by
C. Hurst & Co. (Publishers) Ltd, New Wing,
Somerset House, Strand, London, WC2R 1LA All
rights reserved. Printed in the United Kingdom.

3. Sequence
• Introduction
• Seventy Years of Partition
• Master Narrative
• Two Power Centers
• An Establishmentarian Democracy
• Constitutional Dynamics
• Mass Public
• The Outsider
• Conclusion

4. Introduction:
The central theme of this book is political conflict between the federal and
provincial governments, Islamists and modernists, the religion sectarian majority
and minorities, the civil and military wings of the state, the judiciary and
parliament, industrialists and labour and between landlords and peasants. Often
these conflicts have been studied as the outcome of a clash of interests and
identities, expressed through public mobilization in pursuit of certain demands for
change in the normal flow of social, cultural and political life of the country.

5. Introduction:
Political conflict in Pakistan in the context of
four clusters of themes.
The first cluster deals with conflict within
the state. One of the basic arguments of the
book is that the institutional design of the
state plays a crucial role in determining the
nature and scope of the conflict

6. The constitutional dynamics as the center of conflictual activity
surrounding the issues of parliamentary sovereignty, the federal project
and the Islamic project. The state’s master narrative re-makes history
and re-charters a vision of the future in pursuit of defining the national
destiny. This exercise runs into conflict with alternative narratives,
which are by no means extinct.

7. • In the process of nation-building, Pakistan experienced the emergence of
two power centers, the middle class and the political class, which were
diametrically opposed to each other in their political vision. These power
centers defined the mega conflict between the civil and military organs of
the state. A clash of institutions ensued not only between the (military)
establishment and parliament, which often resulted in a coup or
dissolution of assemblies or dismissal of prime ministers, but also between
parliament and the judiciary

8. Seventy Years of Partition :
• In 1947, the Partition made religion a defining variable for evaluating the role of
the elite and the masses, past and present, culture and politics. It produced a
robust sense of predestination whereby people felt they had arrived in the
Promised Land. Apart from the archival history of the constitutional negotiations
that can be grouped together as partition exotica. In India, this approximates the
‘vivisection syndrome’, while in Pakistan this has been elevated to a war between
Islam and Hinduism. On both sides, ‘sacrifice syndrome’ became a source of
sanctifying Communal violence, especially in Punjab.

9. Seventy Years of Partition :
In 1947, Pakistan got out of India. But India did not get out of Pakistan. That has made all
the difference. India continued to be part of Pakistan in various ways. Apart from Pashtu
and the languages of the northern areas, the languages of Pakistan are essentially Indian
languages, including the national language, Urdu, along with Punjabi, Sindhi and some
minor linguistic varieties. The Indian calendar, Indian dress, Indian cuisine, Indian medicine,
Indian wedding rituals and Indian customary laws have continued to operate in large parts
of what became Pakistan. The name for Sunday (Itwar) is derived from the Hindu sun god,
Aditya; similarly, the names for Monday (Somwar) and Tuesday (Mangalwar) belong to the
Sanskrit, while the name for Wednesday comes from Buddha.

10. Seventy Years of Partition :
The process of making Muslims different from Hindus – socially, politically and culturally –
brought into action the inspirational appeal of religion. The Islamic campaign led by the
Muslim elite superseded ethnic, linguistic, sectarian and cultural differences among
Muslims across India in order to create a grand opposition between the two faith-based
communities. After partition, while India followed a politics of identity based on the
culture and language of the land and the people, and reorganized provinces on that basis,
Pakistan followed a model of culture as vision, agenda and mission to establish the rule of
Islam. Unlike India, one of the most comprehensive and pervasive sources of conflict in
Pakistan is the gap between the reality on the ground in linguistic, cultural and social
terms.

11. Seventy Years of Partition :
In this way, state felt obliged to de-acknowledge the cultures and languages
of the constituent parts of the country. The two countries adopted different
sources of political legitimacy. In India, language was in, religion was out. In
Pakistan, religion was in, language was out. Unlike India, linguistic parties
were unable to become the building blocks of the federation of Pakistan. This
led to conflict between modernists, who wanted to keep the constitutional
state system intact, and traditionalists, who wanted to replace it with an
Islamic state based on Sharia.

12. Seventy Years of Partition
The Mohajir-dominated bureaucracy and Punjabi-dominated army in bringing about a ‘bureaucratic polity’ in
Pakistan during the first quarter of a century after independence. The 1970 election campaign targeted the so-
called ‘22 families’, who had criticized their amassing of wealth in the industrial, insurance and commercial
sectors. But in 1972, when the Bhutto government nationalized industry in the ten leading sectors, including
electrical, engineering, petrochemicals, iron and steel, “ The cotton industry, which was located mainly in
Punjab, was not nationalized”. Not surprisingly, while the business community in general turned against the
Pakistan People’s Party. The labour reforms of the PPP government hit the business community hard. The
Mohajir industrial elite shared with its non-Mohajir counterpart the overall insecurity at the hands of the
‘Socialist’ PPP regime . In 1972, it allegedly tried to stop industrial labour in Karachi away from the PPP by using
the Urdu– Sindhi controversy to divide it along linguistic lines