Consequence of Losing an Ideological War: The Case of Pakistan

 Construction and de-construction of the ideology of Pakistan

During the final days of the British colonial rule, the Muslims of South Asia –the largest Muslim population in the world, became imbued with a great dream to build an Islamic state. Dismantling of Osmania Khilafa both by the British imperialists and the Turkish secularists intensified such an urge. Abolishment of khilafa was in fact the joint enterprise of Islam’s internal and the external enemies. The Turkish and Arab Muslims lost their ideological war to secularist and nationalist enemies of Islam. It was one of the most depressive moments in Muslim history. Unlike inaction of the Arab and Turkish Muslims, the largest mass movement for preservation Osmania Khilafa, happened in India. Indeed it was the first mass movement in Indian history. Contrary to ugly fragmentation of the Muslim Middle East, the Muslims of the South Asia showed strong pan-Islamic brotherhood. The creation of Pakistan was indeed an embodiment of such pan-Islamic fraternity. When Arab, Turk, Kurd and Persian Muslims sleepwalked into prison states of linguistic, ethnic, tribal or territorial isolation, the Muslims of the Indian subcontinent moved beyond those narrow parochial borders and forged a grand pan-Islamic unity. The Muslims of Bengal, Bihar, Assam, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Sindh, NWFP, Baluchistan, Maharashtra, Gujarat, and other areas of the undivided India united to realise the dream of an Islamic republic. The British imperialists and the Hindu majority of India did not want such a state. But Pakistan came into being as the largest Muslim country on the World map despite all oppositions and conspiracies.

But the enemies of Islam never abandoned their project of dismantling Pakistan. The British imperialists left the subcontinent in 1947. But their unfinished job was handed over to their home-grown vice-regents. These are the ideological converts like secularists, nationalists, socialists and other brands of anti-Islamists. They were embedded in deep government of Pakistan. As a legacy of colonial secularism, the transcending cementing force that must exist in Muslims of all ethnicities was almost non-existent in the hard core secular institutions of the country like Pakistan Army and the bureaucracy.  So, the ethnic, linguistic and tribal fractures firstly appeared in the country’s most powerful bastions of secularism –the army and the bureaucracy. The ideological colonies of the British imperialists –like the cantonments, the judicial enclaves, the bureaucratic quarters and the university campuses with the secularized teachers and the combatant disciples, stood in revolt to undo the whole Pakistan project. The non-Muslim imperialists need not fire a single bullet. The gang of ideological cum cultural converts like Mr Golam Muhammad –the former obedient servant of the British Empire in India and later on the Governor General of Pakistan (he dissolved the elected government and the parliament and opened the gate for long military rule and thus put an end to participatory and reconciliatory politics of Pakistan’s both wings, thereby expedited the break-up of the country), Justice Munir –the faithful servant of the British Empire in its judiciary and later on the Chief Justice of Pakistan (he justified the dissolution of democratically elected parliament by a judicial decree), General Ayub Khan and General Yahiya Khan –both known for their obedient servitude for the British Empire and later on both became the President of Pakistan, did the job quite effectively.

The most significant event

After the conquest of Delhi about 8 hundred years ago, the creation of Pakistan was the most significant event in India’s Muslim history. It was indeed a grand outcome of wining an ideological cum political war. No army needed to fire a single bullet for the creation of this largest Muslim country of the world. At that time, the Indian Muslims didn’t have any army, but had some outstanding ideological warriors. After Pakistan’s creation, intellectuals of such height are never produced. How a country can achieve military and political success with intellectual failures? Ideological war is not a one-time war; it is an all-time continuous war. Like territorial frontiers, the ideological frontiers too need constant protection. It needs continuous deployment of the best ideological warriors on the front-line of this never ending war. In Islam, it is a holy jihad. Any neglect of such Islamic obligation breeds only disasters. Most catastrophic disaster in Muslim history indeed took place because of ignoring this holy intellectual war. In Pakistan, such jihad was grossly ignored; political mudslinging and repeated military coups indeed stampeded the prospect of any ideological war.

Pakistan’s secular civil and military rulers had little understanding of the country’s ideological issue. Nor do they possess any skill to fight such ideological war. They assumed that its secular education, industries, army and cantonments will save the country. But Islam’s ideological war can’t be won by the military, bombs and missiles. Soviet Union had thousands of atomic bombs and ballistic missiles in its store, but still couldn’t survive its ideological war. Pakistan too, made its ugliest history by losing its war on the ideological frontiers. Its ideological defeat made its own citizens the worst enemy against its own existence; and led to the catastrophic defeat in the military war with India in 1971. The same process is still ongoing.

The case of Pakistan has categorically proved that winning the ideological war is crucial -not only for the creation of an ideological state, but also for its survival. In such context, Pakistan’s failure presents huge learning opportunities for every Muslim man and woman in the world, not only for today, rather for all times to come. Surprisingly, the policy makers, academics and the intellectuals of Pakistan have little appetite to learn from its past failures. These painful sagas are seldom taught in Pakistan’s schools, colleges and universities; neither does appear in the country’s intellectually ambivalent media. These are swept under the carpet. How a people can defend their state and dignity with such historical amnesia? So the country continues to lose its war in the ideological frontiers.

Colonization of mind

The seeds of Pakistan’s failure were indeed sowed by the imperialists long before its creation in 1947. The Muslims were the ideological captives in the hand of enemies for 190 years. During the long rule, the British colonialists had the opportunity and freedom to inoculate the body of Muslim Ummah with high dose of anti-Islamic ideas. Education system played the crucial rule in such inoculation. It was indeed the colonisation of Muslim mind and soul. This way, not only they made them resistant to Islamic faith, but also made them incurable ideological converts. They were no less inimical to Islam and the Muslims than the religious converts. Instead of populating with their own people –as they did in America, Australia and New Zealand, in the Indian subcontinent the British were more focused to colonise people’s minds with toxic ideas.  The people with such colonised mind-set built their own cultural cum ideological colonies amidst the Muslim majority. After the end of the colonial era, these ideological converts could still flourish in those cultural colonies and worked as the imperialists’ Trojan horse. In Pakistan, huge number of such Trojan horses indeed proved detrimental to country’s own survival. The dwellers of these cultural cum ideological colonies look alike in belief and lifestyle their former colonial masters. The Western politicians, war lords and the NGO leaders enjoy full cultural match in such islands –as if these are their own lands. The settlers of these ideological colonies started war against Pakistan’s ideological basis of creation from day one. Such proxy soldiers of the imperialists –both civil and military, quickly took over the country’s driving seat; and those who fought for the creation of an Islamic Pakistan were dumped only as captive passengers in the backseat.

Pakistan lost its ideological war long before its defeat by India in December 1971. The embedded secularists in Pakistan Army have little appetite for fighting a decisive war against the arch enemy. They pleasure-seeking secularists were more concerned about big plots and lucrative houses in best residential areas of the country. They showed again and again their skills only in bombing and occupying their own country. In its 17 days’ war in 1971, the Pakistan Army in its East Pakistan sector never faced a single day of intense bombing like Israeli bombing on Gaza. Few thousands Hamas fighters didn’t surrender even after 50 days’ of carpet bombing. The Israeli tanks and artillery couldn’t penetrate Hamas’s defence line. Indian Army was never stronger than the Israeli Army and neither had such precision weapons. But Pakistan Army’s nearly 60 thousand men couldn’t stand against India even for 17 days. So, Pakistan Army made a history of ugly surrender in the whole Muslim history. The Islamists Razakars rather showed better fighting spirit and resistance. In their 9 month guerrilla fight, the India trained secessionist Mukti Bahini couldn’t capture even a single district, a sub-district or a small township of the former Pakistan due to strong defence put forward by the Islamists.

States of collaborators

The united Pakistan divided in 1971. The fallen-apart wings of former Pakistan now survive not only as the graveyard of the Islamists’ dream, but also as servile states of collaborators for the imperialists. The leftover Pakistan –the former West Pakistan, now works for US-led imperialists. The country played a decisive role as the logistic route for the US army for its war of occupation and genocide in Afghanistan. The Pakistan Army itself now continues its killing mission against the Islamists of the country. Even scores of young female students of an Islamic madrasa in Islamabad (Hafsa madrasa) had to die with Army’s bullets in their chest. The country is still on the path of an ideological death. Pakistan has a huge professional army and also possess huge high tech weapons –even atomic weapons, but has very few ideological warriors for Islam and for Pakistan. The country’s philosophically deprived political leaders and intellectuals have little insights of the ongoing ideological war against its own existence. Hence, they are sleepwalking into disaster after disasters. These secularists are always ready to display their extra-territorial commitment. They fought and shed their own blood for the imperialists in both the World Wars. So, it will not be surprising if the army joins the imperialists in their war against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. They have already helped them in Afghanistan; and now fighting the same war against the Islamists in their own country.

Bangladesh –the former eastern wing of Pakistan now works for the Indian imperialists. It is a logistic route for the Indian Army for its ongoing war against the liberation movements in the eastern Indian states. The Islamists are slaughtered in the streets of this Muslim majority country; thousands of the Islamists are now languishing in prisons of the ruling secularist extremists. The country itself survives as a captive market for India’s industrial and cultural products. The pro-Indian ruling secularists are so much glued with India and alienated from the basic teachings of Islam that they consider supporting and fighting for a united Pakistan in 1971 was a crime punishable only by death sentences or life-term imprisonment. The anti-Islamic venom in secular judiciary of Bangladesh is so strong that they have taken the job of judicial murder of the Islamists in their own hand. The situation was 70 years ago. Bengal played a crucial role as the engine of Pakistan movement; and Dhaka is the birth place of Muslim League –the organisation that created Pakistan in 1947. In 1940, in Muslim League’s All India convention in Lahore, the historic Pakistan proposal was raised by none but by Bengal’s Muslim League Prime Minister Mr A K Fazlul Haque. But such facts are now being forgotten in both the former wings of Pakistan.