President Ayub Khan has never been particularly popular among those sections of the Pakistani community which are currently spearheading the campaign for his overthrow. Students and lawyers have regarded his regime as being harsh and authoritarian. The ulema have distrusted the Field Marshal because of his modernist outlook. They have been specially opposed to family planning and the Muslim Family Law Ordinance which prohibits polygamy.
By and large these sections rallied behind Miss Fatima Jinnah at the time of the last presidential election in 1965. The intelligentsia was attracted to her because she gave expression to its opposition to the system of basic democracies which legitimises the marriage of convenience between the military bureaucratic dictatorship of Field Marshal Ayub Khan and powerful landlords in the countryside. The ulema were so anxious to get rid of President Ayub Khan that contrary to hallowed tradition they endorsed Miss Jinnah for the office of the head of state.
But the intelligentsia and the ulema have acquiesced in the continuance of the regime for a variety of reasons. First, the level of political consciousness in Pakistan has been fairly low. Secondly, they have been overawed by the coercive apparatus of the State. Finally, the intelligentsia was not sufficiently alienated from the regime so long as the latter could claim to have won impressive victories in the field of foreign policy.
Ayub’s Illness
The situation has clearly changed. No proof is required after the massive demonstrations all over Pakistan in the past two months. Among the factors that are responsible for this remarkable change, the 1965 war with India, President Ayub Khan’s prolonged illness in early 1968, and the growing politicalisation and even radicalisation of the youth deserve special attention.
Unfortunately, a number of partly valid assumptions have come to be widely accepted regarding the Pakistani view of the 1965 war. Three of these assumptions are: (1) that the Pakistanis regarded themselves as the victims of an unprovoked aggression because they saw no relation between the guerilla attack on Kashmir and the Indian offensive in the plains; (2) that they were firmly convinced that they had won major victories over the Indian giant and had gallantly repulsed a concerted attempt to conquer them; and (3) that they generally feel menaced by India’s power and that was why they reacted in an irrational and hysterical manner to the Indian military build-up necessitated by China’s aggression and aggressive designs.
If the Pakistanis saw the conflict purely in a defensive light and if they were convinced that they had won major victories, they should have been satisfied with President Ayub Khan’s leadership and with the Tashkent agreement which secured the withdrawal of Indian forces from the vicinity of Lahore and Sialkot and from the strategic passes from which they could have menaced Muzzaffarabad. We know that this was not the case.
The reasons are not far to seek. The Pakistanis regarded the war with India both as a jehad and as a defensive war of self-preservation – a jehad against the kafirs in “forcible, illegal and immoral occupation” of Kashmir and a war of defence against the aggressor who had sent his armies across the international frontier as part of a well-laid plan to destroy their State. Even if the Pakistanis could convince themselves that they had beaten back the “aggressor” they could not ignore the failure of the jehad to “liberate” Kashmir. Mr Bhutto identified himself with the jehad facet of the conflict and that was why he emerged as a popular hero.
Contradictory
The Pakistani intelligentsia has thought of this country in wholly contradictory terms. India to it is a giant but with feet of clay, a potential aggressor who lacks the necessary will and resolution, a bully who is a coward at heart and a claimant to Asian leadership who is hard put to it to keep his own constituent units together. For years before the 1965 war the Pakistani ruling elite seriously believed that the forces of separatism and disruption would overwhelm India after Mr Nehru’s death.
It is this psychological framework which made it possible for the intelligentsia in 1965 to believe that Pakistan was engaged at once in a crusade to “liberate” Kashmir and in a war of self-preservation. It could at the same time be alarmed over the Indian build-up and treat it with contempt under the self-delusion that one Pakistani soldier was equal to four Indians.
It was not an accident that Mr Bhutto emerged as President Ayub Khan’s principal opponent. Contrary to the popular view abroad, Mr Bhutto was a partner and not a mere subordinate of the Field Marshal. He played a dominant role in the evolution of Pakistan’s foreign policy in the ‘sixties.
Pakistan’s foreign policy had two facets before the 1965 war, one represented by President Ayub Khan and the other by Mr Bhutto. The two viewpoints could be and indeed were harmonized. But their separate identity was evident all the time.
President Ayub Khan symbolised the generally pragmatic, non-adventurous, pro-status quo and pro-Western facet of Pakistan’s policy. He sanctioned an anti-American press campaign in 1961 for three reasons. He was disappointed with the new US posture towards non-aligned countries, specially India; he found it a useful expedient to improve his standing with the intelligentsia which found the alliance with Washington galling, and he realised that the time had come to realign his Government’s policy to make it accord with the vastly changed world situation. He was also converted to the desirability of improving relations with the Soviet Union and China on the ground that the former could be weaned away from its policy of total support for India over Kashmir and the latter could help to redress the power imbalance in the sub-continent to Pakistan’s advantage. But on the whole President Ayub Khan remained committed to the policy of maintaining close relations with Washington and London.
Mr Bhutto’s view of the world was entirely different. He distrusted the West, particularly the United States. He was opposed to Pakistan’s alliance with America because in his view it weakened his country’s standing in the Afro-Asian world generally and among the Arabs and Soviet bloc countries in particular. He admired Mr Nehru’s policy of non-alignment for its independence, anti-colonialism, and friendship with the Soviet Union and China.
He believed that the Indian Prime Minister’s single greatest failure was to allow India’s cordial relations with Peking to be disrupted. Mr Bhutto admired China as much for its defiance of the West as for its hostility towards India. In course of time he came to adopt what could be called a China-centred view of the world. There was a striking similarity between Mr Bhutto’s and Dr Sukarno’s approach to international relations and this accounted for the Peking-Jakarta-Rawalpindi axis.
A consensus emerged on the basis of the harmonisation of the two viewpoints and temperaments. There can be little doubt that this consensus made it possible for the image builders in Pakistan to project President Ayub Khan as Asia’s de Gaulle, one who could defy the United States without alienating it and befriend Russia and China without importing their ideas regarding economy and policy.
Consensus Ends
The Ayub-Bhutto partnership broke down with the failure of their military plans in September 1965. With it ended the consensus on foreign policy. President Ayub Khan returned to his cautious, pragmatic and non-doctrinaire approach. Mr Bhutto not only stayed loyal to his philosophy of foreign policy but presented it in even sharper colours than ever before.
Mr Bhutto spoke of one thousand years of Muslim rule over the “barbarous” Hindus and of Pakistan being ready for a thousand years of struggle if necessary. This was music for the ears of the Pakistani youth because it touched two powerful chords in their thinking – a harking back to the days of the Mughal empire and the intense desire to return to that “golden” age.
India’s reluctance to press its military advantage and President Ayub Khan’s own propaganda that India was guilty of a treacherous attack and that the Pakistani forces had secured smashing victories on all fronts prevented a full and public exposure of the fact that Mr Bhutto’s line had been tried and failed. Bhutto. Bhuttoism could not have survived an Indian occupation of Muzzaffarabad or Sialkot. But as it is the former Foreign Minister remains a hero for his country’s youth. The official propaganda regarding India’s alleged designs only enhances his appeal.
The Times of India, 8 January 1969