Islam and Democracy: Why Military Solutions Won't Solve Political Problems
by Beena Sarwar
- Pakistan -
President Pervez Musharraf's resignation from office on August 18th under intense pressure has raised questions, particularly in the West, about the future of Pakistan's "war on terror". The following article takes a historic and political look at the background and possible future of this war. - Ed.
When the British colonizers left India in August 1947, they granted India independence, dividing it along religious lines which saw Hindus and Muslims as two different nations. Pakistan, conceived as a nation-state for Indian Muslims, consisted of the Muslim-majority provinces or states, including two states with nearly equal Hindu and Muslim populations - Punjab and Bengal on India’s eastern border, situated a thousand miles away from the other four Pakistani provinces. Two other Muslim-majority states ended up in India’s control: Kashmir to the northwest (which Pakistan also laid claim to), and Hyderabad in central India.
The two-nation theory bypassed the reality of the multinational, multi-faith and multilingual communities that make up India and Pakistan. Attempting to develop a homogenous national identity (largely to counter India), successive Pakistani governments tended to focus on Islam as the unifying factor. They also continued the authoritarian and colonist policies of the British, resulting in religious, ethnic or linguistic groups feeling excluded and discriminated against. For most of its existence, Pakistan has been governed by military rulers who have prioritized weapons and military training over education and social welfare, resulting in a sense of injustice and deprivation, and divisions along religious, sectarian, class and ethnic lines.
