As Pakistan celebrates 70 years as an independent nation, does Pakistan’s chequered history provide indicators for Pakistan’s future?
Pakistan was carved out of British India as the homeland for India’s Muslims.
Yet,
Preponderantly Muslim, Bengali-speaking East Pakistan is today the independent nation of Bangladesh.
After accounting for Pakistan & Bangladesh, India itself still has almost as many Muslims as Pakistan.
The Doctrine of Necessity is the basis on which extra-legal actions by state actors, which are designed to restore order, are found to be constitutional.
In 1954, the Governor General of Pakistan, Ghulam Mohammed, dismissed the Pakistan Constituent Assembly on the grounds that the Constituent Assembly did not represent the people of Pakistan.
Image from Costs of Justice Munir's Doctrine of Necessity.
An appeal against the Governor General's order was filed in the Sind High Court by the President of the Constituent Assembly Maulvi Tamizzuddin. The Sind High Court ruled in favor of the petition filed by Maulvi Tamizzuddin.
The Chief Court of Pakistan’s (. .. the Supreme Court), Justice Muhammed Munir set aside the verdict of the Sind High Court (ruling) in favor of the Governor General. The court relied on the doctrine of necessity as enunciated in Roman law & articulated by Ivor Jennings … the well being of the people was the supreme law.
This decision of Justice Munir was to have far reaching effect on Pakistan politics and on a number of occasions the Supreme Court of Pakistan justified Military Coups. The court justified the military coup by general Zia ul Haq which overthrew the elected civilian Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto … Bhutto being hanged as a common criminal for a crime for which no legal evidence was available.
In the hanging of Bhutto the Pakistan Supreme Court which had earlier upheld the rule of Zia under the doctrine of necessity also acquiesced in the hanging of Bhutto.
Doctrine of Necessity in Pakistan Law and Its Interpretation by Pakistan Supreme Court
The Struggle for Pakistan, The Hudson Institute.
You can’t keep snakes in your backyard & expect them to only bite your neighbours.
Hillary Clinton, US Secretary of State
Hina Rabbani Khar, Pakistan Foreign Minister.
The DG ISI reports to both the Pakistan Prime Minister & the Pakistan Army Chief of Army Staff.
Let’s say Pakistan deluded themselves into believing that they were allies. (with America)
Allies have the same objective, which we did not have.
In statecraft morality takes a backseat.
Lt-Gen Asad Durrani, served Pakistan both as a former director-general of both the omnipresent Inter-Services Intelligence & of the Pakistan Army's original intelligence arm the Military Intelligence.
Is Pakistan, a gang of zealots
Who own an intelligence service?
Which owns an army?
Which owns a country?
Image from Education system of Pakistan.
Strictures were placed on people’s thinking.
It was Gen Zia-ul-Haq who began the trend the other way, the strict laws...the rising role of religion in matters of state, in matters of society, those have been instrumental for Pakistan to seek salvation in the past.
Change can happen only when education is seen as a means for opening minds rather than an instrument of ideological control.
Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy, Pakistani nuclear physicist, mathematician & Distinguished Professor, Forman Christian College, Lahore
What do you think?
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