refugee elite would continue to rule with the assis-
tance of the army and the higher civil service, sup-
pressing ethnic nationalism and securing their
predominance over the more populous eastern
half. Here in a nutshell lies the reason for the cat-
astrophic development of Pakistan’s politics – its
undemocratic features, the army’s subversion of
civilian government without a broad popular mass
base, and ultimately the rebellion of disadvan-
taged and resentful East Pakistan in 1971.
To manipulate the constitution to their advan-
tage, Pakistan’s rulers forcibly amalgamated the
provinces in the west into one West Pakistan
region which was then given an equal voice to the
more populous East Pakistan. But the constitu-
tion of 1956 caused much dissatisfaction among
the steam-rollered participants east and west. The
Muslim League politicians meanwhile could not
establish a stable civilian government based on a
parliamentary assembly. Between 1948 and 1954
the Constituent Assembly had been less than a
hundred days in session and one prime minister
had been assassinated.
The constitution of 1956 provided for elec-
tions in February 1959. Provincial elections in
East Pakistan in 1954 had already shown that one
political party there, the United Front, would
carry all before it; the Muslim League had come
last, gaining only 10 of the 309 seats. In West
Pakistan, with its fourfold ethnic rivalry, no single
party could hope to equal the performance of the
United Party. The United Party and East Pakistan
would thus take control of the whole country.
The rulers were not prepared to accept this. In
1958, General Ayub Khan extinguished parlia-
ment, first in East Pakistan, where he had been
sent as military governor, and then in West
Pakistan, when in the same year he became head
of state. It was a military coup, but few regretted
the passing of the self-serving politicians.
President Ayub Khan invented an ingenious
constitutional device, the indirect referendum: an
electoral college of ‘basic democrats’ was formed,
which then overwhelmingly confirmed him in
office. Although power was concentrated in the
president’s hands, he relied for day-to-day gov-
ernment on the civil service. There was no room
for political parties under the constitution he
drew up in 1962; the members of the National
Assembly were chosen on ‘personal merit’ as
judged by the president and his advisers. The
judiciary and press were fettered, and subordi-
nated to presidential rule. Provincial autonomy,
to the extent it had survived, was brought com-
pletely under central control. East Pakistan,
deprived even of the rights of the 1956 constitu-
tion, erupted in riots. The political opposition
there formed the Awami League under Sheikh
Mujibur Rahman, whose proposals for a two-
nation federation landed him in jail. In the
unfavoured provinces in West Pakistan, resent-
ment against the Punjabi–Muslim refugee elite
which, with the army, continued to control poli-
cy and patronage under the Ayub presidency
also produced growing unrest. Ayub’s most
capable opponent was Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, whose
Pakistan People’s Party gathered the support in
the provinces of both rural and urban groups dis-
advantaged by the changes brought about by
industrialisation.
Ayub Kahn also had to face the problems of
Pakistan’s national security. Relations with India
went from bad to worse after independence.
Pakistan had taken advantage of the Cold War ten-
sions to redress the balance as against a larger and
stronger India by tying itself to the US-backed
anti-communist line-up of nations in Asia, joining
the South-East Asia Treaty Organisation (SEATO)
in 1954 and the Baghdad Pact the following
year. As expected, Pakistan thereupon received
substantial American military and financial aid.
For Pakistan and India, however, it was not the
Cold War that primarily concerned them but rela-
tions with each other. At the heart of their con-
flict lay the problem of Kashmir. All attempts by
Pakistan to negotiate directly with India came to
nothing; nor could the United Nations find a
peaceful way to mediate. Every attempt was
blocked by Nehru, who refused to hold the
plebiscite he had earlier promised. The possibility
that the majority of Kashmir’s people might opt
for Pakistan because they were Muslims struck at
the heart of India’s nationhood as conceived by
Nehru and the other Congress leaders: India was
a secular state in which both Muslims and Hindus
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