"the state of martial rule," ayesha jalal

central thesis: book makes a very convincing case that the first eleven years of Pakistan's history, preceding Ayub's coup in 1958, confirmed the dominance of non-elected institutions (specifically, the civil bureaucracy and the military) over the political process. internally, this represented a failure to transcend the inherited weaknesses of the Muslim League as a political organization (which won power in precisely those provinces where it had no real political presence, eleventh hour alliances with landed elites notwithstanding). externally, jalal demonstrates how the subordination of the political process suited the strategic designs of the British and then the Americans (though she never argues that they were "agents" of this accommodation, they unquestionably figure).

moreover, jalal makes important points, in particular, about the impact of this excessive centralization on centre-province relations. those eleventh hour alliances were never going to offer legitimacy to the State in the eyes of provincial inhabitants--what was crucially absent from Pakistan's early political scene, she suggests, was the sort of political project that could unite provincial grievances (a socialist project, we can say). without it, the centre retreated into itself. this "closing off" of all traditional means of engagement with State authority only exacerbated the problems of provincialism.

in my humble opinion, jalal doesn't make explicit the thoroughly "backward" justifications offered for this progressive centralization of State power, even while she traces them in great detail (she does make the obligatory refutation of the silly thesis that military rule stepped into the vacancies left by "bickering politicians"; indeed, her point is that these bickering politicians are the product of the same structural dynamics that encourage military dominance via the consolidation of central authority). in particular, one could stress more the continuities with colonial rule, which are truly striking to those unfamiliar with the history: Pakistan was governed according to the British Government of India Act of 1935 for the first 9 years of its existence. and even when the first constituent assembly, after those 9 years, agreed upon the first constitution in 1956, it was pressured into making huge concessions to presidential authority. in that sense, it is important to stress that pakistan never made a "break" with the colonial era (complementing this inherite political "superstructure," remember, is the patronizing of landed elites by jinnah in the time immediately preceding partition). if there's one thing jalal's book lacks, then, it is this sense of outrage at the unforgivable hubris of the project of managed, colonial democracy.

but a great read and valuable reference-book all round.

--- important quotes/excerpts ---

(introduction): good summary of her central theses

(17): "With no organizational machinery in the Muslim-majority provinces, Jinnah and the league had little option but to advocate terms largely defined by landed notables in control of local politics."

(28): "A man of unquestionable constitutional acumen, Jinnah could see the perils ahead in letting anyone other than himself exercise the vast powers bestowed upon the governor-general [in newly independent Pakistan]"

(60): "While the provincial arenas continued to serve as the main centres of political activity, those who set about creating the new central apparatus were either politicians with no identifiable bases of support or civil servants well-versed in the traditions of British Indian administration." (these pages trace also the separation of the Muslim League from the business of government)

(135): "By the time Pakistan's first prime minister became the target of an evidently hired assasin, the institutional balance had begun gravitating away from the political centre in Karachi to military headquarters in Rawalpindi. It was to take a few years and the unfolding of yet more painful domestic political and economic crises before the central government was forced to make the shift..."

(145): first elections based on adult franchise in Pakistan's history--provincial elections in Punjab, March 1951

(151): critical: anti-ahmediya riots came in a context of serious economic crisis; state did not do anything to nip them in the bud

(152): "...[T]he shift in Pakistan's foreign policy [from London to Washington] owed nothing to popular opinion. Quite the opposite. Relentless demands for military equipment by the defence establishment generated pressures for warmer relations with the United States; financial stringency and a deepening food crisis made them irresistible..."

(186): legends of the fail--proposal by ambassador to US for governor-general to change government, in efforts to stave off a "fanatical theocracy"

(200-202): story of the attempt to dismiss the first constituent assembly by the governor-general, and then consequent legal wrangling (Sindh High Court reverses, eventually Chief Justice re-reverses)

(213-222): extensive discussion of 1956 constitution and its absurdly anti-democratic (of the liberal sort, even) provisions

(236): "Yet here was the rub. Nowhere had the consequences of the disjunction between the political process and the imperatives of state consolidation been felt more acutely than in the realm of economic decision-making. The absence of stable and popularly based governments at the centre capable of keeping firm checks on the demands of military headquarters and the activities of a sprawling administrative machinery had been as great, if not greater, obstacle to sound economic planning than the shortage of finance and trained personnel."

(241-246): a useful discussion of the Harvard Advisory Group years ("Clearly then, the first five year plan was an attempt to confirm, correct, and coordinate rather than to radically change the tenor of the central government's past economic politices. The mere fact that the final verison of the plan was made public just six months before the military takeover demands a closer scruitny of the political and structural obstacles in the way of its implementation.")

(257): birth of the National Awami Party, 1956

(269-270): "Yet the centre which for so long had dodged the issue of elections was now to face them when its revenues were falling and defence and civil administration expenditures were rising. Barely able to remain solvent, the centre could meet the provinces half way only by slashing the budgets of the two institutions which were the best hope the stat had for surviving assaults from below. This double paradox--the need to dole out funds to allay some of the provincial grievances just prior to the elections and the impossibility of finding the finances without cutting back on defence and civil administration--was the crisis of the state which the October 1958 military intervention aimed at dispelling if not altogether resolving."

(272): June 1958 mobilizations

(276): As of October, Mirza gone, Ayub ascendant

(277): "The very fact that the British transferred power in India to two centralized high commands instead of the provincial and the local bosses whose support they had so long solicited and used to strengthen their raj meant that the institutionalisation and consolidation of a new political centre over the Muslim-majority areas was implicitly a question of society accomodating itself to a state whose structures of authority were as uncertain as its claims to legitimacy were vague and ambiguous... This is where Islam proved to have its uses" (this is important to complicating the assertion that we are dealing with simple continuities of colonial rule)

(278): "the ambiguities of Islam seemed to offer the best hope of lending legitimacy to a state which, because it had only the most tenuous roots in society, was coming to base its authority on an administrative rather than a political centralization."

(288): interesting reflection on the stratified socio-economic base of syncretic islam (i.e., the welding of landed powers and pirs/etc.)

(295): [GOOD SUMMARY OF WHOLE THESIS]: It was during the first decade of independence that an interplay of domestic, regional and international factors saw the civil bureaucracy and the army gradually registering their dominance over parties and politicians withing the evolving structure of the state. While allowing the state a relative autonomy of action in directing the course of political and economic developments, the shifts in the institutional balance of power by their very nature militated against forging organic links with society. With decision-making firmly in the hands of a ruling alliance drawn mainly from the top echelons of the bureaucracy and the army, although loosely tied to dominant classes and interest groups, there was no obvious equation between the actual wielding of state authority and the structures of economic power and social control. Consequently, the relative autonomy of the Pakistani state from the internal class structure came to rest in large part on the closely nurtured connections of its senior state officials--civil and military--with the centres of the international capitalist system."

(302-303): discussion of the absurdity of Ayub's "basic democracts"

(304): re: land reforms and more, Jalal writes: "Preoccupations with the growth-redistribution debate has tended to blur analyses of the state's critical role int he creation of socio-economic privilege. The overwhelming trend has been to focus on the location of dominant socio-economic groups in relation to the state structure. But the dissonance between the military and the bureaucracy's institutional interests and those of socio-economic groups makes it equally, if not more important, to investigate how positions within the state apparatus facilitate the relocation of functionaries of government at various levels in key socio-economic sectors.

(307-308): November 1968 mobilizations

(310-311): Jalal suggests reconciliation was made impossible (between Bhutto and Mujib) by the entrenched role of the "praetorian guard and the mandarins."

(311): assessment of PPP's base

(317): Jalal links Bhutto's use of the Islamist idiom to the oilboom-financed patronage of religious forces (also the beginnings of the story of migrations to and from the Gulf, for sure)

(320): Zia's call for an end to class discord in the name of Allah.

---- timeline -----

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governor-General_of_Pakistan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Prime_Ministers_of_Pakistan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Presidents_of_Pakistan