Have Pakistani Politicians Realised the Repercussions of Reckless Religiosity?

The horrific Peshawar school attack drew irrevocable lines between the establishment and religious seminaries.

Supporters of Imran Khan.

(Photo: PTI)

Every single political party in Pakistan has pandered to reckless religiousity in order to widen its topical appeal. Religion has been the default ‘go-to’ mode whenever populist one-upmanship was sought. The contradiction of democracy rationalising itself with the rigidities of religion was genealogical and foundational, with the ‘two-nation theory’ besetting the sovereign.  

Quaid-e-Azam Jinnah’s 11 August address (replete with insistence on secularism) to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan was conveniently buried at the birth of the nation itself. Even so-called democrats like Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, Nawaz Sharif, Benazir Bhutto, and Imran Khan — all of them had shady dalliances with extremist forces and contributed to the Islamist fervour. If Zulfiqar is rightfully blamed for Ordinance XX diminishing the Ahmediyas, his daughter Benazir could claim to have spurred the birth of the Taliban (through her Interior Minister, Naseerullah Babar).

Nawaz Sharif had mastered the game of running with the hare and hunting with the hound in terms of mixing affairs with Afghanistan and India with a religious lens and patronising dodgy entities.

Whereas Imran Khan’s volte-face from a playboy who married a Western Jewish heiress to one who later married a mystic Peerni and promised ‘Riyasat-e-Medina’ (governance akin to the state of Medina) is reflective of the schizophrenic relation between democrats and religion in the ‘land of pure’.   

Then there are some like the Tehreek-e-Labbaik, Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan, Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, and Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (Fazl) that are fundamentally and overtly Islamist in their positions. These forces broadly represent the formal footprint of Mullahs and Maulanas in Pakistan’s stuttering democracy (disrupted with multiple formal military coups i.e., 1958-71, 1977-1988, and 1999-2008) whose foremost cadres are the Madrassa (Islamic seminary) taught populace, especially from the restive Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Baluchistan provinces.  

Initially, the Economy Could Afford Distractions Like Religion

Both India and Pakistan were predominantly agrarian economies with a limited industrial base. But by the 1960s, the Pakistani economy fared relatively better with political stability and steady support from the United States, growing at an impressive rate of 6.7 per cent through the decade.

The tumult of the 1970s aside, the invaluable aid from the US poured through the 1980s as Islamabad funneled the latter's wherewithal in Afghanistan (with many leaks). Geopolitics of the times allowed bigots like General Zia-ul-Haq to seed religious extremism towards their own regime insecurities, and the ‘West’ looked the other way, as long as Pakistan did its bidding. The patent duplicity of the Pakistanis would continue through 1990s and later with Pervez Musharraf’s joining of the ‘War on Terror’ as they routinely extracted their own pound of flesh.

Within Pakistan itself, the unhinged politicians and equally compromised military generals jousted with each other, posturing to be more pious than the other, to ingratiate themselves amongst the masses. All the while, Pakistan was getting sucked into the vortex of religious intolerance.

Importantly and increasingly, religion and piety were getting perceived as mannah from the heavens – simply because the dangerous impact of religion hadn’t hit home, and the leaders could still afford to play the religion card.         

When the Reality of Overplaying the Religious Card Was Exposed

The bloody siege of Lal Masjid (‘Operation Sunrise’) in 2007 spelled to the public the first sense of having overplayed religion, as the state pitted itself against its own creation. While many still remain perplexed and silent – the ‘divide’ between the progenitor i.e., Pakistani ‘establishment’, and religious extremists sprung forth. Later that year, Benazir Bhutto was assassinated.

Yet the narrative tottered with contradictory instincts that ranged from outright concern to parallel comfort in working towards ‘strategic depth’ in Afghanistan and supporting secessionism in Kashmir, with unbridled religion as the foremost lever.

The horrific Peshawar school attack that killed over 140 children drew the lines firmly and irrevocably between the Pakistani establishment and religious seminaries. They were no longer compatible with each other, anymore. The price of playing with religious fire was rearing its head, suddenly. 

A spate of religious protests leading to multiple public sit-ins e.g., the October 2021 protest by Tehreek-e-Labbaik (seeking deportation of the French Ambassador), ensued. Religious organisations seemed to be championing issues that had nothing to do with economic sustenance as it focused on issues like blasphemy laws, Charlie Hebdo, Afghanistan, etc., and the middle class and intelligentsia started waking up to the futility of religious passions. Soon, terrorism from home-grown ‘nurseries’ started a relentless reverse-flow, onto Pakistan itself.

The 2014 Peshawar school attack closed the lid of all ambiguities and the citizenry (beyond the madrassa-trained fringe) started tiring of religious bodies. While Pakistan was becoming globally infamous and synonymous with religious extremism, its citizenry sent its own contrarian message with religious political parties faring lukewarm in elections by 2018. The Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (Fazl) and Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan combined mustered merely 4.85 per cent of of popular vote and 12 seats, while the Tehreek-e-Labbaik won 4.21 per cent of the popular vote, but drew a blank

Today, Pakistan is under unprecedented socio-economic stress as it barely survives on international doles and aid. It humiliatingly got out of the terror ‘Grey List’ and inflation has spiraled to an all-time high. The Afghanistan Taliban government is cocking-a-snook at one-time benefactor and facilitating militants who are bleeding Pakistan, whereas Kashmir looks infinitely more prosperous and progressive than Pakistan itself.

Religious organisations have no cause to posit other than look even more regressive and isolationist. Mainstream parties like PTI have absorbed the conflated agenda of the ‘Anti-West’, Islamism, and populist governance to coalesce a formidable constituency (even if it will be denied by the Pakistani establishment eventually).

Religious Parties Fare Poorly in 2024 National Elections

Unsurprisingly, pure religious parties have fared poorly in the 2024 elections (amongst its worst ever, in recent times). The only puritanical party to win any seats is Jamiat Ulama-e-Islam Pakistan with just 3 seats, the rest have been routed or subsumed largely in the ‘Independents’ promoted by PTI.

The generic slogan of ‘Islam, Pakistan aur Awam’ by the likes of Tehreek-e-Labbaik simply didn’t cut ice as voters wanted more clarity on restoring the economy, bringing down inflation, addressing unemployment, and curbing terrorism – herein, the solutions (if any) offered by these religious parties were either mealy-mouthed or counterproductive, as far as the masses were concerned.

Secondly, the all-powerful ‘establishment’ too felt no need to support these religious parties with such declinatory agendas, especially when it was seeking to mend fences with the ‘West’.  

Pakistan is emerging as a nation that has gone through the full circle of pandering to religiousity, paying a terrible price for the same, and now possibly reneging from its pernicious outcomes. However, matters of sovereign pride and the supposed stand against corruption have held the PTI ‘Independents’ in good stead – that they also come wrapped in religious postures adds to its winning formulaic appeal, over the more discredited options like PML-N and PPP.  

However, the ‘establishment’ will ensure that its writ is not compromised and therefore a coalition of the (un)willing be the most plausible eventuality. However, it is safe to say that Pakistan, which is the only nation to be created in the name of religion in the world, has seemingly ended its honeymoon with unrestrained religiousity as the realisation of the proverbial chickens coming home to roost looms large. The religious parties and their dark forces are currently on the backfoot (their space has been usurped by the ‘purer’ soft-religious appeal of the PTI) and the Mullahs and Maulanas are no longer the toast of the season. 

(The author is a Former Lt Governor of Andaman & Nicobar Islands and Puducherry. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)