On the outskirts of the city, close to the Indian border, relics of the war survive till today. Three layers of mounds were constructed to halt the progression of Indian tanks, in the middle of which were camouflaged posts, still numbered and well maintained. Several villages along the border were occupied by advancing Indian forces, but Lahore was saved. Despite being caught off guard and outnumbered, the Pakistani army managed to keep the Indian forces away from the city.
Ayub Khan, who had by now become disillusioned by his ambitious foreign minister, took it upon himself to seek peace. He met with Indian Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri in Tashkent where, snubbing Bhutto, he signed the Tashkent Declaration, a ceasefire deal, on 10 January 1966. Humiliated, Bhutto returned to Pakistan perhaps having made up his mind to overthrow the powerful field marshal. He called Ayub a coward and accused him of having agreed to ceasefire so close to victory. A battle he had lost on the ground, he managed to win through clever rhetoric. Ironically, using the rhetoric that Bhutto had crafted then, the Pakistani establishment continues to project the war of 1965 as a victory even today.
Situated within the locality of Ichra, not far from Shadman Chowk, where Nawab Mohammad Kasuri was shot, is the house of Maulana Maududi, the cleric who founded the Jama’at-e-Islami. Once opposed to the creation of Pakistan, the Jamaat led by Maududi started demanding that Islamic law be introduced in the country after its creation. Maududi regarded Bhutto’s leftist rhetoric as a threat to his Islamic agenda. Bhutto too returned the compliment, with his criticism often directed against Maududi in his speeches.
After almost six years in power, Bhutto’s popularity was not what it had been in the 1970 election. However, the Opposition was divided and the PPP would have easily swept the elections. Bhutto’s strongest rival, Wali Khan, was jailed and barred from campaigning. Bhutto did not just want to win the elections, though. He wanted to win by a landslide, with a two-thirds majority, so he could bring about the constitutional changes he wanted.34 This included jettisoning the parliamentary system, with all its checks and balances, in favour of a presidential system that would give him even more power.
To his surprise, several Opposition parties came together to form a united front against the PPP, under the banner of the Pakistan National Alliance (PNA). It was an unlikely coalition, with leftists joining hands with rightists to overthrow the ‘tyranny’ of Bhutto. Despite a strong opposition, the PPP was still able to win the elections by a landslide, a verdict the PNA refused to accept. Allegations of rigging spread like wildfire, with street protests bringing life to a halt in Lahore and Karachi.
From March 1977, when the elections were held, till July 1977, chaos reigned on the streets of Pakistan’s cities. In Lahore, the Jama’at-e-Islami led the charge. Its highly organized cadres of young and passionate boys clashed regularly with state authorities. Both the Opposition and the government refused to budge and conditions continued to worsen. Eventually, Bhutto decided to concede to certain demands of the PNA. At the end of April 1977, he arrived at Ichra to meet Maududi in his home. Two days after the meeting, alcohol, gambling, nightclubs, cinemas and other ‘anti-Muslim’ activities were banned. Lahore was directing the country towards ‘Islamization’, which would be taken up full throttle by Zia.
There is reason to believe that the Opposition and the government were heading towards a settlement at the start of July.35 Rioting, protests and state brutality, which turned Lahore and other major cities of the country into battlegrounds, had taken their toll on the resolve of both sides and they were now looking for a way out. General Zia, the army chief, was aware of this. On 4 July, the prime minister conducted a meeting with his trusted cabinet members which included Zia and declared that the ‘deadlock’ would break the next day.36 The same night, Bhutto and his family were taken into ‘protected custody’ by General Zia and martial law was declared.
Similar to the fate of Mujib-ur-Rehman, who, along with members of his family, was assassinated during a coup d’état, Zia too would have liked his soldiers to kill Bhutto on the morning of 5 July. However, Bhutto astutely cooperated and urged his family members to do the same. The soldiers were provided with no reason to assassinate the prime minister. The tedious task of finding a reason to assassinate his former boss came to Zia. Former allies of Bhutto were interrogated. Old files revisited and all orders from the prime minister’s office carefully studied. A pretext was required and it was eventually found in this almost forgotten police report, in which Bhutto had been accused of conspiring to murder Ahmad Raza Khan Kasuri on the night of 9 November 1974.
Disappointed when Lahore High Court granted bail to Bhutto, Zia took it upon himself to handle the case. Bhutto was arrested once again, to be tried by a military court. However, soon after, Zia allowed the case to be heard in Lahore High Court, where he had handpicked a judge who had a personal grudge against the former prime minister. By referring the case directly to the high court instead of the civil court, the cunning military dictator had deprived Bhutto of one step of appeal. The case was heard and Bhutto was found guilty. In Lahore, a city that had once embraced Bhutto, his death warrant had now been issued.
The judgment was split 4–3, with all Punjabi judges upholding the penalty and non-Punjabi judges disagreeing with it. Punjab was standing behind the military establishment. Bhutto spent the last days of his life in Rawalpindi Jail, where he was eventually executed. The judgment was appealed in the Supreme Court which rejected it and upheld Lahore High Court’s decision.
Bhutto, sitting in his cell awaiting the Supreme Court’s decision, must have realized that the judgment would be against him. It was in jail that he made his last political move which was to make him immortal in a way. He took his cue from other famous political prisoners, particularly Jawaharlal Nehru, someone he had deeply admired since his youth.37
Fashioning his writing on a pattern similar to Nehru’s letters to his daughter from jail, later published as Glimpses of World History, Bhutto wrote to his political successor, Benazir, encouraging her to continue his incomplete political journey. This powerful letter written to a future prime minister from death row has today become part of history. Bhutto reiterated that he would prefer dying at the hands of the military; he would rather live in history. His writings from jail, including this letter, were to serve this particular purpose. His last bout of rhetoric made him immortal—a giant of a politician, whom every politician today wants to emulate. Bhutto, as he had wished, managed to stay alive in history.
In the company of tall plazas that house shopping malls and offices, this spacious single-storey house stands out like an anomaly. A vast garden with old trees spreads out across its front yard; the house itself with its chipping paint shows signs of neglect. The boundary wall is low and the gate see-through, reminiscent of a time when the city was much safer. Mubashir Hassan, the occupant of the house, it seems, still wants to live in that city of yore.
This historic house is located on one of the most important roads of the city, Main Boulevard, a long, signal-free stretch running through Gulberg. A modern suburb constructed in the 1960s, Gulberg, with its large bungalows, became home to the gentry. Its distance from the city centre made it a calm island in the chaos of Lahore. Today, however, it serves as the city centre, while still retaining its prestigious status. Even as new plazas emerge from the earth all across Gulberg, old bungalows with tall pillars, high walls and spacious gardens, constructed in a colonial architectural tradition, continue to exist.
In the middle of this locality, an anomaly exists almost like an unpleasant truth, in the form of a town known as Guru Mangat. This fourteenth-century town gets its name from a devotee of Guru Hargobind who constructed a gurdwara here to commemorate the Guru’s presence at the spot as he passed through the city.38 There are at least two other gurdwaras in Lahore that commemorate the same trip, all marking the different halting spots of the Guru.
Just off Mall Road, the ultimate symbol of colonial Lahore, is Temple Road whi
ch passes through the locality of Mozang, another small town that dates back to the sixteenth century, incorporated into the metropolis of Lahore.39 Temple Road derives its name from another Gurdwara of Hargobind, constructed to commemorate his visit to the locality.
About 12 kilometres from here, in the middle of the village of Amar Sidhu, now part of Lahore’s prestigious DHA, there is another gurdwara that commemorates the Guru’s stop at the locality. Guru Mangat lies in the middle of these two towns. Slowly, as the city of Lahore spilled beyond its old borders and looked hungrily outwards at the agricultural land surrounding it, Guru Mangat too made way for sprawling postcolonial bungalows. Today, the area undergoes another transition as the bungalows cede ground to the shining plazas.
On 30 November 1967, after Bhutto had acquired nationwide popularity by defying Ayub Khan, a public convention was organized on the sprawling lawns of Mubashir Hassan’s home in the heart of Gulberg. The PPP, one of the largest and most important political parties in the country, was formed here. With Islamic socialism as its manifesto, the party was a unique amalgamation of political opinions, with its members ranging from committed communists to feudal lords and spiritual leaders. In the years to come, these contradictions were laid bare as Bhutto rushed through half-hearted land reforms and nationalization, while at the same time unleashing the state machinery on protesting labourers.
Right from the beginning, the city of Lahore was at the centre of Bhutto’s political movement. In June 1966, Bhutto resigned from the cabinet and travelled to Lahore, where, at the historic railway station, he was greeted by a sea of supporters, the largest show of support Bhutto had ever had till that point.40 Lahore was also home to several colleges and universities, with their political students groups, many of which had leftist leanings and were charmed by the socialist rhetoric of Bhutto. They became his most passionate supporters. With Lahore safely behind him, Bhutto knew he could challenge the military establishment. He would go on to speak in front of gigantic crowds in the city, vying in numbers with gatherings in the largest city of Pakistan, Bhutto’s adopted home town, Karachi.
Bhutto’s show of strength in Lahore and Karachi leading to the elections of 1970 were to translate into a landslide victory in Punjab and Sindh, making the PPP the strongest party in the western wing. Even in the 1977 elections, the PPP remained dominant in these two provinces, which easily allowed it to dominate the federation.
There are several accomplishments attributed to Bhutto’s years in power—the Constitution, the country’s nuclear programme, democratization of politics and foreign policy successes being a few of them. However, one of the least talked about was the forging of a uniquely Pakistani identity. Despite his demonization by the subsequent military establishment and his political opponents, his vision of a Pakistani identity, inspired by an Islamic ethos, remains a central feature of the military establishment’s perception of Pakistani identity as well.
Fresh from a civil war after the country’s dismemberment, Bhutto felt it was imperative to carve a national identity, especially with Indira Gandhi proclaiming the death of the ‘Two-Nation Theory’—the raison d’être of Pakistan. Despite his secular views, religious identity acquired a stronger presence in Bhutto’s conception of national identity. His rhetoric and sloganeering against India contained elements of this, where he presented Pakistan as a distinct Islamic civilization in perpetual conflict with its Hindu neighbour.
It was during his tenure that history as a subject was replaced with Pakistan studies in schools to inculcate a sense of national identity. The country’s Hindu past was removed from the curriculum and history was reinterpreted to project Islamic rulers as heroes and Hindus as demons in order to justify the creation of Pakistan. A civilizational framework, similar to Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations, was used to study the historical relationship between Hindus and Muslims, presented as full of antagonism, as two distinct groups forced to live together despite irreconcilable differences. This extremely biased subject which has experienced several revisions over the years is one of the most important legacies of Bhutto.
Perhaps taking a cue from Nehru’s India, Bhutto worked actively to promote the country’s culture, through film, theatre, books and music. He established government institutes to promote art and culture rooted in an Islamic spirit. The boundaries between culture, religion and national identity became blurred. Even today, several of these institutes survive, actively seeking to promote a Pakistani identity, an identity they are trained to see through a monolithic lens, which since Bhutto’s time has become even narrower.
Bhutto’s mortal enemy, Zia, did not deviate much from the nationalist agenda the former had set for the state. His Islamization policies and an attempt, particularly during the Afghan War, to project himself as the leader of the Islamic world, were adopted from his predecessor. All the major politicians of the country, including Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan, in more ways than one, share this nationalistic vision. Almost three decades after the creation of Pakistan, Bhutto moulded Jinnah’s vision of Pakistan in a way that the country continues to internalize till today.
However, today it is Zia more than Bhutto who is held responsible for this narrow interpretation of the Pakistani identity. The blame for the intolerance and violence that emerge from a monolithic view of national identity is laid at his doorstep as opposed to that of Bhutto, the original architect of this vision. Bhutto, when compared to Zia, is almost seen as a saint, his ‘martyrdom’ making him immortal, beyond any criticism. Zia becomes a demon, to be blamed for every ill the country faces today. The nuance of history is lost in this polarization of political characters. The continuity of vision and policy from Bhutto to Zia is overlooked.
You could well say that in the popular imagination of Pakistan, Bhutto is Ram, while Zia is Ravana.
3
TO THE LEFT, NO RIGHT
I stopped my car in front of a tall metal gate and honked. The walls were several feet high. There was no chance of anyone getting in unnoticed. A small window in the gate opened and a pair of eyes peeped out. A young man with a long beard looked at me with inquisitive eyes. ‘I want to go to Brigadier Saeed’s house,’ I told him. He asked for my identity card, and the gate of Dar-us-Salam opened.
The irony of the name of this community was not lost on me. Dar-us-Salam means an abode of peace but, in Islamic terminology, it also refers to a place where Muslims are free to practise their religion. Located in the heart of urban, middle-class Lahore, flanked by Muslim Town and Garden Town, is a small community of a few dozen houses, all belonging to members of the persecuted Ahmadiyya community.
Till a few years ago, before members of the community were hunted down in the streets of Pakistan, before their houses and residential communities were ransacked at the slightest ‘provocation’, security at Dar-us-Salam was lax. It was like any other housing society without the barbed wire, surveillance cameras, metal gates and vigilant security guards.
Lahore, however, is a changed city. This is a city that has tasted blood and would not settle for less. This is a city pushed beyond the precipice of sanity, consumed by its own paranoia. Graffiti inciting acts of hatred against members of the community does not even raise eyebrows any more. The report of an Ahmadi killed in the city is one more addition to a pile of several such stories. Often, these stories appear unexplained. There is no need to explain why an Ahmadi was shot. There is no public condemnation, no word of consolation from the political elite. No one dare humanize them any more.
On 28 May 2010, the city of Lahore saw one of its worst massacres. Two Ahmadiyya ‘places of worship’ were attacked by the Punjab Wing of the Tehrik-i-Taliban. According to the laws of the country it would be illegal to call them mosques. More than eighty people were killed and several more injured.1 A few days later, the victims were attacked once again at Jinnah Hospital where they had been taken after the incident.
Salman Taseer, then serving as the governor of Punjab, was the only prominent g
overnment official to visit the leaders of the community after the attack. He was accused of being an Ahmadi agent and a threat to religion.2 Less than a year later, he was assassinated by his bodyguard for his support to a Christian woman accused of blasphemy. Nawaz Sharif would not dare to meet members of the community, but condemned the incident, calling it an attack on Ahmadi brothers. He too was severely criticized. ‘How can Ahmadis be our brothers?’ he was asked. He eventually had to retract his statement.3 Whereas a majority of the citizens of the city would have condemned the brutal assassination of members of the community, opposition to Taseer and Sharif made it clear that they shared with the Tehrik-i-Taliban a pathological hatred towards Ahmadis.
The Ahmadiyya movement was founded by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, born on 13 February 1835 at Qadian, a village in the district of Gurdaspur. His forefathers had been given a large jagir in the village by Babur, founder of the Mughal Empire. They temporarily lost favour during the Sikh era, when their properties were taken away and they were forced to move out of Qadian. However, towards the end of his rule, Ranjit Singh re-established Mirza Ghulam Ahmad’s family in Qadian and his father was given a high post in the army. During the colonial regime, they lost part of their jagir but continued receiving a pension from the British state.4 Mirza Ghulam Ahmad was a religious scholar and author who wrote numerous books and articles.
In many ways, the Ahmadiyya movement was a product of its time. The colonial state had spread its tentacles all across Punjab. Christian missionaries had a strong presence in the cities and towns through their schools, colleges and hospitals, and were free to proselytize in remote villages. Several marginalized members of the community, particularly those who belonged to the lowest rungs of the Hindu caste hierarchy, found an attractive escape in a new, ‘egalitarian’ religion.
Both Hindus and Muslims reacted to this in their own way. The Arya Samaj, founded in Lahore in 1877, reacting to the Christian missionaries, criticized some elements of ‘Hindu religion’ and offered a rationalist interpretation of the Vedas. They found much support in the province. Mirza Ghulam Ahmad saw the Arya Samaj movement and the activities of Christian missionaries in Punjab as a threat to Islam, which led him to begin his own movement for Islamic revivalism. His was meant to be an intellectual response to the ideological threat posed by the other two proselytizing movements.5 It was similar to several Islamic revivalist movements launched in colonial India that saw the dying influence of Muslims in the political arena as a lack of Islamic religiosity.
Imagining Lahore Page 7