ABSTRACT

This chapter sketches the formative phase of Pakistani politics. The contention is that despite the historic weaknesses of Pakistani political institutions a structure of power relations emerged during this period. The ‘system’ was governed by British and Pakistani political traditions. Its internal power relations had dual roots. Its Pakistani roots revealed the primacy of paternalistic and autocratic ways of Pakistani political and economic elites. The British roots of the post-1947 Pakistani system revealed the primacy of the British-trained Pakistani civil service. After 1947 it emerged as the steel frame of the Pakistani government administration, and it played a prominent role in Pakistani political life. In what became Pakistan after 1947, the British India government had relied on its civil servants and its military officers to administer the forward areas by administrative means. The civil service avoided mass politics and it divided mass movements by manipulating key political personalities or local notables. The local allies of British authority acted in a paternalistic and an autocratic manner. They had not been groomed in the nursery of democracy and in the ideals of individual freedom, liberty and nationalism. This tradition continued to dominate the Pakistani political system after 1947. Such a political system was not unified by high ideals or national, political or moral purposes which enjoyed widespread legitimacy. In these circumstances Pakistani political personalities acted with a view to aggrandize personal power. Factional fights were used to gain power with the aid of domestic and foreign alliances.1 The habit of relying on mass politics did not exist.2 Independent Pakistan’s main political party, the Muslim League, never led or participated in mass movements prior to 1947 as did the Indian National Congress Party. Instead, there were horizontal and vertical cleavages in Pakistani politics and society at the time of independence and these revealed the limits as well the opportunities. They revealed the system boundaries in which the political elites functioned to organize the power structure and political relations.