ABSTRACT
As talks on the new Constitution plodded on into the 1950s, the everyday interaction between institutions and state authorities within Pakistan and across the border with India took the centre-stage by replacing the Constituent Assembly. The early – cloudy – engagement of local authorities with wider debates over the role of institutions, foreign policy and the consolidation of a national community frequently softened the resilience of the particular social structures that underpinned local politics and its electoral dynamics. The difficulties of the federal and the provincial government in facing up to nation- and state-building processes have been acknowledged for their ‘centripetal effects’. “There is a deep-seated jealousy and an aberrant inferiority complex” – pointed out a US attaché in a 1956 memorandum – “among many Pakistanis over India’s abilities and achievements”. 1 These feelings, coupled with the paranoid fear of an imminent fatal attack from India, paved the way for the forming of (what Jalal has described as) a state of martial rule. 2
