Pakistan's power paradox—how army became its ‘jugular vein'

The Print

15-05-2025

While Pakistan managed to fight India to a stalemate in Kashmir, despite inheriting a little more than one-third of the troops of the British Indian Army, Akbar Khan felt that the civilian leadership's decision to accept a ceasefire that left the Kashmir valley under Indian control was akin to a national surrender.
New Delhi: After the first Kashmir war between the newly born states of India and Pakistan, Major Akbar Khan, an army general of Pakistan who played a key role in the war, became utterly disillusioned by the civilian leadership.
Akbar Khan, a communist sympathiser, felt civilians are not to be trusted with the fate of the recently dreamt-up and formed country, perennially and existentially under threat from its fraternal enemy, India. Along with 12 other soldiers and a few communists, including famed poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz, he fomented a plot, the 'Rawalpindi conspiracy', to overthrow the country's first Prime Minister, Liaqat Ali Khan.
The conspiracy, once foiled, led to a trial, putting the army in the hot seat, uncomfortably. Akbar Khan, along with Faiz, was convicted and sentenced to long terms of imprisonment.
The new army chief, Ayub Khan, was furious. In any case, he had been contemptuous of politicians. 'It was a torture for him to give a decision,' he once spoke out, for instance, in a reference to the late East Pakistan chief minister Khawaja Nazimuddin while Ayub Khan was in the province, his then place of posting. Nazimuddin was later made the governor general of Pakistan upon Jinnah's death.
In less than a decade, in 1958, Ayub staged a coup and became the first military dictator of Pakistan, dashing the country's hope for democracy for years to come.
Since then, it has been considered a truism that Pakistan, from the outset, has been ill-equipped for democratic rule. Even when democratic leaders are in power in the Islamic Republic, the de facto rulers sit in Rawalpindi.
Days before the Pahalgam attack in Jammu and Kashmir, Pakistan's Army Chief Asim Munir desperately sought to impress the relevance of the two-nation theory on his countryfolk, nearly eight decades after the two-nation theory brought the two nation-states of India and Pakistan into existence.
The Pahalgam attack eventually led to a war-like situation between India and Pakistan before military operations were precariously halted for the time by a curiously brokered ceasefire.
While there are many possible explanations for Munir's actions, ThePrint explains the paradox of Pakistan's tryst with democracy. The reasons, or why, despite the shared civilisational and political histories and common genetic, cultural, and linguistic heritage of India and Pakistan, the civilian leadership of the latter remains subservient to its military rulers.
Even before Ayub Khan, as early as 1951, Ghulam Mohammad, a civil servant in Pakistan, staged a quasi-coup to become the third governor-general of Pakistan. Trained in the British 'steel frame' ethos, it was, in fact, Ghulam Mohammad, who appointed Ayub Khan, then the army chief, as the country's defence minister.
Why, to use Indian sociologist Shiv Visvanathan's memorable phrase, did Indians 'by-heart' democracy, whereas their Pakistani counterparts barely experienced it? Can the pre-Partition history of the 'Pakistani' region of 'India' answer why Pakistan became the direct successor of the colonial legacy of the civil and military bureaucracy running the country, whereas India did not? And is there something about the Aligarh Movement, which created Pakistan in a land far away from where the country's idea was conceived, i.e. Aligarh, that made the hope for democracy in Pakistan a stillborn?
Also read: Asim Malik is a fitting NSA for Pakistan—neither army nor civilian govt will challenge him
The Punjab factor
For a whole range of historical factors, the tradition of democracy was weak in the region, which later became Pakistan, much before Pakistan's creation. As political scientist Christophe Jaffrelot argued in his book, The Pakistan Paradox: Instability and Resilience, 'The whole territory of the Raj did not benefit in the same way from the colonial apprenticeship of democracy. The provinces that would later become the principal components of Pakistan [Punjab, North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), and Balochistan] were among the least solidly anchored in this tradition.'
With a tradition of bureaucracy-military nexus, Punjab, a large part of which later became the heartland of governments in Pakistan, 'embodied better than anyone this mixture of paternalism and autocriticism.'
But why was that the case?
The militarisation of Punjab did not begin with its annexation by the British in 1849. The region's precolonial history is also fraught with the military theme. As a gateway to the subcontinent, Punjab has historically had a geopolitical curse—for centuries, it was the first to be looted and invaded. From the Persians to the Greeks, the Scythians to the Huns, the Kushans to the Turks and the Mongols, most armies or empires, other than the British, entered the subcontinent through Punjab. Violence and militarism were, thus, seeped into the region's culture.
As argued by Tan Tai Yong in his book, The Garrison State: The Military, Government and Society in Colonial Punjab, 1849–1947, 'Under Ranjit Singh, the Sikh kingdom was a classic example of 'a regional Indian fiscal-military state' in which resources generated by a centralised authority were largely devoted to maintaining its military machinery.'
It was a legacy that continued after the British annexation of Punjab, when the region became the military bulwark of the Raj. Firstly, the fear of invasion from the West, especially by Tsarist Russia, the Soviets, or the Afghans, via Punjab was inherited by the British rulers. Arming the region, therefore, remained key to safeguarding the territory of the Empire.
Secondly, as one of the last regions annexed by the British, Punjab became a 'non-regulation' province, which relied more on dynamic administrative flexibility over 'rigid adherence to legislative regulations'. That is to say, Punjab remained in the hands of colonial administrators way more firmly than other provinces of the Empire, many of which experienced some legislative and political activity. This unique style of administration gave rise to a 'paternalistic despotism', unique to Punjab.
Thirdly, as the British faced the unnerving revolt of 1857, when the Bengal regiments mutinied against the Empire, they needed an alternative army to combat the mutiny. The freshly annexed territory of Punjab rose to the occasion, becoming the 'sword arm of the Raj' for decades to come, serving, thereafter, as the primary recruiting ground of the British Indian Army for more than half a century.
Such was Punjab's centrality to the British Indian Army that on the eve of the First World War, Punjabis constituted 66 percent of all cavalrymen, 45 percent of the infantry, and 87 percent of the artillery.
That led to the 'conjunction of the military, civil and political authorities into a unique civil-military regime not replicated anywhere else in British India, nor indeed the empire', says Yong. 'After Independence, it was this powerful and well-entrenched civil–military alliance that took over the state apparatus and ensured the survival of the 'moth-eaten' and fragile state of Pakistan.'
While Indian Punjab also inherited this military legacy, Pakistani Punjab became the governmental heartland of Pakistan, unlike the former, which remained on the periphery of the Indian state.
An infant movement
From before they came into being, the decades and years leading up to the Partition set the to-be nation-states on divergent paths. The differences between the Indian nationalist movement and the movement for Pakistan are, in fact, crucial to understanding why the two fraternal twin nation-states undertook fundamentally different political journeys.
'While Gandhi walked barefoot to break the Salt Law and to galvanise the masses by culturally resonant and action-oriented symbols, a pensive and restless Jinnah waited in London to occupy the commanding heights of political leadership in Delhi,' Indian historian Mushirul Hasan wrote.
That is to say, the Gandhi-led Indian nationalist movement, much older, broader, and deeply rooted in the Indian psyche than the Pakistan movement, ensured the enrichment of the Indian polity with democratic and political processes. Meanwhile, the Jinnah-led movement remained elite and isolated from public imagination until much later.
By the time of Independence, India had institutionalised the authority of the Congress leadership. More importantly, the authority did not stem from only the top rung of leaders, such as Nehru, but also from the wide tiers of local and regional leaders. As political scientist Philip Oldenburg argued in his book, India, Pakistan, and Democracy: Solving the Puzzle of Divergent Paths, the Congress, by the time it took power, had both mass and momentum.
The movement for Pakistan was, by contrast, a political infant. As late as 1945-46, Jinnah had not mobilised supporters or developed leaders in the Muslim-majority provinces that became part of Pakistan.
'The Gandhi-directed nationalist movement did indeed, in stages, become significantly a mass movement,' explained Oldenburg. 'There were literally millions of ordinary Indians who became caught up in nationalist fervour, beginning twenty-five years before Independence. The equivalent fervour emerges among most Pakistanis-to-be only two years before Independence.'
The Aligarh dream of Pakistan
It was not only a question of the nationalist movement's age but also of geography. Arguably, the most paradoxical or, indeed, tragic aspect of Pakistan is that the place where its idea germinated was far away from and never belonged to the region that became Pakistan—Aligarh.
The idea of Pakistan germinated in the minds of the Urdu-speaking elite of the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU).
Far from being just a geo-political fact, this paradox has had grave implications for Pakistan linguistically, culturally, psychologically, and politically. One of the most significant historical reasons why Pakistanis did not 'by heart' democracy the way Indians did is that the Pakistani leaders did not belong to the land they sought to rule.
To be sure, when the British left, they left all real power in the hands of civil servants, trained in the 'steel frame' ethos of the colonisers. But in India, the civil servants had been de-legitimised due to the over two-decade-long nationalist movement and had, decidedly and undisputedly, been subordinated to the nationalist leadership.
In Pakistan, the opposite happened. The leaders who emerged from the nationalism of the Aligarh movement were those who left behind their political roots in India. As Urdu-speaking elites of the United Provinces, they neither shared the culture nor language nor, until as late as 1937, the political aspirations of the people they sought to represent.
As late as the 1937 elections, the Muslim League did poorly in Punjab, Sindh, and the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP). All they had in common was Islam. But that was not enough.
In Pakistan, the Urdu-speaking AMU elites, who left most of their supporters behind in India, competed with the region's homegrown leaders. Doing so was democratically difficult.
As Jaffrelot argued, the 'Pakistan paradox' was also this—the Bengalis had numbers on their side, the muhajirs (migrants from India) had power, whereas the Punjabis had the army. Therefore, instead of taking the democratic route to power, the muhajirs attempted to consolidate their power as civil servants, thereby strengthening, and not weakening, the colonial undemocratic administrative systems.
There were no comparable figures to Pakistani civil servants such as Chaudhri Muhammad Ali, Ghulam Muhammad, and Iskandar Mirza, who received formal positions of political power, argues Oldenburg. While in India, the relationship between the nationalist elite and the Indian democracy was clear from early on, this relationship, in many ways, was stillborn in Pakistan.
A nation perennially under threat
The only politician who could have subordinated the bureaucracy and the army to democratic will was Jinnah, argues Pakistani politician Aitzaz Ahsan. But Jinnah died merely a year after Partition.
A democrat deep down, Jinnah presided over the creation of a Pakistan perennially under threat from India. Political liberalism was, therefore, hardly a priority.
Tellingly, post-independence, Jinnah chose to become the governor-general of Pakistan, and not its prime minister, in contrast to Nehru, thereby setting in place a viceregal system of rule. 'Jinnah viewed this office as similar to the British governors general who bore the title of viceroy after 1858. He thereby promoted the authoritarian and centralising dimension of the British legacy,' says Jaffrelot.
He also became the president of the Constituent Assembly, 'an unprecedented concentration of power in the history of the British dominions'. Struck by the perpetual fear of insubordination and Indian invasion, the members of the central cabinet were handpicked by the Quaid-e-Azam himself. Even then, he was authorised to overrule the cabinet's decision.
On one hand, the Muslim League was seen as the only political organisation which represented the interests of the nation. As Liaqat Ali Khan, the prime minister said, Pakistan was 'the child of the Muslim League'. Those who joined other political movements were 'enemies of Pakistan who aim(ed) to destroy the unity of the people'.
On the other hand, the Muslim League itself was crippled. In February 1948, Jinnah had decided that no party cadre could be minister in the cabinet. The 'divisive party spirit', he worried, could contaminate the state apparatus. 'This divorce took a heavy toll, as the government thus lost important anchorage points throughout the country that could have relayed its policies and been in tune with shifts in public opinion,' writes Jaffrelot.
At the same time, militarily protecting the boundaries of the new nation continued to be the major preoccupations of the country, thereby securing for the military a central place in the political imagination of Pakistan.
The fact that Pakistan, as journalist and former Pakistani Ambassador to the US Hussain Haqani says, inherited one-sixth of India's economy and one-third of its Army, also meant that the military was perpetually justifying its disproportionate size to Pakistanis.
Therefore, it is no surprise that despite Ayub's obvious contempt for civilian political leadership, on his appointment as the first native army chief of Pakistan, Liaqat Ali said, 'After nearly 200 years, a Muslim army in the sub-continent would have a Muslim Commander-in-Chief.'
He came to greatly rely on him, and though on paper, Liaqat kept the defence portfolio with himself—again underscoring the centrality of the military in the political imagination—he ended up giving Ayub more freedom than he wanted, as given his responsibilities as PM and towards the party, he could not devote his undivided attention to the Ministry of Defense.
However, even this on-paper division of powers ended as Ghulam Mohammad, a civil servant, became the governor general in 1951, and made Ayub the defence minister.
By the early 1950s then, the nexus of the civil servants and the army, which held political processes in contempt, were firmly in power in Pakistan. As Ahsan remarked, 'The question often asked is: how did the civil and military bureaucracy wrest power from the politicians at the very outset of Pakistan's creation? The answer has to be that it never relinquished it.'
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
Also read: For Pakistan Army, war is the performance of its nationhood. Ceasefire violation warns of new conflicts ahead