Problems at independence

Problems at Independence

In August 1947, Pakistan was faced with a number of problems, some
immediate but others long term. The most important of these concerns was
the role played by Islam. Was Pakistan to be a secular state serving as a
homeland for Muslims of the subcontinent, or was it to be an Islamic state
governed by the sharia, in which non-Muslims would be second-class
citizens? The second question concerned the distribution of power between
the center and the provincial governments, a question that eventually led to
the dissolution of the country with the painful loss of the East Wing (East
Bengal, later East Pakistan, now Bangladesh) in 1971, an issue that remained
unresolved in the mid-1990s.

The territory of Pakistan was divided into two parts at independence,
separated by about 1,600 kilometers of Indian territory. The 1940 Lahore
Resolution had called for independent "states" in the northwest and the
northeast. This objective was changed, by a 1946 meeting of Muslim League
legislators to a call for a single state (the acronym Pakistan had no letter for
Bengal). Pakistan lacked the machinery, personnel, and equipment for a new
government. Even its capital, Karachi, was a second choice--Lahore was
rejected because it was too close to the Indian border. Pakistan's economy
seemed enviable after severing ties with India, the major market for its
commodities. And much of Punjab's electricity was imported from Indian
power stations.

Above all other concerns were the violence and the refugee problem: Muslims
were fleeing India; Hindus and Sikhs were fleeing Pakistan. Jinnah's plea to
regard religion as a personal matter, not a state matter, was ignored. No one
was prepared for the communal rioting and the mass movements of
population that followed the June 3, 1947, London announcement of imminent
independence and partition. The most conservative estimates of the
casualties were 250,000 dead and 12 million to 24 million refugees. The
actual boundaries of the two new states were not even known until August 17,
when they were announced by a commission headed by a British judge. The
boundaries-- unacceptable to both India and Pakistan--have remained.

West Pakistan lost Hindus and Sikhs. These communities had managed
much of the commercial activity of West Pakistan. The Sikhs were especially
prominent in agricultural colonies. They were replaced largely by Muslims
from India, mostly Urdu speakers from the United Provinces. Although some
people, especially Muslims from eastern Punjab (in India), settled in western
Punjab (in Pakistan), many headed for Karachi and other cities in Sindh,
where they took the jobs vacated by departing Hindus. In 1951 close to half of
the population of Pakistan's major cities were immigrants (muhajirs--refugees
from India and their descendants).

The aspirations for Pakistan that had been so important to Muslims in Muslim-
minority provinces and the goals for the new state these urban refugees had
fled to were not always compatible with those of the traditional rural people

already inhabiting Pakistan, whose support for the concept of Pakistan came
much later. Pakistani society was polarized from its inception.

The land and people west of the Indus River continued to pose problems. The
most immediate problem was the continued presence of a Congress
government in the North-West Frontier Province, a government effective at
the grassroots level and popular despite the loss of the plebiscite. Led by
Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan and his Khudai-i-Khitmagar (Servants of God, a
Congress faction), this group was often referred to as the Red Shirts after its
members' attire. Ghaffar Khan asked his followers not to participate in the July
1947 plebiscite.

Pakistan also had to establish its legitimacy against a possible challenge from
Afghanistan. Irredentist claims from Kabul were based on the ethnic unity of
tribes straddling the border; the emotional appeal of "Pakhtunistan," homeland
of the Pakhtuns, was undeniable. However, Pakistan upheld the treaties
Britain had signed with Afghanistan and refused to discuss the validity of the
Durand Line as the international border (see The Forward Policy , this ch.).
Relations with Afghanistan were hostile, resulting in the rupture of diplomatic
and commercial relations and leading Afghanistan to cast the only vote
against Pakistan's admission to the United Nations (UN) in 1947.

The India Independence Act left the princes theoretically free to accede to
either dominion. The frontier princely states of Dir, Chitral, Amb, and Hunza
acceded quickly to Pakistan while retaining substantial autonomy in internal
administration and customary law. The khan of Kalat in Balochistan declared
independence on August 15, 1947, but offered to negotiate a special
relationship with Pakistan. Other Baloch sardar (tribal chiefs) also expressed
their preference for a separate identity. Pakistan took military action against
them and the khan and brought about their accession in 1948. The state of
Bahawalpur, with a Muslim ruler and a Muslim population, acceded to
Pakistan, as did Khairpur.

The maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir, unpopular among his subjects, was
reluctant to decide on accession to either dominion. He first signed
agreements with both Pakistan and India that would provide for the continued
flow of people and goods to Kashmir--as it is usually called--from both
dominions. Alarmed by reports of oppression of fellow Muslims in Kashmir,
armed groups from the North-West Frontier Province entered the maharaja's
territory. The ruler requested military assistance from India but had to sign
documents acceding to India before that country would provide aid in October
1947.

The government of Pakistan refused to recognize the accession and
denounced it as a fraud even though the Indian government announced that it
would require an expression of the people's will through a plebiscite after the
invaders were driven back. Pakistan launched an active military and
diplomatic campaign to undo the accession. The UN Security Council
eventually brought about a cease-fire between Pakistani and Indian troops,
which took place on January 1, 1949, thus ending the first Indo- Pakistani

War, and directed that a plebiscite be held. The cease- fire agreement
formalized the military status quo, leaving about 30 percent of Kashmir under
Pakistani control (see India , ch. 4; The Formation of Pakistan , ch. 5).

Partition and its accompanying confusion also brought severe economic
challenges to the two newly created and antagonistic countries. The partition
plan ignored the principles of complementarity. West Pakistan, for example,
traditionally produced more wheat than it consumed and had supplied the
deficit areas in India. Cotton grown in West Pakistan was used in mills in
Bombay and other west Indian cities. Commodities such as coal and sugar
were in short supply in Pakistan--they had traditionally come from areas now
part of India. Furthermore, Pakistan faced logistic problems for its commercial
transportation because of the four major ports in British India, it was awarded
only Karachi. But the problem that proved most intractable was defining
relations between the two wings of Pakistan, which had had little economic
exchange before partition.

The two dominions decided to allow free movement of goods, persons, and
capital for one year after independence, but this agreement broke down. In
November 1947, Pakistan levied export duties on jute; India retaliated with
export duties of its own. The trade war reached a crisis in September 1949
when Britain devalued the pound, to which both the Pakistani rupee and the
Indian rupee were pegged. India followed Britain's lead, but Pakistan did not,
so India severed trade relations with Pakistan. The outbreak of the Korean
War (1950-53) and the consequent price rises in jute, leather, cotton, and
wool as a result of wartime needs, saved the economy of Pakistan. New
trading relationships were formed, and the construction of cotton and jute mills
in Pakistan was quickly undertaken. Although India and Pakistan resumed
trade in 1951, both the volume and the value of trade steadily declined; the
two countries ignored bilateral trade for the most part and developed the new
international trade links they had made.

The assets of British India were divided in the ratio of seventeen for India to
five for Pakistan by decision of the Viceroy's Council in June 1947. Division
was difficult to implement, however, and Pakistan complained of
nondeliveries. A financial agreement was reached in December 1948, but the
actual settlement of financial and other disputes continued until 1960 (see
Structure of the Economy , ch. 3).

Division of the all-India services of the Indian Civil Service and the Indian
Police Service was also difficult. Only 101 out of a total of 1,157 Indian
officers were Muslim. Among these Muslim officers, ninety-five officers opted
for Pakistan; they were joined by one Christian, eleven Muslim military officers
transferring to civilian service, and fifty Britons, for a total of 157. But only
twenty of them had had more than fifteen years of service, and more than half
had had fewer than ten years. These men formed the core of the Civil Service
of Pakistan, which became one of the most elite and privileged bureaucracies
in the world. Members of the Civil Service of Pakistan were the architects of
the administrative, judicial, and diplomatic services. They proved
indispensable in running the government machinery during Pakistan's first two

decades, and their contributions to government policy and economics were
profound during the era of Mohammad Ayub Khan. The Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto
government in the 1970s precipitated a major reorganization and reorientation
of the bureaucracy, however, which resulted in a noticeable decline in both
the morale and the standards of the bureaucracy (see Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and
a New Constitutional System; Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, 1971-77 , ch. 4).

Data as of April 1994

Problems at independence

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Problems at independence