Strains in Pakistan
By SIR is
THE ills which religion, in Lucretius's sense, can be used to introduce are shown in the recent anti-Ahmadiyya riots in Lahore and Karachi. The Ahmadiyyas, apart from the fact that they recognise a latter-day saint or Messiah not recognised by Muslims generally, are on general grounds exemplary Muslims; and Qadian, their base in the Gurdaspur district of the Punjab, has nurtured many honest, fair-minded and competent Pakistanis of whom Chaudhri Mohammed Zafrullah, the present Minister for Foreign Affairs, is an out- standing example. Probably no one has done more than he to establish Pakistan as a power in the United Nations and before the world.
It is not clear why the Ahrars have set this witch-hunt on foot, but it is the manner of that association to show fanatical tendencies when they find occasion. Why this particular occasion was chosen we may discover in time, but it is a fair assumption on past form that the motive is closer akin to political faction than to pure faith. It- is bad for Pakistan that such disturbances should occur, but good that the Govern- ment, once the dangers were recognised, took strong action to control the situation. In any event, from this and many other instances, it is clear that there is nothing totalitarian about the Pakistan Government.
There has been much speculation recently about the con- stitution of Pakistan. The basic principles have not yet been settled, nor can the authorities be blamed for their determina- tion to go slow. Many conflicting interests have to be reconciled. The most obvious points of controversy are first the division of representation and voting-power between the components, in particular whether East Bengal's population should be given its full face-value in the calculation, and secondly how far insistence on an all-pervasive spirit of " Islamic democracy " should be assumed to justify the intro- duction of mullahs and maidris as expert witnesses with powers of intervention, when in their opinion any proposed executive or legislative act can be interpreted as offending against the principles of Islam. Such authorised intervention does not com- mend itself to Western jurisprudence, nor on the whole do Pakistanis who are influenced by Western culture, that is to say nearly all those who have had any serious schooling, support the idea.
The fact that East Pakistan and West Pakistan are separated by so many hundreds of miles of Indian territory has caught the popular imagination, and the question is often put as to how it works. This separation, no doubt, raises problems of government, especially of personal contact and communication, but these have been handled successfully. It must be remembered that the people of East Pakistan, includ- ing many non-Muslims, are as good Pakistanis as their brothers in the West, and that consequently irredentism in West Bengal, if any still subsists apart from dreamland, is a lost cause. But at the same time East Bengal is still a more popular name than East Pakistan, and, as has been made clear on more than- one occasion in the last few years, the people are attached to their language and to their identity as Bengalis, and are not content to become a mere appendage of Karachi and Lahore.
Circumstances dictate that Urdu shall be the State language of Pakistan, and Bengalis who wish to join the central services, including, of course, the defence services, or to take any part in the affairs of Pakistan as a whole, will have to learn Urdu. In Dacca there are families now who have resided there for generations, and speak Urdu in preference to Bengali. ,, Bengali in East Pakistan will no doubt, in process of time, divest itself of the Sanskrit polish administered to it in the last hundred years, and, with the readmission of Arabic and Persian words, will become progressively nearer to Urdu— as Punjabi and Urdu are growing together in the West Punjab.
* Governor of East Bengal (part of Pakistan), 1947-50. But meantime the mother tongue for the East Pakistanis is and will remain Bengali; and, while this is understood and while in other respects the advantages accruing to the East and West are as evenly balanced as they are at present, there need be nothing beyond a more or less healthy rivalry between the two divisions of the State.
It has been said that the only two legacies from Great Britain to Pakistan which can be described as wholly good are the army, including the navy and air force, and the Punjab irrigation-system. There is not the space here for worthwhile comment on the first. Let it be said merely that the armed forces of Pakistan are worthy of their predecessors; with the rider that this implies a standard which any troops in the world would be proud to surpass. On the partition of the sub-con- tinent the old Indian Army had to be partitioned- too, a complicated and in some respects a heartbreaking task.
But to divide an irrigation-system is just a sheer impossibility. The sources or upper waters of the five rivers of the Punjab and of the Indus, and some of the barrages controlling the river-waters, are in India or available to India. Vast areas of fertile land in the Punjab, Sind and elsewhere, if deprived of the water earmarked for its distributaries and watercourses, must in a few seasons revert to desert while the occupants starve. When the available water of the whole system was dispensed on a well-established plan, based on many years' experience, with a very high degree of success, complaints that such and such a distributary was being starved for water at the most critical time, or that water never reached the tail of such and such a watercourse, were not uncommon. Fights between parties of irrigators, one charging the other with taking water irregularly, were frequent. Is it then to be wondered at that in the present circumstances Pakistan, not without good evidence, charges India with taking and using water really due to Pakistan ?
The World Bank in 1951 offered its good offices in settlement of this dispute, and has made a proposal involving joint planning by the two States in concert. This is a most valuable suggestion. the adoption of which would inevitably have far- reaching effects extending over other fields. If there could be an effective board to develop and regulate irrigation from the Indus basin as a whole for the joint benefit of India and West Pakistan, why should there not also come to life that fond dream of the steamship companies in the basins of the Ganges, the Brahmaputra and the Meghna in East Bengal and West Bengal and Assam—a rivers-control board similar to the board in operation on the Rhine ? Such a board would not only much facilitate the transport of goods and passengers by that complex system of water-ways, but could also deal comprehensively with schemes of river-control and hydro- electric development on a large scale.
The benefits material and pyschological of any such arrangement in either locality or in both would be immense. Indeed if the board for the joint administration of the waters of the Indus basin ever came to be seriously contemplated, would not its activities need logically to be extended (horresco referens) to Jammu and Kashmir '? That might perhaps offer something of a solvent to the most serious of existing tensions.
The fact that the Kashmir dispute has not been settled long ago is one of the sticks with which quite a number of Pakistanis like to beat the British Government. Another is the old story that the boundary award in 1947 was unduly favourable to India in at least one district; another that Pakistan never received from India her due share of military equipment,---and this cannot be denied. It has, of course, been impossible for Great Britain to impose a settlement on India and Pakistan of the, Kashmir or any other dispute since August 15th, 1947. Moreover, it is undoubtedly true that public opinion in Britain has throughout shown every sympathy with. and admiration for, Pakistaniand her outstanding achievements. But a feeling of dissatisfaction remains, reinforced latterly by suspicions that British business has shown no great enthusiasm for supplying Pakistan with the goods she requires—particularly electrical machinery. Here British firms have had their own difficulties to contend with: But it is sad that such an impression has got abroad.
There is much goodwill for Britain at all levels in Pakistan, and Britain's goodwill for Pakistan has, in fact, been clearly enough demonstrated, one might suppose, in a variety of ways. If, as seems to be the case, something more is needed, it is not easy to say in what way the need can be met. But it is due to Pakistan, and the manner in which she has grappled with one set of troubles after another, that no effort should be spared by the British Government and people to obtain for her a fair deal in all matters affecting the present welfare and future prospects of the State.
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