History of Pakistan
Both a nuclear power and important cricketing nation, Pakistan has existed as an independent country for little more than 60 years, but has been playing an important role in the historical epic of the Indian subcontinent for millennia. It has been the birthplace of the world’s first urban civilisation, home to one of the great flowerings of Buddhism, and cornerstone of the Mughal empire. Born in 1947 as a homeland for Muslims, it has been a frontline state in the Cold War and is currently a key location in the struggle against violent Islamism. Understanding Pakistan’s past is essential to understanding its future trajectory.
Early civilisations
When the Europeans were dressed in animal skins and the USA was known only to the native Indian tribes, the men and women who lived on the land that is now Pakistan were part of one of the most sophisticated societies on earth. The ancient Egyptians, who lived around the same time, may have been better at building pyramids, but when it came to constructing cities, the Indus people were well ahead.
Nothing was known of the Indus civilisation until the 1920s, when excavations at Harappa and Moenjodaro revealed cities built of brick. Subsequent research has shown that the Indus people flourished around 2500–1500 BC.They had a population of roughly five million and a sophisticated bureaucracy with standardised systems for weights and brick sizes. While the evidence is sketchy, many scholars believe that a priestly elite governed the Indus people.
The Indus civilisation probably declined due to the drying of the Indus Valley. There followed centuries of economic decline and foreign conquest. The first to arrive were the Aryans, whose Vedic religion laid the basis for Hinduism as it is practised today. They were followed by Alexander the Great. When you travel in northern Pakistan and, in particular, places such as the Kalasha valleys, you may notice people with relatively pale skin, fair hair and blue eyes. According to popular theory these are the descendants of Alexander the Great’s troops.
After Alexander, a series of imperial powers flexed their muscles in South Asia. The Mauryas were notable for controlling virtually all the subcontinent and promoting Buddhism. Taxila, one of Pakistan’s best-preserved Buddhist sites, was founded by the Mauryans as a university. The Kushans followed close on the Mauryans’ heels, entering from Afghanistan. They took the Greek culture left behind by Alexander’s descendants and fused it with the art of India to produce their sublime Gandharan art. For the first three centuries AD, the Kushans held sway from Taxila to Kabul and left behind a host of ruins, particularly in the Peshawar and Swat Valleys.
In AD 711 an Arab general, Mohammed bin Qasim, arrived in Sindh. He and his 6000 cavalrymen were to have a major impact because they brought with them the religion of Islam. After the Arabs had made inroads from the south, in the 11th century the Turkish rulers of Afghanistan, led by Mahmud of Ghazni, brought the same message of Islam from the north. Muslims were then established as the ruling class, although it was not until the arrival of the Mughal dynasty that there was a truly formidable Islamic government able to leave a lasting architectural and cultural impression.
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The mughals
The Mughals were the undisputed masters of the subcontinent through the 16th and 17th centuries. Their empire was one of only three periods in history during which the subcontinent has come under sustained, unified rule. (The others to pull off this feat were the Mauryas and the British.) The first Mughal emperor, Babur, used the traditional route to invade: from Central Asia. Having taken Kabul he conquered Delhi in 1526. The dynasty he founded endured for more than three centuries. The other great Mughal emperors included Akbar (1556–1605), Shah Jahan (1627–58) and Aurangzeb (1658–1707). Because they were Muslims, the Mughals remain a source of great pride in Pakistan. Under Akbar and his son Jehangir, Lahore was the capital of the empire, and remains home to some of the Muhgals’ greatest architectural legacies, including the Badshahi Mosque, the Lahore Fort and Jehangir’s Tomb. All combine the Mughals’ skill for working on a grand scale and their great use of arches, domes, carvings and towers.
While the Mughals are today most often celebrated for their artistic legacy, they were also excellent administrators who managed to concentrate power in the central government. Their sophisticated bureaucratic systems became particularly highly developed under Akbar. He appointed officials on the basis of merit rather than family rank. He also prevented the establishment of rival power bases by paying loyal officials in cash rather than land. While many of the Mughal rulers were hostile to their Hindu subjects, Akbar took a different view. He saw that the number of Hindus in India was too great to subjugate. Instead, he integrated them into his empire and allowed Hindus to reach senior positions in the government and the military.
Like imperial powers before and after them, the Mughals became overstretched. By the time of Aurangzeb’s death, their empire had become so big it was largely ungovernable. Slowly but steadily the Mughals’ power ebbed away. Their administrative systems were weakened by debilitating and very violent succession struggles and by the decadence of court life. Local powerbrokers in the provinces seized their opportunity and, complaining of Muslim domination and too many taxes, mounted a series of armed rebellions. Faced with these challenges, the Mughals increasingly became rulers only in name. Technically, though, the Mughal empire existed right up until 1857, when the British deposed the 19th and last Mughal ruler, Bahadur Shah II.
The birth of pakistan
Two men are generally credited with having secured the existence of Pakistan. The first was Allama Mohammed Iqbal, a poet and philosopher from Lahore. Iqbal proposed the creation of a separate Muslim state on those parts of the subcontinent where there was a Muslim majority.
While Iqbal articulated the demand for a Muslim state, it took Mohammed Ali Jinnah to put it into practice. The British were initially reluctant to divide the subcontinent, but through a mixture of brilliant advocacy skills and sheer obstinacy Jinnah got his way. Jinnah is a universally revered figure in Pakistan. You will see his image and his name depicted on buildings all over the country. He is often referred to as Quaid-i-Azam or the Quaid (Leader of the People or Great Leader).
At the turn of the century the Hindus and Muslims had been united in their struggle against the British. The Indian National Congress, which was formed in 1885 to put demands to the British, included members from both faiths. Nevertheless, in 1906 the Muslims founded another political organisation, the All-India Muslim League, ‘to protect and advance the political rights of the Muslims of India and respectfully represent their needs and aspirations to the Government’.
For a time the emphasis remained on unity. In 1916 Congress and the Muslim League agreed to the Lucknow Pact, under which they were to campaign for constitutional reform together. After the British massacred a crowd of unarmed protestors at Amritsar in 1919, the demands for greater self-governance turned into an insistence on full independence. The British responded with limited concessions, increasing the number of Indians in the administration and in self-governing institutions.
The Indian leaders could see that they were making progress. But as an independent India became a realistic prospect, tensions between the Muslims and Hindus grew. Mohammed Iqbal first raised the issue of a separate Muslim homeland in 1930. He argued that India was so diverse that a unitary form of government was inconceivable. Religion rather than territory, he said, should be the foundation of national aspirations. It was the first coherent expression of the ‘two-nation theory’ to which Pakistan still adheres.
Iqbal gave no name to his proposed nation. That was done by a student at Cambridge University, Chaudhry Rahmat Ali, who suggested it be called Pakistan. Taken as one word Pakistan means ‘Land of the Spiritually Clean and Pure’. But it was also a sort of acronym standing for Punjab, Afghania (North-West Frontier Province), Kashmir, Sindh and Balochistan.
By the late 1930s, Jinnah, who had previously argued for Hindu-Muslim unity, was convinced of the case for Pakistan. At its annual session in Lahore on 23 March 1940, the Muslim League formally demanded that the Muslim majority areas in northwestern and northeastern India should be autonomous and sovereign. With Congress strongly opposed, it was an issue only London could resolve. The man given the task was Lord Louis Mountbatten, who was appointed Viceroy of India in 1947. Shortly after arriving in Delhi he became convinced that the demand for Pakistan would not go away and that, despite all its objections, Congress would accept it as the price for independence.
Creating two new independent nations out of one imperial possession was not easy. Assets were divided, and a boundary commission appointed to demarcate frontiers. Cyril Radcliffe, a civil servant who had never visited India, bisected the complicated and deeply connected border areas in little over a month. British troops were evacuated and the military was restructured into two forces. Civil servants were given the choice of joining either country.
As the moment of Independence approached, huge numbers of people went on the move. Hindus, fearful of living in the new Pakistan, headed east. So too did the Sikhs. In the period before the British extended their influence to Punjab and Kashmir, the Sikhs had been the dominant power, controlling territory right up to the Afghan border. By 1849 the British military had defeated them and now, with Partition looming, they decided to move and make their future in India. The Muslims, meanwhile, were also leaving their villages and making for their new homeland.
It was the largest mass migration in modern times. Around eight million people gave up their jobs, homes and communities. Most travelled on foot or by train and in doing so risked their lives. Many never made it, becoming victims of the frenzied violence triggered by Partition. The scale of the killing was terrible: it’s estimated that up to a million people were butchered in communal violence. Trains full of Muslims, fleeing westwards, were held up and slaughtered by Hindu and Sikh mobs. Hindus and Sikhs fleeing to the east suffered the same fate. For those who crossed the rivers of blood that separated the two new nations and survived, the feeling of relief was intense. And on 14 August 1947, Pakistan and India achieved independence.
While the new leaders in India were able to pick up where the British left off, their counterparts in Pakistan had to build state institutions from scratch. The task was made all the more difficult because the one man in Pakistan who could command unquestioning loyalty – Jinnah – died 13 months after Independence. His successors were both incompetent and corrupt. It took them nine years to pass Pakistan’s first constitution. When General Ayub Khan took over in a coup in 1958, most Pakistanis were relieved that the politicians were being kicked out of office.
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