The ability to remove unpopular rulers without bloodshed and debating alternative visions of what is good for the country is the beauty of constitutional democracy. Irrespective of the outcome of the debate, the real victor in each political contest is the process that allows disagreement.

The authoritarian mindset is very different. It assumes that there is only one valid course that serves the interest of the state and those advocating an alternative course can only be deemed as enemies of the state. But the state and nation are two different concepts. Before independence, the state in what is today Pakistan, India and Bangladesh was controlled by a foreign nation, the British. The aspirations of the nation were articulated by Gandhi and Jinnah who wanted to radically alter the state by expelling its British masters.

From the point of view of the British state, leaders of the independence movements were acting against the national interest, but in the nation’s opinion they were the only true voice of the nation’s interest.

In case of Pakistan, representative political leaders were eliminated from the process of post-Independence governance by the permanent employees of the state machinery. But the first generation of Pakistan’s generals, civil servants and intelligence officials had joined the service of the British-run state and, therefore, could not be legitimate definers of the interest of an independent Pakistani nation.

In the eyes of the British generation of Pakistan’s civil and military leaders, the state’s interests were no different after independence than they were before. Representatives of the people, reflecting different visions of Pakistan, saw national interest very differently from the narrow definitions offered by those who had been on the wrong side of the independence struggle. As the state inherited from the British insisted on shaping the Pakistani nation, rather than the Pakistani nation being allowed to mould the Pakistani state, a battle between state and nation began that continues to this day.

... contd.