Introduction

This chapter details the outlines of the colonial administrative and hierarchical political order. This chapter argues that the trappings of this order were maintained and continued in the postcolonial set-up of the nascent state of Pakistan. The analysis of this colonial order serves as the backdrop to Pakistan's political-administrative system in which the events of 1953 took place. A brief allusion is also made to the centrality of Punjab as recruitment ground for military personnel in the British and later Pakistani army. A description of the colonial order and the continuation of its features in Pakistan shows that the political and judicial machinery reacting to the events of 1953 tried to rationalize it as a failing of the system, a system which had previously disempowered sections of society from seriously challenging the writ of the colonial state or the rule of law and order. In doing so they not only elaborated on the colonial order – especially the characteristic predominance of the district administrator and a firm handling of law and order violations – but also reflected upon the consequences of democracy for the people of Pakistan, who had shown themselves to be incapable by playing into the hands of mullahs, almost resulting in the breakdown of state authority.

Introduction

This chapter will give a description of the court of inquiry set up by the government of Punjab, procedures adopted for its conduct and individuals or groups who were made party to its proceedings. This will help understand the functioning of the court of inquiry which led to the accumulation of its detailed record, on the basis of which the Munir–Kiyani report was compiled and which has been used for this study as well. The chapter will also address methodological issues relating to the use of the archive generated by the court of inquiry. In doing so, this chapter also considers the question of the dual importance of the Munir–Kiyani report and the record of the court of inquiry as an official chronicle and source for the events of 1953, and as a text which can be read critically for such wider theoretical concerns as an understanding of contestations about Islam, religious exclusion and secular polity in contemporary Pakistan and elsewhere in the postcolonial Muslim states. It is this latter aspect of the report, the chapter argues, which has given it an enduring significance as a reference for various ideological debates aligned along the simplistic mullah/modernist binary, even in contemporary Pakistan.

The court of inquiry

Sardar Shaukat Hayat, an erstwhile political ally of the chief minister of Punjab, Mumtaz Ahmad Khan Daultana (who was deposed after the events of 1953), was among the first persons to demand an inquiry commission to probe the disturbances in Punjab. This he said in a speech during the budget session of the Punjab Assembly. He alleged that power politics between the province and the center and the maneuvers of some central ministers against the prime minister were responsible for killings in the Punjab. He also accused Daultana of giving his tacit support to the movement. As long as Daultana remained chief minister of the province, no effort would be made in the direction of inquiring about the incidents of March 1953. His own political standing and the situation of the province in general was too shaky to allow for the undertaking of such an inquiry. It was only after his removal as the chief minister, within a month following the declaration of martial law, that the new ministry of Punjab set up a court of inquiry.

Asad Ahmed, in his critique of the Second Amendment of the Constitution of Pakistan, argues that since its wording specified it as limited to the purposes of law and constitution only, there emerged a gap between the legal and the ontic identities of the Ahmadis. While legally they had been declared non-Muslims, in their everyday life and practices the Ahmadis continued to be Muslims. The real damage to the Ahmadis was the ordinance passed by General Zia-ul-Haq in 1984 which disallowed the Ahmadis to pose themselves as Muslims. A section of this law said:

Introduction

For a critical understanding of the events leading to the disturbances of 1953 and the debates of 1974, a detailed description of the polemical disputations between the Ahmadis and their opponents is needed. This requires an insight into the background of the Ahmadiyyah movement itself along with a detailing of its various theological underpinnings. The historical and theological aspects of Jama'at Ahmadiyyah, and the political background and colonial context of their opponents — especially Majlis-i-Ahrar — help explain the nature of the religious polemics which existed in Punjab from 1890s onwards. The purpose is not to give credence to the rationale offered by the ulema and religio-political parties of “religious hurt” caused by the Ahmadis as an explanation for the events of 1953. Instead, the purpose is to trace the transformation from the religious polemics of the colonial period into a political movement in the postcolonial state. In this regard, this chapter will emphasize the paranoia caused among religious circles by the ascendancy of the Ahmadis in terms of their economic well-being and an allegedly disproportionate representation in the military and bureaucracy in Pakistan. The present and later chapters will also argue that it was not just the Ahrar and other religio-political parties which benefited from a religiously inspired political movement. Various political actors too were trying to gain political mileage out of this resentment against the Ahmadis created by the ulema and religio-political parties.

This book is about the history and politics of religious exclusion of the Ahmadis in Pakistan through the lens of anti-Ahmadi violence in Pakistan carried out in the name of tehrik-i-khatam-i-nabuwwat (movement for the protection of the finality of prophethood) in 1953 and 1974. The Ahmadis, contrary to the general consensus among Muslims on the finality of Muhammad's prophethood, believe in Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1835–1908) of Qadiyan as a prophet in a nuanced understanding of this term and as the promised messiah. Tehrik-i-khatam-i-nabuwwat was a set of demands put forward by the ulema and some religio-political parties – especially Majlis-i-Ahrar – during the 1950s whose influence was mostly concentrated in the urban centers of Punjab. They primarily demanded Ahmadis to be declared as a non-Muslim minority on the account of their “heretical” views and removed from key military and bureaucratic posts for their alleged disloyalty towards the state of Pakistan. Anti-Ahmadi disputations had existed during the colonial period as well, but in the context of the postcolonial state of Pakistan, ideologically predicated on the instrumentalization of Islam as the basis for national identity, a theological polemic was transformed into a political issue demanding action from the state.

For a study of the events of 1953, this work focuses on the Munir–Kiyani report published in 1954 and the declassified archival material comprising of the record of the proceedings of this court of inquiry. Similarly, for the debates which ultimately resulted in the Second Amendment to the Constitution of Pakistan in 1974, whereby Ahmadis were declared a non-Muslim minority, the recently declassified record of the proceedings of the National Assembly has been used. The purpose of this book is not simply to chronicle the events of anti-Ahmadi violence based on official documents but also to analyze these sources by foregrounding the commentative and interpretative aspects with which these issues were addressed and through which information about them was collated. This requires delineating the statist discourse carrying the imprints of the ideological worldviews and intellectual predilections of the power elites directing this discourse and the official archive they collected about these events.

Introduction

The Munir—Kiyani report held the opinion that if the government of Punjab had adopted an aggressive policy towards those inciting violence and hatred against the Ahmadis, the religious movements would not have reached critical mass. The adoption of noncoercive measures alone would have sufficed to keep tehrik-i-khatam-i-nabuwwat within limits. But due to the inadequacy of the administrative measures adopted – either deliberately for political expediency or out of negligence and incompetence – and the reluctance of the central government to officially reject the ulema's demands, by the end of February 1953 the government had to resort to violent, coercive methods to deal with the uprising.

This chapter chronicles the events which took place after the breakdown of negotiations between the ulema, the religio-political parties and the central government over direct action, ultimately resulting in violence. Although the disturbances were widespread in many districts of central Punjab, they were at their most intense in Lahore. The provincial bureaucracy did not foresee massive support for the movement, and this miscalculation on their part led to their failure to impose and enforce restrictions on public gatherings, providing protestors the opportunity to group together. By the time they realized the gravity of the situation, the legal, “noncoercive” modes of restriction on public agitation were largely ineffective.

Introduction

The tehrik-i-khatam-i-nabuwwat of 1953 had failed to achieve its immediate political goal of having the Ahmadis declared as non-Muslims. Through the use of excessive force, the state and its political elite was able to suppress this movement, which they viewed as threatening to the model of an “Islamic modernist” state. In 1974, in the aftermath of the “Rabwah incident” which sparked off violent protests and agitation, the same strategy was not repeated. The prime minister of Pakistan, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, referred the “90-year-old problem” (to use his own words) to the parliament for consideration instead of referring it to the superior court or the Council of Islamic Ideology. The procedural arrangements of the parliament and the legal strategy pursued during the proceedings ensured that a constitutional amendment was passed describing the Ahmadis as non-Muslims. This was an endorsement of the religious decrees of the ulema given many decades ago, for which they had asked for constitutional cover back in 1953. By avoiding the use of brute force, there was not only a procedural departure from the precedent set in 1953 but, as this chapter will explain, also in terms of what Sadia Saeed calls the “language of stateness.” This chapter will offer an analysis with which to understand the processes whereby statist discourse was no longer subordinated to the power elites with an avowedly Islamic modernist world view.