Photo: Collected
Pakistan’s democratic journey stumbled badly when, as a result of a power struggle, the constitution was abrogated, politicians were arrested and state power was handed over to the army. It was Iskander Mirza who had declared military rule, yet that very rule ultimately snatched away his own power. After General Ayub Khan seized power, a long tradition of military authority was established in the country, which had a far-reaching impact on Pakistan’s politics and state structure.
On 7 October 1958, just 11 years after the founding of Pakistan in 1947, the country’s democratic system faced a major disaster. That day President Major General Iskander Mirza abrogated the constitution and dissolved parliament, and also imposed martial law. The activities of all political parties were banned at the same time. Later, many politicians of East and West Pakistan were arrested. In this way, the possibility of running the state through elected representatives effectively came to a halt.
Mirza’s partner in this plan to seize power was General Mohammad Ayub Khan, chief of the Pakistan Army. Ayub later stated in his memoirs that the desire to seize state power had found a place in his political thinking from 1954 onwards. At that time, besides being army chief, he was also serving as defence minister. Both Mirza and Ayub looked with contempt on the politicians who had led the movement for the creation of Pakistan.
Pakistan’s first general election was due to be held in early 1959. Had that election taken place, the country could have had the opportunity to move forward on the path of parliamentary democracy, like neighbouring India. However, the power-hungry Mirza and Ayub were not prepared to leave the responsibility of running the state in the hands of politicians. Yet in 1956, about nine years after the founding of Pakistan, the country had got a constitution; it was framed through the efforts of various political leaders, including Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, Chaudhry Mohammad Ali and Ayub Khuhro. It was through that constitution that the foundation of a parliamentary system of government was laid.
Even before that, Iskander Mirza had taken the place of Governor General Ghulam Mohammad. When the 1956 constitution came into effect, he took the oath as President of Pakistan. The constitution had been framed on the model of the British Westminster system, and it provided for a parliamentary system of governance. It was hoped that if constitutional continuity was preserved, Pakistan’s democratic institutions would grow strong.
Yet on 7 October 1958, Mirza himself abrogated the very constitution on the basis of which he had become President. This decision destroyed the prospect of Pakistan’s democratic progress. The constitutional framework that had been built through long political discussion, bargaining and compromise collapsed with a single declaration.
Having imposed martial law, Iskander Mirza appointed General Ayub Khan as Chief Martial Law Administrator. A cruel irony of power lay hidden in this decision. Seeking to strengthen his own position, Mirza drew to the centre of state power an army chief at whose hands he would be ousted within a short space of time.
Both Mirza and Ayub were skilled in the calculations of power. In the end, however, Mirza had to accept defeat before Ayub’s military strength and political strategy.
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, a young, foreign-educated lawyer from Larkana, got a place in the cabinet Mirza formed after imposing military rule. Bhutto was a friend of Mirza’s son, Humayun Mirza. His elation at getting a place in the cabinet reached such a level that he wrote a letter to the President expressing his gratitude. That letter also contained a remark that carries special significance in political history. Bhutto’s belief was that history would remember Mirza as a greater man than even Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan.
However, in the 20 days following the declaration of military rule, the tug of war for power between Mirza and Ayub steadily intensified. It had by then become clear that Ayub wanted to establish sole authority. Meanwhile, inside the army, Ayub and the officers loyal to him were planning to remove Mirza. How unaware the President was of this was revealed in the events that followed.
Ayub’s close officers, among them General Burki, K M Sheikh, Musa and Yahya Khan, believed that power could not rest in the hands of two persons in one state. So preparations were made to carry out the decision to remove Mirza.
On 27 October 1958, several military officers were sent to the President’s official residence in Karachi; Yahya Khan was also among them. There Mirza was forced at gunpoint to resign. Afterwards he was put on a plane and sent to Quetta along with his second wife, Nahid Mirza. Nahid had earlier been married to an Iranian naval officer working at the Pakistan embassy in Tehran. A few days later Mirza and Nahid were sent into exile in London. Mirza was never able to return to Pakistan; he spent the rest of his life abroad.
From 27 October, absolute power in Pakistan passed into the hands of Ayub Khan. He took on both responsibilities together: President and Chief Martial Law Administrator. Although there were a few civilians in the new cabinet, military officers predominated. The young Bhutto, too, quickly changed his position and declared his loyalty to Ayub. This episode offers an early hint that the desire for power would later play an important role in his political life.
After Ayub Khan seized power, Pakistan’s judiciary was also seen playing an important role. By applying the ‘doctrine of necessity’, the higher court led by Chief Justice Mohammad Munir cleared the way for giving legal legitimacy to military rule and the seizure of power. This decision later became a controversial precedent in favour of the army’s intervention in Pakistan’s politics.
Justice Munir had been at the centre of the same kind of controversy before. Governor General Ghulam Mohammad had dissolved the Constituent Assembly in 1954, and the Speaker, Maulvi Tamizuddin Khan, mounted a legal challenge against it. The court led by Munir, however, dismissed that challenge. The ‘doctrine of necessity’ was put to use at that time as well.
Four years later, the judicial outlook was the same in the case of Ayub’s seizure of power. Munir compared Ayub’s assumption of power to the French and Russian revolutions. Yet the historical character of those revolutions and an army-led seizure of power in Pakistan were not the same thing. As a result of this stance of the judiciary, an opportunity was created for military authority, rather than constitutional rule, to grow stronger.
As soon as he was in power, Ayub Khan turned Pakistan into his own political laboratory. In 1959 his government issued the Elective Bodies Disqualification Ordinance, or EBDO, through which arrangements were made to keep a large section of politicians away from electoral politics. One of the main features of his system of rule was to weaken the political leadership and establish the control of the administration and the military.
Ayub promoted himself to the rank of Field Marshal, although he had no background of having shown special gallantry in any war. In the first four years of his rule, Pakistan was run directly under martial law.
When a new constitution was framed in 1962, martial law was lifted, but a genuine democratic system was not established by it. Through that constitution, Ayub gave institutional form to his own power. Instead of universal suffrage, arrangements were made to conduct elections through an electoral college of only 80,000 members.
The members of this electoral college were known as ‘Basic Democrats’. It was they who took part in electing the President and other elected representatives. A National Assembly and two provincial assemblies for East and West Pakistan were indeed formed, but these institutions were limited in their effectiveness. The power to appoint and remove governors was also concentrated in the hands of the President.
As a result, the provincial administration also became dependent on Ayub’s political will. The influence of central power was clearly visible in the appointment and removal of persons such as General Azam Khan and Ghulam Faruque in East Pakistan as well.
Abdul Monem Khan was governor of East Pakistan from 1962 to 1969. This little-known Bengali lawyer was a close supporter of Ayub. In West Pakistan, the Nawab of Kalabagh, Malik Amir Mohammad Khan, served as governor for quite a few years. He was later replaced by General Mohammad Musa, who had retired from the post of army chief. The Nawab was subsequently killed by one of his own sons. It was publicised that the incident had arisen from a family dispute.
In an attempt to establish himself as a civilian politician, Ayub Khan split the Muslim League. With one section of the party he formed the Convention Muslim League. In this way he created a political support base of his own, and along with state power, established control over party politics as well.
The civil-military power structure that took shape in Pakistan during Ayub’s ten years of rule weakened political parties and democratic institutions. The flattery of a section of the administration and a part of the media also made his rule centred on one individual. It is mentioned that his memoir, ‘Friends Not Masters’, was written for him by someone else.
When Mohammad Ali Bogra died in 1963, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was given the responsibility of Pakistan’s foreign minister. As an important figure in the Ayub government, his rise in politics proceeded rapidly.
Under the leadership of Ayub and Bhutto, Pakistan became embroiled in a war with India in 1965. As a consequence of that war, both countries came under pressure. In January 1966, Ayub Khan put his initial signature to the Tashkent Declaration with India’s Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri.
However, controversy arose in Pakistan’s domestic politics around this declaration. Bhutto kept spreading the misleading information that the declaration contained a ‘secret clause’. Within a short time he left the government. He then began campaigning against the very Ayub Khan under whose political patronage he had once risen.
Bhutto’s change of position in this way is a notable aspect of Pakistan’s power-centred politics. His joining Ayub’s cabinet bore the mark of his loyalty to those in power; and his later turn to opposing the government widened the path for his own political ambition.
During Ayub Khan’s rule, Bengali nationalism gradually gathered strength in East Pakistan. The Language Movement, economic disparity, deprivation of political rights and the authoritarian conduct of the central rule increased the anger of the Bengalis. Against this backdrop, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman emerged as one of the principal political leaders of East Pakistan.
The Ayub government filed the Agartala Conspiracy Case with the aim of wiping out Sheikh Mujib politically. The government’s goal was to end Mujib’s political life through this case and suppress the Bengali nationalist movement.
In reality, the opposite happened. The Agartala case gave rise to widespread protest in East Pakistan. Public support for Sheikh Mujib kept growing, and the movement demanding autonomy spread further. The case that had been filed as part of the plan to remove him from politics ultimately intensified the anti-Ayub movement and opened the road to his fall.
His supporters wanted to present Ayub as a leader on a par with an Asian Charles de Gaulle, and his period of rule used to be termed the ‘Decade of Development’. But behind this publicity about development, discontent over democratic rights, political participation and the accountability of power was growing in both parts of Pakistan. In East Pakistan in particular, allegations of economic and political disparity gradually weakened the acceptability of his rule.
A deep political crisis engulfed Ayub Khan at the beginning of 1969. He was forced to withdraw the Agartala case. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was invited to the round table conference in Rawalpindi. Khan Abdul Wali Khan and Bhutto had been arrested before this, but under the pressure of the movement they too had to be released.
These events made it clear that Ayub’s system of rule, which stood on military force and administrative control, had gradually grown weak in the face of the mass movement.
In March 1969, Ayub Khan was forced to give up power. But even in the transfer of power he did not preserve democratic constitutional continuity. Under the 1962 constitution, the responsibility of President was supposed to go to the Speaker of the National Assembly, Abdul Jabbar Khan. Instead of taking that path, Ayub handed power over to the army chief, General Yahya Khan.
Immediately on taking power, Yahya Khan imposed martial law again. As a result, it was not democracy but the continuity of military rule that remained in place in Pakistan. The arrival of one military ruler after the departure of another shows that a mere change of individuals was not at the root of Pakistan’s political crisis; at the root were the military’s influence in running the state and the weakness of democratic institutions.
The seizure of power by Iskander Mirza and Ayub Khan left a lasting mark on Pakistan’s political history. Mirza spent his life in exile in London, where he eventually had to work as the manager of a restaurant. Even so, he went on dreaming of returning to his own country.
Mirza died in London in November 1969. Yahya Khan, however, did not give permission for his body to be buried in Pakistan. His family members therefore buried him in Tehran.
Ayub Khan, for his part, died in April 1974, largely forgotten and neglected. In clinging to power he had weakened Pakistan’s democratic institutions; yet in the end even that power could not give permanence to his political legacy.
A long-lasting political trend in Pakistan’s history began with the military coup of October 1958. The country has since seen three more spells of military rule: under General Yahya Khan, General Zia-ul-Haq and General Pervez Musharraf.
Two years after seizing power, Ayub Khan had promoted himself to the rank of Field Marshal. And in Pakistan’s recent political reality, General Asim Munir has been promoted to the rank of Field Marshal; this initiative was taken by the civilian government backed by the military.
The military’s repeated assumption of power, the suspension of the constitution and interference in civilian politics are events in Pakistan’s history that raise a fundamental question: if democratic institutions are weakened and state power is centralised, can political stability be ensured in the long term?
The events of 7 October 1958 and their political aftermath show that, even if power can be temporarily consolidated through military force, democratic culture, constitutional rule and the people’s political rights can be plunged into deep crisis as a result. Pakistan’s subsequent history is a continuing reflection of that very crisis.
