Volume 7, No. 1, January 2025
Editor: Rashed Rahman
The coup of April 1953 represented a victory of the ‘Karachi’ landlord/comprador bourgeois clique and a defeat of the Bengal landlord/comprador bourgeois clique. But it represented also a victory for US imperialism in relation to Pakistan and a defeat for British imperialism. The pro-British Khwaja Nazimuddin was replaced as Prime Minister (PM) by a figure who had the confidence of the US imperialists, the Ambassador to Washington, Mohammad Ali Bogra. In May 1953 Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and Director of the Mutual Security Agency Harold E Stassen paid an official visit to Pakistan, and in the following month the US government made a gift to the government of 700,000 tons of surplus US wheat. In November 1953 Pakistan’s Governor-General (GG) Ghulam Mohammad met President Eisenhower and Secretary of State Dulles in Washington. Prior to the 1953 coup Pakistan had signed, in February 1951, an agreement with the US for technical assistance under the “Point Four” programme. But after the coup, US ‘aid’ began to flow in considerable quantities. As an article in Pakistan Today expresses it: “In 1953 the US made a dramatic entry into Pakistan politics. It was not until that year that the US had provided any substantial aid to Pakistan” (Khusro: “The Burden of US Aid”, Pakistan Today, Autumn 1961, p.14).
The following table shows the increasing amount of US ‘aid’ to Pakistan.
US AID ($ Millions)
1954……………22.0
1955………….109.7
1956………….161.3
1957………….174.4
1958………….143.1
1959………….283.1
1960………….318.8
The sharp increase in 1959 followed the establishment of the Ayub Khan military dictatorship in October 1958.
The following table shows the total of foreign ‘aid’ received by Pakistan in 1951-1960.
FOREIGN AID TO PAKISTAN 1951-1960 ($ Millions)
US government …………..1,238.4
Ford Foundation………………..9.4
World Bank…………………..151.0
Canada………………………….113.0
EXPRESSED IN TERMS OF DOMINATED INTERESTS ($ Millions)
US controlled ‘Aid’………………….1,528.2
UK govt………………………………………..3.2
Commonwealth govts……………………34.0
Other governments………………………….0.6
Total:…………………………….1,566.0
In this period 98 percent of total foreign ‘aid’ received by Pakistan came from US-controlled sources. The price of this US ‘aid’ was, of course, Pakistan’s incorporation into the US-dominated system of alliances. In February 1954 PM Mohammad Ali announced that the government had requested military assistance from the US. When President Eisenhower was pleased to accept the request a few days later, Mohammad Ali declared: “Pakistan today enters what promises to be a glorious chapter in our history.” In March 1954 a US military mission arrived in Pakistan. In April 1954 Pakistan moved into the orbit of US imperialism by signing a treaty of “political, economic, military and cultural” cooperation with Turkey, which had joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) in February 1952. In July 1955 Pakistan adhered to the Turkey-Iraq Defence Pact, then known as the Baghdad Pact but transformed in August 1959 into the Central Treaty Organisation (CENTO). In May 1954 a Mutual Defence Assistance Agreement was signed between Pakistan and the US. As an article in Pakistan Today commented: “As far as the US is concerned, it does no more than state that it will make such military aid available to Pakistan as ‘the Government of the US may authorise’ – i.e., there is no specific obligation at all on the US. On the other hand, the agreement imposes on the Government of Pakistan a series of specified obligations. Most of these provisions are in the nature of an undertaking by the Government of Pakistan to follow in the wake of US policies, especially in the event of hostilities. The agreement also imposes on the Pakistan Government the obligation to receive US Government personnel and to give them every facility to observe what is being done with the aid that is furnished. This means that, in the case of military aid, the US observers have the right of direct access to the Pakistan army” (Khusro: “The Burden of US Aid”, Pakistan Today, Autumn 1961, p.18-19). In September 1954 Pakistan adhered to the US-dominated South-East Asia Treaty Organisation (SEATO). As the US Consul-General in Lahore said in October 1955: “Pakistan represents to us Americans a new Land of Promise.”
The First Five Year Plan
Pakistan’s change of ‘masters’ did not alter the basic colonial-type pattern of the country’s economy. The first Five Year Plan was launched under PM Chaudhri Mohammad Ali in 1955. Three years and three governments later, PM Malik Firoz Khan Noon was saying: “I was staggered to learn that until a few days ago the Five-Year Plan had not even been authenticated by the Government for publication. With hardly two more years to go, the Plan continues to be regarded as routine departmental file, meant only for recording of prolific notes and cross-notes. Even a properly co-ordinated machinery for the implementation of the Plan has not yet been evolved” (Malik Firoz Khan Noon: Reply to an address at the foundation-stone laying ceremony at a power plant in Multan, April 24, 1958).
The basis of the Plan, such as it was, was, of course, private enterprise: “Despite this dismal record, the accent of the First Five Year Plan was still on private enterprise” (Mushtaq Ahmad: Government and Politics in Pakistan, Karachi, 1963, p214). The main purpose of the Plan was not to speed industrialisation, but to slow it down, by making allocations in such a way as to lay ‘special emphasis’ on agriculture, on the pretext that, before the Plan, industry had been developing too rapidly in relation to agriculture: “In the past the interests of agriculture had been sacrificed at the altar of industry…By putting agriculture in the centre of the programme the balance, formerly tilted too heavily in favour of industry, was sought to be redressed…All that the Plan did was to catalogue the projects in the public and private sector and to determine the allocations with special emphasis on agriculture” (Mushtaq Ahmad: ibid., p.61, 214).
“In Pakistan a steady move away from industrialisation policy has taken place. The First Five Year Plan stepped down industrial investment under the excuse of ‘consolidating’ the development which had already taken place” (Khusro: “The Burden of US Aid”, Pakistan Today, Autumn 1961, p.47). The Plan’s one progressive feature – a scheme for land reform in West Pakistan – was shelved by the Suhrawardy government (1956-57) and abandoned by the Noon government (1957-58): “To appease the Republican partners in the Government, he (i.e., PM Suhrawardy – Ed.) agreed to shelve the proposal for land reform, which was the redeeming feature of the Plan. A vital limb of the Plan was thus amputated. Malik Firoz Khan (Noon – Ed.) was the first Prime Minister to justify the existence of landlordism as a stabilising force in society” (Mushtaq Ahmad: ibid., p.72, 79). Even the planned targets for the development of public works in connection with agriculture were however, reached only in a minority of cases: “Major irrigation and power projects were behind schedule…Only 50 percent of the irrigation projects were attained in West Pakistan and 33 percent in East Pakistan, even though the expenditure in all cases was in excess of the original estimates” (Mushtaq Ahmad: ibid., p.214). The Plan was based, in the words of Mushtaq Ahmad, on a “Gross overestimation of resources, both internal and external” (Mushtaq Ahmad: ibid., p.70). Furthermore, the fiscal policy of successive governments was based predominantly on indirect taxation, which fell most heavily on the poorer strata of the population, while the rich were successful in evading much of the relatively modest taxes imposed upon them, with the aid of corrupt tax officials: “The fiscal policy was still wedded to indirect methods of taxation, whose incidence was inevitably borne by the common people. The rich still made a disproportionately small contribution to the Exchequer, and even where the rate of taxation was made heavier, there was no proportionate increase in the yield. Evasion of taxes was a common practice which the Ministry of Finance and the Central Board of Revenue did nothing to check, nor were steps taken to eradicate corruption from the Income Tax and Customs Departments” (Mushtaq Ahmad: ibid., p.79).
As a result of the overestimation of resources and the fiscal policy, the Plan was financed to a great extent by inflationary method, i.e., by the printing of new money: “The gross overestimation of resources, both internal and external, had driven the previous government (i.e., the Chaudhri Mohammad Ali government – Ed.) to rely increasingly on methods of inflationary finance, as was evidenced in the increase in money supply…The projects had, therefore, to be financed out of State borrowing from the banks, leading to a further addition…in the money supply…The dreadful economic and social implications of uncontrolled inflation were ignored by the National Economic Council…the inflationary trends were consequently accentuated…The operations of the free market led to an unprecedented rise in prices” (Mushtaq Ahmad: ibid., p.70, 71, 79, 214). The money in circulation rose, in fact, by Rs 654.9 million in 1955-56, and by Rs 454.0 million in 1956-57 (State Bank Annual Report, 1956-57, p.31, 29).
By the time of the Suhrawardy government (1956-57) it became necessary to scale down the modest targets of the original Plan, while the Noon government (1967-58) scaled them down still further, without altering the basis of the Plan: “All that was done during his (i.e., Suhrawardy’s – Ed.) regime was the reduction of the targets…The (Noon – Ed.) Government scaled down the size of the development programme from Rs 1,160 crores (i.e., Rs 11,600 million – Ed.) as originally stipulated, to 1,080 crores (i.e., Rs 10,800 million – Ed.), affecting both the private and public sectors. The ‘realistic appraisal’ of the resources was, however, not accompanied by an equally realistic reassessment of the use to which these resources were to be put, the new version of the Plan “retaining all the distinctive features’ of its original” (Mushtaq Ahmad: ibid.; p.78).
The 1954 Provincial Elections in East Bengal
In an effort to increase the influence of the Awami Muslim League – and so of the national bourgeoisie of East Bengal, whose interests this political party represented – beyond the eastern province, its leader Suhrawardy had, towards the end of 1952, organised a conference in Lahore together with dissident groups (mainly of landlords) in other provinces. This conference set up what was intended to be an all-Pakistan party, the Jinnah Awami Muslim League, as a loose confederation, but the difference of class interests represented in it caused it to collapse in the following year. The national bourgeoisie of East Bengal then turned their attention, as a first step, to winning control of the provincial legislature. The report of the Basic Principles Committee of September 1950 had angered public opinion in the province and as a result the Awami League (AL, as it was renamed in September 1953) experienced a great increase in its support. This enabled it to form a United Front (UF) with two smaller parties – the Krishak Sramik Party (KSP) and the Nizam-e-Islam (Islamic Order) Party. The Communist Party (CP) gave the UF its support.
The programme of the UF, in the drafting of which the AL, as the strongest party in the coalition, played the leading role, was embodied in a 21-point Charter, the main points of which were:
Around this Charter, the UF organised a large-scale campaign for the holding of provincial elections in East Bengal. The central government finally agreed to this demand, in the hope that the influence of the ‘Bengali’ landlord/comprador bourgeois clique would be reduced as a result of their expected losses in such an election. The provincial elections took place in March 1954, and resulted in the rout of the Muslim League (ML), which won only 10 seats in a House of 310. Ex-Chief Minister (Ex-CM) Nurul Amin was defeated by an 18-year-old student with a majority of more than 7,000, and many of the ML candidates lost their deposits. The UF won 223 seats out of 310, while the CP gained four of the 10 seats it contested. Another 23 members of the CP were elected as candidates representing other parties.
The Central government’s plan to weaken the political influence of the ‘Bengali’ landlord/comprador bourgeois clique had succeeded – but at the cost of bringing into the East Pakistan Legislative Assembly a majority representing the interests of the national bourgeoisie of that province. PM Mohammad Ali made haste to declare that the provincial election results would in no way affect the composition of the central Constituent Assembly!
In April 1954 the leader of the KSP, Fazlul Huq, was invited to form a provincial government, but the central government took immediate steps to bring about its removal. Almost at once violent fighting, in which several hundred people were killed, began between Bengali and non-Bengali workers in plantations and factories and, according to the Pakistan Times, was without any doubt brought about by agents-provocateurs in the pay of the Central government. On May 30, 1954 therefore, the GG imposed Governor’s Rule over the province on the pretext that an ‘emergency’, which the provincial government had been unable to prevent, threatened the security of East Bengal. Major-General Iskander Mirza, Permanent Secretary to the Ministry of Defence and a firm supporter of the ‘Karachi’ landlord/comprador bourgeois clique, was flown into Dacca and sworn in as the new Governor of East Bengal. The leaders of the AL were arrested, ex-CM Fazlul Huq was placed under house arrest, and Suhrawardy prudently went abroad for medical treatment. In June all political meetings were prohibited in East Bengal, and in July the CP was banned, first in East Bengal, then throughout the country. By July 17th, it was officially stated, 1,292 people had been arrested.
The Coup of October 1954
A month after the chastening rout of the ML in East Bengal, the ML parliamentary party adopted the so-called language formula, under which Bengali would have equal status with Urdu as an official language. In June the Constituent Assembly endorsed the language formula. On September 21, 1954, the ‘Bengali’ clique, which was still represented in the central Constituent Assembly by the group headed by Khwaja Nazimuddin, staged a parliamentary coup against the pro-US ‘Karachi’ group. With the cooporation of the Speaker, Tamizuddin Khan, a member of the ‘Bengali’ clique, they arranged for the Assembly to meet an hour earlier than normal, the necessary papers being delivered to Constituent Assembly members outside the group by hand during the night. Then, in a lightning 10 minute session in which only 40 out of the 80 members of the Constituent Assembly were present, they repealed PRODA (used as an instrument of coercion against them by the ‘Karachi’ clique) and adopted an amendment to the Government of India Act, 1935, depriving the GG of his power to dismiss a government at will. The ‘Karachi’ clique sought to fight back by taking advantage of the contradictions between the Bengali national capitalists and the Bengali landlord/comprador bourgeois class – the ‘Bengali’ clique represented in the Constituent Assembly by the Nazimuddin group. The GG approached Suhrawardy, the leader of the AL, suggesting that the latter would benefit by, and should support, action by the GG to dissolve the Constituent Assembly and arrange for the election of a new, more representative one by the provincial Legislative Assemblies, since this would mean that the seats in the Constituent Assembly allotted to East Bengal would be occupied predominantly by representatives of the AL. Suhrawardy agreed, and issued a statement to this effect from his Zurich hospital.
Assured of this support, the ‘Karachi’ clique acted quickly. On October 24, 1954 the GG declared a state of emergency and dissolved the Constituent Assembly. He then instructed PM Mohammad Ali to reconstruct his government by bringing in a number of new Ministers who had not been elected to the Constituent Assembly, the most important of these being Major-General Mirza as Minister of the Interior, General Mohammad Ayub Khan (Commander-in-Chief of the army) as Minister of Defence, and Dr Khan Sahib, an Independent, as Minister of Communications. As Mushtaq Ahmad says: “From 24th October 1954, to 7th July 1955, when the new Constituent Assembly was convened, he (i.e., PM Mohammad Ali – Ed.) continued to head a government which could only be described as the Governor-General’s Council” (Mushtaq Ahmed, Government and Politics in Pakistan, Karachi, 1963; p.57). The Speaker of the old Constituent Assembly, Tamizuddin Khan, challenged the constitutional legality of the GG’s action in the courts, and a long legal wrangle ensued. It was ended only in May 1955, when the Federal Court ruled that the action was valid, but that the law required the election of a new Constituent Assembly.
Splitting the UF
After winning the support of the AL leadership for its coup of October 1954, the ‘Karachi’ clique turned its attention to splitting the UF in East Bengal, offering to the two other parties in the coalition – the KSP and the Nizam-e-Islam Party – the opportunity to be invited to form a provincial government in East Bengal if they would break with the AL. The offer was accepted, and in February 1955 these two parties severed their association with the AL, but continued the link between themselves under the name of the UF. In June 1955 the GG revoked Governor’s rule over East Pakistan (as the province of East Bengal was officially renamed in March 1955), and Abu Hussain Sarkar of the KSP was invited to form a UF provincial government – with the AL in opposition.
One Unit
In the autumn of 1964 the ‘Punjabi’ landlord clique began to campaign for the fusion of the various provinces of West Pakistan into a single administrative unit – the so-called One Unit scheme. This would have increased the political power of West Pakistan in relation to East Pakistan and would, without modifications, have made the ‘Punjabi’ landlord clique the strongest political force in West Pakistan. The ‘Karachi’ clique now offered a deal to the ‘Punjabi’ clique under which the former would support the One Unit scheme, provided the latter would agree:
and c) not to oppose the establishment of joint electoral rolls throughout the country.
The first two of these concessions were of course designed to strengthen the political position of the ‘Karachi’ clique in relation to the ‘Punjabi’ clique, the third concession was to be one of the points of a deal to be offered to the leadership of the AL. The deal was concluded. In November 1964 PM Mohammad Ali announced that the government intended to put One Unit into force. In December the Punjab provincial Assembly adopted a ‘self-sacrificing’ resolution to limit its representation in the new West Pakistan provincial Assembly to 40 percent of the seats (on a population basis, the Punjab would have been entitled to 56 percent), and the government announced that Karachi, hitherto a Federal area, would be incorporated in the new united province of West Pakistan.
Meanwhile the ‘Karachi’ clique had been offering a deal to the leaders of the AL. The basis of this was that if Suhrawardy would enter the government and work in support of One Unit, the ‘Karachi’ clique would arrange for the AL to participate in a coalition government at the Centre, with Suhrawardy as PM, and would see that joint electoral rolls were established throughout the country.
The question of joint electoral rolls or separate religious rolls was an important one for the national capitalists of East Pakistan. Unlike the West, the East contained a large, nine million Hindu minority, comprising 18.4 percent of the population. This minority could exert a much stronger political influence on the basis of separate representation for Hindus than if Hindus voted alongside the Muslim majority in each electorate. Thus, in return for supporting One Unit within the government (a concession that would weaken the position of the national bourgeoisie of East Pakistan, the interests of which the AL represented) the leaders of the AL were offered two actions (participation in the government and joint electorates), which would appear to strengthen the position of the national bourgeoisie of East Pakistan. The deal was accepted, and in December 1954 Suhrawardy entered the Governor’s Council as Minister of Law, in which capacity he played the leading role in drafting the legislation for One Unit. The Federal Court having in May 1955 resolved the Tamizuddin Khan Case in favour of the GG, a new Constituent Assembly was indirectly elected in June by the provincial Assemblies on the basis of 40 members each from West and East Pakistan.
The Role of Mirza
In August 1955 GG Ghulam Mohammad was granted leave of absence for health reasons, and another nominee of the ‘Karachi’ clique, Major General Iskander Mirza, was elevated from the position of Minister of the Interior to that of Acting GG. In the following month Mirza became GG.
The representation of the three main parties/party groups in the new Constituent Assembly was now as follows:
Muslim League…..33; UF…..16; AL…..13; Other parties/groups…..18; Total…..80.
Since no party/party group held a majority in the Constituent Assembly, the only possible government that could command the confidence of the Assembly would be a coalition government. This placed the ‘Karachi’ clique in a strong political position since its nominee, Mirza, held the position of GG (later President), at whose behest governments could be formed and dismissed. Mirza had, before his appointment as GG, openly expressed his contempt for parliamentary democracy, and he used his powers astutely to discredit it as well as the various political parties in order to prepare the ground for the establishment of a military dictatorship on behalf of the ‘Karachi’ clique: “After he got himself elected, the sanctity of the Constitution was violated by more subtle and devious means of keeping the governments in office at his suffrance through a skilful manipulation of parliamentary support. In the making and unmaking of Ministries, his hand was throughout visible. His dictatorial leanings were not revealed for the first time in office, but were known long before he was elected to it. As Governor of East Pakistan and Minister of the Interior he had given public expression to his contempt for democracy” (Mushtaq Ahmad: Government and Politics in Pakistan, Karachi, 1963; p.39, 42). “The view is held that he deliberately set out to discredit and destroy parliamentary democracy so that he could establish a lifelong dictatorship. This appears to be a harsh view, but it could be said with greater justice that he contributed more than anyone else to the creation of those conditions of political confusion which he used as an argument in support of the alleged failure of the Constitution and his action in abrogating it” (Ex-PM Chaudhri Mohammad Ali: Report of the Constitution Committee, 1962, in: Mushtaq Ahmad: ibid.; p.40-41). “The President had thoroughly exploited the weaknesses in the Constitution and had got everyone connected with the political life of the country utterly exposed and discredited. I do not think he ever wanted to hold general elections; he was looking for a suitable opportunity to abrogate the Constitution. Indeed, he was setting the stage for it” (Mohammad Ayub Khan: Friends not Masters: A Political Autobiography, London, 1967; p.56-57).
The 1956 Constitution
In August 1955, as Mirza took up the post of GG on behalf of the ‘Karachi’ clique, the ‘Punjabi’ landlord clique struck back. As a result of this clique’s domination of the ML parliamentary party since the eclipse of the ‘Bengali’ clique, this body elected a nominee of the clique, Chaudhri Mohammad Ali, as leader of the party in place of PM Mohammad Ali, the nominee of the ‘Karachi’ clique. This forced Mohammad Ali to resign as PM. The ‘Punjabi’ clique now sought to counter the deal made between the ‘Karachi’ clique and the AL by making a deal with the UF. The leaders of the latter were offered:
In return the UF would drop its demand for complete provincial autonomy for East Pakistan.
The deal was accepted and Chaudhri Mohammad Ali proceeded to form a government consisting of five Ministers from the ML, five from the UF, and one Independent – Dr Khan Sahib. Significantly, General Mohammad Ayub Khan, the nominee of the ‘Karachi’ clique, was omitted from the government. In September 1955 the new Constituent Assembly, meeting at Murree, a hill town in Punjab, adopted the One Unit scheme for West Pakistan, which formally came into being in October 1955. In January 1956, in accordance with the agreement between the ‘Karachi’ clique and the UF, a National Economic Council was set up with the declared policy already agreed upon.
In February 1956 the Constituent Assembly approved the Constitution Bill. Pakistan was to be a Federal Republic, to be called “The Islamic Republic of Pakistan”; its President, who was required to be a Muslim, was to be elected for a term of five years by an electoral college consisting of the NA and the provincial Legislative Assemblies. The President was named as supreme commander of the armed forces and was to be given wide powers “in case of emergency”. The Bill provided for a single NA of 300 members, drawn in equal numbers from East and West Pakistan, to be directly elected for five years on the basis of adult suffrage. Urdu and Bengali would have equal status as official languages. During the Third Reading of the Bill members representing the AL and the Pakistan National Congress walked out of the Assembly in protest against the Islamic provisions in the Constitution and the failure to give full provincial autonomy to East Pakistan. In March the NA (as the Constituent Assembly was now called) elected Major General Mirza as President of the Republic and resolved that Pakistan would remain within the Commonwealth. The Islamic Republic of Pakistan formally came into existence on March 23, 1956.
The Creation of the Republican Party
The replacement of the nominee of the ‘Karachi’ clique as leader of the ML and PM by the nominee of the ‘Punjabi’ clique in August 1955 made it clear that if the ‘Karachi’ clique was to achieve complete political power, the ML had to be destroyed – at least in its existing form as a political party representing the interests of the ‘Punjabi’ clique. The arena chosen for this operation was the new, One Unit province of West Pakistan. In April 1955 GG Ghulam Mohammad had designated, on behalf of the ‘Karachi’ clique, Mushtaq Ahmad Gurmani as Governor of the new province, and Dr Khan Sahib as Chief Minister (CM). In January 1956, however, indirect elections were held for the new West Pakistan Legislative Assembly, with the former provincial Assemblies acting as electoral colleges. Following these elections, a ML parliamentary group for the provincial Assembly was formed, which claimed 245 members out of a House of 310. In April this parliamentary group threw down a challenge to the ‘Karachi’ clique by adopting a resolution to the effect that only a member of the ML would be acceptable as CM (Khan Sahib being an Independent). The ‘Karachi’ clique were prepared for the challenge. Two days later the Governor confirmed the appointment of Khan Sahib as CM and the latter had, in the meantime, announced the formation of a new political party to be known as the Republican Party (RP). It was made clear that the new party had the full personal backing of President Mirza (of whom Khan Sahib was a personal friend) and within days a majority of ML members both of the NA and of the West Pakistan Legislative Assembly had deserted the ML and joined the RP.
The RP was thus created as the open parliamentary party of the ‘Karachi’ clique. It was a purely parliamentary machine, with the vaguest of programmes, and it was distinguished from the ML only by the fact that it was controlled by the ‘Karachi’ clique, while the latter had been controlled by the ‘Punjabi’ clique. “The organisation of the Republican Party to keep Dr Khan Sahib in office in West Pakistan, and to enable him (the President) to retain his hold over a substantial membership of the NA was a measure of his involvement in politics, despite his protestations to the contrary…The Republican Party provided him with a convenient tool to establish his supremacy both over the Parliament and the Prime Minister. Since it had the largest following in the House, the Prime Minister was always a nominee of the President…At his instance the Party gave and withdrew its support from successive governments, and in each crisis people were given the impression that the President alone was the one and only force of stability in the country…Neither at the Centre nor in the provinces had it a policy or a programme, and its members in the legislatures had no bond of loyalty save their common stake in the government. No matter of principle or ideology being involved in their secession from the Muslim League, the party whose ranks they had swollen was hardly distinguishable from its parent body…The party thus functioned within the four walls of Parliament…The Republicans acquired the reputation of being considered the party of the palace. The reputation was not altogether baseless as on several occasions party meetings were held in the President’s House…Created by the government, the Republican Party had no entity apart from the government” (Mushtaq Ahmad: Government and Politics in Pakistan, P.30-40, 156, 158, 179, 182).
The Creation of the National Awami Party
The UF in East Pakistan had now been broken up, but the AL remained the political party of the national capitalists of East Pakistan. The smashing of the ML in West Pakistan had weakened the political power of the ‘Punjabi’ landlord clique, but this clique continued to exercise a powerful influence in the provincial RP within unified West Pakistan. The next tasks of the ‘Karachi’ clique on its road to complete state power were, therefore:
1) to split the AL,
2) to weaken still further the political power of the ‘Punjabi’ clique.
These tasks were accomplished by the formation of a coalition government at the Centre in which the AL could be gravely compromised.
As a result of the defection of his ML Ministers to the RP by September 1956, PM Chaudhri Mohammad Ali was left as the only member of the Cabinet remaining in the ML. On September 8, 1956, finding this position untenable, he resigned both as PM and from the ML. Meanwhile, the leaders of the RP had reached agreement with the leaders of the AL that if the latter would join them in a coalition government, they would support the enactment of legislation to establish joint electoral rolls throughout the country – this question having been left unresolved in the Constitution Act of February 1956. On September 10, 1956, therefore, President Mirza invited Suhrawardy, leader of the AL, to form a government, and a coalition government of five Republicans and four AL members came to office, with Suhrawardy as PM.
For tactical reasons, the electorate issue was dealt with in two stages. First, in September 1956, the NA adopted the Electorate Bill, providing for joint electoral rolls in East Pakistan and separate religious electoral rolls in West Pakistan. Then, in April 1957, it adopted the Electorate Amendment Bill, abolishing separate electorates in West Pakistan and establishing joint electoral rolls througout the country. On other issues, such as foreign policy, the AL Ministers were compelled either to follow the policy of the dominant RP (that is, of the ‘Karachi’ clique) or resign. They chose the former course, and Suhrawardy became a skilled exponent of the ‘necessity’ for Pakistan to maintain and develop its dependence on US imperialism. “The policies he (i.e., Suhrawardy – Ed) pursued…had to be evolved in consultation and agreement with the senior partners in the Coalition…Although the foreign policy pursued by Mr. Suhrawardy was admittedly not his own, he decidedly proved its abler exponent than the two Mohammad Alis who had preceded him. He argued that Pakistan’s membership of the military alliances was a condition of its survival, and neutrality the surest invitation to aggression…He was a staunch champion of the West. Indeed, he went far out of his way to support the West” (Mushtaq Ahmad: Government and Politics in Pakistan, Karachi, 1963, P.66, 68). The pro-US imperialist policy of the AL Ministers aroused considerable indignation among the national capitalists of East Pakistan, whose interests the AL had been founded to represent, as well as among anti-imperialist rank-and-file members of the party. In October 1956, therefore, President Mirza went to Dacca where: “Strangely he conferred with Maulana Bhashani” (D N Banerjee: East Pakistan: A Case-study in Muslim Politics,Delhi, 1963, p.93).
Mirza’s offer to Bhashani, who was President of the AL, was that if he – taking advantage of the dissatisfaction with the foreign policy of the AL Ministers – formed a breakaway party that would include in its programme the dismemberment of West Pakistan, the RP would support it. Shortly after his meeting with Mirza, Bhashani began to criticise openly this policy of the AL Ministers. In March 1967, Bhashani resigned as President of the AL. In July 1957, together with Mian Iftikharuddin, leader of the Azad Pakistan Party, he sponsored a convention of “democratic forces” in Dacca, which set up the National Awami Party (NAP). The programme of the NAP included the following points: Full provincial autonomy for all provinces (including those at present incorporated in West Pakistan); development of an industrialised economy through the encouragement of a national enterprise; the abolition of landlordism in the countryside; uncompromising opposition to all foreign alliances; better conditions for the working class in the fields of wages, education, health, etc. Thus the appeal of the NAP was directed towards the landlords in the former provinces of Sind, North-West Frontier Province and Balochistan (now dominated with One Unit by the ‘Punjabi’ landlord clique), and towards the national capitalists, peasantry, petty bourgeoisie and workers in both West and East – with particular emphasis on drawing the support of these latter classes in the East away from the AL. Although the appeal of the NAP was directed towards these social strata, objectively it was a party that served the interests of the ‘Karachi’ landlord/comprador bourgeois clique. While the RP was the open party of the ‘Karachi’ clique, the NAP was its concealed instrument. From the viewpoint of practical politics, the key point in the policy of the NAP was that of working for the dismemberment of West Pakistan. “In the organisation and membership of the party itself, opposition to One Unit played the most important and decisive part” (Mushtaq Ahmad: ibid.; p.162). It was this that particularly appealed to the landlords in Sind, the NorthWest Frontier Province and Balochistan. The Frontier area soon became the largest unit in the new party, most of its members there being the personal followers of landlord Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (the brother of the Republican leader Dr Khan Sahib).
In the face of the situation created by the breaking away of a section of their party to form the NAP, the leaders of the AL approached the leaders of the KSP with the proposal that a new ‘united front’ should be established between the two parties. To counter this move, the representatives of the ‘Karachi’ clique offered a deal to the KSP leadership to the effect that, if the AL’s proposal were rejected, the KSP would be invited to participate in a coalition government at the Centre. The result of these manoeuvres was that the KSP also split: one section, headed by Azizul Huq and Yusuf Ali Chaudhury, favoured a ‘united front’ with the AL, the other section, headed by Hamidul Huq Chaudhury, favoured coming to terms with the ‘Karachi’ clique in order to gain the opportunity of participating in the central government.
In September 1957, following the agreement to ‘work together’ between the leaders of the RP and those of the NAP, the West Pakistan Legislative Assembly adopted a resolution in favour of the dismemberment of West Pakistan into four separate provinces. The resolution was moved by those representatives who were now members of the NAP and supported by most of the RP members. Even Tariq Ali, a Trotskyite supporter of the NAP, is compelled to admit: “The National Awami Party indulged in a certain amount of political intrigue in West Pakistan with the extreme right-wing Republican Party…It was prepared to make unprincipled alliances to undo One Unit in West Pakistan.” The Communist Party of Pakistan (CPP) was by now completely dominated by revisionism, and the NAP became the principal field of work of ‘communists’, some of whom obtained influential positions.
The AL was opposed to the dismemberment of West Pakistan, since this would destroy the whole basis of the deal by which they had gained parity between East and West in the NA. But the usefulness of the AL leaders to the ‘Karachi’ clique was now at an end, and in October 1957 the RP withdrew its support from the coalition government on the grounds that PM Suhrawardy was not putting into effect the resolution of the West Pakistan provincial Assembly recommending the dissolution of One Unit. On October 11, Suhrawardy resigned as PM on the demand of President Mirza on the grounds that, with the withdrawal of Republican support, his government no longer commanded the support of a majority of members of the NA.
‘Parliamentary Democracy’ in the East Wing
Meanwhile in East Pakistan, the provincial government of Abu Hussain Sarkar – opposed by the AL, the Pakistan National Congress and the Schedule Caste Federation – had been in a position to be overthrown on a vote of confidence as soon as the provincial Assembly was called together. For this reason, the provincial Assembly was not called for almost a year, and in the meantime, in March 1956, GG Mirza – to strengthen the shaky position of the Sarkar government – appointed as Governor of East Bengal Fazlul Huq, leader of the KSP, the principal party in the UF.
The need to have the provincial budget approved by the Assembly made it necessary to summon the provincial Assembly on May 22, 1956. Speaker Abdul Hakim (another member of the KSP) saved the day by adjourning the House without permitting the budget to be presented. On May 26, on the advice of Governor Fazlul Huq, Mirza (now President) imposed Governor’s rule on the province. On June I, having himself authorised provincial expenditure for three months, he revoked Governor’s Rule, and reinstated the Sarkar Ministry. The next meeting of the provincial Legislative Assembly was fixed for August 13, 1956. Four hours before the session was due to begin, Governor Fazlul Huq prorogued it. The Sarkar Ministry finally resigned and Governor’s Rule was once more imposed on the province.
In September 1956, after a demonstration had been fired upon by the Dacca police, killing four people, and a general strike had been called in protest, Ataur Rahman Khan of the AL was invited to form a provincial government. This was a coalition government that included Ministers from Ganatantri Dal and the Pakistan National Congress, and – with intermittent periods of Governor’s Rule and two unsuccessful attempts to reinstate the Sarkar Ministry – it continued in office until the military coup of October 1958.
The Final Phase of ‘Parliamentary Democracy’
Now that the attack on One Unit had been opened by the NAP and the RP, the ML replied by opening an attack upon the principle of joint electorates – claiming that these had only been accepted on the basis of One Unit. In August 1967 the Nizam-e-Islam Party broke away from the KSP on the issue of separate religious electorates (which the former supported and the latter opposed), and the UF ceased to exist. In May 1958 the Nizam-e-Islam Party merged with the Tehrik-i-Istehkam-i-Pakistan (a small party formed by ex-PM Chaudhri Mohammad Ali) into a new Islamic party under the former’s name. The RP (which had brought about the downfall of the Suhrawardy government ostensibly on the grounds that its AL Ministers had failed to put into effect the resolution of the West Pakistan provincial legislature recommending dismemberment of One Unit) now entered into an agreement with the ML to form a coalition government with it on the understanding that the question of One Unit could be postponed indefinitely, and that the Republicans would support legislation to establish separate religious electoral rolls.
In December 1957 ex-PM Chundrigar revealed: “The President had given his word on behalf of the Republican Party to the effect that they would support a Bill ushering in separate electorates” (Dawn, Karachi, December 19, 1957). The leaders of the KSP were then persuaded to reverse their position on separate electorates in order that they might participate in the coalition government to be formed. On this basis, on October 18, 1957, a coalition government composed of the RP, the ML, the KSP and the Nizam-e-Islam Party was formed, with Ismail Ibrahim Chundrigar of the ML as PM. It consisted of seven Republicans, four Ministers from the ML, three from the KSP, one from the Nizam-e-Islam Party and one Independent. The ML, said PM Chundrigar: “…had entered the Government to save the ideology of Pakistan, which was menaced by joint electorates” (Dawn, Karachi, November 3, 1957). The new government proceeded immediately to introduce a Bill for the establishment of separate religious electorates for the promised General Election, now postponed until November 1958. The RP now reversed its policy once more – its Central Committee declaring that the party could not, after all, support the introduction of separate religious electorates. Having lost the support of the Republicans, the Chundrigar government was compelled to resign two months after taking office, on December 11, 1957. On December 16, 1957, President Mirza invited Malik Firoz Khan Noon, the new leader of the RP, to form a government. On the basis of the party’s new policy of defending joint electorates, Noon was promised the support of all the parties in the House that favoured joint electorates – the AL, the NAP, the Pakistan National Congress, the Schedule Caste Federation and the section of the KSP headed by Hamidul Huq Choudhury. The new government was composed initially of seven Republicans, one Minister from the KSP, and one Independent. Suspecting that the new government would proceed to dismember West Pakistan, the ML – still dominated by the ‘Punjabi’ landlord clique and strengthened by some defections from the RP on this issue – now organised a paramilitary force of some 60,000, the National Guard, which began to parade the streets of the cities armed and uniformed.
The plans of the ‘Karachi’ clique to establish a military dictatorship were now reaching their final phase. In March 1958 President Mirza warned: “Law and order have deteriorated; general administration has weakened, provincialism is working its venom unabated” (Pakistan Times, March 24, 1958). In May 1958, Dr Khan Sahib, founder of the RP, was assassinated, and in July the General Elections were further postponed from November 1958 to February 1959. On September 20, 1958, the Speaker of the East Pakistan Legislative Assembly, Abdul Hakim, a member of the KSP, named several AL members for disorderly conduct, whereupon fighting broke out in the chamber and the Speaker was forced to leave. The Deputy Speaker, a defector from the KSP, then permitted a motion to be carried declaring the Speaker to be of unsound mind. On September 23, 1958, opposition members attacked the Deputy Speaker when he attempted to take the chair, and he was fatally injured. Several opposition members, including former CM Sarkar, were arrested. The provincial budget was passed in the absence of the opposition, and the assembly adjourned. In the same month, September 1958, the government imposed a ban on all private paramilitary organisations, pre-censorship of all newspapers and periodicals, a ban on meetings of more than five persons, and the death penalty for a whole range of offences, including the publication of material “calculated to provoke feelings of enmity”.
The Working Committee of the ML replied on September 28 by adopting a resolution accusing the government of trying to create lawlessness and bloodshed as a pretext for postponitig the elections, and declared that it was the duty of the people and the ML to overthrow any government bent on introducing despotism, “if need be, by extra-constitutional means”. On the pretext of strengthening the government to meet the “threatening situation’, Noon brought into the Cabinet eight Ministers from the AL, a further member from the RP, and a further member of the KSP – so creating 26 Ministers out of a House of 80. When these AL members were allotted minor portfolios, however, they resigned in protest five days after joining the government.
The ‘Revolution’ of October 1958
The ‘Karachi’ clique were now satisfied that the existing political parties and parliamentary democracy itself had been sufficiently discredited by their manoeuvres to abolish parliamentary democracy and establish a military dictatorship. On the evening of the day on which the AL Ministers resigned from the government, President Mirza issued a proclamation: “The mentality of the political parties has sunk so low that I am unable any longer to believe that elections will improve the present chaotic condition. I have decided that:
1) The Constitution of March 23rd, 1956 will be abrogated;
2) the Central and Provincial Governments will be dissolved with immediate effect;
3) the National Assembly and the Provincial Assemblies will be dissolved;
4) all political parties will be abolished, and
5) until alternative arrangements are made, Pakistan will come under Martial Law.”
General Mohammad Ayub Khan, Commander-in-Chief of the Pakistan Army, was appointed Chief Martial Law Administrator. Meetings, strikes and the publication of any material not passed by the military censor were prohibited under penalty of many years’ imprisonment. On October 27, 1958, President Mirza announced that he had “decided to step aside and hand over all powers to General Ayub Khan” (Pakistan Times, October 28, 1958), and Ayub Khan assumed the post of President. He abolished the office of PM and appointed a Cabinet of which the President was the head. Such was the character of what came officially to be called “the revolution of October 1958”. The ‘Karachi’ landlord/comprador bourgeois clique had established its military dictatorship.
(To be continued)