Religion, Culture, and Public Life. New York: Columbia University Press, 2016. vii, 346 pp. (Tables.) US$60.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-231-17306-3.
Pakistan is facing many challenges, and as the title of this book aptly sums up, that country sits at a critical crossroads. At one end of the political spectrum, the country is facing an existential threat amid incessant tides of terrorism ready to override the country, while on the other end, the prospect of a nuclear state falling apart due to its rivalry with the regional hegemon India has caused many migraines with the international community.
In this context, Jaffrelot’s edited volume has brought together an exciting list of contributors writing on their specific areas of expertise regarding the domestic and international environment of Pakistan. The book’s central theme is to assess the current imbroglio of Pakistan at the junction of domestic and international constraints. In this, it adopts a descriptive, thematic, and analytical approach with an overarching argument of analyzing Pakistan problems at the intersection of internal and external factors. On the domestic or internal front, the discussion is centred on issues of civil-military relations, political parties in Pakistan, judicial activism, insurgency in the tribal areas, police reforms, and the state of the Pakistan economy, while the four chapters examining the external front look at Pakistan’s relations with Afghanistan, the United States, China, and the Muslim world—especially Saudi Arabia and Iran.
The section on external relations begins with a chapter on Pakistan-Afghan relations. It castigates Pakistan for creating Jehadi proxies in Afghanistan under the cloak of “strategic depth” to counteract a probable Indian attack on its eastern flank. Furthermore, these proxies were used as infiltrators in Indian held Kashmir to lessen the Indian threat through her military engagement with these proxies in Kashmir. There is scant discussion of the anarchical global Cold War structure that forced Pakistan to play a double game at the behest of the United States. The infidel relationship between Pakistan and the USA was premised upon missed opportunities by both states to forge ahead. The fact that all dictatorships in Pakistan received American blessings is not mentioned at all.
Similarly, two other chapters on the external front, those looking at Pakistan’s relations with China and the Muslim world, explain how the all-weather friendship with China helped Pakistan to develop and upgrade its nuclear missile technology despite American sanctions in the 1990s. The discussion on the role played by Saudi money to fund madrassas in Pakistan for the Afghan jihad during the 1980s requires a closer look as the propagation of indoctrinated ideology promoted Sunni-Shia violence in Pakistan, but again there is no discussion of the Cold War as a major geostrategic compulsion vying for such a discourse. Investments from the Muslim world, particularly Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates, helped to galvanize Pakistan’s nuclear program after being conveniently labeled as the Islamic bomb. This entire discussion of Pakistan’s external relations needs to bring in the role played by global politics, meaning a convergent discussion on domestic compulsions and external pressures.
As far as the domestic section is concerned, the book’s contributors discuss the significant sectors of Pakistan, but the weaving of a recurring common theme seems absent. For example, the chapter on civil-military relations explains Pakistan as a security state flanked by hostile neighbors to both east and west (India and Afghanistan respectively). This led to the rise of the military as a domineering institution and its largesse in political and economic spheres is taken for granted. In his discussion of Pakistan’s tribal insurgency, Mariam Abou Zahab writes in the chapter “Turmoil in the Frontier” that the country’s spate of terrorism is tied to the uprooting of the socio-economic fabric of tribal society due to the excessive involvement of religion in state politics as a counterpoise to centuries-old Pushtun nationalism, but there is scant discussion of how the external variable of containment of communism was instrumentally employed to reinvigorate political Islam for waging jihad against the godless communists. This narrative was established due to the then prevalent global structure of superpower rivalry, and the discussion here needs to blend the domestic and international discourses in order to strengthen the narrative. Similarly, Mohammad Waseem’s chapter, “The Operational Dynamics of Political Parties in Pakistan,” is primarily centred on personality cults. Although in Pakistan political parties are personalized, dancing to the tunes of its incumbents, the premises of the chapter need to involve a discussion of party manifestos, performances, and pledges of its leaders, promises whose un-fulfillment cause domestic pressures. Hassan Abbas’ contribution on the Pakistan police, “Internal Security Issues in Pakistan: Prospects of Police and Law Enforcement Reform,” is focused on the structural and functional aspects of Pakistan’s law enforcement agencies. His argument that inadequate resources and excessive political interference are the prime reasons for their dismal performance needs closer scrutiny. He rightly points out that corruption and the lack of counterinsurgency training in the police department led to the abuse of power by officials. The chapter on the theme of judicial activism is the most interesting as it is a new phenomenon in Pakistan, where the judiciary has assumed a pro-active guardianship role vis-à-vis the body politics. Here Philip Oldenburg adequately discusses the causes behind the rise of the judiciary led by former Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad in 2007. Oldenburg labels this “juristocratic” democracy (89).
In conclusion, this volume, written by eminent scholars on Pakistan, is an interesting addition to the already burgeoning literature on Pakistan since 9/11. It brings to light various domestic and external aspects of Pakistan based on recent developments, though the main assertion of the book expressed by its editor—that it studies the case of Pakistan’s tribulations at the junction of “domestic dynamics and external pressures”—is clearly lacking, as these are all isolated in-depth analyses of various internal and external sectors of Pakistan.
Muhammad Shoaib Pervez
University of Management and Technology, Lahore, Pakistan
pp. 390-392