Rawalpindi Conspiracy Case, 1951

There are incidents in the history of every nation which have profound future implications. In many cases, such incidents are controversial and are always a matter of debate and discussion among different sections of a society. The Rawalpindi conspiracy case is one such unfortunate event in our post-independence history which has impacted our political and, to some extent, social history. After a lapse of six decades, the event ought now to be analyzed objectively in order to learn useful lessons from it as the dust of emotions and sentiments has settled down. In the following paragraphs I will try to give a short summary of the “story” which is called Rawalpindi Conspiracy case and then I will touch upon the questions such as what were the issues at the time when such a conspiracy against the state institutions was planned and how big Rawalpindi conspiracy case is, in its real significance to the history of Pakistan.

The central character of the case was Major Gen Akbar Khan who was serving as a brigadier at the time of independence. Soon after independence, the war broke out between Pakistan and India on the issue of annexation of Kashmir. Akbar Khan led the regular army and civilian tribes against India in the war, whereas General David Gracy was the C-in-C of the Pakistan Army. In fact, Gracy was not in favor of Pakistan's deep involvement in the war. As a consequence, Pakistan could only succeed in occupying some parts of Kashmir. This situation disheartened Brig Khan who was an extremely brave soldier. He was highly frustrated over Pakistan's acceptance of ceasefire and thus turned against the state policy on the Kashmir dispute. He used to express his wrath against the ceasefire indiscreetly in the presence of all and sundry. His spouse, Begum Nasim was the daughter of a renowned woman leader of the Muslim League, Begum Jehan Ara Shahnawaz. She was also highly critical of the government policies. Khan's boldness combined with frustration incited him to make a plan of overthrowing the incumbent government. At that time, Liaquat Ali Khan was the PM and Khawaja Nazimud Din was the governor general. The regime had put severe sanctions on the communist Party of Pakistan which was not permitted to take part in political activities. Due to her family background, Begum Nasim had vast political connections and Faiz Ahmad Faiz was among her friends. Faiz was the editor of the then “Pakistan Post” and was ideologically committed and a great sympathizer of the communist party. Hence, the frustration of both Akbar Khan and Faiz pushed them closer to ousting the incumbent regime. Consequently, Khan convened a meeting at his place in Rawalpindi on February 23, 1951 which was attended by Faiz, Syed Sajjad Zaheer, the then secretary general of the party, and Muhmmad Hussain Ata, another leader of the party. Besides civilians, Akbar Khan, Lt Col Siddique Raja and Maj M Yousaf Sethi were present in the meeting. According to the proposed coup d’état presented by Khan, both Governor General and PM were to be arrested; the GG was to be forced to dismiss the PM and his government. After dismissal of the government, Khan was to form the new government which was to organize general elections in the country. The new government was to allow the communist party to participate in the political process and as a return, the party was to welcome and provide support to the new government. The Daily under the editorship of Faiz, was to provide the editorial support to the new government. According to official sources a police offices who was a trustee of Gen. Khan leaked the information about the conspiracy and hence they were arrested

At that time some big developments were progressing. Firstly, the people of Morocco were involved in the independence movement against the French. Thousands of people mostly students used to come on roads and supported the Moroccan movement against the French. They also demanded to end diplomatic relations with French imperialist regime and to support the Moroccan movement diplomatically. Hence a great portion of population had problems with the foreign policy of Pakistani government and it seemed that the newspapers at that time such as the Pakistan Post were supporting the people against the state. This implied that this newspaper is creating an environment of distrust and contradiction of ideology between the state and the people . The government of Pakistan led by Liaqat Ali Khan was very much irritated by the activities and the statements of these newespapers and people against the state. As the editor was Mr.Faiz who was ideologically committed to communist ideology, the state started to keep a close eye on those people who were regarded as close colleagues of Faiz. And this was at this time that General Khan, his wife and Begum Jehan Ara Begum were supposed to have relations with Faiz. Secondly, Kashmir issue was being discussed in the UN. The people of Pakistan were frustrated about this issue and the proceedings of the case in the UN and it seemed for Pakistanis that the leadership of the state is not able to get the rights of the state. Hence General Khan and the left might have found this occasion suitable to catch the support of the people against the state. Thirdly, those were the days when Muslim league had been speculated as not coming according to the people’s expectation. Also that Muslim league has lost its support as a populist party. And this may also be an answer to the question regarding the vanishing of Muslim league from Pakistan’s political scenario after independence. At that time i.e February to April, 1951, political parties were preparing for the upcoming provincial assembly elections. So this might be considered to be a very good chance for Muslim League to exploit their support by ambushing the “core” of their party and to win the next elections. Hence, we see from the newspapers of those days giving statements about speculations that Azad Pakistan party and Miss. Fatima Jinnah to win the Punjab elections and Muslim league to lose. Fourthly, there were people from the lower strata such as the laborers and the landless workers protesting against the government for not giving them the suitable relief. All of these instances carry us to completely opposite side far away from those facts given to us by the state. Here the hypocrisy of the state is exposed very clearly when we see that the government of Pakistan made a special court and tribunal to try the suspects of the conspiracy and hide the court proceedings from the common man. It also seems that the state is not fully prepared to carry out such arrests such as newspapers at that time were reportng that the “state is yet deciding to arrest or not to arrest Air Commodore Janjua”. Other things which may be useful are the statements of the centrist newspaper Dawn and populist newspaper Pakistan Post during the commencing elections in Punjab. For example Dawn reported that “Muslim league swept elections in Gujranwala and Sargodha”. On the other hand Pakistan post reported that “in Lahore all seats have been won by either Azad Pakistan Party or other non–Muslim league party and that Muslim league party is losing all over the Punjab”. Also newspaper report that “some parties were protesting against the results of elections in Sargodha and Gujranwala”. Here we see that the election is contested through power over newspapers and it seems that even the party of Quaid-e-Azam who was responsible for the making of Pakistan is not behaving honestly. From here we see that the very foundations of our political system were flawed and no one was ready to work for the common man. Fake conspiracy cases were filed against those who were acting against the institutions because the state was west oriented and was not doing those things which it was supposed to do. This conclusion is supported by Miss. Fatima Jinnah when she stated in a rally that “people should vote in favor of those who are the real followers of Quaid”. From this she meant that we should not vote for Muslim league because it had changed its very purposes from the day when Quaid died. History is witness of the fakery of this conspiracy as General Akbar was latter appointed as the Chief of National security in Zulfiqar ali Bhutto’s regime.

The conspiracy was big in terms of its significance to the state. Because the military and the elites in bearucracy were waiting to capture the state machinery because the politicians were not working for the people. Hence later we see that army claims to protect the institutions of the state and the rights of the people. Martial laws are mere the reflectory images of the Rawalpindi Conspiracy Case 1951. Nowadays when we talk about the inability of the state to tackle the problems of the people we forget these thoughts were wandering in the minds of the people when we had Liaqat Ali Khan as our Prime Minister. So its merely the continuity we see in our history. Later we saw further some successful  coups in 1958 ,1969,1977,1991 and some unsuccessful attempts in 1973 and 1995 which was because of the same reasons for which the 1951 conspiracy case emerged.

About The Author: Asif Bahadur is a current student of   Economics/Political Science at lums. His areas of interest includes  Economics, Philosophy and Computer Science. He is also a very good football player and plays for a his hometown football team.

Rationality And Faith: According to Leo Tolstoy and Dr Ali Shariati

Rationality is the mental ability of humans to observe natural phenomena and then contemplate on them on the basis of reason. Rationality can prove or reject certain behaviors, phenomena or hypothesis on the basis of explanation of cause and effect, good or bad and true or false. Rationality is the basic differentiating characteristic of humans and animals. Tradition and science both accept the importance of rationality in our lives. Different philosophers from very different times have tried to answer the question of validity or the importance of reason and rationality in finding the true, good, and beautiful. Leo Tolstoy and Dr.Ali Shariati also tried to answer the same question. Rationality is not the only way of finding the true, good and beautiful but it is an important source of knowledge which along with faith can lead us to what is true, good, and beautiful. In this paper I will discuss in detail what these two authors argued about the importance and limitations of reason in finding the true, good, and beautiful and the questions which they considered important to be answered. In first part of the paper I will discuss the arguments of Leo Tolstoy and Dr.Ali Shariati regarding rationality and that will include the importance and limitations of rationality. It will also attempt to discuss the basic questions regarding life which according to both of them were very important and throughout this discussion I will discuss the validity of superstition or miracles which very much related to rationality. Towards the end I will discuss that how our education system helps or hinders our search for true, good and beautiful.

            Leo Tolstoy lived a life of a very rich man. He gained fame and wealth through what he wrote for his readers. He in his work A Confession wrote about his ambitious past life and his thrust for wealth, fame and glory. He committed bad things in gaining what he wanted but at the end he was not satisfied with his life and he started to find solution for his dissatisfaction. He felt ashamed when he recalled the time in which he regarded themselves the leaders and teachers of this world. He loathed the way he was living his former life because he considered comfort to be the real purpose of life. Disillusioned with his state of life he started to observe the lives of men of his times, both believers and the unbelievers. Questions arisen in his mind regarding life. Questions which he considered easy, “childish” and simplistic to answer were found to be very difficult to answer. Those questions were: what is good and what is evil? What is life for? What does it lead to? Why we live without any aim when we know that after all I will perish and death will annihilate all that I am making for myself or my children? Is there any meaning in my life that the inevitable death awaiting me does not destroy? Why should I live, why wish for anything, or do anything? What will come of my whole life? (Tolstoy 13).He starts to find answers for these questions and he first goes to experimental science and then abstract science or philosophy.

            Tolstoy did not find the answer to his question about life in experimental science. Though experimental science was praised everywhere for its research and ‘progress’ but it was unable to help him in finding those very basic questions of life. Science can do better when it works in those fields which are unrelated to what he wanted to find. But when science attempts to find the answers to his questions regarding life its results are vague and unclear as he describes, “I understood that the clearer they were the less they met my need and the less they applied to my questions.”(Tolstoy 22). Science only can say that:

            “You are what you call your ‘life’; you are a transitory, casual cohesion of particles.

The mutual interactions and changes of these particles produce in you what you call

your “life”. (Tolstoy 25).

Experimental sciences gave him some laws and principles governing life such as the law of evolution which states:

“Everything develops and differentiates itself, moving towards complexity

and perfection, and there are laws directing this movement. You are a part

 of the whole.”(Tolstoy 24).

 At first when he is young and his muscles are developing he finds himself as part of the same system but when he grows older and he finds that his muscles are weakening and his teeth falling, he finds in the laws of science a great contradiction. The other type of science i.e. the abstract science also tries to answer the questions in these words:

“All humanity lives and develops on the basis of spiritual principles and ideals

which guide it. Those ideals are expressed in religions, in sciences, in arts, in

forms of government. One should consider himself a part of humanity, and

therefore his vocation should be to forward the recognition and the realization

 of the ideals of humanity.” (Tolstoy 33).

Tolstoy argues that if universe as according to abstract science is infinitely developing then there must not be a meaning of our lives. Tolstoy is not satisfied with what both sciences tried to give him to answer his questions regarding life. He argued that the stupidity and contradictions of science is because it cannot be used to answer the questions regarding life. In his views, experimental science was mostly concerned with the material phenomena and abstract science was mostly concerned with the essence of things. According to Tolstoy, both sciences are unsuccessful to answer his questions of life.

            Tolstoy then tries to find the answers in words of great men having great minds, who had already tried to answer the same questions regarding life. These men were Buddha, Solomon, Schopenhauer and Socrates. He finds their answer valid just like Socrates said:

“We approach truth only inasmuch as we depart from life when preparing for death.

For what do we, who love truth, strive after in life? To free ourselves from the body,

and from all the evil that is caused by the life of the body! If so, then how can we

fail to be glad when death comes to us?”(Tolstoy 28).

He finds them valid because he observes that even the believers of his time who fear death and sorrows of life and they wish for material comfort in their lives. He argues that these comforts are meaningless as one lives his life in a circle, earning for buying food again and again only to preserve his material body. He argues that these comforts are meaningless because death (which is the ultimate reality) will annihilate all those comforts one day. As Solomon says that:  

“All that is in the world — folly and wisdom and riches and poverty and

 mirth and grief — is vanity and emptiness. Man dies and nothing is left

of him. And that is stupid”. (Tolstoy 29).

Tolstoy argues that if life is evil and if it is a joke then we should end this evil and try to run away from this evil towards a state that is true, good, and beautiful. It is better to end this life and end this joke. The only way to escape this evil and joke is to commit suicide. According to Tolstoy there were four ways to cope with a situation like this. First, don’t try to know that life is senseless and evil. A second way was to know the meaning of life but do not think for the future. Third was to end this life so that there exist no evil. Fourth one was the way of Solomon, to know that life is senseless and vanity and still keep on continuing to live in a tormenting position. He finds himself in this fourth condition which he describes as very contradicting. He thought that because reason is higher than all things, then it should manifest the existence of life. But now in this condition, reason is compelling him to end his life. Other contradiction was that Milliards were living even though they knew that their lives were senseless. He started observing the working-folk or the Milliards. They lived even though they had sorrows in their lives and accepted what life was giving them. They justified their life and death with clear arguments. Tolstoy felt ashamed when he came to know these people. Because he was applying his conclusion about life to few people only who had comforts in their lives, not to those who lived working and doing labor with sorrows and miseries in their lives. He finds that reasonable knowledge excludes life while the majority of population which lives without having reasonable knowledge manifests that there is a type of knowledge which compels them to live. That knowledge is irrational knowledge and is called “faith”.

            Tolstoy argued that faith makes people to believe in those super-natural beings and superstitious phenomena e.g. miracles which are rejected by reason. To have faith for Tolstoy was to reject reason or rationality. He argues that rational knowledge has been beneficial to him only to the extent that it indicated to him that it should include finite and infinite in the question regarding life. The real answer came from the irrational knowledge or faith which included the unity of finite and the infinite within the answer. Faith makes it possible for people to live their lives knowing the meaning of life. Faith is knowledge of the meaning of human life in consequence of which man does not destroy himself but lives. Faith is the strength of life. If human beings understand the illusory nature of the finite, they must believe in the infinite. Without faith they cannot live. Faith remained to Tolstoy as irrational as it was before, but he could not but admit that it alone gives mankind a reply to the questions of life, and consequently it makes life possible. The superstitious beliefs which are rejected by rationality and experimental sciences such as the conception of an omnipotent God, the divinity of soul and men’s conception of moral goodness are the conceptions formulated in the hidden infinity of human thought; they are those conceptions without which neither life nor they should exist.

            Dr.Ali Shariati also discusses the issues related to the questions of true, good and beautiful through his work Hajj (The Pilgrimage). I selected Dr.Ali because his arguments about rationality and superstition are very much alike to that of Tolstoy’s arguments. His main concern in finding true, good, and beautiful was to know about the validity of rationality and faith. Equally important for him were the sequence of knowledge, consciousness and love and the limitations of rationality in finding the true, good and beautiful. He is also interested to find the significance of Umma (the community) in reaching to Almighty Allah.

At the start of Hajj, Shariati says that people from all over the world come to Mecca to offer the great pilgrimage. They come for pilgrimage not only because this is a religious obligation but also because they want to perfect and purify themselves. They are here to exercise death before actually experiencing it because they all know that all of us have to experience the same fact. As Quran says:

“To Allah we belong and to Him is our return”. (Quran II: 156 & XLII: 53) (Shariati 23)

So this is a preparation state where people come and prepare themselves for the life of eternity. Man is reminded of the final meaning of his life. He is reminded that you have to prevent yourself from the bad behavior of money, sex, greed, aggression and dishonesty. To go for pilgrimage is to approach Allah and to approach Allah is to honor oneself with the blessings of perfection, beauty and dignity. All these people belong to different tribes and different cultures but when they approach Mecca they become one Islamic community. Here at Miqat they wear simple white dress called “Ihram”. Ihram is to signify that nobody is distinct and nobody is discriminated. All of the people belong to the same community. “Allah's way is the way of the people.”(Shariati 15). Therefore for approaching Allah we must do whatever we can for the welfare of the community even if we are to face sufferings, captivity and exile. In other words, to approach Allah you must first approach people. This negates the ideals of rationality which are individualism and selfish accumulation of wealth. Moreover, Ihram has white color just like Kaffan which symbolizes death.

            Dr.Shariati in order to explain the conflict of love and rationality takes the example of Hajjar who is the mother of Hazrat Ismail. Allah had ordered Hazrat Hajjar to go to the dessert of Mecca and stay there. But Hajjar had a child who needed milk. Hajjar also needed support as she was a woman and the helpless mother of Ismail in the lonely dessert of Mecca where there was no water. Shariati argues that Hajjar came here because of the love of Allah and Allah had promised to give her comfort. But when she reaches there, she finds no water therefore she starts running in the desert between the mountains of Safa and Marwa to find water for her child. When she comes back she sees that a stream of water has emerged because of the movement of the child’s feet. Dr.Shariati argued that Hajjar came here because of love for Allah but when she didn’t find water she started to use her reason. When Zam Zam (the water) emerged this clearly demonstrated a lesson to the whole humanity. That lesson was that:

“To find water by "love" not by effort but "after the effort". (Shariati 22).

 Zam Zam still remains the manifestation of that lesson. The lesson is that we should use our reason and effort but the ultimate decision comes about on the basis of faith and love. And because of that effort by Hajjar, her actions are repeated now by every pilgrim in the Hajj in the form of Say’y and Tawaf. Allah also gave her a place in His house near Ka’aba. It is because of her love for Allah that this place was not given to any prophet but her. The lesson also serves to solve the contradiction between superstition and rationality. Now miracles are not the things to be judged on the basis of reason and rationality, even the very existence of this universe is a great miracle.

                Shariati also takes the shape of Ka’aba to show that what metaphysics and philosophy have not been able to find the very nature of God he himself has shown in the shape of Ka’aba. Shariati argues that Ka’aba the Qiblah for all the Muslims creates an impression in the minds of all the people that it must have an architectural ornamentation on it. But when they approach it they find it empty of such ornamentation or visualization. They only see a cubic room which signifies that Allah has no shape, direction and color. He is unique. The very structure of Ka’aba is unique. It has six directions but symbolizes no direction.

            Shariati discusses the love of Hazrat Ibrahim for Allah-Almighty. Shariati argues that Ibrahim was rebellious against the idolaters like Nimrud and his own father who was an idol-maker. Nimrud punishes Ibrahim by putting him into a giant fire but because of his love for Allah, Allah helps him. He is saved from the heat of fire because Allah takes the heating and combusting ability of fire. This manifests the same thing that even though reason may say that you should not rebel Nimrud because he may put you into fire or kill you but love on the other hand says that whatever happens, it happens only because of the will of Allah. And this is here we see the limitation of reason very clearly. Would he not been able to rebel against Nimrud he might have done mistake. Allama Iqbal says:

Bey khatar kood para aatish e Namrood mein ishq

Aql  hei mah’ve tamasha-i lab-e-baam abhi

Love dives into the furnace of Nimrod without any hesitation
Logic is still standing dumb-founded

Ishq farmooda e qasid se subuk gaam e amal

Aal samjee hi nahi maanee e pegaam abhi

Also a Pashto poet Rehman Baba says:

“With their only one step they reach out to the vestiges of the Arsh

I have observed the speed of those Darwish (Sufis)”

            Shariati also discussed another instant when Ibrahim was ordered to sacrifice his son for the Love of Allah. This is a superb example of the contradiction between rationality and superstition. This also clearly shows the limitations of rationality. When Ibrahim sees in his dream that he is sacrificing his son Ismail in the way of Allah-Almighty, he asks himself, is that the message from Allah or a mere superstition? Ibrahim does not carry out the sacrifice because he uses reason as a guide. But after the sacrifice appears again and again in his dreams, he calls his son and discusses the matter with him. Ismail comes to know the state of mind of his father. He accepts what Allah wants from him. Ibrahim binds his eyes with a cloth and ties the hands and legs of Ismail and starts cutting the throat of Ismail with a knife. But the knife does not cut it rather Allah sends a sheep from heaven which is sacrificed in place of Ismail. Allah only wanted to test Ibrahim because Ismail was his very big weakness. As is written in Quran:

Even the love for your son is a way of "testing" you! (Quran VIII: 28) (Shariati 53)

This shows the ultimate love of Ibrahim for Allah and in return Allah rewarded him not only in this life but also in the life after his death and now Muslims sacrifice animals on the that day every year.    

            Dr.Shariati also found some very significant meanings in various actions apart from Twa’af and Sa’ay. For Example he argued that the sequence of Arafa’at, Mashar and Mina demonstrates us that how knowledge, consciousness and love are arranged in a sequence. From Arafa’at we get that because there is light therefore we can observe things and gain knowledge, experience and objectivity. In Mashar we have no light therefore we have time to think and improve the ability of consciousness, insight and subjectivity. Now consciousness is between science and faith. In Mina we get that faith or love when the pilgrims stay there for greater time. And it is here when he argues that if you totally depend on knowledge then you will become the prisoner of nature and reason. But if you rely on wisdom, consciousness and faith (the lights that were kindled on earth by the prophets) ,you will get a kind of  knowledge which will lead you to your self-discovery. This is the knowledge which will make you closer to Allah-Almighty (Shariati 55). Other faculties of science like sociology, anthropology and mathematics will help you to learn knowledge about society, culture and mathematical formulas but they cannot help you in finding yourself. Because science can help to liberate you from society and historical facts by simply learning sociology and history, but because man has his own unique instincts therefore science cannot liberate him from those instincts. The arguments of Dr.Shariati and Tolstoy about superstition and rationality are very much alike, if one talks about gaining knowledge from Muslim Umma the other focuses on the Milliards respectively. Both of them argue that if you totally rely on rationality you are liable to fall. Both of them emphasize that rationality is a supplement to the knowledge of faith. Both see religion as the right path to live life and imply that we have no choice in our material life but to embrace one religion, we don’t have the choice of not believing in a supernatural deity or Divine Being. The limitations of reason for Tolstoy are very severe and that is of suicide, which most of people according to him commit seeing no meaning in their life.

            Our teachers in the education system faces the same problem that even though they know that death is the ultimate reality and that we are liable to fail in what is the real exam of life if we do not know the real meaning of life and the real knowledge about things in this universe. They continue to push people away from that real path. Even though we have real knowledge in the form of tradition and religion, the teachers teach us to prepare for gaining the worldly gains. They teach us to make our lives better but again and again the vicious circle of gaining food and comfort and consuming it continues (also according to Tolstoy and Shariati). We are taught here feminism and that Islam is a patriarchal religion in which woman has no rights but we are prevented to study the story of Hajjar. As Shariati says:

“From among all humanity: a woman, From among all women: a

slave, and from among all slaves: a black maid!”(Shariati 24)

And that woman has been given a place near Ka’aba. How can feminism talk about the rights of women when we have such a clear example of a slave which is given this much honor? Again, we are taught about Environmentalism and we are prevented from the knowledge that nature can only be saved if sacredness prevails in nature. People can better preserve environment if they know that it is sacred. We are given the education of liberalism and individualism which creates bad human behavior like pride, greed and jealousy in us. Even we are aware of the straight path towards true, good, and beautiful we are still running in the opposite direction forgetting about all the consequences which will follow if we remained on the same wrong path. The biggest hindrance in the way of contemporary students is the very education system which compels the students to follow the wrong path. It creates the incentives and environment for the students that they are compelled to laugh at tradition and miracles. They regard all the super natural divine beings (regarded by religion as sacred) as superstitious. They are taught to loath the religious people on the basis of reason and rationality. In other words reason is given the top priority and faith is pushed aside. That is what Tolstoy and Shariati negate in their works and they regard this attitude to be viciously mistaken and leading the whole mankind towards the dragon of ignorance. In order to prevent the lives of all human beings from falling victim to that dragon we should make necessary changes in our education system either we would continue to follow the wrong path.

Written By: Asif Bahadur ( LUMS )

The Utility Of Philosophy For Saint Augustine and Al-Ghazali In Their Lives

Philosophy is a Greek word which means “love of wisdom”.It has been defined as “Investigation of the nature of causes or principles of reality, knowledge or values based on logical reasoning rather than empirical methods” (Philosophy, answers.com). Both Al-Ghazali and Saint Augustine searched for true knowledge which is independent of the individual. They studied philosophy very thoroughly to know the answers to the basic questions of life. The time and circumstances of both are different and they are considered among the most influential people of their faiths. Their quests were not easy and hence they faced hardships and difficulties in their quest for the true, good and beautiful. This essay will look at how philosophy contributes towards the true, good and beautiful describing the benefits and limitations of philosophy in helping Al-Ghazali and Augustine in their way towards true, good and beautiful. Also it will differentiate between the attitudes of both scholars towards philosophy and its overall effect on their lives. Since their circumstances were different both of them had different motives to study philosophy. Hence they will be explained separately to have a good grasp of the contribution and limitations of philosophy in their lives.

            First we take Augustine. Since his father Patrick was a Pagan and his mother Monica was a catholic, he was very greatly affected by the behavior of his parents. Monica a Catholic Christian always wanted her son to follow the right path and she wished that her son be prevented from the evils of this world. His father, on the other hand, wished for him to be educated. As he studied he learned the skill of oratory and rhetoric and he was considered to be one of the learned persons of his time. Then he realized that the knowledge gained for the sake of worldly gains is fakery. Also he realized the academics of his times are more interested in form rather than content.  Augustine was also involved in the worldly pleasures such as going to theatrical shows and pursuing sexual adventures. When he is grown and recalls those adventures especially the stealing of pears, he clearly argues that it was not because of their beauty or good taste but because of his company. It was because of that company that he had a longing for evil acts. Later he also classifies the reasons for doing evil, like that of stealing pears, for pleasure, pride, and curiosity.  At that time since Augustine wanted the true knowledge about evil and since during his adolescence he wanted to “love and to be loved” he committed much evil (15). He later converted to Manichaeism but as he learned more he found flaws with the Manichee Faith. At that time he could not explain those flaws and this led him to keep practicing Manichaeism for nearly ten years. It was after he read the Neo-Plotonic philosophy that he answered all those questions which were in his mind. Though he also found flaws in Neo-Plotonic philosophy for not praising God and containing atheistic components, he found it closely compatible with his new faith i.e. Christianity. He found this philosophy in the works of Cicero and Plotinus.

Now we can explain the difficulties Augustine was facing in the way of his quest towards truth, good, and beautiful. When Augustine started to think about God and His existence he was puzzled. Explaining the form and essence of God has been a very important issue for the ancient and medieval philosophers. Augustine at first thought that God is like a gas filling every thing in the universe because everything that exists is because of the existence of God arguing that he is “the life of the life” (12). Hence everything contains God with respect to its size i.e. smaller objects contain lesser part of the God and larger objects contain larger parts. He started to read philosophy and the first book he read was the works from an ancient philosopher, Cicero. Later he continued reading texts which he thought may help him to find the true, good, and beautiful. Augustine longed for the immortality of wisdom with an incredible ardor in his heart. He was unable to believe a God actually not in a material form. The belief in a spiritual being for Augustine was very difficult. At that time he was practicing the faith of Manichees, who claimed to have the true knowledge of God and beings. They expressed God in terms of heavenly bodies like stars and planets. Since then he was more interested in content than form so he prevented himself from falling victim to the deception of the rhetoric of the Manichees. When he had studied philosophy he was ready to answer the criticisms of the Manichees and hence freeing his soul of the puzzles. The following paragraph shows how he answered those questions with the help of his understanding of philosophy.

The most famous, Manichee challenge concerns the nature and source of evil. If God is supremely good, and if he is also all-powerful, eternal, and the cause of all existence, how can evil exist? Where can it come from except God? At the very least, why can't God eliminate it? They argued that there is a conflict between God and evil. The second Manichee challenge concerns the form of God as being corporeal. This question also challenges the idea of God as omnipotent and omnipresent. In the Manichee view, God is limited, he is not everywhere, and does not control everything. The answer Augustine introduces to these first two challenges is Neo-Plotonic in essence. Augustine argued that God is Being itself, the most pure and supreme form of existence. Everything else is God's creation, and fits into a descending scale of being; the further something is from God, the less true existence it has. In short, the further away from God something is, the more evil it is. Heaven is close to God, and comes very close to having his full, unchanging Being. Human souls or minds are a step further down, and bodies and other material things are at the bottom of the pile. This idea allows Augustine to answer the Manichee question of evil as follows: "evil has no existence except as a privation of good, down to that level which is altogether without being (36)". Evil is just a name for a lack of true existence, a label for how far a thing (or person) has wandered from unity with God. It’s helpful here to recall Augustine's theft of the pears, which demonstrates that each sin is really a twisted or incomplete attempt to be like God. Because of the lust for domination he did this stealing. Thus, evil is not some dark substance that exists in conflict with God; it is simply the extent to which something in God's creation has turned away from Him, the extent to which a thing (or human) is unaware of its existence in God. In a significant sense, Augustine argues that there is no evil.

Now we see that philosophy has made his job much easier. Had he not studied Neo-Plotonic philosophy, he would have been unable to answer the questions of Manichees. Philosophy has given him the reasons of doing right and wrong. Augustine also argued that since spirit is good it longs for good and since material body is evil it longs for evil i.e. the worldly beings. When he is in grief because of the death of his close friend he realizes that it was the relation to material being which caused him to be in this grief. Hence he wanted to have an immortal relationship and that could only be possible with an immortal being like God. Here he gets the strength for the belief in a spiritual God which is omnipotent and omniscient and he observes things which he sees as impossible to be explained through reasons or words. Even though philosophy has changed the whole course of his life from Paganism towards Manichaeism and then towards Catholic Christianity, we should not conclude that philosophy always led him to the right path. If Augustine hadn’t studied Cicero and Neo-Plotonic philosophy he would have been remained in the same ignorant path of Manichaeism, the path which he loathed at the latter years of his life. He would have been left without any significant answers to the questions that why we do evils? What is the nature of evil?. It was after he read philosophy that he observed and knew something that was compatible with his thinking. Hence philosophy may lead to a very opposite and far away place from the true, good, and beautiful. This understanding of philosophy was valued most by Al-Ghazali for his search for the true, good, and beautiful.

Now we take Al-Ghazali as an example to describe the contribution of philosophy in his life in finding the true, good, and beautiful. Al-Ghazali was a great scholar in the greatest center of learning in his time. He questioned servile religious conformism. Al-Ghazali had heard from the Apostle of the God –God’s blessings and peace be upon him!-that “every infant is born endowed with the Fitra then his parents make him Jew or Christian or Magian” (9). So he also wanted to know the true meaning of the original Fitra. Later when he was teaching in Baghdad he realized that his teaching is for gaining fame and glory that he was on the wrong side. He wanted to know the true knowledge about religion and life. He defined true knowledge as that knowledge that is free from any error hence it must not accompany a possibility of error. Now it was a very difficult job because there were many sects and every sect claimed to be true on the basis of its own interpretation. A little mistake might have led him into the wrong path. So he started to gain true knowledge through the sense data and reason Judge. He found that the thing which senses signals to us as true is the same sense data that is rejected as false by the reason judge. Hence it forced Ghazali to think of another stage which may in turn rejects what the reason judge is saying. That he found in the state of sleep. When a person is sleeping, all his senses are suspended and yet he believes in what he sees as a dream but as he is awakened he realizes the fact that it was not the truth.

It is according to Al-Ghazali “an affect of light which God Most High cast into his breast” that he conducted his search for true knowledge (16). Then he decided that there are four categories of those who seek true knowledge. These were (1) the Muttakallimun who claim that they are the men of true judgment and reasoning (2) the Talimites who claim to be the recipients of knowledge acquired from their infallible Imam. (3) The philosophers who claim that they are men of logic with proofs (4) The Sufis who claim to be men familiar with the Divine presence and of mystic vision and illumination. From the science of Kalam, Al-Ghazali concluded that Kalam is good for its own aim but because its purpose was to protect the orthodoxy from the innovators it was not adequate for his aim. From the Talimites, Al-Ghazali concluded that they gain knowledge from the infallible Imam, Ghazali answered them that our infallible imam is Muhammad -God blessings be upon him-that he has perfected the teaching for his community. Now the absence or death of the Imam does not matter, so there is no need of an infallible imam. Now as Al-Ghazali is an Islamic theologian, his belief in the God Most High, the revelations and the Last day was very strong and that is manifested when he writes in his autobiography that he was severely ill because he “was wandering between the pull of the worldly desires and the appeals of the afterlife, for six months” (Al-Ghazali 56). Hence Ghazali’s attitude towards philosophy is totally different from what Augustine had. Because Al-Ghazali knew that people involved in the science of Kalam were unsuccessful in negating the arguments of philosophers because of the spacious arguments of the Muttakallimun which were because of their insufficient knowledge about the science of philosophy. So he wanted to study philosophy first so as to have the right reasons for believing or rejecting in what the philosophers of his time were saying. So studied philosophy so thoroughly that he became the most learned in that time in the science of philosophy. His attitude to start the study of philosophy was to negate the arguments because he knew that they were based on disbelief, even though the concept of God before his quest of true, good, and beautiful was different after the quest. Al-Ghazali was a believer from the very start and remained the same after his quest but the nature of his belief has now changed. While Augustine was impartial as he was not bound to one faith, we see that he was a Manichee for Ten years and then he studied Neo-Plotonic Philosophy and then he converted to Christianity. Indeed it was a very risky job because he might have been pushed into a wrong path if he had not continued to read philosophy.

After Al-Ghazali studied philosophy for three years he could easily see the flaws of their arguments. For Ghazali there were many categories of philosophers and his extent of the study of philosophers is manifested through his book “The incoherence of philosophers”. It is not that Al-Ghazali considered all philosophers to be wrong since there were different purposes of different categories of philosophy. Also there were differences in those categories with respect to time. There were some shared attributes which were common to all categories of philosophy. These he classified as (1) that part of their work which is based on disbelief (2) a part connected to innovation (3) a part which cannot be repudiated. He does not prevent us from studying those philosophers as he argued that a believer rejecting mathematics will give an impression to another person who knows the marvels of mathematics that Islam is based on wrong beliefs. He may also think that if Islam is right then how the mathematical philosophers knew these marvelous things. He was able to see the innovations of the philosophers in moral matters. If he didn’t know the science of philosophy he would not have been able to pinpoint the flaws and the innovations of philosophers like Aristotle, Ibne-Sina and Al-Farabi etc. And that is the reason that he emphasizes more to study the sciences before critiquing them because our critique will be as wrong as our study is insufficient. Because of the study of philosophy he negated the three arguments of the Metaphysical philosophers with the help of the teachings given in Quran and traditions. The arguments of the philosophers were (1) only spirits will be assembled on the last day and not their corporeal bodies (2) that God knows universals and not the particulars (3) That world is eternal.

Philosophy was very useful for Al-Ghazali because he just like Augustine realized with the help of philosophy that everything cannot be explained through reasons. He argued that above the reason there is another stage that is the seeing of the unseen. That seeing of the unseen is through the “eye” which God Most High gives to the observer i.e the prophecy. Through the light of prophecy he sees those things which cannot be explained through the narrow range of words or reason. From here he questions the need for prophecy. He had a great insight into this premise because he had read philosophy so he searched for it. Hence he came to know at last that true knowledge can only be gained by experience and practice. First you get knowledge then you practice it and with practice you start to believe in what you know and practice. Because the way to get the true knowledge is to cleanse the heart from worldly desires and that is through fruitional experience and practice so that heart (the center of the soul and the source of true knowledge) gets adorned with the remembrance of God. That’s how prophecy has a need of existence to guide people towards reality. Now he also got the reasons of the disbelief of most of the people in the revelations, prophecy and other things. That he argued was because they themselves had not experienced the same thing therefore they were unable to explain it and therefore they say that it doesn’t exist and regard it to be superstitious. He argued that if these things are superstitious how then you can explain true dreams. According to Ghazali true dreams are only a part of the whole existence of prophecy hence it might quite be possible that every person is getting signals from his God in the form of true dreams. Hence true dream is example of the light of prophecy.  Apart from that philosophy also helped him to recognize the true philosophers and the status of a philosopher according to his works. Philosophy helped him to separate right from wrong. That was because of philosophy that he realized that argumentation should not be for the sake of argumentation but it should be for the sake of gaining truth. Through philosophy he was able to see the faults of philosophers.

As for the limitations of philosophy for Al-Ghazali are concerned they are explained by him very thoroughly. First of all he argued that one man accepting the marvels of mathematics may argue that as the mathematicians know these things their disbelief is manifested by their good knowledge of mathematics. Ghazali argued that these people are misled because the fact that they are skillful in one faculty does not necessarily make them heir to other faculties of knowledge. Other limitations which he argued were also very serious. He said that a person who is more skilful in philosophy will say that I know better than other people so I don’t need to follow the same conformism hence I can handle it. For example, a man may say that I drink wine because I know how to handle its bad effects. From the arguments given above, one should not take the impression that philosophy is the cause or the result of disbelief, because we see many believers in the philosophical discourse nowadays.

Philosophy has been advantageous in giving guidance to Al-Ghazali and Saint Augustine in many ways as discussed above. It has limitations and can hinder the quest for true, good and beautiful. But without studying philosophy the possibility of reaching out to truth decreases. If Augustine and Al-Ghazali had not studied philosophy, it was quite possible that they would have been pushed into the darkness of disbelief by the marvelous rhetoric and arguments from the wrong people. The position of Al-Ghazali very much appeals to me because he is determined from the very outset that he would not lead his life in servile conformism and that he must study every science so that he may understand the purpose of his life and religion with satisfaction. Concluding, philosophy played a very significant role in shaping what they were at last and it contributed to their extremely influential works for which we still give credit to them.

Written By: Asif Bahadur ( LUMS )

Diverse Education System In Pakistan: The Cause Of ill-integrated Political Structure

Pakistan is a country that has a very diverse education system. Various systems educating the people of Pakistan emerged either due to historical (colonial and indigenous) circumstances or because of a necessity. In the first category we have the private schools which prepare students according to the western education system. These schools are in turn further differentiated on the basis of modernity, economic resources or state sponsorship. Here we have the provincial educational system, the federal educational system, British educational system, Feudal educational system and local private schools which employ western methods of education. On the other hand, we have religious Madrassas as the indigenous educational systems found as thousands in numbers in mostly rural areas of all the four Provinces of Pakistan. In the second category we have the Cadet colleges and military colleges which are mostly state sponsored and emerged because the State felt their necessity. The aim of this paper is to show how this highly diversified educational system contributes towards a ill-integrated political structure. Here we should assume some basic conditions as constant so as to have a good grasp of what we are focusing on. The first assumption is that the diversity in educational system is not the only factor determining the whole political structure because there are many factors contributing to the whole system. Secondly, I will be focusing more on Cadet Colleges with provincial educational system and the British educational system as sources of comparison. Moreover, I will only include the politicians and bureaucracy in the political structure. For this essay I will employ the works of Pierre Bordieau, C.Wright Mills, Tariq Rehman, Bettina Larson, Liz Lightfoot, Michael E. Milakovich, Nosheen Ali and Gary Becker and use their various sociological and political concepts. Furthermore I have conducted interviews to further help me write this paper. I will also provide the limitations of these concepts towards the end of this paper. In the first part of the essay I will provide a short history of these three educational systems; I will then try to answer the question of how the diversity in the education system determines the political structure of the country. To understand these different institutions and their graduates is to understand how polarized the Pakistani society is, which hampers the social cohesion and the commitment to a unified policy.

Provincial educational system is the formal education system designed to provide people, with basic education which is mostly free of cost. They are state sponsored and they are mostly Urdu medium schools. They also account for 2.2% of the GDP expenditure from government. These schools provide education to the lower and lower middle social classes. After partition they provided the bulk of low skilled and low educated labor to the industries and government and bureaucratic offices. The infrastructure of these schools was constructed by the government with funds from foreign aid which the country received in its earlier years of independence due to its alliances with western countries. As the masses were educated in these schools the state due to earlier year problems of ethnicity and heterogeneity of society, designed a curriculum for these schools which fostered the ideological function of education. Tariq Rehman argues that ‘Nation-building is to be encouraged by suppressing ethnicity through ignoring the hetero-lingual and hetero-cultural nature of Pakistani Society. Islam has been considered to be the unifying factor against both ethnicity and ‘India’. Security paradigm is considered of having the greatest importance and military is glorified and sanctified in the name of Islam and nationalism .Both of these elements are given importance towards nation building in textbooks’ ( Rehman 2004, 215). With the passage of time they proved to be obsolete as government was not providing the necessary funds and guidance. People with higher incomes jumped to private institutions in which British education system was followed while lower income groups remained to benefit from the same government schools.

British education system which is followed not only in Pakistan but also in other developing countries provides education to the students who belong to upper middle or middle class. As an example I have chosen Karachi Grammar School which was established as an Anglo-Indian school in 1847 by the first Mayor of Karachi, Reverend Henry Brereton. It further evolved as time passed through guidance in syllabus and management, from England. Apart from Karachi Grammar many more schools have emerged who prepare local students for the competitive exams which are taken all over the world. Its primary objective was to educate English and Anglo-Indo children. Many politicians and bureaucrats who made their name appear in the history of Pakistan e.g. Benazir Bhutto was educated in this institution. Students who study here get the higher quality education which they use to get better jobs both in the commercial and non-commercial sector (Liz Lightfoot, 2003). For more information on the history and future of British education system, Liz Lightfoot’s article ‘Examination Debate Has Turned Full Circle' is a good read. Apart from these schools the state needed some other institutions which could provide officers for the Pakistani Army and bureaucracy (mostly police and foreign Office). For that purpose Cadet Colleges and military colleges were established in Ayub Khan’s regime. They were established in many regions especially where there were cantonments such as Kohat, Hasan Abdal, Petaro and Jehlum. Cadet colleges were funded by military but gradually funds were restricted to very low amounts keeping in view the economic conditions of the Alumni of these Cadet colleges (Interview, 2011). For more information on the history and statistics of education system of Pakistan, ‘Denizens of Alien Worlds: a Survey of Students and Teachers in Pakistan’s Urdu and English Medium Schools and Madrassas’ from ‘the Journal of Contemporary South Asia’ is also a good read.

While heterogeneity have helped many countries to industrialize and develop, Pakistan’s political structure is considered to be failing due to the diversified education system. Academics talk about the reasons behind the failure of the political structure of Pakistan i.e. the four military coups which suspended constitution each time and took control of all the political power. Military is still influencing government policies. The situation in Pakistan in which military holds the upper hand can be seen according to C.Wright Mill’s concept of the ‘Power Elite’. In his book ‘The Power Elite’, he describes his concept of ‘power elites’ as the relationship between the political, military, and economic elite noting that these people share a common world view. These elites in the "big three" institutional orders have an "uneasy" alliance based upon their "community of interests" driven by the "military metaphysic," which has transformed the economy into a 'permanent war economy' (Mills 1956, 234). Moreover, he argues that the military possesses class identity, recognizing itself separate and superior to the rest of society and have interchangeability or ‘horizontal mobility’ - they move within and between the three institutional structures and hold interlocking directorates (Mills 1956, 246). According to him socialization of new members who want to participate in power sharing, is done on the basis of how well they clone themselves socially as these elites. According to Mills these individuals can be categorized as the ‘top social stratum’. They have the same social class backgrounds, they study in similar institutions and they interact heavily with each other in the work context. This common background ensures their unity and exclusivity and the perseverance of their status-quo. Mills observation about military was that it is a sole possessor of power and that the bureaucratic, politic and the commercial elites accept its influence in policy making procedures whether it be the foreign policy or the budget policy (Mills 1956, 260). One thinks of the perpetual failure of the political structure to be substantially connected to education system and to what Mills is arguing about.

The Power elites in Pakistan come from the same economic backgrounds. Since inequality in Pakistan is higher, people on the upper strata go to study in same education institutions such as the ‘Branded’ education institutions. Because they know that if they are educated in these Cadet Colleges or Karachi Grammar Schools they will have better future lives. Also they are able to get the high quality education since they have the ability to pay higher fees for getting that education. This attitude of getting higher quality education leads them to study in same institutions and they interact in their classes to a very high degree. Then they interact again when they are about to graduate to apply for jobs. The senior alumni of the institutions are always ready to help their new graduating colleagues. For instance, Cadet Colleges and Grammar schools have Alumni organizations which guide them to pursue their careers in well organized way and in some cases they help them out ‘practically’. Hence we see that this may also be regarded as a very significant reason behind rent-seeking behavior in both the commercial and non-commercial sectors. Moreover as these alumni are having big posts in government and bureaucracy they provide funds to their alma mater. For example notable alumni of Cadet College Kohat include Minister of finance who visits the campus on every Parent’s Day and announces funds for his college amounting to Tens of millions of rupees (Interview, 2011). The students of Cadet College apply mostly for armed forces and public service competitive exams and because of their good education they mostly get themselves into these services. They interact in the military and Bureaucratic academies with their seniors and there they evolve into different groups. For example Kohatians, Abdalian and Alamgerians who compete with one another in these academies. In one sense they increase competition but on the other hand they are mostly involved in rent seeking. For example, a cadet from Cadet College Kohat was an Academy commander who was protecting his Kohatian junior from punishment. Hence these groupings in return do not take advantage of the training what the academies want to provide them. When these cadets graduate from these academies they get higher ranks. When there is a chance of promotion they approach their higher ranked seniors who prefer them instead of others who may be better than them. For example, the present Deputy Chief of Navy is a Kohatian; hence it is highly probable that he will promote those who are Kohatians. This shows how the power is dishonestly distributed among minority of the members of society which leads to further rent-seeking and the decreasing of people having greater power in their hands. This is how we have a ‘minority elites’ influencing all the policies of the government. These groupings also leads to detrimental effects when the people belonging to these groups approach to higher power echelons such as Inspector General of Police or Chief of the Army Staff etc. Just like how Pervez Musharraf did with the help of his colleagues was successful to dismiss the democratically elected government of Nawaz Sharif in October, 1999.

Compared to the Cadet colleges the students from the provincial education system have no guidance or approach to go forward. Cadet colleges dominate the main stream of power holders in national and provincial Assemblies, in armed forces and bureaucracies. Grammar school students mostly dominate the commercial and industrial arena in the urban cities. On the other hand the students of provincial education system are unable to progress because of low quality education. They simply either stop studying or study in government universities which increase their economic burden. Hence it leads Pakistan to have a very polarized society with a minority of oppressive elites on the top with greater power while poor people who are millions in number are at the bottom of the social strata.

Another detrimental effect of this process can be found in the bureaucratic circle. Bettina Larson and Michael E. Milakovich argued in their ‘Citizen Relationship Management and E-Government’ that in United States people at the higher posts in bureaucracy tend to keep lower ranked officials as consultants who implement the orders of the higher ranked officials. He called these interactions as Linkages or ‘issue Networks’ (Michael, 2005). If we compare our bureaucratic system even we can see that behavior in the historical events in the colonial era where the indigenous landlords used to carry out orders of their colonial masters. But after the partition these linkages cannot be seen because of the rent seeking behavior which prevails because of the different groupings both in the military and political structure. For our convenience we give these linkages between higher ranked officials and lower ranked officials a different name i.e. ‘Forward Linkages’ while the linkages between the lower ranked officials and the common public can be termed as ‘backward linkages’. In the Pakistani case both of these linkages are negligible as we see that even rent seeking can be found to a higher extent in backward linkage procedures. Common public can use their approach to the higher ranked officials to get their jobs done. The absence of these forward and backward linkages also leads to the ill-integration of bureaucracy and the separation of public from power sharing and the inefficient distribution of resources in society. This separation of political forces can also be accounted for the inability of Pakistan to evolve into a democratic nation as Max Weber argued in his book ‘Protestant Work Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism’ that efficient Bureaucracy is necessary for an evolving democracy (Weber 1902, 153). Peter Evans in his book ‘Embedded Autonomy’ defined ‘Embedded Autonomy’ as the capacity of a country to drive its bureaucracy and private institutions mostly business community hand in hand for policy objectives. He gives the example of Ministry of Industry and Trading of Japan to have that ‘Embedded Autonomy’ which was responsible for its industrialization (Evans 1991, 18). That Embedded Autonomy is almost absent in Pakistan because of which Pakistan in spite of big tariffs is unable to export its products to other countries and hence is unable to industrialize. The rent seeking behavior which stems from the diversity in education system hence leads to greater problems which the state has not been able to address since its inception.

A good way to ensure that the diversity of education helps to improve instead of harming the political structure is to consider the concept of ‘social capital’. Social capital does not have a clear, undisputed meaning, for substantive and ideological reasons. Many Academics have defined it keeping in mind various circumstances. Three definitions seem relevant here. Social capital is about the value of social networks, bonding similar people and bridging between diverse people, with norms of reciprocity or 'a resource that actors derive from specific social structures and then use to pursue their interests; it is created by changes in the relationship among actors'; (Becker 1964, 184). Or ‘it is made up of social obligations ('connections'), which is convertible, in certain conditions, into economic capital and may be institutionalized in the form of a title of nobility' (Bourdieu 1986,64). Becker and Bourdieu both worked on the concept of ‘Social Capital’. Becker in his article ‘Inequality in Social Capital’ described the concept. He argued that we emphasize more on the economic productivity of education while we ignore the social benefits which in turn can benefit not only the individual but also the whole society. ‘We let slip the most important determinant of educational investment namely the domestic transmission of cultural capital. The particular academic ability and talents in every individual are the result of social and time investment in that individual by his family and society’. (Becker 1964, 256). The accumulation of social capital can vary based on the time period, social structure and the social structure and the particular social class in which the individual presides. The same concept has been argued by Bourdieu in his book ‘Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste’ as ‘The social and economic yields of academically qualified individuals certainly manifests the family investment not only in economic terms but in the social terms i.e. the transmission and investment of hereditary social capital’.( Bourdieu 1986, 33). If we assess the case of Pakistani students we see that the regular students have the least exposure to society because even though they are extremely exposed to their family they are unable to learn the norms and values needed to enter the power structure. While those students who spend five years of their lives in the boarding houses of Cadet Colleges find the necessary time and exposure to enter the power structure with least effort. This can lead us to conclude that Cadet College students are better equipped with social capital which can reinforce a better political structure. Then why has it not worked in the past? The answer is that when these students enter into bureaucratic system or armed forces they are not guided by the state to a common objective point. Also because the diversity in education is at work here therefore all the students can be very difficultly coerced towards a common productive point. This also helps us to understand that a well educated man not having the necessary ‘social capital’ can prove to be either very detrimental to society by using his agency or will be totally on the mercy of social structure.

            Now one is puzzled when he observes that how most of these diversified actors in the complex social structure end to prevent the society from changing? Or in other worlds how they end to preserve the status quo? This question can be answered by Pierre Burdieau in his article ‘Language and symbolic power’. He explained symbolic power or symbolic violence as the self-interested capacity to ensure that the arbitrariness of the social order is either ignored, or posited as natural, thereby justifying the legitimacy of existing social structures ( Bourdieu 1991,86). It is quite possible that the groupings of the Cadet College and Grammar school students may make their members totally selfish and self interested and that they do not think about society. In that case they are preserving what the bureaucracy was doing say, a decade ago even though they may not be consciously acting to preserve the status quo. The symbolic violence concept is extremely against rational choice theory which argues that every agent of the society always acts rationally. For example, a girl when brings her boy friend to her house can make her parents angry. They will make expressions which will indicate to their daughter that what she had done by bringing her boy friend to her home is against the norms of the society. Here in this case her parents are exercising symbolic violence against their daughter to preserve the status quo. Though they are not aware of the hidden perseverance of the status-quo still that they think they should do that if they want their child from bad norms.

            Apart from the classification mentioned in the start of the paper there is another very special case of diversity in educational curriculum which may cause serious disruptions in the society. As Nosheen Ali in her article ‘Outrageous State Sectarianized Citizens: Deconstructing the ‘Textbook Controversy’ in the Northern Areas, Pakistan’ from ‘South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal’ argues about a textbook controversy (2000-2005) that arose when the Pakistan state introduced new, overtly Sunni textbooks in the Northern Areas, and the local Shia population began to agitate for a more balanced curriculum (Ali 2008, 9). The conflict reached an acute stage during 2004-2005, as violent confrontations took place between Shia and Sunni communities, and a constant curfew paralyzed daily life in Gilgit for eleven months. According to Nosheen Ali, the state was making the Shia community to learn from the Islamic Studies books which contained the dogma of Sunni interpretation. Now this event is differentiated from what we were discussing before because it is dangerous in the sense that the education system produces conflict between two communities. This conflict not only prevents students from getting education but also it creates long run problems for both the communities. It should be kept in mind that events like these used to occur frequently but because Shia population is proportionally very less as compared to Sunni population, they didn’t get much notice; but this event got coverage and various academic articles have been written on this event. This is another evidence of how the education system can become important to our social and political structure.

            The works of the authors may be limited in the sense that most of these authors wrote about the concepts like ‘Embedded Autonomy’ and ‘Social capital’ assuming a more complex and developed society with more responsible and developed institutions of western societies. Academics, who have written on the subject of Pakistan and its history, cannot be found in great numbers as a very little work can be found on the subject with these particular assumptions. Their analysis and case studies are very much related to the western societies. Moreover, as Mills have regarded the commercial elites as one of the Power elites, he was assuming the commercial elites of United States. The commercial elites in Pakistan are not so evolved as compared to United States commercial elites who influence most of the policies in their own interest and they also influence the economies and political systems on the international level. Beaurdieu was highly critical of the rational choice theory while we know that in realist terms in most cases people act very rationally and symbolic violence very less observed in normal life.

            The case studies of Cadet Colleges, Grammar Schools and Provincial government system were seen very useful in trying to answer the question of how the diversity of education system in Post-Independence Pakistan has been responsible for the ill-integrated political structure. Pakistani political structure is not necessarily solely determined by the education system, but it is true that because the structure consists of groupings from different local institutions and various highly educated people who reinforce an ill-integrated political structure. This systemic fragmentation can also be seen in armed forces, police and bureaucracy and assemblies. This in turn, influences the power and resource distribution which increases the chances of rent seeking and corruption. The students from lower strata continue to study in the same circle and we see that they either end up in a non commissioned carrier or go abroad and work for foreign governments where their greater numbers manifest that they have fled their country because of the constant progress of the alumni of Cadet Colleges or Grammar Schools.  

Written By: Asif Bahadur ( LUMS )