Rumours are again rife in Islamabad that President Asif Ali Zardari, to assert control over the overweening military establishment, may fire both the head of the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI-D), Ahmed Shuja Pasha, and the Chief of Army Staff, Gen. Ashfaq Pervez Kayani. It is, of course, an open question about whether or not he will be able to assert such authority even though he formally commands the requisite powers to do so. Tragically, the pattern of civil-military relations in Pakistan is such that the stated prerogatives of the elected leadership have meant little in practice.

As is well known, the military asserted control as early as 1958. A pliant judiciary then proceeded to grant its imprimatur to the coup under the imaginative but ill-conceived “doctrine of necessity”.
Since that time, barring brief interregnums, the military establishment has remained primus inter pares within the polity. Worse still, under the tenure of Gen. Pervez Musharraf, it managed to penetrate virtually every facet of the state and beyond. In so doing it extended the overreach that had its genesis under the scrofulous rule of Gen. Zia-ul-Haq. Undoing their disastrous legacies will not an easy task for any civilian leader.
That said, what explains the markedly divergent trajectories of India and Pakistan given that they both emerged from the detritus of British colonial rule in South Asia? Obviously, the common legacy explains little or nothing. Otherwise why would the Indian military remain truly subservient to civilian authority and why are their Pakistani counterparts virtually contemptuous of the same? The answers must be sought elsewhere.
The roots of the two vastly different civil-military dispensations must necessarily be traced to the nationalist movements that spawned the two states. It is worth recalling that the Indian nationalist movement, under the extraordinary tutelage of Mahatma Gandhi, was transformed into a mass-based, internally democratic movement that sought to represent every segment of Indian society. Consequently, the habits of democratic argument, debate and negotiation became an essential feature of India’s political culture. Subsequently, Gandhi’s chosen lieutenant, Jawaharlal Nehru, also displayed extraordinary sagacity as Independence approached. He deftly defended the men and women of Subhas Chandra Bose’s ill-fated Indian National Army (INA) at the famous trial at the Red Fort. However, he also promptly moved to cashier them in the aftermath of the trials. In his judgment, these individuals had violated the sacred oath of office and hence could not be relied upon to remain loyal to civil authority. Worse still, they might sow political discord in the ranks of a post-Independence Indian military order. Finally, given the impeccable credentials of the Indian nationalist leadership that assumed office following British colonial withdrawal, the Indian military had to earn its nationalist spurs through their conduct during the first Kashmir war.
Pakistan, alas, was not so blessed. Its nationalist movement was woven around the tenacious, autocratic and charismatic leadership of Mohammed Ali Jinnah. His party, the Muslim League, did not come to enjoy the benefits of internal democracy. Furthermore, it failed to develop a mass following amongst all Muslim communities in the British Indian Empire. Instead, Jinnah, through his very adroit use of fears of Hindu domination, managed to forge a new nation. However, the Muslim League’s lack of internal democracy, its absence of a mass political base and its failure to devise any blueprints for the governance of a new state, left the country in a most tenuous position in the wake of independence. When faced with the colossal tasks of melding a range of disparate ethnic communities and a degree of Indian hostility, its civilian leadership proved to be singularly ill-equipped. As public order broke down the bureaucracy in concert with the military chose to bypass the anaemic civilian authorities and seized the reins of political power. Since the elitist civilian leadership lacked significant public legitimacy and the vast majority of the populace was unaware of their political rights as citizens, the organisers of the coup met little resistance. Once ensconced in office the military showed scant interest in bolstering civilian institutions and instead proceeded to eviscerate them. Furthermore, it embellished the security threats to the nascent state from its behemoth neighbour to legitimise its rule. In an entirely related vein it also exploited the Kashmir dispute to rally popular opinion.
Over time the military helped generate an authoritarian political culture that neatly dovetailed with the country’s mostly feudal political order. Not surprisingly such an orientation towards politics blighted the growth of independent civilian political institutions, hobbled mass political participation and reinforced atavistic social beliefs and practices. Consequently, even when civilian governments came to the fore the overwhelming prerogatives of the military remained mostly intact. Some leaders made feeble and occasionally quixotic attempts at civil-military reform. However, these were ill-conceived, hasty or idiosyncratic. Given their haphazard features and the asymmetry of power, the military establishment almost inevitably prevailed in these contests.
Pakistan, yet again, is at another critical turning point in its tortured history of civil-military relations. The standing of the military has taken a severe battering following the disclosure that Osama bin Laden had a safe haven within a stone’s throw of Pakistan’s premier military academy. Furthermore, the military’s overconfidence has led it to grossly mishandle relations with the United States. This milieu may actually prove propitious for the civilian regime to forthrightly assert its privileges and thereby embark upon a new approach to civil-military relations. Can it gird its loins to undertake such a Herculean effort?

The writer holds the Rabindranath Tagore Chair in Indian Cultures and Civilisations at Indiana University, Bloomington, US