The state of Pakistan is the creation of the reactionary forces that moulded the Indian sub-continent: British imperialism and Gandhian nationalism. Through colonial exploitation the one exacerbated the internal pre-capitalist religious differences of the sub-continent. The other, articulating the interests of the Hindu bourgeoisie under the guise of regenerating the Indian nation, provoked the Muslim people as a whole into a defensive separatism. The ideology that preached nonviolence was responsible for the deaths of several millions of people; by its gross and mendacious irrelevance to the problems of the Indian people it is continuing to kill many more. In this situation, the Muslims were led by their own bourgeoisie and landowners into a separatist state, Pakistan. Since then it has been ruled by a coalition of landowners, businessmen, officers and civil servants, and they have been able to hold the predominantly peasant population in subjection, using both armed repression and the manipulation of Islamic and anti-Indian ideology.

As in many other colonial states, the ruling class lacked the political maturity to adopt the classical institutions of political rule as developed in the industrial capitalist world; after 10 years of pseudo-parliamentary rule the army took power in 1958. Since then Pakistan has been ruled by the Ayub Khan clique (1958–69) and the present clique around Yahya Khan. This evolution has posed a definite political choice, clearly brought out by Tariq Ali in the title of his book ‘Pakistan: Military Rule or People’s Power’.footnote1 There have been many cases in the third world of military régimes deceiving the masses through demagogy at home and a token anti-imperialism abroad; in some cases these have carried through national-democratic reforms. But they have always installed new forms of exploitation over the masses. The examples of Nasser and Kassem in the Arab world and of a succession of nationalist military régimes in Latin America bear this out. Without organizing and relying on the masses such régimes are precarious and create their own internal relations of exploitation.