The conversation we owe Kashmir

The legality of a constitutional settlement cannot compensate for the absence of time, preparation and protection required to implement it The collapse of the Cabinet Mission Plan did more than extinguish the last comprehensive attempt to preserve a united India. It transformed a constitutional dispute into an administrative and humanitarian emergency. Indian National Congress proceeded with the Constituent Assembly, the Muslim League withdrew its acceptance of the Plan, and political distrust increasingly gave way to confrontation. Communal violence spread across different parts of India, demonstrating that the approaching transfer of power could no longer be treated simply as an exercise in constitutional drafting. By the beginning of 1947, Britain had reached a decisive conclusion. Its rule in India could not continue indefinitely, while no constitution acceptable to all the principal political parties had emerged. On February 20, 1947, Prime Minister Clement Attlee announced that British authority would be transferred to Indian hands no later than June 1948. The statement also acknowledged that, in the absence of an agreed constitution, Britain would have to determine whether power should pass to a central authority, provincial governments or some other arrangement. The possibility of more than one successor authority had now entered official policy. Lord Louis Mountbatten arrived as the last Viceroy in March 1947 with a mandate to supervise this transfer. He inherited a political order already close to collapse. The Cabinet Mission framework had ceased to command common confidence, the interim government was paralysed by rivalry between Congress and the Muslim League, and communal violence had exposed the fragility of provincial administration. Mountbatten’s task was not to negotiate within a stable constitutional environment. It was to construct a settlement while the institutions through which it had to be implemented were rapidly disintegrating. The central question was whether the deadline of June 1948 provided sufficient time to undertake an orderly transfer or whether delay would deepen violence and political uncertainty. Mountbatten chose acceleration. On June 3, 1947, the British Government announced a plan under which British India could be divided and power transferred to two successor governments. Punjab and Bengal would decide whether they should themselves be partitioned; separate constituent assemblies could emerge; and referendums would determine the future of the North-West Frontier Province and the Sylhet district of Assam. The date for transfer was brought forward from June 1948 to August 1947. The acceleration was defended as a response to deteriorating conditions. British authority was weakening, communal violence was spreading and the principal political parties had accepted that Partition had become unavoidable. Mountbatten and his supporters believed that a definite and immediate date would end uncertainty and compel the parties to assume responsibility. The opposing view deserves equal attention. A constitutional transformation of such magnitude required the division of provinces, armed forces, civil services, financial assets, railways, irrigation systems, records and administrative institutions. It required the establishment of two governments and the settlement of territorial boundaries affecting millions of people. Compressing this process into a few weeks inevitably reduced the time available for administrative preparation, security arrangements and the protection of vulnerable communities. The question is therefore not simply whether British withdrawal had become inevitable. It plainly had. The more difficult question is whether the decision to advance the transfer by approximately ten months converted political urgency into administrative recklessness. The Indian Independence Act received Royal Assent on July 18, 1947. It provided that two independent Dominions—India and Pakistan—would be established from August 15, 1947. It partitioned Punjab and Bengal, empowered the respective constituent assemblies to legislate for the new Dominions and terminated British responsibility for governing India. Parliamentary sovereignty, exercised from London for generations, legislated itself out of the subcontinent in an extraordinarily compressed period. The legal instrument was concise. Partition was not. An Act of Parliament could establish two Dominions, confer legislative authority and terminate imperial jurisdiction. It could not divide villages, canals, railway lines, police forces, military units, families and centuries of shared social existence with comparable simplicity. Constitutional law could provide a date for independence, but it could not by itself produce the administrative capacity necessary to manage the consequences of territorial division. The most visible illustration of this haste was the work of the Punjab and Bengal Boundary Commissions. Sir Cyril Radcliffe was appointed to chair both bodies and was required to determine the boundaries separating Muslim-majority and non-Muslim-majority areas. The task involved densely populated territories in which religious communities, agricultural systems, transport networks and commercial centres were deeply interwoven. He was given only a matter of weeks to complete it. Punjab and Bengal could not be divided by applying census figures mechanically. District-level majorities concealed substantial minorities, while economic and geographic considerations frequently pointed in directions different from religious demography. Rivers, irrigation headworks, railways and markets crossed the proposed boundaries. Sikhs were particularly vulnerable in Punjab because their population, landholdings and sacred places were distributed across areas claimed by both successor states. The commissions were expected to resolve these questions while political authority was itself being divided. Their members were nominated from opposing political sides and were unable to agree on many decisive matters. The ultimate responsibility therefore rested with Radcliffe, who was required to draw boundaries under extraordinary pressure and with limited opportunity for local investigation. More troubling was the timing of publication. The boundary awards were made public on August 17, 1947, after independence ceremonies had already taken place. Large populations in Punjab and Bengal consequently entered independence without knowing with certainty on which side of the new international frontier they would fall. The delay may have been intended to prevent the boundary controversy from overshadowing the independence celebrations or provoking immediate disorder. Its effect was to deepen uncertainty at the precise moment when administrative clarity was most urgently required. Officials responsible for security, local government and transportation had little time to prepare for the territorial consequences. Ordinary people were left to respond to rumour, fear and rapidly changing political realities. No law expressly ordered a complete exchange of populations between India

Many Pakistanis, especially the youth in colleges and universities, while celebrating Independence Day every year (August 14, 2026, marks seventy-ninth), express bafflement as to how a state purportedly created in the name of ‘Islam’ is juxtaposed with the term ‘Republic. They wonder how a Parliament, where majority is not that of theologians, working under Westminster model, retains, amends and enacts mainly Anglo-Saxon laws and yet claims that Shariah is supreme. In Europe and the United States and elsewhere, the term republic connotes a State that precludes monarch and clergy. In our context, the predominant view (though totally misconceived) is that divorced from religion, politics is “changezee” (chaos, anarchy and disorder). جلالِ بادشاہی ہو کہ جمہوری تماشا ہو جدا ہو دیں سیاست سے تو رہ جاتی ہے چنگیزی What poet Dr. Muhammad Iqbal emphasizes in the couplet, Jallah badshahi ho ya jamhori tamasha ho; Juda hon deen siyasat se, to reh jati hai changezee, is that ethics contained in holy Quran should be part and parcel of governance. The majority misconstrue deen (Quranic term seerat-e-mustaqeemright path) as conventional mazhab (religion). By reading the second stanza in isolation, the clergy interprets and insists that politics should only be in the name of their brand of conventional (orthodox) religion. They and many others conveniently ignore the first stanza of the couplet. The couplet unambiguously conveys that whether it is monarchy or democracy, governance sans ethical framework of deen is changezee. With conventional mazhab comes Shariah that is a contentious issue since the adoption of Objectives Resolution of 1949. In a fragmented society marred by sectarian hatred (not merely genuine differences over interpretation of Islamic laws) it has becomes a permanent source of conflicts with claims and counter claims on how to run the State. Ziauddin Sardar (born in Lahore and who left Pakistan in 1960 at the age of nine, now author of not less than fifty books with world-wide acclaim of a public intellectual specialising in Muslim thought) says that if you equate Islam with state, then religion becomes a reason of the state and that state becomes the power of religion. Basically you produce a totalitarian system”. Ziauddin elaborates that the very idea that “Islam is equal to state is a totalitarian equation. We dont have to go very far; we just have to see recent history. Wherever Islam has been equated with state, we have produced totalitarian systems, like Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Afghanistan, you name it”. Of course, Saudi Arabia is now drifting away from influence of clergy, but not monarchy. According to critics of Objectives Resolution, it was a departure from the ideals of Quaid-e-Azam, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, of equality for all citizens and his principles of fair governance. Using it as a ploy, they say that all governments, both military and civilians, managed to convert Pakistan into an exploitative State where ultimately the Shariat Court held land reforms against Islam. According to them, Quaid-e-Azam did not want to make Pakistan a theocratic but certainly an egalitarian state. Objectives Resolution, passed by the first Constituent Assembly on March 12, 1949 under Liaquat Ali Khans leadership is undoubtedly one of the most important documents in the constitutional history of Pakistanit served as preamble for the Constitutions of 1956, 1962 and eventually became part of the 1973 Constitution when the Eighth Amendment was passed in 1985. The proponents of Objectives Resolution claim that it confirms the true genesis of Pakistan by reiterating, Sovereignty of the entire Universe belongs to Allah alone and authority should be delegated to the State through its people under the rules set by Allah”. Therefore, it has become a blend of Islam and Western democracy. Liaquat Ali Khan explained the context of the resolution in his speech delivered in the Constituent Assembly on March 7, 1949 claiming it to be “the most important occasion in the life of this country, next in importance only to the achievement of independence”. He said that we as Muslims believe that authority is vested in Allah Almighty and it should be exercised in accordance with the standards laid down in Islam. He added that this preamble had made it clear that the elected persons would exercise the authority, which is the essence of democracy, and it eliminates the dangers of theocracy. The events that followed proved him wrong as clergy started asserting its own authority instead of that of Allahs by saying religion is what we interpret”. The logical outcomes of the Objectives Resolution were: (a) movement against Ahmadis, (b) clergys campaign against Ayub Khans regime in the name of Islam, (c) support of religious parties and right wing to military crackdown in East Pakistan culminating into dismemberment of the country and (d) Zulfikar Ali Bhuttos compromises with religious leaders. The matter did not end there. It paved the way for an 11-year dictatorial and nightmarish rule [1977-1988] of General Ziaul Haq. Zias legacy was reflected in the formative political years of Mian Nawaz Sharif, three time elected Prime Minster of Pakistan. Military dictator late General Pervez Musharraf who deposed Nawaz Sharif on October 12, 1999, and all others who followed him failed to undo Zias legacyunfortunately since 1977, religious bigotry is haunting us. The militants and terrorists derive their ideological strength from the notion that real authority rests with Allah and they are waging jihad to make Pakistan a true Islamic polity. The Objectives Resolution, being part of our Constitution, though emphasizes existence of a Muslim State based on the principles of justice and equity for all, yet contradicts the concept of a secular State free of any religious obligations. Shariah as body of laws cannot be free of sectarian biases, thus, one cannot reconcile the two conflicting ideas. For example, in Indonesia, the debate whether you can have an Islamic state was a long drawn one with much depth, and they finally reached the conclusion that Islam and politics are linked, not through the state but through a civic society. It means that if you are a

Every few months, someone declares that people no longer need literature. The argument usually sounds convincing enough. We live in a world of instant news, endless social media, podcasts, and artificial intelligence. Information arrives faster than ever before. Why spend days with a novel when an opinion can be delivered in mere seconds? Yet the strange thing is that the more information we have, the more relevant literature seems to become. Hand someone a novel written a century ago, and they might discover their own world reflected in its pages, including many of the same fears and uncertainties they face today. That is more than a coincidence. It is literature doing exactly what it has always done, peering beyond the moment in which it was written. Literature offers more than a compelling story and reminds us why it continues to resonate till date. Many admire literature for its alluring language and craft. Others value it for the evolutionary nature and futuristic tendencies. That’s the side this leans toward. Literature stays with us because it explains the world we’re still trying to make sense of. Every generation believes its experiences are unique. Pandemics feel unprecedented, propaganda seems like a modern invention and the world today evolves at a pace that feels unlike anything before it. Yet long before any of this dominated the headlines, writers had already imagined it, warned about it, or lived through versions of it themselves. Literature does not simply reflect its own era. It reaches far beyond it, exploring aspects of human nature that continue to surface despite changing circumstances. When COVID-19 hit in 2020, thousands of readers picked up a novel from 1947 and discovered echoes of the present. Albert Camus’s The Plague, set in the Algerian city of Oran, seemed to describe their own lives with strange precision; the empty streets, the panic-buying, the denial before the lockdowns, and that eerie numbness that emerged as the crisis dragged on. Camus never saw a pandemic like this coming. What he understood, decades before any of us lived through one, was how people respond when disruption takes hold. George Orwell did something similar, except his warning arrived even earlier. Nineteen Eighty-Four gave us words we now use so casually and forget they came from fiction: surveillance, doublethink, thoughtcrime. Orwell imagined a state where truth could be manipulated and every move was watched. Decades later, in a world run by data and constant tracking, his descriptions still feel eerily familiar. Pakistani writers were making this same point long before it became the world’s concern. Saadat Hasan Manto’s Toba Tek Singh imagined a man stranded between two countries decades before the world started talking about refugees and border crises. Qurratulain Hyder’s Aag Ka Darya traced the same cycle of displacement and rebuilding that we’re still watching today, whether in Gaza, Ukraine, or Afghanistan, revealing how human beings survive conflict no matter which war or which century it happens to be. What makes literature so accurate over time is not mysticism. Writers were not fortune-tellers. They were keen observers of human nature. They sensed that while the world keeps reinventing itself, people rarely do. A writer who understands these instincts deeply enough, produces literature that seems to anticipate futures it was never meant to witness. That same power demands caution. Literature can expose hidden truths just as easily as it can be used as a tool of persuasion. Throughout history, poems, novels, and stories have been used to shape how people think, feel, and behave. Rudyard Kipling’s The White Man’s Burden is a reminder of how easily powerful narratives can turn domination into duty. It shows how persuasive language can make unequal power structures appear virtuous and troubling ideas sound noble. The same dynamic persists today, whenever power seeks a more palatable language to conceal itself. The Soviet Union promoted an entire genre known as socialist realism, where literature was not expected to explore human complexity but to glorify the state and inspire loyalty. Even something as ordinary as a school curriculum works the same way. The books chosen for students are never just neutral stories. They are early lessons that shape young minds, teaching them which histories to trust and which values to hold onto. This is the quiet, manipulative side of literature that doesn’t need to announce itself, yet still decides how an entire generation views the world. Literature deserves more than passive consumption. The same stories that broaden our understanding can also be used to influence and persuade. That makes reading critically, asking who wrote something and why, not just an academic skill, but a way of navigating a world built on narratives. What keeps literature alive is not tradition, nostalgia, or academic praise. It is the moment of recognition it still delivers. When a writer long gone can describe anxieties, conflicts, and dilemmas that feel unmistakably current, how many of our modern concerns are merely old questions in new disguises?

“Shall we put an end to the human race; or shall mankind renounce war?”— Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein, The Russell–Einstein Manifesto, 1955 War hysteria sweeping the world shows nothing more than absolute insanity on the part of all belligerent parties. Humanity can explore distant planets, communicate across continents within seconds and build machines capable of imitating human intelligence, yet it still appears incapable of resolving disputes without bombing cities, starving populations and producing generations of traumatised children. There are people struggling with poverty, food shortages, unemployment, high inflation, disease and homelessness. Then there are their so-called leaders—some elected, some imposed, some in uniform and others protected by manufactured democratic legitimacy—who remain obsessed with gunfire, drones, missiles, nuclear warheads and weapons of mass destruction. This is not leadership. It is organised madness presented as patriotism. Look at Gaza. Nearly 1.9 million of its 2.1 million inhabitants remain displaced, many of them repeatedly, while restrictions and operational constraints continue to obstruct humanitarian relief. Families are pushed from one devastated neighbourhood to another, carrying whatever they can salvage. For them, “strategic operations” mean ruined homes, unsafe water, inadequate food, fractured hospitals and children learning the geography of survival before they learn the alphabet. Look at Ukraine. During the first six months of 2026, the United Nations verified 1,396 civilian deaths and 7,978 injuries—a 37 per cent increase over the corresponding period of 2025. June recorded the highest monthly civilian casualty total since April 2022. Yet the war continues to be discussed through maps, territorial percentages and weapon packages, as though the dead were merely inconvenient entries in a military balance sheet. Look at Sudan, where a contest for power has become a war against the population itself. About 19.5 million people face acute hunger, five million are at emergency levels and an estimated 825,000 children under five are expected to suffer acute malnutrition during 2026. Several areas remain at risk of famine while humanitarian agencies struggle for access and resources. The world can finance bullets that arrive on time, but food and medicine are eternally delayed. Now look at the ever-expanding Middle Eastern conflict. What began as confrontation involving Israel, the United States and Iran has steadily drawn other states into its orbit. The latest joint military strikes by the United States and Saudi Arabia against Iran-aligned armed groups operating in Iraq demonstrate how quickly regional conflicts acquire new participants and new frontlines. Iraq, itself struggling to preserve its sovereignty and internal stability, has once again become a battleground for rival powers. Every new military operation is justified as retaliation or deterrence, yet each one merely widens the geography of destruction and pushes peace still further beyond reach. The consequences are not confined to the combatants. Energy infrastructure, shipping routes and humanitarian supply corridors remain vulnerable, while the risks of slower global growth, renewed inflation and economic instability continue to rise. Once again, decisions taken in heavily guarded capitals are paid for by ordinary families thousands of kilometres away. That is the cruel arithmetic of modern warfare. The latest strikes in Iraq also expose another dangerous reality. Countries that once claimed merely to support one side diplomatically are now becoming direct military participants. Every additional state entering the conflict reduces the space for negotiation while increasing the possibility of miscalculation. History repeatedly demonstrates that wars rarely remain confined within the boundaries imagined by those who initiate them. They expand geographically, economically and morally, dragging into their vortex nations and populations that neither sought nor desired confrontation. A missile is fired in the Middle East and transport and electricity can become more expensive in Pakistan. A shipping route is blocked and food prices rise in poor importing countries. Oil installations are attacked and workers whose wages were already inadequate are advised to “adjust” their household budgets. The poor neither declare wars nor negotiate ceasefires. They merely finance wars through taxes, inflation and deprivation—and then provide their bodies. The scale of this moral collapse is evident from global priorities. Military expenditure reached a record US$2.887 trillion in 2025, marking the eleventh consecutive annual increase. In the same world, approximately 645 million people faced hunger during 2025 and around 2.7 billion could not afford a healthy diet. There is no global shortage of money. There is a shortage of conscience, political courage and human decency. Governments insist that military expenditure ensures security. Security for whom? What security does a mother possess when she cannot feed her children? What security is enjoyed by an unemployed graduate, a patient unable to afford medicine or a farmer crushed by fuel and fertiliser prices? Of what use are supersonic aircraft to citizens living without clean water, functioning schools or basic healthcare? Even more frightening is the renewed worship of nuclear weapons. At the beginning of 2026, the world possessed an estimated 12,187 nuclear warheads. About 9,745 were held in military stockpiles for possible use, while between 2,100 and 2,200 deployed warheads remained on high operational alert. Leaders speak of deterrence, escalation ladders and tactical nuclear options as though they were discussing pieces on a chessboard rather than devices capable of extinguishing cities and contaminating generations. The language of war has also been deliberately sanitised. Bombing becomes an “operation”; dead civilians become “collateral damage”; starvation becomes “food insecurity”; demolished homes become “infrastructure losses”; and children torn apart by explosives become “unintended consequences.” Such expressions do not explain reality. They hide it. They allow those ordering violence to sleep peacefully while others search for their loved ones through rubble. Responsibility in every conflict is not necessarily equal. International law distinguishes aggression from self-defence, occupation from resistance and military targets from civilians. But no invocation of history, religion, national security or territorial ambition can justify treating innocent human suffering as politically useful or morally irrelevant. Every party that deliberately attacks civilians, blocks essential relief, uses starvation as leverage or prolongs war for domestic political survival must be held accountable. Citizens must also confront their own complicity. War hysteria cannot survive without

Pakistan’s debt problem has entered a new phase. The headline figure is alarming: total debt and liabilities reached Rs. 99.59 trillion by the end of fiscal year (FY) 2025-26. The deeper concern, however, lies in the composition of this debt, the burden of servicing it and the channels through which public borrowing now affects every productive sector of the economy. According to the latest State Bank of Pakistan data, total debt stood at Rs. 97.88 trillion. Gross government domestic debt reached Rs. 59.44 trillion, while external debt amounted to Rs. 36.20 trillion. Central government debt increased by 7.39% over the preceding year to Rs. 83.64 trillion. External debt and liabilities stood at US$138.85 billion. These numbers confirm the central argument developed in the a ten-part series published in these columns [‘Bankruptcy of ideas—X: Debt, Taxes & Democracy’, Minute Mirror, June 21, 2026]. Pakistan has not merely borrowed against its future. It has increasingly borrowed to service earlier borrowing, while failing to create sufficient productive capacity from the accumulated debt.   ‏The external debt-servicing profile for FY2026 makes this particularly clear. Pakistan serviced US$21.59 billion of external debt during the year. An extraordinary US$10.14 billion—nearly half of the annual amount—fell in the final quarter alone. Quarterly servicing was 2.63 times the amount paid in the preceding quarter, mainly because principal repayments jumped from US$2.70 billion in the third quarter to US$8.81 billion in the fourth. This concentration of repayments is as important as the overall debt stock. A country may carry a large debt if its economy generates sufficient revenue, exports and foreign exchange to service it. Pakistan’s difficulty is that debt obligations have expanded much faster than the productive and export capacities needed to meet them. The debt accumulated over decades cannot be attributed to one government or one fiscal year. Persistent fiscal deficits, a narrow and inequitable tax base, losses of state-owned enterprises, the energy-sector circular debt, excessive recurrent expenditure, exchange-rate depreciation and repeated balance-of-payments crises have all contributed to it. Borrowing became the preferred substitute for reform.  Governments borrowed because they could not tax influential sectors, restructure loss-making enterprises, reduce wasteful expenditure or build a competitive export economy. External lenders financed temporary stability, while domestic banks financed the fiscal deficit. Each arrangement postponed difficult decisions without removing the causes of the crisis. The Ministry of Finance reported public debt at 70.7% of GDP by June 2025. The ratio may improve when nominal GDP grows faster than debt, especially during periods of inflation, fiscal consolidation and lower interest rates. A declining debt-to-GDP ratio, however, does not necessarily mean that the debt burden has become harmless. Pakistan’s debt stock is still increasing. What has improved is the immediate cost of servicing parts of it. Total debt and liabilities servicing declined from Rs. 13.16 trillion in FY2025 to Rs. 11.97 trillion in FY2026. Interest payments on debt fell by more than 23%, from Rs. 9.47 trillion to Rs. 7.27 trillion, largely because lower policy rates reduced the cost of servicing domestic government debt. Interest payments on gross government domestic debt consequently fell from Rs. 8.08 trillion to Rs5.99 trillion. This is welcome relief. It should not be presented as the end of the debt crisis. Lower interest rates reduce the flow cost of debt; they do not extinguish the stock. Principal repayments on external debt and liabilities increased from Rs. 3.47 trillion to Rs. 4.47 trillion during FY2026. Pakistan therefore obtained relief on domestic interest payments while facing a substantially heavier external repayment burden. The distinction is between debt management and economic transformation. Pakistan may be moving from an acute debt-accumulation crisis towards a more manageable financing position. It has not escaped debtocracy—the system in which fiscal policy, taxation, banking, foreign relations and development priorities become subordinate to the requirements of borrowing and repayment. Debtocracy does not remain confined to the accounts of the Ministry of Finance. It is transmitted throughout the economy. The first channel is the banking system. Government securities offer banks sovereign backing, liquidity and attractive risk-adjusted returns. Lending to the government is easier than evaluating businesses, financing innovation or supporting small and medium enterprises. A large domestic borrowing requirement therefore creates continuous competition for available liquidity. The result is crowding out. The State obtains the funds it requires, banks earn relatively secure returns and the private sector bears the adjustment. Productive businesses face limited access to credit, higher risk premiums and shorter financing horizons. Smaller enterprises suffer the most because they cannot compete with the sovereign for bank liquidity. This creates a financial system that can remain profitable while the productive economy remains weak. Deposits are mobilised from citizens and businesses, channelled into government securities, and then used substantially to meet recurrent expenditure and service earlier debt. Banking expands without an equivalent expansion in productive capacity. The second channel operates through foreign exchange. External debt repayment creates demand for dollars. That demand places pressure on reserves and the current account. Any resulting exchange-rate depreciation increases the rupee value of external liabilities and raises the domestic price of imported fuel, machinery, raw materials and intermediate goods.  The chain is direct: External repayment creates foreign-exchange demand; reserve pressure increases exchange-rate sensitivity; depreciation generates imported inflation; and inflation raises working-capital requirements and production costs. Debt consequently becomes a corporate balance-sheet issue. An industrial enterprise may have no external loan, yet still bear the effects of sovereign external debt through a weaker rupee, costlier imports, higher energy prices and restricted access to domestic credit. Consumers ultimately pay through inflation, reduced employment and lower real incomes. The third channel is fiscal. Every rupee allocated to debt servicing is a rupee unavailable for education, health, water, climate resilience and productive infrastructure—unless the State raises additional revenue or borrows again. Pakistan then enters a circular arrangement: borrowing creates servicing obligations, servicing compresses development expenditure, weak development limits growth and revenue, and insufficient revenue necessitates further borrowing. This is why a primary surplus, though necessary, is not sufficient. It can stabilise debt dynamics, but