As I write these lines, two proverbial sayings seem to be rushing into my mind.
The first one says that second marriage is triumph of hope over experience. The second one says that he who controls the past, controls the future.
Both sayings are intriguing. Do we control the past? To find the answer let us visit it.
In 1958, I was a student in Hyderabad Sindh. On the morning of the 8th of October, we were taken by shocked surprise to learn that some kind of a revolution had occurred during the night, because of which the country had been pulled out of the jaws of “misrule”, and put on the road to “reconstruction” and “progress”. It goes without saying that the shock was of an overwhelmingly joyous nature. The man behind the projected revolution was General Ayub Khan who on the 27th of October the same month assumed fullest possible control, because of which he was to be adorned with the title of Field Marshal later on. He was also to re-invent Pakistan Muslim League with the help of Ch. Khaliq ue-uz-Zaman a few years later.
Ayub Khan had come from nowhere. Our young minds hadn’t known that revolutions could take place without any long struggle. A man in uniform was enough to strike down everything including the Constitution. He just had to be reasonably sure that the people were disenchanted enough with their government and lives to welcome change. Any change!
No wonder General Ayub Khan was lauded and applauded on his arrival. Pakistan’s ‘first’ second marriage had taken place. No wonder it was a triumph of the hope of a better future over the experience of a bitter past.
Ten years and some months were to pass before the “second” of the numerous second marriages of Pakistan was to take place. In fact it was a populist movement triggered by the rise of Bhutto, and led by Air Marshal Asghar Khan that paved the way for the second of our ‘revolutions’ in uniform. General Yahya Khan elbowed out his mentor Field Marshal Ayub Khan to become on the one hand a harbinger of democracy, and on the other hand a shaper of doom. It was under him that Pakistan had its first free general election. It was also under him that Pakistan’s Eastern Part separated from the Western Part. Pakistan’s ‘third’ second marriage took place as a result of a polarized struggle for power between two major vote banks of the country—one pro-Bhutto and the other anti-Bhutto. General Zia ul Haque’s own ambition might well have played a part but, essentially it was the failure on the part of the founder of the PPP to extinguish the fires of polarized discord in the country that gave the shrewd general the opportunity to grab power. That General Zia tried to turn this opportunity into a revolution of his own definition is quite another story.
The fourth of Pakistan’s ‘second’ marriages took place in precisely similar circumstances. It was the failure on the part of Mian Nawaz Sharif to abandon the politics of polarization and discord that helped General Pervez Musharraf to arrive riding on a tidal wave of high expectations.
Now this marriage is over too. And Pakistan is back under a civilian rule—as it had been in the pre-Ayub era-or in the post-Zia era-or (in between) in the ZAB era.
Has Pakistan lost its taste for second marriages Will the next second marriage if it occurs be without a honeymoon period? Or has the present regime or governing setup done enough to kill the need for any new second marriage? Meaning thereby that is our experience of life under Zardari is sweet and worth-holding-in-embrace—?
(This Column was first published on 06-10-2009)
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