Navigating Pakistan’s Religious,Social and Political Fault Lines in the 1980s: Contemporary Trends and Relevance

Introduction

The 1980s with the military in power was characterized by a domestic sociopolitical order that was turbulent, chaotic and disorderly. Politically, the Zia regime which came to power after overthrowing the elected government of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1977, contended with popular domestic resistance in the form of the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy (MRD) where nine political parties came together in 1981 seeking an end to military rule. The MRD represented the wider civil society’s yearning for democracy and political participation and its distaste for the military regime’s authoritarianism. Unfortunately, this facet of Pakistan’s political society is under-appreciated in scholarly analysis which gravitates towards and is focused exclusively on the military’s dominance and its control of Pakistan’s state apparatus (Rizvi, 2000; Shah, 2014; Waseem, 2022). Short of popular legitimacy, the Zia regime engineered its wider acceptance in society through the appropriation of the Islamist discourse with definitive consequences for two underprivileged sections of society: women and religious minorities. The Islamist discourse’s ethos was embedded in a patriarchal form of governance where the agency of women was to be inherently controlled and regulated if an Islamist society had to be created anew. Zia’s Islamic Pakistan, thus, undermined the agency of women through regressive laws such as the Hudood Ordinance (Wasti, 2003). In the same breadth, the Islamist discourse was characterised by a majoritarian impulse—where majorities fear minorities as a threat to their existence—and the Ahmadi minority, in particular, was victimized through the weaponization of colonial-era blasphemy laws based on dishonouring the sanctity of the finality of the last Prophet (Julius, 2016).

The article seeks to understand and explain the trajectory of political, social and religious contestations that took shape in the 1980s and their contemporary manifestations. The political contestation, an incessant and protracted feature of Pakistan’s polity, is evident in imbalanced civil–military relations which have seen the military usurping political power through the manipulative dismissal of elected civilian governments. The article interprets the military’s direct takeover of power and indirect influence in the political process not as a symbol of its overbearing power and influence (Hoffman, 2011) but most crucially as signalling its fear relative to the consolidation of its civilian counterparts and the emboldening of political processes in Pakistan. In short, the military intervenes to prevent its civilian opponents from accumulating requisite power. Second, the social contestation is focused on the agency of women. Women in Pakistan faced repressive and discriminatory treatment under the Zia regime through the Hudood Ordinances. The Women Action Forum (WAF) organized itself during the Zia years and made calls not only against gender discrimination but also in support of democracy, federalism, pluralism and secularism (Mumtaz & Shaheed, 1987). Almost 30 years later, the continued peripheralization of women engendered the Aurat March, a social movement that came to the fore in 2018, making claims for bodily autonomy and reproductive rights and with it a cultural rejection of patriarchal values that dot Pakistan’s society. Understood as Pakistan’s fourth feminist wave (Saigol & Chaudhary, 2020), the Aurat March and Aurat Azadi March movements not only challenge patriarchal values but are also strong proponents of economic justice, social welfare, democratization and environmental protection. Finally, a peculiar interpretation of Islam as bordering on protecting the sanctity of the final Prophet is slowly seeping into Pakistan’s social fabric with majoritarian religious parties such as the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), whose sole political objective is to oversee that the blasphemy laws retain potency and are stringently applied. This majoritarianism is disconcerting for it is not only TLP but all mainstream political parties including the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) and Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf that are equally reluctant to engage in an informed debate on the subject and are embracing the blasphemy discourse for electoral purposes.

Civil–Military Imbalance and the Political Predicament: Movement for the Restoration of Democracy (MRD) and the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM)

Pakistan’s political development in the post-colonial years can be encapsulated and conveniently surmised in the form of a civil–military conflict for power and authority. This civil–military conflict is often interpreted in the language of a dominant military and a subjugated political elite, as evidenced in periods where the military rules directly and also indirectly where the military instrumentalizes its power and authority to undermine elected governments (Adeney, 2017; Aziz, 2008; Nawaz, 2008; Tudor, 2013). Opposed to this peculiar episteme, an alternative interpretation of the civil–military equation borders on understanding it as a bargaining process in which the military negotiates with civilian political elites in order to sustain its own power vis-à-vis its civilian contenders (Siddiqi, 2023). Understood this way, the civil–military relationship in Pakistan transforms one from where the military is ascendant and in complete control to one where the civilian political elites stand not as meek political participants but as active agents who contest with the powerful military to carve out their own institutional space in politics. This latter explanation focused on civilian strategies and their yearning for institutional and political autonomy is important to contextualize because the scope and depth of the challenge to the military’s unbridled power in contemporary Pakistan has increased tremendously at both the elite and societal levels.

The military encountered a devastating loss on two fronts in 1971 as it lost the majority party of the country, East Pakistan in a domestic civil war with the Bengalis and in the process also lost an external war and surrendered to its arch-rival India (Zakaria, 2019). As the civilian government under Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto came to power, the military receded into the background. Bhutto instituted widescale changes in the military and civilian bureaucracy’s organizational structure along with a new constitution that gave powers to the elected representatives of the people, the legislature and the executive (Burki, 1980). However, Bhutto’s populist and authoritarian style of governance only served to alienate his closest supporters and provided the perfect opportunity for the military to take over power in 1977. Bhutto’s ouster while attesting to the military’s coercive power and ability to overthrow democratically elected governments did not mean that the subjugation of civilian political elites was absolute. In fact, in 1981, nine political parties including the PPP, the Tehreek-i-Istiqlal (TI), the Pakistan Democratic Party (PDP), Pakistan Mazdoor Kisan Party (MKP), the National Democratic Party (NDP), Jamiat-ul-Ulema-i-Islam (JUI), the Azad Jammu and Kashmir Muslim Conference (AJKMC), the Qaumi Mahaz-i-Azadi (QMA) and Khwaja Khairuddin’s faction of the Muslim League, joined hands together with the objective of restoring democracy in Pakistan (Ali, 1984). In their joint declaration issued on 8 February 1981, the party heads declared:

Pakistan and Martial Law cannot co-exist. An earlier Martial Law, under General Yahya Khan, resulted in the secession of East Pakistan. The Martial Law of Zia-ul-Haq today threatens once again the existence of the Federation of Pakistan. This crisis of colossal magnitude can only be met with the united will and support of the entire country, mobilised by a popularly elected government. We therefore demand that Zia-ul-Haq quit and Martial Law be lifted immediately, failing which they will be removed by the irresistible will of the people; that free, fair and impartial elections to the National and Provincial Assemblies be held within 3 months, in accordance with the unanimously adopted Constitution of 1973, and power be transferred to the elected representatives of the people; and the interests of the four federating units be fully restored and protected. (Pakistan Democratic Forum, 1983, p. 2)

Ironically, while the Zia regime instituted measures to control dissent, it was still impacted by pressures relative to recovering the military’s reduced public legitimacy (Arif, 1995) and popular demands for democratic rule (Noman, 1988). Zia banned all political parties in 1979, prohibited public gatherings and imposed strict press censorship (Nawaz, 2008, p. 363). Yet this did not prevent the growing societal rage against the military dictatorship, in fact, it became more entrenched. In the end, Zia was forced to concede political participation, howsoever controlled, to civilian political actors. In August 1983, General Zia announced political measures designed to bring to fruition an elected parliament and the possibility of the lifting of martial law. As it turned out, the spate of events only served to alienate him further as the political and societal opposition to his rule and the demand for democracy gained salience. Before the announcement of elections which came eventually in March 1985, General Zia organized a referendum to consolidate his own grip on power in December 1984. The question put to the voter was:

Do you endorse the process initiated by the President of Pakistan, General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, for bringing the laws of Pakistan in conformity with the injunctions of Islam as laid down in the Holy Quran and Sunnah of the Holy Prophet (peace be upon him) and for the preservation of the ideology of Pakistan; and are you in favour of the continuation and further consolidation of that process and for the smooth and orderly transfer to the elected representatives of the people?

Every voter was required to answer, ‘yes’ or ‘no’ (Arif, 1995, p. 229). Although not stated in the referendum question, General Zia in a televised speech before the referendum, stated that in case the majority of the electorate says ‘yes’ this will be taken to mean that his policies have been endorsed and that he is elected as President for the next five years. The official results announced by the military regime put the turnout at 66% with close to 97% of the electorate answering in the affirmative. Independent observers put the turnout at 30% while the opposition claimed that no more than 5% had voted (Richter, 1985, p. 147).

The subsequent elections took place in February 1985 on a non-political party basis. This was done to dilute any form of opposition emanating from political parties, especially the PPP. Contrary to expectations, the non-political party elections generated enough enthusiasm to record a voter turnout of 52% (Arif, 1995). Fearful of the new parliament, General Zia engineered the political system to his advantage and negotiated the passage of the 8th Amendment through the parliament which created a semi-presidential system in the country with General Zia reserving the notorious Presidential power to arbitrarily dismiss the elected legislature through Article 58 (2) (b) (Aziz, 2008, p. 71). Zia’s push in the direction of political and constitutional engineering does not imply that the new political class in parliament internalized military power with the intent not to challenge it. In fact, the Zia-appointed Prime Minister Muhammad Khan Junejo started asserting his independent authority and relieved army personnel who were inducted into the civilian administration during Zia’s regime (Rizvi, 2000). Prime Minister Junejo was also proactively committed to Pakistan signing the Geneva Accords compared to the much reluctant General Zia, the latter intent on persisting with Pakistan’s involvement in Afghanistan. For the Geneva Accords, Prime Minister Junejo called an All-Parties Conference where to Zia’s chagrin he also invited Benazir Bhutto who was Zia’s most vocal critic (Arif, 1995). Prime Minister Junejo’s independence ruffled Zia’s feathers and as the friction between the President and Prime Minister intensified, the President dismissed Junejo’s government on 29 May 1988 (Rais, 1989). Almost three months later, Zia met his fate as his aircraft crashed near Bahawalpur thus ending 11 years of his despotic rule.

How does the nature of civil–military relations in the 1980s compare to Pakistan’s recent history? The military’s ability to overthrow elected governments while manifest does not imply that there are no costs on the military once it is in power. In 2007, General Musharraf’s manufactured political experiment was brought to a halt by the Lawyers Movement, as the lawyers mobilized against Musharraf’s arbitrary and authoritarian dismissal of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (Ahmed & Stephan, 2010). The Lawyers Movement stands as one of the defining moments in Pakistan’s political history indicating the institutional and societal resistance against the military’s dominance (Kureshi, 2022). The post-Musharraf years saw the passage of the 18th Amendment to the Constitution brought about civilian political actors which provided legal guarantees to the sustenance of democracy and provincial autonomy (Ahmed, 2020). Since 2010, Pakistan’s fledgling democracy with civilians at the helm has hung on to power against a relentless military fighting to preserve its political influence. In 2018, the military engineered the victory of Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf after providing enabling conditions for the party to succeed in the general elections (Javid & Mufti, 2020). The military did this in order to stave off the challenge to its power and authority emanating from the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) government. Two instances of a severe civil–military conflict were evident during the PML-N government in power: first, the PML-N government negotiated a China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) with the Chinese government as part of the larger Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) with an initial Chinese investment to the tune of US$ 46 billion which was later increased to US$ 62 billion (McCartney, 2021). Immediately, the PML-N government started imposing its authority and taking control over the project to the neglect of the military. The military raised a special division in order to provide security for the project but the government, especially Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was non-committal in allowing the military and its affiliated businesses a share in the project (Ghumman, 2016). Prime Minister Sharif balked at the idea of a special China-Pakistan Economic Development Authority where the civilians and the military stakeholders could engage in economic projects related to energy, investments, the Gwadar port and transport infrastructure. He detested the purported share of the military in CPEC projects causing a significant rift in civil–military relations.

Second, the PML-N government expressed dissatisfaction with the military’s strategic support to militant non-state actors. which, according to the government, increased reputational costs on the Pakistani state. The details of this peculiar civil–military tension were brought fore in a local English newspaper, Dawn, which headlined how the PML-N had confronted the military and blamed it for the state’s diplomatic isolation (Almeida, 2016). The military took it upon itself as an insult and immediately pressured the government to bring to task government ministers who had leaked the story to the press. In this regard, a commission notified by the government to investigate how meeting details were leaked to the press was publicly rejected by the DG ISPR on account of it being incomplete (Sikander, 2017). The following events led to the resignation of the Information Minister and a serious split between the civilian and military elites which finally culminated in the latter bringing about Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s disqualification through a judicial ruling as a consequence of the global Panama Leaks (Hashim, 2017).

General elections in 2018 brought Imran Khan to power with the military’s blessing and its large-scale manipulation of the electoral vote as the electronic Results Transmission System (RTS) collapsed and election results were delayed inordinately (Wasim, 2018). The government-military honeymoon under the PTI was typified by Prime Minister Imran Khan reiterating that the government and army were on the same page for the ‘first’ time (Zaafir & Alvi, 2019). As a result, political commentaries on Pakistan focused predominantly on the military’s absolute control and that it had achieved a ‘coup-less coup’ (Smith, 2018) in the form of a hybrid government. However, such commentaries failed to evaluate and appreciate the downside of the hybrid arrangement. During this time, the opposition parties did not spare the PTI government nor the military by repeatedly labelling Imran Khan as a ‘selected’ Prime Minister who had only come to power at the behest of the military (Wasim, 2019). At a multiparty conference called by the opposition parties, the former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif reiterated that our political struggle is not against Imran Khan but against those who brought him into power and ‘destroyed the country’ (Dawn, 2020a). This direct accusation against the military and the opposition’s growing frustration with the hybrid regime’s oppressive tactics including the jailing of opposition leaders, muzzling free speech and withholding funding for media houses for their critical takes on politics culminated in the establishment of the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM).

The PDM, an alliance of nine opposition parties, in their first press conference, announced their goal of de-seating the incumbent PTI government and the announcement of free and fair elections (Dawn, 2020b). The PDM achieved its goal with the tacit support of the military in April 2022 when a vote of no-confidence against the Imran Khan government succeeded as allies deserted the PTI (Chaudhry, 2022). By that time, differences between the government and military had reached a point of no return as Imran Khan continued to assert what he labelled as his independent foreign policy and laid claim to a foreign conspiracy (on the behest of the United States) to unseat his government (Raza, 2022). The military which was trying to mend relations with the US before and after Imran Khan’s visit to Russia in February 2022 now engineered the PTI’s dismissal with the PDM coming to power. The one year with the PDM government in power brought more reputational costs to the military with Imran Khan rallying against the institution for engineering its dismissal while openly naming and shaming military generals involved in his ouster. On 9 May 2023, things came full circle after PTI supporters in Rawalpindi and Lahore attacked and ransacked military property, a development which is unique in Pakistan’s political history for it reveals the public anxiety and anger directed at the military in Punjab, the traditional nerve centre of the military’s recruitment base and the seat of its political and military power (Asad, 2023).

Comparing recent history to the 1980s, some important conclusions can be drawn. First, in a more celebratory tone, it can be surmised that the era of direct military takeover of power might well be over in Pakistan. This optimistic take has to do with the fact that the political process and with it the agency of political leaders and political parties have strengthened since political elites passed the 18th Amendment to the Constitution (Rabbani, 2011). Not only political elites, leaders and parties but a cultural yearning for democracy in the public space is witnessed in the speech acts of journalists, lawyers, new social movements, students and the larger civil society. Second, the hybrid democracy experiment that the military launched with Imran Khan and his PTI government is increasingly unsustainable. Given the deep fissures that developed between the PTI government and the military attest to a friction-prone, zero-sum nature of civil–military relations. Finally, the increased public displeasure witnessed in the wake of Nawaz Sharif’s disqualification in 2017 and Imran Khan’s government’s ouster through a vote of no-confidence, especially in the urban classes across Pakistan and Punjab attests to the widening scope of public resentment against the military. The military’s de-facing and its declining legitimacy in the Punjab province, stand now as an entrenched feature of Pakistan’s political culture and public space.

The Making of a Majoritarian Islam in the 1980s and the Rise of Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP)

In February 1979 in his address to the nation, General Zia triumphantly announced the introduction of the Islamic system in the country (Ministry of Information, 1979). The instrumentalization of Islam was Zia’s way of providing legitimacy to his unconstitutional and illegal regime. As is often the case, the Islam that Zia instituted was populist and a means to manipulate the religious sentiments of the masses for self-serving purposes. The core feature of this populist Islam was a tirade against the Ahmadis, a heretical religious group formed in the late nineteenth century by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad who reinterpreted the phrase, Khatam-an-nabiyyin-, mentioned only once in the Quran, as not implying the finality of Prophethood (Qasmi, 2015). The phrase, according to Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, meant a ‘seal’ of the Prophets with the implication that new Prophets could be revealed but only under the authority of the Prophet, without they reserving the power of introducing new laws or Shariah.

General Zia’s military regime weaponized colonial-era blasphemy laws by introducing amendments to the Pakistan Penal Code, the most notorious of which was Ordinance XX introduced in 1984 (Haq, 2019). While the nature of colonial blasphemy laws was general in their orientation and not specific to any religious group, Ordinance XX was specific to people of the Ahmadi faith and is entirely exclusionary in nature (Ahmed 2021, p. 277). The Ordinance prohibits Ahmadis from publicly professing Islamic religious terminology; it also prohibits Ahmadis from using religious titles, descriptions or epithets of Muslim origin including using the word ‘Masjid’ for their place of worship or referring to their call for prayers as ‘Azan’ and themselves as ‘Muslims’—these words reserved specifically for the majority Muslim community; and the Ordinance also provides that any Ahmadi

who, directly or indirectly poses himself as a Muslim … or by visual representations or in any manner whatsoever outrages the religious feelings of Muslims, shall be punished with imprisonment…for a term which may extend to three years and shall also be liable to a fine (Berberian, 1987, pp. 678–679).

In the post-Zia years, the politicization of blasphemy laws has only gathered pace with the introduction of a new political actor, the TLP, which in the 2018 general elections emerged as Pakistan’s fifth-largest political party in terms of votes received (Basit, 2020). The immediate genesis of the TLP is contained in the assassination of the Punjab Governor, Salman Taseer, by his security guard, Mumtaz Qadri as the former campaigned in favour of Asia Bibi’s release and also for reforming blasphemy laws (Ahmed 2021, p. 280). Qadri belonged to the Barelvi order, a traditionally reformist and peaceful sect compared to its more proactive and jihadist-inspired Deobandi rival. However, embracing the politics of blasphemy provided a newfound militant tenor to the Barelvi political ideology which crystallized as a social movement and political force in 2017 (Basit, 2020).

In that year, the PML-N government introduced changes in electoral laws that would have allowed the Ahmadis to vote in the same electoral roll as the Muslims. The controversy gathered steam after the passage of the Elections Act, 2017 which omitted Sections 7B and 7C from The Conduct of General Elections Order, 2002 (Election Commission of Pakistan, 2002). Specifically, the two Sections related to the status of Ahmadis in Pakistan’s electoral system. Section 7B reiterated that the standing of Ahmadis as non-Muslims according to the Second Amendment to the Pakistan constitution would remain the same. Section 7C which deals with the finality of the Holy Prophet states that,

If a person has got himself enrolled as voter and objection is filed……that such a voter is not a Muslim, the Revising Authority shall issue a notice to him to appear before it within fifteen days and require him to sign a declaration regarding his belief about the absolute and unqualified finality of the Prophethood of Muhammad (peace be upon him)………In case he refuses to sign the declaration as aforesaid, he shall be deemed to be a non-Muslim and his name shall be deleted from the joint electoral rolls and added to a supplementary list of voters in the same electoral area as non-Muslim’. (Election Commission of Pakistan, 2002)

The erosion and omission of the two sections along with the change of the wordings in Form-A for someone affirming the finality of the Prophet from ‘I solemnly swear’ to ‘I believe’ snowballed into a major controversy. At issue was the claim that the change in wording had turned Form-A for candidates contesting elections into a declaration form instead of an affidavit which puts a candidate under oath (Gurmani, 2017). Religious parties organized rallies against the change forcing the government to reinstate the clauses in their original form (The Express Tribune, 2017). The government defended the earlier omission of the clauses as merely a ‘clerical error’ but the reputational damage to the government had been done (Gurmani, 2017). The major social actors that emerged from the protests were led by the Barelvi leaders this time in the personality of Khadim Hussain Rizvi and his social movement, Tehreek-e-Labbaik Ya Rasoolullah (TLYRA) which then coalesced into a political party, the TLP (Basit, 2020).

The politicization and weaponization of the blasphemy issue under the TLP have emerged as a primary node of conflict in Pakistani society. The TLP with its majoritarianism is not only injurious to religious minorities, especially the Ahmadis, but its supporters are also equally vocal against the majority Muslims who speak against the utility of blasphemy laws and have a more nuanced understanding of social cohesion and peaceful coexistence. Interestingly, Muslims make up the largest community of people accused of blasphemy as opposed to non-Muslims. In the 1947–2021 period, close to 1,000 Muslims, both male and female, were accused of blasphemy compared to Ahmadis (187) and Christians (220) (Nafees, 2021). This overwhelming statistic—Muslims accusing Muslims—attests to the nature of such accusations resulting from settling personal scores, property disputes and political conflicts at the local level where adversaries find it convenient to instrumentalize the blasphemy accusation to prevail over and punish their rivals. Unfortunately, the blasphemy issue now pervades the language and discourse of major political parties, not only the TLP. It became a pervasive issue during the 2018 elections, where Imran Khan criticized the PML-N government for being part of an international conspiracy that led to the deletion of the Khatam-e-Nabuwwat clause (Manzoor, 2018). However, Imran Khan’s own government became a victim of the blasphemy discourse after it appointed Atif Mian, an Ahmadi, to the Economic Advisory Council (EAC) and in the face of mounting criticism had to withdraw the decision (Chaudhry, 2018). The potency of the Khatam-e-Nabuwwat issue can be gauged from the fact that the Punjab provincial government passed legislation mandating the inclusion of the clause in declarations of marriage (The Express Tribune, 2022b). Given the pumped-up public emotions on display and blasphemy laws’ widespread embracement by political elites, the issue is unlikely to wither away any time soon and with it the majoritarian Islam on display.

Islamization, Gender Discrimination and the Aurat March Mobilization in 2018

While announcing his Islamization measures for the Pakistani state and society in February 1979, General Zia outlined a set of punitive measures for various crimes called as ‘Hadd’ in the Quran and Sunnah. These Hudood Laws related to four vices of social life including: drinking, adultery, theft and imputation of adultery (Qazf) (Ministry of Information, 1979, p. 18). Punishments for any of these vices ranged from public flogging to amputation to stoning to death. The Hudood Laws were injurious to the agency of women as they did not legally differentiate between zina (adultery and fornication) and zina bil jabr (rape). The law allowed for a man to have been seen as committing zina in order to be convicted while in the case of women, pregnancy was deemed as admissible evidence for the legal conviction (Weiss, 1999, pp. 25–26). In addition, women could only prove rape by providing four male adult Muslim witnesses to the actual penetration (Saigol, 2021, p. 180). More controversially, by reporting the incident without providing for the four witnesses condemned to them being booked on charges of zina (adultery) which was punishable by death. In this sense, rape and adultery were conflated and zina (adultery) which was formerly a crime against a person became a crime against the state (Saigol, 2021, p. 181). Another feature of the Islamization laws that created controversy related to the Qanoon-e-Shahadat or the Law of Evidence (Weiss, 1985, p. 871). This particular law denigrated evidence provided by women in a court to be of lesser importance unless there were two of them while for men a single evidence would suffice. Later, another Ordinance related to Qisas and Diyat (Retaliation and Blood Money) ordained that the financial compensation of a female victim would be half compared to a victim who was male. According to Saigol (2021, p. 181), ‘the Zina law and the Qisas and Diyat Ordinance reflect an obsession with female sexuality and the state’s urge to regulate it through the family system’.

It was in response to the gender-discriminatory nature of such laws, particularly the zina Ordinance that women in Pakistan organized and mobilized against General Zia’s military dictatorship. The specific incident was the decision of a sessions court in Fehmida and Allah Bux vs the State convicting Fehmida and Allah Bux of adultery and ordering that both Allah Bux and Fehmida be given 100 lashes under the Hudood Ordinance and be stoned to death (Khan, 2011, p. 1076). Fehmida and Allah Bux had eloped to get married against the wishes of their family prompting Fehmida’s family to file an abduction case against Allah Bux. The couple was caught and charged with zina despite the fact that they were married. In opposition to the judgement, a number of women activists organized under the banner of the WAF in September 1981.

According to the organization’s Charter,

The Women’s Action Forum believes in a democratic and secular state wherein all fundamental rights of all citizens are upheld irrespective of class, caste, colour, creed, ethnicity or sect. WAF believes that all discrimination against citizens based on sex/gender, religion, class, caste, ethnicity or sect should be declared illegal as the concept of citizenship equality is enshrined in the constitution. (Saigol, 2021, p. 180)

As evident, WAF’s agenda was truly intersectional in nature as it encompassed not only women’s rights but other deprived ethnicities, classes and sects. Moreover, the WAF’s mobilization was not merely gender-specific but encompassed a broader agenda in favour of political pluralism, democratization, federalism, a social welfare state and a secular Pakistan (Saigol, 2021, pp. 183–195). WAF retains its organizational resilience with local chapters in all major cities of Pakistan to date and is a salient voice against the excesses of the state and the military.

Fast forward to 2018, a new feminist movement emerged in the shape of the Aurat March led by a younger generation of women and other genders inspired by the global MeToo movement (Zia, 2022). Taking its cue from earlier feminist mobilization, this new wave of feminism is starkly distinct from WAF in their advocacy of bodily autonomy and multiple sexualities in the reproductive/private sphere (Saigol, 2021, p. 202). The Aurat March in emphasizing the autonomy of the private challenged patriarchy more vociferously than the Women’s Action Forum. In essence, their cultural slogans created quite the controversy in a predominantly conservative society that associates the bodily presence of women in the public and private spheres with ‘shame’, and ‘honour’. The cultural slogans bordered on mera jism, meri marzi (my body, my right), apna khana khud garam karo (warm up your own dinner) and mujhe kya maloom tumhara moza kahan hai (how should I know where your sock is?) (Saigol & Chaudhary, 2020, p. 10). Second, the Aurat March compared to earlier feminist activism actively asserts the rights of the LGBT community with a third feature being the AM’s robust use of social media as a strategy (Saigol & Chaudhary, 2020, pp. 22–23). Moreover, in their campaigning for autonomy of the private sphere and sexual oppression, the Aurat March is seen as more individualistic in orientation guided by a neoliberal ethos and less critical of the state and its oppressive laws and policies, which was a primary focus of the WAF. This final characterization relative to challenging the state and broadening the agenda beyond the private sphere to the more political came with the emergence of the Aurat Azadi March which was the work of the Women Democratic Forum (WDF), and which self-defines itself as a socialist feminist resistance movement.

The Aurat Azadi March Charter of Demands resonates with calls for economic justice including ‘urban land reform and land regulation changes to ensure provision of dignified public and low-income housing for the working classes of our city, including women, religious and ethnic minorities, and transgender, queer and non-binary people’; ‘an end to the destruction of khokas, kiosks and other sources of livelihoods for poor workers in the name of anti-encroachment’; student rights including ‘increase education spending to at least 6 per cent of GDP to ensure universal quality education for all’; ‘reinstate student unions in universities across the country, with minimum representation for female students and representation in university decision-making bodies’; civil liberties including ‘end the unconstitutional practice of enforced disappearances and pass a bill to criminalise the practice’; ‘repeal colonial era sedition laws and end the arbitrary use of anti-terrorism laws against non-violent political workers and activists’; and calls for climate and environmental justice based on ‘an end to the destructive treatment of finite natural systems as exploitable resources’; ‘enforcement of fuel standards, re-forestation and green cover and improved public transport to ensure livable air quality in our cities’ (Women Democratic Front, 2020).

Feminist claims since 2018 have resulted in an intense backlash against the Aurat March from conservative sections of society for corrupting the moral values of Islamic society and spreading Western cultural influences. In 2021, a petition was filed by the ultra-conservative Shuhada Foundation of the notorious Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) against Islamabad authorities for allowing the march to be convened and labelled the Aurat March organizers as ‘cultural assassinators’ (Zia, 2022). In 2019, right-wing organizations organized the ‘Haya March’ (Modesty March) in response to the Aurat March’s cultural agenda and women legislators in the provincial legislative assembly of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa passed a resolution against the Aurat March with the purpose of preventing ‘conspiracies aimed at destroying our social and cultural values in the form of immoral protests’ (Provincial Assembly of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 2019). It was in response to this conservative public backlash including also charges of blasphemy on the Aurat March organizers, that they dropped the earlier cultural slogans bordering on bodily autonomy in favour of a more diversified political, social and economic agenda in recent years (Zia, 2022). However, this does not imply that the March and its supporters have paled into insignificance. The diversified agenda now sits uneasily with the military and government with the result that the March 2023 rally saw violence in which the police baton charged and disrupted the march (The Express Tribune, 2023).

Conclusion

The political, religious and social contestations and contradictions that characterized the Pakistani state and society in the 1980s have only become more protracted in the twenty-first century. In essence, the contradictions reveal a state, especially the military, that is unwilling to unlearn and rethink its past policies and practices. This is despite the fact that the military in Pakistan stands today as a discredited actor in the eyes of the public for its political engineering and vested interests in politics and the larger political economy. As political and social developments from the 1980s indicate, the military was never the absolute and totalizing force in the sense of exercising complete control over society. Instead, the military stood in a state of opposition to political and civil society actors, activists and non-activists who detested the military’s illegal usurpation of political power. The MRD and WAF exemplify the persistent trend of the military’s contested authority in the wider society. This contestation and support for democracy and political participation has only increased in the 2000s, which also explains why the military continues to persist with its interventionist politics. This interventionism is needed according to the military’s self-logic for failure to do so only results in their capitulation and loss of power to their civilian counterparts.

The religious trend in Pakistani society displays a pessimism with the ideological and institutional embeddedness of the blasphemy discourse. The pessimism is ingrained in how the issue has become politicized to the point where all mainstream parties make recourse to the issue for electoral gains and to prove their Islamic credentials. In more ways than one, blasphemy is not only injurious to the minority communities in the country but also detrimental to the Muslim majority community, especially advocates of peaceful coexistence and social cohesion. Majoritarian Islam of the kind being propagated in the name of the sanctity of blasphemy laws presents a major challenge to Pakistan of the future. On the social plane, patriarchal women endure routine violence which includes honour killings, forced marriages and conversions. In a traditional and patriarchal Pakistani society, discourses that border on gender empowerment and women’s freedoms are bound to be consciously misinterpreted by conservative quarters as a threat to social stability and outrightly un-Islamic. On a slightly positive tone, feminist mobilization is not going to wither away any time soon for as long as gender discrimination remains embedded in society, so will be the voice of the dispossessed and discriminated.