 DIARIES OF FIELD MARSHAL MOHAMMAD AYUB KHAN: 1966-72
Edited and annotated by Craig Baxter
Oxford University Press
Price: £26.99, Pages: 638 | India-baiting has been an abiding characteristic of Gohar Ayub Khan, who as speaker of Pakistan’s National Assembly loudly proclaimed, during the course of an official visit to India in 1993, that India would disintegrate. This propensity was also more than evident in his comments about virtually every aspect of India’s national life—from its industries to its armed forces. In these circumstances, one would naturally be concerned about the authenticity of the diaries of his father—Pakistan’s first military dictator, the self-proclaimed “Field Marshal” Mohammad Ayub Khan—which were in Gohar’s custody after Ayub’s death in 1974. It is, however, reassuring that the authenticity of the diaries has been endorsed by Craig Baxter, professor emeritus of politics at Juanita University in the US, and one of America’s most experienced analysts of developments in the subcontinent.  | | PICTURE SPEAK | |  | | OBSESSIVE OPINIONS: Ayub (left) and Yahya Khan | | The Ayub Khan diaries are a valuable source of authentic information (though written in a self-serving manner) about the course that developments in Pakistan took in a turbulent period of the country’s history (1966-1972), when the follies of going to war with India in 1965 were compounded by a total misreading of domestic, global and regional developments by two military rulers—Ayub Khan and General Yahya Khan. These follies ultimately led to the humiliating events of 1971, when Pakistan fell apart in an unprecedented manner, with the country’s majority population in Bangladesh choosing to ‘secede’ from the Punjabi-dominated minority of West Pakistan. Not surprisingly, Ayub finds fault with everyone—the “unreliable” Americans, the “devious” Indians and the “crooked” Bangladeshis—for the situation getting out of hand in the erstwhile East Pakistan. He shows no understanding of Bangladeshi pride in the country’s linguistic and cultural heritage, justifies Jinnah’s ill-advised imposition of Urdu on the people of East Pakistan and absolves himself of any responsibility for the break-up of the country he ruled for over a decade. Ayub Khan’s prejudices about India and Indians (who are regularly described as “Hindus”) are clearly spelt out in his comments to Soviet prime minister Alexei Kosygin in September 1967. Referring to the political situation in India, Ayub told Kosygin, “Only a bigoted and a narrow-minded type of Hindu had a chance of ruling India. Such people have only to be lived with to be believed. How insufferable they were.” Interestingly, Ayub acknowledges that in this meeting, Kosygin told him to be “realistic” on Kashmir, while noting that “carving out new frontiers was an impossible job”. But, what emerges from Ayub’s Diaries is the extent to which the Soviet leadership was prepared to go to provide economic and military assistance to Pakistan after the signing of the Tashkent Agreement in 1966. Interestingly, the Soviet posture changed after the split in the Congress Party in 1969, coinciding with the emergence of Indira Gandhi, with left-leaning policies, as India’s undisputed leader. | | | | “The Indian vote and election results have been negative. I have my doubts if the country will ever recover from this shock. That is why I keep telling our people not to play with the fires of adult voting for elections to assemblies. They will only burn their fingers and themselves in the process too.”
—On the 1967 general elections in India and the implications of universal adult suffrage | | “We must get East Pakistan ministers to examine if there is any practical solution. I doubt if this will bear any fruit as the Bengalis have no stomach for self-criticism nor for listening to the truth about themselves. People who do not have these qualities cannot recognise their maladies, let alone cure them.”
—On dealing with Bengalis in East Pakistan (Bangladesh) | | “When thinking of the problems of East Pakistan, one cannot help feeling that their (Muslim Bengalis’ )urge to isolate themselves from West Pakistan and revert to Hindu language and culture is close to the fact that they have no culture and language of their own, nor have they been able to assimilate the culture of the Muslims of the sub-continent, by turning their back on Urdu. Further, by doing so they have forced two state languages on Pakistan. This has been a great tragedy for them and for the rest of Pakistan. They lack literature on the philosophy of Islam.”
—On Bengali language and culture in East Pakistan | | Ayub’s Diaries will be of little interest to laymen, who can hardly be expected to spend their time reading 548 pages of a first-person account of developments in Pakistan four decades ago. But for scholars, analysts and our journalists (who all too often believe they have obtained divine wisdom about Pakistan after a 48-hour visit to Islamabad), who take an interest in India’s neighbourhood, this book is important reading. It gives a graphic description of how Pakistan’s rulers think, in their obsession to seek “parity” on every conceivable issue, with India. It also focuses attention on the dangers that a medium-sized country like Pakistan invites when it tries to exploit the Great Power differences for its own benefit. At the same time, one gets a good insight into the depth of the Persian-Arab rivalries in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East, and the biases of President Richard Nixon. Reading Ayub’s Diaries, one cannot help noting how an opinionated military ruler, supremely confident of his abilities and contemptuous of democratic institutions, brought about his own downfall and ruination to his country. His military alliance with the US earned the wrath of the Soviet Union and proved of little avail during and after the 1965 conflict. His successor Yahya Khan brought disaster on Pakistan by helping forge a US-China partnership directed against the Soviet Union, forcing a seemingly friendly Soviet Union to turn hostile to Pakistan yet again. Ayub’s suspicions about Afghanistan bordered on paranoia. Nearly four decades after his ouster, we are witnessing a downturn in the fortunes of yet another Pakistani military ruler, who shows a similar contempt for democratic institutions and claims to be an ally of the US even as he permits Taliban leaders to seek haven in his country and kill American and nato soldiers in Afghanistan. Reading Ayub’s Diaries, one wonders if Pakistan’s military rulers ever learn anything from history. Index |
THE OTHER SIDE OF JUSTICE
EQ AND LEADERSHIP
OUR GANDHI: WHY HE DID WHAT HE DID
