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Ayub Khan (1958-1969) (1907-d.1974) 2nd President

Muhammad Ayub Khan was born on May 14, 1907, in the village of Rehana near Haripur, in Hazara District. He
was the first child of the second wife of Mir Dad Khan. After passing his Matriculation Examination in 1922,
Ayub was sent to Aligarh University where he spent four years. However, before appearing in his B. A. exams,
he was selected for the Royal Military College at Sandhurst. He sailed for England in 1926, got commission in
Indian Army in 1928. He assumed the presidency from the first president Iskander Mirza through coup in 1958,
the first successful coup d'état of the country. From 1953 to 1958, he served in the civilian
government as Defence and Home Minister and supported President Iskander Mirza's decision to impose
martial law against Prime Minister Feroze Khan's administration in 1958.The popular demonstrations and
labour strikes which were supported by the protests in East Pakistan ultimately led to his forced resignation in
1969. He died on 19th April 1974 in Islamabad.

1.Were the economic reforms of Ayub Khan the most important of his domestic policies in the ‘Decade of
Progress’ between 1958 and 1969? Explain your answer. [14] M/J 2019

Economic
• The land of smaller farmers was redistributed to farmers with medium sized farms and agriculture was revitalised to such an extent that crop
outputs were at record levels.
• In 1962, an oil refinery was established in Karachi and a Mineral Development Corporation was set up for the exploration of mineral deposits
which contributed significantly to the economy.
• An Export Bonus Scheme was set up offering incentives to industrialists who increased exports.
• The national economic annual growth rate was 7% and the economy grew three times faster than that of other South Asian countries.
• However, the new wealth was concentrated in the hands of a few and did not bring widespread benefits.
Other
• The government set about improving housing for refugees. A massive new housing development provided new homes for refugees in Karachi,
which had a beneficial effect on the lives of these people.
• Family Planning Programme used the media to persuade people to limit family size to slow population growth rates.
• In 1959, Basic Democracies were introduced. This was a four tier structure of government, allowing elections at various levels. The success of
these councils was such that martial law was lifted.
• People were prevented from hoarding goods and selling them on at inflated prices. Profiteers had their goods confiscated and many were
arrested. As a result, this action brought prices of many goods down and that benefitted people.
• The price of milk and other goods were fixed to stop profiteering which helped families to manage their weekly budget better.

2-What were the Basic Democracies? [4] M/J 2017

The system of Basic Democracies was initially a five-tier arrangement. They were: (i) union councils (rural areas), town and union committees
(urban areas); (ii) thana councils (East Pakistan), tehsil councils (West Pakistan); (iii) district councils; (iv) divisional councils; (v) provincial
development advisory council.
• 80 000 BD’s (Electoral College)
• No political parties to take place in the elections held December 1959 to January 1960.
• Newly elected BD’s able to vote in referendum on Ayub Khan remaining President, 95% voted yes.

3-Explain why Ayub Khan introduced Martial Law in 1958. [7] M/J 2016

Were the social reforms of Ayub Khan the most important of his domestic policies during the ‘Decade of
Progress’ between 1958 and 1969? Explain your answer. [14] M/J 2014

After consolidating power, the government tried to build up public support. The government undertook a number of measures to weed out
corruption, within the state as well as in the larger society. Altogether, 1662 government officials were punished through dismissal, compulsory
retirement, reduction in rank and other lesser punishments, a number of individuals were tried under EBDO, and were disqualified from public
office including Suharwardhy and Qayyum Khan.

Between 1958 and 1962, using his special powers under martial law, Ayub initiated a number of reforms. He identified the landlord class as being
responsible for holding Pakistan back in both socioeconomic and political terms. Land reforms introduced by him imposed a ceiling of 500 acres of
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irrigated land, and 1000 acres of un-irrigated land, for a single holding in West Pakistan. The government claimed that some two million acres were
surrendered by the landlords and distributed among the peasants.

By 1961 the Ayub regime had largely restored the country’s economy that had begun to weaken from the mid-1950s onwards, mainly due to the
political chaos that prevailed in the country, as various factions of Pakistan’s first ruling party, the Muslim League, indulged in constant infighting
and intrigues, and were unable to address the growing disenchantment and cynicism exhibited towards politicians by those who were kept out
from the political process dominated by the country’s political-bureaucratic elite.

Ayub was at the height of his power and popularity when he decided to lift Martial Law in 1962 and restore at least a semblance of political activity
by the parties that had been banned in 1958.

He became the president and handpicked an assembly through a complex electoral system that he called ‘Basic Democracy’. After discarding the
1956 Constitution, his assembly passed a brand new constitution that enshrined Ayub’s idea of ‘Jinnah’s Pakistan’. It revolved
around the construction of a strong military-industrial state, propped-up by state-backed capitalism, free enterprise, agricultural reforms and a
‘progressive interpretation of Islam that was compatible with science, technology and modernity.’

Ayub detested politicians, from both the left as well as the right. His regime came down hard on left-wing parties and then went on to also ban
parties such as the Jamat-i-Islami (JI) — though the ban was overturned by the courts. Leftists accused him of encouraging crony capitalism, the
exploitation of workers and the suppression of the rights and ethnic-nationalism of the Bengalis (in East Pakistan), Sindhis, the Baloch and the
Pakhtun, and of dislodging the Urdu-speaking (the Mohajirs) from important state and government institutions that they had helped build after
Pakistan’s creation in 1947.

The religious right denounced him of being overtly secular and undermining ‘Pakistan’s Islamic culture and traditions’. The Muslim Family Laws
Ordinance, 1961 provided that marriages and divorces be registered; permission be sought from the court for second and subsequent marriage(s);
divorce be effective only after it had been approved by the court; minimum age for marriage be fixed at 14 for female and sixteen for male; and a
grandson of a pre-deceased son be allowed to inherit property of his grandfather. The Ordinance is regarded as ‘the first step toward
modernization of family life’ (Jr.,1975) and “the most progressive interpretation of Muslims family law to be implemented in the subcontinent”
(Rosenbloom, 1995). In addition to the Ordinance, the Child Marriage Restraint Act and Dissolution of Muslim Marriage Act were also enacted in
1961. It was only after outmaneuvering the ulama that Ayub Khan had got passed the bill from the National Assembly. These Acts and Ordinance
discouraged polygamy, protected the rights of wives and granted the rights of inheritance to grand children (Wriggins, 1975).

In 1959, the Ayub Government promulgated West Pakistan Auqaf Properties Ordinance, 1959, and established Ministry of Auqaf for the
supervision and management of religious endowments including shrines and tombs of Sufi Shaykhs. This measure was aimed at containing the
power of the mullahs and pirs, especially in rural areas of the country. (Forced Modernization and Public Policy: A Case Study of Ayub
Khan Era (1958-69) Sarfraz Husain Ansari∗

India had suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of the Chinese army in 1964 and Bhutto and his supporters in the cabinet were convinced that
the Pakistan army would be able to crush the weakened Indian armed forces. Though the Pakistani armed forces made rapid gains in the initial
period of the 1965 war, the conflict soon turned into a stalemate. Ayub settled for a ceasefire, apparently sending Bhutto into a rage.
Ayub eased out Bhutto from the government but the damage was done. The war had drained the country’s resources and the economy began to
slide. Ayub’s opponents accused him of ‘losing the war on the negotiation table’. Bhutto went on to form the PPP, and along with the already
established left-wing groups, such as the National Awami Party (NAP) and the National Students Federation (NSF), he became the most prominent
face of left-wing opposition in West Pakistan. In East Pakistan, Shiekh Mujeebur Rehman’s Awami League (AL), upped the ante against the regime
and accused it of leaving East Pakistan open to an Indian attack during the 1965 war.

By late 1968 the movement had spread beyond Karachi, Lahore, Rawalpindi and Peshawar and reached the smaller cities and towns of Punjab and
Sindh. Meanwhile in East Pakistan, AL and other Bengali nationalist groups began to demand complete provincial autonomy for East Pakistan.
Schools, colleges and universities stopped functioning; workers went on strike and closed down a number of factories, and white-collar
professionals refused to attend office, further crippling an already deteriorating political and economic order. After failing to quell the protests
(through police action and wide-scale arrests), Ayub invited opposition parties to hold a dialogue with the government. But the PPP and NAP
boycotted the negotiations that were largely attended by religious parties and some moderate right-wing parties. However, Mujeeb’s AL did
participate, but the talks ultimately broke down.

By early 1969 the movement had also been joined by peasant committees and organisations in the country’s rural areas. In March 1969 a group of
senior military men advised Ayub to step down, fearing the eruption of a full-scale civil war in East Pakistan and political and social anarchy in the
country’s west wing. A weakened and tired Ayub finally decided to throw-in the towel and resigned, handing over power to General Yahya Khan
who immediately imposed the country’s second martial law. Ayub, who had gone into seclusion, died in 1974.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, August 31, 2014

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4- Why Ayub Khan resigned? 7 Marks

Ayub Khan had been President for nine years and, if nothing else, longevity in power leads to decline in popularity, particularly in a Third World
country. His authority had begun to diminish with the onslaught on him in the presidential campaign of 1964. The acceptance of the cease-fire in
the 1965 September War followed by the Tashkent Declaration made him unpopular, and, most important, affected his standing with the army,
hitherto his power base. He had also lost two major assets with the departure first of ZAB and then of his strong Governor of West Pakistan, Malik
Amir Mohammad Khan of Kalabagh.

In East Pakistan, agitation for provincial autonomy had been gaining momentum, following years of protest against domination and exploitation by
West Pakistan. Even recognition of Bengali as a national language had been won only after a struggle In the West Wing, ZAB and his Party now
provided a focal point for the expression of grievances and frustration. The regime's high-handedness had earlier angered students, who first
demonstrated in 1961 and again in 1965-66. They were prepared to challenge Ayub Khan. The regime had allowed the 'twenty-two families' of
industrial and business barons to flourish, but no trade unionism to develop. Labor was restless. In the rural areas, land reforms had not been
implemented and the poverty of the peasant was extreme. 'Land to landless' was an irresistible call. Young intellectuals felt stifled by press controls
and. authoritarian rule. To them ZAB was the 'Hero of Kashmir', made in the mould of Soekarno, Zhou Enlai and Nasser. It was the grout, around
Mairaj that made Roti, Kapra aur Makaan the rallying call of the Party. By the end of 1968, East Pakistan was in serious disorder. Sheikh Mujibur
Rahman, the leader of the Awami League, had been arrested earlier and was being tried in the Agartala Conspiracy Case (ZAB and Pakistan by Rafi
Raza)

5-Ayub era was celebrated as decade of development, do you agree or not? 14 marks

Ayub era is dubbed the decade of development, though this was a desperate slogan from 1968, when the regime was already dying. Development
was for the idle rich; the majority of Pakistanis suffered an absolute decline in living standards. Per capita consumption of food-grain fell, as did real
wages in industry. Foreign aid mutated from grants into loans, and debt servicing as a percentage of foreign exchange shot up from 4 per cent in
1960 to 34pc by 1971.

Some of this might have worked, if Pakistan’s industrial elite wasn’t also so vile. Instead, Ayub’s patronage saw the rise of a rent-seeking cartel class
that continues to thrive today in new forms — unproductive vultures in sugar and auto and wheat flour. ‘22 families’ was a cliché in the 1960s; it is
a lived nightmare now.

Even Ayub’s inarguable achievements — the Muslim Family Laws Ordinance and the Indus Waters Treaty — were overshadowed by the big-
ticket proposals he never attempted seriously: land reform and population planning.

The second aspect is politics, where the commander-in-chief blazed a trail of his own. He was the first to tear up the constitution, a crime that
remains unsanctioned as of this week. The first torture-murder of a political prisoner, Hasan Nasir, came about in the Lahore Fort’s dungeons in
1960. The first allegations of financial corruption at the top also drew in House Ayub: as the British High Commission’s cables on Gandhara
Industries read, family members had “mysteriously acquired a leading position in the business world in a comparatively short period of time”. (That
the heirs of Lord Clive were crying corruption is an unrelated irony.)

In the most consequential first of all, Pakistan’s only direct elections were rigged. “They call her the Mother of the Nation,” Ayub said of his rival
Fatima Jinnah, “then she should at least behave like a mother.” Celebrating their stolen victory, Ayub’s goons went on to brutalise Fatima’s Mohajir
supporters, sparking Karachi’s first ethnic riots. Our history’s most tragic what-if remains a Fatima presidency, fully endorsed by Mujib in East
Pakistan.

All of which brings us to the federation Ayub tore apart. As the muscle behind One Unit, Ayub wrote that East Bengalis “have all the inhibitions of
downtrodden races and have not yet found it possible to adjust psychologically to the requirements of freedom”. Freedom remembers otherwise:
Pakistan was born in Dhaka, just as most Pakistanis were Bengali.

But the Ayub regime, described as “a Punjab-Pathan autocracy seasoned with émigrés from UP”, kept them out of the cabinet. Islamabad, an
imaginary city that bordered Ayub’s native Haripur, was made the capital, in spite of the millions of Bengalis attached to Karachi. Lopsided tariffs
and development meant the difference in per capita income between East and West Pakistan ballooned from 32pc in 1959 to 61pc in 1969, and set
the stage for war, secession, and death under his favourite lieutenants, Yahya and Zulfikar.

In his last address to the nation, a defeated Ayub said, “It is impossible for me to preside over the destruction of our country” — though he
already had. It’s time to accept that destruction, so that the past can start informing Pakistan’s future.

By asad rahim khan

Published in Dawn, 16th January 2020

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6-What Was U-2 Crisis? [4]

During Ayub’s regime on 1 May 1960, a United States U-2 spy plane was shot down by the Soviet Air Defence Forces while performing
photographic aerial reconnaissance deep into Soviet territory. The single-seat aircraft, flown by pilot Francis Gary Powers, was hit by an S-75
Dvina (SA-2 Guideline) surface-to-air missile and crashed near Sverdlovsk (today's Yekaterinburg). Powers parachuted safely and was captured. U-2
took flight from Peshawar airbase.
Initially, the US authorities acknowledged the incident as the loss of a civilian weather research aircraft operated by NASA, but were forced to
admit the mission's true purpose when a few days later the Soviet government produced the captured pilot and parts of the U-
2's surveillance equipment, including photographs of Soviet military bases taken during the mission.

The incident occurred during the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower and the premiership of Nikita Khrushchev, around two
weeks before the scheduled opening of an east–west summit in Paris. It caused great embarrassment to the United States and prompted a marked
deterioration in its relations with the Soviet Union, already strained by the ongoing Cold War.

Zubair Ahmed Bhatti, The City School, LGS Gulberg, LGS Township
zubairbhatti105@gmail.com facebook: Free Tutorial/ZUBAIR AHMED BHATTI