Pakistan: The Roots of Failure - Part 1: Authoritarianism & Islamization

Pakistan: The Roots of Failure - Part 1: Authoritarianism & Islamization

by eriposte
As I indicated in the Introduction [1], this is a series focused on the issue of ethnic/linguistic suppression in Pakistan and its longer-term consequences for Pakistan's internal security and stability. In trying to understand Pakistan's current problems, a key question that we need to ask is why a constitutional, secular democracy never took hold in Pakistan since its creation in 1947 despite the stated goals of Pakistan's founders and the influence of its largely democratic neighbor India. Pakistan has had a slew of authoritarian rulers and even the semblance of political democracy (sometimes through rigged elections) has been circumvented more often than not by the military-bureaucratic power structure in Pakistan. Authoritarian, especially military, rulers have led Pakistan into multiple external & internal wars and suppressed internal dissent and certain ethnic identities. Given that Pakistan had far fewer ethnic and linguistic groups than India and is much smaller and arguably easier to govern than India, a natural question is why Pakistan and India took two fundamentally different paths with different consequences. This cannot not be explained merely by simplistic explanations based on religion or Islamic fundamentalism - the answers (discussed in this post) are more complex and reveal a lot about the underlying structural issues in Pakistan that are not properly understood even by some experts and yet to be adequately addressed even today.


Yesterday a reader responded to my introductory post with the view that India was able to remain democratic because it is a secular country and that Pakistan had instead declared itself an Islamic state that "drove out all non-muslims". The reader also asserted that "Islam is not compatible with democracy". The reality is that, after partition, both India and Pakistan had virtually identical proportions of their populations (~85-86%) that constituted the religious majority in each country. In fact, India's constitution was first amended (in 1976) to declare India as "secular" during the only, brief period of time in India's post-independence history when India was not a democracy i.e., when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi assumed dictatorial powers after declaring an Emergency. In contrast, even though attempts had been made previously to brand Pakistan an Islamic Republic, the first time the Pakistani constitution was unanimously amended (in 1973) to declare Islam the official state religion was during the regime of Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was fairly Westernized and came to power after the first free elections in Pakistan's history. The point of these anecdotes is that facile judgments are often unhelpful in understanding the real root causes of Pakistan's problems.
This post is grouped into the following sections, for clarity (emphasis is mine, throughout this post; I do ask for forgiveness in advance for using certain generalizations in the discussion. None of my comments here are intended to imply that all people of a certain ethnic or religious group necessarily think alike or necessarily share the same world view - however, to the extent that certain classes or groups tended to behave in certain ways historically, it is important to discuss those aspects).
1. Summary
2. The 1947 Partition of British India and Migration into Pakistan
3. The Mohajir Elite and Pakistan's Power Structure
4. The Punjabi Elite and Pakistan's Power Structure
5. The Roots of Authoritarianism in Pakistan and Democracy in India
6. The Roots of Islamization of Pakistan and Secularism in India

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1. Summary
The violent partition of colonial India in 1947 created the modern countries of India and Pakistan. During this partition, most Hindus and Sikhs migrated into India from Pakistan and large numbers of Muslims migrated into Pakistan, mostly from Northern India. The Urdu-speaking Mohajirs who migrated to Pakistan from India constituted a minuscule percentage of Pakistan's population and were an ethnic and linguistic minority. However, they were the most literate and elite group of migrants, were landed and wealthy, and were strongly over-represented in the existing colonial power structure. This combination of characteristics made it somewhat inevitable that the Mohajir elite were unlikely to easily give up their power and wealth under democratic rule to a poorer and "lower" class Muslim majority in Pakistan. The combination of Punjabi dominance in Pakistan's military, the wealth and influence of the Punjabi landed elite and the fact that Punjab was the second most populous and perhaps the most prosperous province (with the largest agricultural & industrial base) set the stage for Punjabis playing a dominant role in the new Pakistan, even though East Pakistan (Bengal) was the most populous province.
Tracing the roots of Pakistan's authoritarian-style model and India's democratic model indicates that religion in itself was not the fundamental determinant, even if religion in the case of Pakistan was subsequently used to perpetuate the status quo power structure. In fact, after partition, the percentage strength of the religious majority in both countries (Hindus in India and Muslims in Pakistan) was virtually identical at ~85-86%. In this environment, the proliferation of numerous ethno-linguistic groups in both countries made linguistic rights and identity much more important than religion in determining the respective trajectories of India and Pakistan. The way in which Indian and Pakistani leaders managed linguistic identity, rights and representation therefore had a disproportionate impact on the success and failure of achieving a democratic system of government. The roots of India's democracy can be traced directly to the Indian leaders' commitment to a largely secular democracy with linguistic rights, the largely representative structure of the original Indian National Congress which had undertaken grassroots party-building in leading the struggle for Indian independence by explicitly recognizing and integrating linguistic groups at the provincial level (which in turn forced competing political parties to build representative national or provincial party structures), and the linguistic autonomy that was gradually granted to the provinces that facilitated their continued participation in national party politics. Although the conditions under which India and Pakistan were created in 1947 were somewhat similar, the differences in the structures of the principal political parties in both countries and the visions and actions of their respective leaders, as well as the class and power structure in Pakistan, led to Pakistan becoming an authoritarian and unrepresentative non-democratic state. The Pakistani leadership placed higher importance on superficial national unity than on ethnic/linguistic rights and the power base was dominated by generally wealthier and more literate ethnic minorities (Mohajir and Punjabi elites) who successfully suppressed both the linguistic majority group (Bengalis) and other linguistic minorities (Sindhis, Balochs, Siraikis, etc.) by retaining most of the power in the new Pakistan. This suppression was enabled by the fact that the structure of Pakistani government soon after independence was modified to make the civil bureaucracy far more powerful than the political class, and the bureaucracy and military - the two most powerful institutions - were initially dominated by Mohajirs and Punjabis. Representative democracy was thus antithetical to the main interests of the Mohajir-Punjabi ruling elite and this became clear when they declared Urdu - a language spoken by the minuscule Mohajir minority - to be the sole official language of the state under the guise of 'unification', thereby suppressing other languages. The fact that, unlike the Indian National Congress, the Muslim League - that was dominated by minority Muslims from India rather than the ethnic/linguistic groups hailing from the new Pakistan - was not a truly representative body, also facilitated this trajectory.
Pakistan was created as a state for Muslims (as opposed to an "Islamic state"), in contrast to India whose leaders repeatedly referred to India as a secular state. However, it is important not to confuse the creation of Pakistan as a state for Muslims by ostensibly "secular" leaders such as Jinnah, with the program of Islamization that was subsequently initiated in Pakistan. The reason this is important is that Islamization largely post-dated independence and was primarily a means of suppressing ethnic/linguistic identities in order to preserve authoritarian rule and undercut democracy. Both before and after partition, Indian political leaders faced significant pressure from some Hindu leaders to formally declare India a Hindu state, but thanks to visionary leadership starting with Jawaharlal Nehru that pressure has been successfully repelled to-date. The original emergence of Hindu nationalism and its reinvigoration in the last two decades has been challenging for India to deal with. Further, the presence of a country founded on religious grounds next door to India - it's long-time rival Pakistan - has been a point of tension between India's Hindus and Muslims for decades. Yet, despite the long-standing pressure from some major Hindu leaders, India has shakily, but steadfastly, avoided going down the path of declaring itself a Hindu state. In part, this is because of the major efforts of key Hindu leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru (and many others who succeeded them) to ensure that religious minorities in India felt that they have a strong voice in the country and the ability to establish, propagate and enjoy their identity in a nominally secular India. On balance, although India has much work to do to make majority-minority relations better, India's model has been more or less stable over the last few decades. A careful review of Pakistan's history indicates that regardless of the original - and highly debated - intent of Pakistan's founders, the ambiguity of the founders' views on the relationship between state and religion has been successfully exploited by successive, usually (but not always) authoritarian rulers of Pakistan to invoke Islam when convenient in order to cloak and suppress ethnic and linguistic differences, preserve their power structure and cover up gross misconduct using bigoted or religious appeals.

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2. The 1947 Partition of British India and Migration into Pakistan
Multiple books have been written on the gut-wrenching partition of British India into India and Pakistan (East & West), that led to the largest and fastest human migration in modern history. Anywhere from 14-18 million people [2, 3] were displaced from their homes and forced to migrate either to India or Pakistan (often in a matter of weeks to months) as a result of the partition. It is estimated that anywhere from several hundred thousand to a million [4] to potentially well over 3 million [2] people died - primarily due to the rioting and carnage that resulted from the partition.
For the purposes of this post, my main interest is in understanding the inflows of migrants into Pakistan from the former British India given that some of these migrants played a significant role in the creation of Pakistan and would subsequently wield disproportionate influence on Pakistan's future. The most recent, detailed analysis of the partition of British India is from Bharadwaj, Khwaja and Mian [2, 3]. The portion of their work that is of particular interest is their estimation of the inflow of migrants into Pakistan. In one of their charts reproduced below [2], Bharadwaj et al. point out that the vast majority of migrants into West Pakistan emanated primarily from northern India and arrived mostly into the Pakistani provinces of Sindh and Punjab that adjoin the Indian border (see red circles in the chart below).

In separate charts, the authors also estimated the outflows from all provinces and the net inflows. On the whole, Sindh and Punjab were the only two provinces of Pakistan that received a massive net inflow of migrants that constituted a substantial % of the pre-partition population in those regions. All other Pakistani provinces either registered a net outflow (especially in East Pakistan) or very small net inflows.
Although there were different ethnic groups in the migrant communities, the predominant Muslim migrants into West Pakistan were Urdu-speaking Mohajirs (most of whom originated from northern India, especially the United Provinces and Bihar) and Punjabi-speaking Punjabis (who mostly hailed from the eastern side of the partitioned Punjab province and adjoining princely states). Although the migrant Punjabis were ethnically and linguistically close to existing Punjabis in Pakistan, the Mohajirs were a distinct community that also spoke a language (Urdu) that was not native to any existing province of Pakistan.
Another aspect of this migration was key to determining the future trajectory of Pakistan - the average literacy rate of incoming migrants and how that compared to the literacy rate of the remaining residents. In a separate paper [3], Bharadwaj et al. discussed literacy rates and other aspects of the migrant population. Perhaps most striking is this:

Partition-related flows altered the composition of the literate populations in India and Pakistan. [...] In particular for Pakistan, the aggregate impact is small as the out-migrating Hindus and Sikhs were vastly more literate than the resident Muslims.² A one standard deviation in outflows from Pakistan decreased literacy by 1.02%. However, in Pakistan, partition-related flows had large compositional effects within religious groups. This occurs due to in-migrating Muslims being vastly more literate than resident Muslims.
An example of place with a small aggregate effect but important compositional effects is the case of Karachi in Pakistan. The district of Karachi received a large influx of migrants - in 1951, nearly 28% of the population was migrant. We also compute an outflow of around 15% for the Karachi district.³ Moreover, Hindus and Sikhs in Karachi in 1931 were also much more literate than the resident Muslims - 21% as opposed to just 3.7%. After partition, nearly all Hindus and Sikhs left Karachi (only 1.5% of the population in 1951 was composed of minorities). Yet, the aggregate effect on Karachi’s literacy is very small - this was due to the highly literate migrants who moved into Karachi. In the city of Karachi, 91% of the literate population were migrants! What is important here is while overall literacy rates remained largely unchanged, who the literate population was composed of certainly changed. Partition thus replaced existing minority-majority literacy differences with within majority literacy differences.

The significance of these observations is best seen through the chart below [from Ref. 3]. In all Pakistani provinces that received Muslim migrants from India, the literacy rate of incoming migrants was generally substantially higher than the literacy rate of the existing Muslim residents in those provinces. In East Bengal (which became East Pakistan) this disparity had less of an impact not just because East Pakistan had net outflows, but because most of the migrants (Bengalis) were ethnically similar to the existing majority in East Pakistan. Further, per Adeney [5]:

...within East Bengal, Hindus comprised 22 percent of the population.⁷ This point is important because, for the population of East Bengal, the Bengali identity was as important as their religion [Eriposte note: Many Bengali Muslims - like Sindhi Muslims - were descended from Hindu converts and had close ethnic and linguistic ties with fellow Hindus]. This is why there was less movement across the border than in the Punjab at the time of partition. As Ali Masood notes, "[c]ompared to West Pakistan, it is estimated, a lesser number of non-Muslims left East Pakistan and even fewer Muslims from India entered that wing" (1970, 39).⁸ [page 67]

In West Pakistan, Punjabi migrants generally settled in Punjab with ethnically and linguistically similar residents. However, a huge number of the migrants into Sindh were Urdu-speaking Mohajirs who were ethnically and linguistically different and much more literate than the resident Muslim Sindhis. This would have a major impact on the trajectory of Pakistan, as we shall see below.
3. The Mohajir Elite and Pakistan's Power Structure
Although not all Urdu-speaking Muslims are considered Mohajirs, most of those who migrated to (West) Pakistan are generally referred to using this term. The significantly higher literacy of the Mohajirs (compared to the resident Sindhis) clearly opened the door for greater success in post-partition Pakistan. More importantly, as Khan pointed out [6], the "United Provinces (UP) of India, from where the majority of the Urdu-speaking Mohajirs had migrated to Pakistan, was the traditional power base of the Muslim landed gentry of the Mughal Empire since the twelfth century". Over centuries the Mohajirs had accumulated wealth and powerful positions and the British initially retained their privileges. Over time as British India became a more formal administration driven by an educated bureaucracy, the requirements for holding key administrative positions became more stringent. With greater competition from Hindus, the share of Urdu-speaking Muslims in senior executive and judicial positions started to drop rapidly in the late 1800s. This provoked reformist/educational movements among the Muslim elite in the UP in order to reverse the decline. In addition, some of the Muslim leaders, partly fearful of Hindu dominance, began to resort to communalist politics and demanded special quotas/reservations for minority Muslims. The British were only happy to oblige. Khan [6] has traced the historical antecedents of the Mohajirs in some detail and observed that one of the most influential spiritual leaders of Pakistani Mohajirs was Syed Ahmed Khan (1817-1898):

Growing into a formidable communalist, [Syed Ahmed Khan] demanded a special quota for Muslims in the Indian Civil Service and favoured communal rather than joint electorates. ¹⁴ He opposed the Indian National Congress' demand for representative rule on the ground that this would be detrimental to Muslim interests and would benefit only the Hindu majority. ¹⁵ Instead, he demanded parity in government jobs on the basis of quality, which he believed the Muslims had, rather than quantity.¹⁶
Syed Ahmed's ideas had disastrous consequences for the relationship between not only the Hindus and Muslims, but also between the modernised UP Muslims and the rest of the Indian Muslims. These same ideas were later to determine the Mohajirs' relations with the indigenous Pakistanis. As a spokesman of the aristocratic UP Muslims, his concerns were restricted to the losses of his own class and the impoverishment of the lower classes among the Muslims of UP did not attract his sympathies. ¹⁷ The main themes of his discourse were so rigidly organized 'along caste, birth, class and status lines', that he denounced 'the Congress for basing itself on the principle of social equality among the "lowly" and the "highly" born.' ¹⁸
[...]
Syed Ahmed is rightly regarded as the instigator of the two-nation theory that termed the Hindus and Muslims as two separate nations. It was his demand for a special quota for Muslims and separate electorates that created a communal wedge between the Hindus and Muslims, which later became the basis of the partition of India. [...] The ideological Islam of Syed Ahmed, which had before partition provided justification for colonial rule and denigrated the folk Sufi Islam of the Indian Muslims as irrational and superstitious, became after partition a tool in the hands of the Pakistani rulers, who have used it to legitimise their misrule and to deny regional and ethnic identities. [pages 165-166]

It should also be remembered that the All-India Muslim League, which was instrumental in the creation of Pakistan, was dominated by Mohajirs and other Muslims from India, which paralleled their domination of the bureaucratic power structure [6]:

The All-India Muslim League, which led Muslims to the partition of India and the creation of Pakistan, was not only founded by the Muslims from the United Provinces (UP) and other Muslim minority provinces but also dominated by them, before as well as after partition. In 1946-7, only 10 out of 23 members of the Muslim League Working Committee were from the future Pakistan areas. After partition, at the Muslim League council meeting in December 1947, 160 out of 300 members were immigrants. ²¹ After Jinnah's death in 1948, an aristocrat from Lucknow, Chaudhri Khaliquzzaman, became the President of the Muslim League. Between 1947 and 1958, some of the most important government posts like the prime ministership, the ministerial portfolios of education, information and refugee rehabilitation, and various provincial governorships were all held by Mohajirs. ²²
These facts acquire additional significance because only 2 per cent of the millions of Indian Muslims who migrated to Pakistan were from UP. During the same period Mohajirs, on the whole, were only 3 per cent of the total population of Pakistan, ²³ but due to their over-representation in high-ranking jobs in the colonial administration, they came to dominate the administrative structure of the new state. At the time of partition, there were 101 Muslim officers in the Indian Civil Service (ICS) and the Indian Political Service (IPS). Of these 95 (83 ICS, 12 IPS) opted for Pakistan. ²⁴ Out of the 83 ICS officers, 49 were Urdu-speakers from minority provinces. ²⁵
[...]
The revised quota of November 1949, which reduced the Bengali and non-Punjabi areas' share by 2 per cent and allocated 20 per cent to the merit category, brought even more benefits to the Mohajirs, whose literacy rate at 70 per cent was the highest in Pakistan. By 1950, when Mohajirs were 2 per cent of Sindh's population, their share among the successful candidates of the civil service examination was as large as 46.6 per cent. ²⁷ Although Mohajirs' share in non-officer ranks in the military has been marginal, in senior positions (above the rank of brigadier) it was disproportionately high, as much as 23 per cent in 1968, when they held 11 out of 48 positions. ²⁸ [pages 166-167]

As we can see from the above, although the Mohajirs who migrated to Pakistan constituted a minuscule percentage of Pakistan's population and were an ethnic and linguistic minority, they were the most literate and elite group of migrants, were landed and wealthy, and were strongly over-represented in the existing colonial power structure. This combination of characteristics made it somewhat inevitable that the Mohajir elite were unlikely to easily give up their power and wealth under democratic rule to a poorer and "lower" class Muslim majority in Pakistan.

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4. The Punjabi Elite and Pakistan's Power Structure
Unlike the Mohajirs whose claim to power in post-partition Pakistan rested on their literacy and over-representation in the bureaucratic governing elite and senior officer ranks, the Pakistani Punjabis (as opposed to Indian Punjabis who mostly ended up being a Sikh minority in India) became the prima facie leaders in Pakistan in large part due to their large population & agricultural/industrial base combined with their over-representation and power base in the military. Shah [7] notes that some Punjabi leaders essentially treated Punjab as synonymous with Pakistan and also expected that the disproportionate suffering of Punjabis during partition would be compensated through more power in the new Pakistan:

Punjabis were disproportionately represented in the new state's bureaucratic and military structures (Jahan, 1972: 24). The Punjab had emerged from the blood bath of partition and Punjabis felt they would be adequately compensated, and would likely be the masters of Pakistan's destiny. [page 132]

As Khan pointed out [6]:

...although not the traditional elite like the UPites, the Punjabis endeared themselves to the British authorities by helping them in putting down the armed resistance movement of 1857. The British showered their favours on Punjab through the irrigation schemes that led to the reclamation of large areas of West Punjab. ¹² Thus came into being a large class of Punjabi landowners, who played an important role in strengthening the colonial system of control by providing men for army service. Punjab had the highest share in the British Indian army. Over 50 per cent of the British Indian army personnel were from Punjab, especially those parts of the province which were later to become Pakistan. Before the First World War, Punjabi Muslims were 75 per cent of the total number of Muslims in the Indian army, and after partition the Pakistan army was 60 per cent Punjabi. ¹³
This led to the militarization of the bureaucratic structure of the province, 'as nearly all aspects of its activities were geared towards the provision of men and material for the war effort.'¹⁴ Initially, Punjabis gave little support to the Muslim League and its demand for Pakistan, but later, when the appeal for Pakistan caught the imagination of the people, the 'Muslim landed elite chose to use the League as its vehicle for carrying over its authority into the post-colonial period.' ¹⁵ [pages 64-65]

Thus, the combination of Punjabi dominance in Pakistan's military, the wealth and influence of the Punjabi landed elite and the fact that Punjab was the second most populous and perhaps the most prosperous province (with the largest agricultural & industrial base) set the stage for Punjabis playing a dominant role in the new Pakistan, even though East Pakistan (Bengal) was the most populous province.

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5. The Roots of Authoritarianism in Pakistan and Democracy in India
5.1 Language Trumps Religion
Adeney [5] has presented a substantial and excellent discussion of the pre- and post-partition constitutional positions and federal structures of India and Pakistan. In some cases, the pre-partition constitutional positions of the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League were based on the assumption of a united India with some Muslim majority provinces - these positions evolved or changed, by necessity, after partition. In other cases, the horrors of partition had the immediate effect of reducing provincial autonomy and increasing federal power in both India and Pakistan as leaders of both countries sought to strengthen the federation at the expense of the provinces in order to ostensibly reduce the likelihood of enabling secessionary tendencies. However, many of these factors, including the carnage of partition and the virtually identical percentages of their respective religious majorities [6], were common to both India and Pakistan and cannot explain the very different trajectories that Pakistan and India took soon after partition - namely, a much more authoritarian governing model in Pakistan that contrasted with a generally much more representative democratic model in India. To see why the trajectories diverged, we therefore need to look at other factors.
The pre-partition record suggests that key Indian leaders were generally resistant to drawing borders on religious lines but were more in favor of linguistic reorganization and reasonable autonomy for provinces as long as there was no threat of secession. The leaders of the Muslim League, who had originally not pushed for partition along religious lines but over time had become wedded to that idea, had no formal position on linguistic reorganization of provinces. On balance, however, Pakistani leader Mohammad Ali Jinnah's position was more rigid than Indian leader Jawaharlal Nehru's - that Muslim unity (in the case of Pakistan) took precedence over ethnic/linguistic autonomy. As Adeney [5] observed:

Jinnah's strategy was predicated on Muslim unity; anything which undermined this threatened the consociational elite autonomy he strove so hard to achieve. Linguistic reorganizations that threatened Muslim unity were therefore rejected, a policy continued after independence. [page 58]

The issue of the rights of linguistic groups cannot be overstated. At face value a seemingly manageable matter, this was enormously significant in determining the divergent paths between India and Pakistan for three major reasons.

• First, both India and Pakistan were far from being monolithic religious populations - each had many distinct ethno-linguistic groups [5]. In India, Hindi was the language spoken by the largest percentage of Indians, but even at number one, Hindi was spoken by no more than ~30.4% of the population shortly after partition; the second most popular language was Telugu - spoken by ~9% of the population. Clearly, India had a large number of different languages, spoken in various small and large provinces across the country. In Pakistan, the majority language was Bengali which was spoken by roughly 54% of the overall population [5] - but entirely in East Pakistan. Punjabi was next, spoken by ~27.6% of the population, and there were other languages spoken by various minority groups.
• Second, linguistic groups often had distinct ethnic backgrounds and customs that were not tied to religion. Thus, in an environment where each country had an overwhelming religious majority, religious issues naturally fell behind in importance compared to ethno-linguistic identity and class issues.
• Third, with ethno-linguistic identity frequently taking precedence over religion, these distinct groups were in a position to play a pivotal role in enabling truly democratic and representative party politics across the country and at the national level.

In view of the above factors, the way in which Indian and Pakistani leaders managed linguistic identity, rights and representation therefore had a disproportionate impact on the success and failure of achieving a democratic system of government.
5.2 India
Right from the beginning, there was enormous pressure on the Indian leadership to forcibly make Hindi the official language of the country, in an attempt to create a national language that would "unify" the country. However, three factors made it certain that in India linguistic rights and identities would receive high priority, despite some backtracking in the immediate aftermath of the carnage of partition. First, the visionary and inclusive nature of Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and other Indian leaders made it virtually certain that Hindi would not be imposed on the Indian provinces. Second, the fact that the plurality of Hindi speakers were still a minority of the population ensured there was strong counter-pressure from various linguistic groups, especially from Southern India, to prevent the imposition of Hindi as an official language. Thus, even before the Indian government formally reorganized provinces along linguistic lines, Nehru and other Congress leaders ensured that most provinces could use their own language while using English to communicate with the Federal government. Third, and perhaps most importantly, the recognition of linguistic identity had been a long-standing pillar of the Indian National Congress in the decades preceding independence. This was because, in a country as large and linguistically diverse as India, the only way for the Congress party to successfully expand its reach country-wide and establish a democratic, representative and grassroots party structure to strengthen the party in its fight for India's independence, was to linguistically reorganize the provincial party committees. As Adeney points out [5]:

In contrast to the reluctant acceptance of the creation of new Muslim-majority provinces, the Congress was deeply committed to linguistic reorganization. [...] As Pattabhi Sitaramayya observes, "wide and strong was the belief that for Provincial Autonomy to be successful, the medium of instruction as well as administration must be the provincial language" (1935, 250).
[...]
...The Congress's acceptance of linguistic reorganization of its own organization had everything to do with its mobilizing strategy in the struggle for independence....The systematic restructuring of the Congress's organization and a commitment to linguistic reorganization coincided with Gandhi's rise to prominence in the Congress. Although he initially opposed linguistic reorganization, in 1920 he cited it as one of the four principles that he held dear. Linguistic reorganization of its internal structure coincided with the Congress becoming a more democratic and active organization (Kaushik 1964, 34). Instead of a three-day annual wonder, it became an organization "humming with activity" throughout the year. The link between linguistic reorganization and the Congress's mobilizing success was a dynamic one. As James Manor argues, the fact that the Congress was such a broad church has as its corollary the need for internal representation, and linguistic reorganization strengthened the Congress in many regions (1990, 29). D. A. Low supports this, noting that when "the Congress provinces were redrawn they ... helped pave the way for the recruitment of new categories of supporters" (1991, 75)....[it] opened its ranks to non-English-speaking leaders. The Congress's success sprang from its ability to mobilize the masses, for which local organization was required, and its newly formed linguistic PCCs facilitated this. [pages 55-56]

After India's independence, the horrors of partition unfortunately led successive Indian leaders to partly postpone the creation of linguistically reorganized provinces under the fear of secession, but over time the leadership came to realize that there was greater risk of disintegration and chaos without linguistic autonomy [6]:

The belated acceptance of linguistic reorganization was an outcome produced by the danger of internal party dissent as well as external protest. As Meghnad Desai notes, language politics produced more street violence in the 20 years after the partition riots than did religious violence (2000, 93; Wilkinson 2002a, 15-16). [...] Despite the concerns articulated by Selig Harrison (1960, 135, 307) and Michael Brecher (1959, 21), linguistic reorganization accommodated conflicts and stabilized the [Indian] federation. [pages 77-78]

There was another factor involved here that played to the Congress' advantage. Since the Congress had used linguistic reorganization over decades to build a highly representative party structure across most of India (to some extent even cutting across class lines) and to successfully win independence from the British, there was simply no credible or serious political competition for the Congress when India became independent. No other major grassroots-based parties existed in India for quite some time after independence - which meant that party leaders had few concerns about the loss of political power in the extraordinarily diverse, post-partition India. This made it easy for the Congress to rule India through mostly Democratic means right after independence. Further, Jawaharlal Nehru was a strong believer in democracy (at least at the national level) and his long tenure (1947-1964) pretty much ensured that at the national level, democracy would be sustained. Unfortunately, Indian democracy was not perfect and in some cases at the provincial level (e.g., Jammu & Kashmir), the risk of secession was used as an excuse to impose military or authoritarian rule. However, by and large, India has continued to remain a democracy at the national level, and generally at the provincial level as well, through most of its life.
In summary, the roots of India's democracy can be traced directly to the Indian leaders' commitment to a largely secular democracy with linguistic rights, the largely representative structure of the original Indian National Congress which had undertaken grassroots party-building in leading the struggle for Indian independence by explicitly recognizing and integrating linguistic groups at the provincial level (which in turn forced competing political parties to build representative national or provincial party structures), and the linguistic autonomy that was gradually granted to the provinces that facilitated their continued participation in national party politics.
NOTE: The only period of time that India lapsed into authoritarian, dictatorial rule was during one of the terms of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, who was a novice when she was basically thrust into the role of Prime Minister not long after the death of her father and national icon Jawaharlal Nehru. In her case, as a woman who had been newly elected to the most powerful position in the country, she was unable to claim a strong grassroots base of party support for her candidacy and therefore began the process of overturning the bottoms-up structure of the Congress party to impose a tops-down hierarchy with a closed circle of advisors (her tenure is generally acknowledged as having been a key turning point in the corruption of the Indian political system). This coincided with a period of extreme turmoil in India due to ethnic, linguistic and class conflicts and she ultimately declared an emergency and overturned democracy for a few years. She was punished in the polls held right after the end of the emergency although she was subsequently re-elected, before eventually being assassinated.
5.3 Pakistan
The trajectory of Pakistan was very different from India's primarily due to the following reasons.
Firstly, the nation of Pakistan was premised on the unity of Muslims over everything else (although it was likely not premised initially on Islam [6]). There are conflicting views on whether or not Mohammad Ali Jinnah and other leaders sought a "secular" Pakistan comprised primarily of Muslims in order to preserve the rights of Muslims (not the same as unity!) or whether religion was considered as paramount as Muslim unity or rights (see Section 6 below for more on this). Regardless, the basic premise automatically elevated Muslim unity as being paramount and more important than concerns of provincial or linguistic/ethnic autonomy - making it much easier for Pakistani leaders to concoct false arguments of Muslim unity to suppress certain ethnic/linguistic groups from the political/power structure. This should be contrasted with India which was created as a nation where borders or governance would ostensibly not be based on consideration of religion and there was sufficient room for linguistic rights and reorganization.
Secondly, and more importantly, the Muslim League that was the de facto entity eventually pushing for and overseeing the creation of Pakistan, was not a representative party like the Indian National Congress. The membership of the League prior to partition was predominantly from Muslim minority provinces in British India and it had few members in positions of influence who originated from the Muslim majority provinces that would eventually become the country of Pakistan. The Muslim League was also predominantly comprised of mainly upper to middle class Muslims and had no real representative, grassroots base amongst the vast majority of Muslims, especially in the future Pakistan regions. In fact, as Khan points out [6], just before partition, even the Muslim-majority provinces that were to become Pakistan did not have Muslim League governments or leaders who advocated for an independent Pakistan - indeed, there was no mass movement in the Muslim majority provinces even demanding the creation of Pakistan, at the time of partition.
Thirdly, the Muslim League elite had a large number of Mohajirs who were very concerned about being able to maintain their wealth, power and way of life in Pakistan - a land that was arguably foreign to them and where they had no meaningful political base to speak of. Once they migrated to Pakistan, they were an insignificant ethnic and linguistic minority in Pakistan. Therefore, supporting constitutional democracy would have meant certain defeat for the Mohajirs at the polls across most of Pakistan, thereby reducing their power base to an insignificant level. This represented a dire threat to the way of life and power of the Mohajir elite.
Fourthly, the Punjabi elites who dominated the military (and had by now developed a strong aversion for India after enduring the horrors of partition) were very concerned about the impact of constitutional representative democracy on their ability to wield political power in Pakistan and maintain their landed wealth in a country dominated by the poor and by the Bengali majority. East Pakistan (formerly East Bengal) had the majority of Pakistan's population after partition and when combined with the other provinces (Sindh, NWFP, Balochistan, etc.), this would have meant that the likelihood of Punjabis dominating the Pakistani political power structure through democratic rule was very low indeed.
The combination of these factors significantly tilted the trajectory of Pakistan towards authoritarian, non-democratic rule by the already powerful Punjabi-Mohajir elite, who saw no other means to preserve their power and interests in Pakistan. Representative democracy was thus completely antithetical to their main interests and this became clear when they declared Urdu - a language spoken by the minuscule Mohajir minority to be the sole official language of the state and suppressed other languages. The authoritarian trajectory was turned into reality when Jinnah made the bureaucracy more powerful than the political class, thereby making sure that a democratic system based on elected leaders was at best going to be very weak and at worst, dead on arrival. As Khan notes [6]:

By himself holding the three most important positions of governor general, president of the Constituent Assembly and president of the Muslim League at the same time, Jinnah set a tradition by which a powerful individual came to be more important than the institutionalized distribution of state power. 'No constitutional ruler and few autocrats have possessed such plenitude of power.' ⁶
By amending the colonial Government of India Act 1935, Jinnah made it more unitary and less federal. On the one hand, the powers of the the governor general were increased, and on the other, the powers of provincial governments were decreased. [...]
One of the most disastrous contributions of Jinnah to the future of Pakistan was 'a demotion of the political leadership in favour of the bureaucracy'. ⁷ He created the post of secretary general for one of his lieutenants, Chaudhri Mohammad Ali, to run the government single-handedly through the central and provincial bureaucracy.⁸ As a consequence, the British-trained civil servants assumed prominence in the state system at the expense of the political leadership. On the other hand, Pakistan's insecure leadership, which, in the face of Indian speculations that the new state would not survive very long, was not sure about the viability of the Pakistani state, diverted national resources to the build-up of a strong military force. This set the Pakistani state on a path that would soon lead to a military-bureaucratic authoritarianism, which continues to plague Pakistan's political system till today.
The predominance of the bureaucracy and military not only retarded the political process but also adversely affected the ethnic composition of the state managers, for the civilian state administrators were predominantly Mohajirs and Punjabis, and the army was overwhelmingly from one province, Punjab. Therefore, Pakistan came to be ruled by minority ethnic groups, Mohajirs and Punjabis, with the almost total exclusion of the Bengali majority from the civil bureaucracy and military. In 1948, East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), which had 54 per cent of Pakistan's total population, had only 11.1 per cent share in the civil service and the rest of the personnel, 88.9 per cent, were from West Pakistan. ⁹ [pages 62-63]

In summary, although the conditions under which India and Pakistan were created in 1947 were somewhat similar, the differences in the structures of the principal political parties in both countries and the visions and actions of their respective leaders, as well as the class and power structure in Pakistan, led to Pakistan becoming an authoritarian and unrepresentative non-democratic state. The Pakistani leadership placed higher importance on superficial national unity than on ethnic/linguistic rights and the power base was dominated by generally wealthier and more literate ethnic minorities (Mohajir and Punjabi elites) who successfully suppressed both the linguistic majority group (Bengalis) and other linguistic minorities (Sindhis, Balochs, Siraikis, etc.) by retaining most of the power in the new Pakistan. This suppression was enabled by the fact that the structure of Pakistani government soon after independence was modified to make the civil bureaucracy far more powerful than the political class, and the bureaucracy and military - the two most powerful institutions - were initially dominated by Mohajirs and Punjabis. Representative democracy was thus antithetical to the main interests of the Mohajir-Punjabi ruling elite and this became clear when they declared Urdu - a language spoken by the minuscule Mohajir minority - to be the sole official language of the state under the guise of 'unification', thereby suppressing other languages. The fact that, unlike the Indian National Congress, the Muslim League - that was dominated by minority Muslims from India rather than the ethnic/linguistic groups hailing from the new Pakistan - was not a truly representative body, also facilitated this trajectory.

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6. The Roots of Islamization of Pakistan and Secularism in India
After partition, both India and Pakistan were glaringly similar in one respect. The percentage strength of the religious majority in both countries (Hindus in India and Muslims in Pakistan) was virtually identical at ~85-86% [5]. Pakistan was created as a state for Muslims (as opposed to an "Islamic state"), in contrast to India, whose leaders repeatedly referred to India as a secular state (with secularism in this case really being "neutrality between religions, rather than separation of state and religion" [5, p. 76]). However, it is important not to confuse the creation of Pakistan as a state for Muslims by ostensibly "secular" leaders such as Jinnah, with the program of Islamization that was subsequently initiated in Pakistan. The reason this is important is that Islamization largely post-dated independence and was primarily a means of suppressing ethnic/linguistic identities in order to preserve authoritarian rule and undercut democracy.
It is interesting to note [6] that although Pakistan's constitutions of 1956, 1962 (with the First Amendment) and 1973 all made explicit mentions that Pakistan is an Islamic state, the first time the Pakistani constitution was unanimously amended (in 1973) to declare Islam the official state religion was during the regime of Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was fairly Westernized and came to power after the first free elections in Pakistan's history. In contrast, India's constitution was first amended (in 1976) to declare India as "secular" during the only, brief period of time in India's post-independence history when India was not a democracy i.e., when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi assumed dictatorial powers after declaring an Emergency. This is important to keep in mind to ensure that we don't make superficial judgments regarding the origin of, or reasons for, the Islamization of Pakistan.
6.1 India
Both before and after partition, Indian political leaders faced significant pressure from some Hindu leaders to formally declare India a Hindu state [8], but thanks to visionary leadership starting with Jawaharlal Nehru that pressure has been successfully repelled to-date. The campaign for a "Hindu Rashtra" (Hindu Nation) has a long history and has been based partly on religious arguments and partly on nationalistic arguments. The latter view was espoused by one of its earliest proponents - the controversial Vinayak (Veer) Savarkar - who is also the originator of the term "Hindutva" commonly used today by India's Hindu nationalist parties. Savarkar, who became head of the Hindu Mahasabha political party in 1937, was actually an atheist Hindu [9] whose appeals to Hindutva were based on nationalism - as an expression of cultural and ethnic identity. Savarkar is a key icon to the various overtly Hindu nationalist political parties in India today; however, some of these parties explicitly advocate not just a nationalist view but also a religious view for a Hindu Rashtra. The original emergence of Hindu nationalism and its reinvigoration in the last two decades has been challenging for India to deal with. Further, the presence of a country founded on religious grounds next door to India - it's long-time rival Pakistan - has been a point of tension between India's Hindus and Muslims for decades. Yet, despite the long-standing pressure from some major Hindu leaders, India has shakily, but steadfastly, avoided going down the path of declaring itself a Hindu state. In part, this is because of the major efforts of key Hindu leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru (and many others who succeeded them) to ensure that religious minorities in India felt that they have a strong voice in the country and the ability to establish, propagate and enjoy their identity in a nominally secular India [10]. Granted, the relationship between India's religious majority and minorities has sometimes been tenuous and not without violent conflict (driven by factors such as India's partition during independence along religious lines, troubled relations with neighboring Pakistan, actions of Hindu fundamentalists, local Hindu-Muslim strife, and so on), but in some areas, India has also swung the pendulum pretty far in the direction of accommodating minority needs by propagating a separate civil code [11] for some minorities that is different from the civil code that its Hindu majority is subject to (which is one of the key points of tension between Hindus and Muslims in India today). On balance, although India has much work to do to make majority-minority relations better, India's model has been more or less stable over the last few decades.
6.2 Pakistan
The state of Pakistan was defined from the time of its creation on religious grounds even though pre-partition, most Muslim religious groups never really supported the Muslim League or its demand to create Pakistan [6]. There has been considerable debate about exactly what Pakistan's founders really believed regarding state and religion. Jinnah himself is known for making seemingly contradictory and ambiguous statements on this matter [6]. Pakistan, at the minimum, was conceived as a state for Muslims under the premise that Muslims could not get adequate civil rights under a Hindu majority. The debate is whether Pakistan was also conceived as an Islamic state whose laws and constitution are not really secular but religious in nature. As Khan said [6]:

A country that was created in the name of religion has not, even after over 50 years of its existence, been able to determine what role religion should have in the affairs of the state. ²² [page 68]

A careful review of Pakistan's history [6, 7] indicates that regardless of the original - and highly debated - intent of Pakistan's founders, the ambiguity of the founders' views on the relationship between state and religion was successfully exploited by successive, usually (but not always) authoritarian rulers of Pakistan to invoke Islam when convenient in order to cloak and suppress ethnic and linguistic differences, preserve their power structure and cover up gross misconduct using bigoted or religious appeals.
For most of Pakistan's history, the misuse of Islam by its rulers has been extensive. The allegedly "secular" Zulfikar Ali Bhutto actually initiated some Islamization himself. However, the reign of terror under Zia ul-Haq is generally considered the most important turning point in the full scale Islamization of Pakistan [6]:

Unfortunately, it was not only Bhutto who had to pay with his life for his misdeeds - the whole country had to experience the worst crimes of political coercion, social repression, widespread corruption and religious bigotry during the more than a decade long dictatorial rule of Zia.
Zia's period (1977-88) might have been the darkest in the otherwise not so bright history of Pakistan: marred by public hanging, widespread flogging, sexism and the worst kind of religious bigotry and intolerance, all in the name of Islam. [...]
The brutal "Islamic' rule of Zia continues to haunt Pakistan in the shape of ethnic and sectarian violence and endemic corruption.
Zia's military dictatorship, imbued with Islamic fundamentalism, brutalised society and 'increased the divisions, ruptures and bitterness within an insecure nation.' ⁵⁵ Consequently, Pakistan today is a less tolerant and more aggressive nation. [page 75]

Khan summarized aptly that [6]:

What emerges from a study of the politics of Pakistan is that all rulers, whether military or civilian, has [sic] used Islam to justify and legitimise their repression and coercion. As far as national integration is concerned, Islam has been projected in order to obscure the ethnic and regional divisions in society. In the absence of a coherent national ideology, Islam has been cynically used to suppress the voices of regional and ethnic discontent. This is why many different kinds of Islam have been projected at different stages in Pakistan's history according to the demands of the times. For instance, the early rulers' Islam was a 'liberal-modernist Islam', Ayub Khan's 'developmental Islam', Yahya Khan's 'nationalist Islam', Bhutto's 'socialist-populist Islam', and Zia's 'revivalist-fundamentalist Islam.' ⁵⁶ [pages 75-76]

Khan concludes by pointing out that a survey conducted in 1997 which showed that 72% of Pakistanis surveyed felt that religious parties have done more harm than good and 81% felt that the Imams (priests) must not politicize their sermons. He offers this as an example of the disconnect between Pakistan's rulers and the majority of the public.
Adeney [5] has summarized this in a different way:

The Pakistani elite accepted the legitimacy of different religious identities in a way that their Indian counterparts did not. But this acceptance did not extend to recognition in the decision-making organs of the state for either religious or, significantly, linguistic communities. ³²
[...] Linguistic communities were not accommodated at the provincial level or at the center under the 1956 Constitution with the belated exception of the recognition of Bengali as a state language on par with Urdu. Pakistan did not recognize the legitimacy of provincial languages. This contrasted with India, which, even before it conceded linguistic reorganization, recognized the right of the states to use their own languages. [pages 79-80]

In upcoming posts, we will take a look at some examples of how linguistic/ethnic suppression was carried out and what some of its consequences were.
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