Centre-Province Relations in Pakistan Under President Zia: The Government's and the Opposition's Approaches

Abstract

W HILE PRESIDENT ZIA-UL-HAQ'S ISLAMIZATION program has been the focus of much scholastic attention, especially with regard to its repercussions upon the political process of the countryl and its nefarious effects upon the condition of women in Pakistan,2 the consequences of the government's Islamization drive upon centre-province relations have yet to be analyzed in detail. It is as a result of President Zia's use of the Islamization program as a means to legitimize his government's drive to smother provincial dissent that the issue of centre-province relations has essentially become a clash between secularism and Islamic fundamentalism. Moreover, this problem is further compounded by the widespread perception in the smaller provinces that the Islamization process is a crude and veiled attempt to impose Punjabi culture and values on the rest of the country. The view that the country is being Punjabized is given credibility by the fact that the two major state institutions, the armed forces and the bureaucracy, are overwhelmingly dominated by Punjabis. Therefore, it is this Punjabization of the three other provinces, coupled with the imposition of the government's highly centralized and Islamic approach to centreprovince relations, which has had an adverse effect on the process of national integration. Accordingly, it is the aim of this article to demonstrate that although President Zia's Islamization program has failed to arrest the centrifugal