When institutions forget whom they serve

Dawn · 16/10/2026، 3:54:52 PM

When Institutions Forget Prism When institutions forget whom they serve Athar Minallah Scroll Photograph © foto-momo.com At the terminus of Islamabad’s major axial boulevard, next to the house of elected representatives, rises up a brutalist vessel of white concrete and marble. Within it sits the court charged with interpreting the charter whose name its address bears. Every judge who enters the Supreme Court of Pakistan’s portals takes an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution. Yet the building complex itself, its entrances and even the plaques affixed to its walls belie that oath, recording instead elite capture and the repeated suppression of the will of the people. Pakistan’s Constitution could not be framed immediately after the nation attained independence as a sovereign state. The elected representatives in the Constituent Assembly had reached a consensus, but that consensus was unacceptable to the unelected centres of power. The assembly was dismissed, and the federal court contrived the doctrines of lack of assent and necessity to legitimise the suppression of the people’s will. Those doctrines became the foundation of constitutional deviation, which continued to cast its shadow until the dismemberment of Pakistan in 1971. The tragedy of 1971 temporarily subdued the unelected centres of power. The elected leadership of what remained of Pakistan came together and gave the nation a constitution based on consensus — even if this came about more than two decades after independence. It was, nevertheless, a remarkable achievement. This Constitution survived in its true form only, however, until 1977, when it was placed in abeyance by a military ruler. The country was left without a constitution, yet one of Islamabad’s grandest boulevards has continued to be a signifier for it. I The capital on paper · 1960 ← → Islamabad Master Plan, 1960. Doxiadis Associates, Summary of Final Programme and Plan, no. 37 (DOX-PA 93), Sept 1960. Via Mahsud (2008) Exec