Beyond the Myth of a Single bloc: Alliance Formation among the Divergent Religious Parties of Pakistan during the 1970s
Keywords:
Religious Parties, Z. A Bhutto, Alliances, Single Bloc, Politics of Survival, PakistanAbstract
This paper examines an entrenched assumption that religious parties of Pakistan during 1970s constituted a monolith and a cohesive bloc against Z.A Bhutto, popularly known as religious parties’ vs Bhutto. However, this assumption misses nuances of the complex alliances of the religious parties against Bhutto. Despite their irreconcilable differences and inherent contradictions, the religious parties built strategic alliances against Bhutto primarily as an imperative of political survival and contingent political milieu. The paper argues that the formation of political alliances was driven by a shared imperative of survival rather than ideological affiliations and convergences. Using previously untapped sources, including party literature, vernacular digests and newspapers, the paper employs a contingency based framework embedded in the ‘politics of survival’. It argues that the alliance building among the religious parties during 1970s could be better explained by shared perception of political threat, competing claim over religious constituencies and immediate and contingent political realities rather than an oversaturated explanation of ideological convergences.
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