Karl Marx, writing in our forebear’s old nemesis, the New York Herald Tribune, once observed that British rule on the Indian subcontinent was playing a progressive role. The cantankerous communist reckoned that in “Hindostan” England was “actuated only by the vilest interests” — he sounded more like an editorial writer of the New York Times — but acknowledged that England was inadvertently triggering “a fundamental revolution in the social state of Asia.” It’s kind of fun to try to imagine what the bewhiskered coot would have made of the latest maneuvering between the be-medaled president of Pakistan, General Musharraf, and the Radcliffe-educated Benizar Bhutto, over the next phase of the revolution in Islamabad.

Certainly the tipping of power in Islamabad back toward the democratic parties is starting to verge on the dramatic. All three nation states that emerged on the Indian subcontinent following the collapse of British rule — Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh — have democratic foundations. India is the best functioning of the three, but there is no denying the presence of significant democratic forces in Pakistan, where, initially gathered under the banner of the independence of the judiciary, they forced Mr. Musharraf to accept the return to office of the chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry. Mr. Musharraf’s failed power play was aimed at avoiding an likely decision by Mr. Chaudhry that Mr. Musharraf’s bid to continue as both president and army chief of staff was unconstitutional.

It is on that point that Mr. Musharraf has now yielded, according to the reports. Adding judicial insult to executive injury, the court has since ruled that a former premier, Nawaz Sharif, who was ousted by Mr. Musharraf eight years ago, may return from exile. Mr. Sharif’s party has drawn significant support in Punjab, but also in rebellious Baluchistan province and from the Taliban-infested areas on the border with Afghanistan. It is not an extreme religious party. These pressures are mounting just as the intelligence agencies in this country launched a public campaign to pressure Mr. Musharraf to step up his efforts against the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Mr. Musharraf’s re-election as president under the terms of the agreement with Mrs. Bhutto is virtually assured, for the president is elected from Pakistan’s national and provincial legislatures. But Mrs. Bhutto would compete in the general election to be held before January 2008.

Whether Mrs. Bhutto or Mr. Musharraf is a better bet for America is not so easy a question. Our key interest lies in increasing the tempo and effectiveness of the struggle against the Taliban and Al Qaeda, who have been regrouping along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan. Mr. Musharraf will need help, and forging a de facto alliance with democratic forces releases him from any dependency of more extremist religious circles. Beyond that lies the fact that Pakistan is the only Muslim nation thus far with a nuclear arsenal. In the past, Pakistan’s leading nuclear scientist was at the heart of the world’s most dangerous nuclear proliferation ring. A.Q. Khan’s betrayals sharpen the point.

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Above all is the question of democracy. What is shaping up is a scenario under which President Bush could be able to celebrate, as America goes into its own election year, a democratic resurgence in one of the front-line countries in the world war. The prospect puts a spring in our step. It is a time to remember that democracy’s surprises can be pleasant. Only yesterday, the New York Times had a veritable nervous breakdown in its editorial columns because the president of France said something — he voiced a harder line than the Quai d’Orsay had taken in respect of Iran — that was broadly consonant with the policies of America’s own freely elected government, a prospect the editors of the Times reckon is “scary,” particularly because Monsieur Sarkozy had just had a hamburger with President Bush at Kennebunkport. Germany, Poland, India, Israel, Iraq, and, conceivably, Pakistan, cooperating on a democratic foundation — what would Karl Marx make of it?