Daily Times

Let me begin by saying unabashedly that I consider myself a Pakistani nationalist and I am very proud of this. I also realise that the exact contours of this nationalism are often unclear to its detractors and supporters alike. Beyond there being a sense of ‘not India’, there has hardly been any attempt to define it on its merits.
To begin with, my idea of Pakistani nationalism is informed by the history of the events leading up to the creation of Pakistan in 1947 as an independent state. Its starting point is the emergence of Muslim communal consciousness in United India as it began to develop in the late 19th century. I neither celebrate nor denigrate this development. The peculiar social and material conditions that saw parallel development of discursive Hindu and Muslim identities had as much to do with the fact that the British saw the Hindus and Muslims of South Asia as monoliths because key Hindu reformers of the 19th century paid scant attention to social reform outside their own community. This was understandable given that Hindus and Muslims in that early crucible of colonial rule had come to see each other as two different people.
Sir Syed Ahmad Khan was the first Muslim reformer to follow this tradition of South Asian reformers by limiting himself entirely to Muslims and a sub-section thereof. The parallel course of Hindus and Muslims was given legal and constitutional force by the British Raj in the form of separate electorates in 1909. It must be remembered that Mohammad Ali Jinnah had always held a profound distaste for separate electorates throughout his life. In 1916, however, Congress had entered into the Lucknow Pact with the Muslim League, which both sides had accepted as a compromise. Nation building was to proceed through a communal pact, which would one day allow distinctions of Hindus and Muslims in the political sphere to disappear. Instead came the Khilafat agitation that, though providing temporary unity between the two communities, introduced religion into politics in a way that the trajectories of Muslims and Hindus went in the opposite direction. Gandhi’s emphasis on the one hand on religious symbols that appealed only to the Hindus and simultaneously his willingness to engage the Muslim ulema (clergy) with their anti-modern extra-territorial concerns as the mainstream in politics was a shortsighted policy that made religious identities non-negotiable. Not that attempts were not made to resurrect a communal pact. The Muslim League, which, it must be noted had stayed away from Khilafat agitation, met Congress to hammer out differences in 1924, 1928, 1929, 1935, 1937 and 1938 but each time the attempt ended in failure.
As a Pakistani nationalist, I also recognise that partition was not inevitable. There were many points in history where the two communities and their interests would have coincided. Even without a communal pact, had Congress, as a party of the majority, conceded at any point the residuary powers to the provinces, had it chosen to respect at the very least the status of Urdu and made efforts to reassure Muslims of their bona fides vis-à-vis their culture and traditions, had it not imposed Band-e-Mataram or the Wardha Education Scheme a political unity may well have federated between the two communities. It was not just in 1937 that Congress went back on its alliance with the Muslim League and tried to split the Muslim Unity Board by coopting the Deoband ulema and Ahraris in the way that it did, but the fact that it even discriminated against its own non-Hindu members when it came to positions of power. The cases of Syed Mahmud and Nariman have been mentioned by Maulana Azad in his book India Wins Freedom but there were many more. The point I wish to make is that the Muslim group nationalism that emerged was the result of a continuous neglect of ground realities on the part of Congress, including its secular socialist wing. It is no wonder that many of those young, secular minded Muslim socialists who joined Congress or were its sympathisers in 1937 ended up leaving and joining the Muslim League, which they had so vociferously condemned earlier.
So, Pakistani nationalism, in my view, has to be cognizant of its own history and struggle. There has to be a clear recognition that unlike the communal forerunner of Muslim nationalism, Pakistani nationalism has to be territorial arising out of the defined boundaries of the nation state that is Pakistan, an independent state in the Indian subcontinent. Furthermore, Pakistani nationalism cannot and should not be blind to the considerations, concerns and fears of Pakistan’s religious minorities, and of these there are many. It must proceed on the basis that the Pakistani Muslim majority must concede to its minority every safeguard that it desires for integration into the mainstream of Pakistani society. Just as we had asked for greater than proportional representation in a United India, we must be willing to give a much higher representation to non-Muslim Pakistanis, both politically and in government jobs. The five percent quota given to the non-Muslims and often subject to shameless manipulation by majorities in Pakistan is not nearly enough to ensure effective affirmative action for the Pakistani minorities. The real challenge, however, is to coopt Pakistan’s ethnic groups in the nation building project. Pakistani nationalism must recognise the existence of diversity within the country. Pashtun, Sindhi, Baloch, Punjabi and other cultures should be promoted as building blocks of this nationalism. This requires recognition of local and regional languages and traditions as part of the mosaic that is Pakistan. Instead of being blind to them, Pakistani nationalism should be the cumulative of the various subnational identities.
To imagine this nationalism requires a fair bit of learning and unlearning. It requires learning the various political exigencies that created the country in the first place. It requires unlearning of the communal identity that, however important to its creation, was a requirement of its time and not a binding position for all times to come. A nation was looking for a homeland in 1947 but today the resultant state needs a nation of its own. Therein lies the rationale for Pakistani nationalism.

The writer is a lawyer based in Lahore and the author of the book Mr Jinnah: Myth and Reality. He can be contacted via twitter @therealylh and through his email address yasser.hamdani@gmail.com