Daily Times

Pakistan’s main ideological foundations were based on a separate nationhood, culture and civilisation identified by Islam. The founding fathers envisaged Pakistan as one unified, centralised nation, with one religion, one people and one language. What began as an obvious attempt to use the emotional attachment of the Muslim masses to religion also became the building block of Pakistani nationalism. What followed was the disconnect of nationalism from modernity, a failed project of a consensual conception of the nation far removed from the modern principles of human freedom, equality and emancipation. The stress on Islam led to the state endorsement of a Sunni, literal and reformist Islam disconnected from the religious practices of the majority of the population. Those who built the country’s institutions after independence also fell for the temptation of communal engineering, instead of conceiving the new state in a diverse form.

Pakistan’s ruling elites and proponents of a unitary conception of Pakistan as one nation also sought to naturalise their political claims in history and geography as a solution to the lack of a cohesive ‘national culture’. The ‘Islamisation’ of national history, an explicit focus of state planning from the very beginning, added to the conundrum of Pakistani nationalism. The ceaseless clamour for Islam, heard from all quarters since the establishment of Pakistan, encouraged the masses to believe in a nebulous Islamic state — a state guided by the apparition of an Islamic state, which has haunted Muslims throughout history. Supposedly, such a state had roots in Islam’s glorious and heroic Arab past, rapidly spread its message through conquest, uprooting centuries-old institutions and superstitions, thus providing hope to enslaved humanity. In keeping with this approach, regular attempts are made to infuse Pakistan with a more Middle Eastern /Central Asian identity in an effort to dilute the geographic and cultural connection with the Indian subcontinent.

Moreover, Pakistani state nationalism propagated Urdu as the linguistic medium of a unitary culture in a large, bounded territorial homeland. Before 1947, Urdu was progressively projected as the language of Muslims and became ‘a bearer’ of religion. Pakistan’s ‘language ideology’ ignored the ‘shallowness of Urdu’s roots’ in the provinces that constituted Pakistan in 1947. After serious conflict and lasting damage, Urdu did emerge and achieve national acceptance as the national language, part of official programmes crafted to make national citizens learn to speak — like a state. Thus, the common identity markers defining the Pakistani ‘nation’ became Islam and Urdu, combining to manufacture a state nationalism later rephrased as the ‘ideology of Pakistan’.

The absence of democracy, representative politics and a federal structure became additional impediments in the search for a nation. The few attempts made by civilian leaders to mould Pakistani nationalism into a more inclusive narrative, regrettably went hand in hand with tighter repression of so-called subversive discourses. The beast of nationalism was unleashed on those movements that did not identify with Pakistani state nationalism but put forward localised ethnic identities, arguing for cultural recognition in a more inclusive national narrative, or struggled for political autonomy. The emergence of an independent Bangladesh created even more doubts and questions over what exactly constitutes the Pakistani nation.

The case of Pakistan, as is sometimes rightly pointed out, is the assumption of the nation as necessarily unitary, which conflicts with the concrete existence of a diverse population. Other nationalities resent Punjab’s putative ethnic hegemony in the country through the numeric dominance of the bureaucracy, the military, and industry, which further consolidated itself after 1971. The state, as the agent principally responsible to manage ethnic plurality in a way that maintains peace, is caught up in unification. Instead of celebrating diversity, ethnic differences have become a cause of conflict as the state, falling back on homogenising logic, neglects or exploits them. The weak political system serves to attenuate and intensify feelings of ethnicity, inflaming and alleviating ethnic resentment, which leads to ongoing conflict and violence. This suggests that ethno-nationalist movements will continue to plague the state, further stymieing the quest to build a nation.

Perhaps, as some theorists of nationalism and historians suggest, the answer to evolving a Pakistani nationhood is not to look at history but to look towards the future. As the Pakistani state is a reality today, there is a need is to evolve a consensus on where it wants to go from here, not where it came from. The future may be best realised on the basis of several seminal principles: democracy, national self-governance, secularism and inclusiveness. The government ought to exist and functions on the principles of consociationalism and power sharing. State hegemony imposed on the population, which gives rise to internal resistance, must be contained. To bolster the congruence of the political and national unit, the nation’s primarily political character should be a democratic and ethnic association of equals. Hopefully, there may come a point where Pakistani nationalism can begin to engender the nation, not the other way around.

The writer can be reached on shgcci@gmail.com