Daily Times

Some fellows are against both linguistic and Islamic identity in Pakistan. They fail to understand that Pakistan without linguistic and Islamic identity is left with no identity at all! For if you deny it its Islamic identity and at the same time deny linguistic identity to the different peoples inhabiting it, you are left with no identity. Or do we want to invent a new one? One doubts if that indeed is possible at all. Attempts at inventing one so far have proved disastrous.

Let us demonstrate intellectual honesty, rise above our wishful thinking and vested interests, and state this: Pakistan is a multi-national state like Canada and Belgium are and Yugoslavia was once upon a time; and that it is inhabited by four distinct nationalities. These include the Baloch, Punjabis, Sindhis and Pashtuns. Please note that Pashtuns among all stand out to qualify the most to be called a nation given its very distinct culture, language and history. Sindh and Punjab have a number of similarities, including cultural, linguistic, historical and racial. This diversity of peoples with distinct languages and cultures has the potential — if the diversity is used wisely and towards achieving positive outcomes — of taking Pakistan to great heights of advancement, as well as it can put the country on a path to total destruction, depending on how the policy makers handle it. One hopes (against hope) it is not handled the way they did in the former East Pakistan, which resulted in grave consequences.

For Pakistan to survive and emerge as a successful state, two fundamental reforms have to be introduced, and sooner than later:

First, these four nationalities must be recognised as such and true federalism introduced. In the Pakistani context, true federalism can be nothing less than rewriting a new and drastically different constitution wherein all powers, except the printing of currency, matters related to defence, and the formulation of foreign policy, are returned back to these nationalities, their languages declared as state languages and their children allowed education in their respective mother tongues. That is how precisely countries with more than one nationality do. Belgium has Dutch, French and German as its official languages while in Canada English and French are the official languages. Dari and Pashto are the official languages in Afghanistan. So what makes Pakistan different than these countries?

The second reform that must follow is that the state must refrain from patronising religion and the use of the same as tool of internal and external policies. Religious instruction — as is the case in the Republic of Turkey — must be taken over by the state, and the latter should determine the number of religious schools required and what needs to be taught to pupils. Private individual, as is the case presently, should not be allowed to undertake any such activity on his own.

Some of my friends believe that it is just the role of religion in politics that has landed Pakistan in its present troubles. That is simply not true. The Baloch, Pashtun and Sindhi nationalists all share one thing in common: they are all secular and democratic. Yet they resort (some actually, others potentially) to violence and often take up arms against the Pakistani state. This is a very commonsensical fact, which those who believe that secularism will solve all existential threats to the Pakistani state either do not understand or they simply do not want to because the same somehow makes them uncomfortable. Their line of reasoning is just too simplistic and naive to be able to help find a remedy for the deep malaise Pakistani state is suffering from since the very day it was created.

Pakistani leadership since the initial years of the country’s creation has followed a self-defeating policy with regard to the ‘linguistic’ issue and the question of distribution of powers between the centre and the provinces. They have always refused to recognise their rightful identities, for which the state has paid dearly in 1971 when it was partitioned and Bengalis emerged as a free people, and it is again on the brink of yet another breakup if the situation in Balochistan is looked at objectively. Let us not forget that it is always the secular forces, which have either broken Pakistan (the emergence of Bangladesh in 1971) or seek to break it (the Baloch separatists), not for religious reasons, but because they were denied their basic linguistic, cultural, economic and political rights. It were secular factors not religious that were responsible for most of the breakups of states in the 20th century.

Therefore, to my ‘secularist’ friends one cannot help but appeal to please try to understand the fact that more than secularism, it is true federalism that can heal the potentially fatal wounds of the Pakistani polity. It is simply a contradiction in terms to preach secularism and in the same vein to condemn voices for linguistic and cultural identity. The recognition of national (read linguistic) identity and the practice of secularism constitute the part and parcel of modern nation state system.

The writer is from Waziristan and can be reached at ilyasakbarkhan@gmail.com