Daily Times

Nothing is more tragic than the tragedy of dispossession, but a cursory look at history shows how ruthlessly societies have been pitted against the tragedy time and again, for the sake of prolonged stay in power or national interest by vested interests, through projection of history in a single story, thus robbing them of their original past.

Not long ago, colonisers dispossessed people of the subcontinent from their organic past through projection of history in a colonial perspective. The above claim can be corroborated from the fact that our youth, after having a little bit understanding of the subcontinent’s history in their academics, have more understanding of the region under the colonisers’ rule than when it was under the rule of Mughals or prior to Mughal rulers.

Colonial history portrays pre-colonial era as a free-for-all while era under the rule of colonisers was quite civilised. This portrayal of history in a single story has invoked a sense of disregard for pre-colonial era’s otherwise rich legacy among students. This projection of history in a single story was not only applied by the colonisers, but it was also applied by the offspring to which it got birth on August 14, 1947 from its womb in the name of Pakistan.

Devoid of any concrete criterion for morphing itself into a nation because of engendering diversity of four ethnicities comprising Punjabis, Pusthoons, Sindhis and Balochis, it put its bet for turning itself into a nation through a religion, Islam, which has majority following in its diverse population but not through definite version.

Islam, as the sole criterion of the nationhood in Pakistan, is another projection of history in a single story which has come at the cost of its ethnicities’ history and rich pluralistic fabric that the pre-colonial society in this part of the world embodied.

In our curricula, no effort has been made to make students understand history of four ethnicities (Punjabis, Sindhis, Pushtoons and Balochis) neither in itself nor in juxtaposition to the history of Pakistan. Their concept of “Pakistaniat” is based upon flimsy ground of religion with which they have been indoctrinated by the state.

The whole concept of Pakistaniat vanishes when they have to discuss an issue of national interest in which instead of carrying forward national interest’s narrative in debate they take their positions with respect to their ethnicities to the problem at hand by pointing fingers at each other. This is what I observed when I was a member of the Youth Parliament Pakistan, PILDAT, in 2013 and at many other youth discussion forums in Lahore.

Danger of a single story is that it leads into stereotypes and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue but they are incomplete, leading to poor understanding of the problem at hand. The question “Who is Pakistani?” needs to be redefined with an inclusive picture of history rather than a single story.

The blogger is a graduate in Social Sciences from Government College University, Lahore. He can be reached at uinam39@gmail.com