Why Pakistan?

“Noble intentions breathed life into the Pakistan dream, but the country has been stalked by tragedy from its inception. Democratic purposes have been obscured by authoritarian decision-making; the quest for

individual freedom apparently compromised by societal necessity. The desire to establish a libertarian State has not been reconciled with the realities of political culture that limits popular expression and emphasizes personal rule”

- Lawrence Ziring, ‘Pakistan: The enigma of Political Development’

Over the past many years it has become fashionable for many budding as well as seasoned intellectuals, to try and fathom the ‘mystery’ of ‘why Pakistan?’ It was a Professor D’ Shevemann who first voiced concern. Speaking at the Brooklyn University on 3rd June 1949, he stated:

“ The State of Pakistan, which has come into being in South East Asia, is a state manifest with enormous pitfalls unique to itself. Its existence is vulnerable, as time will show. In less than half a century, the state will collapse because its people, who are born with the chains of slavery, whose thoughts do not see love of a free country and whose minds cannot function beyond the scope of personal selfish ends”

The welcome freedom of CHOWK has provided ‘nuggets’ as well as ‘gravel’ by way of opinions, objective, subjective, on the State/Government/People/Institutions of this land of varied hues. It is a heady mix, the discerning views as well as the rainbow canvas that provides the grist for these views. Of particular interest has been the cultural ethos that is as readily confounding as entrancing: the multi-faceted pluralism, fanaticism and fatalism, compounded regionalism and ethnicity, diverse racial strains. “This is my own, my very Land ----“; one can readily empathise with the feelings of Rupert Brooke.

More than any other concern, the strident views have inferred to the perceived failure of the State of Pakistan in fusing the diversity into a cohesive Nation. This is an abject pessimism that needs to be corrected. The cause for the pessimism and doubting is easily discernible; more so in the aftermath of October 1999 and the high expectations generated to mitigate the people from the trauma of repeated violations of trust by the elected (selected?) power-wielders. It may be pertinent to consider the dialectic of ‘culture’ and ‘nation-state’, and then perhaps ‘why Pakistan?’ may fall into place.

First, a quick primer from the OUP Dictionary (no intention to test anybody’s credibility):

Culture – customs, achievements etc, of a particular civilisation or group.

Nation – community of people of mainly common descent, history, language etc,forming a State or inhabiting a territory.

Ethnic – having a common national or cultural tradition.

Civilisation – a people or nation regarded as an element of social evolution.

Motivation which flows out from goals, aims, objectives, is a force-multiplier in welding the bedrock of national cohesion. Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah understood this well and he constantly exhorted on the people to build-up on the commonality of culture and civilisation to forge national cohesion. Despite all the hype and brouhaha on the ‘Objectives Resolution’ being inserted as an integral part of the Constitution (and in the PCO now), it would be denial of the truth to undermine its impact on keeping the focus on the very fundamental of Pakistan’s creation. ‘Pakistan ka matlab kya?’ may have been distorted in understanding the answer, but certainly the spirit of its birth and continued existence as a Nation-State is that, we are different. The erosion of purpose, thence values, was probably due to the inordinate delay in finalising our Constitution. Much has been said about the first Constituent Assembly, even to the point of casting aspersions on Liaqat Ali Khan’s using ‘dilatory’ means. Suffice it now to state that national direction was missing, thus the fusion started to unravel and constant internecine rivalry sapped the vitality of the newborn Nation-State. Our philosopher-poet, Allama Iqbal, broached this weakness in a broader perspective in ‘Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam’:

“The cultures of Asia and, in fact, of the whole ancient world failed because they approached Reality exclusively from within and moved from within outwards. This procedure gave them theory without power, and on mere theory no durable civilisation can be based “.

How does one really define ‘nation’? Stalin perhaps gave a bit more meaning to the pure definition of the OUP as given above:

“A nation is a historically evolved, stable community of language, territory, economic life and psychological make-up manifested in a commonality of culture. None of the above characteristics is by itself sufficient to define a nation. On the other hand, it is sufficient for a single of these characteristics to be absent and the nation ceases to be a nation ---. It is only when all the characteristics are present that we have a Nation”.

The question of ‘civilisation’, ‘culture’ and ‘ethnicity’ vis-à-vis ‘community’, ’nation’ and ‘state’, became a serious dilemma for our forebear in understanding the intricacies of what, in recent times, Edward Said referred to as “post modernism” and the pillorying of the ‘evil influences of western culture and degeneration of values’. We readily fall into the trap of identifying the failures of our introvert self (an Asian, more immediately, a Muslim trait; what Allama Iqbal referred to as “approaching reality exclusively from within”) as subjugation by the ‘pop-and-burger’ culture. One which is a life-style evolving worldwide with the advent of the electronic media and the easy access to the comforts (quality) of life. Old values are intrinsic and lasting only to a point where the collective good of the society (nation-state) is not at risk. Kahlil Gibran writes (‘The New Frontier’, 1915):

“There are in the Middle East today two challenging ideas: old and new.

The old ideas vanish because they are weak and exhausted.

There is in the Middle East an awakening that defies slumber.

This awakening will conquer because the Sun is its leader, and the Dawn is its army.”

The challenges facing Pakistan (the developing world, all nations/states/communities or whatever) are those of stability and the appreciation of human dignity. Kahlil Gibran understood the vanquishment of the Ottoman Empire and the “old ideas” in terms of freedom for the people. Freedom in moving on, upwards and ‘awakening’ to a new beginning in their quality of life – certainly not a change in the cultural ethos, but of a unified ‘nation’ through a better and common good.

Pakistan is a country with a heady mix of different communities, groups and, yes, cultures. Apparently there is no commonality in the life-style of the people of Kalash and Nagarparkar. The wanderlust nature of the Chinioti or Gujjar is in sharp contrast to the tribalism and seclusion of, for example, the Mengal or Jamali areas of Balochistan or Moros of Sindh. Sindh is steeped in the cloak of Sufi traditions, while the openness and vibrancy of Punjab’s harvest tunes conjures up gaiety and colour. The somber and granite vision of the Frontier and the easy cosmopolitan abundance of Karachi, are at variance. Even Peshawar now, thanks in large measure to the Afghanistan conflict and over a decade of ‘gora’ influence, is nothing of the city (town, really) that was ‘walled’ literally as well as psychologically even as late as the 1980s. The first ‘Jashn-e-Khyber’ mela staged in 1968 to herald Ayub’s ‘Decade of Development’, drew more gun-toting tribals to the shooting stalls than the meager ‘folk arts’ layouts.

This is the Nation-State of Pakistan. But, it is a Nation, contradictions apart, of certain defined paradigms.

The most important is that of Religion. We are a Nation because of this. We are a Nation of one because of the commonality of beliefs that the people who inhabited the territories constituting Muslim majority areas of the sub-continent were, are, and will always be different (the recent paranoid views of Altaf Hussain and his UK-based MQM-wallahs notwithstanding!) A few years ago, Aitzaz Ahsan caused a flutter with his ‘Indus valley Saga’ and well-articulated theory on the oneness of the people who inhabited the region west of the ‘Gurdaspur-Kathiawar divide’ (west of the Beas-Sulej belt). He asserted, and perhaps rightly so, that the people from Khyber to K.T.Bundar, Chaman to Cholistan, have a similarity in dress, mannerisms, economy, land-usage and, above all, the family system. He rightly identified that those who came and settled in the areas of this ‘Indus’ region, now Pakistan (and what Mountbatten deceitfully denied, Gurdaspur and Kashmir) were readily absorbed and became a part of the ‘Nation-State’ of Pakistan. The post-partition settlers are no less, nor more: appendages such as ‘mohajir’ or ’urdu speaking’ are nothing more than defining terms. {A word on my surname: it is a pride and privilege extending back to the time of the Hijrat and as followers of the Prophet (PBUH) from Mecca to Medina.}

The life-styles are varied and different. So are they amongst the Welsh and Scots in UK; or the cheery Californians and gawky Ozarks, the snarling New Yorker and gentle Midwesterner of USA! Why is it that nobody questions or wonders about their being one nation? More so, why is the ‘nation’ which has Aryans, Dravidians, Mongloids and Arabs, so concerned that Pakistan will fall back to the fold (did somebody gleefully agree with the ‘NYT’ article that doomsday is around 2010 or so?). And if the USA with the dormant, sometimes erupting, racial tensions, or UK with more than 75 years of Irish defiance, do not seem to have doubts that they will exist, why should we persist in our self-flagellation?