Identity Crisis in Pakistan
DEVELOPMENTS
Pakistan is at war: after decades of ambivalence the Pakistan Army has engaged the spawn of its Cold War tryst with the USA, the Taliban, in a fight-to-the-death among the peaks and valleys of the country’s far North West.
The first result of this engagement is the largest displacement of South Asians since that which accompanied the partition of India in 1947—over three million men, women and children in teeming, makeshift camps.
The second is that groups affiliated with the Taliban now engage in near-daily suicide attacks against government and civilian targets, ruthlessly killing all those who oppose them, and a fair few who would sympathize with them if they were ever given the chance to speak.
And third: while public opinion across Pakistan has come to support military action, the war has significantly sharpened the crisis of identity that has plagued Pakistan from its birth. For decades, Pakistanis had been told (and sometimes believed) that Islamic militants posed no threat to their society and were a source of “strategic depth” in case of an Indian attack. As such, the debate over how to tackle the Taliban has become part of the broader question of what kind of society and nation-state Pakistan should be. In order to lend a new perspective to this question, we will provide a summary of the two most influential Pakistani founding narratives and briefly propose an interpretation that might help to resolve Pakistan’s ongoing identity crisis.
BACKGROUND
The founder-creator of Pakistan (and the divider of India) was Mohammad Ali Jinnah, known in Pakistan as the Quaid e Azam or “Great Leader”. Jinnah spent most of his political career working towards an inter-communal arrangement for an independent and unified Indian state. In his late middle age, however, he became a champion of Muslim separatism on the basis of the “Two-Nation Theory”; a theory which describes the Hindus and Muslims of the Indian subcontinent as two nations, separated by religion and culture, defined by their opposition to another, and unable to coexist within a single state.
At the same time, however, Jinnah clearly never imagined Pakistan as either a theocratic or a religious state. On the eve of Partition, before the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, Jinnah declared:
You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place of worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed that has nothing to do with the business of the State.
The apparent contradiction between Jinnah’s demand for a separate state on the basis of religious difference and his pluralistic declaration once that state was won is at the root of Pakistan’s identity crisis. The existence of this contradiction divided Jinnah’s audience and Pakistani opinion ever since. And while the calls for an Islamic State were (and continue to be) led by the Jamaat-e-Islami, a party which began in its life in opposition to “secular” Jinnah and his Pakistan, the story of Pakistan’s manifest destiny as an Islamic state proved the easier sell, and thus that is the story that has made it into the textbooks.
By the constitution’s third iteration in 1973 (the brainchild of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, father of Benazir Bhutto) Islam was the state religion and various provisions stamped the slogans of Islam all over the apparatus and business of state. These included establishing a definition of Muslim-hood that excommunicated the entire Ahmedi community. The state now became the arbiter of who was to be considered ‘Muslim’—a dangerous and divisive development. Since then governments, both civilian and military, have championed their ‘Islamic reforms’ as evidence of their commitment to an Islamic Pakistan.
In 1979, after deposing and executing Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, General Zia ul Haq launched a sweeping programme of Islamization which aimed to replace the kaleidoscope of Pakistani society with the monochrome of Wahabi Islam, imported from Saudi Arabia. Zia’s used Islamic identity to emphasize the differences between Pakistanis and their enemies du jour.; the ‘godless’ Soviet forces in Afghanistan, the ‘pagan’ Indian forces in Kashmir, and the ‘apostate’ local groups that opposed his regime.
However, Zia’s religious prescription for Pakistan’s identity crisis did nothing to dilute the tribal allegiances, feudal ties and ethnic distinctions1 which still form the primary prism through which Pakistanis identify each other and themselves. Instead, his programme multiplied the fault lines already present; pitting Sunni against Shia and folk religionists against puritans. In the end, Zia’s desire to create a national consciousness based primarily on a specific interpretation of Islam engendered intolerance, xenophobia and stunted the development of a genuinely unifying national identity..
ANALYSIS
In order to develop an effective national identity and tackle Islamic militancy, Pakistanis must reach a consensus on the meaning of their state, the source of its moral authority, and the values and beliefs that it must uphold. The slogan of Islam has failed to provide this meaning.
Instead, Pakistanis would do well to recall that the Pakistan Movement was inspired by the unifying theme of Jinnah’s career: his belief that the rights and aspirations of minorities must be protected against the tyranny of the majority. Jinnah envisioned Pakistan as a society where the rule of law protected fundamental rights and guaranteed opportunities to every citizen of the state. Making this principle the basis of all state functions would help to eliminate the religious, ethnic, gender, and economic divisions that underlie the many grievances within Pakistani society and have contributed to rise of Islamic militancy.
The international community can play a vital role in aiding the development of a more inclusive Pakistani identity by supporting the civil institutions that guarantee individual rights and reverse decades of miseducation designed to breed hostility and prejudice. Pakistanis must work to eliminate agents and attitudes within government and civil society that wish to perpetuate the divisive politics of communalism and religious intolerance. Together these efforts can realize Jinnah’s vision of an inclusive society that truly represents the rich diversity of peoples and opinions that is Pakistan.
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Sheheryar Kabraji is a physician at the Royal Free Hospital, London, U.K. He is writing in is personal capacity. He gratefully acknowledges the substantial intellectual and editorial input of Mr. Sofyan Sultan M.A., and Mr. Shahpur Kabraji M.A.