Put your hand up, dear reader, if you’ve ever heard someone insisting that the problem with Pakistan is that we “became a country before we became a nation”. Right? You’ve heard it, haven’t you? Or maybe you’re one of those who believe it. Clearly, the assumption is that a ‘Nation’ is somehow a more valid and therefore a more stable category than a mere ‘country’ and therefore likely to have greater historical validity and longevity.
What, then, is this thing called a nation? A nation is “an imagined community” which, according to the political philosopher Ernest Gellner, is specifically a product of modernity. For Gellner, nationalism was a sociological phenomenon, and not merely the product of primordial identity myths. In this, he comes closer to the concepts of Karl Marx, who saw the appearance of nations as a specific stage in the evolution of the relations of production. Thus, for Marx, a modern nation-state – whether (like Italy or his own native Germany) it had united a number of smaller feudal satrapies, or whether (like Poland or Pakistan) it had crystallised and opted out of a larger state entity – was a product of the capitalist stage of human social evolution and was therefore provisional upon the development of capital in a particular society. Gellner, however, favoured the view that states seek their justification, their raison d’etre, by invoking one or the other kind of primordial “imagined community” and the more coherent states are those where there is a degree of congruence between the political state and the ideational state.
As we look at the map of the world, the roughly two hundred states thereon, in fact, exhibit an enormous variety of perceived or actual raisons d’etre and, at least for outsiders, it would be impossible to distinguish between the national characteristics of, say, the people of Guatemala and those of Nicaragua. Both these countries have similar climates and topographies and their inhabitants are racially and culturally similar, speak the same languages, and have the same religion. What could account for their being separate countries?
How much more difficult to find a distinctive raison d’etre for a country that is dispersed over some of the most diverse topographies anywhere – from deserts to lush farmlands, from utterly flat plains to the world’s highest mountain ranges, and on which live people of an immense variety of racial varieties and combinations, speaking seventy-two languages and many hundred dialects, and professing a wide range of religions and sub-sects of religions?
I refer, of course, to our own Pakistan.
National narratives or 'state ideologies' are commonly developed after the establishment of a state, as a kind of retrospective justification, not before
Are we a state without being a nation? Or does it even matter? After all, as Gellner tells us, and as we are realistically aware, most national myths and their related narratives are created after the achievement of statehood and not before.
Still, there must have been some good reason, some raison d’etre – beyond the confused and unconvincing “official” narratives – for these diverse ethnic entities and geographic entities to separate themselves from India and to stay together thereafter. With a very open mind, let us cast aside all preconceptions and received formulae, and ask ourselves: What is the true nature of the nation that is Pakistan?
Is Pakistan in its essence essentiallyan ‘Ideological Nation’, seeking to be an embodiment of Islamic values and practices? Is this the cement that holds us together? The question answered itself – for me, at least – when, back in the 1980s, I was astonished to read of a prominent leader from a sectarian organisation seeking to have Shia Muslims declared as non-Muslims. Until then, I had not known that the matter was even at issue – whatever the doctrinal differences may be between various Muslims. And, as we have watched, the differences have multiplied and grown over the years until they have become as explosive as they are today. Clearly, then, religious ideology (not ordinary piety, or religious faith) are not unifying factors for this nation, but may even be the opposite!
Some have referred to Pakistan as a Muslim Zion, a homeland for the Subcontinent’s Muslims. But the term, in my view, is an exceedingly unfortunate one, insensitive both to those left behind in India and the older populations that were already here.
A number of parties and political forces see religious belief as the primary motivation for statehood
Alright, let us look further. Is Pakistan a cultural nation: the last bastion of the syncretic Indo-Muslim civilisation, as embodied in the Urdu language and Sufi religious practices? Well, there is some truth in that, given the whole spirit and zeitgeist of the Pakistan movement as it gathered force and moved towards its realisation. But whether this can still be considered anything more than one aspect of the multiple cultures in the existing Pakistani nation is a doubtful proposition, at the very least.
On the other side is the concept propounded by Major Ishaq of the Mazdoor Kissan Party (MKP) and some regional nationalists and described at length by Mr Aitzaz Ahsan in his book The Indus Saga. Pakistan, they feel, is essentially a geographical nation: the territory of the Indus regions which have been historically distinct from the Ganges or Brahmaputra regions. This region, which is now Pakistan, has in history been known variously as Sapat Sindhu, or Sindhustan, or, to the Arab traders, as Sindh, to distinguish it from Hind or Hindustan. Now, such a formulation lies on the opposite pole to the divisive arguments of religious sectarian ideologues, or those of ethnic nationalists, and can be seen to have a measure of historical validity. The question is whether such or formulation is either useful or valid, given that history has evolved enormously since the days of ancient Gandhara.
I feel it needs to be understood that all nation-states, including Pakistan, comprise a geographically identifiable stretch of territory, whose inhabitants – even though they may or may not have common ethnic, linguistic, or cultural characteristics – feel that their lives, liberty, and pursuit of happiness are better served by belonging to the state than not. Primeval identities may assist these processes of integration, but are not essential. Witness such notably patriotic citizens as those of such diverse states as Vietnam, Canada, Brazil, Switzerland or even India. The point is that a nation-state is frequently a historical accident.
However a state may have chanced to appear on a map, once it has done so, its purpose thereafter is nothing more and nothing less than promoting the wellbeing of its citizens. It is meant to provide governance, promote economic activity, make available education and other social services to its citizens, and ensure their freedom, their rights, justice, and security – in that order.
Let us emphasise that national narratives or ‘state ideologies’ are commonly developed after the establishment of a state, as a kind of retrospective justification, not before.
But sometimes there is a more insidious motive at work in contriving a post facto national narrative. Elsewhere, I have mentioned Gramsci’s identification of hegemony – i.e. ideological control and, more crucially, consent – as one of the two tools of authoritarian control. By hegemony, Gramsci meant the permeation throughout society of an entire system of values, attitudes, beliefs and morality that has the effect of supporting the status quo in power relations.
Such a hegemonic narrative was thrust onto Pakistan, most forcefully during the eleven dark years of the authoritarian General Zia regime. We are still paying the price for it.
