Have been following the debate that’s been raging under the Pakistan @ 60 blog post. The discussion that started on whether Pakistan has merely existed or has been independent from ‘47 to date has now become a discussion on national as well as ethnic identity. Questions of whether or not Pakistanis are a nation or as Jamali two years back controversially declared, “` We are a nation but we have five different national groups amongst us “
Author Ishtiaq Ahmed almost three years back wrote an article titled “ The era of the nation state.” in which he defined a nation as `A relatively large group of people vertically linked and stratified by class and social rank which identifies itself in terms of some cultural particularity and associates itself with a specific geographical areas over which it assumes it has original rights. Such a group of people either exercise self rule/sovereignty or aspires to it. “
Group identity on the other hand is the essence of the nationalist sentiment.
So , the question is are Pakistanis a nation ? Or is Pakistan an amalgam of various group identities?
As food for thought, consider this :
The Friday Times ran a series of interviews in Jan –Feb 2004 which asked young, middle class, professional Pakistanis as to what it meant to be a Pakistani. The results were interesting, as they say. Respondent after respondent declared, “ Being a Pakistani is not only being a Muslim. Our identities are more multi layered. “Another respondent claimed “ For me, my identity is first being from Lahore, secondly being a woman, thirdly being a doctor. All these things mean more than merely saying I am a Muslim in Pakistan” Another respondent declared, “ I don’t believe in nation states. I define myself through my interests and not through my religion” Another respondent declared ,“ I define myself more as a Pathan ,following the religion of Islam living in the Pakistani area of South Asia.” The respondent further went on to point out that for him nation and religion based identities are fluid as he could change his religion, his nationality but not the ethnic group that he hailed form. Even if he converted to Christianity and got a US Citizenship, he would still remain a Pathan ,following the religion of Christianity living in America. He declared that he wanted to live in Pakistan as this was the only place that he could call home.
What do you think ? Or as FM 91 is asking these days, “Aap ki shanakhat kiya hai ?” What is your identity?
People can wear many hats at the same time. I’ve never agreed with Wali Khans famous comment about being a Pakistani for x number of years, Pashtun for a thousand and so forth. I believe ones faith is ones faith and comparing loyalty to the state with ones faith or ethnicity is comparing apples and oranges.
Pakistans establishments obsession with creating perfect pakistanis is more a consequence of inferiority and superiority complexes by the ruling elite of certain ethnic groups.
Bizenjo was a strong proponent of the nationality theory in the 1970’s, as a consequence the old NAP was branded anti Pakistani. And yet successful many nations are ones that pride themselves on diversity under the umbrella of a state. India, the US and even Lebanon and Afghanistan are all states that the locals from a variety of ethnic groups still identify themselves as proud citizens of the state.
Zak. Your comments amuse me a lot!
“I believe ones faith is ones faith and comparing loyalty to the state with ones faith or ethnicity is comparing apples and oranges.”
Now what does that really mean? By Faith if you mean your religious belief…then we are back to square one………..this discussion is then useless because we know this rheorical notion of identity has taken us nowhere and never will. By that token all the lands east of The AFRICAN Sahara desert and Malaka starait should be one nation with one identity! But isn’t that what OBL also says? What do you think?
If not then which faith are u refering to?
As for Wali Khan’s belief..u seem to have completely missedwhat he means when he says that I am a Pakhtun since thousands of years, Muslim since 1400 years and Pakistani since 47. It simply means that an identity has a history, a cultutre, a language, values etc to define it.You can’t evolve an identity for urself in a flickof a moment and replace it with the one u have had for millenia. The examples you gave are again soooooo flimsy. Comparing Americaand India with Afganistan and Lebnon is …..hummmmmmmmmmmmmm………….. comparing oranges and apples!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! India has had a history thousands of years old.America had the ‘American Dream’………………and Lebnon and Afghanistan are there where they are because they have had an identity issue!!!!!!
For identifying urself as proud citizens of a state one needs something more than ‘Propaganda of Fortress of Islam”
Mr. Zak’s style of argumentation violates, or “molests” to be more correct, all acceptable patterns and forms of proper commonsense and sound reasoning.
To begin with, look at his analogy of identity with a hat? Mr. Zak, identity is not just a superficial, surface-level state or condition to be arbitrarily brought about or whimsically terminated. On the contrary, it evolves over millennia and exists at the deepest levels of the conscious and the subconscious…Further, it has the profoundest emotional and psychological significance and an immense practical utility for an individual or group. “Who am I or who we are”, the quest to bring purpose and meaning to life and find one’s unique place in the universe in relation to others, has even been sought by humanity.
Moreover, generalization is done not based on the rarity of desired examples (or similar cases)…rather than on the higher frequency of such examples/cases…if more than half members (n/2 +…) out of a given population (of size n) have a given attribute (say “x”), then we can conclude that all have the attribute “x”. But if we have a situation that is the inverse of the above, then a generalization based on it would be invalid.
Here you have quoted few countries that you think are “successfully multinational” and on the bases of these very few “examples”, have concluded or suggested that multinationalism is a successful experience. You have omitted the hundreds and thousands of empires, kingdoms, and states/countries in history as well as in the contemporary times that have tried to impose a single nationhood on culturally diverse communities but have failed. USSR, former Yugoslavia, Indonesia, etc. are some of the recent examples of these failures. Iraq is fast on its way to becoming a con-federal, if not a disintegrated, state of Shias, Kurds, and Sunni Arabs. Afghanistan in a way has become a federal state with strong and autonomous units and weak center.
History has also amply proved that consciousness of a distinct identity and aspirations for self-rule and self-definition/determination never die. Britain is a successful democracy for centuries but it couldn’t suppress the sense of identity of Irish and Scottish people. They have acquired sufficient degree of autonomy and it is being predicted that in the coming 25 to 40 years, they would be to a large extent completely autonomous. What about Kurds in Turkey, Chechens in Russia, etc? What about Chinese-inhabited Singapore that was a part of Malaysia but then split away from it and now is a separate country? Does not the existence of a rather greater number of nation-states prove that countries with largely homogeneous culture are more successful than multinational states.
Moreover, the conditions which apply to USA or Australia, or Canada(?), etc. are not valid for Pakistan, where historical nations live in compartmentalized and well-demarcated territories/zones. In USA, we don’t find geographically and territorially distinct Black or white zones. Mostly, they live together in the same town or city neighbor-to-neighbor or locality-to-locality. Further, USA, Australia, etc. are liberal, secular, democratic states with immense resources and economic prosperity and representative political systems unlike the impoverished, shoggy-boggy Pakistan that is being dictatorially held together by a military, mainly from a single province.
Hindustani example is also not correct which is a historical identity that is based on Vedic Civilization and subsequent Hindu-Muslim social and cultural traditions. Punjabis, Sindhis, Muhajirs, and Siraikis of Pakistan are as a matter of fact, Hindustanis sharing everything with the people across Wahga including religion (remember there are more Muslims in India). They are within the geo-civilizational and geo-cultural bounds of Hindustan and so is the World’s perception of them no matter how much do they deny who they really are.
Lastly, it is true that identity is manifold/multilayered but the most fundamental, elemental, immediate, primary, and significant identity is that which you express, assert, communicate, uphold, and practice every moment of your life. The most fundamental and important identity is that which is built-into your anthropological make-up(color etc.), language, dress-code, value-systems, social structure, etc.
True “Humanity” is my identity but that identity is very remote very broad and of no practical use, politically, economically, culturally, or socially. Similarly, Pakistani identity is just a political marker based on the contract (between different nations like Baluchis, Pashtun, Sidhis, Punjabis, etc.) defined by (the now defunct) Pakistan constitution. It exists only in my documents. It is only a citizenship speci-fier. It cannot give me the distinctiveness that my Pashtun, Baluch, etc. identity can give me.
My identity is first and foremost Pashtun…Pakistani is just a political label that the unfortunate turn of history has imposed on me.