Making Sense of Pakistan

"Farzana Shaikh’s earliest historical study, based on her doctoral research, was a timely attempt to investigate the quest of a cohesive political community anchored on the historical and intellectual ethos of worldwide Islam within a specific South Asian context. That volume had tried to move the discourse on Pakistan’s evolution from the prevalent paradigm of high politics of a few powerful men at the top, nudging its reader to seek long-term explanation of this country’s evolution, especially after the post-1857 trauma. Surely, this was a dilemma faced by the Muslim élite who often differed over the very public role of Islam, yet, irrespective of their doctrinal and variable strands, they also sought to define ‘Muslimness’ in holistic ways. Like its rich and often turbulent past, it was again in the Indus Valley that a predominant strand began to assume a formidable formulation in the form of Pakistan, though its impetus came from upper India and the lower Gangetic regions. The hasty dissolution of the Raj led to a post-1947 configuration in South Asia, which only grew on inter-state conflicts instead of seeking friendly co-existence. True to its history, the Indus Valley was left on its own, faced with suspicion and hostility both from its eastern and western neighbours and, in the process, underwent fragmentation as well as redefinition, which persist even today. Shaikh is right in suggesting that there have been multiple forms of Islam and, in the same vein, there are numerous perceptions of Pakistan . Well, that should not be surprising, especially to any scholar, since we are talking about a populous and immensely plural part of the world and it must not come as a surprise that even countries like the United Kingdom, Belgium, Italy and Spain may have similar challenges, though, of course, with several substantial differences. Yet collective identity is always a fluid and evolving paradigm and in that sense a period of 60 years may be too meagre. Even Israel, often mentioned by our author in her volume, has serious ideological problems, not only vis-à-vis its Arab population but even amongst its own Jewish Zionist hard core who differ over the nature and direction of their very Jewishness. Yes, India had a better start since it inherited the mainstream institutional framework from the Raj, has been advantageously located away from the restive frontier regions and had been lucky to have a long list of founding fathers, who, unlike their mostly flamboyant Pakistani counterparts, built up enduring institutions. However, even the very Indian identity is comparatively quite young and still evolving, though claims by Jawaharlal Nehru and others of its historicity are no less trivial. But then real India, in a way, was the Indus Valley as recorded in Rig Veda unless we are talking about Hindustan, though the Indus Valley, curiously, never forsook its adolescence. Post-9/11 multi-dimensional spotlight on Islam has caused, among others, two kinds of attitudes amongst Muslims: defensively aggressive and apologetically defensive. Of course, there are many Muslims who do not seek a single-factor explanation of the complex geo-political and ideological phenomenon known as Political Islam, which, like Hindutva and Christian Zionism (and Zionism on its own), has been with us since the early 19th century. The recent volatility is not solely an intra-Muslim problem; it is equally linked with the acute imbalances within the international systems, which have often helped scripturalists attain primacy over other strands. Political Islam is a rallying cry for systemic change and for the displacement of corrupt and humiliating systems, yet may not be lacking consensus when it comes to systemic alternatives. While fighting hegemonies, several of its own trajectories have themselves the tendency to become hegemonic. Cases of corruption and extra-regional assaults have certainly not deflated the mystique of political Islam given its powerful components such as resistance, sacrifice, utopianism, shared brotherhood and austerity. Following the dissolution of the communist regimes, it has been asserting its own space and here its various manifestations are falling beyond the orbit of simplistic and monolith definitions. Many Muslims, especially from amongst the modernists, have readily internalised simplistic and solely negative explanation of Political Islam, which, accordingly, becomes the bane of all the problems across the Muslim countries and communities. Historically, Muslim modernists in India had aggregated several regional and ecclesiastic groups to form a loose alliance to obtain a territorial identity but then their successors failed to deliver on the problems of political and economic disempowerment, and here Islamists began to offer themselves as alternatives. Political Islam is not just violence and is not solely dependent upon bullet, as, in the case of Pakistan, we also witness a vast array of religio-political parties forming governments through ballot and, by using media, rallies and publications, they cultivate their own constituencies. Putting them at par with the militant elements is certainly incorrect and this pervasive view of a monolithicised Islam anchored upon a single-factor preoccupation with violence (Jihadis!) is a miscomprehension of a more complex situation. The spectre of Talibanisation does not mean that the entire heritage of Political Islam in the country is in shambles. Shaikh lists all the contentious ideological and structural areas, including the ambiguous idea of a Muslim-versus-Islamic state, the predominance of military and mullahs and a less savoury record on reformism, even often at the risk of repetition. Her present book is definitely not a history of Pakistan and perhaps that is why she keeps traversing across the decades and personalities. Instead of her erstwhile fascination with M A Jinnah, Muhammad Iqbal and Fazlur Rahman and the modernist Islam in the form of demand for Pakistan, here Shaikh, like many other Pakistanis, does not hide her disappointment with the country’s post-1947 leaders and comes closer to Hamza Alavi’s interpretation of a Muslim salariat playing its own chequered game of interests. Alavi’s understandably class-based analysis presupposed a pre-existing Muslim upper middle class in British India, which may be an exaggerated view given the economic underdevelopment and disparate nature of Muslim communities, but that is a different subject altogether. To Shaikh, the élite interests constantly ignored the quest for a consensus identity and that became Pakistan’s major malaise. Several Pakistanis may like to go along with her way of thinking but putting the entire onus of responsibility on Pakistan as an errant run-away from a pristine Mother India, or acting as ‘America’s sullen mistress’, warrants a similar view from ‘the other side of the mountain’. While her prefatory remarks and the major section of the book are interspersed with an unflinching critique of how Pakistan was imagined, created and has been mismanaged – all in confusion! – her epilogue quite briefly surmises the vocality of its media and civil society, but only as a passing reference. Shaikh, like several others, might have already lost her hope in the makers and unmakers of that country; however, a vast majority of its people – the descendants of the Indus lands – are surely its stakeholders as well and not just the mute bystanders, and, once again, are confronted with gigantic challenges. As in the past millennia, they need to redefine themselves within the context of unpleasant hazards emanating from the outside and from within. If developed countries like Yugoslavia or the Soviet Union can fall apart there is no guarantee that Pakistan or several similar post-colonial states may be able to ride triumphantly over the raging storms."

"Yes, it is the very best book I have read on Pakistan. If Pakistan can introspect, it will have to recognise that in their Islamic republic, as Omar Khayyam said all those centuries ago, “the two and seventy jarring sects confute” – all these sects are part of the family of Islam. The question of whether there should be a Muslim nation or not on the subcontinent is one that is only of historical importance now. They do have an overwhelmingly Muslim majority country in Pakistan. Pakistan is as much a geographical as an historical reality and reversing that reality is simply out of the question. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . If Pakistan continues to feel threatened by India, or is portrayed by the military as being threatened by India, the Pakistan army can conquer the only country it is capable of conquering – which is Pakistan. Then, of course, the room for introspection becomes less because the country feels it is under siege and can’t progress. If India and Pakistan were to engage, from my own experience of seeing the very rapid outcome of the engagement at several different points, I think things could move forward. And in those conditions Pakistan can consolidate its own nationhood, not in terms of the idea of Pakistan that was born in a welter of hostility towards India. It needs to recognise that it doesn’t have to struggle to be a Muslim nation. It is a Muslim nation. But it must become a Muslim nation in which all the sects of Islam, and the remaining sliver of religious minorities, have an equal place. That, I think, is Farzana Shaikh’s essential point. Now the question is: Is Pakistan going to be a reactionary Muslim nation or is it going to be a modern Muslim nation? And I think popular opinion in Pakistan would drive it towards being a modern Muslim nation. As a modern Muslim nation, it would dilute the ideological influences upon its nationhood and, recognising its own plurality, would be able to celebrate that. At that point, I think Pakistan could become our very best friend instead of allowing elements in Pakistan to benefit from the perception of all this hostility."