Foundation books
Rs 695
Sept 11, 2009
Present-day Pakistan is a battlefield between two models of statehood. One vision is of a traditional territorial nation-state. The other is of a community without borders. The result is a variety of Talibans, the world’s scariest nuclear arsenal, an obsession with balancing against India and a seriously dysfunctional political-military setup. Or so argues Farzana Shaikh in this dense but enlightening essay.
Shaikh traces the rot to the creation. The national myth was schizo from the start, torn between embedment in a universal umma and representing South Asian Islam. Even in the first few years of existence its leaders extolled Islamic brotherhood but abandoned an Israeli-style “right of return” policy for Indian Muslims.
One of the book’s strengths is to underline how traumatic and defining East Bengal’s secession was for Pakistani identity. The primary result, she writes, is that “since the late 1970s the Pakistani state has been actively complicit in the hardening of separate religious identities”. The reason was to “neutralize regional identities, which were perceived to be a greater threat to its political hegemony than sectarian discord”.
Prescription against Partition: injections of theocracy to immunise the country from more 1971-itis. Taking this medicine took Pakistan’s already fragile psyche into a spooky space. Namely, “the dilemma of choosing between rival interpretations of the dominant religion…and deciding which receive state support”. Through the 1970s and 1980s a succession of Pakistani leaders began making the country overtly Sunni. As Shaikh stresses, “the idea of making Pakistan an Islamic state began with the politicians not the ulama”.
http://newageislam.com/making-sense-of-pakistan--the-sick-man-of-asia/books-and-documents/d/1819
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