Book: The Indus Saga and the Making of Pakistan

Author: Aitzaz Ahsan
Publisher:

'Is the Pakistani an Arab? Or an Indian? Or something of both? Or neither? Are his origins entirely central Asian? What influence has he imbibed from Persia? How is he different from the Europeans who ruled him for almost one hundred years? Does he have a distinct personality or culture of his own? If so, for how long has he had this distinctiveness? Was it first created by the Partition of the sub-continent in August 1947, or did it pre-exist the Partition of 1947?'

These are the questions with which Aitzaz Ahsan starts his book titled, 'The Indus Saga and the Making of Pakistan.'

Aitzaz Ahsan is a prominent politician and lawyer in Pakistan. Educated at the University of Cambridge, he has been a Federal Minister and is currently an MNA from Lahore, representing PPP. In this very well-researched work, he attempts to examine, define and answer questions about the identity of Pakistan, convincingly arguing that from the times of Pataliputra till 1947, 'Regardless of the uncertainities of history and of geopolitical diplomacy and conflict, there always has been...a Pakistan.'

The book is divided into three parts: Part I: The Two Regions, compares and contrasts the Indus Valley region (present-day Pakistan) and Ganga Valley region (present-day India) from the time period of 2000 BC to AD 1800. Part II: The Two Worlds, covers the two regions from AD 1600 to 1857. Part III: The Two Nations, covers the timeframe of AD 1757 to 1947. Without a doubt, the first part is the most interesting. This part is worth reading, even on its own, to get a clear understanding of the history of the provinces of Punjab and NWFP, from the point of view of a native religiously-agnostic Indus point of view. The second part covers the decline of the Muslim rule and the rise of the British Raj. While Part III primarily concentrates on the efforts of the Congress and Muslim League leaders in creating India and Pakistan. Unfortunately, as the book progresses into Parts II and III, the frequency of original ideas presented and interesting questions asked (e.g. why didn`t Indian Hindu names get absorbed into Islam, while pre-Islamic Arabic and Persian Parsi names did get absorbed?) decreases, and the book slowly turns into a history book - albeit a good one, relying mostly on dates and events.

This book is different from other works attempting a similar study, in that it does not rely on the religious argument to define the identity of Pakistan as a nation separate from India. Instead, it relies on a cultural argument. According to Ahsan, 'The essential differences between Indus and India are civilizational and cultural. These differences are deep-rooted, primordial and many. To restrict these differences merely to those of religion is to refuse to comprehend the issue.' By stating this throughout the book, he disagrees with the two prominent arguments currently presented in South Asia, regarding Pakistan - one originating from India, implying that Pakistan is a part of a greater India and the other originating from Pakistan, implying that Pakistan is a part of a greater Islamic (and maybe even) Arabic culture.

Ahsan concludes that present day Pakistan has always been the southeastern border of a central Asian and Persian society. It was never the northwestern border of the Indian society. Nor was Indus ever influenced to any significant degree by the Arabs.

Ahsan traces Pakistan`s roots back to centuries before Islam appeared in South Asia. According to him, the sub-continent has always consisted of two cultures - one dominating the Indus Valley, the other the Ganga Valley. The cultural border of these two regions has roughly been the Gurdaspur-Kathiawar salient. The areas to the northwest of this salient are called, 'Indus' by the author, while those to the southeast are referred to as, 'India.'

Ahsan then goes into a very detailed historical analysis to prove his thesis. He begins his journey of the history of Indus and India from the days of Moenjodaro and Harrapa, tracing it step by step through the Aryan invasion, the movements of the Aryans through Indus into India in search of Iron, the invasions of Alexander to the first-ever unification of Indus and India under the rule of Ashok and its subsequent break-up into a separate Indus region under Bactrian Greeks, covering every phase in between, to the introduction of Islam through the brief appearance of Arabs in Sind to the lengthy occupation of Indus and India by central Asian Muslim invaders, the rise and fall of the Mughals, the second-ever and last reunification of the Indus and India under the British, eventually ending at the creation of Pakistan - thus arguing that Pakistan always existed as a separate entity from the Ganga Valley for thousands of years.

The author has written the book from the point of view of an Indus person. To him, all Indus people, regardless of the religion they belonged to at a certain stage in history (Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians) are one people, and thus view(ed) all other forces, from central Asia and the Ganga Valley as invaders and foreign influences - eventually being far more influenced by the central Asians than by Indians. He thus describes his heroes as being native Indus men and women.

'I have taken pains to trace the history of this region only to attempt to prove that the civilization that has been inherited by Indus citizens (Pakistanis), is not the gift of Akbar or of any other emperor. Nor is it the legacy of any fundamentalist obscurantist. It is the land of the intense poety of Khusrau, Hussain, Bahu, Bulleh, Waris, Latif, Khushhal, Iqbal, and Faiz. It is the civilization that has been shaped by deeds and tales of resistance and valour of Rasalu, Jasrat, Sarang, Arjun, Dullah, Shah Inayat, Chakar, Khushhal, Ahmad Khan Kharal, Bhagat Singh, and above all, by that incomparable, liberal, progressive, and enlightened Muslim: Mohammad Ali Jinnah.'

The author ends the book by providing the definition of the present-day Indus person as, 'On the one hand...a family man, an enlightened non-fundamentalist Muslim, and a brave soldier. On the other...an ostentatious consumerist, a bad administrator, and devoid of civic sense and responsibility.'

The biggest strength of this book lies in the originality with which it views the history of the development of the culture of present-day Pakistan over a span of thousands of years, i.e. an already existing society, with a unique cultures, customs, languages, waiting to be independent. Another strength is the objectivity with which the author makes his arguments without any premeditated biases against or for any religion or secularism. The detailed explanation of how the British exploited both the Indus and Ganga Valleys is interesting, as well - discrediting the arguments that the British may have actually been good for South Asia.

Its weaknesses lie in the fact that the author primarily concentrates on the Punjab region, with some emphasis on present-NWFP. He rarely touches the Sind and Baluchistan areas. He himself points out his lack of knowledge of these areas in the early part of the book. Another weakness is the lack of clarity in meshing his cultural argument with the argument of a separate state for Muslims, presented by Jinnah in the 1947 timeframe. Also, the author displays a touch of hypocrisy,
correctly and repeatedly describing, 'feudalism' historically as one of the main problems of the Indus region, while simultaneously being a leading political figure of Pakistan`s largest feudally-dominated political party. The final definition of the Indus person also seems to have been drafted in a hurry and does not do justice to the well-researched arguments preceding it.

On the whole, this book is a must-read for all Pakistanis who want to explore a line of argument, different from the standard Two Nation Theory arguments, on the identity of their nation. It is also a must read for all Indians who are interested in the history of the Indus Valley.