Pakistan under its Ethnic Shadows

“There is so little sense of authentic nationhood [in Pakistan] that when the Balochi inhabitants of the country’s southwestern desert venture elsewhere in Pakistan, they say they are going to ’’Hindustan,’’ which for most people means India. As a consequence, Pakistan’s ruling aristocracy -- once a triumvirate of military officers, tribal chiefs and the feudal landowners who bankroll the political parties -- clings to the British legacy of empire as the only available defense against anarchy,” wrote New York Times’ Robert Kaplan in “Pakistan: A Nuclear Yugoslavia” while reviewing two recent books published on Pakistan.

This “authentic nationhood” that binds a country together, if the authors of the books, Owen Bennett Jones and Mary Anne Weaver, are to be believed, is completely lacking in Pakistan. If true, this gives rise to a question critical to Pakistan: In the absence of nationhood and national identity, where identification of oneself is more with the ethnic group rather than the nation itself of which the ethnic group is supposedly a part of, can Pakistan be considered a viable nation? That, in turn, raises the second critical question: In the absence of an “authentic nationhood,” is the viability of Pakistan even desirable?

Is Pakistan a viable nation? If one sees the country under the shadows of its ethnic restlessness, the answer cannot be in the affirmative. With its each ethnic group feeling that it is getting the short end of the stick from the Center and is forced to identify itself more with the “tribe” than the “nation” of Pakistan, then today’s Pakistan remains more of an idea that was propagated before its birth than a concrete reality it pretends to be today. This “idea” may exist on paper, in the minds of a handful of “Pakistanis,” at diplmatic missions around the globe and at the UN; but it does not exist in reality, in the minds of its “citizens,” as the above quote from the Balochis shows.

Is Pakistan as an entity, then, even desirable to those who inhabit its current geographical boundaries? This is perhaps even more difficult question to tackle. What does “Pakistan” mean to its inhabitants? Unless one can sufficiently and satisfactorily answer the question “What does Pakistan mean (Pakistan ka mutlab kya)” in the affirmation of a nationhood, the desirability of a “Pakistan” as a viable entity will remain questionable, and this vital question if unanswered will for certain lead to Pakistan’s eventual demise.

The legal entity of “Pakistan” consists of at least five different major distinct ethnic groups: Punjabi, Sindhi, Pathan, Baloch and Mohajir. It’s not that this set up is unprecedented. The United States, the most powerful country in the world, also consisted of at least six different major distinct ethnic groups not very long ago: English, German, French, Irish, Italian and Polish. When the SAT (the standardized college-entrance exam in the US) was first devised in 1926, it included English, German and French as required languages all students taking the exam had to know. What bound the US together was the notion of “American,” its inhabitant’s common culture and Christian religion, with English becoming the common language of the nation. Out of this “idea” of “American,” the inhabitants of the US were “Americanized” and became “Americans” irrespective of their ethnicities; ethnicities that became secondary to and cultivated into a well-defined notion of “American.”

But Pakistan is not America. The Center in Pakistan has not satisfied is five major ethnic groups and has failed to instill the notion of a “Pakistani” in the general populace of its various ethnic groups. Those who wish to see a “Pakistan” continue to exist as a viable entity in the future must work very hard to bring the five major ethnic groups in harmony with each other, and also must define to them “Pakistan ka mutlab kya.” That is not an easy task. First, it must be acknowledged that this issue is a real one for Pakistan. It would then require introspection, philosophical brooding, and concrete and realistic actions to achieve the goal of an authentic nationhood. If that is not done or cannot be achieved, then Pakistan may turn out be a historical aberration that will die its own natural death; that death, unfortunately, will not be tranquil.