IMO there are 3 roads to strong statehood:
1. a homogenous entity based on common ethnicity and culture (e.g., any Western European state)
2. an ideological state that is a melting pot of different ethnicities and cultures, but lives for an abstract idea (e.g., the United States)
3. an imperial state that changes 'subjects' into its own image by changing their language, culture, etc (e.g., France).
The problem with Pakistan is that it's neither 1, 2 or 3.
Option 3 might have been possible under Durrani Afghan rule. If the Durranis didn't lose their Eastern frontiers to the Sikhs or British then perhaps those areas might have been Afghanized by the 20th century.
In terms of Option 1, you have this 'Islamic' identity that isn't tied to a specific ethnic group. In of itself, using Islam as an ideological identity is fair. But where it goes haywire for Pakistan is when its leaders and people switch to contradictory concepts when it suits their interests.
If your national identity was Islam, then you should let Muslims from all over the world settle in Pakistan. Like the US (or even Canada, UK, etc) you should have some naturalization program that can turn the most stateless Muslim on earth (e.g., a Uyghur) into a Pakistani. But Pakistani leaders can't even bother with Bihari refugees in Bangladesh. Of course, let's not forget the abuse and oppression of East Bengal before that or the expulsion of Afghan 'refugees' today.
Instead, when it suits their interests, Pakistani leaders go secular, nationalistic or ethnic. But the problem with the contradiction is that Pakistani society isn't homogenous, but ethnically divided. So, when you stroke the ethnic card, you're fuelling balkanization. As for the secular card; well, you didn't do anything to develop our population along those lines (unlike say Turkey), so the secular stuff literally makes no sense to us.
Now when you have that contradiction permeating at every level, you end up with a confused and directionless population, no vision of where to take the nation in 10, 20, 50, or 100 years, and lots of wasted energy.
Finally, we Pakistanis don't have a real identity either. If we want to carry the Islamic card, then (according to what Islam itself says) it doesn't matter where we come from. Our ethnicities, tribes, family trees, etc don't matter. We're all from clay (Adam AS). So, a Pakistani of Kerala descent shouldn't be any different than a Pakistani of Pashtun background. Now, let's take that story to someone who believes in "martial races" and other BS.
So, we ain't serious with Islam; we ain't serious with secularism; we ain't serious at all.
Totally get what you mean.
Pakistan's indecisiveness on this was wrought by a number of things during the formation/birthing (and I am summarising
extensively here):
a) The span of years from ~1900 (or whenever one wants to start in a "modern" era) to 1940 and the erosion of trust among those that should have known better (on all sides)...on fundamental alliances for unity of nationstate among its sub-identities....deteriorating into nations (and eventually nationstates) cleaved on those sub-identities instead.
b) Certain unprincipled (IMO) approach of 1940 - 1947 (given fog of war) of the veterans from the above part (a) (again on all sides)
c) a and b leading to a most horrific partition (where most eyes start focusing on without reading enough on a and b)
d) Pakistan's much smaller size relative to Indian "remnant" during this partition (thus the % intensity of its effect mentally being all the more higher)
e) a,b,c,d all combining for the most hasty (uncalled for IMO, given standstill agreement) intervention into the kingdom of Kashmir, making sure partition psyche would continue a great longer deal with the remnant country as it counter-intervened
f) The (wise, shrewd yet quite perplexing) founding father passing most untimely not too long after the events of (e). He could not add a legacy beyond it to maybe more peaceably self-correct with veterans on other side like Nehru (who would be around for nearly 2 decades more affording a good window for it hypothetically)....as maybe unlikely it might have been anyway (As wise Pakistani mentor of mine has said on many occasions quite resentfully) given the slow usurpation already unfolding beneath him (as partition did not rest in them, like the reasons he had foreseen and envisioned).
g) The usurpation taking advantage of this early passing to pass the objectives resolution and then start the ball rolling on other strong arm thuggishness to purify after partition....rather than accept people for whom they are and give them full benefit of any doubt as a first principle.
h) The cacophony of political events till 1958 when the first strong man intervened (at the supposed invitation of one of the usurping-minded political hacks) setting full early precedent for what vcheng's quote sadly summarises on the accumulated effect.
The rest is just a larger continuation of this snowball allowed to form and roll down. Once you understand the snowball at top of the hill, you understand the avalanche further below later.
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That is why I prefer minimalism for a nationstate. It must be focused extremely well and not set up problems (especially those of "overriding" identity in a miasma multi-identities) for itself.
Jinnah's whole reasoning was that of muslim majoritarianism (I find that unprincipled like any majoritarianism but maybe it was practical and mostly reactionary the more I read on (a) about the other side's characters and foibles too)...
But it was one with secularism once it had been cleaved to ensure everyrone's rights (muslim majority and its minorities are both protected by not introducing religion into the constitutional framework at all).
In fact a grander exercise to protect every majority and minority (sub-identity wise) of the new cleaved state would have taken shape with enough "catch" of this in enough of the substrata in the elite among and just below jinnah.....by simply ensuring fundamental human rights to every human being that is a Pakistani citizen (that had not lived what it was to be Pakistani for all that long at all yet - a matter of just minutes literally so far.....their memories and names were rooted in quite a great number of other things....years, centuries and even millenia).
And there we see the sad abandonment of the hammer when the iron was most warm and ready and much more wieldy.
The dereliction of the proven forge (one only needed to look at the rest of the world, what its successes and failures had been to that point)....all in some anger+fear driven attempt to make some new untested one with the worst of human impulses.
I could write at length about this in the Indian side, but it only brings tears to my eyes lately. I shall refrain.
For I hate how so few ruin everything that was good and proper and promising.
You see, we Bharatis are currently undergoing a civil war that is taken on the hue of the "cold war"....because again because of various failures and those that are most crafty yet unprincipled taking advantage of those failures instead of the harder route to explain and correct them.
No matter how well you set up a nationstate sometimes, certain things will be found not to size and scruff.
A much older nationstate than ours (though we are by far the older nation) that is a superpower now....learned that a most terrible way when it had to grapple with just who is a citizen to get its vaunted individual rights constructed so beautifully on paper by quite possibly the best set of minds in human history for it.
Yet even the effects of that war still linger and still re-appear in their fashion.
But the first 100 years are definitely crucial (to grapple and resolve firmly some fundamental questions of theory and practice as they apply to the homo sapiens psychology) to even have a chance of meeting potential and greatness for some larger period of time. That is what Pakistan has really diverted itself away from distance wise IMO....and it plays out as it does in its case.
This my friend, is why in the end, it has always been my honour and my greatest pleasure to live among and support and fight for the regular people wherever they are (as they are the salt of the earth in the end and are our collective bedrock)....
.....and to warn them (increasingly) of the powerful and never to divide themselves so easily to make things easy for those that already have it so easy yet want so much more no matter the cost on the rest. i.e Treat every powerful person with suspicion and even contempt as the default.....as the powerful get there inevitably by devious rotten means, dictated only by the ignorance and weakness of the non-powerful....as such is the nature of our species in becoming powerful....I have seen this all play out in various ways as I grow longer in the tooth and each new scar gets inflicted...
I feel I am losing this battle...the more and more I look around...it permeates places I thought were secure formerly...undermining all of it like a wildfire...and at a cost it little knows or cares for....
...., but struggle with it I must....and see it through the best I can.
it out. Good point.
