Essay - Identity Crisis of Pakistan

History of Islam started in India when a young general Muhammad bin Qasim made victory of Sindh, by defeating the Hindu Raja Dahir and thus annexed the area of Sindh to the Muslim imperial rule of Umayyad Caliphate.

Emergence of Muslim rule resulted in fundamental changes in the civil society of this area in a way that vast local population embraced Islam and thus acquired their identity as 'Muslims'. After about three centuries, other Muslim invaders of Turkish origin managed to bring most of the northern Indian Territory including almost whole territory of present day Pakistan under the Muslim rule. Muslim society flourished under the Muslim rule because Muslim culture was more progressive and tolerant than the culture of Hindus, who were in majority. Muslim culture and society got its own distinct identity, which was quite different to the identity of majority Hindu culture. Muslim political rule continued over centuries until eighteenth century when signs of the decline of Muslim rule began appearing and many turn of events resulted in the shift of locus of political control in the hands of a British origin business oriented establishment which was doing business in the country in the name of British East India Company.

After the war of 1857, the political control over India formally shifted to the British Crown. British government introduced democratic type limited self-autonomy in India. Under this type of government, Muslims would have gone under the Hindu political control in case the country got freedom from Britain.

The two world wars made Britain so much weak that now it could not hold on its many colonies including India. It became apparent during the Second World War that sooner or later Britain will have to announce freedom for India.

Indian Muslims were already concerned about the future of their separate identity as a 'Muslim Culture' and a prominent Muslim leader Sir Allama Iqbal already had proposed the establishment of a separate Muslim state within India where Muslims could preserve the separate identity of their culture.

But it was during the second world war when top Muslim leadership first realized that Allama Iqbal's proposal could become the real motto of Indian Muslim's struggle for independence from British Rule. So Indian Muslims demanded for a separate homeland i.e. Pakistan for them. The basis of this demand was the 'two nation theory'. The themes of this ‘two nation theory’ was that Indian Muslims were not just a minority community in India but were having a distinct complete culture of their own and so were a separate nation. The underlying idea was that future of India should be decided by not considering Indian Muslims as just minority community but should be decided while considering Indian Muslims as a complete nation, which should be given a separate homeland where they could preserve their distinct culture.

Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah did lot of effort to persuade British rulers and Hindu leadership about the truth of this 'two nation theory' so that they may accede to the Muslim demand of a separate homeland for them. Quid-e-Azam succeeded in his efforts and so 'Pakistan' came into being as a homeland for Muslims who were having their own independent culture which was quite different from the majority Hindu culture.

Identity Crises After Independence:

Muslims as a whole really were quite different from Hindus but within Muslims, the society was divided into many sub groups. At the time of independence, Pakistani territory was divided into two wings i.e. East and West Pakistan, which were separated by a distance of 1000 miles. West Pakistan corresponds to present day Pakistan whereas East Pakistan became independent country of Bangladesh in 1971, mainly because of the identity crises of Pakistan.

Originally, West Pakistan consisted of four provinces i.e. Punjab, Sindh, N.W.F.P and Balochistan. East Pakistan was a single province, which had its population greater than all the four provinces of West Pakistan combined. Pakistan faced its first identity crises when government adopted Urdu as national language. Although Urdu was not just a regional language and was widely understood among the people of different provinces and so could better serve the purpose of inter-provincial communication but this language had not any deep roots in the East Pakistan, the largest province of the country. People of East Pakistan protested against the decision of making Urdu as national language and they raised the demand of making Bengali as a national language as this was the language of majority population of East and West Pakistan combined. But this demand could not be acceptable to the people of any of the provinces of the West Pakistan because Bengali language had no roots at all in any of the provinces of West Pakistan.

Urdu language, finally became the official national language but without happy consent of the largest province of the country. Obviously, country was divided into many sub-cultures who had their own languages and they did have emotional attachment with their own regional languages also. Our early leaders however were trying to identify the country as a uni-lingual one but this was not the on ground reality of course.

Secondly, our early leaders also tried not only to conceive, but also to practically make the whole country a cultural unity. They abolished the provinces of West Pakistan with the view to make it one cultural unit. This was an attempt to eliminate the regional cultures of different provinces in order to promote the idea of a one single culture. The underlying purpose however was political in nature whose aim was to bring West Pakistan at the level of political parity with the otherwise more populous East Pakistan. Political benefit was going in the favour of West Pakistan but still then people of different provinces of West Pakistan protested against this new scheme and insisted on the separate distinct identities of regional cultures of the provinces. It means that people of country had strong emotional ties with their regional sub-cultures but our leaders were not ready to accept this fact. This thing created a grave unrest among the people of East Pakistan as the new scheme had put them on politically disadvantageous position.

Since our leaders failed to apprehend the plural nature of the culture of country and since they did not identify the true national identity, so the consequent identity crises at last resulted in the
Separation of East Pakistan in 1971.

How a country identifies its National Identity is important because it is actually the comprehension of a country about the composition and structure of its own society and culture. This National Identity not only determines objectives and goals for the people and leadership of the country, it also determines the type of relationships with other sovereign countries of the world. Secondly, National Identity of a country is not any rigid or fixed entity, as its various aspects always remain in the process of change and developments as a result of the changes that occur in the political and cultural environment of the whole world. Pakistan’s National Identity also has gone through many such changes. Before the separation of East Pakistan, the main outstanding issues related to the interrelationships of different provinces. Loss of East Pakistan resulted in somewhat reduced burden of this type of issues and so rest of the Pakistan successfully resoled the matters relating to interrelationships of the remaining provinces, in the form of unanimous constitution of 1973. With the passage of time however, those issues are again getting significance and so there is need to re-identify the current composition, structure and kind of country’s society. Country has also got the experience of both civil democratic political set-up as well as various Martial Law regimes. But we still are in need to identify which form of government best suits to the taste and needs of our society. On the international environment, due to many factors, image of Muslim societies is being negatively projected. Mass international media is projecting this wrong information that Muslim societies are the supporters of terrorist activities on the global scale. Muslim societies are being labeled as ‘extremist societies’. Pakistan is also one of the victims of this wrong media projection. Under these current crises, we are in need to evaluate our true identity i.e. whether we, as a nation, are extremist people or are enlightened, balanced, peace loving, and at the same time, intelligent and brave people. By the Grace of Almighty God, we are a nuclear power nation and so we should identify ourselves as more balanced and more responsible nation than before.