M.sc Pakistan study Unit 8

Prepared by H-M-ZAKRIA 

Lecturer GDC Parova, D.I.KHAN

PAKISTANI SOCIETY AND CULTURE

Unit # 8. National Cultural Identity:

# National Integration

To combine and bring together all the people of a country is known as national integration. It is a feeling which combines all the people irrespective of their colour, race, caste, region and religion etc. It is the only force with the help of which all types of people live together peacefully and considering themselves the members of single whole.

 THE STATE OF NATIONAL INTEGRATION IN PAKISTAN

Pakistan is facing the problem of national integration since its creation. The lack of national integration is a big problem. Owing to theabsence of national integration Pakistan has been pushed to cruel circle. It has made Pakistan a sorry state of affairs, and has madePakistan the centre of terrorist activities. Due to this problem Pakistan has become an instable and vulnerable state and a totalbreakdown of state machinery. This was not the problem at first. Pakistan was the result of integration on the basis of Islam.Unfortunately after the death of Quaid-e-Azam the country was isolated. National integration faced too many problems. At this rate,income inequalities, social injustice, political blow and other evils raised their heads. All of these made national integration weak andfragile. There is lack of consensus on important national issues in Pakistan. For that reason the provinces hate each other. The Punjab isbeing accused by the rest of three provinces i.e. Sindh, Khyber Pukhtunkhwa and Baluchistan for exploiting their resources and notpaying there just share. Sindh, Baluchistan, and Khyber Pukhtunkhwa are against the construction of Kala Bagh dame while Punjab wantsto construct it. On the issue of NFC award the three provinces having the same reservation from Punjab. There are too much hurdles anddifficulties in the way of national integration of Pakistan. It is necessary to vanish the sentiments of regionalism or provincialismlanguisticism or communalism etc.

Some of the important reasons of the failure of national integration of Pakistan are as below:

CRISIS OF LEADERSHIP

After the death of Quaid-e-Azam there was hardly any leader upon whom the nation could be united. Every leader prefers his personal interest rather than national interest. They built up economic assets on illegal means. Thus they exploited the national purse on the coast of national interest and promoted personal interests. Therefore national integration remained weak and fragile.

ECONOMIC DISPARITIES

There is a big gap between rich and poor. The system of Pakistan has been structured such that the gulf between poor and rich become widen with the every passing day. Rich become richer and the poor become poorer and poorer. It strengthens the upper and privileged class of society. It never cares of the lower class of the society. Thus the economic inequalities led towards the weakness of the national integration.

PROVINCIAL BIASES AND SOCIAL INJUSTICE

Beside the lack of social justice and provincial biases are posing a threat to the basic existence of the country. It leads towards the destabilization of the state and shaking the basis of national integration of the country. The smaller provinces have developed the sense of deprivation. They think that they have been deprived of their just share in the national exchequer and of their just royalty. It has developed the age-old animosities among the provinces. Social justice is the only solution of national integration in Pakistan. The water dispute existed among the provinces. It has posed a major threat to national integration. The provinces have objections on the construction of Kala Bagh dam which has detracted the confidence and unity of the country.

MILITARY INTERVENTION

Military intervention has weakened the basis of national integration. During military rule the small provinces has been deprived of there just share. East Pakistan seceded during military rule. The military regime failed to promote the sense of ones in the two wings of Pakistan. Baluchistan issue also emerged during military rule. Military rule always damage the image of Pakistan in the world.

POLITICAL INSTABILITY

Political stability is the most important prerequisite for strengthening the national integration. Unfortunately Pakistan is lacking this requirement since very long. The political instability has widened the gulf between the ruling class and the ruled class. It has distorted the picture of Pakistan and made it retrogressive in all spheres. Political instability has posed a big threat to national unity and integrity.

Lack of unity and integration has pushed behind the objectives for which Pakistan was created. It has also rhythm of national progress. As a result the nation has become hallow from within in terms of national integration.

LANGUAGE PROBLEM

Pakistani is a plural society. There are living many linguistic groups which is problem. Some time it poses serious threats for the geographical integrity of the state. Pakistan lost its eastern wing owing to many problem of which the language problem was one of the important problem. In today’s Pakistan the difference of language is still a problem in the way of national integration of state. It is very much important for Pakistan to have a language policy which is helpful for the promotion of all languages equally. The current policy has created a sense among the small linguistic groups that the government is only promoting Urdu at the coast of regional languages. All the provinces have been divided into more than one linguistic group which contributing to the instability of country.

MEDIA

Media is a source of information and education. It is the most effective mean of change and information. Media is expected to play a positive role in image building of the state. It is the responsibility of media to promote national interest and national integration. In a democratic society the role of media is to be of a watchdog. It is the need of the time that our media should strive for building of soft and positive image of the state.

The way of expressing news, the way the politicians talking, in talk shows and political debates, show the attitude of the people of that country. The media is bound to spread reality and should be careful of its responsibilities. Media should aware the public without influencing their mind negatively the mind of public and make them able to protest in true manner which could result oriented. Mc Combs and Shaw consider the media as, “the mass media sets the agenda for political campaigns, influencing public attitudes toward desired issues”. Pakistani media is more responsible than any other media of the other countries of the world because Pakistan needs a big change and the media is the powerful source of change. Now-a-days media is easily accessible to all walks of life through various means electronic means and press i.e. TV, radio, mobile, internet, newspapers, journals, magazines etc.

# Question of Nationalities 

The origins of a common Muslim nationalist identity in Pakistan are complex. Throughout its several thousand-year history, the Indian subcontinent never experienced centralized rule; no single ruler consolidated power over the region’s entire territory. The political structure of the subcontinent has long been decentralized, consisting of small kingdoms managed by indigenous rulers. Imperial powers delegated governing authority to local leaders, who in return pledged their loyalty to the empire. Consequently, a singular identity never emerged in the subcontinent. Rather, local rulers relied on existing tribal and feudal structures to govern by proxy.

Three key factors have contributed to the erosion of a common Pakistani identity: (1) inequitable allocation of financial resources; (2) the army’s dominance over political processes and its tendency to adopt discriminatory policies; and (3) the political marginalization of the smaller federating units. 

In particular, the relationship between Punjab and Pakistan’s other provinces evidences these key factors. Punjab is Pakistan’s most populous province and holds disproportionate control over the national economy, distribution of jobs, and institutional development. As a result, the other provinces exhibit under-development—both structural and institutional—relative to Punjab. Based on these discrepancies, constituents of many Pakistani provinces perceive Punjab as exploiting their national financial resources. Punjab heavily influences the federal government, and other provinces presume the center—identified in this piece as the Pakistani federal government—to be subservient to Punjab. 

# Crisis of Cultural Identity

The creation of Pakistan was based on the idea that the Muslim community was altogether a separate nation than the Hindus of the subcontinent, and not just an ethnic minority. It was believed that they had a distinct identity and culture. The present day Pakistan has been home to one of the most ancient civilization (the Indus valley) and had seen many invasions, mostly by Muslim invaders. The Muslim rule in this area resulted in most of the population of this region acquiring the identity of ‘Muslims’ which has been recognized by historians to be different in terms of culture from the rest of the subcontinent. This separate identity was put in danger when the British colonized India and oppressed Muslims. However this can also be seen as a provocation for the Muslims to realize that they are a separate nation and to demand a separate homeland. Since despite leading a ‘distinct’ social existence within the host subcontinent, never before the need was felt to have sovereignty over a territory and being identified as a ‘nation’. The important thing to understand here is that the Muslim self-awakening movement stressed on “safeguarding rights and aspirations of the minority” (i.e. the Muslims) within an undivided India only. But it was only when they realized that this was not possible in a Hindu-dominated India, they demanded a separate state. This challenges the perception that Pakistan was created on the basis of a flawed theory that just because Hindus and Muslims were fundamentally different from one another, they couldn’t coexist and that Pakistan was envisioned to be a strictly theocratic state.

Jinnah and Iqbal both wanted Muslim-majority areas merged together into a state where Muslims and all religious minorities would have equal rights as citizens. The quest for Pakistan has been misinterpreted as a quest for Islam. The slogan: “Pakistan ka matlab kya? La illaha illallah”(what is the meaning of Pakistan? There is no God but Allah) has been misapprehended as intending to put religious institution at the top of the state or to patronize religion-based nationalism. But it simply meant to give a message of peace, tolerance and universalism.

However this perception led to the contradiction over Jinnah’s promise of protecting rights of minorities in Pakistan and birth of the fundamentalist call for an ‘Islamic’ state (which was indeed nothing more than a specific interpretation of Islam and entirely contestable).

This was the beginning of religious conflict in the state. Then with the 1973 constitution the state taking the definition of ‘Muslim-hood’ in its hands was a “dangerous and divisive development” with both civilian and militant governments producing their ‘Islamic reforms’. Overtime, use of religion to define state ideology created confusion in the minds of ordinary Pakistani and eventually Zia-ul-Haq taking the tinkertoy in his hands and imposing his prescription of Islamic identity pitted the different sects, puritans and folk religionists against each other; created intolerance and extremist views; and hindered the development of a “genuinely unifying national identity”.

Other conflicts arose in the form of cultural disputes. Though Muslims were different from Hindus but within the Muslims there are many diverse ethnic groups. This could be understood by the fact that the present day Pakistan is a product of many struggles and invasions in this region. It saw the Arian, Persian as well as Greek invasion; a period of political dominance of Turkish, then Arab Muslims, and then finally the rule of British Raj and its downfall followed by migrations from India in 1947 and Afghan refugees in 1980. Thus the Pakistanis trace back their ethnicity from many different origins such as mongals, Afghan, Persians, Arabs and then Sindhi, Punjabi, Pathan and so on.

Pakistanis are multilingual and have many different cultures and tradition within the domain of Pakistan. The second type of identity crisis set in when Pakistani government decided to make Urdu the national language, which wasn’t as widely accepted as was expected. At that time Pakistan was divided into two wings i.e. West Pakistan (present day Pakistan) and East Pakistan (present day Bangladesh). Though Urdu could have served as a means of intra-provincial communication as there were four provinces in West Pakistan at that time, but it had no roots in East Pakistan as it was a single province of Bengal and led to the feelings of resentment among natives of East Pakistan. After facing protest from East Pakistan it was declared the national language alongside Urdu, engendering anger in other provinces. Secondly the attempt to amalgamate all the provinces in a single unit created further hostility among the ethnic groups as they wanted to maintain their ‘distinct’ ethnic identity. Rather than bringing the people under an umbrella of a unifying national identity that of a ‘Pakistani’, these attempts brought the ethnic divide and also led to the independence of East Bengal indicating the lost identity.

It is clear that for the people of Pakistan and in fact for most of the people around the world, knowledge and certainty about one’s origin is a crucial aspect wherewith he formulates and defines his identity. This notion, well known to the ruling elite has been their weapon to indoctrinate the masses to support their political party. This type of indoctrination is typically known as ‘political indoctrination’ whereby positive perceptions about the political party are formed to “create a single minded following among the masses”. This is usually done through propaganda. The most typical technique of generating propaganda used by Pakistani politicians is ‘Appeal to prejudice’ i.e. “The use of sensitive or loaded terms to connect an emotional value or moral goodness to believing the scheme”. And that emotional value is the ethnic origin of the people. It cannot be a coincidence that almost everyone who follows a political party, follows the one whose leaders are of the same ethnic background as them. Clearly it has been in the interest of Pakistani politicians to play identity politics i.e. making political alliance consisting exclusively of people from same social backgrounds. Ethnic and provincial leaders began this by calling their provinces “nations” and arguing that their very existence was threatened by the blend into a ‘Pakistani identity’. One such example is of Sayid Ghulam Mustafa who writes in his book Sayyed: as we knew him “… Sindhi nation, its culture, language and literature cannot co-exist with the above colouring or moud of teachings. If Pakistani Muslims are to be taken as one nation, then their cultures, language and literature have to be levelled …” Another example is of Altaf Hussain of MQM who on one hand negates the two nation theory by saying that “The idea of Pakistan was dead at its inception, when the majority of Muslims chose to stay back after partition, a truism reiterated in the creation of Bangladesh in 1971” but recommends that restrictions should be imposed on entry into Sindh, even for people of other provinces. Such indoctrination has been successfully propagated by the ruling elite and unquestioningly accepted by the followers; widening the divide between ethnic groups, and hindering them to progress towards a common ideology. This can be supported by the finding of a survey conducted on university students (attached in the appendix) showing that 89% of those who support a political party, supported one that belongs to their own ethnic group.

Prepared by H-M-ZAKRIA Lecturer GDC Parova, D.I.KHAN   hmzakriakhan@gmail.com  Information point   https://web.facebook.com/?_rdc=1&_rdr

The third phase of identity crisis is the current crisis of the whole nation which is a combination of the religious and cultural crisis discussed above, as well as political and economic identity crisis both at domestic and international level. This is the worst national identity crisis that Pakistanis have faced. The conflict between religious and liberal secular minded people continues to haunt the nation accompanied by the ‘culture war’.