Right from 1947, the Punjab oligarchy, with no little help from the upper-class diaspora from India, has had a great facility to put national questions in a patriotic frame. Urdu had to be the national language and not Bengali because that is what patriotism demanded. One Unit, suppressing Bengali aspirations, entering into western defence pacts and suppressing democracy itself were all justified at the bar of a higher and often mysterious patriotism.
The remnants of the old patriotism still survive in pockets of Punjab (read some of the Urdu papers to get a taste of the doctrine). Scratch any Punjab babu of a certain age and the old patriotism with all its shibboleths will quickly rise to the surface.
But the people of Pakistan as a whole, lied to so often, and by now heavily schooled in cynicism, have moved on. (Or at least one hopes they have moved on.) The old theology - responsible for the rise of militarism in the body-politic and the dismemberment of Jinnah’s Pakistan - no longer exercises the same hold.
**Putting the Kalabagh Dam in a patriotic frame and indeed making its construction a touchstone of Pakistanism will no longer do. Far from doing anything good it will further embitter feelings in the smaller provinces where the word Kalabagh has become synonymous with Punjabi chauvinism. **