Very interesting article. The guy took the words out of my mouth!
The question of identity
http://www.dawn.com/2005/06/17/op.htm
By Sardar Aseff Ahmad Ali
SOME months back I was asked to open a photographic exhibition by the PNCA at the Shakir Ali Museum in Lahore. In my brief address I referred to the rich South Asian culture of which Pakistan is a part. A gentleman from the audience took exception to my remarks and later wrote to me to the effect that I had disclaimed the two-nation theory, and that the Pakistani Islamic culture was distinct from the Indian Hindu culture.
For many months I have pondered the question with deep reflection. So important is the issue, a public answer from a public figure might just be in order. The threat of prediction must never thwart a seeker of truth.
Let me at the outset declare that no one can question my Pakistani credentials nor my family’s who were stalwarts of the Pakistan Movement. Having said that, the issue of Pakistan’s culture being purely Islamic remains to this day a moot question. I cannot hazard a definition of what constitutes “culture”.
The overwhelming view now is that ethnicity and culture are what nations and societies use to define themselves. As an individual I am extremely proud of being a Pakistan and a Muslim. I wish that could resolve the complexity of our situation in Pakistan and in South Asia. Talk to a Sindhi, Baloch or a Pakhtoon and one will get an idea of our situation.
Unlike the Punjabi, none is prepared to sacrifice his mother tongue or his subculture and history. Only the Punjabi middle-class and intelligensia are too ashamed to talk to their children in Punjabi which is perhaps among the oldest South Asian languages, rich in poetry and literature. Only in Punjab, Urdu is seen as a replacement of Bulleh Shah’s Punjabi. It’s Hali versus the Heer.
The “ideology of Pakistan” is too insecure to tolerate a language other than Urdu. This is not to say Urdu is not ours. It is and will remain the national language. There’s no threat to Urdu from any regional language. Why is then Punjabi seen as a threat to Urdu? So, language as a vital medium of culture, runs into serious problems when the large majority’s mother tongue is else from the officially promoted language Urdu.
My other problem is how can religion alone explain our nationhood. If this were so what are the 160 million Muslims of India? According to the two nation-theory, the Indian Muslims are really overseas Pakistanis stranded in India. Then there’s the issue of Bangladesh. Previously, as a majority they rejected Urdu as their national language, but did not ask that Bengali, the language of the majority of the then Pakistan, be made the official lingua franca. This was their right.
If Urdu is the only symbol of the two-nation theory and a symbol of ‘Pakistaniat’, then by definition the architects of Pakistan negated the democratic basis of its genesis, i.e. a minority will dictate the majority. Also, how do we explain the culture of Muslim Bengal in terms of the ideology of Pakistan, if ideology is to be defined in terms of the Urdu language and Islam only?
The intellectual problem arises in defining culture as a medium of religion only. In the Muslim world there are distinct historical and civilizational entities. The Iranians and Turks intermingled, yet are distinct from one another. The Gulf Arabs have little in common with the Levant or the Maghreb. The Sahil and Sahara have an identity of their own. The Central Asians and Caucasians are different from all others. The Far Eastern cultures of Indonesia and Malaysia, though Muslim, have little in common with heartland of Islam. South Asian Muslims are worlds apart from other Muslim peoples. So where do we draw the line?
It’s true that practice of the tenets of Islam has much in common in all Muslim lands. In the spiritual sense there’s an identity amongst Muslims all over the world. But in the temporal sense there is no one unifying identity. Each Muslim society defines its own paradigms of culture and civilization. Muslim societies of the Nile, Mesopotamia, the Indus and Oxus have pre- and post-Islamic civilizations. Their people are proud of their ancient and their recent past. They see no contradiction in claiming the past as their own.
So the more we look deeply into the issue, the more complex it becomes. The more answers we seek, the more questions arise. No single answer satisfies us. Why not therefore shed historical romanticism, and evolve a more realistic paradigm of what we are.
We are Muslims of South Asia who evolved a culture of our own different from the Muslims of other parts of the world. Most of us were Hindus, but were converted to Islam by Sufi saints over the last thousand years.
Over 10 centuries those of us who came from foreign lands, gave much to South Asia. At the same time South Asia gave us a great deal. A huge South Asian diffusion took place in languages, literatures, music, food, poetry, architecture, paintings etc. we became South Asians. We should not be in denial of this stark reality, which cannot be wished away. Who can deny that the style of Taj Mahal’s central structure minus minarets and domes is Rajput? Who can deny Ameer Khusro’s contribution to music. How long can we sustain the fiction that we are not South Asian?
All attempts to Persianize, Arabize or Islamize Pakistan have been unmitigated disasters leading to confusion, intolerance, denial of democratic and human rights, and finally terrorism. There is a South Asian culture in the sense that there is a European culture. Germans, French, English, Italian and Spanish are all proud of their European culture and civilization. This does not take away from their own identities which caused so much historical discord. Why can’t we conceive of a South Asian culture as a macrocosm and our own as a microcosm? It is a shared subcontinent of races, languages and religions. In diversity and inclusion is its identity. We can remain proud and confident that we are countries with individual cultures and religions, and yet recognize 1000 years of cohabitation.
We made Pakistan because of our insecurity with the Congress which did nothing to allay our fears as a minority. Mr Jinnah till the last, was for any possible settlement not to divide India. Let us hypothetically imagine the consequences for the subcontinent, had the Congress accepted the Muslim League’s demand for separate electorates, or if Nehru and Gandhi had agreed to the Cabinet Mission Plan. Notionally, the Muslims of India would have been divested of their insecurity as a minority. The raison d’etre for Pakistan would not be there. In terms of pure deductive logic, the follies of the Indian Congress opened the door for the Pakistan Movement.
South Asia is several time larger geographically than the continent of Europe, and many times larger demographically. There is vast diversity of language, race, ethnicity, nation and religion. Yet there is a South Asian under-pinning; a commonality it would be foolish to deny. It’s time we accept this as a confident nation, rather than argue that it has served us poorly. Our pride in our country and Islam, can’t be so fragile that it’s in any danger. An acceptance of this reality will remove many intellectual cobwebs in our minds, and remove the identity crises of Pakistan.
We must seek our identity in our land, in our deep roots which go back to the ancient Indus Valley civilization. To this day, our farmers use the same utensils, implements, bullock carts, etc. as those used in Mehrgarh, Harappa and Moenjodaro. Like millions of other children, I too played with terracotta toys from ancient times, as a child. If Egyptian Muslims can be proud of their pharonic past, Iraqis of their Mesopotamian and Babylonian history, and Iranians of the Fars; why can’t we Pakistani Muslims take pride in the Indus civilization?
Pakistan as a land was an entity 6,000 years ago; an ancient land with a new country. Our history did not start with Mohammad Bin Qasim. I know of no other state or country that disclaims its own history and civilization. The whole ethos that the so-called intellectuals of Pakistani conservatism have evolved, is based on the foreignness of Pakistan. The ideological history is based on conquerors and marauders, and not the gentle people of Harappa, Moenjodaro, Gandhara or Hindujah. It is true Arian Khushans, Arabs, Turko-Afghan, Persians migrated to this land, some in peace and some in war. All were assimilated in this region. None were ashamed of their new identity. They all made this land their home. None went back to Baghdad or Basra, none returned to Balkh or Bokhara. With their new religions, creeds, languages, cultures, they all assimilated.
Islam spread with the advent of conquerors; not by the sword but by the great saints who came and stayed. They preached love and tolerance. They preached inclusion. They condemned no faith, no religion. They saw truth and beauty in every religion. Through love, through spirituality they converted millions of Indians to Islam.
That is what Pakistan is all about; proud of its ancient history, proud of its diversity, proud of its gallant people and proud of its religion of the Sufi saints and their sublime poetry.
Let us wind up the identity debate and play our destined role as a proud Muslim state of South Asia. History beckons us to be a bridge between Central Asia and South Asia, between South Asia and the Middle East, and be a moderator between Islam and other great religions.
Let us not circumscribe ourselves to some arcane and untenable definition of our statehood that belittles our ancient culture and civilization. I do not propose to challenge the wisdom of our founding fathers, but only to re-define our identity on a historically realistic paradigm free of romanticism and arcane intellectualism based on faulted assumptions.
The writer is a former foreign minister.
I would sooo even go as far as give birth through my penis to be a West Asian/Central Asian!!! To be honest with you I don’t want to be associated with South Asians. Most South Asians who see me think I’m a West Asian/Central Asian asylum seeker anyhow.