When Americans talk about their country..,they talk about the pursuit of happiness, freedom & the American dream. When Indians define their nationalism they define it in terms secularism & the love of homeland… what they call bharat mata or Vande-Matram.
I know the US is not all about freedom & democracy its an imperialist power tormenting the weak all over the world & India is not a perfect example of secularism ,infact people may even debate that the facade of Indian secularism is a deception, However, that is not the point I want to talk about. The thing I want to discuss is that all great nations associate themselves & their countries in terms of some higher ideals,moral values & principles & while the ground realities of these nations may be far from these ideals there is absolute unanimity over these fundamental principles & their status as the ideals on which the collective national character should be defined. For some its a certain moral code, for some its race,culture,language, shared heritage or being inhabitants of a homeland for decades & millenniums.
When I look at Pakistan I cant conjure any high morals, principles or a value system as the basis for the definition of Pakistan. i know many people will respond to this with ‘Ideology of Pakistan’ as the moral code & founding principle of our nation, to them I will say arguably this was the basis on which we won independence but the reality of our nation has never ever followed from any of those principles.., infact the majority of Pakistanis at time of creation of Pakistan & almost all pakistanis at this time & age don’t have a cohesive & unambiguous understanding of what it means. on top of it now its very status as the basis of creation of Pakistan is challenged openly & more importantly lets be honest to ourselves we are not Islamic in our character , while islam has been used as a slogan to ignite emotions in our people but when it comes to molding our society & character based on Islam, nether are we prepared to take the hard pill to do so as a nation, nor do we agree this is the right way to go about in this present day or age & above all we are not sure what it fully means & what is the righteous manifestation of these ideas( I guess we have all heard these familiar phrases ‘Kis Ka Islam ?’)
62 years of hypocritical slogans & recent wave of tormenting terrorism have created so many doubts in our hearts about Islamic Ideology that atleast now & in the near future it does not seems that islamic ideology will define our national character ,
So will nationalism drawn from a shared homeland form the basis of our nation…, at the moment regionalism (Qaum Parasti as it is called in Pakistan) is far stronger & in direct confrontation with Pakistani Nationalism, Infact I believe there is no such thing as Pakistani nationalism or Pakistaniat in Pakistan, this I would like if I am wrong to be corrected …,
Its not race, its not language, its not even culture - which I believe although are similar & the differences are not confrontational .., yet I dont believe the similarity is strong enough for nation building (again if I am wrong i would be interested to listen to sound arguments).
When we analyze the history of great nations …, we will observe a nascent energy amongst its national in the era when these nations raised to greatness, It was this energy & passion that enabled them to rid themselves of all causes that denied them of greatness, its these very foundational principles or shared attributes from where they draw the inspiration for their transformation. Therefore I believe Until we figure out who we are as nation we will not manage to claim greatness & more importantly considering the geo-political circumstances that are developing I think our very survival as a country will remain in threat.
