TRAVELLING through the Ghizer district, heartland of Gilgit-Baltistan’s nationalist movement, my mind has been constantly grappling with what it is that makes ordinary people tend towards the form of political community that is modern nationalism.

Most from down country who go north as tourists to marvel at the stunning landscape have no knowledge of the nationalist movement, nor could they imagine any good reason for the people of GB to harbour dissident views vis-à-vis the Pakistani state. Indeed, the overwhelming majority of the region’s people evince no overt resentment towards tourists from ‘neechay’ — the term commonly used to refer to mainland Pakistan — and in fact are in regular contact with the rest of the country as migrant workers and in the case of the youth, education.

On the surface, ordinary people are not paralysed by the kind of acute economic hardship that is often posited as a major cause of disaffection in other peripheral regions of Pakistan — Balochistan would be the stand-out case in this regard. But then an increasingly literate population always views its material deprivation in relative terms; GB’s educated youth are increasingly conscious of the vast mineral wealth hidden away in the region’s mountain ranges, and resentful of the manner in which the Pakistani state and its foreign patrons are apparently splitting up the booty.

Even if the optimists are to be believed and all of GB’s almost two million people were to overnight become affluent on the back of the influx of Chinese capital — which, as a matter of fact, is little more than a pipe dream — nationalism would still find a home in the peaks and valleys of Ghizer, Astore and Hunza. The reason is simple; 70 years after Pakistan became ‘free’, GB’s people enjoy none of the rights to which the rest of us Pakistanis can at least nominally lay claim.

GB’s people enjoy none of the rights to which the rest can lay claim.

On the one hand, the state here continues to see GB’s status as that of a ‘disputed territory’ which requires international arbitration while on the other hand it treats the region like a strategic buffer zone in the guise of a classical colonial possession consistently denying the region’s people political rights in accordance with global conventions.

Quite aside from the fact that GB is not part of Kashmir as per the official narrative, there can be no justification for the state's flagrant denial of basic political freedoms. But then again, this is Pakistan, land of the pure, where anything can be justified in the name of defence of religion.

And this, ultimately, is the paradox of modern nationalism. As an ideology of resistance to the organised power of the state, especially in explicitly colonial contexts, it has served the cause of freedom more than any other idea of political community — the mix of nationalism and Marxism found in the 20th-century emancipatory movements led by larger-than-life figures such as Mao, Castro and Cabral are particularly noteworthy.

Yet the story of nationalism at the service of the state has filled even more history books — and generated more tyranny than anything known to humankind before the onset of modernity.

That the Pakistani state and its ideologues continue to assert the unity of the mythical Muslim nation in the face of dissident nationalisms in GB, Balochistan, Sindh and other underrepresented regions is testament only to the undemocratic nature of the structure of power. Indeed, the story of regions such as Balochistan which remain in chains despite their formal constitutional status confirms that the solution to the intractable problem that is the Pakistani state’s colonial essence cannot just be about extending constitutional rights to regions like GB.

For its part the state has, over the past couple of decades, attempted to co-opt the fast-growing population of educated youth of GB by extending opportunities for state employment whilst also facilitating local entrepreneurs seeking to establish links with big capital both within Pakistan and without. But the contradictions inherent in the political economy of internal colonialism continue to rear their head in the shape of political movements like those led by the incarcerated red Baba Jan.

It is unlikely that we will ever see another era like that of the revolutionary nationalisms of the 1960s and 1970s, particularly given the manner in which those Third World nationalisms degenerated after the acquisition of state power. But the desire of politically conscious elements in regions like GB to secure their right to self-determination is as acute as ever. We dismiss it at our peril.

And calling the mad rush to loot the region’s resources development will not change what it is —– a shameless politics of thekas with no end. Yet resistance to this plunder will persist, like it has since the very beginning of time.

The writer teaches at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.

Published in Dawn, July 1st, 2016