KARACHI, Aug 25: The nation that we were in 1947 no longer exists, and the Pakistani people could never create the state we set out to, said the eminent historian and author of a number of books I.A. Rahman at a seminar titled “Pakistan at 61: neither a state, nor a nation” organised by the Irtiqa Institute of Social Science, the Hamza Alavi Institute, in collaboration with the Jinnah Medical College.
Speaking to people from various walks of life, Mr Rahman traced the concept of nation and state in the subcontinent from early history to the present-day Pakistan. In the western world, nation and state grew hand-in-hand whereas in this subcontinent, the state came into existence before there was a need of a nation, he observed. Earlier, he added, people were recognised by their ethnicities, like Turks, Iranians, etc, until the Mughals came and decided to call themselves as “Indian Muslims”.
“Nations are not permanent; they were not always there, and will not be; they may exist at a dormant stage but can only become true nations when they become active,” he said.
Mr Rahman was of the view that the idea of a Muslim nation did not develop overnight, rather it evolved over decades as was particularly evident from the Pakistan Movement. He quoted excerpts from Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s speeches at various stages in the movement, and references of other historians to show that how a movement that initially began as a political struggle was given religious connotation at the end.
The evolution became somewhat clearer during the March 1940 Lahore Resolution which brought the two-nation theory to a public platform. Using definition of a nation — that if it loses any of its essential characteristics, it ceases to be a nation —, Mr Rahman remarked that “Pakistan has also ceased to be a nation”. He talked about the intra-Muslim divisions, and observed that “even religious solidarity cannot eclipse national differences”.
Moving on to state, Mr Rahman said that the state of Pakistan began as an extension of a colonial period. He described the various civilian and military dispensations in Pakistan as “different republics”, and said that these seven to eight republics had wrought a big havoc in the country. “Pakistan no longer qualifies as a state as defined by the Westphalian definition since it does not have a monopoly of power.” He said another problem that the country had to face was that it was interpreted by everyone in his own way.
Mr Rahman also discussed how Mr Jinnah, using his political genius, had brought together various diverse groups under one umbrella, and said that the Quaid’s successors had simply subjugated those groups and caused disharmony.
While answering a question, Mr Rahman said that Pakistan had now lost its internal sovereignty, which included various rights that citizens enjoy. When a state reaches a stage where people start disappearing and the state claims having no knowledge about their disappearance, then such a situation questions the internal sovereignty of the state, according to him.
Dr Manzoor Ahmed, who presided over the seminar, said that there were too many sacred cows involved in the issue, and to discuss it threadbare would mean stepping on too many toes. He said that Pakistan as a nation/state had never been discussed properly in the country’s early years because most of the literature produced in that period tended to be of emotional nature. “Pakistan may become a nation but it will take another 100 years”, he remarked.