Recently, I've heard it said that the problem with Pakistan is that we don't have a national identity. America has a national identity. Even India has a national identity. So why don't we?

My own view is that national identity is overrated.

I say this as a man who chose to move back to Pakistan after many years abroad, who wore a green wig to last year's T20 World Cup final at Lords, and who experienced undeniable pleasure at the fact that his first child was born on Aug 14. I'm a Pakistani, no doubt about it.

At least, I am a Pakistani to me. But if the test of being a Pakistani is that I am by definition anti-Indian, then I fail. I don't like losing to the Indian team in cricket. I really don't like the Indian government's position on Kashmir. And I really, really don't like it when Indian leaders talk about launching air strikes against Pakistan. But am I fundamentally anti-Indian? No. If it were up to me, I'd have both countries compromise on our disputes, end our dangerous military standoff, and institute visa-free travel.

Similarly, if the test of being a Pakistani is that I'd like our country to look more like what Ziaul Haq had in mind, in other words a country where you could happily live your life according to any interpretation of Islam so long as it was his interpretation of Islam, then I fail again. I don't want my government imposing its view of religion on me. There is a reason why differences between Sunnis and Shias exist, and why differences between Barelvis and Deobandis exist. The reason these differences exist is that Muslims disagree. So I support the idea that Pakistan should be a place where Muslims are free to practise their religion according to their own conscience, and where religious minorities are free to do the same.

But let's say I was different. Let's say I hated India to the core. In Canada there are aging Sikh supporters of Khalistan who probably hate India to the core. Does hating India make me somehow Canadian? Or let's say that I liked Zia's particular vision of Islam. Maybe there are people in Saudi Arabia who like it too. So am I really a Saudi?

My point is that neither being virulently anti-Indian nor having a rigid, government-sponsored interpretation of religion necessarily makes someone Pakistani.

What does make someone Pakistani then? In its simplest terms being from here. If you're from Pakistan, then you're a Pakistani.

I recognise that this definition of national identity, which takes as its starting point people and geography rather than abstract ideology, may seem pretty useless. But I don't think it is useless at all, for three reasons.

First off, being able to define Pakistanis simply as people from Pakistan should come as a relief. Before 1947, there was no Pakistan. For some decades after, it looked like we might be overrun by a hostile India. Yet we're still here. We're almost 63 years old. We've just about lived a human lifetime. We don't need to conjure ourselves into existence through struggle and bloodshed and political will because we already exist. We're not a dream, we're reality. We're not some weird idea for a country, we are a country. We're normal. At last. And part of being normal is we don't have to justify to anyone else why there should be a Pakistan. There is a Pakistan. Let's move on.

Second, if we think about our national identity in this way we can stop clinging to oppressive ideologies to hold our ethnically diverse country together. We really shouldn't be at much risk of splitting apart.

Take each of our provinces in turn. The Hazara minority issue aside, the Pathans of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa are unlikely to want to join up with their brethren in Afghanistan for the simple reason that life in Afghanistan is much worse than it is in Pakistan. Sindh and Balochistan, their names notwithstanding, are multi-ethnic provinces that would themselves face ethnic divisions should they attempt to build independent states on the basis of ethnicity. So is Punjab, and landlocked besides. Of course, oppressing ethnic groups could drive them out of our federation, but provided we treat each other fairly, our reasons to remain together are more powerful.

Third, if we can accept that we're real people in a real place (instead of an idea of an imagined utopia), and that we are one country because we actually choose to be (instead of a sand castle in desperate need of wave-resistant ideology), then we can focus on what really matters understanding who our country is for. In a democracy, the answer is clear. Our country is for us. It exists to allow as many of us as possible to live better lives. At the moment, a few of us are living like kings. But most of us are living on weekly wages worth not much more than a kilo of pine nuts. When you're paid pine nuts, so to speak, you have every right to demand that things improve.

The stories countries tell themselves about their national identities are always partly fictional. Among millions of people, in any country, there will be differences. National identities are ways of denying those differences. After its civil war between North and South, America re-forged its national identity in conflicts against Native Americans, Germany, Japan, the Soviet Union. Now its conflict is with a few thousand terrorists.

But this last is hardly an adversary powerful enough to unite a nation of 300 million people. And cracks in America's national identity are re-emerging, with more uncompromising partisanship and political groupings that appear in many ways to be descended from those of the old North and South of a century and a half ago, even if now the terms used are Red and Blue.

In India too, some sections of society seem bent on forging a national identity as an upcoming superpower. It is perhaps no accident that this has been accompanied by the rise of anti-Muslim political parties and a backlash of Maoist tribal rebellions. The official national identity of India appears to be growing more distant from one that can encompass all of its people.

Pakistan has been making the same mistake, but we can stop. The problem with Pakistan isn't our national identity. The problem is that we have allowed ourselves to be distracted and bogged down in the name of national identity for too long.

I am Pakistani. Surely that should be enough.

The writer is the author of the novels Moth Smoke and The Reluctant Fundamentalist.