Edited by Christophe Jaffrelot. (New Delhi: Manohar, 2002).
ISBN 81-7304-407-4. Price Rs 650 (US$13). 352 pages.
ISBN 81-7304-407-4. Price Rs 650 (US$13). 352 pages.
The book gives an account of Pakistan’s complicated political mosaic focuses on ethnic tensions within the country, the Mohajir movement, Pakhtun and Baloch nationalisms, and the "Punjabization" of the country.
There are thoughtful essays on the problems that Pakistan has had in achieving a coherent national identity and becoming a stable nation. The initial rationale for separating Pakistan from India was the presumed need to provide a homeland for the otherwise minority Muslims in an overwhelmingly Hindu India. But Muslim identity was never sufficient to make Pakistan into a well-functioning nation; Islam is central to far too many other countries to be the exclusive basis of Pakistan’s sense of national identity.
Mohajirs are now developing separatist tendencies. The Pakhtun, the Sindhi and the Baloch nationalists are not as vocal but they still endorse centrifugal forces due to their resentment of what they call the -Punjabi hegemony; Islam too has failed as a cementing force because of the increasingly violent Shia-Sunni conflict.
National integration remains a remote prospect for Pakistan, but Pakistani nationalism exists, largely because it expresses itself against others- India, first of all. Over time, hostility toward India also proved inadequate as a unifying force. The inescapable fact is that Pakistanis are divided not only by different variations of Islam but also by a host of other ethnic, linguistic, cultural, and social differences.
Pakistan has become a key actor in the realm of international relations post 11 September 2001. Like after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, now also, the geopolitical situation has made it the main base for US military operations and the fight against Bin Laden’s Jihadist network. But Pakistan’s strategic position, this time round, was also due to its special links with the Taliban.
This book provides an up to the date account of Pakistan’s extraordinarily complicated political tapestry. The contributors look at the country’s foreign policy, and the dialectic between domestic and foreign policy besides the role of the army, which is known as the establishment. And hold a mirror to the intersection of religious and ethnic factors, a deeply flawed institutionalization of democracy, and the potentially explosive cross impacts of regional and domestic politics.
Author (Editor), Christophe Jaffrelot, is Director of CERI and Editor-in-Chief of Critique Internationale. His most recent publications are The Hindu nationalist movement and Indian Politics, 1925 to the 1990s. He has also co-edited with Blom Hansen, The BJP and the Compulsions of Politics in India.
