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So where can a nation get a memory for itself? Mahatma Gandhi tried to do something in this regard when he made a statement, time and again, that Indians are essentially a non-violent people. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru did that through his Discovery of India, where he identified unity-in-diversity as the core characteristic of India. Pakistan was bereft of such statesmanlike thinkers until now. It has spent much of its rather short life trying to find an identity through needling India. Unfortunately, criticising another yields only this much benefit in identity formation. The result is that Pakistan currently tops the list of failed-nations. It has a state all right. Oppressive and unfair, its very existence is dependent on American goodwill. Rooting for the worst of tendencies in the contemporary world, its rulers have repeatedly sought the glue of fundamentalism to check divisive tendencies within. Aitzaz Ahsan, a scholarly politician, has made an extraordinary effort to fill the void in collective memory for Pakistan. He recollects the history of Pakistan much in the manner that Nehru did the history of India. Hindus and Muslims, according to the story that Ahsan tells us, were just two religions that happened by the by in the history of the people who inhabited the land of the Indus. To make too much of a fuss about the one or the other, such as the fundamentalists are doing today, would be a great mistake. He makes a clear distinction between the people who live in the area of the Indus and those who live beyond it, in the subcontinent. Traditionally we have become used to calling both as the people of India. Those who set up civilizations in Kurukshetra, Pataliputra and beyond were a different people. With visible differences in culture, economy and social behaviour, they always fought for the control of the entire subcontinent. The story of one such great battle was narrated in the Mahabharata. That was merely the beginning of a series of conflicts in the Panipat-Tarrain-Sirhind triangle. In between the wars people set up impressive civilisations. These were people from the Indus region and not from the lands to the southeast. The ones who really held the subcontinent together were they who came from Central Asia. Their rule continued for a thousand years. These men related better with the lands beyond the Hindukush and always hoped to be back in Central Asia. However, they too succumbed to the geographical imperative created by the land of the Indus that forced them to develop roots here. Their minds and hearts may have been in creating an empire that would extend far into Central Asia, but the Indus was now their land. When some of their political elite set up bases beyond the Indus in Delhi and Agra, the people of the Indus, now increasingly Muslim, revolted and these revolts would continue right down to the 20th century. Each effort to get free of the rulers from Delhi helped strengthen the roots of the people of the Indus. These people finally succeeded in wresting for themselves a state in 1947, Pakistan, says Ahsan. He narrates a history going back to over 5000 years to say that the people of Pakistan created a distinct culture for themselves, one that was tolerant, pleasant and appreciative of a good life. Those who, under Central
Asian pressures, are now trying to destroy this culture and impose an
uncivil fundamentalism should see that their efforts are historically
destined to fail, he says. |
Nation states are like men
in many ways, especially in their dependence on memories. Without
memories, a nation is like an amnesiac vainly searching for a reason to
exist. "Why should we be a nation", becomes a question
consuming an overwhelming amount of time. If acceptable answers do not
pop up quickly enough, the people may soon start breaking heads, much in
the way it is happening in Pakistan for the past 60 years.