This “Year of India” (5): … and the chronic crisis of Pakistan
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Salman Rushdie, no less, finished his packed public talk at Brown three weeks ago with the observation that Pakistan is the globe’s true nightmare nation — that if Pakistan doesn’t rescue itself from political collapse into extremism, “we’re all fucked.” In this “Year of India” at Brown, we are talking again about the Pakistan question next door — about India’s nuclear-armed neighor and sibling, on the verge, some say, of meltdown.
Farzana Shaikh is a child of Pakistan who writes about her country now as the daughter of a distressed family. The thread through her pithy analysis, Making Sense of Pakistan, is that Pakistan’s problem is not fundamentally with India, much less with the United States and the world, but with itself and Islam. She begins:
More than six decades after being carved out of British India, Pakistan remains an enigma. Born in 1947 as the first self-professed Muslim state, it rejected theocracy. Vulnerable to the appeal of political Islam, it aspired to Western constitutionalism. Prone to military dictatorship, it hankered after democracy. Unsure of what it stood for, Pakistan has been left clutching at an identity beset by an ambigous relation to Islam…
Farzana Shaikh, Making Sense of Pakistan, Columbia University Press.
Salman Rushdie’s irresistible prose is one touchstone of our conversation:
download an mp3It is well known that the term ‘Pakistan,’ an acronym, was originally thought up in England by a group of Muslim intellectuals. P for the Punjabis. A for the Afghans, K for the Kashmiris, S for Sind and the ‘tan’, they say, for Balochistan. (No mention of the East West, you notice: Bangladesh never got its name in the title, and so eventually it took the hint and seceded from the secessionists….). So, it was a word born in exile which then went East, was borne across or translated, and imposed itself on history; a returning migrant, settling down on partitioned land, forming a palimpsest on the past. A palimpsest obscures what lies beneath. To build Pakistan it was necessary to cover up Indian history, to deny that Indian centuries lay just beneath the surface.
Salman Rushdie, Shame, 1983. p. 87.
March 16th, 2010 at 9:52 am
Tidbit about Pakistan name is beyond stupid. All political entities are named somehow. It is certainly more creative than “United States of America”, a person of art should appreciate that. Rushdie is Indian patriot and of course he will bash India’s enemies. Don’t be a coward and hide bigotry using “child of Pakistan”. It is like foxnews using blacks to bash blacks.
April 14th, 2010 at 12:52 am
While I agree with most of what Dr Shaikh is saying, I am a bit perplexed why she is introduced as a child of Pakistan. She was indeed born in Pakistan when East Pakistan (which later became Bangladesh) was part of it. Her father was a proud Bengali civil servant. In a world, where ethnic identity often supersedes national identity, one would assume Dr Shaikh’s Bengali identity to be more important. This is more so important keeping in mind the acrimonious relationship between the East and West Pakistan.
April 15th, 2010 at 6:39 am
For these Western ears this interview Dr. Shaikh on Pakistan was exceptional. Immediately I noticed the (obvious if you are tuned) similarity of Pakistan’s struggle with that of Israel (secular vs. religious identity, how to deal with minorities, making peace with neighbors etc.) and of course it was mentioned. In both cases, as Dr. Shaikh noted, we cannot leave the situation to these people to solve or not solve in their own way because of their effects on the rest of us.
She is wonderful to listen to – and it’s great conversation. Chris, you have done many other programs, and on Pakistan. You often manage something much better than the ordinary, and this was one of those…..thank you.