The Great Pakistani Identity Hunt: Or, How to Be Anyone But Your Neighbor
A
Seven-Decade Quest to Escape the Subcontinent by Borrowing Persian, Arab, and
Turkish Clothes
Pakistan's
search for a national identity since 1947 reveals a fascinating paradox: a
nation physically rooted in the Indian subcontinent that has spent seventy
years trying to prove it belongs anywhere else. From a Persianized national
anthem that almost no one speaks as a mother tongue, to the Arabization
campaigns of the Zia era, to the current obsession with Turkish dramas,
Pakistan has engaged in relentless "civilizational hopping." This
article synthesizes discussions on the Qaumi Taranah's deliberate linguistic
engineering, the genetic evidence showing Pakistanis are far closer to Indians
than to Arabs, the cultural resilience of South Asian traditions through
Bollywood and Coke Studio, and the structural tensions between state-imposed
identity and organic continuity. The result is a nation caught between its
ideological aspirations and its geographical reality.
Prologue: The Friend Who Returns With a New Accent
If nations were people, Pakistan would be that one friend
who returns from every summer vacation with a new accent, a different wardrobe,
and a completely revised family tree. Since 1947, the country has engaged in a
relentless, sometimes comical, and often tragic pursuit of a
"civilizational home" that is anywhere but where it actually sits on
the map. It is a story of a state trying to build a fortress of identity out of
imported bricks while ignoring the very soil it is built upon.
The historian Ayesha Jalal once observed, "Pakistan's
identity crisis stems from a fundamental contradiction: it was created as a
homeland for Muslims, but Muslims were not a nation in any conventional sense
of the word." This observation captures the essence of the dilemma. The
founders needed to forge a new nationalism from scratch, and they chose to look
westward—toward Persia, then Arabia, and now Turkey—rather than eastward toward
the civilization they had just left.
Chapter One: The Anthem That Speaks to No One
The first major brick in what might be called the
"Invisible Grid" of Pakistani identity was the national anthem, the
Qaumi Taranah. It is a piece of music so committed to the "Not-India"
project that it was written in a language that almost no one in the country
actually spoke as a mother tongue.
The Persian Question
A common observation about the anthem is that it is almost
entirely in Persian. Technically, it is written in highly Persianized Urdu,
which exists on a register of mutual intelligibility with standard Urdu.
However, out of the entire anthem, only one word—"ka" (the Urdu
possessive)—is not found in the Persian lexicon. The rest is pure Farsi, the
language of medieval Persian courts and poetry.
The choice of Persian served several strategic and cultural
purposes. First, Persian had been for centuries the "lingua franca"
of Islamic history—the language of courts, administration, and high culture
across South and Central Asia. By using Persian, the state was tapping into a
prestigious literary heritage that felt "Islamic" without being
exclusively "Arab." Dr. Tariq Rahman, a leading linguist of South
Asia, explains: "Persian represented a middle ground—it was foreign enough
to distance Pakistan from India, yet familiar enough to the elite who had grown
up with the Mughal legacy."
Second, Persian offered a "Clean Slate" identity.
Modern Urdu shares a common grammatical base (derived from Prakrit, an ancient
Indian language) with Hindi. By leaning heavily into Persian vocabulary, the
creators could distance the anthem from the shared linguistic roots of the
subcontinent, making it sound more distinct from "Indian" cultural
markers. The linguistic scholar Amrit Rai noted in his work on the Hindi-Urdu
divide that "every Persian word in Urdu was a political statement."
Third, Persian served as a universalist bridge. While
Pakistan was linguistically diverse—with Bengali, Punjabi, Sindhi, Pashto, and
Balochi all claiming millions of speakers—Persian was seen as a neutral,
high-literary language that sat above provincial identities. Or so the theory
went.
The Seven-Year Delay
Pakistan was founded in 1947, but the official anthem was
not approved until 1954. Why did it take seven years to adopt a national song?
Several factors contributed to this "identity crisis."
Political instability played a major role. The early years
were defined by the death of the founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah in 1948, the
assassination of Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan in 1951, and the struggle to
draft a constitution. An anthem was a lower priority than basic national
survival. As one cabinet minister allegedly remarked during a heated debate
about the anthem, "We are still trying to figure out if we will exist
tomorrow, and you want to worry about poetry?"
Then there was the musical-lyric gap. Interestingly, the
music was composed first. Ahmed G. Chagla, a celebrated composer, created the
tune in 1949—a complex, non-repetitive fusion of Eastern and Western scales
that drew on both Hindustani classical traditions and European marches. The
government played the tune for years during state visits without any lyrics. It
was a bizarre spectacle: foreign dignitaries would stand at attention while a
melody played that no Pakistani could sing.
It wasn't until 1952 that a competition was held to find
words that fit Chagla's intricate composition. The melody was deliberately
difficult—it did not follow the standard repetitive structure of most national
anthems. Hafeez Jalandhari, a poet with deep roots in the Persian literary
tradition, eventually won the competition. His lyrics, completed in 1952 and
officially approved in 1954, fit the music like a glove—but only if one
understood Persian.
The Bengali Question
Perhaps the most significant factor delaying the anthem's
adoption was the growing Language Movement in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh).
Choosing an Urdu-heavy or Persian-heavy anthem risked alienating the
Bengali-speaking majority, who already made up 55 percent of Pakistan's
population and were already protesting for their linguistic rights.
Dr. M. R. Akhtar Mukul, a historian of the Language
Movement, notes: "For Bengalis, the anthem debate was not abstract. It was
a direct test of whether Pakistan would be a federation of equals or a West
Pakistani dominion. When they heard the Persianized lyrics, they heard the
voice of an elite that had no interest in their culture."
The disconnect was so stark that the government initially
considered having two national songs—one in Urdu and one in Bengali—to satisfy
both wings. However, once the Qaumi Taranah was approved in 1954, the cabinet
declared that separate regional songs were "unnecessary." This
dismissal deepened the sense among Bengalis that they were second-class
citizens in their own country.
Chapter Two: The East Pakistan Friction—When the Anthem
Became a Weapon
The adoption of the national anthem was far from smooth.
While it was celebrated as a milestone of sovereignty in West Pakistan, it
became a significant point of cultural friction in East Pakistan. This friction
would prove to be one of the early "fracture lines" that contributed
to the eventual secession of East Pakistan in 1971.
Linguistic Alienation
To the Bengali-speaking majority, the anthem felt like a
linguistic imposition from the West. Since the anthem was in highly Persianized
Urdu, it was practically unintelligible to the average Bengali. The
"National Soundscape" being built in Karachi felt foreign to Dacca
(now Dhaka). A Bengali schoolteacher from the era recalled, "We were told
to stand and honor words we could not understand. It felt less like patriotism
and more like submission."
The political scientist Badruddin Umar argued that the
anthem became a symbol of what he called "cultural colonization from
within." In his analysis, West Pakistan was not content with political
dominance—it wanted to erase the very linguistic identity of the eastern wing.
The "Dual Anthem" Suggestion Rejected
The government's rejection of a dual-anthem solution was
particularly damaging. For many Bengalis, the dismissal of Bengali as a
language worthy of national expression was not just an insult but a declaration
of intent. If the national anthem could not be sung in the language of the
majority, what did "national" even mean?
The historian William Dalrymple has observed, "The
tragedy of Pakistan's early years is that the state's identity project was
designed by and for an elite that lived in Karachi and Lahore, and they simply
could not see why a peasant in Sylhet should care about Persian poetry."
A Symbol of West Pakistani Hegemony
For many Bengalis, the anthem wasn't just a song; it was a
symptom of the broader "Urdu-only" policy that had already sparked
the bloody Language Movement of 1952, when police killed student protesters in
Dhaka demanding recognition of Bengali as a state language. While West
Pakistani singers like Najam Ara recall the recording of the anthem as a moment
of "great pride," the mood in the East was one of growing resistance.
The cultural critic Niaz Zaman puts it bluntly: "You
cannot build a nation by telling 55 percent of your people that their mother
tongue is irrelevant to the national project. The anthem was not a unifying
symbol; it was a Rorschach test. West Pakistanis saw prestige and pedigree;
East Pakistanis saw domination and dismissal."
Chapter Three: The Jagannath Azad Controversy—A Lost
Secular Moment?
There is a persistent, though heavily disputed, historical
narrative that the first unofficial anthem of Pakistan was written by a Hindu
poet, Jagannath Azad, at the personal request of Jinnah in 1947. According to
this story, Jinnah wanted a secular anthem to show that Pakistan was a land for
all religious communities. The proposed anthem reportedly emphasized the shared
citizenship of Muslims, Hindus, Christians, and others.
The story goes that after Jinnah's death in 1948, the state
shifted toward a more religious and "Persianized" identity, leading
to the commissioning of the current anthem by Hafeez Jalandhari. Most
mainstream Pakistani historians reject the Azad story as a myth. Dr. Mubarak
Ali, a prominent Pakistani historian, states: "There is no archival
evidence for the Jagannath Azad anthem. It appears to be a later invention,
perhaps to contrast a imagined secular past with a religious present."
Yet the story persists, and it remains a common point of
discussion regarding how Pakistan's identity "hardened" in its first
decade. Whether factual or not, the Azad narrative serves as a useful
counterfactual—a reminder that Pakistan's identity was not predetermined but
was actively constructed through choices that could have been made differently.
The journalist Khaled Ahmed has written that "the Azad
story, true or false, represents the road not taken—a more inclusive, less
linguistically aggressive Pakistan that might have kept East Pakistan within
the fold."
Chapter Four: Pride and Pedigree in West Pakistan
In West Pakistan, the reaction to the anthem was more
positive, though there were debates among the elite. Understanding this
reaction is crucial to understanding the cultural schizophrenia that would
define Pakistan.
A "High Culture" Success
The Western elite and the military establishment saw the
Persianized lyrics as a triumph of "civilizational pedigree." It
validated the state's desire to look toward the Persian and Turkic worlds
rather than its Indic roots. The poet and intellectual Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi
defended the choice of Persian, arguing that "Urdu without Persian is like
a bird without wings—it cannot soar to the heights that a national anthem
requires."
This perspective reveals a deep anxiety: the fear that
without the ornamentation of Persian, Pakistani culture would be exposed as
merely a variant of North Indian culture. The "Persianization"
project was thus a form of cultural armor.
The Music-First Problem
Because the music was composed in 1949 and the lyrics only
added in 1954, the public had "listened" to the anthem as an
instrumental piece for years. When the lyrics finally arrived, some found them
difficult to sing. The melody, composed by Chagla, was complex and did not
follow the standard repetitive structure of most national anthems.
The musicologist Yousuf Sadiq explains: "Most anthems
are designed to be sung by crowds. Chagla's composition is closer to a
classical raga—beautiful but demanding. It was never intended for a stadium
full of people. This tells you something about the elite origins of the
project. It was designed for gramophone records in drawing rooms, not for the
masses."
Chapter Five: The Genetic Irony—DNA Doesn't Lie
Perhaps the most profound irony of Pakistan's identity
project is revealed not by history or linguistics but by genetics. The DNA of
Pakistan's population tells a story that contradicts decades of state-sponsored
identity engineering.
The South Asian Trinity
Almost everyone in Pakistan (and North India) is a mix of
three primary ancestral groups. The difference between a Punjabi in Lahore and
one in Amritsar is often just the proportions of these three, not the presence
or absence of any fundamental genetic difference.
The first group is the Ancient Ancestral South Indian
(AASI), the indigenous hunter-gatherer lineage of the subcontinent. The second
is the Iranian Farmer, Neolithic farmers who migrated from the Zagros mountains
(modern Iran) thousands of years ago and mixed with the AASI to form the basis
of the Indus Valley Civilization. The third is the Steppe Pastoralist (often
loosely called "Aryan"), Bronze Age migrants from the Eurasian Steppe
(Central Asia and Eastern Europe) who arrived around 1500 to 1000 BCE.
Dr. David Reich, a geneticist at Harvard who has studied
South Asian populations extensively, notes: "The people of the Indus
Valley—whether they live on the Indian side or the Pakistani side—share a
common ancestral heritage that predates the partition of 1947 by thousands of
years. The genetic boundary between India and Pakistan is essentially
non-existent."
The India-Pakistan Overlap
If you compare a Punjabi or Sindhi from Pakistan with a
Punjabi or Jat from North India, their DNA is often 95 to 99 percent identical.
The "Indus Frontier" is not at the Wagah border crossing; it is
further west, beyond the traditional boundaries of South Asia.
The main difference is a gradient. As you move from
Northwest Pakistan toward South and East India, the percentage of AASI
(Indigenous) DNA increases, while the Steppe and Iranian Farmer percentages
slightly decrease. But this is a smooth continuum, not a sharp break.
Dr. Razib Khan, a population geneticist, explains: "If
you gave a geneticist a hundred DNA samples from Lahore and a hundred from
Amritsar, they could not reliably tell you which was which. The populations are
effectively identical."
The Western Influence: Less Than Imagined
While Pakistan's national identity looks toward Persia and
Afghanistan, the actual DNA tells a more nuanced story. Pashtuns and
Balochis—the groups that live closest to the Iranian plateau—do carry
significantly higher Iranian Farmer and Central Asian components than Punjabis
or Sindhis. However, even Pakistani Pashtuns are genetically closer to North
Indian Brahmins than they are to Western Iranians.
The "Persian" DNA specifically from modern-day
Fars or Western Iran is relatively low in the general Pakistani population. The
"Iranian" component in Pakistan is mostly from prehistoric
migrations, not from the medieval Persian empires that the anthem celebrates.
And then there is the Arab "ghost." Despite the
"Arabization" under General Zia-ul-Haq, actual Arab genetic markers
(specifically Haplogroup J1) are statistically negligible in Pakistan, often
less than 1 to 2 percent, even among those who claim "Sayyid" or
"Qureshi" descent. Most such claims, geneticists agree, are cultural
or social rather than biological.
The geneticist Dr. Toomas Kivisild puts it bluntly:
"The idea that Pakistan has significant Arab ancestry is a myth. The
numbers simply do not support it. What Pakistan has is a very strong South
Asian genetic signature with a thin Iranian overlay in the western
regions."
The Genetic Breakdown
To put numbers to this: a typical Punjabi from Pakistan
might have approximately 20 to 30 percent AASI (Indigenous South Asian), 40 to
50 percent Iranian Farmer, and 20 to 30 percent Steppe ancestry. A Sindhi might
show 25 to 35 percent AASI, 45 to 55 percent Iranian Farmer, and 10 to 20
percent Steppe. A Pashtun from Pakistan might show 10 to 15 percent AASI, 50 to
60 percent Iranian Farmer, and 25 to 30 percent Steppe.
Now compare this to a North Indian from an upper-caste
background: 20 to 30 percent AASI, 40 to 50 percent Iranian Farmer, and 20 to
30 percent Steppe. The numbers are essentially the same.
The profound irony was captured by the novelist Mohsin
Hamid, who wrote: "We are brothers with the people across the border in
ways that go deeper than politics. Our cells know what our politicians refuse
to admit."
Chapter Six: The Zia Pivot—From Persianate to Arabized
The shift under General Zia-ul-Haq (1977–1988) was a
fundamental pivot. If the 1950s was about Persianized "High Culture"
to distinguish from India, the 1980s was about "Arabization" to
transform the very soul of Pakistani society.
From Indo-Persian to Arabized
Before Zia, Pakistan's Islamic identity was largely
"Indo-Persian"—meaning it was influenced by Sufism, Persian poetry
(especially of Allama Iqbal), and a shared aesthetic with the Mughal era. This
version of Islam was syncretic, mystical, and deeply intertwined with the
cultural traditions of the subcontinent.
Zia viewed this version of Islam as "contaminated"
by local Indian traditions and "Hindu influences." The political
scientist Maya Tudor notes: "Zia's Islam was not the Islam of the shrines
and the qawwals. It was the Islam of the law books—literalist, codified, and
fundamentally foreign to Pakistani soil."
The linguistic shifts were particularly visible. Common
greetings like "Khuda Hafiz" (Persian for "God be your
protector") began to be replaced by "Allah Hafiz" (Arabic for
"Allah be your protector") in state media. The change might seem
minor, but it signaled a profound reorientation. "Khuda" is a Persian
word that had been used by South Asian Muslims for centuries; "Allah"
is Arabic, the language of the Quran.
Dr. Tariq Rahman observes: "The shift from Khuda Hafiz
to Allah Hafiz was a deliberate act of linguistic engineering. It was meant to
erase the Persian heritage and replace it with an Arabized identity. It worked
remarkably well—today, most Pakistanis under forty use Allah Hafiz without
knowing that their grandparents used Khuda Hafiz."
The Saudi Influence and the Petro-Dollar Connection
This shift was not organic; it was heavily funded and
politically motivated. The influx of Saudi aid during the Soviet-Afghan War
brought with it a specific, literalist brand of Islam—Wahhabism or
Salafism—that was inherently Arab-centric. The Saudis built mosques, funded
madrassas, and supported religious parties that promoted their particular
interpretation of Islam.
Millions of Pakistanis also began migrating to the Gulf for
work. These workers sent back remittances that kept the economy afloat, but
they also brought back a "Gulf-style" Islamic practice that looked
down upon the local "Pir and Dargah" (Sufi shrine) culture of the
Punjab and Sindh. The remittance economy thus became a vector for cultural
change.
The journalist Ahmed Rashid, who covered the Afghan jihad
extensively, notes: "The Saudi influence on Pakistan during the 1980s
cannot be overstated. The Saudis didn't just give money—they gave ideology. And
Zia was a willing recipient because this ideology also served his political
purposes."
The Afghan War and the Pan-Islamic Warrior Identity
To mobilize the Mujahideen against the Soviets, Zia needed a
"pan-Islamic" warrior identity. Arab volunteers and Arab funding
required an ideological framework that looked like the desert-warrior motifs of
early Islamic history, rather than the "soft" courtly traditions of
the Mughals.
The Pakistani state began promoting a narrative that
Pakistan was not just a nation but a frontier fortress of Islam—the
"Gateway to Central Asia" and the "Bulwark against
communism." This narrative required an identity that was more aggressive,
more centralized, and more "pure" than the syncretic traditions of
the subcontinent.
The academic S. V. R. Nasr has argued that "Zia's
project was not merely religious but civilizational. He wanted to reorient
Pakistan away from its South Asian moorings and toward the Middle East. The
anthem's Persian had been a step in that direction; Zia wanted to finish the
journey by replacing Persian with Arabic."
Chapter Seven: The Turkish Turn—Ertuğrul and the
Neo-Ottoman Fantasy
The current obsession with Turkish dramas like
"Diriliş: Ertuğrul" (Resurrection: Ertuğrul) is the latest chapter in
Pakistan's long search for a civilizational home. It represents yet another
pivot—this time toward a "Neo-Ottoman" identity that allows
Pakistanis to celebrate a "warrior" Islamic history that is perhaps
more exciting than the Arab model, while still maintaining distance from the
Indian "other."
The Ertuğrul Phenomenon
The state's embrace of Turkish dramas has been
extraordinary. Prime Minister Imran Khan (during his tenure) repeatedly praised
"Ertuğrul" and encouraged Pakistanis to watch it. State television
broadcast the show with Urdu dubbing. Merchandise featuring the show's
characters became ubiquitous in Pakistani markets.
Why Turkey? The appeal is multi-layered. Turkey offers a
model of a Muslim-majority nation that is also a regional power with a proud
military history. The Ottoman Empire, unlike the Arab caliphates, had ruled
over lands that are now part of Pakistan's imagined sphere of influence. And
crucially, Turkey is not India—it offers a "foreign" identity that is
more prestigious and powerful-seeming than Pakistan's own local traditions.
The cultural critic Noman Ahmed has observed: "Turkish
dramas give Pakistanis a way to feel connected to a glorious Islamic past
without having to engage with the messy, complicated reality of their own
history. The Mughals are too 'Indian' for comfort; the Ottomans are safely
distant."
The Imagined Turkic Lineage
The pivot toward Turkey allows many Pakistanis to reimagine
their own ancestry. Dominant groups in Pakistan's heartland, such as the
Punjabis, have historical roots as Rajputs or Jats—communities that they share
with North India. Under the British "Martial Race" theory, these
groups were praised for their warrior status, but they were never considered
"foreign."
By leaning into the "Turkic" identity (the Mughals
themselves were Central Asian Turko-Mongols), the Pakistani state allows these
local groups to view their "warrior" nature not as a shared trait
with Indian Rajputs, but as a biological inheritance from Central Asian
conquerors. The Turkish drama "Ertuğrul" gave the masses a way to
feel "Turkish" without actually having to learn a single word of the
Turkish language.
Dr. Farzana Shaikh, a scholar of Pakistani identity, notes:
"There is something poignant about the Turkish turn. Pakistanis are
essentially claiming a connection to a people they have little genetic or
historical link to. It is identity as performance, not as lived reality."
Chapter Eight: The Unbreakable Grid—Why the Masses Stay
South Asian
Despite decades of state-sponsored identity
engineering—Persian, Arab, Turkish—the cultural landscape of Pakistan today
remains stubbornly, almost aggressively, South Asian. The "Invisible
Grid" of daily life has proven far more resilient than any anthem or
ideological campaign.
The Bollywood Trojan Horse
Despite multiple bans on Indian films and the rise of
"narrative warfare" in cinema, Bollywood remains the undisputed
heavyweight of the Pakistani subconscious. The journalist Nadeem Farooq Paracha
has called Bollywood "the real national cinema of Pakistan"—a
provocative statement that contains more than a grain of truth.
The wedding economy provides the clearest evidence. It is a
running joke—and a cultural reality—that a Pakistani wedding is essentially a
three-day tribute to Bollywood choreography. From Mehndi dances to the
"entry" songs, the aesthetic is entirely derived from Mumbai's dream
factory. A wedding planner in Lahore told this author: "If I played only
Pakistani music at a wedding, the guests would riot. They want the latest
Bollywood hits. That's what they dance to."
The linguistic barrier to Bollywood is zero. Because the
masses speak Urdu, Punjabi, and Sindhi—all mutually intelligible with Hindi in
their colloquial forms—a Bollywood song "feels" like home in a way
that Arabic nasheeds or Turkish folk songs never could. The film scholar
Madhava Prasad has argued that "the Hindi-Urdu divide is largely a
literate elite phenomenon. For the masses, the language of Bollywood is simply
the language of entertainment."
And then there is what might be called emotional syncretism.
The masses on both sides of the border share the same "trauma
markers"—family dynamics, the obsession with engineering and medicine as
career paths, the melodrama of forbidden love, the importance of arranged
marriages. These stories resonate more deeply than the "warrior-hero"
tropes imported from Turkish or Arab history.
The filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, an Oscar-winning
Pakistani director, has observed: "You cannot tell a Pakistani story
without referencing the subcontinent. Our emotional vocabulary is South Asian.
That is just a fact."
The Coke Studio Effect
Pakistani music is perhaps the most successful
"Invisible Grid" that bypasses state ideology. The most popular music
genre in Pakistan isn't Arabic nasheeds or Turkish folk; it's the
high-production fusion seen on platforms like Coke Studio.
This music blends Qawwali—an inherently subcontinental Sufi
form that uses Hindustani classical structures—with Western rock and electronic
beats. Even the structure of the music relies on ragas and taals that are part
of the Hindustani classical tradition, which was codified in the subcontinent
thousands of years ago.
When a Pakistani artist like Abida Parveen or Ali Sethi
sings, they are using a musical grammar that predates Islam in South Asia. The
ragas they employ are the same ragas used by Hindu musicians in Varanasi. The
tabla and sarangi are instruments whose evolution is intertwined with the
entire subcontinent.
The "Pasoori" phenomenon—a song from Coke Studio
that became a global hit—proves that the "Indus Sound," a mix of
Punjabi folk and modern pop, is what actually defines the nation's creative
output. The song features lyrics in Punjabi, a language spoken on both sides of
the border, and its melody draws on folk traditions that have existed in the
region for centuries.
The music critic Zahra Salahuddin writes: "When
Pakistan tries to be Arab or Turkish, it fails artistically. When it embraces
its South Asian roots, it produces global hits. This should tell us something
about authenticity."
The Deep State of the Masses: Food and Fashion
The resilience of South Asian identity is also visible on
the dinner table. Despite the "Arabization" of the 1980s, the
Pakistani palate remains firmly rooted in the spice-heavy traditions of the
subcontinent. The dark store models of modern quick commerce in Pakistan are
delivering biryanis and parathas, not hummus and kabsa. A Pakistani meal is far
closer to what one would eat in Lucknow or Hyderabad than in Riyadh or Tehran.
The food historian Colleen Taylor Sen notes: "The
cooking of the Indus Valley is one of the world's great continuous culinary
traditions. No amount of Arabization can erase the fact that Pakistanis eat
with their hands, use the same spice blends as their Indian neighbors, and
share the same vocabulary for food."
In fashion, the continuity is equally striking. While
General Zia pushed the hijab and abaya, the vast majority of Pakistani women
still wear the shalwar kameez—a garment with deep Central Asian and North
Indian roots—stylized with the same embroidery patterns found across the border
in Punjab. The abaya is worn by a small minority, primarily in urban centers
and among certain religious communities.
The fashion designer Maheen Khan observes: "The shalwar
kameez is our national dress because it is authentic to this region. The abaya
is an import. You can see in the way women style themselves—the colors, the
cuts, the embroidery—that they are rooted in this place, not in Arabia."
Chapter Nine: Sufism—The Vernacular Islam That Won't
Disappear
Perhaps the most significant domain where South Asian
identity persists is in religious practice. The "Islam of the Masses"
in Pakistan is largely Sufi-oriented, centered around dargahs (shrines) and urs
(death anniversaries of saints). This practice is inherently syncretic, drawing
on traditions that predate the arrival of Islam in South Asia.
The Dargah Culture
Across Pakistan, millions of people visit Sufi shrines. The
most famous—Data Darbar in Lahore, Lal Shahbaz Qalandar in Sehwan, Abdullah
Shah Ghazi in Karachi—attract crowds that rival the Hajj in their devotion. At
these shrines, the boundaries between Islam and local tradition blur. Pilgrims
tie threads to grilles as they do in Hindu temples, offer flowers and incense,
and circumambulate tombs—practices that Wahhabi-influenced clerics condemn as
shirk (idolatry).
The music played at these shrines is Qawwali, which uses the
same ragas as Indian classical music. The poet-calligrapher Rasheed Butt
explains: "When you hear Qawwali, you are hearing a thousand years of
subcontinental civilization. The poetry may be about divine love, but the
melody is from the soil of this land."
The Clerical Backlash
The persistence of Sufi practice has put the Pakistani state
in a difficult position. The same state that promoted Arabization under Zia
also relies on the legitimacy that Sufi shrines provide. The contradiction is
unresolved.
Dr. Muhammad Qasim Zaman, a scholar of modern Islamic
thought, notes: "The Pakistani state has tried to have it both
ways—promoting an Arabized, textual Islam while also patronizing Sufi shrines
that the Arabizers condemn. This is not a stable equilibrium."
The Invisible Grid of Shared Spirituality
The Sufi networks of Pakistan connect to networks across
India. The Chishti order, one of the most popular in South Asia, has major
centers in Ajmer (India) and Pakpattan (Pakistan). Devotees on both sides
consider these shrines part of a single sacred geography.
The scholar Carl Ernst has argued that "the partition
of 1947 divided the land, but it could not divide the spiritual map. The
saints' graves ignore the Radcliffe Line completely."
Chapter Ten: The Architecture of Memory—What Buildings
Reveal
You can see the identity struggle in the very buildings of
Pakistan's cities. Architecture offers a physical record of the country's
civilizational vacillations.
The Mughal Legacy
The most iconic structures in Pakistan—the Badshahi Mosque
in Lahore, the Shah Jahan Mosque in Thatta, the Lahore Fort—are
"Indo-Islamic," a style that exists nowhere else in the world. These
buildings blend Persian domes and iwans with local stone and craftsmanship.
They are unmistakably Islamic and unmistakably South Asian.
The architectural historian Kamil Khan Mumtaz notes:
"The Mughals did not import Persian architecture wholesale. They adapted
it to local materials, local climate, local aesthetics. The result was a fusion
that reflected the reality of their civilization—it was Persianate but also
deeply Indian."
The Modern Arab Import
Contrast the Badshahi Mosque with modern mosques built with
Gulf funding. These structures often feature stark, white, desert-style
architecture that looks "imported" and sits uncomfortably on the
lush, green plains of the Punjab. They have no relationship to the local
building traditions or climate.
The architect Arif Hasan has described these mosques as
"architectural colonialism." He notes: "When you build a
Saudi-style mosque in Lahore, you are making a statement that local traditions
are inferior. You are telling people that the only authentic Islam is the Islam
of Arabia."
The "Dubai House" Phenomenon
In the villages of Punjab, returning migrant workers have
built "Dubai houses"—structures that combine local layouts with
Gulf-inspired facades, using materials and design elements that have no
relationship to the local environment. The critic Nadeem Aslam has called these
buildings "the architecture of longing—people building homes for the
countries they wish they lived in."
Chapter Eleven: The Digital Re-Unification—Technology
Bypasses the State
Perhaps the most significant development of the last decade
is how digital platforms have bypassed state-controlled narratives. The
"Invisible Grid" of technology has, paradoxically, revealed the
persistence of the older, deeper grid of shared culture.
The TikTok and YouTube Ecosystem
On platforms like TikTok and YouTube, the
"Urdu-Hindi" divide effectively disappears. A Pakistani influencer
and an Indian influencer often use the same trending audio, follow the same
fashion trends, and participate in the same "challenges." The
algorithms do not recognize the Radcliffe Line.
The media studies scholar Dr. Sadaf Ahmad notes: "The
state can ban Indian films, but it cannot ban the internet. And on the
internet, the border is meaningless. Young Pakistanis follow Indian
influencers, participate in the same viral moments, and absorb the same
cultural references."
The Pasoori Philosophy Revisited
"Pasoori" and similar hits are not isolated
phenomena. They represent a broader pattern: Pakistani popular culture is
thriving precisely when it embraces its South Asian roots. The singer Ali
Sethi, whose voice defined "Pasoori," has spoken openly about how his
music draws on the entire subcontinental tradition.
This has created a generational divide. Older Pakistanis who
came of age during the Zia era often express discomfort with the
"Indianness" of contemporary Pakistani music. Younger Pakistanis,
raised on the internet, do not share this anxiety. For them, the border is a
political reality but not a cultural one.
The novelist Kamila Shamsie has observed: "The
generation that grew up with the internet simply does not have the same
hysteria about India that their parents have. They see Bollywood clips on
Instagram, they listen to Punjabi music on Spotify, they consume the same
memes. The state's attempts to create a cultural firewall have failed."
Chapter Twelve: The Layers of the Pakistani Soul
If you were to peel back the layers of identity in a typical
Pakistani, you would find a complex stratification, each layer representing a
different historical and civilizational influence.
The Base Layer: Indigenous
At the deepest level is the indigenous layer—the DNA, the
food, the family structures, the agricultural cycles. This is the layer that
connects Pakistanis to the Indus Valley Civilization, to the ancient farmers
who first cultivated wheat and barley in this region. This layer is entirely
South Asian.
The Middle Layer: South Asian
Above that is the specifically South Asian cultural
layer—the music (ragas and talas), the language (Indo-Aryan grammar), the
wedding rituals (mehndi, baraat, ubtan), the clothing (shalwar kameez,
dupatta). This layer is shared with North India, and it forms the actual lived
experience of most Pakistanis.
The Top Layer: Ideological
At the surface is the ideological layer—the Persianized
anthem, the Arabized greetings, the Turkish dramas on state television. This is
the layer that the state has actively constructed since 1947. It is the
"protective coating" applied to maintain a distinct national
identity.
The Aspirational Layer
And above even that is the aspirational layer—the imagined
community that Pakistanis wish they belonged to. This is the layer that shifts
over time: Persian in the 1950s, Arab in the 1980s, Turkish in the 2010s. It is
always somewhere else, always foreign, always just beyond reach.
The anthropologist Akbar S. Ahmed has described Pakistan's
identity as a "mosaic without mortar"—beautiful pieces that do not
quite hold together. This metaphor captures both the creativity and the
fragility of the national project.
Chapter Thirteen: Expert Voices—Fifteen Perspectives on
the Puzzle
Dr. Ayesha Jalal (Historian): "Pakistan's
founders were so focused on the political argument for separation that they
never developed a coherent cultural argument. The identity crisis was built
into the birth of the nation."
Dr. Tariq Rahman (Linguist): "The Persianization
of Urdu was a deliberate political choice. Every Persian word was a declaration
of distance from India."
Dr. David Reich (Geneticist): "The people of the
Indus Valley share a common ancestral heritage that predates partition by
thousands of years. The genetic boundary between India and Pakistan is
essentially non-existent."
Prof. William Dalrymple (Historian): "The
tragedy of Pakistan's early years is that the state's identity project was
designed by and for an elite that lived in Karachi and Lahore, and they simply
could not see why a peasant in Sylhet should care about Persian poetry."
Dr. Maya Tudor (Political Scientist): "Zia's
Islam was not the Islam of the shrines and the qawwals. It was the Islam of the
law books—literalist, codified, and fundamentally foreign to Pakistani
soil."
Ahmed Rashid (Journalist): "The Saudi influence
on Pakistan during the 1980s cannot be overstated. The Saudis didn't just give
money—they gave ideology."
Dr. Farzana Shaikh (Scholar): "There is
something poignant about the Turkish turn. Pakistanis are essentially claiming
a connection to a people they have little genetic or historical link to."
Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy (Filmmaker): "You cannot
tell a Pakistani story without referencing the subcontinent. Our emotional
vocabulary is South Asian."
Nadeem Farooq Paracha (Journalist): "Bollywood
is the real national cinema of Pakistan. That statement is more true than most
Pakistanis would like to admit."
Dr. Muhammad Qasim Zaman (Scholar): "The
Pakistani state has tried to have it both ways—promoting an Arabized, textual
Islam while also patronizing Sufi shrines that the Arabizers condemn."
Arif Hasan (Architect): "When you build a
Saudi-style mosque in Lahore, you are making a statement that local traditions
are inferior. You are telling people that the only authentic Islam is the Islam
of Arabia."
Dr. Sadaf Ahmad (Media Studies): "The state can
ban Indian films, but it cannot ban the internet. And on the internet, the
border is meaningless."
Kamila Shamsie (Novelist): "The generation that
grew up with the internet simply does not have the same hysteria about India
that their parents have."
Mohsin Hamid (Novelist): "We are brothers with
the people across the border in ways that go deeper than politics. Our cells
know what our politicians refuse to admit."
Akbar S. Ahmed (Anthropologist): "Pakistan is a
mosaic without mortar—beautiful pieces that do not quite hold together."
Chapter Fourteen: Strategic Autonomy or Identity Debt?
The question that lingers over this entire analysis is
whether Pakistan's "civilizational hopping" represents a form of
strategic autonomy—a clever way to maintain distance from a larger neighbor—or
a self-inflicted "identity debt" that prevents the state from ever
truly stabilizing.
The Strategic Autonomy Argument
Proponents of the strategic autonomy view argue that
Pakistan's identity flexibility is actually a strength. By not tying itself too
closely to any single civilizational narrative, Pakistan can pivot as
geopolitical circumstances change.
The international relations scholar Dr. Rasul Bakhsh Rais
notes: "Pakistan sits at the crossroads of South Asia, Central Asia, and
the Middle East. An identity that is too rooted in any one of these regions
would foreclose options. The ambiguity is a feature, not a bug."
In this view, the Persianized anthem helped build ties with
Iran and Afghanistan. The Arabization of the 1980s opened the door to Saudi
funding. The Turkish turn now aligns Pakistan with a rising regional power.
Each pivot has been strategically rational.
The Identity Debt Argument
Critics counter that this flexibility comes at a cost. A
nation that is constantly searching for its identity cannot build the stable
institutions and shared narratives that underpin long-term success. The
sociologist Dr. Hamza Alavi argued that Pakistan suffers from a
"structural schizoid condition"—a permanent state of internal
contradiction that undermines collective action.
The economist Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy has written that "you
cannot build a modern scientific society when your national identity is a
moving target. Pakistan needs to decide who it is before it can decide where it
is going."
The Resilience Question
Given your work on global power structures and
"Weaponized Interdependence," a final question emerges: Does this
"Identity Scavenging" make Pakistan more resilient by having multiple
"homes," or does it leave it perpetually fragile because it lacks a
singular, grounded foundation?
The evidence is mixed. On one hand, Pakistan has survived—it
is one of the few post-colonial states that has not collapsed despite numerous
crises. On the other hand, it has also failed to achieve the economic, social,
and political stability that its founders envisioned. The identity crisis has
not killed Pakistan, but it has weakened it.
The historian Ishtiaq Ahmed offers a balanced assessment:
"Pakistan's identity flexibility has been a survival mechanism, but
survival and thriving are not the same thing. The country has managed to exist,
but it has not managed to flourish. The two are connected."
Conclusion: The Map Is Not the Territory
Pakistan's identity project remains a masterpiece of what
this article has called "Invisible Infrastructure"—the deliberate
construction of narratives, symbols, and institutions designed to anchor the
country to a specific historical and religious arc. Yet as every cartographer
knows, the map is not the territory. The identity that the state has tried to
impose is not the identity that the people actually live.
The anthem's Persian lyrics may be sung at official
functions, but the songs that fill the streets are in Punjabi and Urdu. The
Arabized greetings may be used on state television, but the weddings follow
subcontinental rituals. The Turkish dramas may be praised by politicians, but
the real cultural consumption is Bollywood, Coke Studio, and TikTok.
The genetic evidence is perhaps the most profound irony of
all: the people of Pakistan are biologically brothers to the people of India,
cousins to the people of Afghanistan, and strangers to the people of Arabia.
The "Invisible Grid" of shared DNA and shared history has proved far
more resilient than seventy years of top-down identity engineering.
The novelist Nadeem Aslam once wrote that "Pakistan was
born in blood and confusion, and it has never quite recovered from the trauma
of its own birth." This observation captures the psychological dimension
of the identity crisis. A nation that is unsure of its own story cannot tell
that story convincingly to the world.
Reflection
Standing back from this seven-decade saga, what emerges is
neither tragedy nor farce, though it contains elements of both. It is, rather,
a profound meditation on the relationship between geography and identity,
between the land we inhabit and the stories we tell about ourselves.
Pakistan's greatest gift to the world may be as a cautionary
tale about the limits of ideological engineering. The founders were right that
a new nation needed new symbols. But they were perhaps wrong to believe that
symbols could ever fully replace the slow, organic growth of shared culture.
The anthem's Persian lyrics were chosen to create distance from India, but they
also created distance from the people who were supposed to sing them.
The lesson for other nations in similar circumstances is
clear: you can change your anthem, your language, even your time zone (as
Pakistan did in the 1990s, moving clocks back to align with Gulf time rather
than Indian time). But you cannot change your geography, your DNA, or the
fundamental reality that you live in a particular place with particular
neighbors.
The Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet wrote, "The most painful
thing is to love your country but not know its name." For Pakistan, the
pain may be the opposite: to know your country's name but not know its soul.
The search for that soul continues, and it remains the most urgent and
unresolved question in Pakistani life.
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