THE PROBLEM OF PAKISTANI IDENTITY AND WRITERS
By
Intizar Hussain
Let me give vent to a feeling of jealousy brewing in me for long. As we all
know, independent India and Pakistan were born at one and the same time. But the
problem of a national identity is peculiar to us alone. I as a Pakistani writer feel
envious of my contemporaries in India, who may have other kinds of problems but
were never seen perturbed about their national identity, Pakistan is going to
complete its fifty years in the coming year, but the problem of identity with us is
still there.
Allow me to look at the problem as it cropped up among the writers and
soon turned into a subject of controversy. Those were early days of Pakistan when
urdu writers were seen on both sides of the Divide enjaged in writing about the the
human miseries caused by the holocaust coming in the wake of Partition. A few
writers with their zeal for Pakistan, felt disturbed to see that writers in Pakistan too
were writing with the same attitude towards Partition and the subsequent situation,
which was the hall mark of fiction and poetry being written in india. Foremost
among writers reacting afainst this prevalent attitude were Dr Taseer, Mohammad
Hassan Askari and Mumtaz Shrin. Their reaction led to the theory of ‘Pakistan
Adab’ with Askari as its chief exponent, who zealously argued that literature in
Pakistan should emerge with a character distinct from that literature in India.
This idea was unpalatable to the Progressive Writers Movement. Its reaction
was given voice by a progressive poets Ahmad Riaz, who wrote: “Kaun Karsakta
hai taqseem adab ki jagir,” that the domain of literature is indivisible.
This sharp reaction triggered off a heated controversy centering round the
question as to how we will define Pakistani literature as distinct from literature
produced in India. And the controversy soon gave birth to the question of identity.
What after all is our identity, that was the question. Let me here quote from Faiz.
“You well remember” he said “the idea that worked as the basis of pakistan; that
we are a separate nation, so we have a right to have a separate homeland, and that
weare a separate nation, because we have a separate culture. At that time none of
us cared to ask what we should have asked from ourselves. But now we have
chosen to ask from ourselves as to what is that we claim to be our separate
culture.”
Herein lies the secret of our national identity, if any, as culture, according to
Faiz had made these remarks in 1968 while delivering a series of lecture on the
problem of Culture in Azad Kashmir. But as hinted above, we had began asking
this question soon after the emergence of Pakistan Allied with it were a few more
questions. Are we a new nation born on 14 th August, 1947 on an old one. If old,
how old. Should we trace our history from the day Mohammad Bin Qasim entered
this land or from the times Mohenjodaro and Harappa. Does our culture originate
from Islam or from our land. If it is land based, why should we try to own Muslim
relics on India
Apart from the controversy centering round these questions in the
intellectual circles, peoples in different walks of life were so fond in those days of
calling themselves a newly born nation little caring for the implications it involved.
Mohammad Hasan Askari warned about the dangers this assertion being of being
new carried with it and prophesied that “if we forget the aspect of oldness of
Pakistan, we will not be able to keep East Pakistan and West Pakistan within one
state for long”.
And he explained the aspect of oldness of Pakistan in terms of a nation with
its tradition evolved during the process of centuries. But the idea of being born a
new had a magic of its own. We see even Faiz asserting that “With the partition of
the subcontinent a new country came into existence and a new nation was born –
Pakistan nation.
And he set to define the culture of this new nation, and while attempting
this, he did not mind on embarking on journey of Mohenjo-Daro, Harappa and
Taxila. However, Faiz is seen taking a middle position. On one extremes were
those holding the view that culture is something wholly and solely rooted in the
land, and hence each region in Pakistan has a culture of its own with no unifying
force to integrate these separate cultural entities or nationalities on a higher
national level. On the other end were those who laid stress on the concept of a
national culture to the extent that everything regional appeared to them to be
negating what is national from their point of view. There was also a third extremist
group, which stood for a pure Islamic culture. They branded as un-Islamic all other
factors which constitutes a culture.
Faiz readily dismissed those different extremist versions of culture. But there was
one more version of Pakistani culture drawing its sustenance from Muslim history
in the sub-continent. Mohammad Hasan Askari, as has been pointed out earlier,
explained it in terms of traditions evolved in the process of centuries and
designated it as Indo-Islamic culture. JameelJalibi likes to call it Indo-Muslim,
which is an attempt to lay stress more on the historical process than on its Islamic
purity, he has also taken care while analyzing it, to accommodate regional culture
within its fold. “Regions” he says “are integral parts of national culture”, but that
they, in his opinion, should contribute to the collective soul of nation.
According to prof Gilani Kamran’s analysis as [presented in his book
“Qaumkitashkeelaur Urdu zaban”], it was during the centuries of Muslim rule in
India that a new culture emerged and took the shape now known as Indo-Islamic
culture. It was this culture, which according to him, helped Indian Muslim to have
an awareness of their national identity and make a demand for Pakistan. This
identity, he says, emerged in consequences of a common history, a common
culture consciousness, and a common heritage.
But Salim Ahmed wondered that after we succeeded in getting recognized as
a separate nation on the basis of a common history and a common culture and
achieved Pakistan, we are being told that, we are not a nation and that we have no
common culture. 6. I agree with the analysis made by Gilani Kamran and I have a
deep regard for the sentiments of Salim Ahmed even, I will dare ask a question.
Why was it that this identity, which worked as the basis for the basis for the
demand of Pakistan, becomes controversial immediately after the birth of Pakistan.
Why was it Quaid-e-Azam M.A. Jinnah during the years of the movement went on
asserting a separate Muslim identity with its roots in a common culture and, as Faiz
has pointed out, nobody cared to raise question about this common culture. What
went wrong with us that the question of this nature cropped up after we had
achieved Pakistan. To say that the intellectuals had been misled by the propaganda
campaign launched by the enemies of Pakistan does not appear to be a very sound
explanation. Perhaps the explanation lies somewhere in the historical process
which came to an end with birth of Pakistan. We in fact were interlocked in a love-
hate relationship with the Hindus. For centuries we has fought against them and
had made peace with them. We abhorred their religious rites, their “pooja” and
designated all this as “kufr”. And yet we felt attracted to their age-old cultural
patterns, to the colorfulness of their rituals. In this situation with two opposing
forces, that of repulsion and attraction working side by side, we influenced them
and were in turn influenced by them. Thus living among Hindus, who were in
majority, the Muslim in India felt a pull toward their awareness of their cultural
existence distinct from them. The more wise among them justified that influence
they had absorbed in the process by saying that “kufr kuch chaheay Islam ki
raunaq kayliey”.
Such was our identity, for the awareness of which we were indebted to the
Hindus. With the sudden elimination of the Indian context and the Hindus, we lost
our cultural balance and pour identity grew blurred, the nation called Indian
Muslims, which had created this homeland, itself underwent the process of
partition. The part of the nation secure in Pakistan developed the feeling of being a
newly born nation.
It was now that our regional consciousness, which had remained subdue
during the movement years, came to the fore-front. The exponents of this
consciousness made attempts to discover roots of their country in Mohenjo-Daro,
Harappa and Taxila. With the elimination of Hindus from our society, it appeared
to these intellectuals so easy to seek relationship and take pride in the Aryan and
pre-Aryan past of the land. Prof Karkar Husain, on the other hand, opined that
what we have dug out from our soil, backs the historical continuity, which is so
necessary for establishment of a cultural tradition.
But Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi, while on a visit to Mohenjo-Daro discovered
historical continuity in the bullock cart creeping on the dusty road of Mohenjo-
Daro, reminding him of what he had just seen in the museum.
But as pointed out by Faiz, there is a snag in it. If we begin our history from
Mohenjo-Daro, we will, according to him, be compelled to own the succeeding
periods of history which include the period of Brahman culture, the period of
Buddhist culture, and the period of Greek culture, and in consequences we will
have to accommodate Ashok, Chandr Gupt, Alexander the Great, Raja Pours and
Raja Risaloo among our heroes. What in the end is left is a tiny part of history
which separates us from Hindus.
This situation compelled Faiz to say good bye to his Marxist friends’
concept of Pakistani history and culture. And he declared in unequivocal terms that
“our religion is the basis of our culture”.
Mohenjodaro and Harappa. And with the help of historical process in
Muslims India he discovered two strong cultural links between the two wings-the
architectural of the mosques and mausoleums and the dish of “pulao”.
But after the separation of East Pakistan, our poet did not care to remember
such cultural links which took birth and developed under the historical process in
the Muslim period throughout India. Or perhaps because of being a poet, he
doesn’t believe in being consistent in his arguments. He himself emphatically said
that frontiers of culture are not always synonymous with the frontiers of the
state,12 and he declared in unequivocal term :It goes without doubt that Delhi,
Agra, Mir and Ghalib are parts of our cultural heritage. The same can be said about
Samarqand, Bukhara, Hafiz, Saadi and Roomi.
But the poet takes no time in changing his position and advises us to
differentiate between what we find on our land and what lies beyond our land: “of
course we have close links with Tajmahal, Lal Qila, Samarqand, and Bukhara, but
they are not our property. Mohenjo-Daro on other hand, Is our property. So is
Sehwan Shrif, Taxila, Lahore, Multan and Khyber”.
Let me quote here a comment from Dr. Wazir Agha, who said that
Samarqand and Bukhara have only been formally named here. “The real intention
is to strike out Red Fort and Taj Mahal from the cultural heritage of Pakistan,” and
adds “but immediately after saying thus he perhaps realized that he had said not
behave like a frog in well . We should not try to disown what has become a part of
culture. But is he not contradicting himself. What after all does he want to say”.
I have nothing to add to these remarks by Dr Wazir Agha. But he has said
something more, and that seems to me a very same comment on the cultural
controversy In Pakistan. He says that “with the emergence of new political
frontiers, a kind of cultural anarchy seems inevitable.” 16
He is right. It is state of cultural anarchy we are living in. but perhaps the
Urdu word ‘ghadar’ used by Wazir Agha is more apt here. And in times of
‘ghadar’ we hardly except from anyone to talk sense. Faiz, whom we had accepted
as the most sensible man among us (I mean the writers), suggested a way out from
Siqafai ghadar or cultural anarchy. “Let us scrutinize. He said: the cultural
fragments scatter around us and carve out from them prescriptions of cultures,
which is around us and carve out from them prescription of a culture, which is
distinctly Pakistani”. (17) Good suggestion. But I was reminded of a profound
statement by Eliot. He was discussing culture in his own European context. He
expressed his apprehension that if Christianity goes, the whole of our culture goes.
And he adds “Then you must start pain- fully again, and you cannot put on a new
culture readymade. You must wade for the grass to grow to feed the sheep to give
the wool out of which your new coat will be made. You must pass thoroughly
many centuries of barbarism.” 18
So the prescription recommended by Faiz is fine. But, alas, it is unworkable,
so with the alternative left with us wait for the grass to grow. Our identity at
present lies in our craving for an identity.
(1996)
