A nation is a society united by a delusion of its ancestry and by common hatred of its neighbours: William Inge
Civil engineers know that lifespan of reinforced concrete cement (RCC) structures is around 70 years. When Pakistan was created as a separate nation for Muslims in 1947, its founders believed that Islam would cement the diverse ethnic and linguistic groups and weld them together into a composite nation.
Just 25 years later, however, Islamabad could not carry the weight of Bangladesh which broke away as a separate nation; and 70 years later, now, Pakistan appears heading towards another possible disintegration as its centrifugally-restive ethnic constituents—the Sindhis, the Balochs, the Pashtoons—seek freedom from the Punjabi clique.
Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI) chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman, and other political parties, are now planning to undertake a “decisive” long march on Islamabad, aimed at ousting the “fake” Imran Government in October. Clearly, separateness of ethnicities proved stronger than the separateness of Islam.
Not that Pakistan, a green-shoot planted on the Mohenjo Daro (Mound of the Dead), did not try to out-survive these diverse, sub-national forces. It made efforts to push the differences under the carpet of “nationhood”, and even promoted the usual suspect Muhajir (Refugee) Generals as dictators; Zia ul-Haq and Pervez Musharraf had to prove their loyalty to Pakistan by going hammer-and-tongs against India. Pakistan’s first Prime Minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, a Muhajir; was assassinated. If Pakistan could not keep in its tent even those it was created for in the first place (Muhajirs/Immigrants), how could it retain its Ansars (Helpers) of Sindh and other sub-nationalities?
In its quest for a new identity and parentage, Pakistan also tried to distance itself from all that meant India, its culture, its history and its civilization—and somehow emerge as the Voice of Islam. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto wanted to war against India for a thousand years, and to make nuclear bomb come what may.
The patient Arabs, Iranians and the Turks, who had seen rise and fall of several such tin-pot sultanates over the last 1,400 years, ignored the gargantuan claims of a neophyte who could pay the first salaries of its Muslim employees in 1947 only when that rank infidel, Mahatma Gandhi, virtually forced the Nehru Government to pay Rs.55 crore to a broke Pakistan as its share in the combined treasury.
Pakistan is broke again. And is at war against India, again! And is being ignored by the Muslim Brotherhood, once again.
An Urdu phrase goes like this: Naya muezzin zyada zor se azaan deta hai! (A new crier shouts the loudest calling the believers to the mosque). Since the 1940s, Muslim leaders of Pakistan had been the loudest criers of Islam khatre main hai (Islam is in danger). No other country—including Turkey, where the Caliphate was constitutionally abolished in the 1920s by Mustafa Kemal Pasha “Ataturk”—ever felt that the great religion was in danger! Interestingly, various Pakistani leaders have, down the line, seen in the same Mustafa their ideal hero!
More loyal than the King of Saudi Arabia, an upstart Pakistan even named its new capital Islamabad (Abode of Islam) and claimed its stolen atom bomb was the Islamic bomb; among the Muslim nations, however, it is probably the only one to have lost all its wars against an infidel (India). Ironically, officers of its armed forces proudly wear badges and colours of gallantry!
In August 2019 alone, Pakistan brayed several times about its nuclear might and threatened India and others with apocalyptic atomic war on the Kashmir issue. President Arif Alvi and Prime Minister Imran Ahmed Khan Niazi talked loosely on this serious issue. But Railway Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed took the cake when, on September 2, he claimed that Pakistan even had “smart” nuclear bombs weighing aadha pav and pav (125 and 250 grams) for specific targets! Then, in just two days, Islamabad did two somersaults: Imran Khan, in a U-Turn, said Pakistan will never be the first to launch a nuclear attack on India; a day later, his Foreign Ministry, in another U-Turn, announced no change in the existing nuclear policy!
Alas, Pakistan thinks all others are fools and Islamabad can pull the wool on their eyes at will.
The Muslim world has rightly seen through this Pakistan’s existential tragi-comedy and refused to buy its bullying and blackmailing tactics. In the comity of 57 members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), Islamabad often remained a pariah precisely for this fakery. It pretended to be the only Muslim nation in the last 1,400 years to have been carved out of an infidel Hindustan and cried its Islamic credentials the loudest.
Also read: https://www.revoi.in/roving-periscope-why-is-pakistan-a-global-orphan-i/
Also read: https://www.revoi.in/roving-periscope-why-is-pakistan-a-global-orphan-ii/
Islam, a great unifier, had spread in three major waves of expansion. In the First Wave, in the first 300 years, the Arabs, blue-blood of Islam, spread their faith as its primary carriers; in the Second Wave, that lasted until crippling of the Baghdad-based Abbasid Caliphate by the Mongols in 1258, Iranians and Turks were the main agents of expansion, as Islam’s secondary carriers; in the Third (Sunni) Wave, that began with the Mughals in the East and the Ottomans in the West, the great faith was expanded by the tertiary carriers, the Mughals and the Sufis.
Most “Muslims” in South and South-East Asia are products of the Third Wave, converts from the Hindu (and Buddhist) stock, mainly from the ‘lower’ castes—now known as the Pasmandas as in Bihar who comprise over 85% of the total Muslim population. They are mostly nominal Muslims; the Arabs have often treating them as upstarts, ‘second’ or ‘third class’ Muslims. In fact, the Arabs traditionally clubbed the South Asian Muslims of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh together as Hindu, Hindi or Hindustani Muslims and gave them only domestic or lowly jobs in the Middle East.
Even Akbar, the Mughal-e-Azam, would rather trust robust Hindus like Rajputs, not those Muslims who had converted from Hinduism. That was why, out of 137 Mansabdars of 1,000 horsemen and above, 70% were Muslims born outside India! Except the Rajputs, the Mughals viewed most Indians as cowards, be they Hindu or converts to Islam.
An overwhelming population of Pakistan comprises these converts to Islam. Remember, the ebullient Pakistani fanatics, who trooped into Afghanistan after 9/11 to defeat America, soon returned with their tail firmly turned in! No wonder, few took Pakistan seriously when it threatened India and others with a nuclear war in August 2019. It was all hot gas, hype and hoopla, which Islamabad thought, could be a substitute for its cowardice. That is why it is outsourcing the ‘war’ against India to terrorists wearing the Mujahideen cap.
Parvez Mahmood rightly argued that Pakistani people are becoming “rootless orphans”. “Our hiraeth for a non-existent Islamic utopia has compelled us to abdicate our organic connection to our land and to abandon our links to our past.”
Ironically, while most Arabs retained their pre-Islamic names even after conversion to Islam and became robust Muslims, the Indian/Pakistani converts changed their names to sound Arabic but, in essence, remained confused Hindus! Like the America-Born Confused Desis (ABCDs), the Pakistanis became Muslim-Born Confused Hindus (MBCHs)!
So who could adopt this ‘orphan’?
The Middle East would not; the South Asia could; and India may!
Provided Pakistan is ready to return to its biological, infidel Mother India, rather than crying for induction in the Islamic Brotherhood.
But not until the Purani Fauz bleeds Naya Pakistan white. Alas, most Pakistanis love their Nemesis!
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