The Idea of PakistanPakistan is an independent sovereign country in South Asia of about ninety-five million (now about 160 million), which was brought into being in 1947 to fulfil a religious or cultural aspiration. The idea was to provide a homeland for the Indian sub-continent's Muslims, or most of them; a place where, after the British imperial power had gone they could freely develop their way of life in an Islamic environment apart from the Hindus, who outnumbered them by about three to one. So Pakistan, in a sense, is a very extraordinary country-a fact which gets less attention, here in the West, than it deserves. Few others in the modern world can be said to have been created to embody a belief or doctrine or theory; to owe their existence to what some would call-depending on how the word is defined-an ideology. Hindus, of course, fully understand why they fear Islam, despite their huge numerical preponderance on the sub-continent. Its believers, arriving by sea and then by land, began to inflict a catastrophic series of defeats on their gifted forbears as long ago as A.D. 711, when a general of the Caliph invaded Sind; and between the twelfth and eighteenth centuries, for about 550 years, Muslim conquerors exercised from Delhi almost uninterrupted, impious sway over large parts of Bharat Mata, or holy Mother of India, of the revered land, the very earth itself which forms an essential part of the Hindu religion, and through which flow the the three sacred river systems. The shame of it has caused deep wounds in the Hindu mind. Hinduism's resulting unrelieved antagonism to Islam,its patient, age-long determination to subjugate or absorb or expel it, and Islam's corresponding resistance, are plainly both the main reason for the obstacles which the Pakistan-concept met, and why the concept over developed; the cause, in fact, of the appalling blood soaked partition of the sub continent in 1947-in which about 500,000 persons died, and 14,000,000 had to migrate. These things will be discussed in later chapters. But the attitude towards Islam of westerners, American and European-a less obvious but interesting matter-needs some discussing here and now. Their lack of interest in a country so exceptional as Pakistan, so populous, so strategically important, a country moreover, which has allied itself with them militarily; their frequent symptoms of a vague emotional repugnance; their inclination to turn elsewhere, towards other less significant parts of the map, combine, on reflection, into something strange, which ask for enquiry. And there seems reason to suspect that an antagonism of religious origin-though it does not wholly explain it-may be involved here too. British statesmen and administrators, of course, before Pakistan come into being dislike prospect of the administrative unity of the Indian sub-continent, which their predecessors had done so much to create, being wrenched apart. The thought of the Indian Army having to be divide was particularly distressing, to civilians, as to soldiers. It had just come through the Second World War with glory: its prestige stood higher than ever; and internationally it had great stabilising potentialities. There was nothing religious in this; but it meant that the Pakistan concept stirred distaste in British governing circles. And much doubt was felt, and indeed disbelief, not only by leading British people but by foreigners, on whether, in the event, so clumsy looking a new political creation as Pakistan-consisting, as evidently it would of two very dissimilar bits of country about 1,000 miles apart-could survive. And if id did not, that would make a nasty mess on the map of South Asia, which war-weary westerners would presumably have to try to tide up. And then, as well, after Pakistan had come into being, influential men experienced in the sub-continent's affairs as a result of governments service or career in business, tended to become silent. Most senior government personnel just retired, whether military or civilian, were exhausted and disillusioned; they had gone through very rough times, and the Partition and riots had destroyed assumption that their whole life work was based on. Moreover, rules still, to some extent, bound them; their positions might depend on reticence about their knowledge or about papers that they held. 'Well, that's no use crying over spilt milk; let us turn to something else.' Phrases such as these well express what many of them felt. There was also a widespread notion in high places, which affected the press, that as Britain had ceased to rule, she should not risk jogging the successor governments elbows by fussy comments from afar. These were respectable reason far silence; and yet another supplemented it, one of calculated expediency, which from its nature happened to be adverse to Pakistan. For plainly the new India, much the larger successor-state; would occupy a position on which great international issues hinged: issues of communist ideology and the 'cold wars' of competition between foreign countries hitherto uninterested in the sub-continent or strategic, cultural, and trading opportunities; and in Britain's case, the critical issue of how much of her large stake in the Indian investment-field she could preserve. To avoid irritating the government of such a country would be prudent. All these were practical considerations unconnected with religion, but in themselves not wholly explaining-so this writer believes most westerners dislike of the Pakistan-concept. And, as well, the mere average westerner-not the prominent politician, civil servant or businessman, but he person of no particular position-tends to forget about Asia, or at any rate its remoter regions; a by-product, this of the Occidental bias in his schooling and in the newspapers and wireless that mould his adult ideas. Europe, and its affluent North American offshoot, is usually assumed to be the only part of the globe that matters; the large non-Christian parts are ignored. In childhood he has been taught of Greece and Rome-with just enough of the Levant thrown in to illustrate Christianity's background, but not to let him grasp that Jesus was an Asiatic; the hustled past the discreditable 'dark ages' he reaches Europe's medieval epoch, with its distinctive culture evolved under the Church's leadership-but gets hardly a glimpse of what was simultaneously going on elsewhere. Much is recounted about the Renaissance and Reformation: and more about the wonderful European technological discoveries and overseas expansion of the last four centuries- all leading straight to the West's preeminence of today, or yesterday, and regardless of the fact that for one millennium out of the two thus dealt with, the now developed lands north-western Europe were but an unimportant appendage of the Eurasian land-mass, steeped (comparatively speaking) in ignorant squalor, when set against the accomplished civilisation farther east, in Asia. Hindu and Buddhist empires, Confucian one-here, at last, we come to the religious factor already foreshadowed-were indeed far away; far enough for the westerner's ignorance to be excused. But some of the former Muslim empires were nearer. Direct contacts did exit. And it may well be that uneasy half-remembrance of this and of the sometimes alarming quality, militarily and religiously, of the proselytising Faith which inspired them, underlies the westerner's tendency to turn aside, alienated or uncomfortable, when the ideology of the Pakistani State is touched on. At any rate, there is a point here, and in this writer's opinion an important one, worth looking at in the opening chapter of this book. Suppose an average westerner, a novice in eastward travel, arrives at Istanbul, the best known city in the Muslim country nearest to Europe. As he is driven off to his hotel, he sees, startling against the clear evening air-perhaps with a symbolic crescent moon riding above it-that wonderful notched skyline of domes and minars. And the spectacle jolts both his eyes and mind,violently. Those structures, or some of them,.he recalls, stand on the masonry of what once were Christian churches. And as he looks about further thoughts stir' dim memories of tales half-heard about conversion by the sword of Levantine Christian communities during Islam's first outrush from Arabia 1,300 years ago' later tales-more meaningful-here in Istanbul- of fierce non-Christian hordes, Turkish one now, not Arab, sweeping across the plains of Hungary to the gates of Vienna, or-glancing further west, nearer home-tales of rape, and lootings, by slave-raiding home-tales of rape, and lootings, by slave-raiding Barbary pirates along Europe's southern shores-shores rich in Greek and Roman history' or tales of the conquest by the Mors of Spain. And he will forget now, if he knew, about that Moorish civilisation's superiority to its contemporary Christian rivals further North, its splendid arts, the grace and richness of its architecture its pioneering technology-in baths and sanitation for instance, or street lighting; the prestige of its University of Cordova; or the crucial role played by Islamic scholarship along the Mediterranean, as guardians of the heritage of Greece in fostering the European Renaissance. It is the rough military fact of seizure of European soil by, for him, an alien, infidel regime, that grips his thought. And he will recall again, drawing his mind back to Istanbul and gazing anew at those shapes on the skyline so unfamiliar, compared with his accustomed buildings of Gothic or Classical design-the (for him) tragic collapse, 500 years ago, before Islamic onslaught of Byzantine Empire. Or delving deeper into European group-memory where the hurt of it still festers a little, he may think of the high ropes, the chivalry, the faith and then the disillusion ignominious end of the Crusades. It can scarcely be questioned that, though detailed attempts to analyse them would be absurd, thoughts like these do distort the westerner's attitude towards Islam and therefore towards the interesting country dealt with in this look. But Pakistanis, oddly enough-here we reach the unexpected obverse of the medal-see matter quite otherwise, geographical and historically; see them in a friendly, not a hostile light-which is a big discovery that our hypothetical westerner novice makes, travelling east, in this first major landfall happens not to be (say) Istanbul or Cairo, but Karachi or Lahore, Delhi or Dacca. He will then have entered the Oriental world not through some stiff-hinged opening in Islam's historic boundary wall with Christendom in the Mediterranean, but (so to speak) by a side-door, via the muddle of the open fields and unfenced orchards behind, in South Asia. Here, no particular local remembrance exists of any doctrinal clash or conflict between Islam and Christianity-through politically some resentment may linger among the educated, against the arrogant aspects of recent British imperialism. Religiously however, it is an area where the Muslim is well aware even the simple illiterate Muslim, and his posture when praying reminds him of it-that his affinities lie westwardly; an area where Islam competes confusedly with creeds and cultures to the east, so very aliens both to itself and to the western spirit generally, that by contrast the hard-edged difference between things Muslim and Christian may at some moments seem to waver, even to dissolve; an area where in particular, Islam confronts with continual blank incomprehension, from its egalitarian and race less standpoint, from its austere iconoclastic monotheism, the intricacies of Hindus caste system, their prohibitions on intermarriage ad inter dining their multiplicity of gods, their (to the Muslim) nauseating idol-worship. And although our western novice in his initial bewilderment finds the brownish people around him, whether Hindu or Muslim, and all much alike, he soon realises that some Muslims approach him, if not as a brother doctrinally, then as a fairly close cousin. By comparison with Hindus, or Buddhist or Sikhs, Jains, or indeed Parsis, it is clear that he, a Christian, stands forth for them in a special relationship. He is not, in their view quite a pagan. While in his inexperience he may not yet know it, he shares with them a good deal of scripture, which is not annulled by what, to them, is the final holy look, the Koran. The founder of Christianity, he may be surprised to learn ranks for them as one of the major prophets of Islam. Jerusalem for them, too, is a place of holiness. What other religion, educated Indo-Pakistani Muslims might ask, has this sort of nearness to Christianity? Do the Jews revere Jesus? Old testament personalities-Adam and Eve, King Solomon, the Queen of Sheba, Noah, Ishmael-are common to both Faiths. So called Christian names are Muslim names too: Ibrahim and Musa, Daud, Yaqub and Ishaq translate into their English equivalents very easily. Nor should the novice suppose that the Muslims around him in south Asia, or what is called Middle East, are less important than those closer to Europe, in the Near East. Here lies a frequent misconception, deriving, in part, from the noisy arrogance of Arab nationalism in recent years, but perhaps more from the lopsided way in which Oriental affairs are treated in western publications, by people who assume that if a place lies nearer Washington or London or Paris, its interest increases. Indo-Pakistani Muslims, Persian or Afghan Muslims, Indonesian Muslims do not look at the map that way. Their minds; naturally, turn it round South or central, or south-east Asia is their starting point. And in this they have such weighty facts as population-strength to back them. The combined number of Muslim in their area-Iran, Afghanistan, the two wings of Pakistan, the Indian Union, the U.S.S.R., China, Burma and Thailand, Ceylon, Indonesia, Borneo, and so forth-amounts to no less than 280 million. Against this, the westerner may discover with surprise, the better-known Mediterranean or Turco-Arab sector of the Islamic world-that is, Yugoslavia and Albania, Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, the Yemen, Egypt, and the four 'Maghreb' countries (Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco) strung along the North African shore-can offer only 197 million. And, as Indo-Pakistani Muslims construe history-a subject which may mean more to them than to British, who have never been under foreign rule-the achievements of their regime at Delhi, of the successive sultanates of Kutb-ud-Din and the 'slave kings', of the Khiljis, Tughlaks, Sayydis, Lodis, Suris, culminating during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in that of the Moghuls; their regime's splendid peak, were (to put it mildly) at least equal, in liberality as well as grandeur, to those of Ottomans, nearer to Europe. And this, of course, leads to another resemblance, as the Pakistani sees it, between you, as a westerner, and himself, especially if you are British. Although as indicated he may dislike some manifestations of the British RAj that he experienced or has hear about nevertheless he recognises in you an affinity in military and administrative aptitudes. He looks on you, in fact-looks on you nowadays with a lively sympathetic interest-as a fellow ex-imperialist. True, your regime was short, 200 years or so, about a third of his. And its imprint on the Indian scene, artistic and architectural, religious and racial, was less. In a sense, you westerner were with drawers always, your governmental and commercial folk leading a camp-like existence, setting up no permanent home, the men doing their jobs up and down the sub-continent till middle life, then retiring on the proceeds, always retiring, to your far-off little islands; the women, thanks to the Suez Canal and latterly to aircraft, putting in ever more ephemeral and disconnected appearances-disconnected, it seemed, mentally as well as physically, for few British women ever developed any sense of 'belonging'; none of you, with the rarest exceptions, setting down for good on its soil, or mingling intimately with the people, personally, intellectually, or matrimonially, as the Muslim invaders did. Nevertheless, your forbears, like his, and like the Portuguese and the French, arrived in India was western conquerors; and they too like his, ruled successfully for a while over intelligent, cultivated, and sturdy Hindus much more numerous than themselves. The bond of fellow-feeling between him and you is thus felt to be strong. The Muslim in south Asia, then, is very conscious that his sources-religious and cultural certainly, and he may believe racial too-are Occidental. Unlike the Hindu, entwined by ancient rituals and tradition with the venerated land and waters of Mother India, he feels keen interest in outside countries to the west of him, where his own religion started; or, at the least, he does not feel neutral, or alien from them. Because pressed by geography into touch with Oriental cultures so distinct from his own, and particularly with Hinduism, which contrasts with Islam on practical details of life in an extreme way, as later pages will illustrate, he has much in mind his links with the non-Indian world; no merely with Arabia or Turkey, but with Europe. The average westerner on the other hand, parochially European and aloof, has no conception of the profound cleavage between Hinduism and Islam, or of the reasons for it, or of the resultant leaning of Ind-Pakistani Muslims towards friendliness for the Wes-until he himself visits the sub-continent, and is embarrassed to discover how little he knows. And perhaps some Muslims there, observing his predicament, might politely press upon him the question why westerners should be so ignorant of simple Asian realities? Can it be that unwittingly they live under remote control by their early Church? Are they swayed sub-consciously by the dread which, centuries ago, bishops and abbots felt of Islam's capacity to expand? Does there, even now,lurk in the shadows of the European mind a remembrance of such unrelished facts as that, in A.D.732, the Muslim conquerors of Spain, thrusting northwards under their leader Abdur Rehman, got half way across France, to a point beyond Poitiers, only 200 miles from the English channel? And our western novice might find such a question difficult to answer.
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