Abstract
Despite its liberal protestations, the Pakistani establishment has remained reluctant to accept the plural composition of society and has reduced it to a law-and-order threat, or to the machinations of a few foreign-inspired mavericks. Curiously, the religious elites have frowned upon ethnic diversity in exactly the same way that they were dismissive of the concepts of nationalism and the nation-state — regarding them as transplanted conspiracies to shatter an inter-Muslim, trans-regional unity. It is worth stating here that ethnicity is not merely a fall-out of state-centric politics; it embodies the intricacies of cultural traditions, political economy, modernisation, urbanisation and development, the multi-tiered forces interlinked with both the state and society at large.
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Notes
For further details, see Myron Weiner, ‘Peoples and States in the New World Order’, Third World Quarterly, XIII (2), 1992, p. 320.
Frederick Barth, ‘Introduction’, in F. Barth (ed.), Ethnic Groups and Boundaries, Boston, 1969, p. 14.
George DeVos, ‘Ethnic Pluralism: Conflict and Accommodation’, in George DeVos and L. Romanucci-Ross (eds), Ethnic Identity and Change, Palo Alto, 1975, p. 17.
‘It is no accident that ethnicity as a subject has tended to be slighted, if not ignored’, wrote Moynihan in his recent work. ‘At the onset of the twentieth century, there were two large ideas abroad, curiously congruent, which predicted a steady or even precipitous decline of ethnic attachments.’ He then proceeds to define both the liberal and communist interpretations, which took the issue rather lightly until it came full circle in recent times. Daniel P. Moynihan, Pandaemonium, Oxford, 1993, pp. 27–9.
Donald L. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict, Berkeley, 1985, p. ix.
John Rex, Race and Ethnicity, Milton Keynes, 1986, p. 16.
Also, Fred W. Riggs, Help for Social Scientists. A New Kind of Reference Process, Paris, 1986, pp. 43–8.
E. J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality, Cambridge, 1990, p. 63.
For more on the subject, see Anthony D. Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations, Oxford, 1987.
For further details, see Urmilla Phadnis, Ethnicity and Nation-building in South Asia, New Delhi, 1991, pp. 16–17.
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, London, 1991 (revised edn), p. 3.
Hugh Seton-Watson, Nations and States. An Enquiry into the Origins of Nations and the Politics of Nationalism, Boulder, 1977, p. 5.
For a classical treatment of this subject, see E. Kedourie, Nationalism, London, 1961 (2nd edn);
and Hans Kohn, The Idea of Nationalism, New York, 1967.
Ernest Gellner, Thought and Change, London, 1964, p. 169.
To many other sociologists and historians ‘the national phenomenon cannot be adequately investigated without careful attention to the “invention of tradition’”. See Terence Ranger and Eric Hobsbawm (eds), The Invention of Tradition, Cambridge, 1984, p. 14. To them, tradition itself is a space between custom and modernity and between an invariant and changing world. Ibid., p. 2.
For an early study see P. H. M. van den Dungen, ‘Changes in Status And Occupation in Nineteenth Century Punjab’, in D. A. Low (ed.), Soundings in Modern South Asian History, Berkeley, 1968.
For a more recent study though largely in the realm of political history, see Ian Talbot, ‘The Role of Crowd in the Muslim League Struggle for Pakistan’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, XXI (2), 1993, pp. 307–33.
This argument has been made very capably in a study on pre-1947 politics in the NWFP. See Stephen A. Rittenberg, Ethnicity, Nationalism and the Pakhtuns: The Independence Movement in India’s North-West Frontier Province, Durham, 1988.
See C. A. Bayly, Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars. North Indian Society in the Age of British Expansion, 1770–1870, Cambridge, 1983.
For a pertinent study, see Francis Robinson, Separatism Among Indian Muslims: The Politics of the United Provinces’ Muslims, 1860–1923, Cambridge, 1974;
and Mushirul Hasan, Nationalism and Communal Politics in India, 1916–1928, Delhi, 1978.
Paul R. Brass, Language, Religion and Politics in North India, London, 1974, p. 124.
Francis Robinson, ‘Islam in Muslim Separatism’, in David Taylor and Malcolm Yapp (eds), Political Identity in South Asia, London, 1979, pp. 78–112.
Farzana Shaikh, Community and Consensus in Islam. Muslim Representation in Colonial India, 1860–1947, Cambridge, 1989, p. 5.
Francis Robinson, ‘Technology and Religious Change. Islam and the Impact of Print’, Modern Asian Studies, XXVI1, part 1, 1993, pp. 229–51.
Fazlur Rahman, Islam, London, 1966, p. 2.
Thomas R. Metcalf, The Aftermath of Revolt: India 1857–1870, Princeton, 1965, p. 298.
Some senior British officials like John Lawrence found among them a ‘more active, vindictive and fanatic spirit than Hindoos’ while the Collector of Agra viewed the Muslims as inherently anti-British: ‘The green flag of Mahomed too had been unfurled, the mass of the followers of the false prophet rejoicing to believe that under the auspices of the Great Mogal of Delhi their lost ascendancy was to be recovered, their deep hatred to the Christians got vent, and they rushed forth to kill and destroy’ (quoted in Peter Hardy, The Muslims of British India, Cambridge, 1972, p. 63).
Ainslee T. Embree, ‘Indian Civilization and Regional Cultures: The Two Realities’, in Paul Wallace (ed.), Region and Nation in India, New Delhi, 1985, pp. 35–6.
See Ayesha Jalal, The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan, Cambridge, 1985;
David Page, Prelude to Partition: The Indian Muslims and the Imperial System of Control 1920–1932, Delhi, 1982.
See Rafiuddin Ahmed, The Bengal Muslims, 1871–1906: A Quest for Identity, Delhi, 1981.
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© 1997 Iftikhar H. Malik
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Malik, I.H. (1997). Ethnicity, Nationalism and Nation-Building. In: State and Civil Society in Pakistan. St Antony’s Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230376298_9
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