This article gives one version of PK history. Worth a read.
Islam and the Paths of Pakistan’s Political Development
Summary:
- National identity remains a very serious issue in Pakistan today. There has never been a clear answer to the question of how many nations live within the country — one or more.
- The constitutional process, accompanied by tensions in communal relations, bears witness to serious ideological differences in society over the role religion should play in social and political life.
- Pakistan’s Islamization, through giving traditional Muslim standards legal force, has not been completed, but many traditional standards have now been written into law and have thus become an integral part of the country’s political and legal system.
- Solutions to Pakistan’s problems should be based on comprehensive approaches that avoid experiments with Islam — one of the foundations of Pakistan’s statehood — and emphasize administrative, social, economic, and security issues.
Excerpt:
One nation or two?
Pakistan appeared on the world map in 1947, as a result of the Muslim League’s struggle for a Muslim state. The party’s ideology was based on the theory that India was home to two nations — Hindus and Muslims. But after the establishment of the Pakistani sovereign state, its leader, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, tried to introduce the idea of a single Pakistani nation, saying, “Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the State.”
http://www.carnegie.ru/en/pubs/briefings/Topychkanov_Briefing_Eng.pdf
Posted 2 years ago on 17 Aug 2009 17:19
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