Pakistan finds a balanced identity in democracy

From the icy heights of K2 in the north, the world's second tallest peak, to the steamy southern plains of its Arabian Sea coast, Pakistan is a country whose turbulent 50-year-long search for identity is finally on the verge of bearing the sweet fruit of democracy.

Born from the breakup of Britain's India in August 1947 as a somewhat contrived amalgam of conflicting sectarian interests, the "Land of the Pure" still serves its purpose as a homeland for the former colony's Islamic faithful.

It is hard to say that this country has ever represented anything more to its 130 million citizens than a safe haven from Hindu domination. The death of Pakistan's founding father, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, in 1948 robbed the people of their chance to have the "Great Leader" stamp a vision, an identity on his creation.

A quick look at the historical setting of independence, however, calls into question whether even Jinnah could have defined Pakistan's identity, other than pointing to its purpose as a lifeboat for Muslim self-rule after 1947.

"You couldn't tell (the Indian independence leader) Nehru and Jinnah apart, except for religion," said South Asian specialist Dr. Leo Rose of the University of California, Berkeley.

Fifty years on, Dr. Rose says Jinnah is merely "a nice name you can use" to answer the political needs of the moment.

Since Jinnah's untimely demise, a procession of elitist military officers and prominent families have presided over Pakistan's fitful progress toward a democracy that may yet permanently bind the country's disparate groups.

It would seem that Pakistan has two natural identities. Facing west there is Islam, whose adherents make up 98 percent of the country's population, and facing east there is India, the mortal enemy. Neither finds an easy home in the "Land of the Pure."

Islam has built upon a South Asian cultural heritage that dates back 5,000 years to the Indus Valley civilization. It is not, according to Berkeley's Rose, unusual to find Muslim Pakistanis celebrating holidays with a basis in Indian culture, or observing the mores of the caste system that Islam supposedly abolished.

Pakistan: How a country and democracy was born.
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The country does maintain strong links with the rest of the Islamic world, from Egypt to Indonesia, but the attachments are primarily based on an economic expediency or a common religious bond.

On the other hand, Pakistan's conscious embrace of its South Asian identity is problematic because of the country's enmity with India. Full acknowledgment of the two countries' essentially identical cultural heritage would call into question Pakistan's very reason for existence.

But, says Berkeley's Dr. Chris Candland, there is a "very well developed sense of Pakistan, with "no feeling that Pakistan is a growth or appendage of India."

Pakistan is working to take full advantage of its position at the crossroads of the Middle East and East Asia. The country is aggressively pursuing trade with partners east and west.

But business attitudes and world view are not what define Pakistan. The country's ongoing history of internal strife is the sore thumb that sticks out to the rest of the world.

Almost daily reports of murder and mayhem in Karachi, the country's largest city and a stronghold of the Urdu-speaking Mohajir (immigrants from India), depict a city, observers say, is in the middle of an undeclared civil war. Throughout the rest of the country orthodox Sunni Muslims and Shia Muslims fight their own bloody internecine battle.

In the past, people of Baloch and Sindh provinces have waged wars of independence. But not since East and West Pakistan split into present-day Pakistan and the independent Bangladesh has an insurgency so threatened to tear the country apart.

Each group has slowly been co-opted into the political system. Balochs have been given more autonomy, while the government has taken the side of the Sindhis in their battle with the Mohajir. Meanwhile, the Mohajir Quami (National) Movement (MQM) distanced itself in July from a separatist agenda by changing its name to the Mutahida Quami Movement, the United National Movement.

The MQM says it now wants to represent all of the country's minority and oppressed groups in the National Assembly, challenging the might of elite Punjabis and other powerful interests.

Nothing better represents the sea change in Pakistani politics than the MQM's new outlook. The political forum is now the venue of choice for expressing Pakistan's vision of itself. It's a complex vision yet to fully work itself out, but a far cry from the simplistic answers offered by the military governments and straitjacketed electorates of the past.

Caught in the balance between their living South Asian heritage and an enduring devotion to Islam, Pakistanis seem to have realized that self-affirmation through the democratic process is the only viable way to successfully express their nation's volatile mix of identities.