It’s been startling—at times dispiriting—to witness the tenor of Pakistani responses to recent BP posts. Not just the jingoism, but the denial. A refusal to acknowledge the civilizational reality of India before 1947. It isn’t just ahistorical—it’s tragicomic. And it reveals a deeper pathology: the English-speaking Pakistani elite is afflicted with Post-Colonial Derangement Syndrome. Omar has long argued this. I’ve become a convert over the past decade.
I love Pakistan. But that love doesn’t require denying India. I can honour my father and mother without disfiguring one to exalt the other. Civilizations are not exclusive claims—they are overlapping inheritances. Nationalism demands we choose. Patriotism allows us to belong. One blinds. The other binds.
Pakistan’s identity hinges on rupture. It claims to be not Hind, not Bharat—something purer, separate, superior. And yet, its elites remain obsessed with India. At least the Koreas and Vietnams acknowledge their shared past. Even China and Taiwan did—until foreign interference fractured that memory. But here? Not even a name is spared. There is no sign of “India” in the very land that birthed the name. If India truly didn’t exist in the Pakistani imagination, why the resentment? Why the rivalry? The schizophrenia is telling: deny the mother, envy the sibling.
Take Kashmir. If this is a political conflict—not religious—why were the victims in Pahalgam targeted as adult Hindu men? That wasn’t strategic. It was sectarian. Either the attackers acted from religious hatred, or the political cause they serve is entangled with it. You cannot claim secular nationalism while endorsing ideological murder.
Let’s be blunt. Pakistan was meant to be a pan-Islamic vanguard state. Has it worked? Among the Arab monarchies? Among the Iranians? Even Turkey keeps its distance. Pakistan neither gained parity with India nor primacy among Muslims. That’s not just loss. That’s strategic miscalculation.
Worse, this arrogance disables reflection. Tactical gains in Pahalgam—whatever their veracity—are paraded as existential victories. A conversation that began with economic collapse is now masked by militant pride. This isn’t war-winning confidence. It’s survivalist delusion.
And what now? The future is Chinese. Langfang to Lahore. Gwadar to Xinjiang. Pakistan is becoming a logistical limb of the Belt & Road—not a sovereign state, but a provincial outpost. Was this Allama Iqbal’s dream? Was this Quaid-e-Azam’s vision? To trade the Ummah for the yuan?
Let’s imagine another future. In a united India, 650 million Muslims would have wielded immense cultural and political power. The Babri Masjid might still stand—or be respectfully relocated. Partition’s trauma—psychic and civilizational—might never have occurred. Instead, Pakistan was built on rupture. Now it survives on repression, loans, and foreign patronage.
It didn’t have to be this way. It still doesn’t. But only when Pakistanis can say—yes, we come from Hind. Yes, our civilizational arc begins with the Indus and bends through Sanskrit, before it met Arabic. If Arabic is Pakistan’s adopted father, Sanskrit is its mother tongue. Deny either, and you’re an orphan.
Until that reckoning happens, the alumnus of Karachi Grammar School will remain a mimic man—polished, articulate, and chained to someone else’s empire.
In my opinion, it’s really not as complicated as you are making it out to be. Most Pakistanis don’t think about things like civilizational inheritance etc. We are anti-India because it is a country with which we have a territorial dispute and with which we have fought multiple wars. India had a role in splitting Pakistan in two in 1971. More recently, India blames Pakistan reflexively. Modi and others in his party have often told Indian Muslims to “go to Pakistan”. No neutral person can deny that Hindutva has a role to play in making Pakistanis even more anti-Indian than they previously were. In my own case, I grew up with many Indian friends and admire Nehruvian secularism. But Modi’s time in power has shown me that the real India is one that hates the Muslim minority, lynches them for eating beef etc. Many Indian writers (of course of the liberal persuasion) have pointed out that Modi’s party is bent on turning India into a Hindu Pakistan. Do they hate their own country? Or are they standing by their values and trying to prevent their country from losing its secular character?
I honestly believe that if both countries moved towards a settlement on Kashmir then much of the rancor would disappear. Pakistan Army’s outsize role in the country is justified by the fear of aggressive action by India. An India that is not antagonizing Pakistan would lower the relevance of the Pakistan Army. The countries may never like each other but they can at least be normal neighbors.
Hard disagree on the Sanskrit thing. It is the liturgical language of Hinduism but is otherwise not a living language. It has no relevance in a country that is 96% Muslim. Surely, it is our right as Pakistanis to decide which elements of the region’s culture and history we choose to embrace and which we feel are not relevant.
Hatred exists on both sides. Many Indians have a very strange idea of what daily life in Pakistan is like. People to people contact is one way to break down stereotypes but right now the situation in both countries is not conducive to such contact.
Also, I have never defended the Pahalgam incident. I certainly don’t believe singling people out by their religion and killing men in front of their families is justified. We still don’t know whether this was carried out by local Kashmiris or by Pakistan-backed groups. India refuses to present evidence in front of the international community and instead reflexively blamed Pakistan. I think one can criticize that without being accused of justifying terrorism.
//Hard disagree on the Sanskrit thing. It is the liturgical language of “Hinduism but is otherwise not a living language. It has no relevance in a country that is 96% Muslim.//
It lives through it’s descendant languages in Pakistan: Urdu, Punjabi, Sindhi etc. They are all derived from a form of Sanskrit.
That may well be true. But you can’t deny that it is the liturgical language of Hinduism. There is zero reason for any Muslim to identify with it (unless they are specifically interested in languages). You could make a case for Pakistanis learning Persian since our high culture is Persianate. The same case cannot be made for Sanskrit.
Probably the biggest tragedy is the fact that Panini the world first known grammarian was from Taxila, which is in modern day Pakistan.
South Asian Muslims are always kanging about Arabs’ contribution to mathematics citing things like Algebra. But the Arabs built a lot on the work of Indian mathematicians:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/sep/01/hidden-story-ancient-india-west-maths-astronomy-historians
In fact the first attestation of the number zero is from a Sanskrit manuscript from Pakistan:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakhshali_manuscript
One renowned Sanskrit scholar and linguist Madhav Deshpande mentioned meeting a Pakistani linguist at a conference who said to him proudly “you know about the Pakistani linguist Panini”.
Pakistani linguist 🙂
Thank You/
Claims with references always welcome
I will be posting on FB
I’ve been to Taxila. I have absolutely no problem with it. I’m not against the pre-Islamic parts of Pakistan’s heritage.
However, I do think most people in the country don’t connect with them. Many Pakistanis see themselves as Muslim first and Pakistani second. This has to do with the way that the national identity was constructed. It’s true that in many ways Pakistan is the “anti-India”.
In my own research I’ve written about the decline of Hindustani music in Pakistan. Partly this was caused by conceding khayal, dhurpad etc as “Hindu” or “Indian” instead of owning them and arguing that there was a huge Muslim contribution to these art forms (which factually there was).
The Indus Valley Civilization is a Pakistani Civilization. The Indians are just kanging onto it because they don’t have anything original that only belongs to them. Pakistan is the real Hind, Hind being an exonym of Sindh which is a province and a primary river of Pakistan.
Hinduism didn’t even exist 200 years ago, until the British decided to promote it as a united alternative to Islam in India. The words Hindu, Hindi and Hinduism are all Farsi exonyms that were used by Persians and Turkic Muslims. The word Hindu was a gepgraphical term originally, mischaracterized as a non-Islamic religion by the Brits.
What existed before was Brahmin religion and folk pagan religions of India that were practiced by the lower castes. The Brahmins – who were carrying on the traditions of the Central Asian Aryan conquerors from 3000 years ago, had installed themselves at the top of the social caste hierarchy to avoid too much race mixing with local Indians. The local Indian population adopted Brahmin customs and culture as their own high culture and high religion, while mixing their own religious traditions with those of the Brahmins. Each region with completely different religious traditions therefore got influenced by Brahminism. These mundane Brahmin similarity across the geography is in effect what Hindu nationalists think are ”civilizational ties”, when in reality its quite superficial. Nobody in Pakistani Sindh or Punjab really feels any affinity or cultural similarity towards someone from Maharashtra or Gujrat or Bihar, the absence of this link is more apparent the less the person speaks any lingua franca languages like Urdu or English. People need to touch grass here, they will realize reality soon enough when they do.
Those who read too much colonial history and suffer from an inferiority complex about history want to talk about some civilizational ties, these ties only exists in the minds of English speaking peoples. Southern Asia was never under a united polity except under the brief periods of Ashok (Buddhist), Aurangzeb (Muslim) or Queen Victoria (Christian). Seeking to unite it again under an even weaker identity (Hindu) will only result in the destruction of everyone here.
Once the ‘Hindus’ learn to accept that they are not that great and that not everyone wants to be associated with them, and that they should accept their neighbors, then and only then perhaps their neighbors would work with them and maybe then the neigbours may even be fine associating with them. Otherwise all this civilizational kanging is just interpreted as modern Hindus being expansionist today to compensate for the past 3000 years of foreign rule.
Blah blah blah blah
The Mughal empire is an Indian empire. Pak has no claim to it. 99.99999% of Pakistanis will never see the Taj Mahal.
Mauryan Empire’s greatest reach was under Chandragupta (Hindu)
And Pakistan didn’t exist before 47.
EVERYTHING before it is INDIAN, no matter how much you cope.
Lahore was the Mughal capital for a while. Lahore is in Pakistan. Therefore, Pakistanis have a claim to the Mughal Empire.
“Pakistan didn’t exist before 1947”– Neither did the Republic of India. What’s your point?
For a while is not the same as the 100s of years it was in present day India.
Let me introduce the concept of “successor state”.
Republic of India is the successor state of British India, hence the Olympic records and the cricket records and the capital etc remained with ROI post 1947 while Pakistan had to get new stuff.
Similarly, Russian Federation in 1992 is the successor state of USSR, hence they got the capital and the UNSC Permanent seat, not Belarus or Ukraine or one of the Stans.
PRC is the successor state of the RoC which is the successor state of the Qing Empire.
Using your logic, Pak came into being in 1971 as majority of the population left.
THAT is the point.
You can write entire paragraphs. I don’t care. It will not change the fact that there was no such thing as “India” prior to August 15, 1947. There was BRITISH India which was not a nation state but a colony.
Also don’t you all hate the Mughals? Because they were Muslim. Pakistan claims the Mughals because they shared our religion. According to your Hindu Hriday Samrat the Mughals were part of your “1000 years of slavery”. You just cannot deal with the fact that we ruled over you. You didn’t rule over us.
Anyway, I was mainly responding to your point “Everything before that was Indian”– NO. There was no “India” until 1947. We have a shared history. It doesn’t belong entirely to you.
Depends on the Mughal, Akbar is very popular in India. Stories of Akbar and Birbal are told across the country and he is considered to be as close to an ideal king as practically possible.
Shah Jahan is the romantic.
Aurangzeb the villain. Lots of alternate history essays about how much better if Dara Sikoh had won.
All still considered pretty Indian.
Whats with the ‘we ruled over you’, who is the ‘we’ here? Do you think your entire ancestry is from Genghis khan or Nadir Shah, or the first followers of Muhammad? The ‘you’ is almost certainly 99% Bharatiya/Hindu ancestry at some point. Did the conversion of your ancestors have some tremendous significance in some battle that you are taking pride in?
I think the entire point of this site is saying we have shared history, we are trying to get you to accept yours (in the entirety).
The BJP governments have been writing the Mughals out of textbooks. Hindu Hriday Samrat has repeatedly spoken of “1000 years of slavery” (which would presumably cover the Mughal period). So at least the ruling dispensation in India doesn’t consider the Mughals to be “pretty Indian”.
A lot of Hindu nationalists hate the Mughals because they perceive it as Muslim rule over Hindus. That’s what I was referring to. My personal ancestry is not really anyone’s business but for the record my family is Kashmiri on both sides. Some people also came from Iran at some point.
I have absolutely no issue with shared history. I do think that claiming that as “Indian” history is ahistorical because there was no nation-state of India prior to 1947. My issues as a Pakistani are with Hindutva and with the current regime in India.
Have you actually looked at an Indian history textbook? Plenty of Mughals. Pls don’t paste all the stupid NYTimes WaPo news reports on it, it’s probably the best example of liberal Media actual fake news I’ve seen.
There was a much needed balancing of textbooks to include more pre-islamic history. The fragmented nature of this made it very hard to include and when I was in school it was wholly absent.
While this is probably the 4rth time you have voiced your problem with Modi, do you feel pre Modi Pakistani attitudes were any different? Were there fewer wars? Less terror? Did your history textbooks acknowledge your past in any detail then? Did Modi drive you towards Islamic radicalization? Pakistan is very much a key component in the rise of Hindutva.
Indian outlets like “The Wire” and “Scroll.in” have reported on the BJP government’s rewriting of textbooks. If you call them “fake news” then I really have nothing much further to discuss with you.
You seem to be accusing me of being full of Pakistani biases but you seem to have also internalized a lot of right wing Indian biases. Personally, I was educated almost entirely abroad so I never had to take “Pakistan Studies” which is of course full of ideology.
Pre Modi, India and Pakistan had a dialogue process that went on even in difficult situations. Both countries actually discussed Kashmir (and not just “taking back POK”). Perhaps the biggest example is that Dr. Manmohan Singh refused to go to war with Pakistan post Mumbai (which was of course a much worse terrorist attack than Pahalgam). Instead evidence was presented to Pakistan and as even some of your own ex-High Commissioners to Pakistan (Raghavan sahab) have pointed out Pakistan did take some action (of course limited and then rolled back).
Modi’s Hindutva policies have served to heighten anti-India feelings in Pakistan. Our establishment can point to lynching of Muslims over beef, abrogation of Article 370 etc to make the point that we as Muslims are much better off as a majority in Pakistan than we would have been as a minority in India.
Pakistan is of course a component in the rise of Hindutva. But the rise of Hindutva is also a component in hardening TNT in Pakistan. Just to give you a small example, Nawaz Sharif was ready to make peace with India. Imran Khan was not. Imran and the PTI certainly talked a lot about the RSS being inspired by the Nazis (which is of course a historical fact).
Pakistanis need to introspect but so do Indians. Launching military strikes on a country without actual evidence of their involvement is not the way to solve any problems.
African Americans might have it tough with racism in the US but they will never go over to Africa cause life is so poor.
Indian Muslims might have issues in India but they are way better off in India then Pak (where they are lynched for other stuff like being Shia/Ahmadi or blasphemy or getting blown up by the Taliban). Does it really matter why you are killed if you are being killed?
India surpasses Pak hugely in every socioeconomic metric and the gap is only growing. Indian Muslims live way better lives than Pakistani Muslims. May not be as good as Indian Hindus but that does not negate my point.
There is NO actor in Pak as big as the three Khans, NO music composer as big as AR Rahman, NO current day cricketer as accomplished as Mohammed Shami and Siraj.
You don’t know very much about Pakistan. Just restricting myself to music: Medhi Hassan, Farida Khanum, Madam Noor Jehan.
I would much prefer living as a member of the majority in Pakistan than as a member of the minority in India.
None of those are as acclaimed as AR Rahman, a Oscar winner.
No one has heard of those names outside Pakistan.
You have no idea.
Lata Mangeshkar said about Medhi Hasan “unkay galay mai bhagwan boltain hain”
Doesn’t change the fact he is unknown.
Kashmiris were conquered by the Mughals then the Afghans then the Sikhs then the Dogras.
“You” didn’t rule shit.
Mughals with Hindu Rajput generals conquered Kashmir.
Your “king” Hari Singh gave you over to us.
The Republic of India now “rules” Kashmir.
“You” never ruled over anything. Punjabi Muslims claiming Mughal rule due to religion is like a Goan Catholic claiming the Portuguese Empire. You were the “ruled” not the “rulers”.
“You” were ruled by the Mughals, the Afghans, the Sikhs and then the British. Only in 1947 did you finally became free.
The vast majority of the descendants of the Mughals are Indian Muslims with Indian citizenship living in Delhi, Lucknow, Hyderabad etc. The number who live in Karachi are minuscule in comparison.
A bunch of RWers hating the Mughals doesn’t change reality – Mughals were an “Indian” empire. There was no word called Pakistan before the 1930s.
Almost all of the great Mughals (and all of the minor ones) are buried in India with their descendants like I said scattered across North India. Almost all of their great palaces and structures are in India.
There was no Republic of India before 1947. “India” on the other hand is thousands of years old and its history belongs solely to the successor state which is the Republic of India just like the history of China belongs to the PRC and the history of Russia to the Russian Federation.
Pakistan is a rump-state of “India” whose history begins in 1947.
You can bark all you want. You can’t take Lahore’s history from a Lahori.
Lahore lies within Pak.
Agra and Delhi don’t.
No amount of “Mughal kanging” changes that. 99.9999% Pakistanis will never see the Taj Mahal, the peak of Mughal achievment while random Hindu guys will go and make insta reels there.
Hinduism didn’t even exist 200 years ago, until the British decided to promote it as a united alternative to Islam in India. The words Hindu, Hindi and Hinduism are all Farsi exonyms that were used by Persians and Turkic Muslims. The word Hindu was a gepgraphical term originally, mischaracterized as a non-Islamic religion by the Brits.
Not 100% sure, but appear to be correct. Never come across the word “Hindu” or “India” in the Mahavamsa and other historical texts. The Mahavamsa is the oldest historical text in South Asia with a consistent dating system, i.e. from the passing of the Buddha.
India is called Jambudvipa in the Mahavamsa, But more often by local principality names. eg Vanga for Bengal, Kalinga for modern day Orissa
What existed before was Brahmin religion and folk pagan religions of India that were practiced by the lower castes.
Lower Castes: Now you are using invader/Brahmin Terminology for non Vedic peoples. All of Sri Lanka would be Sudra by those Brahmin definition.
Under the Brahmin definition the Buddha, Chandragupta and Asoka Mayura would be Lower castes. In fact Asoka was erased from Indian history by the Brahmins. “Found” and Identified by the Brits using the Mahavamsa. Has a whole chapter on Asokas genealogy.
You can read about it in link below.
Lanka and Kalingahttps://www.brownpundits.com/2018/06/01/lanka-and-kalinga/
Lanka and Kalinga
https://www.brownpundits.com/2018/06/01/lanka-and-kalinga/
The ones truly kanging are those from south Asia who take the name of an Arab tribe like the Qureishi. IVC is not a Pakistani civilization, it existed long before the prophet and his religion existed. Pakistani = Islamic.
The IVC is the heritage of all those descended from the IVC, which means the vast majority of South Asians. The IVC people migrated further into the subcontinent following its collapse.
And your analysis of Hinduism is bull, you should stick to analysing your own religion. Or read the works of specialists like Asko Parpola Roots of Hinduism book.
I couldn’t agree more! But, you’re banging your head against the wall as the earlier two comments prove.
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Take Kashmir. If this is a political conflict—not religious—why were the victims in Pahalgam targeted as adult Hindu men? That wasn’t strategic. It was sectarian. Either the attackers acted from religious hatred, or the political cause they serve is entangled with it. You cannot claim secular nationalism while endorsing ideological murder.” you are confused because you dont want to accept that people CHOOSE to be supremacist and bigoted.
Pak elites live in delulu land.
The UN HDI report came out.
Pak is the 3rd lowest in Asia after the likes of Yemen and Afghanistan, two countries raged by war.
In fact gap between Afg (0.496) and Pak(0.544) is smaller than the gap between Pak and Ind (0.685).
These English speaking Burgers aren’t blind. They see what is happening and deny it.
After all Coldplay, Dua Lipa etc tour India, not Pak.
IPhones are being manufactured in Ind, not Pak.
F1, CWG, Asian Games (and Olympics soon) are held in India not Pak. Pak can’t even hold an ICC trophy final which India takes away from them.
Etc etc
These English speaking elites have the saddest life – where they get to watch India pull away every year and get to developed/superpower status while they remain a third world backwater.
In fact other countries have also pulled away, including Bangladesh.
Pak cricket team now can’t even defeat Bangladesh and Afghanistan, forget India who are on a different league.
Here are HDI by state. Two methods using Nominal GDP/capita and the other using PPP GDP/capita
Note: Sri Lanka HDI HDI value of 0.780 (Nominal GDP), Has slid from 78th out of 191 countries to 89th place among 193 countries. Due to loss of GDP.
List of Indian by Human Development IndexI hope you see a pattern
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Indian_states_and_union_territories_by_Human_Development_Index.
[…] The Arrogance That Binds: Post-Colonial Delusions in the English speaking Pakistani Mind May 14, 2025 […]
A few years ago, Razib Khan pointed ou tthat PM Imran Khan retweeted something by Khalil Gibran, who was a Lebanese-American Maronite Catholic, and Imran Khan referred to him as one of his countrymen. So it shows that Pakistanis would more likely accept an Arab Christian than they would a fellow Punjabi like Guru Nanak.
Imran Khan is not a very smart man. That’s pretty much all that is shows.