Kabir: Lastly, KGS and other schools like it are never going to replace English with anything else. English is the way to get ahead in Pakistan (as it is in India to a large extent). The real divide in Pakistan is between those who are Urdu-educated vs. those who are English-educated.
As Kabir states, correctly, that Pakistan’s real divide is between those educated in English and those in Urdu. But what’s startling is that the English-educated class who should, in theory, be intellectually equipped to think critically often recycles the same tired tropes, increasingly unmoored from history or reflection.
The irony is sharp: those schooled in Pakistan’s vernacular languages, closer to the soil, are often more grounded in the idea that Pakistan should not be an alien implant, but a natural outgrowth of the subcontinent. It’s the Anglo-Urdu elite, disconnected from both India and the Ummah, that has imposed a post-colonial ideology designed to obscure origin and suppress complexity.
Let’s call this what it is: a mimic elite with settler instincts. Like Israel’s Ashkenazi founders or apartheid South Africa’s Anglo-Afrikaner elite, Pakistan’s ruling class sought to distance itself from the land it governed while claiming divine or ideological legitimacy to rule it. The mass displacement of Pashtun nationalism, the long war against Baloch identity, the obsession with Kashmir, the suppression of Bengali, the toppling of Afghan regimes—these were not accidents. They were acts of statecraft designed to fracture any natural civilizational or ethnic continuity that could threaten the state’s ideological foundations.
By contrast, Indian nationalism, especially that of the Congress, was pluralistic, even if patronizing. Its flaws were real: Brahminical bias, Hindu cultural dominance, an elitist bent. But it emerged organically from within the civilizational matrix. Nehru and Gandhi, despite their faults, belonged to the land in ways Quaid-e-Azam never did or, rather more tellingly, never wanted to. A fifth generation Hindu convert, QeA cosplayed as a brilliant British barrister with Muslim sympathies (the Pakistani elite are so proud of his pork-eating proclivities). QeA’s creation was brilliant—possibly a poker bluff played to perfection. But it came at enormous cost.
Partition wasn’t merely territorial—it was a civilizational rupture, most violently felt in Punjab, the Urland of South Asia: once serene and syncretic, peaceful and prosperous, suddenly shattered. Continue reading “Mimicstan”: the burden of Purity from Pagan origins
Let’s unpack Kabir’s comment. Credit where it’s due; his opinions inspire more of my posts. Perhaps it’s time he rejoined as a contributor.
“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.”
If Persian is truly the high culture, then why do ignore the one holiday that defines the Persianate sphere, Norouz? Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Iran, the Kurds, all speak different tongues, yet Norouz unites them. It is the civilizational cornerstone of Persian identity, the cultural “Jan. 1” across centuries of shared memory. But in Pakistan, Norouz is invisible. Not because Pakistan is un-Persian. But because Pakistan is post-colonial. The elite curate rupture, not heritage. Distance, not descent.
And let’s be honest: the erasure didn’t start with the British. Aurangzeb, still lionized by most Pakistanis (his fanaticism and Hinduphobia a plus point), abolished Nowruz as part of his Islamic “reforms,” replacing it with religious festivals. So how can one claim Persianate lineage while revering the very figure who uprooted it?
Continue reading Norouz or Nowhere: The Identity Pakistan Can’t Claim