Norouz or Nowhere: The Identity Pakistan Can’t Claim

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?

We also see this distortion projected outward. Pakistan’s involvement in Afghanistan hasn’t safeguarded Persianate culture, it’s helped fracture it. Meanwhile, India, despite its Hindu majority, still maintains classical Persian departments in its universities. The civilizational irony writes itself.

If Pakistanis truly valued the Persianate inheritance, they had a clear path: remain in an undivided India. By 2025, Muslims in such a polity would likely number 650–700 million. With that demographic weight, they could have preserved Persian, advanced language rights, and embedded their civilizational identity as co-architects of a pluralistic state. Instead, Partition gave us rupture without revival. And now we neither dominate the Muslim world nor feel at home in the Indic one.

Worse still, the linguistic schizophrenia is complete:

• Sanskrit is disowned as “Hindu.”

• Persian is claimed but not practiced (less than 0.01% speak it).

• Arabic is idealized but not understood, recited without reflection.

The result is mimicry. A nation imitating others’ inheritances while forsaking its own.

If we were serious, Karachi Grammar School would teach Persian, not English, as its belle langue. We would celebrate Nowruz alongside Eid. We would honour Sanskrit as we do Arabic, as a root, however distant, of who we are.

The Vedas were composed on the banks of the Indus, yet nearly every Pakistani, outside its Hindu minority, remains entirely unaware. A civilizational treasure, erased from national memory.

Until then, the post-colonial Pakistani elite will remain in limbo: polished, articulate, and estranged from every civilizational lineage it claims. When you abandon your mother’s language and your father’s festival, don’t be surprised if no one calls you home. It suspiciously reminds me of an ideological-settler further to the West that also strangles its indigenous identity.