In
India's case every major North Indian language is based on Sanskrit
and all Dravidian languages have been so deeply permeated (not just
influenced) by Sanskrit that it is difficult to identify concepts
and practices which are not rooted in the Sanskrit- based culture.
In the deepest sense of the term ethnicity, India has for
millenia been an ethnic entity which neither the Christian nor the
Muslim world has been. Again, in a fundamental sense, Punjab and
Sind in present-day Pakistan have been and remain part of this Indic
ethnicity.
The imposition of the state of
Pakistan on its constituent units bears comparison with the
imposition of the communist ideology on the Russian empire; as in
the case of the latter, it is impossible to ascertain which
component has been the worst sufferer. For, if in the Soviet Union's
case, it is as plausible to argue (as Alexander Solzhenitsyn does)
that the Russians have paid the highest price for the misadventure
as it is to suggest that other ethnic groups have been sat upon, in
Pakistan's case it is as legitimate to sympathize with the Punjabis
for the erosion of their identity as to plead that they have treated
badly the Sindhis and the Baluchis, and up to 1971, the
Bangladeshis. Such an entity could not possibly define itself in
terms of its past, notwithstanding all attempts by Pakistani
historians of the I.H. Qureshi school to invent a history
for Pakistan beginning with the Muslim invasion of Sind in the
eighth century. The formation of Pakistan coincided with the onset
of the cold war between the West (mainly USA) and the USSR. The cold
war at once helped sustain Pakistan and limit its aggressiveness.
With the termination of the cold war, Pakistan must at once feel
more desperate and become more intransigent in its attitude towards
India. But whatever turn events take, the conclusion is inescapable
that Pakistan has not been a success story in any sense of the term.
