#2 of 16: PAKISTAN: ORIGINS, IDENTITY, AND FUTURE
Вставка
- Опубліковано 15 чер 2023
- Pervez Hoodbhoy in conversation with Shaheryar Azhar. #2 of 16 episodes.
-- Mughals and colonialism
-- British reinvent India
-- Rise of Muslim orthodoxy
-- Indian Islam versus Arab Islam
-- The Muslim invasion
The international edition (Routledge) of this book is available from: www.amazon.com/Pakistan-Perve... , and the local (Pakistani) version from:
foliobooks.pk/book-author/per...
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
o Front cover endorsement by Noam Chomsky
o Back cover endorsements
o Acknowledgments
o About the author
o Foreword by Christophe Jaffrelot
o Why this Book?
o Charting the Labyrinth
- Myths of a nation’s origin
- Exclusivism as philosophy
- Was Partition accidental?
- The book’s expeditionary map (Parts I-V)
o Part One: Long Before The Two Nation Idea
1. Identity formation in medieval India
- The herd instinct
- India without nations
- The Sanskrit controversy
- Muslim invasions
- Mughal era purifiers of Islam
- Conclusion
2. The British reinvent India
- Colonialism quietly sneaks in
- The Great Mutiny - a watershed
- Demoralized Muslim ashrafiyya
- Exception: the United Provinces
- The Muslim predicament
- Modernity impacts Muslims
- Modernity impacts Hindus
- Ways begin to part
o Part Two: A Closer Look At Pakistan’s Three Founder-Heroes
3. Founder I: the lonely modernizer
- Early years
- It’s okay to eat mangos
- Metamorphosis to modernity
- Siding with the British
- An unabashed elitist
- The non-communal Sir Syed
- Sir Syed communalizes
- Sir Syed’s mixed legacy
4. Founder II: premier poet-preacher-politician
- Everyone loves Iqbal
- Biographical sketch
- Philosopher or just philosophical?
- Iqbal uses languages selectively
- Iqbal on faith versus reason
- Iqbal’s physics/math criticisms
- Iqbal’s “higher” communalism
- Iqbal on women
- Iqbal on theocracy
- Iqbal on blasphemy
- Iqbal and Sir Syed compared
5. Founder III: liberal-secular-visionary?
- Did Jinnah have a plan?
- Anticipating dependence
- Did Jinnah not want Pakistan?
- Jinnah - the man
- Did Jinnah want secularism?
- Jinnah fuses politics with religion
- Jinnah and the Islamic state
- Jinnah’s Shia problem
- A master tactician not strategist
6. Jinnah trounces his Muslim opponents
- Maududi - Jinnah’s nemesis
- Azad - the prescient cleric
- Bacha Khan - the peaceful Pathan
- Who won, who lost?
o Part Three: Postnatal Blues
7. Stubborn angularities I: Bengal
- A snapshot of history
- Mocking Bangla
- The road to separation
- Punjab still doesn’t want to know why
- Bangladesh overtakes Pakistan
- Final reflections
8. Stubborn angularities II: Balochistan
- A shotgun wedding
- Baloch identity emerges
- Changes since 1947
- Too rich to be left alone
- CPEC and Balochistan
- The secession question
- The way forward
o Part Four: Five Big Questions
9. Was Partition worth the price?
- The no-Pakistan option
- Socialist utopia rejected
- Mobilizing the Muslim masses
- The winners
- The losers
- The cobra effect
10. What is the ideology of Pakistan - and why does it matter?
- Ideology defined
- Hindutva ideology
- Pakistan ka matlab kya?
- The weaponization of ideology
- Resolving the ideology conundrum
11. Why couldn’t Pakistan become an Islamic state?
- Warmup: a Christian state
- Who speaks for Islam?
- Qur’an and Islamic state
- Islamic scholars on the Islamic state
- Model I: The Medina state
- Model II: Maudoodi’s Islamic state
- Model III: The Taliban state
- The caliphate’s undying appeal
- The ummah and pan-Islamism
- What created political Islam?
- What if Pakistan becomes an Islamic sharia state?
- Is a liberal sharia state possible?
12. Why is Pakistan a praetorian state?
- The Establishment defined
- Bankrupt political class
- A once apolitical army
- America’s junior partner
- Strong men make weak countries
- Wars of choice
- Cross-border jihad - a failed experiment
- Courting the blasphemy-busters
- India under martial law?
13. Identity crisis: I’m Pakistani but what am I?
- Inventing an ancient Pakistan
- Telling Hindu from Muslim
- State imposed identity
- Cultural orphans
- The first Pakistani
- Arab Wannabe Syndrome
- My name is Ertugrul
- Citizens and subjects
- Price of prejudice
- The overseas Pakistani
- Folks: here’s what I really am!
o Part Five: Looking Ahead
14. Three imminent physical perils
- Climate change
- Population bomb
- Nuclear war
- Prognosis up to 2047
15. The paths travelled post-1971
- Experiment One - Vengeance
- Experiment Two - Nizam-e-Mustafa
- Experiment Three - Enlightened moderation
- Experiment Four - Hybrid regime
- Why the experiments failed
16. Replacing the Two Nation Theory
- End legalized discrimination
- Spread the wealth
- Pakistan not Punjabistan
- Uncage the women
- Give skills don’t brainwash
- Cool down Kashmir
- Send army to the barracks
- Epilogue
o Index
Moghul empire collapsed before British empire came. Marathas were ruling most part except east. Moghuls were confined to delhi.
Why Muslims are poor and backward in spite of ruling over India for 800 years compared to only 200 of the British ?
The answer is , If you do not educate and train people for creating wealth , how prosperity would come ?
Oxford University was established around the time when Sultans out here were busy investing in their own Tombs.
It is all about the choices we make.
Bakhtiar Khilji demolished a grand library and burned Nalanda University.
The right language for the reasons of collapse of the three empires - Moghul, Safavid and Ottoman - is Extreme Religiousity rather than "extractive". Isn't history repeating in most of Ummah, especially in Pakistan?? Present is key to the Past.
Dr Hoodbhoy .... a real Genius !
Keep up with this work!❤
Very nice discussion, Sirs
I want to buy this book but have no idea how to do it if some body could help me
Also from reading similar account mentioned in my last comment and from also from books like "Company Politics" my understanding is that the competition during the time of colonization was between a Mix of locals plus the French and a Mix of local plus the British and exclusively finacianced by local bankers. Would you agree with this and if yes then how could you account for the disparity in technology and scientific approach.
My understanding is that the French were organizing with similar technology and organizational strategy, unless you are saying that if it was not going to be English then it would have been French.
Informative.keep it up.
Pakistan does not deserve an enlightened and scholarly person of the calibre of Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy. This scholarly discussion is excellent but unfortunately the Pakistani establishment does not appreciate it.
He is absolutely right. Empires collapsed because of their lack of innovation, not very different to Saudi, UAE and Qatar. Someone rightly said, Islam has/had dominance in extracting the fruits of Innovation, but absolute unwillingness to work on the roots of it. This was at the centre of Mughal India and Ottoman collapse. They thought they were getting powerful by buying someone else’s invention. But at the end, the Europeans were cunning or say smart enough to realise the weakness. I would also add Islamic Spain or the Iberian Peninsula to that list. When Ferdinand and Isabella saw the opportunity of what is going on Grenada, reconquest happened and the entire peninsula was converted back to Christianity with Jews and Muslims receiving the ultimatum from Spanish & Portuguese Kingdoms. Interestingly you also see a direct correlation between Portuguese expeditions outside Europe and substantial decline in Arab power. To a point that they absolutely became irrelevant in the medieval discourse. You almost see blank pages when it comes to Arab history from 1500s to 2000s.
@Dr.Hoodbhoy
The so called "modernists" were allies of the British helping them rule and loot the subcontinent.
There were only 50,000 British troops in British India with a population of 400 million.
The power structure in the subcontinent helping the British occupy British India which was roughly half of today's India took over from the British after 1947 both in Pakistan and India, two countries which never existed prior to arrival of a foreign masala company called East India Company.
Congress and Muslim League were regular political parties in British India helping the British rule and loot the subcontinent under the ruse of governance. Which is why Gandhi and Jinnah actually opposed independence of India.
There was little to no inner party democracy in Congress and Muslim League as they were both under the thumb of Gandhi and Jinnah.
The concept of tprivate property, ownership of property was to some extent created bourgeois and mercantile classes.
Dr Hoodboy is an excellent scholar. Being a nuclear physistist he really excelled in historical analyst. Brilliant.
Mars has its two moon if by chance we are on this planet or in future we will discover earth has more than one moon and then how we will decide our holy months? Just a scientific question
Very informative thank you for sharing sir
Fanatical adherence to religious beliefs was the cause of doom of many. In this day and age, we should without question reject religion and discard it into the historical dumpster for good. In Islam, potential reformers who dared to think differently were violently and brutally eliminated and this was not the case with Hinduism because it was very diverse from the very beginning. Reformers of Hinduism date back to several centuries before Christ.
It is wrong for anyone to expect that Dr. Hoodbhoy will be an expert on everything under the sun - from ancient history, medieval history, modern history, current affairs, physics, constitutionalism, etc, but he is well-meaning person.
1. It is common sense if the military had to take power in Pakistan, it fights with the person or group who is already in power. Whether that person is Sharif or Imran Khan - does not matter. Military boots will crush the person. It is a formula - Similarly, when the Britishers wanted to grab power in India to become its new rulers, they fought with Muslims and eliminated them from power. It does not suggest any special love and hate for Muslims or Islam by the British. They would have fought with anyone who is in power irrespective of their religion.
2. Hinduism is not an organized religion. Yes, there are some common things - vegetarianism, freedom to pursue and imagine god anyway devotee likes, Geeta so on. Hence there is no unified reaction of the community against anyone. Neither it was against Muslim invaders who made incursions through our Northern borders (today's Pakistan) before the British. While Islam is an organized religion and the reaction against anything seen against Islam by the clergy was unified. That is true even today, it was also reflected in the opposition against modern education in the 19th century. The creation of Pakistan is also a reflection of this, where Muslims in India under the banner of Islam rejected the secularism of the Congress party under the leadership of Jinnah.
When will you Pakistanis come out of your bubble? Marathas had already snatched everything from the Mughals even before the British asserted their dominance. What they had was lesser than a kingdom, let alone an empire. Plus, you can't ignore the rise of Sikhs under Maharaja Ranjit Singh. Rajputs of Rajasthan and nearby areas already never ever were under the full control of Mughals. Rajputs had their own kingdoms, although small ones but they were many and they asserted an independent status for themselves. It is true that Mughal empire was powerful from the time of Akbar till the time of Aurangzeb, we agree with that. But Marathas were already gaining grounds against Mughals right from the period of the reign of Aurangzeb. British didn't inherit India from Muslims/Mughals. Rajputs, Marathas and Sikhs had already made the Mughals a redundant entity. That is why all major wars fought by British on the Indian soil was against Marathas and Sikhs, Rajputs had secured a greater level of autonomy even during the British era. Read about Anglo-Maratha wars and Anglo-Sikh wars and get done with your Mughal empire crap.
Further to Macaulay's role, Presidency College in Calcutta was set up in 1817.
Just saying.
4. I can't type everything, but what I want to say is - that Professor Sahab is a good human being. He wants his nation to become prosperous - spiritually, culturally, economically, etc, at the same time he wants Islamists/Islam should be kept in check from corrupting Pakistan by making it another Taliban-ruled Afghan as both the incompatible with each other. We can only give him best wishes.
Quibble - Macaulay was anything but a thorough Englishman!
There are 3 civilizations that exist today the meditarenean, the indic and the sinic. Try to fit in the medit camp and not the sinic. 😅
Excellent conversation. Great
mughals were also following militant islam
Ironic indeed
Agha Khan awal suggested Pakistan proofessr SB!! Didn't he
Unfortunately Hoodbhoy's study of origins and history is based on western and muslim perspective - 'outside in' - very unbalanced and creates an impression that India was a land similar to other lands with very little civilizational progress. That version is totally wrong and completely false - Most Science and Maths has come out of India and the turkic and mughal invasions created a period of dark ages where there was no advancement and research (which hoodbhoy says is the golden period of mughal rule, ha ha) - I think he should stick to study of modern Pakistan and most likely his implementation plan for its future is just as shallow and academic - NOT A FAN
We need Industries at this time.. Not just theories containing Assumptions ,