Mphil 2012 london_met__thesis_v3fb

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SALEEM KHAN, MA, Mres, MPhil
Accommodation, Competition and Conflict:
Sectarian Identity in Pakistan,1977- 2002.
Introduction
Outline
Since the 2003 American led military intervention in Iraq, the ongoing sectarian
bloodshed between Shia Muslims and Sunni Muslims has featured regularly in the
media. Prior to 2003, for more than twenty years, Pakistan not Iraq was the global
epicentre for violent internal conflict between Islam’s two major sects. The time frame
for this study starts with a military takeover in 1977 that meant for the first time in its
history, Pakistan had a leadership with a religious leaning and it ends with several
opposing religious parties representing various sects and sub-sects forming a grand
alliance that achieved a degree of electoral success in 2002. In looking at the three
different aspects of sectarian relations in Pakistan:-accommodation, competition and
conflict during the period 1977 to 2002, this dissertation attempts to deal with several
important questions. Why has sectarian identity become so significant, particularly in
certain regions of Pakistan? Another important issue is the increasing significance of
sectarianism in the political arena. For which there is a need to assess the influence
of sectarianism in neighbouring states, as well as government policy, which have
contributed in creating sharper forms of sectarian identity in Pakistan. The
dissertation intends to achieve the following aims. Firstly, enlarge our understanding
of the nature of sectarian identity. Secondary, explain the dynamics of sectarian
conflict. Finally, assess the significance of sectarian identity in a religiously defined
state. Before embarking on this task, there is a need to situate this study within a
broader context.

Most dissertations on community conflicts in South Asia are concerned with conflicts
between members of different religious traditions. For instance, there exists a
massive body of literature on the various inter-communal conflicts between Hindus
and Muslims in India, and Sinhalese Buddhists and Hindu Tamils in Sri Lanka.
Normally such conflicts are asymmetrical as usually there features a majority-
minority dimension. The rise of Shia-Sunni violence in Pakistan involving militants
from the majoritarian Sunnis against militants from the Shia minority is one of the
prime examples of conflict within a single religious tradition or between sects, which
for the purposes of this particular research is sectarianism. Sectarianism viewed as a
variant of fundamentalism, or vice-versa, but this manifestation of religious
extremism becomes more complicated. Many but not all the fundamentalists are
also sectarian. Before embarking further along this path, there is a need to explain
fundamentalism. The term fundamentalism is often attached to militant groups
associated with rigid adherence to religious doctrines, ritual practices and group
hierarchy in which charismatic leaders often dominate.
Fundamentalists sometimes become politically significant when they seek to impose
their radical demands on the rest of society despite often being a minority within their
particular religious tradition. Fundamentalists claim that their interpretation of religion
is the only “pure” and “true” interpretation, an undiluted and original version. In
addition, fundamentalists claim monopoly on defining what is right and what is
wrong, as well as usually refusing to recognise alternative viewpoints. However,
fundamentalism is not just a throwback to the ancient or medieval eras as
fundamentalism is a selective reinterpretation of the past (Puri 2004:194-195). In
reality, fundamentalism is a complex mix of certain aspects of modernity and
tradition, which is regarded as a reaction against other aspects especially the liberal
aspects of modernity and tradition.

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Inadequate significance has been attached to sectarian conflict in Pakistan.
Therefore, there is a need for a major reappraisal and scrutiny of the complexities in
the internal and external crises facing state and society in Pakistan as to avoid
oversimplification. Therefore, this dissertation has focused on the formation,
development, political consequences and the efforts for possible reconciliation to
conflict between rival Muslim sects and sub-sects in Pakistan.
Pakistan like many countries has experienced a religious resurgence that defies the
secularization thesis. The Secularization thesis which itself was once a dogma for
social scientists especially sociologists of religion states that the modernization of
society with increasing industrialisation, urbanization, education and upward social
mobility will result in religion being confined to the private sphere, excluded from the
public arena (Davie 2007:3-4).
Sectarian militancy is one aspect of this religious revival. One Muslim sect is different
from another in terms of certain rituals or beliefs, which may appear to some as
being of minor importance, but to some militants or neo-fundamentalists who have a
closed attitude towards these differences it is constructed as an argument of
orthodoxy against heterodoxy or heresy. Sunni Islam is the assumed Islamic
`Orthodoxy’ (Karolewski 2008:436).
It is due to the influence of studies of Christian theology on Islamic studies that the
dichotomy of Orthodoxy and heterodoxy were produced in order to try to define what
should be the norm and what is considered as a deviation from it. One of the major
concerns of Muslim scholars has been the comparison of Imami Shia and Sunni
sects. The other major topic of interest being numerically smaller non-Imami Shia
sects who differ from both Sunni and Imami Shia Islam as far as importance
attached to formal rituals. Generally and opposing the viewpoints of Sunni scholars

these groups usually also define themselves as Muslims and contest the assertion of
Sunni Islam as the sole `righteous’ interpretation (Karolewski 2008:435).
In extreme cases there is a process of neo-fundamentalists dichotomizing
themselves as the only true believers and denying their Muslim opponents the status
of being fellow Muslims ; previously they were regarded as deviated Muslims but still
contained within the Islamic fold. The term neo-fundamentalist is used here as they
are not adherents of traditional Islam which allows more acceptance or tolerance of
religious pluralism and thus is not absolutist or exclusive. The terms of categorization
of Islam discussed here and the debates associated with them will be explained in
more depth in the forthcoming chapters.
These neo-fundamentalists may be better described as sectarian neo-
fundamentalists as opposed to some Islamists such as the Jammat-e-Islami (Islamic
Society) or JI who since the late 1970s began to de-emphasize internal differences
among Muslims in their long-term quest for the establishment of a theocracy or the
Islamisation of state rather than society which they see as their pivotal goal
regardless of strict adherence to a particular sectarian viewpoint. So the JI’s
membership which is now open to almost all Muslim sects is thus accommodative
being almost unique among Pakistani religious parties who are strongly identified
with a single sect or in the case of Sunni parties a particular sub-sect. Being an
Islamist party, JI is relatively more open to express its views in the language of
modernity and Islamizing concepts from modernity while the other major strand in
radical Islam, the neo-fundamentalists almost totally reject such an approach (Roy
2012:245-6).
Neo-fundamentalists also tend to strongly oppose any efforts towards Islamic
ecumenism. The JI’s unsuccessful attempts in 1990s to bring rapprochement
between warring sectarian militias by forming the Milli Yikjahati (national unity)
Council shows that radical Islam itself has a multitude of ideological orientations
some of which like traditional Islam share a degree of flexibility in accepting plurality
in society. Thus Islamic radicals are not always synonymous with sectarianism or
intolerance.

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In Pakistan, the Sunnis, who are as in most Muslim countries, the majority sect, and
the Shia, a much smaller but a relatively powerful minority are locked in a bitter
struggle with militants from both sects violently arguing over several major and minor
issues. Shia militants fearing that their community will be further marginalized while
their Sunni rivals pursue the utopian ideal that a Islamic state has to be a
homogeneous entity. The Shias have since the late 1970s been experiencing
increasing levels of hostility from Sunni sectarian militants which are also in conflict
with alternative or less literal interpretations such as the modernist and Sufi
tendencies within the broader category of Sunni Islam.
There is in Pakistan a simultaneous intra-Sunni conflict which is of smaller
magnitude which both impacts and is influenced by Shia-Sunni sectarianism. So the
Shia-Sunni dichotomy is not the only sectarian fault line in Pakistan. The sheer
variety of Muslim sects and especially sub-sects in Pakistan seems quite
overwhelming and this thesis can’t explore all of them. If religion was the only issue
in sectarianism that Ismaili Shias would be the prime target for Sunni sectarian
militias as Ismaili are much more deviated from what is regarded as the Sunni norm
than mainstream Imami Shias. Faisal Devji (2005:58) argues that it is the Imami
Shias who are targeted because of their closeness to Sunni Islam and also that is
they are a competitor to Sunni Islam. In this thesis, Shia usually always refers to
Imami Shia.
There is some continuity in sectarian relations between Shias and Sunnis which
span historical and geographical dimensions as Pakistan is not the only country
experiencing intra-Muslim conflicts. Afghanistan and Iran have longer histories of
sectarianism than Pakistan. Saudi Arabia is the most sectarian Muslim country which
allegedly sponsors sectarianism in many other countries including Pakistan (Nasr
2006:23). In Syria, Turkey and Yemen there are `Shia’ minority sects termed as

Alawis, Alevis and Zaidis respectively who sometimes come into violent conflict with
Sunnis.
This endeavour will help highlight shared characteristics that Pakistan has with some
other multi-sect Muslim countries as well as the peculiarities of sectarianism in
Pakistan. In addition, similar comparisons are made with Hindu majority India, where
despite the dominance of the Hindu-Muslim communal conflict, there is conflict
between Shias and Sunnis in certain regions of India, the Shias believing that they
are under siege as they are a minority within a minority as Sunnis greatly outnumber
them. The conflicts between Hindus and Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs and the internal
social divisions of caste among Hindus provide more scope for comparisons as
these conflicts have all been studied in the South Asian context.
Conflict between Shias and Sunnis has a long history, but why has the level and
spread of violent sectarian activity increased so sharply in the last quarter century
that it now dominates the political agenda in some regions of Pakistan? With regard
to Pakistan’s historical time line, the seriousness of sectarian incidents has
intensified. The general trend was towards more violence, with 1997 being the peak
year of violence. Why did sectarian violence peak at the fifth anniversary of
Pakistan’s establishment? This is by no means an easy question to answer as there
are many contradictions inherent in Pakistan’s politics and history. However, here in
this thesis, an attempt has been made to analyse the various causes for sectarian
polarization and to study whether some of these causes interact in producing an
unstable situation which then inspires the growth of violent sectarian movements.
The sectarian hysteria generated during campaigns directed at other Muslim sects is
seen as a failure of modernist Islam which inspired Pakistan’s founding fathers and
the decline of the appeal of traditional Islam in the consciousness of the expanding
lower middle classes. The petty bourgeoisie which is the social class most
associated with religiosity have many grievances against the privileged elites who
deny them a major role in the political decision making process and so segments of
the lower middle class who also aspire to more prosperity provide the bulk of the
constituency which is receptive to radical Islam as an egalitarian ideology that can
challenge the authoritarianism of existing elites but is also itself totalitarian in nature

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(Hussain 2005:188). The irony here is that these elites have successfully used these
religious militants in combating challenges from liberal and leftwing ideologies.
The division between the Shias and the Sunnis which may be seen as a form of an
internal clash of civilizations is rooted in the intense debates and doctrinal
controversies over the crisis of legitimate succession to the Muslim community’s
leadership that came into question following the death of the holy Prophet
Muhammad. Thus it can be said that the religious divide between Shias and Sunnis
has its origins in a leadership struggle which implies that politics take precedence
over religion in reality. To the Shia, most of the Companions of the Prophet (Sahaba)
after the Prophet’s death wanted to deny Hazrat Ali (his son-in-law), and after him
his descendants, the Shia imams, of their religious and political right to the
leadership of the Muslim community. According to the Shias (partisans of Ali), these
Sahaba, and their successors, were acting against the wishes of the Prophet and
used Islam for enhancing their own political motives. However, the Sunnis revere the
Sahaba, and some Sunnis also revere the Shia imams as well, but the Khulafa’ al-
Rashidun, the four `pious successors’ of the Prophet (of whom Ali was to eventually
become the last), are revered as second in status only to the Prophet in the Sunni
religious hierarchy. The hostile attitude of the Shias towards the Sahaba (especially
the first three caliphs) expressed in their ritual cursing (tabarra) of the Sahaba is the
major religious divide which separates the Shias from the Sunnis.
Islam as in case of other religions is much more than just a set of beliefs or shared
rituals but also includes religious authority which also defines a body of members
within a religious boundary, so both Sunnis and Shias find strength in their specific
sectarian identity. Some knowledge of Islamic history and theology is therefore
essential, but here in dealing with a more contemporary scene, in the context of
Pakistan, a nation-state defined in religious terms, an in-depth exploration of
Pakistan’s socio-economic and geopolitical environment is required to understand if
it has significance to the consolidation of sectarianism as an important political
discourse. There are few places in the world where religious and political identities
are so closely entangled as in Pakistan.

Prior to Pakistan’s independence in 1947, sectarian relations between the Shia and
Sunni sects was relatively free from actual violence in most of the Muslim majority
regions that came together to form the new country (Behuria 2004:158). This was
probably due to the strong influence of Muslim mystical saints (Sufi Pirs) having an
almost unchallenged hold of the rural masses that formed the vast bulk of the
region’s population (Zahab 2002:115).The emphasis on community conflict and
competition during the British Raj period was largely centred on the binary divide
between Muslims and non-Muslims (Hindus and Sikhs). However, Ashutosh
Varshney ( 2003:172) writes that in some parts of the former United Provinces of
British India, especially in the Awadh region where Shia elites had dominated the far
more numerous Sunnis and Hindus prior to the British Raj, sectarianism amongst the
minority Muslim population eclipsed the more documented Hindu-Muslim tensions.
The United Provinces, now the modern Indian provinces of Uttar Pradesh and
Uttarankhand, was the major centre for various community conflicts (Hindu-Muslim,
Shia-Sunni, higher caste Hindu-lower caste Hindu) in British India. The Muslim
League which had its roots in safeguarding the rights of Muslims in British India, was
a party dominated by upper class Muslim elites both Shia and Sunni from this region.
After Partition, many urban middle class and lower middle class Urdu speaking
Muslims both Shia and Sunni, from India also came to Pakistan. Here in this new
nation-state, owing to their relatively better education they were over-represented in
certain sectors of the economy. The indigenous population resented their dominance
and labelled them as being Muhajirs (migrants).
This unkind description made this particular grouping of Muslims feel rather uneasy
in their new homeland and their initial response was to strongly emphasis their
identity as religious Muslims by forming various Islamist organisations. So Muhajirs
were over-represented in religious organisations such as the JI which demanded that
Pakistan be turned into a religious state which would be subject to the full application
of the Islamic sacred law (Shariah) as the supreme law. This relationship of Islam
with Pakistani nationalism, can be considered as a quest for unitary, one God, one
language (Urdu), one country, one religion which also implicitly meant just one sect.
Tolerance of diversity regarded as compromising or threatening unitary. Such

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extremists were strongly opposed to the dominant `secular’ nationalist parties led by
indigenous rural landed elites, some of whom had strong links to Sufis (Choudhary
2010:11).
According to JI doctrines, the aim of an Islamic state is to remove those evils which
are not eradicated through the efforts of Islamist organisations alone, the coercive
power of the state apparatus has to fulfil this purpose. Liberal democracy is not
regarded as being a part of an Islamic State (Roy 2011:62).
The JI’s ideas regarding the establishment of an Islamic state in Pakistan were
detrimental to its western-educated ruling elites, as they did not envisage an Islamic
state. Pakistan was created according to modernist Muslim ideals to safeguard the
Muslim minority of British India from the real or perceived threat of the Hindu majority
who were relatively more advanced in the important modern sectors of business and
education. This concept of minority protection also meant by extension that all
religious minorities both Muslim and non-Muslim living in Pakistan should be free
from discrimination from the state apparatus otherwise the Pakistani state itself
would be classified as a hypocritical state (Badler 2003:267- 278).
The imposition of an Islamic order in Pakistan would bring out to the open more
problems regarding inter-community relations than it would probably intend to solve.
Which version of the Islamic law is going to be applied, the Muslims were
themselves going to be divided further by this theme? Would the imposing of Islamic
law in Pakistan encourage more discrimination towards the Muslim minority sects
and non-Muslim minorities? Mawdudi was not discouraged by the complexity of the
implementation of Sharia law would bring as all he said in response to his modernist
critics was that Pakistan is in a state of unbelief and so is acting against the wishes
of God.
In this period, the Muhajirs outwardly neglected their own racial and regional origins.
This increased emphasis on Muslim identity and practice made some sense in an

overwhelming Muslim majority state, as it could be a tool to help further the cause of
Muslim brotherhood by discouraging the threat of ethnic regionalism. There was
however a considerable drawback to this approach, as sectarian identity is a part of
and interacts with the wider religious identity. The broader identity of just being a
Muslim could not be fully separated from the concern placed on which sect of Islam
an individual or a family belongs to, regardless of their actual role in public life.
Also during this period, due the impact of Muhajirs especially those from the lower
middle classes, who had carried with them from India, a strong sense of sectarian
identity. The much larger indigenous population of Pakistan, itself already heavily
divided on various racial, tribal and linguistic lines, was being exposed to religious
sectarianism to a far greater extent than it was during the British Raj. Tariq Ali ( 200
2:177) asserts that since almost all the Hindus and Sikhs have been expelled from
the territories that have come to form what is now Pakistan, so denying the Sunni
Muslim neo-fundamentalists of an easily defined non-Muslim target, they have then
focussed their hatred towards the new targets of the Ahmedis and Shias, by
emphasising that only Sunnis are Muslims and denying the rights of other sects to
claim this status so making the definition of Muslim identity a highly contested
identity.
Some of these Sunni neo-fundamentalists have formed sectarian parties which
consider themselves as the custodians of a redefined authenticity which denies the
legitimacy of their secular and religious opponents including even other Sunni
religious parties such as the Islamist JI. The sectarian parties justify their rigid
approach to religion, as they look at differences as a form of dissent (fitna) towards
the solidarity of believers. This is rather complex as the unity of Muslims is itself a
contested term.
Does this viewpoint have its origin in the segment of society that is politically
frustrated so finds sectarian organisations an appealing outlet? Mention of class
conflicts which may be expressing themselves in more distinct ideological terms is
required if sectarianism is masking underlying class tensions. Most of the Muslim
clergy (ulema) belong to the lower middle classes, some of them are deeply rooted
in sectarianism, regard themselves as the religious representatives of the people, so

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they demand the intrusion of their particular interpretations of Islam into the public
sphere. So there is an on-going tussle between the sacred and the secular as also
there are variances in the interpretations of Islam preferred by sections of the
religious scholars, modernist elites and the populace.
So sectarian identities were now added with a new greater emphasis to the vast
array of existing identities, making the relationship between different sections of
Pakistani society more complex than ever before. Yet the first thirty years of
Pakistan’s existence (1947-1977) were going to be considered a relatively mild
period for Shia-Sunni relations compared with what was going to happen in the
aftermath of the military takeover of July 1977, when a popular supposedly Shia
prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (Nasr 2006:88-90) was overthrown by the
staunchly Sunni chief of army staff that Bhutto himself had appointed, General
Muhammad Zia ul Haq (1977-1988). However the power struggle between the
Sunni Zia and the Shia Bhutto should not be portrayed in simple sectarian terms
being that of a Shia against a Sunni. During the peak of Bhutto’s power in the early
1970s, his left-wing politics alarmed some of the Shia business and religious elites
who entered into alliance with the anti-Bhutto camp which contained many Sunnis of
similar class interests (Ahmed 2009:109). However Zia preferred senior military
appointments to be filled with strict Sunni officers who shared his lower middle class
background and religious outlook. Zia also encouraged divisive politics based on
sect, region and clan as he had feared political parties especially the PPP which had
cross-community support, could challenge his authority. Zia had created what
Mughees Ahmed ( 2009:110) the localization of politics which shifted the political
focus away from national politics which helped the spread of sectarianism.
Pakistan is not usually associated with Shi’ism as in the case of Iran and Iraq. Iran is
the country most closely associated with Shi’ism as Shias are in overwhelming
majority and Iranian nationalism and Shi’ism are powerfully intertwined. Pakistan
has probably the world’s second largest Shia population after Iran (Shaikh 2011:
243). The exact percentage of the Pakistani population in Muslim sectarian terms is
difficult to establish as there are no official figures published. The government only

acknowledges that there exists a Shia minority and also that there are religious
differences which are present among the Sunni majority. The only government
statistics available regarding religious affiliation is based on the binary divide
between Muslims and non-Muslims which shows the later category includes as little
as 3.5% of the entire population of Pakistan.
The major non-Muslim communities in Pakistan are Christians, Hindus and the
Ahmadis who have been entered against their adamant claims, into the non-Muslim
category since Bhutto’s legislative reforms of 1974. The Ahmadis especially the
Qadiani majority sub-sect among them believe that the Prophet Muhammad was not
the last the prophet while the minority Lahore sub-sect of Ahmadis regards the
founder of the Ahmadi movement, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad not as a prophet but as a
great religious reformer. This belief on continued prophet-hood has periodically
brought Ahmadis into intense conflict with both Sunnis and Shias, despite Ahmadis
themselves strictly observing the major rituals of Sunni Islam from which they had
separated during the nineteenth century. There exists an almost universal consensus
among both Sunnis and Shias that the Ahmadis are outside the fold of Islam.
Some sectarian Sunnis had with the help of their Shia rivals successfully urged
Bhutto to change the status of the Ahmadi community. These militant Sunnis had
temporarily set aside their long standing disputes with their counterparts in the Shia
community, so the Ahmadi community was targeted by what appeared to be a united
front of Shia and Sunni ulema. Shias were reluctantly accommodated by Sunnis
during the anti-Ahmadi campaign but their rivalries and differences remained intact
below the surface. Since 1974 when the Ahmedis had their status as Muslims
revoked by the state, later during Zia’s regime additional restrictions were enforced
on the Ahmadi community which disallowed them from public preaching. Sunni
fundamentalists have wanted to extend the argument regarding the precise definition
of who is or is not a Muslim from the tiny Ahmadi community to the much larger Shia
community. The boundaries of Muslim citizenship had become a political issue rather
than simply a religious one (Saeed 2007:145).
Some sectarian Sunnis also tend to greatly underestimate Shias as they are
sometimes portrayed by them as an unrepresentative elite community at the apex of

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a pyramid-like structured society enslaving the Sunni masses. Shia sectarian
organisations grossly inflate their numbers so to emphasis their relative community
strength and the growing appeal of their faith to new converts from the Sunni
Muslims. So estimates can be found that range widely, from as little as 2% to as
high as 35 % of Pakistan’s Muslim population. (Ahmed 1998:109,119). Most scholars
believe that the range 15% to 25% is more realistic, taking 20% as a median,
means that there are around 30 million Shias in Pakistan so far exceeding the figure
for third placed Iraq which probably has less than 20 million Shias. Pakistan’s Shia
population is more than 20% of total global Shia population (Nasr 2007:9-10).
Debates regarding the actual size of the Shia population are part of sectarian politics
in Pakistan.
So militant organizations took off only in the last three decades and thus are
themselves a new and powerful means of encouraging sectarian identities and of
expressing them, frequently with the show or the actual use of force. Other
influences on sectarian identities are not new: mosques and madrasas (seminaries
of Islamic education), have an important role where often matters of sectarian
identity are enhanced with new methods: mosques and madrasas not only have their
own well demarcated sectarian boundaries, but in addition many of them are also
intensely involved openly or secretly with extremist bodies. Much of the leadership of
such organizations comes from madrasas and comprises people who began their
careers as lower ranking clergy in small local mosques. The building of new
madrasas is also often sponsored by these organizations, and it is not too hard to
notice that a remarkable mushrooming of madrasas and the growth of sectarian
conflict tended to coincide in recent years.
Mosques, madrasas, the distribution of sectarian literature, the easy availability of
firearms and the emergence of sectarian groups have all contributed to an
environment of considerable socio-economic and political instability to encourage
what was once a minor issue. Though the purpose here is to trace the roots of
sectarian conflict in Pakistan, this dissertation also shows the importance of
sectarianism as a major form of religious change and social protest. So sectarianism

appears to its adherents as a form of liberation theology. The partial success of
urban sectarian organizations in spreading their ideology to the hinterland by setting
up new mosques and madrasas and redefining the religious life there, analysed in
the forthcoming pages, will show the spread of a reformist, urban, scripture focused
and relatively rigid form of sectarian identity which clashes with the tolerant ethos of
mystical and popular forms of the Islamic faith (Kumar 2004:701).
Pakistan has not yet and perhaps never will succumb totally to sectarianism, Shia-
Sunni sectarianism has not reached the levels of violence that Hindu-Muslim
communal conflict has in India, but sectarianism is an important political discourse in
Pakistan. By utilising Pakistan as the venue for the illustrating the role of
sectarianism, this dissertation attempts to enhance the understanding of
sectarianism. The main hypothesis is that the manipulation and instrumentalization
of sectarian and other ethnic identities as sources of political legitimacy have
considerably inhibited attempts towards nation-building in Pakistan. Sectarian and
ethnic identity politics have gravely damaged the development of nation-building as
they have prevented national reconciliation and the improvement of state-society
relations and a national identity in Pakistan.
Methodology
Sectarian identity: primordialism and instrumentalism
This thesis is concerned with sectarian identity politics, which falls in the broader
category of identity politics. Fundamental to identity politics, is the nature of identity.
Individuals and groups have multiple identities and a complex relationship exists
between these identities. Identity politics is the politics of recognition and the politics
of differences. There is a strong need to understand the nature, causes and
development of identity politics in Pakistan.
Some people assert that sectarian identities in themselves are responsible for violent

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conflict, but the variance in the patterns and levels of sectarian violence do not yield
validity to this line of argument. Why does sectarian violence occur in some places
while it is almost absent elsewhere in Pakistan? It may occur at specific places and
periods then stop but resurface in a region with no prior history of sectarian tension.
Let us start by discussing the term sect first which depicts a smaller religious group
that has branched from a larger established group. Sects share many beliefs and
rites in common with the main religious body that they have separated off from, but
are considered as distinct mainly by a number of doctrinal differences. Khan and
Chaudhry ( 2011:74) define Sectarianism in Pakistan as a form of religio-political
nationalism and as such, in their view its root causes are directly in identity
mobilization and ethnic conflict. It has metamorphosed from religious schism into
political conflict around communal identity. Sectarianism has articulated itself as a
political function and its militant forces operate in the political domain rather than
religious (Nasr 2004:86). So sectarianism falls in the field of the study of nationalism,
ethnicity and ethnic conflict. Borrowing concepts of influential instrumentalist social
scientists like Paul Brass (1991), Thomas Eriksen ( 2002), Eric Hobsbawm (1992),
Andreas Wimmer ( 2008) and considering religious or sectarian identity as a form of
ethnicity can help provide further insights. The instrumentalism here is the belief that
sectarian identities are in the process of being created and reshaped and their
alternative explanations to the tenuous situation in Pakistan will be explored in more
detail in the forthcoming chapters. Some of the means of imparting a sense of a
sectarian identity are relatively new. By focusing on a certain issue or selecting
community symbols, elites make it possible, to construct a sectarian identity by
giving attention to a real or imagined threat.
Recently, the printing and distribution of sectarian literature in local languages, which
attack the rights and claims of their rivals, has become a major role of sectarian
organizations in Pakistan. Audio and video recordings have supplemented this print
media. The spread of sectarian identity by modern means creates what Benedict
Anderson (1991:6) calls `imagined community because the members of even the
smallest nation (or sizeable sect) will never know most of their fellow members,

meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their
communion’. Anderson (1991:7) further adds that `it is imagined as a community,
because, regardless of actual inequity and exploitation that prevail in each, the
nation is always conceived as a deep horizontal comradeship’. Grace Davie ( 2007:
27) refers to the work of Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) who unlike previous Marxists
places more importance on the independent characteristics of religion, culture and
politics- supporting its power to influence autonomous of economic factors.
Central to Gramscian thinking is the concept of hegemony, which means elites
maintain their hold on politics by exploiting popular consensus. The process is so
total that the status quo is considered acceptable and even `natural’. Religion can be
used in both affirming and challenging the dominant social structure. In the later
situation, elites of disaffected groups can awaken a new consciousness. Therefore,
the Shias and Sunnis have become imagined communities. Steve Bruce ( 2003:11)
further adds that religious groups or sects are in advantageous strategic position, for
it is difficult and costly for any state to suppress the traditions of such groups
because they claim an authority higher than any available on this earth.
Sectarian identity can be attributed as a form of ethnic identity and sectarian
categories as distinct ethnic groups. Sectarianism can be seen as a form of ethnic
conflict. Before any assumptions can be made, there is a need to know what
constitutes an ethnic group. Most scholars agree that religion is an aspect of
ethnicity, as religion provides a strong measure of solidarity for a named human
population. Jonathan Fox (1997:5) adapts Ted Gurr’s definition of ethnic group as
“in essence, ethnic groups are psychological communities: groups whose core
members share a distinctive and enduring collective identity based on cultural traits
and life-ways that matter to them and to others with whom they interact. People have
many possible bases for ethnic identity: shared historical experiences of myths,
religious beliefs, language, region of residence, and in caste-like systems,
customary occupations. Ethnic groups are usually distinguished by several enforcing
traits. The key to identifying ethnic groups is not the presence of a particular trait or

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combination of traits, but rather in the shared perception that defining traits,
whatever they are, set the group apart.”
Jyoti Puri (2004:174) adds to this definition by highlighting that being held together
by a shared cultural identity however defined, an ethnic group recognizes itself and
is recognized by others.
As these are attributes that function as instruments for the development of an ethnic
group which is an informal political organization. Within the developing countries,
such a grouping is more stable and more effective in achieving its aims than a formal
association in which loyalties derive only from contractual interests. With these three
definitions added together sectarian identity can be attributed as a form of ethnic
identity and sectarian categories as distinct ethnic groups. This helps to develop a
theoretical framework where the politics of sectarianism especially the construction
of sectarian identity and conflict can be emphasized.
This discussion of ethnicity, nationalism and sectarianism in Pakistan initially projects
a picture where rival fractions are deeply hostile towards each other and sometimes
engaging in violence, what is important here in the political science context is how
and why such an unstable situation where diversity is not accommodated has
developed. This endeavour demands a theoretical understanding which continues to
be dominated by two opposing standpoints. The two major rival theories which
dominate the debates on ethnic conflict are termed the primordialist and
instrumentalist. Alone, each of them is inadequate and implausible. So there exists a
massive literature on ethnicity and ethnic conflict. In which attempts are made to
select and disregard certain aspects of both primordialism and instrumentalism.
In its most extreme form, the primordialist view is that ethnic attachments are so
persistence and intense- as they are the basic categories of society where given ties
of history and culture help to unite people into naturally defined groups. It explains
the high levels of passion and the self-sacrifice aspects of ethnic groups by the

importance of the strong attachments between group members for their collective
well-being based on the intimate links between ethnicity, kinship and territory.
People do not actively choose their ethnic identities. Clifford Geertz (1993: 259- 260)
says “ By a primordial attachment is meant one that stems from the `givens’ of social
existence : immediate contiguity and kin connection mainly, but beyond them the
givens that stems from being born into a particular religious community, speaking a
particular language, or even a dialect of a language, and following particular social
practices. These congruities of blood, speech, custom, and so on, are seen to have
an
“Ineffable and at times, overpowering, coerciveness in and of them. One is bound to
one’s kinsman, one’s neighbour, one’s fellow believer, ipso facto; as the result not
merely of personal affection, practical necessity, common interest, or incurred
obligation, but at least in great part by virtue of some unaccountable absolute import
attributed to the very tie itself. The general strength of such primordial bonds, vary
for each society, and from time to time. But for virtually every person, in every
society, at almost all times, some attachments seem to flow more from a sense of
natural affinity than from social interaction.”
Here ethnicity is largely seen as being interchangeable with culture, and culture itself
is considered more a rather static than as a fluid entity which provides the divide
between ethnic groups. Common cultural attributes provide a structure of internal
cohesion which also symbolizes continuity between the pre-modern and modern
(Eriksen 2002:55).
States, parties, bureaucracies, and politics are seen mainly as the expression of
these historical but immemorial ethnic cultural divides. The main drawback with
primordialism is that it finds it difficult to explain why some ethnic groups form,
change and merge with others and why patterns of ethnic conflict can be so uneven
and unstable. Primordialists give huge importance to emotional and instinctive
attributes as reasons for ethnic mobilization. People are regarded as intensively
emotional rather than rational beings in primordialist thinking as people are capable
of sacrificing themselves for the community rather than for just individual purposes
which instrumentalists find difficult to explain (Smith 2008:10).

19
The primordialist view is often rooted in nationalist especially extremist or sectarian
understanding of identity politics, less extreme versions sometimes appear in
scholarly works. Nation-states often portray and impose the primordialist view as the
official and authentic version by their control or influence of the media and
educational system. Political mobilization in which ethnicity dominates occurs when
ethnic groups seek to defend, sustain or propagate the interests of their own group.
This primordialist explanation implies that ethnic conflict is inevitable; it is the normal
outcome for primordial attachments.
Over time, the levels of awareness within an ethnic group about itself and perhaps
more importantly its relationship with other ethnic groups may change when it is
confronted with new challenges brought on by changing circumstances. One key
element which brings such a heightened consciousness among the masses of an
ethnic group is the role of elites within that ethnic group. Seeing an ethnic group as a
collectively within a larger social, memories of a shared historical or mythical
heritage and cultural focus on one or more symbolic elements such as religious
affiliation that led to emotional intensity and ethnic mobilization, but primordialists
usually have underestimated the political advantages gained from the exploitation of
these symbols by elites.
In strong contrast to primordialist explanations, instrumentalist understanding of
ethnicity conceives it as being socially constructed. Ethnic identities are not
considered here as being permanent, predetermined and naturally given, for the
most extreme instrumentalists like Paul Brass and Eric Hobsbawn ethnicity seems to
lack any pre-modern origins. Paul Brass (1991:16) gives huge emphasis perhaps
overemphasis on the role that elites play in shaping and reshaping identity by
distorting and sometimes even fabricating materials from the cultures of groups, for
political and socio-economic advantages. Elites here can be defined as high status
groups which have a high level of resources that the rest of society usually lacks but
aspires to achieve. Ethnic identity in this particular context is produced by rational
decisions taken by elites and followed by their constituencies. Although ethnic
groups have characteristics based on linguistic, religious or other social traits, the
solidarity between group members is not naturally given, instead it is a created and

dynamic bond based on political and economic interests.
So being the product of various political and socio-economic processes, ethnicity is a
flexible and highly fluid entity which has no fixed boundaries. Ethnic groups are
collectives which change in size depending on circumstances. At an individual level,
a person can belong to many ethnic groups simultaneously but identifies with a
particular one depending on the situation. In addition, the major theme of
instrumentalism is the process of selecting and manipulating symbols in order to
define boundaries, which serves the important role of identity formation as the basis
for political mobilization.
Elites are successful in establishing political movements based on ethnic divides
when showing the importance of the links between community interest and political
involvement rather than the specific elite interest which is submerged in the wider
interest rhetoric. The degree of success of elites in this task depends on the level of
intra-group cohesion based on communication and interaction between these elites
and their followers from the masses.
Anthony Smith, a leading scholar and moderate primordialist, does not deny that
ethnicity, can be manipulated by elites for political mobilization, elites do distort
existing myths, where he disagrees with the most avowed instrumentalists like Paul
Brass, is whether and how far, can elites can `invent’ them. Anthony Smith’s
contribution to the study of ethnicity is termed as ethno symbolism which is not totally
incompatible with instrumentalism and which can be seen as a bridging approach
(Conversi 2007:17- 25). Smith ( 2008:xi) considers ethno symbolism as a corrective
and useful supplement to the dominant modernist orthodoxy, by which he implies
instrumentalism. To some extent, ethno symbolism removes the instrumentalist-
primordialist dichotomy. The ethno symbolic approach towards the study of ethnicity
formulated by Smith appears to be the most appropriate for this study on Pakistan as
Pakistani elites are restricted by constraints imposed on them by religion and
nationalism, and so have to distort myths within these confines which they are very
adapt at doing.
It appears that ethnic mobilization is more common in agrarian based societies in
which autocratic modes of leadership dominate rather in advanced industrialized

21
democracies. The relationship between different ethnic groups and boundary
maintenance are important themes in instrumentalist studies of ethnicity (Eriksen
2002:9-10). For explaining sectarianism in Pakistan, the dynamics of identity
formation in instrumentalist theory and especially the importance on boundary
maintenance adapted and refined from the earlier works of Fredrick Barth on tribal
groups in northern Pakistan by Thomas Eriksen (2002) appear to be the most
appropriate.
For Thomas Eriksen (2002:9-10), contact and inter-relationships are the essential
determinants in identity formation, where ethnic or sectarian groups remain more or
less discreet, but they are still conscious of and in contact with the members of other
communities. In adding that, those groups, sects or other categories are in a sense
created through that very contact. Group identities must always be defined in relation
to they are not-in other words, in relation to non-members of the group.
Eriksen (2002:11-12) asserts that the dominant feature of identity groups is the
boundary lines of the group between these of insiders and outsiders, between us
and them. As he highlights that ‘if no boundary exists, there can be no identity, since
identity assumes an institutional relationship between alienated categories whose
members consider each other to be culturally distinctive’. So Shia Muslims in
Pakistan are still facing and reacting to Sunni Muslim hostility towards them partly
due to the emphasis placed on the relatively few differences between them which
continue to be problematic as the common core of shared beliefs and practices is
ignored. The differences themselves become the identity. The Shia and Sunni
identities now override the significance of broader Muslim identity.
Interdisciplinary
This dissertation does not aim to be just a study of religious extremism in Pakistan
as it is not one done in a university department of Islamic studies. This thesis uses a

chronological sequence, with the aim to analyse historical circumstances and events
that gave rise to the evolution of sectarianism. Historical analysis although important
in such a study is not in itself sufficient in developing an advanced knowledge of
sectarianism in Pakistan. A historical perspective helps to some extent in explaining
that sectarian identity politics is not a new phenomenon in Pakistan and that a fragile
state and uneven socio-economic development have caused, sustained and
reinforced sectarian and other ethnic identity politics over time. Rather a more
interdisciplinary approach is required and has been applied with the aim of
constructing a synthesis that will shed new light on the problem of Muslim
sectarianism of Pakistan. Anthropology, history, sociology, religious studies,
international relations and politics all provide relevant concepts, debates and
perspectives that can greatly enhance this task. Other social sciences can be added
to this list but I have confined myself to those what I am familiar with.
In the last few decades, ethnicity, nationalism and religious radicalism have emerged
as topics of special interest to many social scientists, especially those from the
disciplines of social anthropology, sociology and political science who together have
produced much of the academic literature concerned with the global revival of
identity politics and religion. The divide between social anthropology and sociology
has narrowed over the years as each now often uses methodology borrowed from
the other. Some universities even have joint departments. They are still separate
subjects. However, for the purposes of this study these two related disciplines have
been grouped together.
Ethnography
The primary research method most strongly associated with anthropology is
ethnography which is increasingly being taken up by sociologists, so probably the
distinctions between these two disciplines have lessened. Ethnography is an
underused methodology in political science; so underutilized is ethnography that, for
instance, in two leading American journals, The American Journal of Political Science
and the American Political Science Review, in the period 1996 to 2005, almost a
decade, of the 938 articles published, only one published in 1999 had ethnography

23
as its primary research method (Bayard de Volo & Schatz 2004: 267- 271). This is
nearly one in a thousand! So why is there such a resistance towards ethnography in
political science?
Ethnography provides insights into the processes and meanings that sustain and
enhance political power in communities. The reluctance in using ethnography in
political science is that it is regarded as being too limited to develop into
generalisations, as it by definition involves small sample size which may be difficult
to replicate. Ethnography can reveal much that interviewing, one of the methods
most favoured by political scientists, fails to do, while it can also be argued that the
mere presence of the anthropologist also distorts the behaviour of community being
studied. Anthropologists in contrast to most political scientists, prefer to focus on the
internal dynamics of sectarianism in their ethnographic studies- for instance, how
religious elites actually interact with their followers in the performance of rituals which
enhances identity formation (Bayard de Volo & Schatz 2004:268).
Anthropologists understand better how sectarianism has spread to wider society in
Pakistan while political scientists focus much more on the relationship between
militant sectarian groups and the state. As I am unable to undertake my own
ethnographic research in Pakistan due to my difficult personal circumstances, I have
instead incorporated the contributions of social anthropologists (Tor Aase, Hafeez-
ur-Rehman Chaudhry, Mary Hegland, Sarfraz Khan, and David Pinault etc) working
on sectarianism in Pakistan. Political scientists working on sectarianism in Pakistan
(eg.Vali Nasr, Muhammad Wassem and Mariam Abou Zahab etc.) have usually
shunned works of anthropology while anthropologists have only slightly used the
works of political scientists. I have used the contributions of both sets of social
scientists. However, I have also conducted interviews with relevant persons in the
UK as well as telephone interviews with such people in Pakistan. My other primary
sources include sectarian publications, speeches made by senior sectarian party
leaders on CD and YouTube videos on the web, articles and reports on sectarian
violence in Pakistani and international newspapers.

Thus this study uses the linkages between politics and other closely related social
sciences and attempts to seek how this relationship functions. There is here an
endeavour to bring new evidence to illuminate existing issues and pose new issues
that will enhance the collective body of knowledge on sectarianism. In attempting to
rethink sectarianism there is a need to reinterpret existing material on Pakistani
society and politics.
Overview of Chapters
The thesis consists of six chapters, including this introduction which also deals with
methodology. The next chapter is somewhat introductory in nature as it deals with
the initial thirty years of Pakistan. This provides a historical context to understand the
politics of Pakistan. The contrasting regimes of various military rulers, the civilian
administration of Zulfikhar Ali Bhutto and their relations with religious parties
dominate this period. The major upheavals of Pakistani history such the separation
of East Pakistan which became the nation-state of Bangladesh highlights the failure
of the nation building project and the legal exclusion of the Ahmedi sect by the
Pakistan state from the membership of the Islamic fold, both of which form
precedents for further turmoil. Chapter Three is concerned with the transformation of
the Sunni community, how political instability both outside and inside Pakistan
together with socio-economic change, influenced the gradual shift from quietist,
conservative and traditional Islam to a radical, activist and fundamentalist Islam.
Chapter Four focuses on developments within the Shia community. It follows a
similar pattern to chapter three but also highlights the growth and internal diversity of
the Shia community, the historical and trans-national links between the Pakistani
Shia community and Iran, as the degree of tolerance within Shi’ism is also contested.
Chapter Five which deals with sectarian conflict, concentrates on certain aspects of
sectarian history, perspectives, literature, parties and their interplay and their
influence on wider society. Chapter Six is the summary and conclusion.

25
Nationalism, Religion and Class in Pakistan,
c.1947-1977
Introduction
This chapter explores the complex and troubled relationship between nationalism,

religion and class in Pakistan during this period which is essential for understanding
why and how sectarianism became a powerful force in later periods. A huge corpus
of social science literature exists which deals with debates regarding nationalism and
nations, two reasons among many why such a vast body of work is still expanding is
that nationalism does not have a universally agreed definition and there are many
variants of nationalism. The rise of nationalism and the emergence of nation-states
from the disintegration of empires and the merger of provincial regions is a recent
development in the time line of human history. Nationalism, which could be seen as
the identity that binds or attempts to bind together groups of people above that of
tribal, regional and linguistic differences into a single nation. Religion is not just about
faith and practices, it too has this attribute, which makes it important like
nationalism in politics, as it also deals with collective identity, moral authority and
ultimate loyalty. Like nationalism which is a problematic term to define, religion
especially when dealing with the Semitic religions such as Christianity, Islam and
Judaism, and most Eastern religions apart from Confucianism and some variants of
Buddhism, can be seen as a structure of belief and rituals oriented towards the
sacred or supernatural, through which the life experiences of groups of people are
given significance and direction (Gill 2001:120).
The supernatural element is the most important part of this definition as it sets
religion apart from secular ideologies. Religion usually appears in an institutional
form as nearly all religions have regulations defining who is a member of the faith
community and which members are qualified to make decisions about doctrinal
matters and to act as its representatives. Religion is also about authoritative
relationships, especially in political science in which religion-state relations are of
paramount importance. Religion, which is a multifaceted phenomenon, is not just a
variant of culture. But is also structural: it serves the focus of a differential
instrumental subsystem. Like politics, religion is a social sphere that manifests both
the socio-specific and the global universal (Cesari 2005:86).
Throughout history especially in the pre-modern era, religion was the dominant form
of group identity for most people until empires eventually gave way to modern
nation-states. The eminent sociologist Anthony Giddens says nationalism even
secular nationalism appears to have features in common with religion such as ideas

27
and beliefs about political order but also psychological, symbolic and socio-economic
relationships (Juergensmeyer 2009:13). Whether nationalism has replaced religion
as the most important unifying or dividing identity is a contested issue especially but
not always in postcolonial countries. Yet for several forms of ethnic nationalism,
religion is a vital element especially if we consider for instance, Catholicism in Polish
nationalism and Judaism in Israeli nationalism where such a situation exists as a
single dominant religion prevails (Friedland 2001:138).
What we are dealing with in such examples is best described as religious
nationalism. Religious nationalism is a particular form of collective representation in
which membership and recognition depend not merely on the territorial nation-state
but on culturally specific categories, behaviour codes, moral values and historical
narratives (Friedland 1999:301-30 2). These characteristics of religious nationalism
make it more than just an identity but an ideology and a social movement. Mark
Juergensmeyer (1996:4-6) describes three major variants of religious nationalism:
ethnic religious nationalism, ideological religious nationalism and ethno-ideological
religious nationalism which as its name suggests combines elements of the previous
two. In ethnic religious nationalism, religious identity becomes a political identity in
pursuit of socio-economic or secular objectives, where the rivals are another ethnic-
religious group. In ideological religious nationalism, the reverse occurs, in which the
sacred dominates politics, where conflicts and issues are placed within a sacred
religious framework and the secular or even the ethnic religious state is regarded as
the enemy.
In ethno-ideological religious nationalism, there is a double set of foes, both other
ethnic-religious groups and the state. It is difficult to situate specific Muslim political
groups in each of these particular religious nationalism categories. Mainstream
parties such as the Pakistan Muslim League (PML) and Pakistan People’s Party
(PPP) in Pakistan may fall into the first category. The older Islamist groups seem to
be in the second, while the relatively newer more militant sectarian outfits such as
the SSP (Sipah–e-Sahaba Pakistan) in the third. Nationalism especially in its civic
form is seen as a modernist political entity which embraces an open pluralistic

society in which liberty, democracy, tolerance and equality are emphasized.
Religious nationalism is associated with closed, totalitarian societies which reject the
values of civic nationalism and instead is focused on a more narrow focus of a
particular community.
Religious nationalism is not a throwback to the medieval but is a modern endeavour
depending on circumstances, to compete or fuse elements with or even replace civic
nationalism in order to control state and society as it considers civic nationalism as
falling short of fulfilling expectations that modernization promised. The leadership of
ideological variants of religious nationalism such as Islamist or Islamic
fundamentalist organizations is not usually the high ranked traditional religious elite
such as from the older established seminaries or those descended from Saintly Sufi
lineages. Its support base is not the poorest segments of society such as much of
the working class or the rural peasantry. Religious nationalism appeals to segments
of the urban middle class especially lower middle class which provides the bulk of its
support base. Secularly educated technical people such as medical doctors,
engineers and scientists dominate the leadership of Islamist political organizations
(Metcalf 2007:289).
British India, Muslim Nationalism and Pakistan
The All India Muslim League was the political party that championed the ideology of
Muslim nationalism, here Muslim nationalism can be seen as an ethnic religious
nationalism as it was a nationalism built on the ethnicity of being Muslim, in which

29
Muslim religious identity became a political identity and the rivalry was between
Muslims and Hindus which ignored tensions within the Muslim community. It was led
by the British educated lawyer Muhammad Ali Jinnah obtained the majority of Muslim
votes and seats in the elections of 1945-46 which had the greatest impact on the
future of South Asia. In 1947 the sovereign state of Pakistan was created from nearly
all the Muslim majority provinces of British India. The emergence of Pakistan as an
independent Muslim majority state was not a complete victory for the Muslim League
as Muslim majority Kashmir stayed in the Indian union while the largest Muslim
majority provinces, Bengal and Punjab were divided between Pakistan and India.
The extremely violent break-up of British India into two independent states also
challenged the Congress party’s claim that it was a secular organization that
represented all Indian religious communities. As Hindu nationalism within the
Congress fold especially at grassroots level helped to enhance the alienation of
many Muslim politicians, many of whom abandoned it and in increasing numbers
joined its main political rival the Muslim League (Gould 2000:91). The Muslim
League successfully used the rhetoric of religious nationalism insisting that there
existed only two distinct nations in British India each with its own mutually exclusive
cultural attributes and opposing socio-economic interests, one being the Hindu
majority and the other being the Muslim minority. Hindu and Muslim were recognized
by the Muslim League leadership as the major binary divisions rather than those on
the lines of region, language, class, caste and sect. Hinduism and Islam were often
portrayed as homogenous entities despite the numerous internal differences that
manifest South Asian society.
Some sixteen years prior of Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s own conversion to Muslim
nationalism, as he once was a staunch Congressman who later joined the Muslim
League seven years after its formation, the supreme Hindu nationalist (Hindutva)
idealist Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1883-1966) had proclaimed that the Hindu
majority and Muslim minority in British India were two distinct and hostile nations
(Nandy 2009:3). For Savarkar, Hindus were not just a mere religious community but
a sacred brotherhood whose faith (dharma) represents what he defines as the

indigenous culture and religious tradition of India, while Muslims and Christians are
outside this fold as their religions are of trans-national nature and so they are
deemed to have rejected their Indian heritage. Savarkar considers Sikhs, Jains and
Buddhists despite being Non-Hindus as a part of the greater Hindu family (Parivar)
of religions as Sikhism, Jainism and Buddhism have their origin in India.
He considers Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism as having evolved from Hindu sects
eventually into separate religions. So not only do both Hindu and Muslim religious
nationalism share common traits, ironically they both vitally need each other to
survive. These viewpoints of Hindu-Muslim cultural, social and historical
incompatibility were projected by politicians like Jinnah and Savarkar both of whom
despite not being pious individuals had astutely resorted to use powerful rhetorical
language for political mobilization purposes. Savarkar even acknowledged with
somewhat delight that Jinnah had eventually reached the same conclusions (Nandy
2009:4).
The partition of Imperial India and the birth of Pakistan as a geographical entity
represented for the Muslim League the emancipation of the Muslim majority
provinces and Muslim refugees from minority Muslim provinces, from the domination
or the threat of domination posed by a hostile Hindu majority Raj. The major initial
drawback of this endeavour was that a substantial Muslim minority was left behind in
India which is the largest Muslim minority in the world. Indian Muslims especially
those in northern and central India experienced discrimination and violence as they
had been the most vocal support base of the Muslim league and had provided much
of its early leadership and funding.
The majority Muslim provinces situated in the northwest and northeast of British
India comprised two wings of the new-born state of Pakistan separated by India until
the more ethnically homogenous eastern wing which despite its numerical superiority
suffered cultural and socio-economic disadvantages at the hands of the western
wing emerged as the newly independent state of Bangladesh after the third Indo-
Pakistan war in 1971. This represented another failure for the ideology of Muslim

31
nationalism as it was unable to accommodate the rights and aspirations of the
Bengali Muslims who were the majority of united Pakistan’s population but began to
gradually feel alienated as it appeared to them that they were just a colony of the
western wing rather than equal partners.
Ironically, Bengali Muslims among the Muslim majority provinces of British India had
welcomed the Muslim League to far greater extent than any of the provinces in the
western wing of Pakistan. The Muslim League was seen by Bengali Muslims as
liberators from the `Hindu Raj’ of landed elite Hindus especially the upper caste
Brahmins who dominated virtually all spheres of socioeconomic life (Bose 2009:1).
While the Punjabi Muslim leadership represented a consolidated rural landed elite
that formed the apex of Punjabi society. The urban intelligentsia and petite
bourgeoisie of the Punjab were largely high caste Hindus. The Punjabi Hindus did
not own much land in western Punjab but they were better educated than the
Muslims, therefore were more represented in the civil service and modern
professions. Colonial Punjab had several influential indigenous groupings competing
for greater inclusion into the imperial state apparatus, including the Sikhs, the former
rulers of the Punjab whose overall socio-economic community profile overlapped
both those of the Muslims and Hindus. The Bengali Muslims lacked the resources of
any of these powerful groups; they were a middle class in the making (Bose 2009:
2).
The social structure of Pakistan is very multifaceted as it has elements of the caste
system inherited from its Hindu past. Caste as a social organization has less scope
for social mobility than class, to some extent caste and class categories overlap in
Pakistan as it does in India. Most but not all of Pakistan’s elites are from high caste
origins. This is particularly true of rural landlords who still provide a large proportion
of its political leadership while for their peasants it is the opposite. Yet not all
Pakistanis from high ranking caste groups are privileged but they take pride in
belonging to the same group as the elites.
In the urban areas especially in the major cities, greater exposure to capitalism and

religious reform movements have to some degree produced an economy where the
social functions of various castes are longer restricted to their ancestral occupations.
One aspect of the caste hierarchy which still resists change is of the institution of
marriage patterns which maintains that marriage is confined to caste groups of the
same or similar status. Apart from the Zulifkhar Ali Bhutto era, class by itself has
seldom been a powerful institution for political mobilization in Pakistan as individual
loyalties are hinged on clan and caste. Both clan and caste overlap over class
boundaries (Lyon 2002:19). Class becomes a more successful mobilizing political
tool when linked with religious identity and the next chapters of this thesis deal with
this aspect in more depth.
After 1947, the continued elite manipulation of religious sentiment has been more of
liability to Pakistan rather than an asset. During the campaign for Pakistan, religious
nationalism provided a useful tool in combating both moderate and extremist
opposition to the Muslim League which came from sources as wide as regionally
based parities such as the Punjab Unionists focusing on agrarian issues and
religious fundamentalists from both the Muslim and Hindu communities. Religious
nationalism could only mask temporarily the deep cultural, socio-economic and
sectarian divisions prevalent in Muslim society. Islamic brotherhood failed to
construct a strong national Pakistani identity and thus religious identity was not
enough to entirely overwhelm other competing identities.
As the partition of the British India was done on religious symbols lines submerged
regional, linguistic and social identities among Muslims which during the Pakistan
campaign could fragment Muslim unity were frowned upon by the leadership officially
yet the same leaders often used such bonds to gather support from their own
regional bases. National identity focused solely on a particular religion was limited in
its power to enhance a strong sense of belonging as social inequality and ethnic
imbalances impacted more on the daily lives. Sub-national identities challenge the
unitary culture imposed by the state which only recognizes diversity as a source of
weakness as it is seen as fragmenting the contingency because rival claimants to
power can gather support on themes not addressed by the state. In addition,
Muhammad Iqbal regarded as a national icon of Pakistan, sees Islam and modern
territorial nationalism as conflicting ideologies for building an Islamic society ,

33
nationalism helps to bring people together but it simultaneously divides them and
maintains that division, for its attributes of solidarity, race, language and territory-
cannot be easily be acquired by migrants. Some of these attributes which cannot be
changed or are difficult to change have a negative impact on Islamic brotherhood
(Lieven 2011:1 24).
Sub-national movements based on ethnicity, focused on the level of representation
their communities have at the national level are regarded by the state as anti-
national as Pakistan failed in most instances to meet their demands for greater
inclusion in the state apparatus, but the most contested theme in the early years of
Pakistan was the extent to which the role of Islam had on its state and society - the
intense rivalry between the sacred and the secular. Most of the leaders of the ruling
Muslim League came from an elite group which included among its ranks educated
lawyers like Jinnah, other professional people, merchants, journalists, civil servants,
military personnel and rural notables. This elite group would have faced stiff
competition from Hindu elites in a united India but now Pakistan provided them with
a space where the Muslim elites have complete and unchallenged socio-economic
control. They had envisaged Pakistan as a Muslim majority entity not an Islamic
state where the sacred law was paramount despite their tactical use of religious
rhetoric in securing its establishment.
Most of the founding fathers of Pakistan were educated at elite British institutions
such as Oxbridge, Sandhurst and the Inns of Court, some of them were not
personally pious people, they consciously therefore did not want to construct a
religious state (Bruce 2003:186-187). Other reasons why they opposed a theocratic
state were that they all came from diverse sectarian backgrounds. Taking the
example of Jinnah, who was originally from an Ismaili Shia family, the followers of
the Aga Khan but probably later, he had converted to Imami Shi’ism (Nasr 2006:88-
90). The Ismaili Shias in India also known as Khojas followed a religion, which was
until the arrival of the Aga Khans from Iran to India during the nineteenth century, an
eclectic mix of elements derived from Shi’ism and Hinduism. The Aga Khans started
a campaign to eliminate most Hindu inspired doctrines and customs from Indian

Ismailism, which made it closer to mainstream Islam. This purge also had split the
Khoja community in three parts, as some of them converted back to their ancestral
Hinduism or went in the opposite direction by joining other branches of Islam. Most
Khojas however welcomed the Aga Khan’s religious reforms and remained his
committed followers.
It is strange to learn that the founding father of Pakistan had such an origin steeped
in Hindu-Muslim syncretism. On the other hand, perhaps this background produced
a fear that that Khoja community might lapse back into Hinduism, so a more
demarcated Muslim identity was required to preserve it. Jinnah’s Islamic credentials
were dubious on two aspects : firstly he was a not pious Muslim and his Khoja
origins were at odds with the majority of the League’s membership who were mainly
Sunnis with a considerable Imami Shia minority which almost reflected the sectarian
ratio of the general Muslim population. However the Khoja community being
descended from converts from the merchant Hindu castes was one of the few
business Muslim groups in British India and their financial clout helped their leader
the Aga Khan become a leading figure in the Muslim League. The Raja of
Mahmudabad, Muhammad Amir Ahmad Khan (1914-1973), the largest Shia landlord
in Uttar Pradesh, had been one of the biggest financial supporters of the Muslim
League (Kazimi 2009:133), in 1940 he had written to Jinnah demanding an Islamic
state not just a Muslim majority state. Jinnah refused stating that which Islam and
whose Islam would eventually led to the dissolution of such a state. In 1970, the Raja
wrote that he was wrong and Jinnah was right (Kazimi 2009:135).
This liberal aspect of Muslim nationalism is that is it extremely tolerant of all Muslim
sects. All Muslim sects and sub-sects are welcome even those sects regarded as
being at the fringes of the Islamic religious spectrum. Here no precise doctrinal
definition of what is or who is a Muslim exists. During the Partition riots of 1947,
Sikhs and Hindus who had paid little attention to the internal diversity within South
Asian Islam attacked Muslims regardless of sectarian affiliation. Even Muslims, who
had opposed the Muslim League, had been attacked during this extremely traumatic
period. Muslim nationalism saw all Muslim victims of such violence as Muslims
regardless of their actual sectarian allegiance or degree of religious observance.
This one reason for such an outlook is that Muslim unity is paramount in Muslim

35
nationalism, which is also a feature to some extent in Hindu nationalism as some of
its adherents oppose the rigid caste hierarchies that divide traditional Hindu society.
The struggle against the secular elite’s hold on Pakistan was mainly posed by
Islamist organizations. Having largely opposed the Muslim League’s demand for
Pakistan and feeling rather irrelevant in the new state, Islamists like Mawdudi laid
down conditions that future leaders of Pakistan should fulfil if they were to be
regarded as legitimate Muslim rulers. The importance of Islam to Pakistan was not to
be confined to the idea of it as a Muslim majority space but as a place where the
rigid application of Islamic laws were paramount over other laws and such a
discourse was rendered possible by the gap that existed between Pakistan’s elites
and regional identities, which became more pronounced due to inequality in the
power structure of the country.
Islamists despite their profound differences with secular elites over the issue of the
extent to which Islamic laws were relevant in a modern nation-state both arrived
towards building a consensual understanding between them especially when
regarding the emergence of a third force in the politics of Pakistan which came in the
form of ethno-regionalism as these sub-national movements were seen as
challenging the very existence of the state rather than simply defining its secular or
religious orientation.
This Pakistani state had a dual relationship with Islamists as a resource needed to
fight against the threat of regionalism. Pakistani identity is not regarded as supreme
unless it supersedes regional identity. To be able to achieve this, national identity
requires that religious identity be more emphasized as it creates stronger bonds
between Muslims of different ethnicities and simultaneously weakens the bonds
between Muslims and non-Muslims of the same ethnicity. It does not eliminate but
only marginalizes other identities such as regional, linguistic, cultural, social and
other aspects of identification which exist within the complex mosaic of society. The
Punjab region of South Asia, part of which is now the most important province of
Pakistan, once had a common Punjabi identity which was based on language, food,

dress and folk culture but was eroded by the increased importance given to the
religious boundaries of Muslim and Non-Muslim (Hindu and Sikh).
Within a few decades, religious differences overtook ethnic commonalities,
developing into political identities in which social divisions such as caste, class and
sect were temporarily submerged. Cultural nationalism, political sovereignty and the
territorial tussles are key features of post colonial states like Pakistan and India (Puri
2004:170-171). So the Muslim identity of Muslim Punjabis in Pakistan was greatly
emphasized at the expense of their Punjabi identity breaking bonds with Non-Muslim
Punjabis in India. Religious identities became distinctive to the Punjabi communities
in this respect unlike for instance the Pashtun community, which did not have non-
Muslim members like Sikhs and Hindus. There was no need to over emphasise the
Muslim identity of the Pashtun. Being a Pashtun also simultaneously meant being a
Muslim as all Pashtuns are Muslims (Saikal 2010:9). The major divisions in Pashtun
society have always been tribal affiliation which has sometimes resulted in warfare.
When comparing the two forms of nationalism in Pakistan and India, the form of
nationalism in Pakistan is focused more on religious identity where it is hoped that
other identities are or will be submerged as Islam is the primary factor for the binding
of a diverse population whose only common bond is adherence to Islam.
Pakistani nationhood has developed a hostile attitude towards other forms of identity,
often seeing them as a dangerous rival that may eventually lead to the fragmentation
of Pakistan. This hostile attitude has its roots in the campaign for Pakistan in which
the Muslim League believed that Muslims need their own state in order to create a
space where only they dominated and their unity was paramount as diversity was
considered as a factor that could undermine that constructed unity as the ultimate
political contest was portrayed by the league as being between the Hindu majority
and Muslim minority, so diversity within a minority was seen as more damaging to its
political interests than that posed by diversity in the majority. This is a factor why the
Indian state has been somewhat less hostile than the Pakistani state towards
diversity. India has also a long history of conflict between the centre and some of its
states but India lacks an overwhelming majority in the way Punjabi Muslims are
dominant in Pakistan.

37
Pakistani nationalism hinges on the concept that a single religion unifies the majority
of its population and so appears to satisfy the basis for its nationhood. This rather
simple form of religious nationalism was successful in the early period of Pakistan’s
history to keep dissent among dominated Muslim ethnicities of Pakistan to a
minimum, especially in the aftermath of the violent inter-religious communal rioting of
the 1947 partition, but when the main political contest of them-and –us of Hindus
versus Muslim could not resolve the socio-economic aspirations of the dominated
Muslim ethnicities, the state itself become to be seen as the instrument of dominant
Muslim ethnicities.
The many diverse Muslim ethnicities that competed for greater shares in the
Pakistani decision making apparatus were often grouped in rival alliances. The roots
of these alliances could be traced to the British Raj period and beyond where
Muslims in different regions of South Asia existed alongside Hindus but had different
socio-economic and demographical attributes whose legacies then helped to
produce local disparities and accounted for regional inequalities within Pakistani
society.
Compared to its main rival the Congress party, the Muslim League was a more elite
focused political organization in which most of its leadership were either from the
great landlord clans or lawyers. These two categories to an extent overlapped as
many lawyer-politicians were from lesser landlord lineages. The roots of Muslim
separatism were in the Hindu-majority Indo-Ganges plains of northern India, where
Muslim upper classes were more densely distributed as compared to other areas of
South Asia. The upper strata of Muslim society became very apprehensive of
marginalization in an independent united India where Hindu elites would dominate.
These Muslim elites were losing power to the elite caste Hindus such as Brahmins,
Rajputs and Kaysaths, who started in the early twentieth century to outnumber their
Muslim counterparts in the administrative ranks that were open to Indians in the
imperial bureaucracy (Page 1999:8).

Within the privileged strata of Hindu society, strong rivalries existed between the
Brahmin, Rajput and Kaysath castes but such internal differences became
submerged and were overlooked whenever they were in conflict with Muslims over
the issue of over-representation of Muslims in the colonial administration of northern
India. Under such a situation, internal differences within Muslims also became
submerged so that many Shias both Imami and Ismaili occupied high ranks in the
Muslim League including on several occasions its supreme leadership despite Shias
being heavily outnumbered by Sunnis in its general membership.
The majority of British Punjab’s Muslims both Sunnis and Shias lived in the
countryside, where the institution of Sufism prevails. Rural Punjab is dotted with
hundreds of Sufi Shrines, visited by followers (murids) of various Sufi orders. Each
shrine was built on the burial ground of a Sufi Saint (Pir) and these shrines were
cared for by the living descendents of the Pir were themselves accorded Pir status.
Over the centuries, Islamic mysticism became institutionalized and Pirs welded great
influence and power. Pirs appealed not only to Muslims but also to Hindus and
Sikhs. During the nineteenth century, religious reformist and revivalist movements
appeared in each of Punjab’s three major religious communities.
One feature that they all shared was that they denounced Sufism. The Muslim
League realized after its electoral defeat of 1930s that it needed to develop local
roots. The patron-client networks of Sufi Pirs and their murids helped the Muslim
League to become successful in the next decade as both modernist and traditional
Islam were joined together in a political alliance against fundamentalist Islam
(Oldenburg 2010:26). Pirs may also have helped the Muslim League, as some of
them being landlords feared the land reform policy of the radical wing of the
Congress. In a Congress dominated India their socio-economic status would be
undermined but the Muslim League being preoccupied with Hindu-Muslim politics
could not afford to alienate such a powerful lobby.
In addition to the socio-economic competition between the two religious
communities, the cultural divide between them increased as most upper caste

39
Hindus increasingly turned towards Hindi as their chosen language while Muslims
strengthened their allegiance to Urdu. Initially, this language preference was not
based on religious affiliation as in urban areas of UP (United Provinces/Uttar
Pradesh) and Bihar, Urdu was more widely spoken than Hindi by both religious
communities but the ascendancy of high caste Hindus with strong rural roots in the
political sphere, gave the Hindi-Urdu linguistic debate a strong identification with the
Hindi-Muslim religious divide.
So Urdu become an important aspect of elite Muslim identity and regional Muslim
upper and professional classes elsewhere in British India especially in the Punjab
began to acquire Urdu as a secondary language, this became more enhanced as
some of them were educated at the premier Muslim dominated educational
establishment of India, Aligarh University.
So Urdu became more than a regional language it transcended ethnic boundaries
among Muslim elites so they considered it as a tool useful in unifying diverse
regional groups into a more solid entity that could bargain with greater authority with
the colonial administration over socio-economic demands.
Therefore, Pakistan was to have a uniform identity, one nation, one religion, one
culture and one language that sidelined diversity as a threat to national
cohesiveness. Such a simplistic construction of nationalism was not realistic.
Pakistan contained many ethnic groups with long histories which had considerable
cultural and social baggage that simply could not be disregarded under the state’s
aim of deliberately constructing and imposing a national identity regardless of what
such ethnic groups actually needed and demanded.
One ethnic group indigenous to Pakistan that supported the concept of a uniform
national culture and identity were the Punjabis, the largest ethnic group in the west
wing of Pakistan. Prior to 1947, Punjabi Muslims were largely rural the urban centres
of the Punjab were dominated by Hindu high castes such as Brahmins and Khatris
who were the most educated community in the Punjab followed at a distance by the

Sikhs with Muslims a distant third. After 1947, the regional vacuum made by the
departure of non-Muslim business and professional classes was partially fulfilled by
the emerging Punjabi Muslim middle class. However, the main strength of the
Punjabi Muslim community was its dominance of the British Indian military since the
mutiny/revolt of 1857.
Punjabis were the largest ethnic group in the British Indian Army, rural Muslims and
Sikhs were especially fond of military service. Over half the British Indian army were
Punjabis, most were from the western districts that later became Pakistan. Even
before WW1, Punjabi Muslims represented the overwhelming majority of the total
number of Muslim personnel in the British Indian army (Hussain 2005:57-58).
Pakistan having inherited this colonial legacy now faced further internal dissent as
most other ethnic groups apart from Pashtuns were largely underrepresented in the
military.
This imbalance become more politically significant when Pakistan had a Bengali
speaking majority in its population, a Punjabi minority that dominated the military and
a civil service in which Punjabis and uprooted north Indian urban Muslims due to
their superior education were together in the majority. Nationally, the industrial and
business sector was dominated by Gujarati Muslims often from Shia Ismaili
merchant lineages who had taken over the role of the expelled Hindu merchant
communities so benefiting from the break-up of British India.
The formation of Pakistan had liberated many Bengali Muslim peasants from the
exploitation of high caste Hindu landlords. However the Bengali Hindu elite
dominance was replaced by the dominance of non-Bengali Muslim control over the
civil and military apparatus of the new state. In 1965, Bengali Muslim share of the
Pakistan army officer class was a dismal 5% (Bhattacharya 2004:51), but the
Bengali Muslim share was also confined to the lower ranks. This factor in
combination with cultural divergence moved Bengali Muslims towards the direction of
demanding greater autonomy within the wider framework of Pakistan.
The fear of the radical politics of Bengali Muslim sub-nationalism and of the impact
that it may have on other aspiring sub-nationalities within Pakistan, alarmed the

41
Pakistani establishment into launching an unsuccessful military campaign with help
from Islamists which resulted in Pakistan’s humiliating defeat and dismemberment.
Islamists in both wings of Pakistan strongly opposed ethnic separatist movements as
they believed that emphasis on ethnicity undermined Islamic brotherhood. This
aspect of Islamist ideology is used by Pakistan’s elites against ethnic secessionists
and is one of the reasons why there exists a working relation between them. East
Pakistan emerged as Bangladesh in 1971, while in Pakistan itself sub-nationalism
which had been submerged in the one unit scheme, resurfaced. Other identities such
as sectarian identity gained more importance as Shias were now a much larger
percentage of the overall Pakistani population, as East Pakistan a predominantly
Sunni region became the independent nation-state of Bangladesh.
The New Pakistan
Pakistan emerged out of the 1971 crisis as a new but truncated Pakistan where the
defeated military was discredited due to its brutality in its operations against the
Bengali populace and perhaps more importantly by its humiliating surrender to arch
rival India. It also showed that the instrumental use of religion failed to hold the two
wings of Pakistan together. However the most positive outcome from this military
misadventure was that a civilian administration was eventually allowed to come into
power. The military was unable to govern on its pretext that it was the nation’s
territorial protector. Pakistan’s new leader was the charismatic but dictatorial Zulfiqar
Ali Bhutto (1928-1979), the founder of the Muslim League’s main rival the PPP
(Pakistan People’s Party), which had won the majority of the national and assembly
seats in Pakistan mainly concentrated in the Punjab and Sindh, in what were the first
direct elections in Pakistan’s history held in 1970. Despite being an Oxbridge
educated Sindhi feudal, Bhutto cleverly used the language of egalitarian idealism to
gather populist support, which he described as Islamic socialism. He would tell the
masses that ‘Roti, Kapra, Makan' (bread, clothes, shelter) were the basics of his

ideology.
Bhutto attempted to build the PPP on a wide social support base which represented
a complex task as there were strong factional rivalries among politicians and various
contradictory interests and demands of the various social classes that make up
Pakistan’s society. Bhutto bolstered his position by the use of strong rhetorical
language to put forward his agenda to win and maintain power, stating that Islam is
our faith, Democracy is our political system, and Socialism is our economic system
and finally Power to the people.
By declaring Islam is our faith, Bhutto not only utilized a pillar of Pakistani
nationalism but also to some extent made a decisive break from the Ayub Khan
regime under which he had began his national political career by serving first as its
commerce and later its foreign minister. The Ayub military dominated administration
had clashed with the Ulema and the Islamists by reforming Muslim family law. By
emphasizing democracy and power to the people slogans, Bhutto expanded his
support base among the general populace who had felt excluded from the elite
dominated politics of the Ayub era. Many middle class liberal and left-wing
intellectuals sidelined by the military for long periods of Pakistan’s history saw in
Bhutto, an opportunity for their social class to have a role in policy making. Socialism
is our economic system placed the PPP further up the populist agenda as the rural
poor and industrial workers had not obtained much benefit from the rapid economic
growth rates under Ayub which had greatly enhanced the wealth of the private
sector. By his partial nationalization and trade unionization policies, which were seen
as causes for the stagnating of economic growth, Bhutto had alienated some
powerful Industrialists who in turn, covertly began to support right-wing religious
groups.
Bhutto’s rivals especially those from the Ulema and the Islamists soon reacted to his
concept of Islamic socialism by stating that Islam and socialism were contradictory
terms and they put intense pressure on Bhutto to Islamize Pakistan. By 1973, Bhutto
deflected some of their anger by taking steps to Islamize Pakistan. Bhutto was also
targeted by many in the religious lobby as they regarded him as an amoral person
unfit to lead a Muslim majority nation. Bhutto was not a religiously pious person,

43
having a well earned reputation for drinking and womanizing which had started while
being an undergraduate at the University of California, Berkeley. Bhutto openly
admitted in one of his speeches that he did drank alcohol but simultaneously Bhutto
was very critical of his rivals whom he described as being greater sinners, accusing
them of drinking the blood of the subaltern classes by their cruel methods of socio-
economic exploitation.
For the first time in its history, Pakistan had now a ministry for religious affairs
headed by an ex-member of the Jammat-e Islami, Maulana Kauiser Khan Niazi. Both
the populist and Islamist constituencies were temporarily won over by curbs on
gambling, alcohol and nightclubs which were seen as elite and westernized pursuits.
The weekly holiday was made Friday (the Muslim Sabbath) instead of Sunday.
Ironically, Bhutto’s political ascendancy began when he had led popular opposition to
Ayub Khan’s compromise with India on the issue of the disputed territory of Kashmir
in the aftermath of the Indo-Pak War of 1965 which also started the painful downfall
of the Ayub regime. Once at the helm of power, Bhutto realized that India was too
much of a powerful adversary that could not be defeated by military means. Further
negotiations with India were the only safe options open to Pakistan. The Simla
agreement of 1972 had put Bhutto in a similar position as his last but one
predecessor.
Bhutto increasingly turned towards Islam and the wider Islamic world as a means of
representing himself as a strong leader of a Muslim majority nation that could with
the backing of its co-religionist countries stand up to a hostile Hindu majority India. In
February 1974, the second international Islamic Conference was held in Lahore.
Greater economic links were established with richer Muslim states. The oil rich Gulf
countries were successfully encouraged to take both professionals, skilled and
unskilled labour from Pakistan. Punjabis, Pashtuns and Muhajirs potentially regarded
politically as the most troublesome communities were especially recruited for
employment. The remittances helped Pakistan’s economy and political stability as
the frustrations caused by the lack of employment were lessened. However,

Pakistani workers in the Gulf returned home rich and independent from Pakistan’s
traditional elites and some of them had become radicalized during their stay in
countries where more rigid interpretations of Islam were practiced especially towards
gender and religious ceremonial issues.
The slide towards greater religious revivalism, both at the level of the state and
among communities had brought more detrimental rather than beneficial impacts on
the PPP. As the PPP was opposed by the religious right, the PPP was especially
supported by religious minorities both non-Muslim and Muslim. Ahmadis and Shias
were strongly associated with the PPP as they were often the rivals of Sunni
hardliners. Shias especially supported the PPP as the PPP was more secular than
its rivals and minority Muslim sects tend to support secular parties as sectarianism is
less of an issue than with religious parties. An additional factor was that the Bhutto
clan itself is widely regarded as being Shia despite that recently some members of it
now portraying themselves as Sunnis (Nasr 2006:88-90).
Ahmadis, Deobandis and the Pakistan state
While the Ahmadis supported the PPP believing that Bhutto was a similar character
to and the heir of Jinnah’s legacy as both were westernized barristers who utilized
religion for political advantage but were devoid of actual sectarian inclinations. Under
Jinnah, the foreign minister of Pakistan was an Ahmadi Barrister, Sir Zafrullah Khan
and most Ahmadis had shown support for the Pakistan campaign and Pakistani
Ahmadi soldiers had been honored for sacrificing their lives in Indo- Pakistan wars.
However since the 1950s, the role of Ahmadis in Pakistan was increasingly
challenged by Islamists who felt that the minute Ahmadi community welded much
more power that its mere numbers could justify. The 1970s saw the renewal of the
anti-Ahmadi movement, in which both doctrinal and political issues intertwined
together were intensely debated.

45
The scale of anti-Ahmadi feeling was more popular in the early 1970s than it had
been in the 1950s when the prime minister was Sir Khawaja Nazim-ud-din, a devout
Muslim, this was possibly as Bhutto was a really a rival rather than an ally of
fundamentalists. In 1973, following the example of Afghanistan half a century earlier
(Magnus and Naby 200 2:91), the Assembly of Pakistani governed Azad Kashmir
declared that Ahmadis outside the Muslim community and so defined as a non-
Muslim community. In addition, curbs were placed on Ahmadi proselytizing. Faced
with increasing pressure from the industrialist and Islamists segments of Pakistani
society, Bhutto gave into opposition demands in 1974 by conceding that Ahmadis
were non-Muslims. Ironically, Bhutto’s minister of religious affairs, Maulana Kauser
Niazi who was once himself an Islamist, had advised him not to meet the demands
of the Islamists and fundamentalists (Haqqani 2005:107).
The Pakistani state like that of Afghanistan was itself now reluctantly involved in
promoting and participating in sectarianism. The Ahmadis despite having some
unique religious beliefs view themselves as Hanafi Sunnis and strongly oppose the
counterclaims of their opponents. The movement against the Ahmadis was largely
spearheaded by Deobandis but backed by both Shia and non-Deobandi Sunni
organizations (Jan, Najeeb 2010:195).
By having a common target as in the case of the besieged Ahmadi community, Shias
especially their Ulema initially welcomed the prosecution of Ahmadis as Shias
themselves were not the targets and also Shia could join with Sunnis in a common
cause where Shia-Sunni differences would be marginal as in the movement for
Pakistan. So Shias and Sunnis of all sub-sects united under a single banner of anti-
Ahmadism which helped to mask deep underlying internal divides. Similarly in
Turkey, the tiny Yazidi sect who also have some unique beliefs have been
persecuted by both the minority Shias and majority Sunnis (Kocan and Oncu
2004:476).
The Shia Ulema welcomed this new binary divide of Muslim versus Ahmadis, as this
would make Shias a more integral part of the Sunni dominated Pakistan society and

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