Pakistan_ A Hard Country - Anatol Lieven [25]
Meanwhile, other kinship groups are descended straight from the lower castes of the Hindu system. These include the kammi artisan and service groups of the towns and villages; and below them, the old untouchables and tribals, who are so far down the system that no one even bothers much if they are Muslim, Hindu or – what most really are – pre-Hindu animist. As in India, these last are the most vulnerable groups in Pakistani society, liable to be preyed on economically and sexually by local dominant lineages and by the police.
As to effective political roles within kinship groups and in wider politics, this spreads outwards from the khandan – denoting both the immediate family and the extended family (often a joint family, in which several brothers and their families live together under one roof) – to that hellish concept, invented for the confusion of mankind: biradiri (related to the Indo-European root for ‘brother’), which is supposed to denote the descendants of one common male ancestor. To judge by my interviews, however, biradiri can be used to mean almost any kind of wider hereditary kinship link depending on context. In this book, I have therefore used ‘kinship group’ or ‘kinship network’ rather than biradiri when speaking of such wider groups.
2
The Struggle for Muslim South Asia
Then We made you their successors in the land, to see how you conduct yourselves
(The Koran, Surah Yunus 10, verse 14)
When we lowered the boat of our existence
Into the river run with pain
How powerful our arms were,
How crimson the blood in our veins!
We were sure that after just a few strokes of the oars
Our boat would enter its haven.
That’s not how it happened.
Every current was treacherous with unseen maelstroms;
We foundered because the boatmen were unskilled;
Nor had the oars been properly tested.
Whatever investigations you conduct;
Whatever charges you bring,
The river is still there; the same boat too.
Now you tell us what can be done.
You tell us how to manage a safe landing.
(Faiz Ahmed Faiz)1
This chapter is not intended to provide a history of the territory of what is now Pakistan – something that would take several books (a chronology of the main events of Pakistan’s history is, however, included as an appendix to this book). Rather, this chapter will try to draw from the history of the region, and of Islam in South Asia, those events and elements which are of greatest relevance to the situation in which Pakistan finds itself today: notably, the intermittent but recurrent history of Islamist mobilization against Western forces in the region; recurrent attempts by different administrations radically to change Pakistan; and an equally recurrent pattern of governmental failure which is common to both civilian and military regimes, and results from a combination of state weakness and entrenched kinship loyalties, religious allegiances and local power structures.
‘ISLAM IN DANGER’
As with the Muslim world more widely, the single most important thing to understand about patterns both of Muslim history and of Muslim consciousness in South Asia is the tremendous rise of Muslim power up to the seventeenth century, and its steep decline thereafter. Before 1947, the glorious history of Muslim rule and cultural achievement in South Asia helped make it impossible for Muslims to accept a subordinate position in what they saw as a future Hindu-dominated India. By the same token, for a long time after independence and to a degree even today, Pakistanis have felt that they not only must compete with India, but must compete on an equal footing; and that to accept anything less would be a humiliating betrayal.
This history also contributes to the fact that, in the words of Iqbal Akhund,
The Pakistani Muslim thinks of himself as heir to the Muslim empire, descended from a race of conquerors and rulers. There is therefore a streak of militarism