The contradictions in Pak army chief's speech that expose flaws in Pakistan's narrative

Questions about the correlation between the terrorist attack on innocent tourists in Pahalgam and the Pak army chief Asim Munir’s anti-India speech a few days earlier are commonsensical. In a series of provocative statements against Indian defence forces, he had made it clear that Pakistan would continue to support militant struggle in Kashmir in the name of Islam.Munir’s speech is a classic example of what may be called religious separatism. He celebrated Jinnah’s two-nation theory as the philosophical foundation of Pakistan, by claiming essential and irrevocable differences between Hindus and Muslims. But he also gave this outdated argument an entirely new form.Munir resorted to a highly misleading interpretation of Islam to justify the creation of Pakistan, and by this logic, Muslim separatism. Although his speech has been criticised widely by a section of political commentators, his use of Islam for justifying violent religious separatism has been almost ignored. Three contradictions in his inflammatory address, therefore, need to be highlighted to understand its wider geo-political implications.Paradox of identity | Munir begins his speech by reciting a famous couplet of Iqbal: “Apni millat par qiyas aqwam-e-maghrib se na kar,khas hai tarkeeb mein qoum-e-Rusool-e-Hashmi” – Do not judge your collectivity (nation!) on the basis of western nations, there is something unique in Prophet’s community.Iqbal is regarded as Pakistan’s official philosopher, so it’s natural to evoke his poetry for encouraging Pak nationalism. The couplet is clearly making a distinction between the western imagination of a nation in the modern sense and the Islamic conception of a fluid and ever-accommodating ummah. But Munir did not bother to say anything on the ‘western criteria to define a nation’, which remains a central concern of Iqbal’s philosophy.Instead, he justified the creation of Pakistan, a nation-state based entirely on the western ideal of one religion, one culture, one state, as a unique form of political community. This fails to recognise that a vast majority of South Asian Muslims rejected Pakistan seven decades ago in its entirety. Partition historians such as Vazira Fazila Zamindar, Neeti Nair and Nazima Parveen show that Indian Muslims did not find any contradiction between their religious identity as Muslims and their political identity as Indians. They are very much part of Islamic community, which Munir’s official framework deliberately ignores.Paradox of history | Munir’s sense of Islamic history is equally flawed. He said: “There are only two govts on earth that have been established on the basis of kalima. The first was Riyasat-e-Taiyabba established by Prophet Muhammad in Medina…the second is Pakistan, your govt, which came into existence after 1300 years.” This comparison of the political system introduced by the Prophet of Islam in Medina with the formation of Pakistan as a modern nation state in 1947 is strange.The Medina system was primarily a coalition, which accommodated the rights of Muslims as well as of communities who had not accepted Islam, including Jews. The famous Medina Charter (Sahifah Madinah) is still regarded as an important political doctrine in Islamic history. Pakistan, on the other hand, was an outcome of religious separatism.The Prophet encouraged a political coalition that could protect the rights of all social-religious groups and communities, while Pakistan was formed on the basis of hatred and religious antagonism.Paradox of knowledge | The last part of Munir’s speech quotes a Quranic verse to underline the significance of critical thinking: “Ya ayyuha allatheena amanoo in jaakum fasiqun binaba-in fatabayyanoo an tuseeboo qawman bijahalatin fatusbihoo AAala ma faAAaltum nadimeen” – O believers, if an evildoer brings you any news, verify it so you do not harm people unknowingly, becoming regretful for what you have done.This is not the only Quran verse that emphasises the need to examine the veracity, accuracy, and truthfulness of received info. The Quran respects human capabilities; and precisely for this reason, it gives a lot of importance to critical context-specific thinking.Munir’s suggestion to Pak Muslims (especially diaspora elites) that they must pass on the ‘story of Pakistan’ to future generations must also be critically re-evaluated from the point of view of Quranic wisdom. Pak children must be encouraged to critically investigate the problematic story of Muslim separatism, led by Muslim upper caste, upper class Ashraf elites in colonial India. They should be introduced to the emptiness of the two-nation theory, which eventually produced one of the most violent human tragedies of the 20th century. They must be exposed to the activities of Pak supported terrorist groups in Kashmir. And, they must also be told about the impact of Partition on generations of Indian Muslims, who are still held responsible for something that they had always opposed.Munir’s conclusion that Pakistan is a ‘hard state’ and every organ of its present govt is working firmly to maintain this hardness is certainly true. This ‘hard state’, however, is facing a crisis of legitimacy. It has to reinvent itself as a stable political unit. This elusive search for stability has virtually forced the Pak establishment to produce a distorted, one-sided and an essentialist imagination of Islam for its own survival.The writer is an Associate Professor at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), New Delhi