During his opening remarks at the start of the so-called US-Pakistan strategic dialogue earlier this week, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mohammad Qureshi said this: “We are meeting today in the special backdrop of the 70th anniversary of adoption of the Pakistan Resolution, a landmark event in the history of South Asia and a defining moment in our struggle for freedom.”
March 23, which is celebrated in Pakistan as Pakistan Day, was the day the resolution to create a separate country was adopted. I am sure a lot has been said and written about it to mark the anniversary. What caught my attention was a piece by Pervez Hoodbhoy in Dawn on that day.
“It's March 23, Pakistan Day, and time for the usual flag-waving. But let's face it: things have not gone well for Pakistan. It has been a state since 1947 but is still not a nation. Missing is a strong common identity, mental makeup, shared sense of history, and common goals. The failure to effectively integrate flows from inequalities of wealth and opportunity, absence of effective democracy, and a dysfunctional legal system,” he wrote.
He makes a telling point when he comments about the country’s glaring disunity, “Pakistan's genesis explains the disunity. Created as the Boolean negative of India - NOT India - there was little thought to how the new country might accommodate diversity.”
Read more here.