Your identity can enrich you but can also impoverish you. It can make you love others but can also make you kill others. It can get you co-operation of others but can also invite their wrath. It performs complex and multiple functions being a source of your strength as well as your Achilles’ heels. Issue of identity can create a serious existential crisis for an individual or a group when an unnatural emphasis is laid on adopting a singular or monolithic identity as is the case with the Punjabis these days. Man, recorded history shows, is blessed or condemned to live with biologically and historically evolved multiple identities. His racial roots, gender, ancestral or adopted homeland, his faith or lack of it, his profession and world-view apart from various other factors, makes him what he is; multifaceted being.

With the creation of a new state of Pakistan in 1947, the Punjabis, most of them Muslims, on this side of the border, attained a new identity: Pakistani. Pakistani identity was outcome of a political struggle driven by a dream of a separatist Muslim culture in the subcontinent whose origins were traced to the conquest of Sindh and Punjab by Arabs and central Asian Turks (8th-11th century).

The Muslim rule peaked in the Mughal era, establishing a vast empire in the subcontinent transforming its religious, cultural and linguistic landscape. A large section of local population particularly in the north western and central regions accepted the new faith. Most of the converts came from the lower castes/classes who suffered ceaseless rigours under the repressive and oppressive socio-political system (Varan Dharam). ‘Varan Dharam’ rested on the religiously sanctioned segregation and inequality of human groups divided vertically into castes with permanently fixed status totally disregarding the individual’s talent and virtue. The newly arrived Muslims on the other hand upheld the vision of human equality in theory if not in practice. In addition to the political and cultural influence of the Muslim rulers who were mostly of foreign origins, the message of liberal and enlightened humanism spread by Sufi saints prompted the plebeians and some patricians to accept the new faith with a hope of achieving some measure of equality and social justice in the emerging scheme of things.

Such a historical transformation resulted in creating certain areas where Muslims came to have numerical strength called Muslim majority provinces like East Bengal, Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan, Kashmir and present-day Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. After the advent of colonialism, the new masters in the guise of scholarly but politically motivated researches and explorations ‘discovered’ identities for the Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs which, they implicitly stressed, were mutually exclusive. Coupled with this the revivalist streaks, a regressive but widespread manifestation of one of the features of anti-colonial resistance, created an explosive situation where the peddlers of ‘purity’ in the matters of race and faith made the peaceful co-existence of different communities difficult, if not impossible. Interestingly it were not Muslim religious parties which advocated the Muslim separatism, they in fact opposed it declaring that Islam was a universal religion that transcended territorial confines. The liberal Muslims in response to the miasma of resurrected cesspool of ‘Shuddhi’ (Brahmanic Puritanism) led the Muslim separatist movement. It is worth noting that such a complex situation with contradictions galore put the two larger-than-life figures on the stage of history that while sharing the Gujrati cultural and linguistic identity treaded totally different paths. It is an irony of history that religious Gandhi wanted an independent secular state and secular Jinnah strove to carve a new faith-based state. Both succeeded and failed at the same time. Gandhi succeeded in having a secular India but failed to avert the partition. His vision of secular India was driven by his desire to keep it united. Jinnah succeeded in founding a new state for the Indian Muslims but failed to materialise his dream of a liberal Muslim welfare state which inspired his political endeavour.

The issue of identity did not end with the emergence of Pakistan. In the pre-partition era the issue was in a way rather simple; it was a question of erecting Muslim identity in juxtaposition to the reinvigorated Hindu identity inspired by imagined purity of hazy Brahmanic past that threatened the Muslim minority with its ominous presence. In the new state the elites tried and still try to push down people’s throat the idea of singular identity derived from the religion and nationalism, denying the existence of diversity and plurality of different nationalities which inhabit the different regions of Pakistan. Confusion about identity is acute in Punjab which dominates the Pakistani establishment. People are made to feel shy of being Punjabis. They are urged to be proud of being Pakistanis and Muslims. The ideal in fact is to be Muslim Pakistanis. But Punjabi identity refuses to disappear when they interact with the people of other nationalities. Their Punjabi identity comes in for a stick, not for its racial or cultural features, but for the political role the Punjabi elite plays vis-a-vis the smaller nationalities. It is a rude reminder of the fact that as Punjabis they are different from them while being citizens of the same state. Their Muslim identity evokes no feelings of faith-based camaraderie when they go to oil rich Arab countries in search of greener pastures. And their Pakistani identity sets the alarm bells ringing the moment they land on European and American airports as if it is a carrier of deadly virus of violent extremism.