New Delhi: In continuation to a series of Monographs published by the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA), the institute recently released Monograph ‘Religion as the Foundation of a Nation: The Making and Unmaking of Pakistan’. Authored by Shri P K Upadhyay, Consultant to IDSA for the Pakistan project, the monograph is an effort to explore the genesis and accentuation of the sectarian divide in Pakistan, its present status, future prognosis and implications.
The Monograph highlights the sectarian fault-lines in Pakistan, a country that owes its origin to the ‘Two Nation Theory’ in the sub-continent’s polity. Leaders of the Pakistan Movement were convinced that Muslims were a separate nation from the Hindu nation and the two could not live together. In their zeal to create a modern progressive Muslim state in the sub-continent they chose to down-ply, or even ignore, the sectarian divide that had been manifesting in South Asian Islam even when the British were still at the helms. Came independence and these sectarian fault-lines began to manifest themselves in Pakistan’s polity.
It speaks about the Pakistan’s political leader’s efforts to politically manipulate the sectarian divide in Pakistan to suit their needs. The monograph insists that it would be erroneous to blame General Zia ul-Haq with triggering the big Islamic theological divides, they were already there. Even General Ayub Khan and Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto tried to politically manipulate the sectarian divide in Pakistan to suit their needs. What Zia ul-Haq did was to build a common cause with Islamic zealots and provide them Army/ISI’s patronage and access within the structures of the government. Various national and regional events since then have allowed these Radical Islamists (RIs) become almost a state within the state.
The author, through this monograph, hopes that the study would start an enlightened debate in Indian strategic community on measures to deal with the fall-out of the looming crisis in Pakistan, like the fate of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, should Radical Islamists (RIs) directly or indirectly takeover power; implications for India of a 'Lebanonised' Pakistan in which no body is in control; the impact of sectarian divide in Pakistan on Indian Muslims; the fate of Pakistan's western borders, etc.
Shri Upadhyay is also the author of chapters on Islamic radicalisation in the two reports – Whither Pakistan? And Pakistan on the edge -that IDSA’s Pakistan Project team prepared.
IDSA Monograph Explores Genesis and Accentuation of Sectarian Divide in Pakistan