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Secularism and the State in Pakistan: Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 April 2011

Humeira Iqtidar  and
David Gilmartin
Humeira Iqtidar
Affiliation:
Centre of South Asian Studies and King's College, University of Cambridge, Laundress Lane, Cambridge CB2 1SD, UK Email: hi217@cam.ac.uk
David Gilmartin
Affiliation:
Department of History, North Carolina State University, 350 Withers Hall, Raleigh, North Carolina 27695-8108, USA Email: david_gilmartin@ncsu.edu
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Extract

Pakistan occupies an uncertain and paradoxical space in debates about secularism. On the one hand, the academic consensus (if there is any), traces a problematic history of secularism in Pakistan to its founding Muslim nationalist ideology, which purportedly predisposed the country towards the contemporary dominance of religion in social and political discourse. For some, the reconciliation of secularism with religious nationalism has been a doomed project; a country founded on religious nationalism could, in this view, offer no future other than its present of Talibans, Drone attacks and Islamist threats. But on the other hand, Pakistan has also been repeatedly held out as a critical site for the redemptive power of secularism in the Muslim world. The idea that religious nationalism and secularism could combine to provide a path for the creation of a specifically Muslim state on the Indian subcontinent is often traced to the rhetoric of Pakistan's founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah. But debate among Muslim League leaders specifically on the relationship of religious nationalism with secularism—and indeed on the nature of the Pakistani state itself—was limited in the years before partition in 1947. Nevertheless, using aspects of Jinnah's rhetoric and holding out the promise of secularism's redemptive power, a military dictator, Pervez Musharraf, was able to secure international legitimacy and support for almost a decade.

Type
Introduction
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 45 , Issue 3 , May 2011 , pp. 491 - 499
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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Footnotes

*

The papers included in this forum were presented at a workshop on ‘State Management of Religion in Pakistan’ held at King's College, Cambridge in October 2008. The workshop was organized under the auspices of The Secularism Network, an academic network funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and British Academy, and was made possible through further support from the Centre of South Asian Studies, and King's College, University of Cambridge. We are grateful to David Washbrook, Werner Menski and Yael Navarro-Yashin who acted as discussants for the papers, and to Joya Chatterji for her critical feedback and support for this forum.

References

1 For some discussion of this, see Binder, Leonard (1963), Religion and Politics in Pakistan, University of California Press, BerkeleyGoogle Scholar.

2 When Agamben noted that ‘[t]here is a moment in the life of concepts when they lose their immediate intelligibility and can then . . . be overburdened with contradictory meanings’ he could very easily have been talking about secularism. Agamben, Giorgio (1998). Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Stanford University Press, Stanford, p. 80Google Scholar.

3 Some recent useful additions, particularly focused on the South Asian, particular Indian context, to the vast and growing body of literature on secularism include: Jacobsohn, Gary (2003). Wheels of Law: Indian Secularism in Constitutional Comparative Context, Princeton University Press, PrincetonGoogle Scholar; Kumar, Sunil (2001). Communalism and Secularism in Indian Politics: A Study of BJP, Rawat Publications, JaipurGoogle Scholar; Needham, Dingwaney and Rajan, Sunder (eds) (2007). The Crisis of Secularism in India, Duke University Press, DurhamCrossRefGoogle Scholar; Srinivasan, T. N. (ed.) (2007). The Future of Secularism, Oxford University Press, DelhiGoogle Scholar. For a recent critical look at legal structures and management of religion in Pakistan see Ahmed, Asad (2010). ‘The Paradoxes of Ahmadiyya Identity: Legal Appropriation of Muslim-ness and the Construction of Ahmadiyya Difference’, in Khan, Naveeda (ed.) Beyond Crisis: Re-evaluating Pakistan, Routledge, DelhiGoogle Scholar.

4 Asad, Talal (2003). Formations of the Secular: Islam, Christianity, Modernity, Stanford University Press, StanfordGoogle Scholar.

5 For instance, Iqtidar, H. (forthcoming 2011). Secularising Islamists? Jamaat-e-Islami and Jamaat-ud-Dawa in Pakistan, University of Chicago Press, ChicagoCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 For a look at the sources of legitimacy for a separate state of Pakistan see Gilmartin, David (1988). Islam and Empire: Punjab and the Making of Pakistan, I. B. Tauris, LondonGoogle Scholar.

7 The dominance that the idea of the state exercises in defining the terms of political debates and discussions goes hand in hand with a certain amount of inflexibility of vocabulary. Hedley Bull remarked that ‘one reason for the vitality of the state systems is the tyranny of the concepts and the normative principles associated with it’ (Bull, Hedley, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics, London: Macmillan, 1977: 275CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

8 See for instance, Boroujerdi, Mehrzad (1994). ‘Can Islam be secularised?’ in Ghanoonparvar, M. R. and Farrokh, F. (eds). In Transition: Essays on Culture and Identity in the Middle East, Texas A&M University Press, AustinGoogle Scholar; Ansari, Filali (1996). ‘Islam and Liberal Democracy: The Challenge of Secularization’, Journal of Democracy 7 (2): 76–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Monshipouri, Mahmood (1998). Islamism, Secularism and Human Rights in the Middle East, Lyn Rienner, LondonGoogle Scholar.

9 In addition to the influential Eickelman, and Piscatori, (1996). Muslim Politics, Princeton University Press, New JerseyCrossRefGoogle Scholar, see also Manager, Leif (1999). Muslim Diversity: Local Islam in Global Contexts, Curzon Press, LondonGoogle Scholar. For an important critique of a previously influential approach of assuming an inherent, unitary continuity in Islamic experiences, that of Clifford Geertz and Ernest Gellner, see Asad, Talal (1996). ‘The Idea of a An Anthropology of Islam’, in Hall, John and Jarvie, Ian, The Social Philosophy of Ernest Gellner, Rodopi, Amsterdam, pp. 387–406Google Scholar.

10 See Zaman, Mohammed Qasim (2007). Ulama in Contemporary Islam: Custodians of Change, Princeton University Press, Princeton New JerseyGoogle Scholar, for a useful look at the innovations integral to the management and rejuvenation of tradition, particularly in South Asian Islam.