249 Quotes About Pakistan

Pakistan, unlike India, would not start out with a functioning capital, central government or financial resources, which necessitated greater homework on the part of the Muslim League leaders. Unfortunately, they did little by way of preparation for running the country they had demanded. Many of Pakistan’s teething problems were the result of this ill-preparedness but Pakistani accounts of the country’s early days paint them as hardships inflicted on Muslim Pakistan by its non-Muslim enemies.

The ‘ideology of Pakistan’ has created a nexus between the ‘custodians of Islam’ and the country’s military, civil bureaucracy and intelligence apparatus, which collectively sees itself as the guardian of the Pakistani state.

After the loss of its eastern wing, which became Bangladesh in 1971, Pakistan has been completely dominated by one ethnic group, the Punjabis, who tend to favour the ideological model for Pakistan and are heavily represented in the military, the media and the bureaucracy.

Pakistan’s young median age today means that an overwhelming majority of its current inhabitants were born in a country called Pakistan and, therefore, do not need an explanation other than their birth to be its citizens.

Pakistan’s unfortunate history may justify the description of Pakistan as being ‘insufficiently imagined’, but imagination is by definition not a finite process. An entity that is insufficiently imagined can be reimagined

International assistance, especially from the United States and some from China and Saudi Arabia, has brought Pakistan back from the brink in the past. But rising xenophobia and Islamo-nationalism— exhibited prominently after the discovery of Osama bin Laden in a Pakistani garrison town—coupled with Pakistan’s policies in Afghanistan make continued US support for Pakistan difficult.

In one way, it was. After the ‘Objectives Resolution’ there was no turning back from Pakistan’s status as an Islamic ideological state.

Pakistan has gone on to try and define by law who is or is not a Muslim, adopted (and abandoned) interest-free banking, considered segregation of the sexes in public, and endeavoured to implement sharia. The quality of education in Pakistan has declined as a result of attempts to comply with clerical demands.

The number of clerics has also increased exponentially. At Independence in 1947, there were only 137 madrasas (Islamic seminaries) in Pakistan. Nine years later, a 1956 survey reported that the number of madrasas had increased to 244 in West Pakistan. By 1995, the ministry of education estimated the figure at 3,906, which increased to 7,000 in 2000 and 35,000 by 2016.