Qaum, Mulk, Sultanat: Citizenship and National Belonging in Pakistan

by Ali Usman Qasmi

After the trauma of mass violence and massive population movements around the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, both new nation states faced the enormous challenge of creating new national narratives, symbols, and histories, as well as a new framework for their political life. While leadership in India claimed the anti-colonial movement, Gandhi, and a civilizational legacy in the subcontinent, the new political elite in Pakistan were faced with a more complex to carve out a separate and distinct Muslim history and political tradition from a millennium long history of cultural and religious interaction, mixing, and coexistence. Drawing on a rich archive of diverse sources, Ali Qasmi traces the complex development of ideas of citizenship and national belonging in the postcolonial Muslim state, offering a nuanced and sweeping history of the country's formative period. Qasmi paints a rich picture of the long, arduous, and often conflict-ridden process of writing a democratic constitution of Pakistan, while simultaneously narrating the invention of a range of new rituals of state—such as the exact color of the flag, the precise date of birth of the national poet of Pakistan, and the observation of Eid as a "national festival"—providing an illuminating analysis of the practices of being Pakistani , and a new portrait of Muslim history in the subcontinent.

Genres: Pakistan, History, Islam, Politics

444 pages, Hardcover

Published December 12, 2023

Reviews

[Saadullah · Rating 5 out of 5]

of this period in pakistan, i think it is only some of the essays from muhammad asad that as a young teenager gave me some sense of what early pakistani nation-making looked like. while his contribution to this project is ultimately marginal, his appearance in this book was one among many surprising, fascinating and -- more than occasionally -- very funny elements of this past that made this book such a great read.

[Saad Hassan · Rating 4 out of 5]

On the first few years of Pak. and how the postcolonial state inscribes the legibility of its power on bodies made legible, and conjures a preferred notion of qaum via commemorative acts, archival practices, museum designs, etc. Really delves into the post-partition calculus and ideological reasons for being pragmatic & pragmatic reasons for being ideological through things like descriptivist vs. non-descriptivist names, national anthem, waxing vs. waning moon on flag. The postscript was a fun read too.

[Stella Rogers · Rating 3 out of 5]

for Pakistani nationalism essay