If there are dangers in imputing a too greater emphasis and importance on culture, I would also suggest that South Asian history has tended to point to the reverse as well: the dangers inherent in a state denying the importance of, and demonstrating a discomfort with, particular cultures. There is tension between the particular and the universal, and often in the name of the latter, states in South Asia have attempted to efface the former.
To illustrate the point in more detail, let’s start with ‘Allama’ Iqbal. For Iqbal it was clear that the kohl in his eyelids was that of the dust of Mecca and Najf:
Khara na kar saka mujhe jalwa danis-i-farang
Soorma hai meri ankhon ka khak-i-Madina wa Najf
In the 1930s, Iqbal sought increasingly to find an autonomous cultural space for the Muslims of India, proclaiming the right of a “communal entity” to “retain its private individuality.” Iqbal has at times being criticised for sentimentality and a Muslim chauvinism. On the one hand this chimes with what miandadrules warns against, of a defence of culture sliding into a crude isolationism. Yet on the other hand, it could certainly be argued that his clarion call for a particular Muslim space was at least partly engendered by the threat of what he saw as homogenising claims of Indian nationalism, which left little space for a Muslim cultural identity.
Indian nationalism was partly inflected by a Hindu cultural symbolism. But there was another strand, influenced by European enlightenment which emphasised universal values. This certainly downplayed Hindu cultural identity, yet it also denied the problems of cultural difference altogether. Nehru had famously declared that he looked through a telescope to spot Hindu-Muslim differences but was unable to see any. A Muslim cultural identity existed only as a surrogate for the narrow class interests of reactionary Muslim leadership. This represented a failure to take seriously issues of cultural identity. Cultural difference and distinctiveness could not be merely wished away. As historians have argued, from the 1920s Indian nationalism altered from an idea of coexistence of community and national identities to the primacy of the latter over the former. Nationalism became impatient with cultural difference, but this only encouraged the sentiments such as those Iqbal expressed. Rabindranath Tagore, seemed closer to the mark than Nehru, when he wrote:
"When there is genuine difference, it is only by expressing and restraining the difference in its proper place that it is possible to fashion unity. Unity cannot be achieved by issuing legal fiats that everybody is one.”
With the coming of independence we have seen both the states of India and Pakistan demonstrating an impatience with cultural identity based on the region. Contrary to the Lahore Resolution of 1940, the early state managers in Pakistan were deeply suspicious of ‘provincialism’. Here Jinnah speak in 1948:
“We are now all Pakistanis–not Baluchis, Pathans, Sindhis, Bengalis, Punjabis and so on–and as Pakistanis we must feet behave and act, and we should be proud to be known as Pakistanis and nothing else.”
This was not an idea of coexistence of the national with the regional but a denial of the latter. There was also to be one language - Urdu. Far from placating regional sentiment, this only fired demands for autonomy from in particular East Pakistan. To be fair to the early state managers we should not lose sight of the troubled beginning and insecure foundations of the new state. Few states have emerged with the problems that Pakistan did. There was the enormous refugee population that needed to be rehabilitated. There was the parlous state of the economy with little industrial inheritance and no integration. Government machinery had to be constructed anew. Conflict with India emerged soon after independence. Nationalism was only nascent - in Muslim majority areas the Pakistan idea emerged late in the colonial day. There was also the curious fact of a nation split into two wings separated by hostile territory. It is not therefore surprising that the leaders emphasised unity as they were conscious how fragile Pakistan’s foundations were. But in the long run, denial of regionally based cultural identities only contributed to the secession of East Pakistan. The centripetal stance of the state at the centre was matched by a centrifugal response in the region.
In the case of India there too was an early reluctance to accept ‘narrow’ identities. As Judith Brown, Nehru’s perceptive biographer, notes:
“Increasingly he [Nehru] deplored what he saw as the persistence of narrow loyalties of caste, region and community, even among younger people, and criticised this has evidence of India’s backwardness. Yet the enduring legitimacy of the new nation state would depend on the state’s ability to recognise and manage such loyalties and identities…and to use its resources to convince people that the new India was worth belonging to. Nehru seems not to have recognised the significance of political management in the ongoing work of building the nation, or the importance of political skills associated with ensuring state responsiveness to sectional demands.”
If there are problems with taking cultural defence too far, and certainly ideas of cultural purity are misplaced and deeply problematic, there is also the contrary danger of wishing away cultural difference and insisting on a universal that leaves little space for individuals particular identities.
