On a map of South Asia, draw a line from Kathiwar to Gurdaspur, and you have Aitzaz Ahsan’s civilisational separation. To the west lies the Indus region, and to the east India. ‘‘The divide is primordial,’’ says Ahsan, a member of Pakistan’s National Assembly and lawyer for Mukhtar Mai. ‘‘1947 was a recreation of that divide.’’ In New Delhi to release The Indus Saga and the Making of Pakistan, Ahsan says that in understanding that separation lies a framework for Pakistan to own its history—before 1947 and before Islam—and forge an identity rooted in geography. The book, delving back 6,000 years in a majestic if somewhat controversial sweep of history, seeks corroborative evidence in ballads and literature and assembles a multicultural pantheon of Indus heroes: Abdullah Bhatti (who put up resistance to Emperor Akbar), Porus, Bhagat Singh, Rasalu, Jasrat, Shah Inayat, etc. Even the Vedas and the god, Indra, are claimed as part of the Indus legacy. ‘‘Unfortunately, Partition has been very narrowly viewed in Pakistan,’’ he says, ‘‘as the product only of a communal divide.’’ Seen this simply, it leads to some obvious questions: ‘‘How do you explain then the greater number of Muslims in India, and the subsequent partition of Pakistan in the ’70s?’’ Moreover, in this communal scheme, ‘‘The Pakistani has to deny his Indianness and to assert that the sole basis of Pakistan is that we are un-Indian. That is what we are not, but we have to be somebody. The Pakistani establishment tried to fill that void by suggesting we are Arab and assuming an extraterritorial personality. But Pakistan does not have to be at odds or in denial. It should accept the plural and multicultural roots of its own identity and be at peace with itself.’’ A Pakistan rooted confidently in a sense of its own unique and rich identity, argues Ahsan, would be less hesitant about accepting its commonalities with India. In fact, he says, if the Indian National Congress had been more understanding of this cultural diversity and had accepted the Cabinet Mission plan of 1946 with its premise of regional autonomy, Partition may have never taken place. The move away from the extraterritorial assertions of the Zia years—when Ahsan was held in a Multan jail, where the idea of Indus/India first took shape—is for him a two-way street. ‘‘Just as Pakistan must disabuse itself of a lot of obsessions and blindly accepted assumptions, India needs to to reappraise the role of Jinnah.’’ Pakistan.should accept the plural and multicultural roots of its own identity and be at peace with itself. — Aitzaz Ahsan Member of Pak Assembly That the reappraisal has begun in the aftermath of BJP President L.K. Advani’s Karachi visit provides a fortuitous peg for the book’s Indian edition. ‘‘The negative reaction in India to his inscription (in the visitor’s book at Jinnah’s mausoleum) does make me despondent,’’ concedes Ahsan. ‘‘But the enormity of the event itself, that none other than L K Advani himself began this, means we are still moving in the right direction. Because of Advani’s three sentences, Jinnah’s role will have to be reassessed by Indians.’’ The Kathiawar-Gurdaspur salient also gives heightened salience to Punjab-Punjab engagement as a vehicle for India-Pakistan reconciliation. In fact, Ahsan says, The Indus Saga focuses on the ‘‘central, crucial role of Punjab (east in particular) as the kind of fertile soil which also produced the only serious syncretic political movement to bring together and merge the Indus and Indian civilisations. Guru Nanak left a distinct order in that no man’s land between Indus and India.’’ It is important, says Ahsan, for Pakistan to move beyond the policies of the Zia-ist state. Part of that process of moving on may perhaps be reflected in the Mukhtar Mai case, in which justice is being sought for a woman whose rape was ordered by a panchayat in south Punjab as vengeance and whose rapists are now being sought to be nailed as guilty. ‘‘Ultimately when the Supreme Court rules,’’ says Ahsan, ‘‘no matter who is held guilty, we might get a judgement that is defining.’’ In the meanwhile, he has been at the forefront of an effort in the National Assembly in Islamabad to deal with honour killings. As for the book being launched, laughs Ahsan: ‘‘I don’t mind controversies. It helps sales.’’ The Pakistan experience certainly suggests so. Hailed by critics as a sort of ‘‘discovery of Pakistan’’—its Nehruvian inspiration is evident in the preface—it predictably angered fundamentalists and those ‘‘who could not take the writings of a politician seriously’’.
