South Asia Investor Review

As India and Pakistan turn 75, there are many secular intellectuals on both sides of the border who question the wisdom of "the Partition" in 1947. They dismiss what is happening in India today under Hindu Nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi's leadership as a temporary aberration, not the norm. They long for a return to "Indian liberalism" which according to anthropologist  Sanjay Srivastava  "did not exist".  India Pakistan Border Ceremony at Wagah-Attari Crossing American historian  Audrey Truschke  who studies India traces the early origins of Hindu Nationalism to the British colonial project to "divide and rule" the South Asian subcontinent. She says colonial-era British historians deliberately distorted the history of Indian Muslim rule to vilify Muslim rulers as part of the British policy to divide and conquer India. These misrepresentations of Muslim rule made during the British Raj appear to have been accepted as fact not just by...

A recent Pew survey in India has found that 64% of Hindus see their religious identity and Indian national identity as closely intertwined. Most Hindus (59%) also link Indian identity with being able to speak Hindi language. The survey was conducted over two years in 2019 and 2020 by Pew Research Center. It included 29,000 Indians.   Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu Nationalist BJP party's appeal is the greatest among Hindus who closely associate their religious identity and the Hindi language with being “truly Indian.” The Pew survey found that less than half of Indians (46%) favored democracy as best suited to solve the country’s problems. Two percent more (48%) preferred a strong leader.  Most Hindus Link Hindu Religion and Hindi Language With Indian National Identity. Source: Pew The majority of Hindus see themselves as very different from Muslims (66%), and most Muslims return the sentiment, saying they are very different from Hindus (64%). Most Muslims across ...

Sheikh Alam, a Muslim leader of Mamta Banerjee's Trinamool Congress Party, has recently been quoted in the Indian media as saying: "We  (Muslims)  are 30% and they (Hindus) are 70% They will come to power with the support of the 70%, they should be ashamed. If our Muslim population moves to one side then we can  create four new Pakistans . Where will 70% of the population go?"   Quaid-e-Azam's Demand For Pakistan:  TMC leader Sheikh Alam's words today are a reminder of the demand for Pakistan in 1940s. It arose from the majoritarian tyranny of the Hindu-dominated Indian National Congress after 1937 elections in India.  Speaking in Lucknow  in October 1937,  Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah  said the following:  "The present leadership of the Congress, especially during the last ten years, has been responsible for alienating the Musalmans of lndia more and more, by pursuing a policy which is exclusively Hindu; and since they have formed t...

Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, is believed to have started as a small fishing village named Kolachi in 1729.  It attracted the attention of the colonial rulers in 1857 as a suitable site for a major port in British India. Thus began the story of Karachi which has now grown into a megacity of 14,910,352 people, as reported in the most recent 2017 Census of Pakistan.  Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah , the founding father of Pakistan , was born in the city of Karachi on December 25, 1876. He also died in Karachi on September 11, 1948, a little over a year after realizing his dream of the creation of Pakistan. In a glowing tribute to Pakistan's founding father, his biographer, American historian Stanley Wolpert, Professor Emeritus at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), wrote the following: “Few individuals significantly alter the course of history. Fewer still modify the map of the world. Hardly anyone can be credited with crea...

Why has democracy not taken root in Pakistan? Why have the nation's democratic institutions failed to sustain themselves? How can Pakistan build and strengthen democratic institutions that provide good governance to solve its problems? Is it entirely the fault of Pakistan's ambitious military generals who have ruled the nation for about half of its 60 year history? Or does it have anything to do with the poor performance of the politicians who have had the opportunity to govern for thirty years, and failed to solve most of its major problems, particularly those related to human development and industrialization ? There are many answers to the questions above. But the explanation that appeals to me most is the one offered by British writer William Dalrymple. He wrote for the Guardian as follows on Pakistan's 60th independence day: "There is a fundamental flaw in Pakistan's political system. Democracy has never thrived here, at least in part because landowning rema...