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Background

I have been encountering a great many Pakistani nationalists on various platforms- Be it Twitter, Reddit or YouTube. Instead of wasting my time taking them on one by one; I have decided to anthologize the various fallacies that accompany their theories.

Why take on such a task? To be concise, I like how easy it is to ideologically defeat them, and I also like the small dose of entertainment I receive when I see them ranting and hurling fatuous insults in the aftermath of the former. We shall begin now.

Pakistani Nationalism began during the late colonial times. It is understood on what basis it began- To create a homeland where the interests of the subcontinental Muslims would be served

The demand of Pakistan was aptly met. On 14 August 1947 India was divided- between the Muslim nation of Pakistan, and the Secular Hindu-Majority nation of India. What Next?

Yes. This is what was and is taught to the Pakistani masses. All their ‘facts’ are mainly based upon the premise that a historical Pakistan existed; It was created by the invading Muslim forces who had subjugated and Islamicized certain parts of Indian land. The present-day Pakistanis are their descendants and hence the rightful rulers of these lands now( though they surely want other pieces of land their Turco-Persian-Arabic forefathers had captured, but they have to settle with only those who were Muslim majority).

Indigenous- The Pakistanis now had to build a theory that would convince them that they are in fact a completely different civilization from the Hindu Indians; and that Pakistan always existed, with the burden of the fact that they are indigenous.

Now, this is a recent development- only in the past few years have we seen Pakistanis- mainly the diaspora and urban-literate ones; pursuing this holy grail of a quest. Here begins the era of Indus Nationalism.

They have found it- the uniting ingredient for Pakistan; and the separating factor from India

Perfect. Includes almost all of mainstream Pakistan and Kashmir. What more do they need? ( you say the upper reaches of the river pass through India, eh? Fine we will add them to this Indus dreamland- they are hardly 2–3% of the entire nation, cant destroy our ideological dream)

Moving on to the reason why we are here- to point out the blatant fallacies.

A river can serve as a civilizational entity and also as the basis of a modern nation-state- but there is one condition, a major one so to say. The modern-day population of the basin should be considerably homogeneous.

Pakistan fails this test. The Waziri Pashtuns on the Gumal have little to do with Vicholi Sindhis on the Indus. Look at the modern-day nation-states who have their basis on river civilization- Egypt and Iraq- both are highly homogeneous( 99.7 % Egyptian, including Copts and 75% Mesopotamian Arabs respectively)

Pakistan consists of highly divergent populations- Punjabis, Saraikis, Sindhis, Pashtuns, Baloch, Dards. There is of course significant overlap present- But that is due to them living just next to each other. There is no single binding factor that differentiates these ethnicities as a whole from countries in the east, west and north.

Sorry to say, river-water doesn’t do the work, try again.

Before we end, I would like to make these points clearer. Take a Look at this-

This country doesn’t exist for precisely the same reasons I have stressed on above. Hope it’s clear now.

Ah yes, religion; the greatest of both uniting and dividing factors. How can this not be used?

Indians = Hindus

What if Pakistanis were Hindus then? This will be a huge fly in the ointment. Thus began the great Pakistani search for a non-Hindu past. What did they come up with? Buddhism

Most of Pakistan was in fact a Buddhist land for a considerable period of time. Late 3rd Century BCE to Mid 5th Century AD would be a fitting timeframe. What was the Gangetic Basin undergoing in the meanwhile? Developments in Hinduism you say? Perfect.

Pakistan=Buddhist(more driven by Pakistan ≠Hindu), India=Hindu. Pakistan ≠India. Hence Proved. This is working as a magnum opus for the Indus nationalists. Too bad it is, as you guessed, a very shallow argument. Starting the deconstruction, I would like to give a brief history of the subcontinent.

IVC in the 3rd Millennium BCE, yes, same old stuff. Then the Indo-Aryans move in with their language, culture and religion: Vedic Hinduism.

This religion was shared by the Indus basin and the Gangetic basin for a long time before it was spread to other parts of the subcontinent. 1500BCE- 500BCE would be the correct timeframe. What next? Northwest India would soon begin to give up this religion(Pointed out in numerous Indian texts including the Mahabharata, probably a result of the exposure of NW to invasions by ‘mlecchas’). Present-day North India on the other hand made the Vedic Religion more rigorous in practice.

Then came Buddhism and Jainism. Influenced All of India strongly, but the former was clearly the dominant faith in the northwest since the people had given up on Vedic Hinduism. Vedic Hinduism undergoes huge changes as a result of the success of the sramanic religions

Islam was working its way and by the 13th century would have cemented its position as the predominant faith in the NW; & you know the rest [ Hinduism in the 20th century was still in a fairly decent position in both Sindh and Punjab! Constituting 27% and 18% of the ethnic populations respectively before partition. There are cities in these regions with a clear Hindu majority in 1941- including Hyderabad, Sukkur, Larkana, Umerkot & Mirpur Khas in Sindh and Pathankot & Garh Shankar in Punjab]

To conclude, Punjab and Sindh followed religious trajectories very similar to their other subcontinental counterparts.

The Third Pillar of Modern PakNationalism is genetics- raw scientific data which provides numerous insights in their favor.

They noticed that a good number of Punjabis- are way closer to Iranic Pashtuns than South or even Central Indians. Boom. Jackpot.

How will the Gangetic Indians now prove the existence of unity in the subcontinent now? We ought to be a different civilization!

Well well well, don’t celebrate too early. Remember the basis of India- Significant presence of Hinduism in a continuous landmass.

Are uniform genetics a characteristic of different Hindu populations? No [To note is the fact that even though genetic variation is considerable in India- almost all communities still are a composite of mainly 3 populations- meaning that almost all people have the same ancestors. Anyways, moving on.]

Then what is something that is almost always a characteristic of a Hindu/Indian population- we have brushed upon it earlier. Something that Hinduism is notoriously known for-the existence of Birth-based, occupational castes/jatis.

Here are some endogamous occupational clans of Punjab and Sindh-

Jats, Rajputs, Shaikhs, Kamboj, Arain, Khatris, Aroras. Note that they hide these as Biradaris, stating these are not exactly castes( Yes even Rajputs are biradaris now :) Also they think we are naive enough to agree to the fact that agricultural clans cannot be considered as jatis. Do they forget that almost all of India is full of agricultural clans- Hindu Jats, Gujjars, Yadavs, Kurmis, Marathas, Reddys, Kammas who make up clear majorities in their respective strongholds)

Here are some other occupational clans- Ansari, Chamar, Julaha, Teli, Ad Dharmi, Mohana, Lohana, Valmiki, Mirasi, Hajam, Mochi, Mussali, Tarkhan, Lohar, Dhobi, Jhinwar, Chuhra, Brahmins, Machhi, Mallah, Banias, Kumhar, Nai, Mahtam, Sama, Khaikheli and many more.

So they want us to believe that even though Eastern Pakistan(Punjab and Sindh)displays a caste-like system, which is not shown anywhere in the world to this extent except modern-day India, it is not related to the rest of the subcontinent. Yes. This exclusive, striking feature shown by Indian populations- extreme endogamy over hundreds of years, with occupational immobility is seen clearly among Punjabi and Sindhis.

Just take the example of their fellow nationals with who they think they “cluster” with- Pashtuns and Baloch. These populations don’t even show hints of the jati-varna system. Their variation is purely geographical/tribal. Moreover, the Hindu percentage among these populations is almost negligible( though some of them were probably influenced by it). Neither do they speak a Sanskrit descended /Sanskrit-influenced language. They are non-Indian populations.

Generally, the Upper Caste+ Elite Agricultural/OBC populations are West Eurasian shifted, whereas other OBCs and SCs are East/South Eurasian shifted (which can be seen from the recently mentioned link) Regional factor is also present(for example both the former and the latter in NW are slightly more West Eurasian than those SE. Though there are exceptions like the Hindu Jats), but mainly its a result of the caste you belong to. PakNationalists take the Elite agriculturists of their populations and compare them to the average Central Indian population. There is significant variation between these two and this works as a pretty good divider, right?

There are a few things wrong with this. Starting with the fact that these nationalists fail to take into consideration that the Punjabi populations show a huge range due to the existence of the caste system. As a result, Hundreds of Millions of Other Indians are similar to one or the other Punjabi populations. They are not, in any way “exclusive”

Though they continue to argue that the Elite agriculturists of Punjab are still significantly different from almost all Indian populations( These people almost replicate Pathans in some cases, though the Pathans they are very similar to are actually Pashtuns from historically Indo-Aryan regions, like the Peshawar basin. There is practically negligible overlap with any of the Iranic populations. What I am moving towards is the fact that a good number of South Indians, 1000s of km away may overlap with Punjabi SCs, but the Punjabis have no overlap with populations just 250 km to the Northwest. Just saying) Anyways, they still harbour this feeling of exclusiveness, a feeling of superiority.

Too bad, they have again missed out on a simple fact. We have Tens of millions of people in our country who are similar to even these Punjabi agriculturists(Khatris, N. Brahmins, Jats, Dogras,etc). The Hindu Jats and Rors in India are actually even more exclusive in that sense, and they number around 20 million in India. What I want to say is that their genetics can not make them a non-Indian population, cause there already exist numerous modern-day Indian communities with similar genetics.

One thing which these PakNationalists are correct about is that the average Punjabi is genetically fairly different from the average person from the Gangetic Basin (in subcontinental context). This is mainly understood as a result of the fact that the [Elite agriculturists/Upper Caste:: SC/Other OBC] proportion in the former is much higher than in the latter. This is significant, but not an apt ‘civilization divider’. For example, even in the Gangetic state of Uttar Pradesh, a District like Mathura has a 68:32 Divide. This becomes 31:69 as we move east towards the district of Raebareli. In the West Punjabi district of Jhang, the proportion is approximately 60:40. So even though they are right about this, they need to find something concrete if they really want to create a wall between the river basins.

All of the subcontinent is socially so similar, that in order to build barriers between different regions PakNationalists need to come up with something, as I mentioned: Concrete.

An Impossible Task to be frank.

[Also a good analogy of Indus- Ganges divide theory would be Narmada People trying to create a civilization separate from the Cauvery; Fairly different, but still clearly parts of a greater civilisation]

Some proposals don’t fall under broader categories, but we can’t leave them out. Let’s look at them one by one

→ If India really existed as a civilizational unit, why are there no accounts of people before the British referring to it as so?

I don’t understand why people go blind about this topic. The unity of India is deeper than semantics. But fine, I will point out the mentions of ‘India’ before the British came.

→Hindus persecuted us and imposed their faith upon the Buddhist-Animist people of the Indus

Few, disputable claims of small-scale violence perpetrated by some Hindu rulers is used by them to demonise ancient Hindus; how else will they draw parallels to the atrocities of Islamic invaders?

So many things are wrong with this- a) These incidents are negligible considering the Hindus and Buddhists coexisted for 1400 years b) The ruler’s persecution had less to do with theological disputes, and more to do with the fact that some Buddhist/group of Buddhist hurt their ego. c) There is no archaeological evidence of the extensive violence recorded by ahem, Chinese Buddhist travellers.

You want to know how and why Buddhism died out in the subcontinent? Patronage of Hindu Brahmins by Rulers, theological absorption/defeat of Buddhism by Hindus & physical persecution by foreign invaders.

There is a reason why Buddhist institutions flourished in the presence of Hindus, but were burned only by people like Bakhtiyar Khalji.

→The Gangetic people viewed us as mlecchas/foreigners since they called our region impure. This proves that we were always separate civilisations

The ‘Gangetic’ people you are talking about here are actually better described as Yamuna people. Anyways, the context here is that the people who are calling the NW impure are people from the core Aryavarta[ approximately the Kuru kingdom].

These people were the developers of the rigid ‘Vedic’ religion(sorry, Pakistan wasn’t the heartland of the Vedas either. Haryana and West UP are the places that have a legitimate claim on the Vedic Legacy & Sanskrit) They viewed the frontier provinces, which were not following the Vedic religion rigidly, and/or were prone to invasions as half impure. This was not an ethnic/linguistic or civilizational distinction

Aren’t Bihar and Bengal gangetic?

→ The Indus populations are a phenotypically distinct; better-looking population. The rest of the Indians want to be like us consequently

I don’t get how the concept of better looking works for a group of 100s of millions of people. You can talk about stuff like frequency and averages but these things don’t matter much when we are talking about individual traits. Not to mention that physical traits are highly subjective. Phenotype arguments are racist, shallow and invidious.

Moving from general to subcontinental talk. South Asian populations may be different due to factors such as slightly different genetics(from a global perspective) & climate. But in general, there is a huge overlap present between them. Non- south Asians would laugh off the minute differences that are pointed out; Anyways, I won't do an analysis on this cause I find these talks unpleasant. You can be the judge-

No cherrypicking. Removed non-ethnic players.

→ The Indus basin was Islamicized unlike the rest of India. This clearly has something to do with us being a distinct group,

Good argument on the surface. But we don’t have to go deep inside to know that it doesn’t prove their non- “Indian-ness”. The real reason for their Islamisation -

The lands of India that were in the extreme East and West, i.e the frontier provinces- were, as expected, relatively fluid and lenient in terms of religion. Also, in the case of western provinces- they were fairly close to West Asia. These 2 factors served as the reason as to why these Indian provinces were prone to Islamicization.

→ “We wuz ruling the gangetics”

Okay, allow me a bit of trolling now. The Muslim dynasties were, as mentioned, mostly of Turco-Mongolic/Persian origin. Non-native

PakNationalists are almost all Punjabis. They can’t bear the fact that they were subjugated for almost all of their history. Hence they dig up the smallest of accounts that point towards a Punjabi Muslim origin of any dynasty in the history of the Indian subcontinent.

They come up with the Gujarat sultanate & Sayyid dynasty. The origin of these dynasties are disputed but let’s give the benefit of the doubt( even these accounts prove that Punjabi Muslims were direct converts from Hinduism :))

These dynasties were nothing more than small vassals acquired through blandishing. Nonetheless, they continue to serve as a coping mechanism for the nationalists.

Let me tell you some facts now- The largest native Punjabi kingdom was either Sikh( Ranjit Singh’s Empire) or Hindu (Hindu Shahis); & the largest native Sindhi kingdom was Hindu(Chach dynasty)

Punjab and Sindh rarely had native rulers, even fewer Muslims. They were either being thrashed from the left or from the right. Right? Yes, the Gangetics were ruling the martial Indus race. Maurya and Gupta empires, for instance.

Don’t forget the ‘beta-cuck’ remarks indusgang would have directed at Gangetic Indians if the scenario was reversed.

Surely they deserve some of it, don’t they? Let’s not go too harsh on them now.

Conclusion

I am not a toxic nationalist who wishes to witness the disintegration of Pakistan or someone who views it as a nation-state that should not exist.

What I am against is this view of NW India being a separate civilization, with no links to the rest of India. This is such an ahistorical & disrespectful assertion for Indians. Though I do see the motive behind PakNationalists doing so; everyone craves identity. But facts are facts. You just can’t go around spreading these BS theories and not expect to be called out.

The partition should have happened or not. I don’t know. But I am aware and acceptive of the fact that Pakistan exists, and should exist as long the people within want to be Pakistani. But the premise of the nation’s existence should not be an incorrect proclamation, which indicates that the 4 Main Ethnic groups of Pakistan are a unified group because of the magical Indus; and that the Indo-Iranic divide doesn’t exist. This is an indirect attack against the evident civilizational unity shown by the Indic people- whether it be Linguistic, Religious, Societal or Genetical.

According to me, Pakistan should be a nation consisting of Punjab, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, AJK, Gilgit-Baltistan and the Kashmir Valley. (Balochistan is contestible. Although the region, like KPK was historically populated by culturally Indic peoples who were assimilated/replaced by the Iranic groups; the Indic presence was not as profound as in KPK)

I don’t see anything wrong with this identity. In fact, this is the only factually correct definition of Pakistan (I mean, how can a civilizational country be consisting of 2 parts- 1000s of km away. Doesn’t make any sense. Even the PakNationalists know it)

Now if you really don't want to be associated with the slightly darker and shorter populations from the rest of India, then I don’t know. Keep living with these fake delusions that you have to convince yourself of every day, I guess.

An example will again help to understand what I am trying to say:

Bangladeshis, when inquired, are accepting of the idea that their land is culturally a part of a greater Indian civilisation. They agree with the fact that their nation is indeed based on frontier Indian provinces that were Islamicized.

This is more or less the case with Pakistan- their differences boil down to only two factors- 1) Being the frontier provinces 2) That became Muslim;

And Pakistanis should be accepting of this. They will resolve their own identity crisis by doing so( Pak Nationalists are also unaccepting of the fact that their National Language Urdu, is not even native to the region. Sorry to say, but it is in fact a “Gangetic” Language with Persian influences. Yes, their nation’s language of prestige, which also serves as the lingua franca, is actually native to modern day-India, not Pakistan)

History is interesting and all, but we need to push it aside and start debating/competing on real practical stuff- Socio-Economic and Educational status of the nations.

The religion of Islam hampers social development due to dogmas attached to it to a large extent; if not closely related economic development. Hinduism doesn’t show anywhere near such levels of dogma[ Islam though, is much better in ensuring the equality in the status of its adherents]. Moreover, Hinduism is not an institutionalized religion- and has given up on even the caste system, a near constitutive part of it, at least in theory. This simple fact will help India to move forward at a faster pace.

Al-Beruni to my rescue again, who had stated “Hindus can easily abrogate their laws for they believe such changes are necessitated by the change of nature of man. Many things which are now forbidden were allowed before”

Pakistan is suffering from problems similar to those faced by India + problems faced by a MENA nation. That’s pretty disappointing. Things aren’t looking bright in the future either[OTOH India, which they lament day & night, is gradually moving towards a respectable position]. And this should be the utmost concern of real Pakistani Nationalists.

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