By Khadim Hussain
28 July 2025
Raza Rumi’s book Being Pakistani: Society, Culture and the Arts is undoubtedly one of the quite few books that I regret leaving unread in my books-rack after I purchased it quite a few years ago. The book, having a common thematic thread, is constituted of various engaging articles, mostly written over the past two decades. Raza Rumi has diligently and candidly explored the subcontinental ethos of celebrating cultural, religious, ethno-national, gender and ideational diversity while boldly challenging the homogenised, linear, isolationist, and unilateral construction of ‘nationhood’ justified in the name of the vaguely termed ‘ideology of Pakistan’.
The unassuming, humble and down to earth Rumi, a former bureaucrat in the overwhelming state-machinery of Pakistan and a well-known substantial intellectual voice from Lahore who has emigrated to the US after several fatal attempts on his life, discovers the confluence of diverse identities in South Asia, especially in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan, through the revealing studies of Kabir’s, Bulleh’s and Lalon’s mystic pluralism, the syncretic devotion reflected in the myths and legends of the Indus, Qurratulain Hyder’s and Intizar Hussain’s novels, Manto’s short stories, Fahmida Riaz’s and Mustafa Zaidi’s poetry, Shazia Sikandar’s and Saira Waseem’s art, and Mehdi Hassan’s profoundly melodious music. When Rumi reminisces Dhaka and Lahore, one can clearly observe conflation of cultural and historical observations and his personal angst of being ins exile. Hence, the following verse by Faiz Ahmad Faiz, quoted by Rumi, carries both personal and collective meaning for him.
ہم کہ ٹھہرے اجنبی اتنی مداراتوں کے بعد
پھر بنیں گے آشنا کتنی ملاقاتوں کے بعد
Raza Rumi has unravelled the proverbial Gordian knot of the highly contested complex saga of the partition of political geography of the Indian subcontinent and the horizontal sociocultural overlapping of the subcontinental pluralist ethos. He appears to have partly ascribed the dichotomous framing of historically situated shared sociocultural values and the ironical construction of separate political identities to the British colonial legacy and partly to the breakdown of talks between the political leadership of the time.
Raza Rumi’s incisive observations and his acutely humanistic worldview enable him to “see through the falsities of the textbooks” which distinguishing him eminently from the scores of other mainstream intellectuals who perceive that religious radicalisation in Pakistan was originated during the 1980s era of Jihadisation facilitated by the then military dictator General Zia-ul-Haq but overlook the continuity and gradually ascending religiosity during right after the inception of Pakistan. In the chapter entitled ‘Public Spaces, Architecture and National Identity’, Rumi contends: “with the adoption of an Islamic identity, the official Pakistan started to re-imagine its history, inventing and recreating a mythological, glorious past and began to shun its non-Muslim heritage. This process was at variance with the population’s every day pluralist reality and this remains the case even after seven decades” (Rumi, 2018: 198).
Quoting Akbar Zaidi, Rumi seems to expound that the pluralist and democratic vision of the founder of the country was actually violated later after his demise in the Pakistan-proper. Zaidi’s quote goes like this: “In many ironic ways, it is Bangladesh which has become Jinnah’s Pakistan—democratic, developmental, liberal and secular—while Pakistan has become his worst nightmare—intolerant, authoritarian, illiberal and fundamentalist” (Rumi, 2018: 272). Many scholars would argue that the foundation of exclusiveness, undemocratic tradition of disregarding equitable democratic representation, and violation of the fundamental principle of people’s right to govern themselves was laid within the very first year of the inceptions by the founder of the country himself.
In addition to the undemocratic measure of declaring Urdu as “state language” which was not spoken by the majority of population and which estranged the whole eastern wing of East Bengal, as duly mentioned by Rumi, two elected provincial governments were also dissolved by the Governor General within just less than a year after the inception of Pakistan. The then NWFP government was dismissed just seven days after the inception of Pakistan as “on 21 August 1947 Jinnah authorized Cunningham to dissolve Dr Khan Sahib’s ministry, which he did accordingly” (Shah, 2015: 231). The government that had been formed in the then NWFP by the parties (Khudai Khidmatgar Movement and All India Congress) had been voted to power by the people just a year ago in 1946. It was dissolved within a week after the inception of Pakistan apparently due to ideological differences. It would have made more logic democratically if the Assembly were dissolved and fresh elections were held instead of dismissing the government if the ideological differences were thought irreconcilable.
It has been well-documented that the province of Sindh played critical role in making the proverbial ‘dream’ of Pakistan a reality and arguably the main leadership role in mobilising Sindh and making it put its weight behind the demand for Pakistan was played by Mohammad Ayub Khuhro (Khuhro, 1998). The elected government of Ayub Khuhro in the Sindh province of Pakistan was dismissed on 26 April 1948 on an administrative issue regarding settlement of the refugees in Karachi (Sayeed, 1968; Kiran, 2022). Apparent insurmountable difficulties of governance and influx of refugees right after partition notwithstanding, the trajectory of democratic development and structuralised inclusive transformation of the newly emerged state of Pakistan might have assumed a different form if the foundation stone of respecting the mandate of the people had been laid during the formative years after the inception of Pakistan. The lessons of history, unfortunately, seem to continue to be brushed under the proverbial carpet. The simple fact that the policies adopted today will certainly have an overwhelming bearing for tomorrow is habitually lost on those who everlastingly roam around in the corridors of power.
Rumi’s implied argument—reflected through his description of economic development, women’s mobility and secular state and society of Bangladesh in the chapter on ‘Dhaka’—appears to be premised on the historically attested trajectory of development in the nation states which adopted an inclusive approach for state formation. The states that structuralised celebration, alongside equitable political representation and equitable distribution of resources, to its cultural, ethnonational, religious, gender and sectarian diversity were observed to have developed a dynamic democratic polity, robust economic development and sustained prosperity. These states and societies are then likely to value their historical heritage and achieve the kind of collective aesthetic consciousness that provides favourable environment for cultural practices, artistic creativity and ideational productivity. They establish a productive society or a conglomeration of societies that is at peace with itself and the rest of the world.
Rendition of complex issues of history, culture, politics and society in an incredibly simple style and alluring diction tinged with personal experiences and individual angst make Raza Rumi’s work not only readable like a fiction work but also transmits it into sublimity. Raza Rumi’s Being Pakistani: Society, Culture and Arts is a book that can be confidently recommended to the students of Political Science, Pakistan Studies, Sociology, Anthropology, Literature and Cultural Studies.
References.
Khuhro, Hamida. (1998). Mohammad Ayub Khuhro: Life of Courage in Politics. Feroz Sons. Lahore.
Kiran, Naumana. (2022). ‘Politics of Sindh and the Federal Cabinet of Pakistan’. Journal of the Pakistan Historical Society. Vol. LXIX. No. 4. Pp. 89-107.
Rumi, Raza. (2018). Being Pakistani: Society, Culture and Arts. HarperCollins Publishers. India.
Sayeed, Khalid B. (1968). Pakistan, the Formative Phase, 1857-1948. Oxford University Press. Karachi.
Shah, Syed Wiqar Ali. (2015). Ethnicity, Islam and Nationalism: Muslim Politics in the North-West Frontier Province (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) 1937-1947. National Institute of Historical and Cultural Research Centre of Excellence, Quaid-I-Azam University (New Campus). Islamabad. Pakistan.
