5,000 years of Pakistan?

TOXIC debates around cultural identity are a frequent occurrence in online spaces, both between people from Pakistan and among those here and across the border in India. In recent months, intense discussions have taken place on the Indus Valley Civilisation (IVC) and Pakistan’s claims of ownership of that part of this region’s history. Alongside, there is a parallel debate on the cultural status of Hindu and Sikh heritage (place names, religious sites and so on) in the area that is now Pakistan. The IVC debate is an old one, but it’s gained more traction in recent years as the government of Pakistan increasingly draws on regional heritage as part of its cultural projection, both online and in public spaces such as global trade and exhibition shows. This is not something entirely new — after all R.E.M. Wheeler’s Five Thousand Years of Pakistan came out in 1950 — but online spaces and their polarisation make both projection and bitter conflicts over that projection somewhat easier. There are several strands in this debate worth considering. The standard right-wing position from the neighbouring country is that Pakistan has nothing to do with the IVC because the state’s creation was on the back of a Muslim minority identity that is ‘delinked’ with the ancient heritage of this region. Resultantly, a claim on ancient heritage cannot be made without a rejection of the present, and in its most extreme variant, of the very creation of a separate state. Some respond to this by asserting that Pakistan’s population consists of a majority of people who have always inhabited this region and who share a common genetic inheritance with all past societal forms. Therefore, they cannot be faulted for claiming various bits of history, even if their cultural practices, such as their religious affiliation, has changed over time. Any serious and sustained interrogation of the Pakistani state’s cultural politics would inevitably bring the tension between projected identity and geography t