Managing Diversity in Pakistan: Nationalism, Ethnic Politics and Cultural Resistance [review essay]

As indicated by the titles of several recent books, it has become commonplace to argue that Pakistan is ‘in search of identity’ (Ali 2009, Jaffrelot 2002, Shaikh 2009). From the secession of East Pakistan to form Bangladesh in 1971 to the on-going conflict in Balochistan, the contestation that the country has faced since its independence in 1947 indeed suggests that Pakistan has not reached a consensual conception of the nation. The two-nation theory, which postulates that South-Asian Hindus ..