Moving away from the Quaid’s vision

A full generation’s life-time is now behind us as an independent nation. Many of us who belong to the first generation that saw and experienced the formative phase of Pakistan and its creation as a dream of its founding fathers, are often reminded of what the Quaid-i-Azam had envisioned this country to be and where we actually stand today as a people and as a state.

This year marks the 65th anniversary of the Pakistan Resolution and the 58th year of our independence. Pakistan’s creation was not an accident of history. The country came into being as a result of a long and relentless struggle of the Muslims of the subcontinent for a separate homeland. Our people saw in it the promise of long-cherished freedom, democracy and prosperity.

The Quaid-i-Azam did not live long to personally steer Pakistan to be what he thought would be “one of the greatest nations of the world.” But during the last year of his life, he addressed almost every segment of our society, including legislators, armed forces, civil servants, educationists, students, business community, workers, lawyers, and the public, providing guidelines on every aspect of national life for “building up Pakistan into a modern and democratic state based on the concept of equality, fraternity and the principles of Islamic social justice.”

He gave us a clear vision of a democratic and progressive state which was to be stable politically and strong economically, imbued with Islamic values. Woefully, we grew up without witnessing these. Our history as a nation is replete with a series of political crises and socio-economic challenges that perhaps no other country in the world has experienced. No doubt, we have survived these crises and challenges but at what cost?

We have gone through traumatic experiences which have left us politically unstable, economically weak, socially fragmented and physically disintegrated. Decades of domestic political chaos and external vulnerability have kept our national priorities lop-sided with nearly one-third of our annual budget being used for our “defence expenditure.”

Addressing Pakistan’s first Constituent Assembly on August 11, 1947, the Quaid reminded the legislators of their “onerous responsibility” of framing the future Constitution of Pakistan and functioning, as a full and complete sovereign body, as the federal legislature of Pakistan. It took our politicians nine years and several governments to frame our first Constitution in 1956 which was abrogated in less than three years.

Since then, we have had two Constitutions, one promulgated by a field marshal president on June 8, 1962, which was first overtaken by the proclamation of “emergency” on September 6, 1965, when the armed conflict with India began and then abrogated altogether by the next chief martial law administrator president on March 25, 1969, and the other adopted by an “elected” legislature of the truncated Pakistan in 1973, which has since been amended 17 times leaving very little of the original text in its essence. It is a different Constitution altogether.

Meanwhile, our parliament has never been able to function as a “full sovereign body” as was envisioned by the Quaid. A cycle of frequent political breakdowns and resultant long spells of military rule disabled our institutional framework unleashing a “culture of political opportunism.” Mostly, we have had a “trivialized” parliament playing no role in country’s decision-making. Our present parliamentary-cum-presidential system under military satraps has no parallel in political philosophy or contemporary history.

Since our independence, we have been experimenting with almost every form of government ranging from democracy to dictatorship, from civilian to military rule, and from parliamentary to presidential system. We also tried a half-baked version of socialism, the outcome of an “administrative” decision, by nationalizing our banks, schools and colleges and major industries and then reversing the tide at huge national losses.

Among his known qualities of intellect and character, the Quaid-i-Azam also had a unique ability to see far ahead of his times. Addressing the officers of the Army Staff College, Quetta on June, 14, 1948, he reminded the armed forces of their constitutional responsibilities, urging them “to understand the true constitutional and legal implications of their oath of allegiance” to the country’s Constitution. However, the tale of our country’s political history says it all. Unfortunately, from the very beginning, power struggle deprived Pakistan of stable and functional political institutions. Military takeovers became a normal practice.

In his message to the All Pakistan Educational Conference at Karachi on November 27, 1947, the Quaid recognized the critical role education plays in the state’s overall welfare.

He told our educationists that “the future of our State will and must greatly depend upon the type of education and the way in which we bring up our children as the future citizens of Pakistan.” This was indeed a message of prophetic relevance to our nation. Unfortunately, with misplaced priorities, we never focused on developing education as a pillar of nation-building.

The Quaid-i-Azam visualized Pakistan’s foreign policy as based on universally acclaimed principles of inter-state relations. In a message to the nation on August 15, 1947, he said: “Our object should be peace within and peace without. We want to live peacefully and maintain cordial and friendly relations with our neighbours and with the world at large. We have no aggressive designs against anyone. We stand by the United Nations Charter and will gladly make our full contribution to the peace and prosperity of the world.” His vision for Pakistan remains unfulfilled.

Unfortunately, throughout our independent statehood, we have had neither domestic stability nor peaceful borders. With India’s image embedded in our psyche as an enemy and a rival, we have been living since independence in the shadow of a perceived Indian hostility and a fear of its threat to our security and survival. In the early 50s, as a young state, we joined western alliances in the hope that their membership might strengthen us against India. But woefully again, when it came to fighting wars with India, we were all alone and in fact every time suffered heavily while also incurring West’s wrath.

In the process, we have mishandled our relations with Iran and Afghanistan, both sharing with us not only common borders but also deep-rooted bonds of faith and culture. The consequences need no elaboration. Many Arab countries viewed our role in Jihadi movements with fear and anxiety. At times, we also became a liability and nuisance for our “time-tested” friend China. We are today in an “alliance” again. This time, however, it is not as a matter of choice.

The Quaid believed in religious freedom and communal harmony. He urged the nation to shun sectarianism. We, however, had a different approach. Intolerance and fanaticism led us to violence with no parallel anywhere in the world. We allowed Pakistan to become the hotbed of religious extremism and obscurantism. Proxy wars were fought on our soil. Sectarianism has ripped our society apart. Even mosques and churches have not been spared as venues of cold-blooded communal and sectarian killings.

Religious extremism and terrorism-related problems afflicting our country have placed us on the global radar screen, giving Pakistan the unenviable distinction of being one of the epochal “frontlines of the war on terror.” The world watches us with anxiety and concern as we clean up Al Qaeda ranks in Pakistan. Our crucial role in this campaign complicates our tasks, both at home and at regional and global levels.

The Quaid-i-Azam, on many occasions, reminded the people of Pakistan of the importance of their responsibilities as citizens of this country. He regarded the ideals of democracy, equality, fraternity and brotherhood of man, rule of law, and human rights as the essence of a countrys inner strength. Our performance in these areas certainly does not live up to the hopes the Quaid had placed before us.

He also believed in the importance of the role of women in nation-building as equal citizens of Pakistan. He would, no doubt, have been happy to see the conspicuously growing number of women in leading professions and political institutions of Pakistan. Unfortunately, there is still a lot that remains to be done at every level for gender mainstreaming through the empowerment of women. They continue to be victims of discriminatory mediaeval practices and have no easy access to justice.

In his presidential address to the First Constituent Assembly of Pakistan on August 11, 1947, the Quaid had given us a roadmap of what he believed were the biggest challenges for the country’s government and lawmakers. According to him, the foremost duty of a government was “to maintain law and order, so that the life, property and religious beliefs of its subjects were fully protected by the state.”

He then warned us against what he called the “evils” of bribery, corruption, black-marketing, nepotism and jobbery. He wanted the government and the Assembly to take “adequate” measures to put these evils down with “an iron hand.”

We as a nation have not only failed to grapple with these challenges but are in fact living remorselessly with these problems as an “integral” part of our society. Crime and corruption are rampant and galore both in scope and scale. Aversion to the rule of law is endemic. Poor governance is our national hallmark. There is constant erosion of law and order in the country.

The writer is a former foreign secretary.

Between myth and history

Pakistan’s impeccable record in commemorating the landmarks in its national struggle has not always been matched by an ability to coherently explain their historical significance. Sixty-five years since its adoption by the All-India Muslim League, the Lahore Resolution remains mired in contentious debates among historians of South Asia as well as the protagonists of provincial versus central rights in Pakistan.

Not surprisingly, most Pakistanis are no nearer understanding how the would-be magna carta of their territorial statehood relates to their citizenship rights, far less squares the circle of the multiple conceptions of nationhood articulated by Muslims in the pre-independence period.

The Resolution’s claim that Indian Muslims were not a minority but a nation was raised on behalf of all the Muslims of the subcontinent. Yet the territorial contours of the newly created homeland for India’s Muslims in 1947 left almost as many Muslim non-citizens outside as there were Muslim citizens within. Even after the creation of Bangladesh in 1971 administered a rude shock to the official narratives of national identity, the contradiction between claims of nationhood and the achievement of statehood was never addressed, far less resolved. The silence has been a major stumbling block in Pakistan’s quest for an identity which is consistent with the appeal of Islamic universalism as well as the requirements of territorial nationalism.

Instead of treating the Lahore Resolution as an issue of metahistorical significance, an analytically nuanced history of the circumstances surrounding its passage can make for a stronger and more coherent sense of national identity. Discussions about the historical significance of the Resolution have concentrated more on the political implications of the transformation of the Muslim minority community in India into a ‘nation’ rather than on the ambiguities surrounding the demand for Muslim ‘statehood’.

A close analysis of the historical context and actual content of the Resolution, however, suggests that there was no neat progression from an assertion of Muslim nationhood to the winning of separate statehood. My book The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan (Cambridge, 1985) delineated the uneasy fit between the claim of Muslim ‘nationhood’ and the uncertainties and indeterminacies of politics in the late colonial era that led to the attainment of sovereign ‘statehood’. Instead of grasping the salience of the argument, some historians and publicists on both sides of the 1947 divide have interpreted this as implying that the demand for a Pakistan was a mere ‘bargaining counter’. In so far as politics is the art of the possible, bargaining is an intrinsic part of that art. To suggest, as some have glibly done, that Mohammed Ali Jinnah used Pakistan as a mere ruse against the Congress is a gross distortion of not only my argument but of the actual history.

My argument in The Sole Spokesman, and one that I confirmed in Self and Sovereignty: Individual and Community in South Asian Islam since 1850s (Routledge and Sang-i-Meel, 2000-1), was that while the insistence on national status for Indian Muslims became a non-negotiable issue after 1940, the demand for a wholly separate and sovereign state of ‘Pakistan’ remained open to negotiation as late as the summer of 1946. A refusal to acknowledge this is a result of the failure to draw an analytical distinction between ‘nation’ and ‘state’. More problematic has been a flawed historical methodology that takes the fact of partition as the point of departure for interpreting the historical evolution of the demand for a ‘Pakistan’.

The historical backdrop of the Lahore Resolution makes plain why a claim to nationhood did not necessarily mean a complete severance of ties with the rest of India. Beginning with Mohammad Iqbal’s presidential address to the All-India Muslim League at Allahabad in December 1930, a succession of Muslims put forward imaginative schemes in the 1930s about how power might be shared between religiously enumerated ‘majorities’ and ‘minorities’ in an independent India.

In staking a claim for a share of power for Muslims on grounds of cultural difference, these schemes in their different ways challenged Congress’s right to indivisible sovereignty without rejecting any sort of identification with India. Describing India as “the greatest Muslim country in the world”, Iqbal called for the establishment of a Muslim state in northwestern India which would remain part of the subcontinental whole.

If even Iqbal was thinking in terms of an all-India whole, outright secession was simply not an option for Muslims hailing from provinces where they were in a minority. Virtually all the schemes put forward by Muslims living in minority provinces considered themselves as ‘a nation in minority’ that was part of ‘a larger nation inhabiting Pakistan and Bengal’. If Muslims in Hindustan were seen as belonging to a larger nation in northwestern India, religious minorities in ‘Pakistan’ and Bengal were expected to derive security from sharing a common nationality with co-religionists dominating the non-Muslim state.

For the notion of reciprocal safeguards to work, Muslims and non-Muslims had to remain part of a larger Indian whole, albeit one that was to be dramatically reconceptualized in form and substance by practically independent self-governing parts. Even schemes with secessionist overtones, most notably that of Chaudhary Rahmat Ali, wanted to carve out half a dozen Muslim states in India and consolidate them into a “Pakistan Commonwealth of Nations.’

What all these schemes led to was the claim that Muslims constituted a nation which could not be subjugated to a Hindu majority represented by the Congress. Taking this as its point of departure and avoiding mention of ‘partition’ or ‘Pakistan’, the League’s draft resolution called for the grouping of the Muslim-majority provinces in northwestern and northeastern India into ‘Independent States’ in which the constituent units would be ‘autonomous and sovereign’.

There was no reference to a centre even though the fourth paragraph spoke of ‘the constitution’ to safeguard the interests of both sets of minorities, Muslim and non-Muslim. The claim that Muslims constituted a ‘nation’ was perfectly compatible with a federal or confederal state structure covering the whole of India. With ‘nations’ straddling states, the boundaries between states had to be permeable and flexible. This is why years after the adoption of the resolution, Jinnah and the League remained implacably opposed to the division of the Punjab and Bengal along religious lines.

Historians and publicists in India have seized on the contradiction in the demand for a Pakistan based on the Muslim right of self-determination and the apparent unwillingness to grant the same right to non-Muslims living in Punjab and Bengal. Much like their counterparts in Pakistan, they have conveniently glossed over the difference between a purely secessionist demand and one aimed at providing the building block for an equitable power sharing arrangement at the subcontinental level between two essentially sovereign states — ‘Pakistan’ based on the Muslim-majority provinces and Hindustan based on the Hindu-majority provinces.

With their singular focus on a monolithic and indivisible concept of sovereignty borrowed from the erstwhile colonial rulers, scholars and students of history on both sides of the 1947 divide have been unable to envisage a political arrangement based on a measure of shared sovereignty which might have satisfied the demands of ‘majorities’ as well as safeguarded the interests of religious minorities in predominantly Muslim and Hindu areas.

In 1944 and then again at the time of the Cabinet Mission Plan, the All-India Muslim League at the behest of Mohammad Ali Jinnah refused to accept a ‘Pakistan’ based on the division of the Punjab and Bengal. It was Congress’s unwillingness to countenance an equitable power sharing arrangement with the Muslim League which resulted in the creation of a sovereign Pakistan based on the partition of Punjab and Bengal along ostensibly religious lines.

Cast against its will in the role of a state seceding from a hostile Indian union, Pakistan has tried securing its independent existence by espousing an ideology of Muslim ‘nationhood’ which has entailed riding roughshod over the provincial rights promised in the Lahore Resolution and dispensing with democracy for the better part of its history. It is no wonder that the claims of Muslim nationhood have been so poorly served by the achievement of territorial statehood.

Such historical insights may not appeal to the authors of the contending narratives of a Pakistani or an Indian identity. But even national myths require some resemblance to history. Charting a linear course to the winning of Muslim statehood cannot even begin to grasp the vexed nature of the problems which faced a geographically dispersed and heterogeneous community in its bid to be considered a ‘nation’.

Nor can it explain why there are more subcontinental Muslims living outside Pakistan, the much vaunted Muslim homeland, in India and Bangladesh. Instead of being weighed under by opposing national reconstructions informed by the teleology of 1947, Pakistanis and Indians could craft a more accommodative future for the subcontinent by acknowledging the domain of political contingency, containing possibilities for different outcomes, that lay between the adoption of the Lahore Resolution and partition seven years later.

The writer is Professor of History, Tufts University, Massachusetts, US.

Importance of protest

March 19, was the second anniversary of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. Although several rallies and demonstrations were held in Europe protesting against the war and calling for the withdrawal of American troops from the war ravaged country, the voices were relatively muted.

In Pakistan it was hardly remembered that it was on this day two year ago when terror rained down on Baghdad. Apart from a handful of demonstrators, who described themselves as the citizens of Pakistan and observed a token show of protest before the Karachi Press Club by holding placards with anti-American slogans inscribed on them, the day went largely unnoticed.

The marchers in England were most vocal but nothing compared to the anti-war campaigners of 2002 and 2003 when they had gone all out to preempt the war which had appeared to be imminent at that time. But now that the war is over and the world appears to have adjusted to the devastation unleashed on Iraq, most of the peace campaigners have moved on.

If the activists in England showed more interest in the anniversary of the invasion than their colleagues on the European continent, it was because the Britons are gearing up for the general elections expected to take place in May. The voters face a dilemma. Public opinion polls show that the Labour Party is way ahead of the Tories and should sweep the polls. But there are many Labour supporters who don’t want Tony Blair to lead the country. They are angry at what they term his role as “President Bush’s poodle”. They want him to pull out British troops from Iraq and would spare no opportunity to embarrass him.

What was surprising was the indifference which marked the people’s attitude in Pakistan. After all the war proved to be as deadly as it had been feared at the time. According to an estimate by Lancet, the prestigious medical journal in Britain, 100,000 civilians were killed in Iraq. These were not just casualties. Behind each death was the grief, sorrow and trauma of the families for whom the world had ended.

The looting of the national treasures and legacies from the museums and libraries also left the Iraqi society battered and the post-war reconstruction — politically, socially and economically — is proving to be a big challenge.

Worse still, it has now been confirmed that the war plans were built on a pack of lies. No traces were found of the weapons of mass destruction which President Saddam Hussein was supposed to have stocked up. The liberation that the Iraqis had been promised is still a pipedream and the blessings of democracy that Mr Bush was so keen about endowing to the people of Iraq has hardly brought any comfort to the people. If anything, after the war of March-April 2003 violence has ripped Iraq and it is difficult to believe how and when it will ever end.

How could we then have forgotten the miseries of the Iraqis? The fact is that as a nation we cannot mobilize ourselves easily — on a voluntary basis — for any cause. The only occasion when one can expect a few hundred people to show up to register their protest is when their emotions are truly roused. The religious parties manage to gather bigger crowds because they excel in the art of mobilization which they practise on a regular basis to keep the party active.

In the case of Iraq, which is a highly emotional issue, it seems that a state of war fatigue has set in. The public’s feelings for the Iraqis have been numbed and now there are other issues — of greater immediacy — to feel concerned about.

Political parties are the main source of mobilization in any society. It is mainly their function to inform and educate the masses and bring them together to show their strength. The political parties in Pakistan, even in the heyday of democracy, have failed to perform these functions effectively. Under a military ruler even though the system has all the trappings of democracy, many of the political parties are in disarray with their leaders in exile or self-exile.

The most organized ones — the MMA and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement — prefer to focus on issues that will fetch them political advantages. The turbulence in Balochistan, the president’s uniform and other similar issues today provide them with the pretext of disturbing peace and capturing the limelight.

They fail to convince the public that they really stand for democracy and freedom. The Muttahida is part of the government and when it attacks the government its contradictions are difficult to explain. As for the MMA, people still remember its crucial role in getting the 17th Amendment adopted by the National Assembly.

Iraq does not fit into the scheme of things of the parties in Pakistan at the moment. Since President Musharraf decided to keep out of the Iraqi quagmire, American pressure notwithstanding, it is strange that the opposition parties find no reason to sympathize with the Iraqis. It would not provide them with the ammunition they need to attack the president. They are more interested in their political self-interest and do not take a global perspective of vital issues.

Although this causes dismay, it is still important to protest against the invasion of Iraq. The global peace movement appears to have made no impact on American policy in Iraq. But the earlier voices of protest were heard in the corridors of power. In Pakistan, had it not been for the protests in support of the Iraqis, our troops would have landed in Iraq.

And now when the US seems to be gunning for Iran on grounds of nuclear proliferation, Washington has so far shown more constraint than it had in 2003 when it was preparing to attack Iraq. Protest is important not just for Iraq where the situation continues to be alarming. It is also important to pre-empt an attack on Iran.

Urdu: ‘in purdah’

Some weeks ago there was an international Urdu conference in Islamabad. It became an official gathering in the sense that, apart from two top government bodies devoted to Urdu, one of the sponsors was the Capital Development Authority.

I do not know what message the government intended to convey, but the moot ended with a call for Urdu’s immediate adoption as the office language. I am personally convinced that it was just hot air and no more.

Does anyone know the federal government’s exact stand on Urdu? I mean that of the present regime and the previous governments which boasted about their heavy mandate and the love they inspired among the masses. If Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto had been asked about their policy on Urdu they wouldn’t have been able to say anything beyond asserting. “It is Pakistan’s national language.”

The reason is that nobody is really clear about Urdu’s place. There used to be a National Language Committee of the National Assembly whose duty it was to decide when (if at all) Urdu was to be introduced in government offices in pursuance of a constitutional requirement. I wonder if the committee is alive or, like so many important things in Pakistan, it has died because of indifference. But since the National Assembly is not clinically dead, I suppose the committee can be revived any time.

After more than 56 years of independence one can say that successive regimes in Pakistan had one common feature: they had been too inhibited by western influence to shed the use of English and too timid to take the plunge in respect of Urdu. They have consistently wavered between the much-publicised importance of English in the modern world and the equally much-publicised inadequacy of Urdu as a vehicle for science and technology and the development subjects, refusing at the same time to give up its lip service to the latter.

Urdu is no doubt the acknowledged national language, the only feeble dissent being not against its status as such but the regional and provincial desires that the other Pakistani languages should not suffer because of it. Nobody can quarrel with these legitimate and even laudable aspirations. In fact it is not necessary to muster ideological and emotional support for Urdu, because, if nothing else, it is the sole means of communication between the various people who inhabit this land. Apart from its theoretical acceptance as the national language, Urdu is the vehicle for written expression in Punjab and Balochistan and the Frontier. It is only in Sindh that people communicate with each other in their mother tongue, and Sindhi poets and writers are virile. All others, though passionately fond of their respective languages for speaking, employ Urdu for writing letters and, to a considerable extent, for literary expression.

Add to this the fact that in Punjab, for some strange psychological reason no one has been able to fathom, the urban educated middle class and above, with pretensions to respectability and culture, have gradually taken to Urdu for oral communication also. For them the only use now left for Punjabi is to converse with the illiterate, to enjoy the vigour and loud violence of Punjabi movies and to draw upon the language’s matchless fund of vulgar invective to abuse opponents. Recently pop music has taken to it in a big way.

In Punjab, the NWFP and Balochistan, Urdu is the language of the courts, except the three high courts, and of subordinate district and tehsil offices. In these offices in Sindh the language used in Sindhi and the proceedings of the lower courts are also conducted in that language.

In the domain in education, Urdu is taught at the primary level all over the country except in Sindh. Then there is the question of the mother tongue at the primary level at least, and in the Frontier the present government has made Pushto compulsory for these classes. The demand also exists in some sections of public opinion in Punjab but it is muted and half-hearted. Activists of Punjabi threaten to launch a campaign in its favour but strangely the common man is not interested, not even in the villages where they all now want to speak Urdu, and of course learn English.

Urdu is the medium of instruction for other subjects in Punjab, the Frontier and Balochistan but not in Sindh except for Urdu-speaking children. It is also the medium of instruction at the highest level in Karachi University, though I don’t know what the students think about that. It is here that the whole problem of contradictions starts, by saying one thing and doing another. The tragedy of Urdu as the national language is that the contradictions stem mostly from the government’s actions (or inaction).

The people themselves have also contributed to the problem. Those who have a bit of money do not want to educate their children in an Urdu-medium school. This is also because the government itself has no openings in the services for young people who are not well up in English. They may be geniuses in Urdu but that’s no good.

Both the federal and provincial governments foster and encourage discrimination in favour of English, and to the disadvantage of Urdu by running high-profile English-medium schools. The vicious process starts with this and culminates at the level of recruitment to the superior services and to executive jobs in commerce and industry where the smart English-speaking candidate has an edge over his Urdu-medium rival. This leaves the latter with the feeling that he is only fit for a clerical post.

It is less easy to pinpoint causes for slow adoption of Urdu in the private sector. One may be the hesitation of the government to introduce Urdu as the official language. There is also the complex that Urdu stands for a backward ‘desi’ culture while English denotes being modern, enlightened and westernized. The educated classes take pride in writing and speaking English well. Even Urdu journalists prefer to work in English newspapers.

Thus the real culprit in the issue is the government itself. Except for some laudable attempts at translating official terms into Urdu (which are never used anyway) and developing an urdu typewriter, hardly anything really positive has been done to launch the national language in day-to-day government work.

To use a metaphor from domestic life, English is the fashionable mistress who is paraded in society while Urdu is the poor wife who cannot be brought out of purdah for fear of shame. This is the state of affairs as I see it. It is not my place to suggest remedies.

Beyond Englishness

Six hundred kids in schools in four English towns were asked about their identity in a Joseph Rowntree Foundation study. Those from ethnic minorities didn’t hesitate with their answers — black, Pakistani Muslim, Muslim, Asian — while the white majority were left stumbling.

“I’m sort of tanned,” said one. “I’ve aquamarine eyes,” said another. Some of the white kids could describe their heritage — “I’m a quarter Scottish” or “I’m an eighth Japanese” — but they couldn’t label the identity it gave them. Being “English” meant nothing to them.

Does it matter that Englishness has so little pull on these children? One school of thought argues that the whole discussion of identity is so much navel fluff — vague and pointless. That position usually reflects a secure, unchallenged sense of identity, and it is the fate that has afflicted Englishness.

Because England has dominated Britain, it has never had to explain itself in the way that Scottish or Welsh identity has had to, or that black people and Muslims are continually being asked to do. The hard graft of developing and interrogating a collective identity is something the English have historically shrugged off, imperiously assuming recognition without ever believing it required explanation.

But there is a growing school which argues that questions of identity are critical, and the “doughnut” problem — the absence of a strong, meaningful sense of Englishness — is a real handicap. This is the starting point for David Blunkett’s attempts to formulate a progressive definition of Englishness.

He argues that the left’s historic ambivalence about nationalism is in danger of leaving open a territory that can be captured by rightwing opinion, which can mould it to fit a narrowly defined, introverted, racialized agenda with dangerous consequences for communal harmony and foreign policy.

Questions of identity are not just abstract concepts, but act as organizing principles for a gamut of domestic and foreign policies, from levels of taxation to community cohesion and Europe.

Blunkett is right in his analysis, and the political danger this issue presents for the left is evident. Anxieties about identity get swiftly projected on to issues such as immigration and asylum seekers. Neal Lawson in the recent Compass pamphlet, Dare More Democracy, quotes focus-group participants who again and again insisted on returning to the subject of immigration and asylum and complained about “foreigners” benefiting from health, welfare and education resources that “should be going to the people who paid into the system”. They said that Blair is “anti-English and supports any country and religion except the English... and is ruining our country — England”. Lawson concluded that this issue animated the focus groups more than any other.

What is driving this defensive sense of Englishness? One of many projects funded by a big Economic and Social Research Council programme on identities, to be launched next month, is looking at Englishness in predominantly white housing estates in Plymouth and Bristol. The sociologist Steve Garner has found in both cities, in these relatively well-off middle England neighbourhoods, a profound sense of insecurity and loss. The latter was described as the loss of a sense of village-scale community where people knew and helped each other.—Dawn/Guardian Service