GOING through the various available material on the jihadis’ role in Kashmir and Afghanistan since the 1990s, some of it in verbatim interviews, one ends up with the feeling that while many of these actors believe in ‘holy war’, not so many are willing to confess to an interest in destabilising Pakistan.

It’s a tricky survey, true, for not too many jihadis are available for interviews and few of them can realistically be thought of as even partly speaking their minds, or of elucidating independently constructed opinion. Yet from what is available, one basic thread becomes apparent: asked about the validity of tactics such as suicide bombings, ‘mere’ bombings, etc, there is a tendency to proffer an overarching theory: various actors, including India, the US and Israel, have somehow colluded to bring trouble to this region.

According to this point of view, while convincing the average jihadi that the government of Pakistan is a collaborator with the enemy was not too hard, there appears to be a reluctance to put things in terms as black and white as that the role of a jihadi is to kill the average citizen.

The ‘India/US/Israel/maybe more’ conspiracy theory has for many years enjoyed reasonable currency in Pakistan. Part of that has to do with the fact that we as a nation have been indoctrinated with a tendency to be unquestioningly patriotic.

(This is not say that the country does not have its fair share of those with grievances, real or perceived, against the state or government or its policies, but to point out that very few people are equipped with the willingness or ability to critically and even somewhat dispassionately examine the idea of Pakistan, and what that means.)

Partly, the preponderance of the conspiracy theory has to do with the configuration of world politics and the regrettable role that Pakistan played in some of it. Yes, we were played for suckers. But we hardly played a wise game either.

These tendencies have been fed by an over-eager and target-happy media, which is delighted to present the world as out to malign Pakistan and its religio-cultural dynamics as long as it ushers in more acrimonious ‘discussions’ and greater on-screen conflict. That, after all, is what is perceived as reeling in the advertising.

Terror, according to this theory, is imposed on Pakistan by a shadowy nexus whose most awful (and effective) result is the perpetration of violence in other regions for which Pakistan gets blamed. This worldview seems to be shared in equal amount by sections ranging from the media to policymakers to the jihadis themselves.

It is an attractive position, after all — it’s generally nicer to consider oneself more sinned against than a sinner.

Pakistan’s position is one of self-aggrandisement imbued with no small measure of self-pity. Part of the problem is that Pakistanis’ historical consciousness, and the manner in which our context is taught to us, tends to link realities with conflated versions of mythologies and conspiracies. And a lot of that has to do with the role played by the version of the Islamic narrative that we’ve been focused on for the past decades.

Narratives stemming loosely from, but not entirely based on, religion have played a crucial role in the formation of our national identity. Consciousness has thus been manipulated to push the right emotional buttons without necessarily thinking about the details.

The Pakistan Studies textbooks that I remember from school, for example, started with Moenjodaro and Harappa, touched briefly, randomly upon the wonders of the Indus Valley Civilisation, Buddhism, Chowkundi and Taxila, and then jumped to pre-Islamic Arabia. A brief overview of early Islamic history later, we arrive at the point when Mohammed Bin Qasim brings Islam to the subcontinent and overthrows Raja Dahir.

Thereafter, the bulk of the work focuses on the Muslim personalities that were involved in South Asian politics, taking pause to skim though the Khilafat movement and the events of 1857, until Pakistan is formed by the Muslims, for the Muslims.

No wonder, then, that in Pakistan national consciousness is partnering in a three-legged race with religio-cultural dynamics. A mix of mythologies comprised of both religious indoctrination and nationalist propaganda have left us viewing our short 60-odd years through a prism that invites us to imagine comparisons with portions of early Islamic (in Arabia) history, starting from 1947 as the time when downtrodden Muslims under thrall of non-Muslims took part in a migration to more conducive climes despite massive costs and sacrifices.

How we are partisan is evident, in this example, by the fact that thousands of equals in suffering travelled eastwards to India, too, but this ‘detail’ finds little place in the Pakistani historical consciousness.

The general public imagination finds a number of such parallels between the Pakistani experience and what is constructed as the ‘Muslim experience’. Historians, academics and those who generally know better can argue that these are not fair comparisons, and in most cases, they aren’t. But that isn’t the point. The point is that in the collective consciousness, they have been fostered and coddled until they feel true.

The narrative of martyrdom, an intrinsic part of the story of Islam, is replicated in every textbook which carries the list of shaheeds that every matriculate must memorise.

The schizophrenia we’re now facing is that according to what we were taught, the shaheeds in our books were brave soldiers who died in the service of their country. But that narrative is being challenged by that of the likes of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, for example, which hold that a shaheed is one who died in the service of his religion — as defined by him or his parent organisation.

For decades, the idea of Pakistan was reinforced by propaganda that sought to make Pakistan synonymous with religion. In the past few years, though, the unity of that narrative has splintered and in the process, is coming back to haunt us.

The writer is a member of staff.

hajrahmumtaz@gmail.com