State and Nation-Building in Pakistan: Beyond Islam and Security (Routledge Contemporary South Asia Series)

Religion, violence, and ethnicity are all intertwined in the history of Pakistan. The entrenchment of landed interests, operationalized through violence, ethnic identity, and power through successive regimes has created a system of ‘authoritarian clientalism.’ This book offers comparative, historicist, and multidisciplinary views on the role of identity politics in the development of Pakistan.

Bringing together perspectives on the dynamics of state-building, the book provides insights into contemporary processes of national contestation which are crucially affected by their treatment in the world media, and by the reactions they elicit within an increasingly globalised polity. It investigates the resilience of landed elites to political and social change, and, in the years after partition, looks at the impact on land holdings of population transfer. It goes on to discuss religious identities and their role in both the construction of national identity and in the development of sectarianism. The book highlights how ethnicity and identity politics are an enduring marker in Pakistani politics, and why they are increasingly powerful and influential.

An insightful collection on a range of perspectives on the dynamics of identity politics and the nation-state, this book on Pakistan will be a useful contribution to South Asian Politics, South Asian History, and Islamic Studies.

Roger D. Long is Professor of History at Eastern Michigan University, USA.

Yunas Samad is Professor of South Asian Studies at the University of Bradford, UK.

Gurharpal Singh is Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at the School of Oriental and African Studies, the University of London, UK.

Ian Talbot is Professor of History and Director of Post-Graduate Research at the University of Southampton, UK, and former Chair of the British Association for South Asian Studies.