Pakistaniat From Below?

Several decades after its publication, Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities remains a field-defining book in the study of nations and nationalism. The argument put forward was simple, yet insightful: a nation is not a natural or eternal entity. Instead, it is a socially constructed community. And it is imagined, because members will never know most of their fellow members, yet they picture themselves as part of a shared collective.

Anderson substantiated his argument by tracing out how the process of ‘nation-building’ actually took place in early modern Europe. The spread of print technologies plays a significant part in his narration, establishing a clear link between material development and political evolution. Similarly, the state's use of techniques of governance, such as drawing clear maps, enumeration exercises like the census and patronage to historical archiving and memorialisation through institutions like museums, also expedited the growth of national belonging.

None of this was to show that nations are not ‘real’. Subjective feelings of belonging to large collectives are real, regardless of whether the stories these feelings are built on are factual or not. A sentiment deeply felt, whether religious or nationalist, deserves to be analysed and treated sociologically, beyond an accounting of its veracity or links with discrete events.

Since the twentieth century, the process of imagining nations has emerged from two distinct paths. The first is the purposeful efforts of state elites trying to build a loyal citizenry from above. The pageantry of national holidays, the perpetuation of historical myths and origin stories, as well as the frequent otherisation of geopolitical rivals are all building blocks of this particular path.

The second path is the response to these very efforts from those on the proverbial margins. Those who weren’t part of the elite that made these decisions; those whose historical myths and cultural norms didn’t find space in state-sanctioned narrations. These nationalisms often grow in insurgent forms, through political entrepreneurs and ideologues. Literary and associated intellectual traditions, and religious performance and ritual (depending on the context), are often key facets in the development of such nationalism. Eventually many of these nationalisms, though not all, grow strong and assertive enough to challenge the status quo, seeking cultural and even political liberation.

Pakistan’s political history broadly treads along these two paths. Centre-province tensions map on to the tension between state-sanctioned nation-building and the political-cultural perseverance of ethnic communities. Language remains the central axis of division, but other aspects, such as the narration of history and commemoration of specific historical figures, also remain important.

With statehood now into its 79th year, ethnic tensions aimed at the centre continue to exist, though in a far more peripheralised form than before. Inter-community tensions remain a flashpoint, especially in Karachi, though these two are now confined within mainstream cultural and political processes, rather than paramilitary and non-state violence that threatened to become the norm not too long ago.

On its own, this status quo is unstable but not unique. Many multi-ethnic polities face issues in limiting communitarian/majoritarian impulses, regardless of how seemingly well-entrenched their liberal political institutions, or how stable the idea of citizenship, may have been in the past. The US and much of Europe, along with India next door, are good examples of this development.

What is more interesting though is the return of technology as a key element in nation-building exercises, especially from ‘below’. Here, I am referring to the rise of social media and the use of large, shared platforms and forums among regular people to work through ideas of collective belonging and history, often in polarised forms against perceived others, whether domestic or cross-border.

The use of social media for this purpose seems to have taken off in Pakistan in a substantial way. Ethnic nationalisms of various stripes, especially those opposed to the political centre (such as the Baloch) have been relying on the internet as both a means of communication, but also to set up a separate cultural and information sphere to archive the past and document the present in the face of mainstream erasure.

But such efforts, and the broader canvas that social media provides, are not just limited to insurgent or peripheral nationalisms. They are also being used to reinterpret and assert statist (or mainstream) nationalism in Pakistan as well.

A key demonstration of this came out during the Indo-Pak war earlier in 2025, when nationalist assertion (and disinformation/propaganda) on social media reached considerable volumes. Since then, online communities from India and Pakistan remain fairly antagonistic to each other, especially on platforms like X.

In the midst of this polarisation, historical narrations and culture are key battlegrounds. A common exchange, for example, is on ownership of custom and its religious origins. Right-wingers point to Partition as an event that severs cultural linkages between the two countries, implying that any continuity in dressing, music or ritual on the Pakistani side is a form of appropriation.

The response to this from Pakistan’s online community is of two types. The first is that stresses the break, citing instead an Islamic heritage that links back to political power through the Mughal empire. This is much closer to the state-sanctioned narration of history, which sought to create a clear cultural break with India.

Increasingly, though, there is another response that is ‘from below’ (i.e. from online citizens), but that modifies the state-sanctioned position in new ways. This response practices a ‘buffet’ model of cultural nationalism, whereby Pakistan now constitutes a purely geographic entity populated by Muslims, who nevertheless have a range of cultural traditions that they follow or can tap into. This includes the obvious Islamicate heritage with the other Muslims countries to the West, but also the heritage of ethnic communities lying within Pakistan’s borders (Punjabi, Sindhi, Pashtun, Baloch, etc.). And increasingly, the (imagined) heritage of past civilisational forms, such as the Indus Valley Civilisation.

This syncretic form of Pakistani identity construction is interesting because it takes geography as a given and culture as multi-dimensional and evolving, which is an inverse of the original project of Pakistaniat, which saw geography as contingent, but culture as much more fixed and discrete. It is also interesting, because while it is ‘from below’, insofar that this is not what the official statist position suggests, it still cements the idea of a centralised Pakistani state as the default, which is not what other forms of nationalisms have historically done.

As the technology of an online public sphere deepens, statehood ambles on and a newer generation of citizens emerges (a generation that has only known a hard border between India and Pakistan), it will likely produce new imaginaries of nation-building.