What does the much-invoked “Ideology of Pakistan” actually mean, and who decided what it should represent? These questions sit at the heart of a wide-ranging and deeply reflective conversation on New Wave History with renowned historian and political scientist Dr. Jaffer Ahmed, one of Pakistan’s most respected scholars of politics, history, and state formation.
Drawing on decades of teaching, research, and more than twenty published books, Dr. Ahmed challenges the assumption that Pakistan is somehow unique as an “ideological state”. He argues instead that all states operate within ideological frameworks, whether explicitly acknowledged or quietly embedded. From North Korea to contemporary India, ideology, he suggests, is not the exception but the norm.
Central to the discussion is Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s 11 August speech, often cited as evidence of a pluralistic vision for Pakistan. Dr. Ahmed places special weight on this moment, noting that Jinnah spoke not as a political agitator but as the founder of a new state, president of the Constituent Assembly, and soon-to-be Governor General. The speech, he argues, articulated a democratic and non-theocratic vision in which citizenship, not religion, was meant to be the basis of equality before the law.
Yet this vision, the conversation reveals, was gradually overshadowed. The term “Ideology of Pakistan” gained political currency in the late 1960s and early 1970s amid intense ideological competition between socialism, nationalism, and religious politics. After the trauma of 1971 and the secession of East Pakistan, ideology became a substitute for popular legitimacy. Successive regimes, civilian and military alike, leaned increasingly on Islamic nationalism to hold together a highly centralised state.
Dr. Ahmed traces how this shift reshaped education, constitutional law, and the status of minorities, particularly during General Zia-ul-Haq’s Islamisation drive. Even later rhetorical departures, such as General Musharraf’s “enlightened moderation”, failed to alter the deeper institutional logic of the state.
The conversation ends on a note of cautious realism. While Pakistan’s society today shows signs of integration through shared economic interests and a growing middle class, regional identities and demands for federalism remain strong. For Dr. Ahmed, the country’s future depends not on ideological slogans, but on revisiting the original constitutional promises of democracy, federalism, and social justice, promises still waiting to be fully realised.