from Ihsan Goraya <ihsangoraya@yahoo.co.uk> hide details 6:55 am (1 hour ago)
to info@wasaib.com
date Feb 23, 2007 6:55 AM
subject History of Pakistan
signed-by yahoo.co.uk

Dear Saeen Ijaz Bloach,
I've seen the piece of the news about the insistence
of a particular class to cut the history of Pakistan
and bring it into the fold of just about a millineum
and a half, which to me is denying the hard facts of
the natural process in the evolution of history of a
particular State, country or region. I'm placing below
an extract from the preface of my book 'History of
Pakistan' for the consideration of the members of
Wasaib.com. These are my own views on the topic,
others may differ but they must bring some solid
argument keeping the true sense of the word 'history'.
Here I may also assert that our country till now is
not an Islamic State in the true sense of the word. It
is, at the best, a Muslim country. Similarly what we
emphasise to be the Islamic history is not the history
of Islam but the history of the Muslims of different
regions of the world. If we're to write the history of
Islam it would deal with the ideological developments
as ordained by Allah and their implementation in
letter and spirit in different societies. Then it
wouldn't merely dealing with the rise and fall of
different countries, kings, emperors or the
governments - or just Muslims' conquests, defeats,
advances, retreats, travels, influences etc.
Thanks.
Yours
Ihsan

"In history a nation does not pop-up out of
nothingness with just an executive order or a royal
decree for the creation of a new state. It grows from
the soil and there are centuries, nay millennia,
behind its formation on which course it would have
traversed through many a culture and civilisation to
finally have an entity and an identity of its own. But
when I come across a book that starts the history of
Pakistan from the 14th of August 1947 – the day it
became an independent State after throwing off the
British yoke – I am unable to reconcile with the idea
that our nation, culture or civilisation was born
within the last about 50-60 years. Some other authors
seem to be a little more generous in delineating its
history from the time of the Arab Muslim invasion of
the southern part of our country. They probably think
that an Islamic country – or a Muslim State – had its
genesis in the period when its boundaries opened to
Muslim invasion. It also gave an impression that
before the advent of Islam there was a blank period
and perhaps nothing was found in this land of the
Pure, which obviously is contrary to the ground
realities.

"In my opinion both of these points of view did not do
justice to the historic evolution that spread over
many a millennium to shape our destiny to become a
Nation and have a culture of our own as a member of
the extensive Civilisation we also call Muslim Ummah.
As such in my theory of the history of Pakistan we
have to go back to our roots found with our remotest
ancestors, who inhabited this country and laid the
foundations of the Nation that was destined to become
Islamic Republic of Pakistan after going through the
grind of all the thousands and thousands of years.

"Here it may be interesting to see also what history
goes to tell. “History”, as Encyclopaedia Britannica
defines, "is the discipline that studies the
chronological record of events (as affecting a nation
or people), based on a critical examination of source
materials and usually presenting an explanation of
their causes.” Even if the earlier phases of the story
of mankind in this part of the world might have been
written by archaeologists, they nevertheless tell the
history in its true sense".