I feel it does not matter what the actual Arab percentage is. The point is you can't claim to be of Arab descent and at the same time claim the IVC or any other ancient civilization before the Arabs came here.
Vinod,
Why not? If the Arabs intermarried with the locals, lets assume the locals were IVC descendants, then some Pakistanis would be absolutely correct in claiming that they were descendent's of the Arabs, but that does not take away the part of their identity that belongs to the lands of Pakistan.
I personally do not know of any part of my family that is Arab, maternal or paternal side.
Both sides of the family are Rajput, though not related.
There are many, many more people in Pakistan with similar family history's - that do not have any recollection of Arab ancestry (which does not mean it may not exist). So just because of people like myself and others who claim no Arab ancestry or claim both Arab and local ancestry, we have a right to claim the IVC.
So if my assumption that Mr. RR is a Pashtun is correct, he would be having an Afghan nationality and won't be defending the "IVC belongs to Pakistan" line. Especially because no part of IVC would have fallen in that land.
Yes, but by that same argument India could have become a dozen nations after the British left as well, and then those in the South would not be claiming the history of the North, and neither would be claiming the history of the East.
Pakistanis who speak Punjabi, Pushto, Sindhi, Urdu, Balochi or whatever are claiming the IVC as Pakistanis, not on the basis of individual ethnicities - just as Modern Indians are claiming Modern India's history regardless of their individual ethnicities, or whether their particular region had anything (or very little) to do with that history.
The modern boundaries of Pakistan are contested by Afghanistan from the west and were a topic of hot discussions on the east in 1947 with tempers being raised on both sides on this or that area.
The various peoples comprising Pakistan, including the Pashtun who voted overwhelmingly in a referendum for Pakistan, decided that they subscribed to a sense of shared nationhood and nationalism and chose to join Pakistan. The fact that they chose this new idea over the long established idea of an Afghan nation is indicative of how powerful that sense of nationhood was.
In the end, it does no matter whether Afghanistan or India covet Pakistani territory, or whether China covets Indian territory - it is the fact that the people decided what their nation was, what it meant, and what their destiny was - and they roundly rejected Afghanistan and the idea of joining India.
AM, are you contesting the point that the sole basis of partition was religious and the communal politics as it played out during the last few decades of independence?
Quite honestly I don't think it matters what basis India and Pakistan were created on. Any way you look at the idea behind nations, they are formed on the basis of divisiveness.
Whether the justification is shared "culture", "race", "ethnicity", "history" or faith, it is ultimately a divisive rationalization: "I want a nation separate from everyone else because of XYZ."
But just to answer your question, Pakistan was formed because the sense of being a separate identity, and therefore not getting fair treatment in India was too strong. It doesn't matter what the reason was, ultimately wanting a separate nation boils down to a fear of not having a particular community's interests being taken care of.
That is why the peoples under the control of the British, including those in the colony of British India, chose to separate from the British empire.
Continuously trying to cast the creation of Pakistan as some sort of horrible communal event is a very intellectually dishonest canard.