Identity can’t precede the object, being identified with. “Pakistani” is the identity - a national identity at that, which came into being, with the coming into being of the state of Pakistan. One can’t apply this identity retrospectively, from the beginning of time, to everything or anything that at some point of time existed, physically or otherwise within the landmass that the union of Pakistan now occupies . Claiming medieval characters, like Panini, to be Pakistani, because they were born and/or worked in a region, which is now in Pakistan, is outrageously bad history. The history of Pakistan, the nation, starts from 1947 and will continue till the nation ceases to exist politically, if at all she does so, in her current name. Anything that happened before 1947, belongs to whatever this piece of land was called by or referred to or identified with. Anything that happens after she ceases to politically exist, will then belong to her successor, if any.
That, brings us to the term “India” and its connotations.
When historians use the term “India”, they don’t mean the current political union of India, but a geographical region, that includes the landmass that is occupied by current unions of Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. The political identity or term of “India”, whether under the British or Mughals or Delhi Sultanate or Ashoka or even before that, was derived from this geographical identity and it is not the other way round, which is being implied here. The fact that this huge landmass was indeed called “India”, is evidenced and attested, by many foreign sources, Megasthenes being one of those. “Pakistan” on the other hand, has no connotation other than that of a state. The term, at no time in history, ever referred to any geographical region whatsoever, and still does not. It is purely a political identity and that too, of recent origin.
This brings us to a even larger question of who, then, can claim(?) the history pre-1947. On a grand scheme of things, Pakistan can’t claim it, exclusively. But then again, neither can the union of India. It is infact, a history, jointly and in equal proportion, shared by these two nations, along with Bangladesh. This also creates a peculiar problem. How can something that happened in an area, which is modern day Chennai, be shared in equal proportions with someone living in a region, which is modern day Multan, and of course, vice-versa.
So how do we apportion our share of history. But then, what history shall we share in the first place. Shall it be events that had significant impact, on regions that are currently separated by political boundaries (e.g. Pre-islamic history, Islamic history, Colonial history etc.)? Shall we then, not share the local history, which perhaps never had any measurably significant impact on the other side (e.g. Pushtun history or Assamese history)? Or shall we share all history, however unconnected or insignificant they are to the different regions, because we are all descendent of a common stock (Genetic marker M124 is common to both Pakistanis and Indians – refer Sengupta et. al 2006 and Manoukian 2006)?
Frankly, I do not have the answers. But I suppose, that the events that significantly effected both the sides of the divide, are indeed shared ones. Individual ethnic history, may not always be shared ones, while some, may well be. (Interestingly, the Brahui people, who live mostly in Kalat district of Pakistan, and in some parts of Afganistan and Iran, speak a language, that has about 15% Dravidian words and are grammatically and morphologically similar to Dravidian as well, although the regions are far apart from each other by over a thousand of miles.)
So lets just call, IVC, what it is, and not as “Pakistani civilization” or “Indian civilization”, unless one intends to imply the entire sub-continent, and lets not drag Panini and his ilk into this identity politics.
