1.1.1 Early Civilizations
In AD 711 an Arab general, Mohammed bin Qasim, arrived in Sindh. He and his 6000 cavalrymen were to have a major impact because they brought with them the religion of Islam. After the Arabs had made inroads from the south, in the 11th century the Turkish rulers of Afghanistan, led by Mahmud of Ghazni, brought the same message of Islam from the north. Muslims were then established as the ruling class, although it was not until the arrival of the Mughal dynasty that there was a truly formidable Islamic government able to leave a lasting architectural and cultural impression.
1.1.2 The Mughals
The Mughals were the undisputed masters of the subcontinent through the 16th and 17th centuries. Their empire was one of only three periods in history during which the subcontinent has come under sustained, unified rule. (The others to pull off this feat were the Mauryas and the British.) Like imperial powers before and after them, the Mughals became overstretched. By the time of Aurangzeb’s death, their empire had become so big it was largely ungovernable. Slowly but steadily the Mughals’ power ebbed away. Their administrative systems were weakened by debilitating and very violent succession struggles and by the decadence of court life. Local power brokers in the provinces seized their opportunity and, complaining of Muslim domination and too many taxes, mounted a series of armed rebellions. Faced with these challenges, the Mughals increasingly became rulers only in name. Technically, though, the Mughal Empire existed right up until 1857, when the British deposed the 19th and last Mughal ruler, Bahadur Shah II.
Figure 1: History timeline of Pakistan
1.1.3 The British
The first Britons to arrive in India were traders from the British East India Company. They came by sea at the beginning of the 17th century and their goal was not conquest but profit. Initially, they restricted themselves to business, doing deals with the Mughal emperors and local rulers. Gradually, though, the relationship changed. In time British factories were established and when faced with disputes they began to apply British rather than local law. The British soon started behaving like imperialists, determined to take territory. The first part of present-day Pakistan to come under British control was Sindh in 1843.
At the start of the 20th century, the demands for more self-governance were becoming louder and the British started to make concessions. First, some Indian councilors were appointed to advise the viceroy. Indians were then given limited roles in elected legislative councils (although the electorate was restricted to a small group of upper-class Indians).
1.1.4 The birth of Pakistan
Two men are generally credited with having secured the existence of Pakistan. The first was Allama Mohammed Iqbal, a poet, and philosopher from Lahore. Iqbal proposed the creation of a separate Muslim state on those parts of the subcontinent where there was a Muslim majority. While Iqbal articulated the demand for a Muslim state, it took Mohammed Ali Jinnah to put it into practice. The British were initially reluctant to divide the subcontinent, but through a mixture of brilliant advocacy skills and sheer obstinacy, Jinnah got his way. Creating two newly independent nations out of one imperial possession was not easy. Assets were divided, and a boundary commission appointed to demarcate frontiers. Cyril Radcliffe, a civil servant who had never visited India, bisected the complicated and deeply connected border areas in little over a month. British troops were evacuated, and the military was restructured into two forces. Civil servants were given the choice of joining either country. It was the largest mass migration in modern times. Around eight million people gave up their jobs, homes, and communities. Most traveled-on foot or by train and in doing so risked their lives. Many never made it, becoming victims of the frenzied violence triggered by Partition. The scale of the killing was terrible: it’s estimated that up to a million people were butchered in communal violence. Trains full of Muslims, fleeing westwards, were held up and slaughtered by Hindu and Sikh mobs. Hindus and Sikhs fleeing to the east suffered the same fate. For those who crossed the rivers of blood that separated the two new nations and survived, the feeling of relief was intense. And on 14 August 1947, Pakistan and India achieved independence.
1.1.5 The Kashmir Dispute
Throughout the British Raj, the leaders of the 565 princely states kept nominal control of their territories. For decades this amounted to nothing more than a constitutional nicety because in practice they were subservient to the British. But in 1947 the princely rulers had the power to decide whether they joined India or Pakistan. The choice was especially difficult for Maharaja Hari Singh of Jammu and Kashmir. His state bordered both India and Pakistan. And while he was a Hindu, his population was predominantly Muslim. Because of the fighting in 1947, and the crushing defeat of the 1965 war, Pakistan currently occupies around one-third of Kashmir, which it calls Azad (Free) Kashmir, and India occupies the other two-thirds. (The situation is further complicated by the fact that, after 1947, China occupied an area called Aksai Chin in Indian-occupied Kashmir. India’s objection to this was one of the factors behind the 1962 Indo-Chinese War, in which India was heavily defeated.)
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