Comment: Islamic factor in Indo-Pak Relations. (1996, 20 Marks)
The Islamic factor goes back to the two-nation theory, which Muhammad Ali Jinnah turned into a demand for a separate state in the Lahore Resolution of 23 March 1940. It works on India–Pakistan relations at three levels: as founding ideology, as state instrument and as diplomatic constituency. It explains less than it is often asked to, but it does much to block a settlement.
As founding ideology
- For Pakistan, a homeland for South Asia’s Muslims, Muslim-majority Kashmir is Partition’s unfinished part. For India’s secular nationalism, its place in India proves the founding premise. Kashmir is therefore about identity, not land.
- Islam as idiom, not cause. Hamza Alavi (“Pakistan and Islam: Ethnicity and Ideology”, 1988) argued that the Pakistan movement was led by a modernist Muslim professional class, the salariat, while leading ulema opposed it; religion was the language of an interest.
- 1971 refuted the theory as social science: shared faith did not hold East and West Pakistan together against language and economic exploitation. Pakistan responded by intensifying its Islamic identity, and Farzana Shaikh, in Making Sense of Pakistan (2009), traces its enduring uncertainty over what being Muslim should mean for the state.
As state instrument
- Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq’s Islamisation (1977–88) fused religion with military doctrine through the Hudood Ordinances, madrasa expansion and the Afghan jihad.
- Husain Haqqani, in Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military (2005), argues that the army used Islamist groups to give the state an identity and to wage proxy war against India. The externalised Kashmir insurgency after 1989, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed and its proxy The Resistance Front all descend from this. At Pahalgam (22 April 2025) victims were reportedly singled out by religion; the US designated TRF a terrorist organisation in July 2025.
- Ayesha Jalal offers an important correction: the deeper cause is the military’s institutional primacy. Religion is the vocabulary that primacy uses.
As diplomatic constituency
- Pakistan has long sought pan-Islamic support on Kashmir. India was excluded from the 1969 Rabat Islamic summit after Pakistan objected, and the OIC still issues Kashmir statements through its contact group.
- The returns have fallen as India’s Gulf ties grew on energy, remittances and investment. Sushma Swaraj was guest of honour at the OIC foreign ministers’ meeting (Abu Dhabi, March 2019), which Pakistan boycotted. After the August 2019 Article 370 changes, the UAE called them an internal matter and gave Narendra Modi its highest honour, the Order of Zayed, that month.
- There are counter-trends: the Saudi–Pakistan Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement (17 September 2025), extended to Turkey by the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement (7 August 2026); Turkish and Azerbaijani support during Operation Sindoor; and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s reference to Kashmir at the UN General Assembly, which India rejected on 29 September 2026. These are bargains of states more than of faith.
What it does not explain
- Alignments: Pakistan’s closest partner is China, despite its treatment of the Uyghurs. Taliban-ruled Afghanistan has fought open battles with Pakistan since late 2025, while India has upgraded its Kabul mission.
- The timing of wars and crises, which strategic and domestic calculations explain better.
- Pakistan’s own fractures: sectarian violence against Shias and Ahmadis, and the TTP insurgency, show that the instrument has escaped its makers.
- Indian domestic politics: communal polarisation in India also hardens positions, so the factor works on both sides.
Conclusion
Islam supplies the legitimising language of the rivalry, not its engine. Its real weight is as a constraint on settlement: it turns every concession into betrayal and makes leaders unable to sell what negotiators agree. India’s secular democracy, together with its growing ties with the Islamic world, remains the best answer to the two-nation logic.