From Liaquat Ali Khan to Karachi’s Transformation
Dr. Masood Tariq
Independent Political Theorist
Karachi, Pakistan
drmasoodtariq@gmail.com
Date: January 4, 2026
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Abstract
This paper analyses the emergence and consolidation of political power exercised by the Urdu-speaking Ashrafia originating from the United Provinces (UP) and Central Provinces (CP) in Pakistan after 1947. It argues that this dominance was not rooted in demographic strength, territorial attachment, or mass political mobilisation, but in a deliberate strategy of political management centred on bureaucratic control, urban capture, linguistic centralisation, and the redistribution of political costs to indigenous nations.
Through a close examination of early state formation under Liaquat Ali Khan, the federalisation and demographic restructuring of Karachi, the marginalisation of provincial autonomies, and the elevation of Urdu as a hegemonic national language, the paper demonstrates how a deterritorialised elite converted structural vulnerability into durable political authority. Situated within postcolonial state theory and Urdu-speaking Ashrafia capture literature, the study contends that while this strategy ensured Urdu-speaking Ashrafia survival and institutional continuity, it simultaneously weakened Pakistan’s federal framework, eroded inter-ethnic trust, and produced long-term instability. The paper concludes that Pakistan’s persistent governance crises are best understood as the structural legacy of a politics detached from soil, demography, and indigenous consent.
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Table of Contents
1. A Politics Without Soil: Deterritorialised Elites and Post-Partition Pakistan
2. Liaquat Ali Khan: The First Prime Minister and the Architecture of Elite Survival
3. Urban Capture as a Strategy of Rule in Postcolonial States
4. Bureaucracy as an Instrument of Hegemony
5. Language as the Ultimate Political Weapon
6. Karachi’s Demographic Engineering and Federal Centralisation
7. Cleverness Without Conscience: Distribution of Political Costs Across Nations
8. Conclusion: The Structural Legacy of a Politics Without Soil
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1. A Politics Without Soil: Deterritorialised Elites and Post-Partition Pakistan
The Urdu-speaking Ashrafia who migrated to Pakistan after 1947 constituted a historically unprecedented ruling elite: The principal architects of a new state who nevertheless lacked organic roots in its territory.
In the history of postcolonial state formation, it is rare for a political elite to design, inherit, and govern a state in which it possesses neither ancestral attachment nor demographic depth.
Unlike Punjabis, Sindhis, Baloch, Pashtuns, or Bengalis, each of whom possessed deep civilisational ties to land, language, shrines, and collective memory.
The Urdu-speaking Ashrafia arrived without ancestral villages, indigenous saints, or territorial continuity within Pakistan. Their historical experience of Muslim politics had unfolded in North India, within minority conditions, urban settings, and colonial administrative institutions rather than within territorially rooted societies.
Sociologically, they constituted a deterritorialised elite. Their cultural memory and political imagination remained anchored in Delhi, Lucknow, Aligarh, and Agra rather than in Lahore, Multan, Larkana, Hyderabad (Sindh), Peshawar, Quetta, or Dhaka.
As Jalal (1985) observes, the Muslim League leadership that negotiated Pakistan’s creation was “urban, salaried, and largely North Indian in origin,” with only a shallow organisational and emotional presence in the Muslim-majority provinces prior to 1940. This absence of soil was not merely cultural; It was fundamentally political.
In postcolonial societies, political legitimacy is typically grounded in indigeneity, collective sacrifice, demographic weight, and historical continuity with territory. These elements allow ruling elites to claim moral authority as representatives of the land and its people.
The Urdu-speaking Ashrafia possessed none of these attributes within Pakistan. They had not mobilised peasant societies, led regional resistance movements, or emerged organically from the social fabric of any Pakistani province.
Yet, paradoxically, they not only survived the transition to a new state but exercised disproportionate influence over Pakistan’s political, bureaucratic, and cultural apparatus for decades. This outcome cannot be explained through numerical strength, military power, or territorial control.
This paper argues that such dominance was achieved through political cleverness: A strategic mode of rule that substituted territorial rootedness with bureaucratic monopolisation, linguistic hegemony, and the systematic capture of urban space. Through these mechanisms, a deterritorialised elite transformed structural vulnerability into enduring political supremacy.
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2. Liaquat Ali Khan: The First Prime Minister and the Architecture of Elite Survival
Liaquat Ali Khan (1895–1951) embodied the central contradictions of the Urdu-speaking Ashrafia in post-Partition Pakistan. Born in Karnal, politically socialised in the United Provinces, educated at Aligarh and Oxford, and embedded within late-colonial aristocratic and bureaucratic networks, he lacked any organic constituency within Pakistan’s territorial provinces (Afzal 1969). Unlike indigenous political leaders whose authority derived from land, kinship, or regional mobilisation, Liaquat’s legitimacy rested on elite negotiation, administrative experience, and proximity to colonial power structures.
His tenure as Pakistan’s first Prime Minister established enduring patterns in the state’s political architecture. Several early decisions taken under his leadership reveal the underlying logic of Urdu-speaking Ashrafia survival: the strategic management of conflict, the displacement of accountability onto peripheral groups, and the creation of urban spaces insulated from indigenous political pressures. Three decisions, in particular, illustrate this logic with clarity.
2.1 Kashmir Over Hyderabad: The Utility of Permanent Conflict
Archival records and memoir literature confirm that informal discussions took place in late 1947 regarding a possible political linkage between the princely states of Kashmir and Hyderabad Deccan (Chaudhry Muhammad Ali 1967; Shaukat Hayat Khan 1991). While such discussions never crystallised into formal negotiations, their existence reveals the differing strategic priorities of Pakistan’s ruling elite.
Hyderabad Deccan, ruled by a Muslim Nizam over a Hindu-majority population, held profound emotional, cultural, and familial significance for the Urdu-speaking Muslim elite of the United Provinces. Many members of the Urdu-speaking Ashrafia maintained personal, social, and political ties to the Deccan, viewing Hyderabad not merely as a territorial issue but as a symbolic centre of Muslim aristocratic power in India.
Kashmir, by contrast, was geographically contiguous with Punjab and strategically vital primarily to Punjabis, whose agrarian economy depended upon its river systems. For Punjabis, Kashmir was existential in material terms; for the Urdu-speaking Ashrafia, it was instrumental in political terms.
Liaquat Ali Khan’s refusal to explore any accommodation over Kashmir, despite Pakistan’s precarious military position and administrative infancy, transformed the dispute into a permanent frontier crisis. From a strategic perspective, this decision locked Punjab into a continuous state of militarisation, tying its political energies, resources, and public imagination to the eastern border. Meanwhile, central authority of Urdu-speaking Ashrafia remained firmly concentrated in Karachi, insulated from the social and economic costs of conflict.
This was not merely a strategic miscalculation. It functioned as strategic diversion: a means of binding Punjab, the demographic and military backbone of the state, to an open-ended security confrontation, while political control remained in the hands of a non-indigenous Urdu-speaking Ashrafia at the centre.
2.2 Kalat 1948: Conquest Without Accountability
The accession of Kalat in March 1948 illustrates another defining feature of Ashrafia politics: decision-making without ownership of consequences. On 11 August 1947, the Khan of Kalat declared independence, invoking treaty relations with the British Crown. The Kalat State Assembly subsequently voted against accession to Pakistan (Baloch 1987).
Despite this, a military operation was authorised in March 1948 by a Karachi-based cabinet dominated by non-indigenous Urdu-speaking Ashrafia. The operation forcibly integrated Kalat into Pakistan, marking the first major use of coercion against a peripheral nation within the new state.
Punjabi soldiers executed the operation; Baloch collective memory assigned responsibility to Punjabis; yet the Urdu-speaking Ashrafia who formulated and authorised the policy remained politically invisible. This asymmetry between decision-making authority and social accountability became a recurring pattern in Pakistan’s centre–province relations.
Policy was formulated at the centre by the Urdu-speaking Ashrafia, enforcement was carried out largely by Punjabi institutions, and resentment accumulated in the peripheries. Over time, this dynamic entrenched mutual distrust between provinces while shielding the central elite from direct political consequences.
2.3 Karachi’s Separation from Sindh: Creating an Ashrafia Enclave
The detachment of Karachi from Sindh in 1948 constituted perhaps the most consequential act of urban capture in Pakistan’s early history. Sindh’s consent was neither sought nor obtained. When Chief Minister Ayub Khuhro resisted the move, he was dismissed, signalling the subordination of provincial autonomy to central imperatives (Talbot 2009).
By federalising Karachi, the Urdu-speaking Ashrafia created a city-state within Pakistan: administratively autonomous, demographically engineered, and culturally detached from its Sindhi environment. Karachi was transformed from a provincial port city into a federal capital designed to serve the interests of a deterritorialised Urdu-speaking Ashrafia.
In effect, Karachi became a substitute homeland, a recreated Delhi, where the Urdu-speaking Ashrafia could rule without negotiating political power with indigenous society. Control over the capital allowed the Urdu-speaking Ashrafia to dominate bureaucracy, diplomacy, media, and trade, while remaining insulated from provincial politics.
This spatial strategy completed the architecture of Urdu-speaking Ashrafia survival: a non-indigenous ruling class secured its position not through land or numbers, but through control of institutions, conflict management, and urban space.
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3. Urban Capture as a Strategy of Rule in Postcolonial States
The Urdu-speaking Ashrafia demonstrated an acute understanding of the spatial logic of power in postcolonial states. They recognised early that political dominance in newly independent societies did not primarily rest on rural demography or territorial depth, but on control over cities, institutions, and the circulation of information. In states inheriting colonial administrative structures, cities functioned as command centres through which authority over vast rural hinterlands could be exercised.
Accordingly, the Urdu-speaking Ashrafia’s strategy prioritised the systematic occupation of key urban nodes. In Sindh, this meant the consolidation of Karachi and, to a lesser extent, Hyderabad. Karachi, as the federal capital and principal port, offered access to trade revenues, diplomatic missions, federal ministries, and national media. Hyderabad served as a secondary administrative and educational hub, reinforcing urban dominance within the province.
In Punjab, the focus shifted toward Lahore’s bureaucratic, cultural, and media institutions. While Punjab retained demographic dominance, the penetration of its civil service, press, and educational establishments enabled non-indigenous Urdu-speaking Ashrafia to exert influence disproportionate to their numbers. Rawalpindi, meanwhile, gained strategic importance due to its proximity to the General Headquarters of the Pakistan Army, allowing the Urdu-speaking Ashrafia to embed themselves within emerging military–bureaucratic networks without directly controlling the armed forces.
Urban occupation enabled a minority Urdu-speaking Ashrafia to convert administrative proximity into political leverage. Cities concentrated decision-making authority, legal power, employment opportunities, and symbolic capital. Control over urban institutions allowed the Urdu-speaking Ashrafia to act as gatekeepers, regulating access to state resources and shaping the ideological narrative of the new nation.
This strategy was facilitated by the distinctive sociological profile of the Urdu-speaking Ashrafia. Unlike Punjabis, whose political and economic life remained deeply tied to landholding and agrarian structures, or Sindhis, whose identity and authority were embedded in dharti (soil), shrine networks, and historical continuity, the Urdu-speaking Ashrafia were administratively mobile and culturally adaptable. Their political identity was portable, anchored not in territory but in education, language, and bureaucratic competence.
Such patterns are not unique to Pakistan. Comparative studies of postcolonial states reveal similar dynamics, where migrant, diasporic, or non-indigenous elites consolidate power through institutional capture rather than demographic dominance. As Mamdani (1996) argues, colonial governance structures often privileged urban intermediaries who could rule “without roots,” relying on administrative authority rather than social embeddedness. In Pakistan, the Urdu-speaking Ashrafia reproduced this colonial logic, substituting indigenous legitimacy with institutional control.
Urban capture thus functioned not merely as a tactical choice but as a foundational strategy of rule, one that allowed a deterritorialised elite to govern a territorially rooted society while remaining structurally insulated from its social consequences.
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4. Bureaucracy as Instrument of Hegemony
At independence in August 1947, Pakistan inherited a skeletal and uneven state apparatus. The colonial administrative machinery had been designed to serve British India as a unified entity, and its abrupt partition left Pakistan with limited institutional capacity, a shortage of trained personnel, and severe fiscal constraints. Into this vacuum stepped Urdu-speaking migrants from the United Provinces (UP) and Central Provinces (CP), many of whom had already been socialised into colonial bureaucratic norms through service in, or proximity to, the Indian Civil Service (ICS) and its subordinate cadres.
By 1951, despite constituting less than four per cent of Pakistan’s total population, Urdu-speaking migrants occupied a disproportionately large share of senior and middle-ranking positions within the civil service, finance ministry, foreign office, and judiciary (Rizvi 2000; Lamb 1991). This overrepresentation was not coincidental. It reflected both the colonial legacy of recruitment patterns, where North Indian Muslims were disproportionately present in salaried and administrative professions and deliberate post-Partition decisions that privileged bureaucratic “experience” over regional representation.
The bureaucracy thus evolved into a central gatekeeping institution. Access to state power was increasingly mediated through administrative credentials, linguistic conformity, and cultural familiarity with North Indian norms of governance. Proficiency in Urdu elevated from a literary language to an administrative and political instrument became a prerequisite for entry into the upper echelons of the state. Equally important was familiarity with a bureaucratic culture shaped by Aligarh, Delhi, and Lucknow, which functioned as an informal but powerful filter.
Indigenous elites Punjabi, Sindhi, Baloch, Pashtun, and Bengali, despite numerical dominance in their respective provinces, were structurally marginalised. Their exclusion was not always overt or formal; rather, it operated through institutional routines, recruitment criteria, and cultural codes that privileged the Urdu-speaking Ashrafia’s social capital. In effect, the bureaucracy replaced representative politics as the primary site of power, allowing a minority Urdu-speaking elite to govern without mass consent.
This bureaucratic hegemony also produced a distinctive legal–political logic, one that prioritised institutional continuity over constitutionalism. Justice Muhammad Munir’s formulation of the “Doctrine of Necessity” following the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly in 1954 epitomised this mindset. By subordinating legality to the perceived requirements of state survival, the doctrine provided juridical cover for executive and later military interventions (Munir 1979).
Far from being an isolated judicial aberration, the Doctrine of Necessity reflected a deeper bureaucratic rationality: the belief that Urdu-speaking elite stewardship, rather than popular sovereignty, was essential for maintaining order in a fragile postcolonial state. In this framework, democracy became contingent, provincial autonomy negotiable, and constitutional limits flexible, so long as bureaucratic dominance remained intact.
The civil service thus functioned not merely as an administrative tool but as an instrument of hegemony. It enabled the Urdu-speaking Ashrafia to convert institutional expertise into political authority, insulating themselves from electoral accountability and embedding their influence across successive regimes. This legacy of bureaucratic centralism would profoundly shape Pakistan’s trajectory, entrenching patterns of exclusion, authoritarianism, and centre–province mistrust that persist to this day.
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5. Language as the Ultimate Political Weapon
The elevation of Urdu as Pakistan’s sole national language was neither a neutral administrative choice nor a communicative necessity in a linguistically diverse state. Rather, it constituted a calculated political strategy that transformed language into a central instrument of power. In a polity marked by profound ethnic, regional, and demographic asymmetries, Urdu functioned as a mechanism through which a deterritorialised elite consolidated authority over indigenous majorities.
Urdu served three interrelated political functions:
First, it operated as cultural capital for migrants. For the Urdu-speaking Ashrafia, linguistic fluency conferred immediate symbolic and material advantage, facilitating access to state employment, higher education, media, and elite social networks. Language thus became a transferable asset, allowing migrants without territorial roots to assert cultural superiority and administrative legitimacy within the new state.
Second, Urdu functioned as a structural barrier to entry for indigenous populations. Speakers of Bengali, Punjabi, Sindhi, Pashto, and Balochi found themselves disadvantaged within institutions where Urdu proficiency was implicitly or explicitly required. This linguistic gatekeeping systematically excluded provincial elites from the upper echelons of the bureaucracy, judiciary, and military–administrative complex, reinforcing patterns of centre–periphery domination. Linguistic hierarchy, in this sense, replaced demographic majority as the determinant of political access.
Third, Urdu acted as an ideological adhesive for a centralised state. Presented as the “language of Muslim unity,” it provided a cultural rationale for suppressing provincial autonomy and delegitimising regional identities as parochial or divisive. The language policy thus aligned seamlessly with the broader project of political centralisation, enabling the state to equate dissent with disloyalty and linguistic pluralism with fragmentation.
The consequences of this policy were most dramatically visible in the rejection of Bengali as a national language in 1948, despite Bengalis constituting a demographic majority within Pakistan. As Jalal (1994) argues, the denial of linguistic recognition converted cultural inequality into political subjugation, eroding the legitimacy of the central state in East Pakistan. The Language Movement of 1952 and the eventual secession of Bangladesh in 1971 were not aberrations but logical outcomes of a system that subordinated popular will to elite linguistic dominance.
For the Urdu-speaking Ashrafia, language substituted for territory. Deprived of ancestral soil within Pakistan, they transformed Urdu into a portable homeland, a symbolic space of belonging that travelled with them into offices, courts, classrooms, and capitals. In doing so, they compelled indigenous populations to negotiate power on alien linguistic terms, effectively inverting the relationship between land and authority.
Thus, Urdu was not merely a medium of expression; it was a weapon of governance. Its imposition institutionalised inequality, legitimised centralisation, and entrenched Urdu-speaking Ashrafia survival in a state already fractured by the legacies of Partition. The long-term costs of this linguistic strategy; alienation, resistance, and disintegration, continue to shape Pakistan’s political landscape.
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6. Karachi’s Demographic Engineering and Federal Centralisation
Karachi’s transformation in the immediate post-Partition period was neither spontaneous nor the natural outcome of refugee inflows alone. Between 1947 and 1951, the city underwent a deliberate process of demographic and administrative restructuring, shaped by state policies that systematically privileged Urdu-speaking migrants over indigenous Sindhi populations. This transformation must be understood as a core component of early federal centralisation rather than as an incidental by-product of migration.
At the heart of this process were policies governing evacuee property, housing allocation, and federal employment. The departure of Karachi’s Hindu population, who had formed a substantial share of the city’s commercial and professional classes, created a vast pool of urban property. Under the Evacuee Property regime, this property was disproportionately allocated to Urdu-speaking migrants, many of whom were already embedded within the bureaucratic and political machinery of the new state (Gazdar 2007). Access to housing in newly established colonies such as Nazimabad and Liaquatabad further consolidated migrant dominance, creating spatially segregated urban enclaves aligned with federal authority.
Simultaneously, Karachi’s designation as the federal capital in 1948 severed it administratively from Sindh. This decision transferred control over land, policing, taxation, and planning from the provincial government to the central state. Sindh’s consent was neither sought nor obtained, and local political resistance, most notably by Chief Minister Ayub Khuhro, was neutralised through dismissal and administrative coercion (Talbot 2009). Federalisation thus transformed Karachi into a centrally governed city, insulated from provincial accountability.
Through the capture of Karachi, the Urdu-speaking Ashrafia secured several strategic advantages. Control over the port and customs revenue provided economic leverage and fiscal autonomy from the provinces. Media dominance, centred around leading newspapers and publishing houses, allowed the Urdu-speaking Ashrafia to shape national discourse and frame political legitimacy in linguistic and ideological terms favourable to their interests. Most critically, diplomatic and bureaucratic concentration ensured that key decision-making institutions, ministries, embassies, and regulatory bodies were physically and socially embedded within an Urdu-speaking Ashrafia-dominated urban space.
As a result, Karachi emerged not merely as Pakistan’s capital but as a reconstructed Urdu-speaking Ashrafia city, a substitute homeland for a deterritorialised ruling class. Detached from its Sindhi hinterland in both administrative structure and demographic composition, the city functioned as an enclave of federal power rather than as an organic part of Sindh. This detachment deepened centre–province tensions and laid the foundations for Karachi’s later conflicts, as competing claims over the city’s identity, resources, and political future became increasingly irreconcilable.
In this sense, Karachi’s demographic engineering was inseparable from the broader project of federal centralisation. It exemplified how urban space could be strategically reconfigured to secure elite dominance in a postcolonial state, even in the absence of demographic majority or territorial rootedness.
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7. Cleverness Without Conscience: Distribution of Political Costs Across Nations
The cumulative consequence of the strategies pursued by the Urdu-speaking Ashrafia was not national integration but the systematic fragmentation of Pakistan’s social contract. While political cleverness ensured Urdu-speaking Ashrafia survival and institutional dominance, it simultaneously externalised the costs of state-building onto Pakistan’s indigenous nations. Rather than being shared equitably, the burdens of consolidation, security, and ideological cohesion were unevenly distributed along ethnic, linguistic, and regional lines.
For Punjabis, the cost manifested primarily through militarisation and demographic sacrifice. Punjab became the principal reservoir of soldiers for Pakistan’s armed forces and the frontline province in the Kashmir conflict. Continuous mobilisation tied Punjabi political energies to security imperatives, limiting civilian political development while associating Punjab in peripheral narratives with coercion and domination, despite strategic decisions being made elsewhere.
For Sindhis, the most profound loss was territorial and symbolic: the separation and federalisation of Karachi. The detachment of Sindh’s historic port city deprived the province of its economic engine, administrative capital, and cultural centre. Over time, this produced a sense of internal colonisation, as Sindh was reduced to a hinterland while its principal city was reoriented toward federal and migrant interests.
For the Baloch, incorporation into Pakistan occurred through coercion rather than consent. The 1948 intervention in Kalat established a pattern of forced integration, military presence, and political marginalisation. Autonomy was subordinated to central authority, generating a cycle of resistance and repression that persists as one of Pakistan’s most enduring conflicts.
For Pashtuns, political repression defined the early relationship with the state. The suppression of the Khudai Khidmatgar movement and the dismissal of elected provincial governments framed Pashtun nationalism as disloyalty. This delegitimisation of non-conformist political expression curtailed democratic development in the frontier regions and entrenched distrust toward the centre.
For Bengalis, the cost was ultimately existential. Linguistic subordination, economic extraction, and political exclusion transformed cultural humiliation into mass mobilisation. The refusal to recognise Bengali as a state language, despite demographic majority, symbolised a deeper denial of political equality. The culmination of these grievances was the secession of East Pakistan in 1971, the most catastrophic failure of Pakistan’s postcolonial experiment.
In contrast, the Urdu-speaking Ashrafia largely avoided direct exposure to these costs. Lacking territorial constituencies or mass demographic bases, they externalised conflict, coercion, and sacrifice onto indigenous nations while retaining disproportionate influence over policy, bureaucracy, and narrative control. Their survival, however, came at a systemic price.
The outcome was a state marked by asymmetrical citizenship, fractured federalism, and enduring inter-ethnic mistrust. Cleverness without conscience ensured Urdu-speaking Ashrafia continuity but hollowed out national cohesion. Pakistan did not fail because of diversity; it faltered because the burdens of unity were imposed selectively, while its benefits were captured narrowly.
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8. Conclusion: The Structural Legacy of a Politics Without Soil
This study has shown that the early Urdu-speaking Ashrafia did not govern Pakistan through numerical dominance, territorial rootedness, or popular mandate. Instead, they exercised power through political cleverness: the strategic management of conflict, monopolisation of bureaucracy, capture of key urban centres, and the instrumentalisation of language as a tool of rule.
These strategies proved effective in securing Urdu-speaking Ashrafia survival during the fragile years of state formation. However, they did so by displacing the social, economic, and political costs of governance onto Pakistan’s indigenous nations. Militarisation was borne largely by Punjabis, territorial loss by Sindhis, coercive integration by Baloch, repression by Pashtuns, and cultural subordination by Bengalis. The benefits of central authority, meanwhile, accrued disproportionately to a small, non-indigenous elite insulated from demographic accountability.
Pakistan’s chronic crises, federal imbalance, ethnic alienation, authoritarian drift, and recurring centre–province conflict are therefore not accidental or merely the result of poor leadership choices. They are the predictable outcomes of a state constructed and managed by a ruling class lacking organic ties to land, language, and society.
A durable and inclusive Pakistani state cannot be built upon administrative cleverness alone. It requires political legitimacy grounded in territorial consent, linguistic plurality, and equitable federalism. Until the foundational asymmetries identified in this paper are addressed, Pakistan will continue to grapple with the unresolved consequences of a politics without soil.
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References
Afzal, M. Rafique. Political Parties in Pakistan, 1947–1958. Islamabad: National Institute of Historical and Cultural Research, 1969.
Chaudhry, Muhammad Ali. The Emergence of Pakistan. New York: Columbia University Press, 1967.
Gazdar, Haris. “Karachi’s Informal Economy.” Economic and Political Weekly 42, no. 28 (2007): 3031–3041.
Jalal, Ayesha. The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
Jalal, Ayesha. Democracy and Authoritarianism in South Asia: A Comparative and Historical Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Lamb, Christina. Waiting for Allah: Pakistan’s Struggle for Democracy. London: Viking, 1991.
Mamdani, Mahmood. Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996.
Rizvi, Hasan Askari. The Military and Politics in Pakistan. Lahore: Sang-e-Meel Publications, 2000.
Talbot, Ian. Pakistan: A Modern History. London: Hurst & Company, 2009.
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Author Biography
Dr. Masood Tariq is a Karachi-based politician and political theorist. He formerly served as Senior Vice President of the Pakistan Muslim Students Federation (PMSF) Sindh, Councillor of the Municipal Corporation Hyderabad, Advisor to the Chief Minister of Sindh, and Member of the Sindh Cabinet.
His research explores South Asian geopolitics, postcolonial state formation, regional nationalism, and inter-ethnic politics, with a focus on the Punjabi question and Cold War strategic alignments.
He also writes on Pakistan’s socio-political and economic structures, analysing their structural causes and proposing policy-oriented solutions aligned with historical research and contemporary strategy.
His work aims to bridge historical scholarship and strategic analysis to inform policymaking across South Asia, Central Asia, and the Middle East.
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