PAKISTAN, BANGLADESH AND CORE IDENTITY QUESTIONS

Pakistan's invocation of the two-nation theory must lead it to craft an honest self-examination 'Gen. Munir's speech needs to be understood not merely as a reaffirmation of a discredited ideology, but as an act of forgetting- a deliberate ment of South Asian history's inconvenient lessons'

- Vinay Kaura

On one front, Pakistan's Chief of Army Staff, General Asim Munir, delivered a speech that resurrected the ghosts of the two-nation theory, the ideological foundation upon which Muhammad Ali Jinnah led the movement for the creation of Pakistan.

In April, at the Overseas Pakistanis Convention in Islamabad, Gen. Munir declared that people of Pakistan are "fundamentally different" from Hindus — by religion, by tradition, by culture, and by ambition. "Our forefathers thought we were different in every possible aspect of life," he remarked, invoking the foundational narrative of Pakistan's birth. His language and tone were nostalgic, divisive and arrogant — an impassioned appeal to safeguard Jinnah's ideological legacy from being forgotten.

A day later, in Dhaka, Bangladesh asked Pakistan to account for the horrors of its disgusting past. During the first Foreign Secretary-level talks in 15 years, Bangladesh's Foreign Secretary demanded a long-awaited apology for the atrocities committed by Pakistan's army during the 1971 Liberation War. Even though the current regime in Bangladesh is courting Pakistan, the demand for confession of guilt is not merely ironic — it is a regrettable theatre of amnesia couched as strategic pragmatism. However, Pakistan's role during the birth of Bangladesh is an episode of colossal brutality that it still echoes in the nation's soul. Along with the apology for a horrendous campaign of systematic repression, Bangladesh has reiterated its demand for more than $4 billion in reparations — its share of undivided Pakistan's assets, including aid, pension funds and other state resources.