How Jinnah's ideology shapes Pakistan's identity

in 1940 in Lahore Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the man who founded Pakistan, gave a seminal speech setting out the need for a separate state for Muslims on the subcontinent.

Prior to the division of India in 1947, Hindus and Muslims had lived together across the country. But Jinnah described them as two separate nations.

"It is a dream that the Hindus and Muslims can ever evolve a common nationality," he said.

"Hindus and Muslims belong to two different religious philosophies, social customs and literary traditions. They neither intermarry nor eat together, and indeed they belong to two different civilisations which are based mainly on conflicting ideas and conceptions."

This "Two Nation Theory", as it came to be known, has become the official Pakistani narrative for the creation of the state and key to how Pakistan defines itself.

Pakistan was perhaps the first country to be formed on the basis not of a common ethnicity or language, but religion. Yet at the same time it is not, and never has been, a theocracy.

This dichotomy is behind much of the debate around Pakistan's national identity and issues such as its treatment of minorities.
read more here