For critics of Pakistan, much of what ails the country stems from the travails of its birth, the so-called original sin. Because it was carved out of the flank of the Indian Subcontinent with the help of the knife and the flame of Islamic nationalism, it was always destined to be permanently grappling with the effects of that impractical vision. Religion was a superimposed identity, a fake overlay, on a surface otherwise pockmarked by older, stronger claims defining groups that were strung together to constitute a Pakistani nation one fateful night in August 1947.
The creation of Bangladesh, in 1971, reinforced this view of Pakistan doomed to crash on the rocks of ethnic divisions, and since then most of the literature on the country's future has been steeped in doubt and dismay. This hand-wringing primarily concerns itself with what is commonly referred to as Pakistan's 'problem of national identity': a nuclear-armed country with a dramatic past and an unpredictable present that does not seem to have acquired the internal coherence to inspire confidence about its tomorrow. But this view, although with some merits, largely misses some remarkable changes that Pakistan has undergone over the last few decades – and which seem to have addressed, in the natural flow of events, the fundamental question about the place of the various sub-nationalities in the larger frame of Pakistani nationalism.
The first change has been demographic, the cross-currents of which have practically taken the wind out of the sails of Pashtun nationalism, which once loomed large on the horizon of the country's internal troubles. Patterns of Pashtun migration in the last three decades have altered patterns of the community's behaviour and political demands. The most notable case in point is Karachi. Being the financial nerve centre of Pakistan, the city has attracted hundreds of thousands Pashtun from across the country and has, as a result, become the world's largest Pashtun city. By gaining a stake beyond their original homeland, the Pashtun have tried to preserve their ethnic identity in a multi-ethnic city, learning to co-exist with Sindhis, Mohajirs, Baloch and Punjabis (see accompanying review, 'Melting-pot constituencies'). Because Karachi provides more than 60 percent of countrywide employment opportunities for the Pashtun, it has diluted their demand for separation from Pakistan proper, and has almost dissolved their resolve to join forces with the Pashtun in Afghanistan for a greater homeland.
A similar increase in the Pashtun population in Quetta has turned that city's demography upside-down. A mixture of enterprising businessmen and millions of Afghan refugees of Pashtun extraction have made deep ingress into the Baloch heartland, establishing a vast network of livelihoods and cumulatively purchasing large tracts of land. While the Baloch have not taken kindly to this invasion from the north, this has in fact produced an interlocking situation for both communities, wherein both are forced to take cognisance of the other's concerns, and neither can assert ethnic identities in aggressive, inconsiderate forms. While the Baloch want to preserve their ethnic domination in their majority areas, Pashtun money is too irresistible to refuse. On the other hand, the latter cannot carry out productive business activities in these areas without keeping the Baloch in good humour.