Negotiating Conflict: Regional and National Identities in Contemporary Pakistani Fiction in English

Abstract

Pakistan has frequently been viewed as a stronghold of Islamic radicals, often being overlooked that various trends of both dormant and obvious conflicts exist between the politics of religion and region. Whereas the former is mainly controlled by the state, the latter is generally influenced by language and ethnicity. The state’s monolithic notion of national identity, from the country’s birth in 1947 to the present, has overshadowed the regional identities mainly the Pashtuns, Baluchis, and Sindhis, and disregarded the minority credos such as Shias, Parsis, Ahmadis, Hindus and Christians. This article aims to overview how contemporary Pakistani fiction in English spotlights images of a fragmented national-self, underlining plights of the aforementioned marginalised groups exhibiting a strong resistance to hidebound national identity. Reviewing the selected fiction of Bapsi Sidhwa, Sara Suleri, Kamila Shamsie, Nadeem Aslam, Bina Shah, and Jamil Ahmad, this paper attempts to foreground the socio-cultural and political valuation of the regional identities.

Keywords

• regional identities, fragmented national-self, prevailing power discourses, contemporary Pakistani fiction in English (CPFE), subversive