Of the fourscore or so countries that have majority Muslim populations at this time in their evolution, Pakistan occupies a unique position. It is the only one that was created out of a large geographic space – in its case the Indian British Colony – to accommodate the people of the Islamic faith. All other Muslim nations were either the product of the spread of Islam when the religion was founded by Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) or were the fragments of the large Ottoman Empire built by the Turkish rulers who brought under their control all of the present day Middle East and parts of Africa and southern Europe. All these were Muslim states that were to be governed by some aspects of the Islamic faith. That was not to be case with Pakistan, a state that was the outcome of a political movement that succeeded in pushing out from colonial India, long ruled by the British.

As discussed below and was dealt with in the article in this space last week, of Pakistan's four immediate neighbours, three have chosen to be governed by whichever faith most of their citizens were following. Afghanistan and Iran have adopted extremist Islam as the governing philosophy – with the former opting for Sunni extremism, and the latter for extremist Shiism. Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India is building a Hindu nation by adopting what it calls Hindutva. It has also changed the name of the country to Bharat. Why did Pakistan not go in this direction?

To answer this question, we need to go back into history and discuss the origins of Pakistan as a nation-state. The movement for the expulsion of Britain from........

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