Two things: ideology is fundamentally oppressive. It is devised to influence and control minds. In other words, ideology helps construct a narrative, and that very narrative, in turn, serves the ideology: the two are inseparable. This brings us to the next question: what do we become emotionally attached to, invested in, and loyal to? Is it a tangible object or person, or merely an abstract idea of it land, a country, a leader, or even a loved one? Put differently, do we pledge our allegiance to a person or to his image; to the state, or to the story associated with it, that is, to the narrative built around something or somebody?

Put simply and bluntly: are people loyal to the state, or to the story told about it? Does a story build a nation, or is the nation itself a story?

It is important to raise these questions in a country like Pakistan, where ideology has served, or been compelled to serve, the nation, and at times vice versa.

When General Ayub Khan tasked Justice Javed Iqbal with forging “an ideology of Pakistan”, he was attempting to construct a narrative to wield power, rather than to “weld the nation together”, his own words, quoted from The Ideology of Pakistan, published by Pakistan Times Press in 1958. Likewise, when Abul Ala Maududi popularised the notion of an “ideology of Islam”, he may inadvertently have created an oxymoron; a scholar of his stature would not wish to imply that Islam is oppressive, as the term “ideology” itself suggests.

The foundation of........

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