An examination of the political and ideological evolution of Pakistan from its 1947 inception shows a state characterized by anti-India obligations, not by its Islamic ideals. Collectively, the sources indicate that Pakistan’s core ideology is not Islamism but anti-Indianism an ideological framework that has dictated its foreign relations, domestic politics, and military behavior for over seventy years. The picture that emerges is that of a rentier military state that militarizes its religion, sells strategic allegiance to the highest bidder, and keeps itself alive by sustaining hostility toward India.
1. Pakistan’s Early Political Moment: Anti-Indianism Framed
At first, Pakistan’s creation was envisioned as necessary to preserve the Muslim identity, in the context of a Hindu majority subcontinent; later on, Muslim identity became a singular obsession to push back against India in all aspects. The Pakistani elite and military establishment utilized anti-Indianism as a coherent ideological glue, greater than the vague notion of Islamic brotherhood.
Islam, as a binding force, was inherently fragile in Pakistan’s multi-ethnic, multi-linguistic society. Punjabis, Sindhis, Baloch, Pashtuns, and Bengalis (until 1971) had little in common beyond religion. In order to sustain national unity, the state incubated the notion that Pakistan was formed because it is not India and that its sustainability and security only could be ensured by battling India at all costs. This ideology ensured that any political leader who attempted to have any sort of genuine peace with India would be exposed as a traitor. Nawaz Sharif reaching out to India through the Lahore Declaration (1999) or Benazir Bhutto attempting regional reconcilation were curbed by the military. Even General Pervez Musharraf, who initiated backchannel peace talks, was later viewed with suspicion by his own institution. The Pakistani Army, therefore, positions itself as the sole guardian of the “ideology of Pakistan,” where peace with India equates to ideological suicide.
2. The Rentier Army: Pakistan’s Strategic Model
Pakistan’s military has mastered the art of monetizing its geography and ideology. It has long been a rentier army, offering its strategic services to global patrons first to the United States, then to Arab monarchies, and occasionally to China in exchange for funds, weapons, and political protection.
During the Cold War, Pakistan became America’s frontline ally in the fight against communism, channeling CIA funds and weapons to the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. Later, after 9/11, the same Pakistan joined Washington’s “War on Terror,” this time fighting the Taliban ironically, a group it had once nurtured. These contradictions underscore that Pakistan’s loyalty is derived from strategic rent-seeking rather than ideology.
In both Afghan wars, Islamabad gleaned billions of dollars in aid, arms, and diplomatic capital from its dual relationships while covertly keeping ties with extremist networks. This dual game was certainly not accidental but simply the result of Pakistan being a state that is sustained through geostrategic patronage rather than productivity or social cohesion.
Pakistan’s collaboration with wealthy Arab regimes further exposes its opportunism. Pakistani military contingents were deployed to protect monarchies, not to defend Islam. In 1970, Pakistani forces fought in Jordan during “Black September” not against Israel, but against Palestinian fighters. During the Mecca siege in 1979, Pakistani commandos helped Saudi forces crush Islamist rebels. In the Gulf War (1990–91), Pakistani troops defended Saudi Arabia against Iraq, choosing the patron who paid more over the Muslim “brother” who claimed to resist Western dominance. Consequently, Pakistan’s army actions have certainly not been disciplined to support Islamic solidarity; they have funded through some financial incentives, funded through strategic rents, and for its own ruling class’s existence.
3. The Palestine Paradox: A Display of Pakistan’s Hypocrisy
Pakistan’s superficial devotion to the Palestinian issue reveals its hypocrisy with respect to Islamic affairs. Although the last three successive Pakistani governments have publicly trumpeted support for Palestine in the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and at the UN, Pakistan’s real-life policies have been transactional and shallow.
A striking example was Pakistan’s endorsement of Donald Trump’s 20-point Gaza resolution, widely condemned as a plan to entrench Israeli dominance. Then–Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif even praised Trump’s “peace initiative,” hailing it as a breakthrough. The statement was so effusive that critics called it “breathless in praise” and “obsequious.” When domestic backlash ensued, Islamabad tried to claim its words were misrepresented yet it never retracted its support.
This event sharply diverged from Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s initial stance, in which he viewed Zionism as a colonial incursion and argued for the need to return Palestine to its rightful people. In Pakistan today, however, those ideals have been displaced by opportunism masquerading as diplomacy. The Palestinian struggle is only convenient rhetoric for local consumption and a signal of solidarity with the Arab world—not a true moral imperative.
Indeed, Pakistan has never contributed materially or militarily to the Palestinian cause. It has never fought Israel, never aided Gaza, and never confronted Western powers that sustain the occupation. The Palestinian issue, much like the Kashmir issue, has become a symbolic theater for Pakistan’s domestic politics a tamasha, as critics describe it performed to sustain the illusion of being the “defender of Islam.”
4. The Army, the Ideology, and the Prison of Anti-India
At the heart of Pakistan’s political structure is a contradiction: the army’s power relies on the deterioration of the relationship with India and a normalisation would signify legitimate progress. As a result of that contradiction, Pakistan finds itself in a cycle of self-detestation. Every civilian government attempting to normalise relations with India is a threat to the army’s predominance, because a peace, at that point, would render the country’s massive defence economy and inflated security apparatus obsolete.
Thus, anti-Indianism is both an ideological decision as well as a structural necessity. The ideology allows for censorship and military coups as well as the modification of the constitution. It sustains the myth that Pakistan’s problems from poverty to terrorism are the result of Indian conspiracies rather than internal decay. The military’s dominance over Pakistan’s economy, politics, and foreign policy thus remains intact, sustained by a perpetual sense of siege.
A Nation Defined by Negation
Pakistan’s crisis today economic collapse, political instability, and internal insurgencies is not accidental. It is the natural consequence of defining a state by what it opposes rather than what it stands for. The fixation on India has hollowed out Pakistan’s institutions, diverted resources from development to defense, and transformed its army into a corporate oligarchy for rent.
In short, Pakistan is not an Islamic state but rather an anti-Indian state that utilizes religion, rents its army, and uses Islamic causes for gain and influence. The tragedy of Pakistan is this ongoing contradiction, a country founded under the banner of faith and perpetuated through enmity and dependence. Unless and until Pakistan fully re-conceptualizes itself away from the purely anti-Indian identity, it will remain in an ideological and moral dead end-a state constantly fighting internally.
