A sixty-year-old book that still questions Pakistan

Recently, I was invited to speak at a programme on Dr Jameel Jalibi's landmark work, Pakistani Culture: The Question of National Culture. Revisiting the book reminded me that some books belong to their time, while others continue to interrogate every generation that follows. Jalibi's work, first published in 1964, is firmly in the latter category. More than sixty years later, it still asks Pakistan some of its most uncomfortable questions.

I belong to a generation for whom Jameel Jalibi was not merely a scholar but an institution. As a student entering the University of Karachi in the mid-1980s, his name carried an intellectual gravitas that inspired awe. My own career took me into physics rather than literature, yet rereading his work after nearly four decades of teaching and research, I realised that while the book had remained unchanged, the reader had not.

One of Jalibi's greatest contributions was his insistence that culture is far more than folklore. We often reduce culture to music, food festivals, handicrafts, traditional dress or regional customs. Jalibi argued instead that culture is a nation's moral vocabulary. It encompasses language, education, literature, ethics, institutions, historical memory, and the values that shape collective behaviour. A society's culture is reflected not only in what it celebrates but also in how it governs, educates, resolves disputes and treats its citizens.

His central question was equally profound: can a nation truly exist without a shared civic culture?

Pakistan has never lacked cultural diversity. Our regional languages, traditions and histories are among our greatest strengths. The challenge, Jalibi argued, was never diversity itself but the ability to build a common national consciousness that respects diversity while nurturing shared values. That challenge remains unresolved. Political polarisation, ethnic divisions and increasingly fragmented public discourse often make us appear more comfortable defending our differences than strengthening our common ground.

The book also offers an important lesson for universities. National identity cannot be manufactured through slogans or official campaigns. It develops through education that encourages curiosity rather than conformity, critical thinking rather than memorisation, and dialogue rather than dogma. As a university teacher, I have long believed that education should produce citizens capable of asking thoughtful questions, not merely students capable of reproducing prescribed answers. In that sense, Jalibi's vision of culture begins in the classroom.

Perhaps the most striking insight for me, however, came from reading the book as a physicist. Science has taught humanity how to harness extraordinary power. Artificial intelligence, biotechnology and nuclear science are transforming civilisation. Yet science alone cannot determine how that power should be used. Technology provides capability; culture provides direction. A society may become technologically advanced while remaining ethically impoverished. Jalibi understood that material progress without intellectual freedom and moral responsibility cannot produce a healthy civilisation.

Naturally, some aspects of his analysis reflect the realities of the 1960s. Today's Pakistan faces challenges that Jalibi could scarcely have imagined: social media, artificial intelligence, digital echo chambers and a globalised information economy. If the book were rewritten today, it would undoubtedly include these developments. Yet its central argument would remain unchanged.

It would also ask whether our institutions are cultivating trust, fairness and shared purpose, or merely managing divisions without addressing the deeper fractures beneath them.

Pakistan's greatest challenge may not be economic or technological. It is civilisational. Nations are sustained not only by constitutions, infrastructure or economic indicators but by shared values, trustworthy institutions and an educated citizenry capable of thinking beyond immediate divisions.

More than six decades after its publication, Pakistani Culture: The Question of National Culture remains remarkably relevant. It is not simply a book about culture. It is an invitation to reflect on what it truly means to become a nation.