In the western borderlands of Pakistan a dramatic political experiment is under way as the government attempts to integrate tribal and ethnic groups with well-defined traditions of local loyalties into a modern nation state. These border areas-Baluchistan and the Northwest Frontier Province-had been annexed to many of the great imperial powers that in the past had controlled Iran, Afghanistan or India, but the tribal societies had succeeded in maintaining their cultural identities and in asserting their political independence.
The last of the great empires, the British, had claimed sovereignty over the area but had left much of the territory in control of tribal chieftains. Their successors, the Government of Pakistan. have endeavored to do what no previous ruler had done-to integrate the tribal peoples and ethnic groups of the borderland into the same structure of administration as the peoples of the plains.
The authors of the essays presented here have analyzed some of the stresses, strains and conflicts that have followed the attempt to make the area an integral part of the nation. The needs of a nation state are very different from those of the previous imperial rulers, and the ethnic loyalties and the economic structures of the tribal societies often conflict sharply with the demands of the Central Government. For the peoples of the borderlands, some of these demands seem to threaten to destroy their way of life, while for the government they represent the end of old systems of oppression and new opportunities for economic and social progress as part of a unified nation. From the perspectives of history' anthropology and political science, the authors describe the working out ot these dilemmas in the process of nation-building in Pakistan.
AINSLlE T. EMRREE is Professor of History and Associate Dean of the School of International Affairs at Columbia University. His publications include Charles Grant and British Rule in India; India's Search for National Identity; The Non-European World (with John and Johanna Meskill); Indian: Geschichte des Subcontinents (with Friedrich Wilhelm); and he has edited The Hindu Tradition; an abridgement of Alberuni's India; and S.M. lkram's Muslim Civilization in India.
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