NPR
Many American history students learn of a concept called the Frontier Thesis, the idea that the American experience on the frontier shaped the American character. Pakistanis have their own common experiences, from mass migration to war. NPR wanted to know how those experiences affect the country, and posed the question to two Pakistani thinkers: Najam Sethi, a leading newspaper editor, and Mosharraf Zaidi, a Pakistani writer and development consultant.
ethi tells NPR’s Steve Inskeep that his compatriots are both hospitable to visitors and suspicious of them.
“When you go to someone’s house, they lay out the red carpet for you,” he says. “But you will never be able to discern what’s going on in their minds. So you will be wined and dined and feted … but you will not know what they are thinking.”
This is true, he says, especially when it comes to trusting superpowers. And, he says, the country is given to conspiracy theories.
Pakistan, Sethi says, is a largely rural country where links to the village are strong even in the cities.
“Modernity in a sense is stretched on a historical rack,” he says.
Sethi, editor of the Friday Times newspaper in Lahore, says the Pakistani population is constantly under strain: On one hand, there’s the village and the lack of modernity; on the other, daily life, which creates uncertainties.
“There are constant strains on this population,” he says. “We’re part tribal, part modern. We’re part Pakistani, part Muslim. There are so many identities in this country.”
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