A land in the grip of fairytales If there is a single country across the planet endlessly obsessed with its origins – how it came to be created and on what basis – it has to be the Islamic Republic, Gen Kayani’s Fortress of Islam.

Nuke capability, Allah be praised, we have attained, and when in moments of patriotic emotion we sing its praises, we give the impression that nothing else matters. But simple things, like running municipal services with a modicum of efficiency or being able to think rationally about a basic need such as public transport, seem beyond our foremost abilities.

Colonialism may have been bad in every sense of the word, but at least it gave us two things: an administrative edifice based on that much-abused term “the rule of law” and a basic infrastructure: roads, canals, a railway system, and so on. We can see for ourselves what we have done with this heritage. Where we should have built upon it we have presided over its vandalising. What is more, deriving pleasure from this experience.

If the Islamic Republic has one ruling deity, real estate would beat everything else into second place. Generals have triggered needless wars, but if the military has excelled in anything it is not, perish the thought, the art of war, but the acquisition and embellishment of real estate. Our defence housing authorities have no parallel anywhere else in the world. Nor is there the least interest in abolishing this culture. If put to the test, the army can forego its guns, not its housing colonies.

And this is the army of the Fortress of Islam. Buttressing its flanks is that misty concept used as a punitive instrument to keep the recalcitrant in line, the ideology of Pakistan.

Six decades of fitful existence is a long enough time to put theories of existence to one side and concentrate on the practical aspects of running a country. But, no, a national politician says something sensible – our national leaders not being particularly famous for saying sensible things – to the effect that we should live like good neighbours with India, and the ideology-of-Pakistan school, whose contribution to the spread of national bigotry and ignorance over the years has been greater than anyone else’s, rips into him as if what has been uttered is the biggest heresy of all.

Oliver Twist asks for a second bowl of porridge and in the orphanage in which he is lodged consternation breaks out, because the unbelievable has just occurred. From table to table the whisper spreads: “Oliver Twist has asked for more.” In the haunts of national ideology we have heard thunder erupting because Nawaz Sharif has spoken of a sensible relationship with India. And because, unspeakable heresy again, he said that the Lord of the Universe was Lord to all of us, not just Muslims.

If the savants of national ideology could have their way India, and Pakistan would not just be at war, their cherished desire, but lobbing nuclear bombs at each other. They seriously ask, what is our nuke capability for? The implication being that if not for use against India, for what then?

The army seriously believes that nuke capability is not enough of a deterrent. In order to achieve nuclear stability, and consequently forestall the use of battlefield nuclear weapons, it is essential that conventional arms capability keep on improving. That is, more rockets and more tanks. This is not just logic reversed, put on its head, but strategy, and the concept of deterrence, gone mad: a recipe for bankruptcy.

Sharif may have started his political journey from the bosom of military rule, but if his remarks on India are taken as a signpost he has come a long way. The fount of misplaced patriotism was always Punjab. And so virulent was this strain of patriotism, championed first and foremost by the ideology-of-Pakistan school of thought, that it spread a message of intolerance.

The people of East Pakistan were alienated. Now it is the youth of Balochistan none too happy with their plight. So for a Punjabi politician to call for a lessening of the paranoia which has been a characteristic of establishment thinking in Pakistan is nothing short of remarkable.

We remain a confused country which could do with less ideological claptrap. But the good thing about the reaction to Sharif’s remarks is that the attack on him has come mainly from the trenches and outposts of the far right. Sharif was once a creature of the far right himself. For someone like him, a scion of Punjab to boot, to undergo a shift to the centre is a positive development. While it has become a fashion to be pessimistic about Pakistan’s future, we should take note of some of the good things happening.

The other good thing is that extremism seems to have run its course. Or at least it has reached the highest points of its expansion. This may sound like an unnecessarily bold statement but it can be put into context.

Pakistan, more than any other nation in the world, can bear witness to the fact that it has seen every form of extremism: sectarian to I don’t know what. With every firebrand and holy warrior taking the shortest route to heaven we have become familiar. The jihadi organisations we have spawned can proliferate no further. North Waziristan or the rest of Fata cannot become more safe havens than they already are. Like a drunk reaching the limits of drunkenness, where his liver can take no more, we have exhausted the limits of extremism.

The ideology-of-Pakistan school has thus served its purpose. Into the hapless body (still not the carcass) of the Republic further ideology cannot be injected. It just can’t take any more. We have also reached the limits of hypocrisy. We would have to be more creative than we are to write further chapters in the saga of national hypocrisy. (Have the defenders and warriors of the Holy Grail reached the limits of real estate? This is a question not easily answered.)

Does this mean that the time for reinventing the Republic has finally arrived? But we can move closer to a less ambitious agenda. Asked what communism was, Lenin famously said: “Soviet power plus electrification of the entire country.” Why can’t we have a similar definition of the ideology of Pakistan?

Why can’t the ideology of Pakistan be to put every child in school, have one curriculum for the entire country, have taxis running on meters, have a public transport system in every major city? Why can’t the ideology of Pakistan, to the exclusion of everything else, be these things: a crash programme to overcome the energy crisis, a crash programme to revive Pakistan Railways and an overnight programme to rid the republic of that devil’s invention which is the polythene bag?

The polythene bag will destroy Pakistan sooner, and more effectively, than the Taliban. Don’t we have the eyes to see its ravages? And a favour: if we can’t fix simple things, let us at least not waste time and energy on metaphysical abstractions.

We know angels won’t descend from heaven to fix these problems. Saladins and Bismarcks we do not have. Greed is a national pastime. The options for change are limited. The stars are implacable in their indifference. We have to create our own miracles, from the material that is available.

But let us also count our blessings, the latest being the confusion into which the ideology-of-Pakistan school has been thrown. Let us agree with Gen Kayani that Pakistan is the Fortress of Islam. Allah again be praised. But we should at least ensure that the drawbridge of this fortress doesn’t creak and the chains are not rusty. The origins of Pakistan have been debated enough. After 64 years, shouldn’t the age of practicality begin?