Sri Lanka, Oct. 16 -- Seventy-eight years after the birth of Pakistan, the promise of liberation from colonial rule remains tragically unfulfilled. While the British Empire formally withdrew in 1947, the structures it left behind were not dismantled, they were repurposed.
The bureaucratic, military, and judicial institutions crafted by the British to subjugate the subcontinent were preserved and retooled by Pakistan's post-colonial elite. Rather than fostering integration, reviving indigenous cultures, or empowering peripheral communities, the state entrenched centralized authority. The elite, feudal landlords, military generals, and bureaucrats, reconstructed colonial hierarchies to serve their own interests, perpetuating exclusion and ex...