Subversive Others, Liminal Subjects

This chapter examines how religious minorities in Pakistan have been constructed as subversive others through a legal and political framework that treats national belonging as contingent on religious conformity. While early constitutional debates promised equal citizenship, they simultaneously framed minority rights as conditional, setting the stage for a hierarchy of belonging rooted in Islam. Drawing on Constituent Assembly debates, constitutional texts, and Supreme Court rulings, the chapter traces how legal ambiguity has been used not to protect, but to police and exclude. From the passage of the Objectives Resolution in 1949 to the 1974 Second Amendment and the expansion of blasphemy laws under Zia-ul-Haq, the state's evolving Islamic identity has increasingly marginalised non-Muslims and dissenting Muslim sects. Judicial rulings in cases such as Zaheeruddin v. The State, Asia Bibi v. The State, and Mubarak Sani v. The State further illustrate how the courts have both reinforced and exposed the instability of these exclusionary frameworks. The chapter argues that minority exclusion is not an aberration, but a structural feature of Pakistan's nation-building and a feature institutionalised through legal mechanisms that conflate loyalty, religion, and citizenship. By mapping this legal trajectory, the chapter offers a new lens on how state power, religion, and legal form coalesce to produce precarious citizenship.