The Muslim genome: postcolonial nation-building through genomics in Pakistan

Abstract

National genome projects are often celebrated as assertions of genomic sovereignty, with limited critique of their potential as instruments of biopolitical control and extraction by the state. This paper extends analyses of genomics and nationalism by examining how genomics is mobilized in service of an authoritarian nation-state and ideology in Pakistan. Since independence, Pakistan has sought to unify and centralize the state under a militarized project of Islamic nationalism. I demonstrate how the Pakistani genome was scientifically characterized along key contours of statist ideology to naturalize an imagined religious-nationalist-genetic community. Further, I discuss how genomics attempted to resolve two major tensions in statist narratives: the nation’s immense ethnocultural diversity under a homogenous national identity, and a territorial disjuncture between its geographical “homeland” and ideological “heartland”. Thus, I situate Pakistan’s genomics effort in the history of ideological collaboration between state and intellectual elites, and challenge the inherently emancipatory assumptions of national genomics initiatives.