Making Sense of Civil Society: The Experience of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nepal

The notion of ‘civil society’ is not new. In the discourse of political studies, civil society has been an inevitable part. The post-colonial South Asian states have adopted the Western model of democracy with a conscious civil society. The role and nature of civil society in various South Asian countries are different. The process of nation building and introducing the democratic system differently applied to Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nepal. The process of nation building and democratic culture have not been successfully embodied in these states. I have chosen these three states of South Asia due to their distinguished nature of statehood. However, the idea of ‘civil society’ was not unknown to South Asian states, but it only implicitly existed. Regarding the evolution of democracy, nature of state, ethnicity and multiculturalism—there are sharp differences among these three. Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nepal have had the experience of corruption, political violence, communalism, ethnic conflicts, religious extremism, violation of fundamental rights and authoritarian rules. The role of civil society in these three states is often very nominal or invisible or restricted. In few cases, civil society transforms into a ‘sleeping society’. The free, fair, neutral and spontaneous role of civil society is a pre-condition to run a democratic system smoothly. This paper intends to investigate the different scenarios of civil society of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nepal.