How Pakistan's own missiles shoot down its sham bid to claim pre-Islamic Indic roots
Pakistan is making a sham bid to claim the pre-Islamic cultural and civilisational heritage of the Indian subcontinent.
However, a concerning amount of Pakistan's military hardware, especially its missiles, are named after Turkic and Afghan conquerors who plundered the region for centuries.
Most of Pakistani missiles are named after Turkic and Afghan who invaded and plundered large parts of modern-day Pakistan and India.
Most things that Pakistan's civilian-military hybrid regime does are duplicitous in nature.
So is its sham bid to highlight its pre-Islamic heritage, especially the legacy of the Indus Valley Civilisation. It has focused on building that narrative, especially after India put the Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance in April 2025.
This fake attempt to embrace the ancient Indic heritage is exposed by an awkward contradiction: many of Pakistan's weapons, especially its missiles, are named after foreign conquerors remembered for invading and plundering the Indian subcontinent.
Modern Pakistan traces its origins to the Two-Nation Theory, which held that Hindus and Muslims could not coexist in a single state. The Partition of 1947 created Pakistan, which later embraced a hardline Islamic identity under General Zia-ul-Haq, recasting its history around the Islamic conquest of Sindh in the 8th century CE.
The attempt to highlight itself as the centre of the pre-Islamic Indus Valley Civilisation is to claim a share of the Indus waters.
Pakistan has long sought to anchor its national identity in the legacy of Arab, Afghan, and Turkic conquerors who crossed the Hindu Kush and established dynasties across large parts of the Indian subcontinent.
For decades, its textbooks have taught that Pakistan's history began with Muhammad bin Qasim's conquest of Sindh in 712 CE.
Many of these rulers, who rose to power through conquest and plunder, have been glorified by the Pakistani state through the names of its missiles, tanks, and warships.
This naming convention also serves a psychological purpose.
By invoking rulers who conquered much of what is now India, Pakistan symbolically positions its weapons against its principal adversary.
Yet the territory that now forms Pakistan, which was part of India, has a continuous history stretching back thousands of years.
From the Indus Valley Civilisation, it became home to the early Vedic culture in the Sapta Sindhu region and the influential Gandhara culture, making it a cradle of major South Asian traditions long before the modern state came into being.
As Islamabad increasingly seeks to reclaim this heritage, an obvious question arises: Can Pakistan celebrate the region's ancient past while continuing to honour those remembered for invading and plundering it by naming its weapons after them?
HOW DOES PAKISTAN NAME ITS MISSILES AND OTHER WEAPONS?
Different countries have different traditions when naming the weapons that equip their armed forces.
The US, for instance, often names its tanks and armoured vehicles after historic military commanders and generals, such as the M4 Sherman, M46/M48 Patton, and M1 Abrams.
India, by contrast, frequently draws from mythology, epics, and Sanskrit terms—for example, the Agni series of ballistic missiles (named after the fire god),
Prithvi (Earth), Akash (Sky), the Arjun and Bhishma tanks (after Mahabharata warriors), and the fighter jet Tejas (radiance).
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NAMES OF PAKISTANI WEAPONS INSPIRED BY ARABIC TERMINOLOGY, HISTORY
Beyond naming weapons after conquerors, Pakistan also draws heavily on Arabic terminology and early Islamic history to imbue its arsenal with martial and religious symbolism.
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The entire Hatf missile series and the Anza air-defence systems are named after Arabic words for weapons (lance and short spear) associated with the Prophet Muhammad, while the naval frigate Zulfiqar is named after his legendary sword.
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The British High Commissioner to Pakistan this week announced a fund to protect Pakistan's cultural heritage.
The move by the British government comes right after the Australian envoy visited the historical site of Taxila and highlighted Pakistan's "extraordinary" heritage.
Has Pakistan resorted to an international toolkit while suddenly highlighting its pre-Islamic history, especially the Indus Valley Civilisation, amid a battle for Indus waters?
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