Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book describes why was democracy seen to be the answer to terrorism in London? and why should democracy be promoted not in Britain, but in Pakistan? It provides a detailed answer to these questions, and examines the logic and the modes of thinking that made such a response possible. The book shows that why they matter for the way democracy is thought about, not only by democracy promoters in Pakistan, but also in Britain. It looks in detail at how the narrative of democracy promotion functions through the logic of temporal othering. The book also provides a link between the colonial and postcolonial periods in what is now Pakistan. It focuses on the importance of the colonial period for the emergence of teleological narratives and their relation to democracy promotion and identity constitution.