Punjabi Nationlaism-IV (Next)

Punjabi Nationalism III

Pakistan: New provinces in a sinking economy
Written by Lal KhanThursday, 26 January 2012

One of the most extraordinary features of human psychology is adaptation. The tolerance of the masses is being tested to the extreme. Every passing day the grim social scenario becomes even gloomier. The masses are seething with anger and revolt against the sharply rising prices, unemployment, poverty, energy shortages and misery. Apart from the rhetoric from right-wing populism, they are presented with no real choice to put an end to this agonising situation. The vacillating petit bourgeoisie in its characteristic haste and impatience goes for this populism but will revert back in the same manner. The mass movement is yet to explode. And the working classes will enter the arena when they see something genuinely related to the burning problems they are forced to endure in this rotting capitalist socio-economic system.
The ruling elite of all shades are harping upon issues that do not really concern the daily lives and the grievances of the people. The crisis of the judiciary and the contempt of courts are irrelevant to the vast majority of the masses, the memo scandal and the likes do not really matter to the people nor do the so-called threats to the sovereignty of a nation and state that gave the people only deprivation and wage slavery. Now the elite have come up with another gimmickry. It is the formation of new provinces in Hazara, the Seraiki belt and elsewhere. It is like inflicting even more wounds on society to divert from the pain of the previous ones. From a Marxist point of view it is the right of the masses of any nationality to have their own administrative units, autonomy and even secession, if it comes to that, and the majority wants that. The main aim is the emancipation of the exploited masses. But to exploit these sentiments to perpetuate their rule, the ruling classes of Pakistan are playing with fire. In a country where national oppression has been a curse throughout its history and is festering specially in Balochistan, to further complicate it shows that the bourgeoisie is losing its bearings.
Pakistan came into being not as a nation-state in spite of the Two Nation dogma, but it has comprised different nationalities as is inscribed in the words that make up its name. However, after almost 65 years of its existence it has failed to become a nation-state. Rather the antagonisms between different nationalities have aggravated. The secession of East Bengal was the first proof of the failure to create a nation on the basis of religion. The revolt in Balochistan against national oppression and the brutalities of the Pakistani state has been relentless. It re-emerges time and again, generation after generation. The imperialists are descending upon this mineral-rich region like vultures and have unleashed a proxy war killing the impoverished masses of Balochistan. The Punjabi elite have been in the forefront of the state enforcing Pakistani chauvinism. But they are also responsible for the monstrosities against the Punjabi masses. The vast majority of the 2.7 million that perished in the partition massacre were Punjabi workers and peasants. The Punjabi ruling elites have ever since ruthlessly exploited and squeezed the blood of the toilers of this nation. The first and foremost victim in their crime of nationalist exploitation of the oppressed nationalities has been Punjabi nationalism, language and culture. The reality is that the longest eastern and western borders of Pakistan segregate living cultures and same nations. In the west, the Durand Line of 1893 drawn by the British cleavage of the Pashtun nation where there was even no religious differentiation. These artificial boundaries cannot stand the vexing social and economic crisis that is pulverising society. But the national question cannot be solved on a bourgeoisie basis. The old nation-states of capitalism from Europe to the US are not able to bear the crisis of the mode of production that has transcended national frontiers and is compelled to operate on an international basis due to the technological advances and the expansion of capitalist exploitation. There is a crushing domination of the world market in every political unit. None can escape under capitalism. But for the emancipation of the toiling classes of the oppressed nationalities, it is necessary to target the enemy within of mass revolt. The reactionary theory of ?reconciliation? also applies to the political elites of different nationalities. The elites are roped into the plunder sharing gambit but as soon as the loot diminishes, the elite falls out, and apart from other issues they use the national question to enhance their share of the plunder. For national liberation it is vital for the toiling masses to steer the rivers of struggles against national oppression into the ocean of class struggle. The resolution of the national question cannot be achieved within the present geographical demarcations. One of Lenin?s greatest contributions towards mankind?s liberation was the resolution of the national question. Lenin wrote in 1920: ?The recognition of the right to self-determination does not exclude either propaganda or agitation against separation or exposure of bourgeois nationalism.?
However, with the plummeting economy the national question will further aggravate and unless a revolutionary Leninist policy is adopted, the ruling classes will use the national question to break the class unity of the movement to overthrow this system of class and national oppression. Even the most acknowledged experts of capitalism in Pakistan are pessimistic about the economic prospects. Shahid Javed Burki, a former finance minister and economist at the World Bank wrote recently: ?Coming on top of an exceptionally weak year, the economy in 2012 is not likely to do better than its lacklustre performance in 2011...Ten million people will be added to the already large pool of poverty. The rate of unemployment will increase with the impact felt to a large extent in the urban areas -- particularly in the large cities. The rich will continue to isolate themselves by creating islands of prosperity in the midst of general poverty. This, as we know, is a recipe for social and political turmoil. I do not see easy times ahead for Pakistan in 2012.?
The condition of the masses will further deteriorate. Without an equitable distribution of wealth, transformation of property relations and a collective ownership of the means of production, economy, agriculture and mineral resources by the working classes, no administrative changes in the present system can end the plight of the people. This tumour of capitalism that is inflicting so much agony and pain to the living body of society has to be surgically removed.
The only way to achieve this success is through a Socialist revolution.
http://www.marxist.com/new-provinces-in-a-sinking-economy.htm

Pakistan or Punjabistan:Crisis of National Identity
by Hooria Saboor

Transcript of Pakistan or Punjabistan: Crisis of NationalIdentity
Pakistan or Punjabistan: Crisis of National Identity
Overview
Yunas Samad is a British social scientist. 
He published several books on the topic of Pakistani nationalism and ethnicity.
Nationalism
 is a belief, creed or political ideology that involves an individual identifying with, or becoming attached to, one's nation. 
Ethnicity

could be referred to as being associated with ethnic traits, background or allegiance. 
Examples of Ethnic groups are: Punjabi, Pashto, Sindhi, Balochi, Kashmiri etc.
The Post-1947 Scenario
PUNJAB:
Sikander Hayat did not want Pakistan
This was Punjabi regionalism not Muslim nationalism
BENGAL:
Regionalism was absorbing nationalism
Suhrawardy rejected Two Nation Theory-> Independent Bengal
SINDH:
Opposed to any center whether controlled by League or Congress
NWFP:
No clear articulation of nationalism
Wanted restricted power for the center
KASHMIR:

Sheikh Abdullah was loyal towards Congress
BALOCHISTAN:

Lay outside the British controlled Balochistan so did not have much of a say in the matters

The Pre-1947 Scenario
Muslim nationalism was Janus-faced i.e. it would shape shift to either Islamic ideology or to regionalism given the situational context
The Muslim League had garnered support from Muslims all over India who possessed discreet modes of nationalism 
->
fear and distrust of Congress

Pre-Bangladesh: Divorce of Ethnicity and Nationalism
High degree dissimilarities between Bengalis and Punjabis
Imposition of Urdu as the national language.

Elections called by Yahya Khan:
West Pakistan politicians failed to homogenize the West.
Victory of Eastern Party.
A six point formula proposed to weaken the federal structure.

MILITARY-BUREAUCRATIC OLIGARCHY
The military-bureaucratic oligarchy had a lot of influence on the politics of the pre-1947 era.
This trend continued in the post-1947 era.
80% of the military and 55% of the federal bureaucracy constituted of individuals with Punjabi roots.
The oligarchy played an interventionist role in Pakistan’s affairs.
The oligarchy was not ethnically neutral in the co-option of its allies.
Representatives of other ethnic classes politicized their ethnic identities in an attempt to legitimize rebellion against the pro-Punjabi government.

Bhutto: A nationalist
After the separation of East Pakistan, and the failure of the army in the Indo-Pak war. Bhutto came into power. He was a nationalist and a socialist. Even though he was a Sindhi, he was a proponent of central control and against India which made him acceptable to the Military-Bureaucracy.
He introduced many policies which made the country strong economically and in international security matters.
Aftermath of Bengali Victory
Fears of West Pakistan:
Weakening of Federal Structure.
Domination of Eastern officials in National Affairs.
Tikka Khan unleashed army action in East upon Yahya Khan’s orders. 
Mass migration to India.- 90% emigrants were Hindus.
1971 war broke out. 
RESULT: Bangladesh gained Independence. 

Group 9
Ijlal Haider
Lala Rukh
Jehanzeb Mufti
Izza Adnan
Hiba Shakil
Hamza Ahsan
Habiba Rehman
Hooria Saboor
Agenda
How Punjabi hegemony of the state has perpetuated correlation between Punjab’s and Pakistan’s interests.
How nationalism and ethnicity actually came to co-exist in the first place
Processes that reactivated ethic identification at the expense of nationalism; 1947 till current date.
Reasons for distrust: 
Congress attitude towards Muslims in inter war years (1939-1945)
Inadequate constitutional safeguards for Muslims provided by Congress
Continued.
Present Scenario
Muslim nationalism was not a homogenous phenomenon
Punjabis and Muhajirs initially advocated a highly centralized state
Ayub Khan, Zulfikhar Ali Bhutto & Zia-ul-Haq changed policies with each passing regime 
Balochis always ignored 
Conclusion
M.Q.M: Muhajir nationalism
1971:
separation of East Pakistan
1973
: 33.5% of civil service officers were Muhajirs
Bhutto implemented 
Quota system
Lost their influence in center
Zia and Bhutto both policies served to decrease the Muhajir's power in the center.
Altaf Husaain
: a student of Karachi university formed an organization APMSO.
Formation of Mutahida Qaumi Mahaz.
Benazir reign
: A threat to military influence on centre so the military is said to have supported the Muhajir and Sindi conflict.
Party/Government Stance (you decide)
Musharraf:

Strengthen Federation, remove Inter-Provincial disharmony and restore National cohesion
PPP:
Neglected Balochis and Pashtuns, continuous power war between Sindh and Punjab
PML-N:
Decentralized government with Punjab being favoured the most, developments seen only in one province

This was the first time when a civilian politician was gaining such power in the centre and popularity and it was taken as a threat to their influence over country’s politics by the military and the bureaucracy who had been the ones controlling the center. He provided political access to Sindhis. 
The recognition of the Sindhi language in 1972 and the quota imposed on Muhajirs entering the civil service led to the deflation of the Sindhi identity and subsumed them in the official Pakistani National identity.
His main opponents were the Balochis and the NWFP
In 1977 Zia ul Haq over threw Bhutto’s government very eagerly and later on Bhutto was hanged to death.

9,000 lives were lost in the Balochi uprisings in attempts to crush the opposition.
Bhutto’s regime also threatened the Military-Bureaucracy and the creation of FSF displaced the army’s role in internal security and lateral entry of political nominees into the bureaucracy antagonized the oligarchy.
When the Pakistan National Movement against PPP mobilised urban groups against electoral misconduct in the 1977 elections, it paved way for the Military-Bureaucracy led by Gen. Zia Ul Haq to take over.
Muslim Nationalism used before the partition was a 
heterogeneous
phenomenon with all of its parts subsumed by the Pakistan Movement.
The tension between nationalism and ethnicity was the basis of all opposition to the center which hardened the ethnic fault lines.
The Military-Bureaucracy were key preserves of the Punjabis and their allies of which they vigorously defended the necessity for a highly centralized state.
Bhutto’s regime reformulated the power at the center and co-opted Sindhis at the expense of Muhajirs.
Zia’s expulsion of Sindhis led to uprisings from Sindh, however, as a result of the soviet invasion, the western provinces had to be neutralized. 
However, not all Punjabis benefited from this domination, Zia’s regime alienated some Punjabis and introduction of Islamic Law politicised women.
His regime was also opposed by Saraiki areas, the Mirpur population and Azad Kashmir.
Domination by the Punjabi elite was the primary cause for the ethnic conflicts that convulsed the nation’s history and challenge the Punjabi hegemony!
Curtsey:  presi.com 17 November 2014

POLITICS
Punjab: Pakistan's political heartland

The province has seen the most ardent campaigning, with few security fears - and a result remains too close to call.
Cyril Almeida | 06 May 2013

Maryam Nawaz, daughter of PML-N leader Nawaz Sharif, is covered in rose petals as she encourages voters in Lahore, where electoral campaigns have been out in full force [Asad Hashim/Al Jazeera]
Pakistan's most populous province has several inherent advantages come election time. It is prosperous, educated, intensely competitive, and decisive - the last because Punjab is home to 148 of the 272 directly elected seats in the National Assembly, Pakistan's lower house of parliament. This election season it is enjoying another advantage: political parties are campaigning openly and freely, unlike in Balochistan, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Sindh and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), where militants of various hues have either brought most parties' campaigns to a shuddering halt or forced them to limp along in a climate of fear and uncertainty.
The vibrancy of the 2013 race in Punjab is down to two factors: the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) are hammering away at each other in the northern and central regions of Punjab - which account for roughly 100 directly elected seats - while the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) is taking aim at the approximately 40 seats in the poorer, predominantly rural south of the province.

With the general election less than a week away, only this much is clear: no party expects an overall majority of its own in the next parliament and the PML-N is leading the pack in Punjab. With the margins of error razor thin, however, the PML-N's momentum is hard to pin down in terms of numbers. A sweep in the 100-odd constituencies in the northern and central regions of Punjab would put the PML-N in a comfortable position to form the next government in Islamabad.
A PML-N sweep is anything but a sure thing, though; the problem being obvious: a surging PTI-led by Imran Khan. Having eschewed policy specifics in favour of denouncing a political system that is widely perceived as corrupt, elitist and unresponsive to the needs of ordinary Pakistanis, the PTI has gained significant traction in the cities, towns and well-connected rural areas of Punjab.
Even at this late hour, though, there is little clarity about how much of the PTI's support will translate into votes. The party leadership accepts that its electoral machinery, so crucial to turning out the vote on polling day, is not up to scratch and that delays in finalising the PTI's roster of candidates have meant the party will effectively have only three weeks to mobilise the electorate leaning towards it.
But Imran Khan is blitzing the province, racing from one rally to the next, several each day, whipping up election fervour among the PTI supporters and reassuring skittish candidates of their prospects come May 11. Equally, however, the PML-N campaign machinery is in full swing, trumpeting its experience and track record, particularly over the past five years, when the party led the provincial government in Punjab in a manner that is seen as more efficient and clean, as compared to the other provincial and federal governments.
Experience, track record and the Punjab electorate's personal liking for Nawaz Sharif, whose middle-class roots, easy-going demeanour and Punjabi nationalism have proved a winning combination for over a decade and a half, are the principal planks of the PML-N's push to capture power in Islamabad for a third time.
The focus on the PTI as the challenger and the PML-N as the still-strong status quo power in Punjab is only two-thirds of the story, however. If the PTI does scale back the PML-N's fortunes in Punjab significantly, the PPP is lurking in the background, ready to pounce on the back of an expected strong performance in south Punjab and interior Sindh.
Because of PPP leader and current Pakistani President Asif Zardari's tried and tested coalition-building and coalition-sustaining skills, the PPP high command believes that, even were it to finish a close second to the PML-N in the overall seat count from across Pakistan, the party has a better chance at forming a coalition government in the next parliament.
So will it be the PML-N, the PTI or the PPP and a handful of allies? Never before has an election in Pakistan been so fiercely contested, or its result so hard to predict.
Source: Al Jazeera

Punjabi body in US opposes visa to Narendra Modi
I P Singh,TNN 

JALANDHAR: Following the issue of Punjabi farmers facing eviction from Kutch region of Gujarat, the North American Punjabi Association (NAPA) has written to US President Barack Obama and senators not to consider granting visa to Gujarat chief minister NarendraModi.

Expressing strong concern and resentment against the attempts of the Modi government to displace Sikh farmers, who had settled around five decades ago in Kutch, NAPA president Satnam Singh Chahal said they have also urged Obama and senators to declare Modi as a communal figure and black list him in US.

"Concerted efforts to evict the Sikh farmers once again reflect communal politics of Modi. There is great resentment among the Punjabi community in North America about the uprooting of Sikh farmers from Kutch. Our community is of the view that this is the real communal face of Modi as he is not ready to accept any minority," Chahal said, adding that silence of the Gujarat CM also proved his anti-minority attitude.

The NAPA chief said it was ironical that despite media reports highlighting concerns of Sikh farmers and statements by Akali leaders, there has been no response from either Modi or any spokesman of Gujarat government. "Even the BJP high command is silent on this important issue, which involves the question of survival of a thousand farmers, who toiled hard to make the barren land fertile," he alleged, adding that the BJP unit of Punjab should answer the people of the state and Punjabi diaspora on the issue.

Punjab Congress threatens to gheraoModi

Jalandhar: Punjab Congress has warned BJP that in case Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi failed to give justice to Sikh farmers of Kutch region, who are being evicted, it would be left with no option but to "gherao" him. On Sunday, Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee (PPCC) spokesperson Sukhpal Singh Khaira said they would not let Modi enter the state till the aggrieved Sikh farmers of Gujarat get complete rights of their lands. Khaira said Congress also dares Akali Dal that if it really cared for the sentiments of Sikh farmers of Gujarat, it should snap ties with BJP if Modi does not return the Sikh farmers' land back.
Curtsey:Times of Idnia.com | Aug 5, 2013

 ‘Punjabi Nationalism’ Dominates National Discourse
By Gulshan Ara

Pakistan’s ‘jaundiced’ media is full of terms such as ‘Baloch, Pashtun, or Sindhi nationalism’ and ‘Mohajirs’. What is missing in defining Pakistan’s ethnic groups in the mainstream media is ‘Punjabi nationalism’.
The electronic media, newspapers and communication flood on the social media had printed on the masses’ minds that demands coming from Pakhtunkhwa, Sindh and Balochistan are speaking of the nationalists in those provinces. However, Punjab’s gains in development, education, health, and communication infrastructure are portrayed as national achievements of Pakistan.
In politics, a term like ‘Sind card’ is widely used with PPP despite its presence in all four provinces, FATA and Gilgit-Baltistan. ANP is hardly defined in terms of its secular agenda or the only anti-Taliban forces in the volatile northwest Pakistan. Political forces from Balochistan---JWP, BNP and others are presented as soft names of the Baloch rebel groups in the national media. Political parties of Sindh are paraded in the media with the available negative tags attached to their names and causes.
All national traitors Pakistanis have known so far through media are either the Bengalis of the pre-71 Pakistan or the non-Pujabis of the post-71 era--Sindhis, Pashtuns, Balochis and Mohajirs. Starting from Pakistan's latest traitor, Dr Shakil Afridi (the doctor whose small efforts had allegedly got rid the South Asian Islam off the terror godfather Osama bin Laden and Wahabism) is Pashtun. Former Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto (Sindh), former opposition leader late Khan Abdul Wali Khan (Pakhtunkhwa), late GM Syed (Sindh), late Ghaus Bakhsh Bizanjo (Balochistan), to name a few, all are defined as traitors in the mainstream media. Altaf Hussain of MQM can’t come back to Pakistan and leaders like Nawab Akbar Bugti don’t deserve life.
Contrary to this, the Indian-specific media and text books are defining Major Aziz Bhatti, Captain Muhammad Sarwar, Major Muhammad Tufail (a total of 11) as Pakistan’s national heroes. All of them died while defending Punjab in four wars against India from 1948-1999. However, the state and ‘yellow’ media of Pakistan have yet to produce a single hero in the 10- year war against Terrorism in a comparatively tough terrain and tricky battlefield known as the Wild Wild West of Pakistan. 
Over 160 million Pakistanis, today, can’t recall a man or a woman that they know who might have been fallen against the Arab, Central Asian or Pakistani fanatics in the mountains in FATA while defending Pakistan against militancy. One apparent reason for this nation-wide apathy towards soldiers fighting Terrorism is that Pakistan not owning the ongoing war despite its claims of higher causalities at international fora.
The decades long control of the Punjabi mindset and ‘Maulvis-turned-journalists’ on media has locked Pakistani journalism in ‘Punjabi Box’. The journalists living in that particular box can hardly imagine the sensitivities of people and regions existing out of the Punjabi Box. They don’t see Pakistan Muslim League (N) or (Q) as Punjabi nationalists nor they define Sharif brothers as leaders of Punjabi nationalism when they allocate more development funds for Punjab or deny due shares of the other three provinces from the national pool of resources.
Whether it’s a political fight between PPP or Muslim League, differences on NFC award (national resources), provincial autonomy, militancy, royalty rights, blasphemy law, or women rights, Pakistani media shows Punjab’s voice as protagonist and those of other provinces as antagonist in its narration of events. 
As if that is not enough, they cover up Punjab’s causes as Pakistan hard core national interests and label others as Pashtun, Baloch, Sindhi or Mohajir nationalists in a bid to deny them a space on the minds of media viewers, listeners and readers.
The irony is that the state institutes and Pakistani intellectuals call it a ‘media revolution era’ of Pakistan though a reader of the Jang newspapers in 1970s and viewer of Geo TV in March 2012 don’t see a difference in contents and description of facts (Punjab vis-à-vis others). The media revolution in Pakistan has, unfortunately, reinvigorated the Punjabi voice and its outreach, however, and has successfully avoided the ‘Punjabi nationalism’ label for itself while defending the interests of one major ethnic group at all levels in a multi-ethnic country.

Curtsey:Sunday ,March 25,2012
Curtsey:www.mullahmilitarymedai.blogpost.com

Punjabi Nationalism for Greater Punjab

As Punjab Succeed in imposing his will on 3 smaller provinces by using the Punjabi Nationalism and by breaking the law of the land, The whole event itself shows that the whole Punjab got united on one agenda, Punjabi Nationalism.

The police of Punjab famous for doing encounters were dancing with PML supporters and raising slogans of G.A Nawaz Sharif itself showed the ugly picture of the incident.

This is the reason why the Establishment always recruits thousands in Police Rangers and Army to crush the voices of smaller provinces, but when such situation created in Punjab they refused to obey orders.

In the recent Long March Punjab Police not only refused to obey the orders but also in advance told the Policemen from Sindh that they will ran away before the coming of PML N rally.

Is this a new start of Punjabi Baladasti on Smaller Provinces?


OR

This will result in accomplishing the Goal of Greater Punjab?

This Incident is also an eyeopener for the people serving in Police and other Government Offices and don't belong from punjab, as They are always used by punjabi Establishment to crush the voices of their own people.

Wakeup Mohajirs, Sindhis, Pathans, Balochis and see the real face of Punjabi Nationalism and learn some lesson from it.
Curtsey: sirfkarachi.blogspot.com

Punjabi nationalism

Beacon Of Light
Justice Syed Asif Shahkar
When ever  I visit  East  or West  Punjab , besides meeting others, I meet and mingle with Punjabis , Many of whom are  quite well placed and  affluent.   I have noticed that they see me as Swedish and not as one of their own; a Punjabi. Their mannerism is  odd and behavior towards me  rather peculiar and pretentious. Why I say that is because they go out of the way to speak in English when I don’t. Most don’t miss a chance to show off their imported possessions and  those who have been abroad can’t stop talking about their visit. Then there are those  who have not been abroad, they criticize and condemn the system they are living in and whine about the bleak and gloomy prospects  for them in Punjab. All most every one I meet can’t wait to leave Punjab and day dreams to settle abroad .
 I am really saddened and  troubled by this trend  . It is really sad that  first they rejected and  renounced their roots and identity  and now they are giving up Punjab their  native soil. If we look at the statistics of emigration from Punjab we will find that Sikhs are on the top followed by Hindus and Muslims. In the  past the only reason Punjabi left Punjab for other lands was economic.  He wanted to prosper and be wealthy . In the initial phase the wealth and money he earned poured back in to Punjab and was used to buy cars and build new homes,  symbols of pride and status which Punjabi flaunted in front of his friends and families. The time has taken a different turn,  as Punjabi now is abandoning every thing he made  and permanently settling in foreign lands.  Their grand and palatial mansions are deserted, haunted and have become playgrounds for dogs. Once symbols of pride are now tombs and crypts of their Punjabi identity .  Unfortunately Punjabi has become an epitome of  renunciation ever ready and eager to give up everything he is all about.  The most impassioned among them are the Sikhs  and as well as Muslims who are  readily giving up their language, culture , heritage  and everything else that has anything to do with being a Punjabi and are doing so  while still living in Punjab.  Shaky, insecure ,egocentric  and inflicted with inferiority complex they are running away from themselves. Instead of facing and finding solutions to their problems they are putting them on the back burner and finding refuge in escapism. I have not been able to find similar examples among another Asian communities, Economically Japan has held number one position and was a leader in the field of science and technology and now Chinese are  getting there but these communities have not followed the culture of renunciation and escapism. These people these nations are
 not from another planet or  more superior than Punjabis in any way ,   what makes them fundamentally different is  their ‘Thinking’.  Scientific approach ,technological advancement and nationalism are  integral  components  of their way of thinking; their belief system. I have been chanting ‘ Nationalism’ like a mantra and am well aware that  I  could be  ridiculed or made of fun of , but at this point I have no choice because ‘ Nationalism’ is the answer to the problems and issues  facing Punjabis.
 Frankly at this point I am uncertain and skeptical of their understanding and outlook about ‘Nationalism’.
What is nationalism?
Before  I elaborate on it , a story from childhood resonates in my mind , which I would want to share  with you all. The story is about a farmer who had several sons. One day he summoned them and all and gave them a bundle of sticks and told them to break it. One by one they tried to do exactly that but no one could do it. Then he opened the bundle and handed a single stick to each one of them and in a split second each stick was minced in to tiny pieces.  I hear echo of Nationalism in this story.  Different academicians and intellectuals have defined nationalism differently but to me it is same sentiment that a family feels about shared past, language and values , problems and aspirations.  Nationalism is a feeling or sentiment shared by  Large aggregate of people, a nation united by common descent , language, culture, history,  aspirations , Inhabiting a country or territory.  Like a string binds and keep sticks together and strong. , similarly  Nationalism  binds , unites and strengthens  a Nation.  Our hearts and souls are naturally  drawn to and  long for the place where we are born and spend our childhood. Nostalgia sets in when we think about the lanes and courtyards where we frolicked and had fun playing games with our friends.  The land  where our elders lived, toiled and  breathed their last , the land that now holds their  ashes and remains .   The land that nurtured and gave us life and  the place which gave us wings to soar and reach for the stars.,  it is only natural that we deeply love and take immense  pride in the place where  our roots  are.  This is the beginning  of the Nationalism.  It is a force, a sentiment that unites  a nation ( people)  and makes it powerful and strong.  Some have tried to make  religion a sole basis to bring people together, but  in the due course it  did not sit well with the spirit of nationalism.  Unlike nationalism , religion not only failed to unite people , It held them back, divided them , set up one group against the other and then  became  a potent source of  breeding and spreading hatred for  one another. There has been a long drawn out struggle between Nationalism and Religion in the West,  and in the due course of time the western world  chose nationalism . Instead of Religion they opted for  Science , technology and Nationalism. As a result of this choice they were able to guarantee  peace , prosperity, security to their people and were able to establish a system in which every human life is valued.  Nationalism, undeniably is a dynamic force It  can lift  people or nations out of  ashes, but if it falls in the hands of wrong elements, it is capable of shrouding  humanity with  catastrophe, destruction and devastation of infinite magnitude,  Germany and Japan are the living example of this phenomena, Unchecked, distorted and out of control it propagated Nazism, fascism and imperialism,   Second world war had  brought Germany and Japan on their knees. Defeated, devastated and humiliated , these two nations were able to rebuild their nations and  regain their esteem  in the post world era with the help of  Nationalism only. They had  learnt their lessons  and realized that Nationalism sitting on the pile of arms and arsenals can be explosive and destructive  for any nation. For that  reason now they have the  world’s most insignificant armies.  Noble form of Nationalism is  love and devotion for one’s county ( patriotism) but I believe that  this love should be extended to other  countries and other people also and not just be limited to one’s own country.  It is customary for any wise person and far-sighted  nation to revisit  past  to examine and re-evaluate the choices and decisions they made.  We as Punjabis should do the same ,  but we  have to be totally honest, objective and impartial when we review our  achievements, losses and failings in the last sixty five years. It is no secret , we are well aware of  how much water has flown under the bridge.
Millions of Punjabis have perished, Millions were uprooted and displaced, not once but several times. Suffered economic and financial devastation worth billions of dollars.
 We very well know that divisions,  internal conflicts  and disputes are our worst enemies and it is no mystery that corrupt religion,  adherence to tribal culture, rigid cast system,  greed and self seeking behavior make perfect breeding ground where divisions, separations , conflicts and wars originate and flourish. We are faced with grim  reality of Punjabis abandoning their land and those living in Punjab  are walking away from their language , culture and heritage. The fact is that Punjabis have become their own worst enemies and they are cutting  down  the very branch they are sitting on.  Enslaved by corruption and opportunism they are nibbling at their own roots and  weakening their own foundation.  History is witness that nations or people who followed this path landed  in  abysmal darkness of destruction and devastation.
This is a moment of truth. We have to choose our future course and make tryst with our destiny.  Time is here and it is now .We have to make clear choices. Do we want to follow  the suicidal and self destructive path we are on?  Or abandon it and imbibe nationalism and follow alternative path to become proud and glorious nation ‘ Punjabi Nation’  in future. We can do it and do it by looking with in ourselves,  We have to peer in to our heart and souls and see if we can rise above our religious identities. I often  wonder if;
 Can we take a leap?
Can we break free from the  shackles of ,tribal  culture, casteism and religious divides?
 Instead of being Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims and Christians, can we assume one identity?
 Identity of being  nothing but PUNJABI and Punjabi only!
I believe the day  even a single Punjabi makes  up his mind to change, it will be a beginning of a new movement , a new direction. One candle light , one flame can pierce the deepest darkness and then one candle lighting  the other candle till there are thousands of  lighted candles spreading the light all around them.
We need one enlightened Punjabi , One guiding star and  One beacon of light ! And not before long the horizon of Punjabi nation will be illuminated with millions of  bright and shining guiding lights. 
Now the question remains who is that Punjabi?
Our leader
Our first candle light !
Our beacon of  light !
Curtsey: www.sanjhapunjab.net

Punjabi-Pashtun and Pashtun-Punjabi Racism and Hatred in Pakistan
By Orbala

Pre-pre-script: The comments on this article were quite phenomenal, many of them reiterating my point. To read them, please click here (scroll a little down on the page to view them).
Pre-script: I realize I’m using “Pukhtun” and “Pashtun” interchangeably – because they are the same thing. I don’t use “Pathan” because many Pashtuns mind that name and see it as a distortion of the original “Pashtun/Pukhtun.”
This is going to be tough to read for those Pukhtuns who are in denial of the fact that the mockery, the racism, the bigotry of the Punjabis against Pashtuns goes both ways: it’s not just Punjabis alone who mock Pukhtuns; Pukhtuns mock Punjabis constantly as well – they just do it in different ways. It’ll also be a tough read for Punjabis and other non-Pashtun Pakistanis who think “Pathan” jokes are funny or who deny the reality of institutional racism against Pashtuns in Pakistan.
One of the most popular “discussions” that takes place on Twitter (prolly right after the whole “NO, STUPID! A Pukhtun cannot be a Pakistani! There’s no such thing as a Pakistani Pashtun!” Or asking Pashtuns, “Do you consider yourself Afghan or Pakistani?”) is how vicious Punjabis are for mocking Pashtuns. It is true, it is very much true that Punjabis mock Pukhtuns constantly — and not just in the privacy of their homes but also in the media and on national television. But Pukhtuns mock Punjabis all the time just as badly but in more intimate spaces.
And when Pashtuns are talking about the hatred of Punjabis for us, you’re not allowed to step in and say, “Agreed – Punjabis are racist against Pashtuns, and their ‘Pathan Jokes’ need to come to an end, and they mock Pashtuns all the time. BUT it’s also true that Pashtuns, too, mock Punjabis all the time.” If you do say that, you’ll get things like what I and a few others I know get when we do this. The initiators of the discussions say what amounts to something like: “You’re a traitor for siding with the Punjabis! Pashtuns don’t mock Punjabis. We’re decent, honorable people.” Here’s the most recent example (Twitter). The bottom line of this discussion was that “No, what Pashtuns say about Punjabis isn’t mockery; we’re just joking. But what they say about us is wrong, it’s dishonorable,” etc., etc. They won’t admit that we do a lot more than just joke about Punjabis, but they’re ready to point out that Punjabis are always mocking us and that needs to stop.
Point being that if you acknowledge that Pashtuns mock Punjabis, too, and that BOTH Pashtuns and Punjabis are wrong in doing this, you’re accused of agreeing with the Punjabis, of supporting what Punjabis say about us.
Why am I writing about this? Sure, I enjoy being the devil’s advocate and I like to intentionally disagree with people because that forces me to be more educated about my opinions and the topic in question, but it also pushes the other person to be able to defend her/his opinion more strongly and to be able to respond to the opposing perspective more intelligently. Not every opinion needs to be defended, but when it’s something like the current topic in question, the opinion-holder does need to be challenged.
Now, let me give a few examples (facts) about the mutual racism, bigotry, hatred, mockery of Pashtun and Punjabis for each other.
How Punjabis Talk about Pashtuns
– “Pathan jokes” are a common thing among Punjabis and other non-Pashtuns throughout Pakistan. You can prolly google them and find many, but I won’t do that. These jokes are heard commonly in the Pakistani media, in talk shows, political discussions, and so on. The most recent of these examples is Javed Ghamedi, considered a scholar by many (most?) Pakistanis, falsely declaring that Taliban’s practice of beheading is “tribal Pashtun culture”! When those considered national “intellectuals” and “scholars” spread such falsehood and hate, you know your nation’s in trouble.
– A friend tells me that Punjabis refer to Pashtuns as “akhrot,” or brain-size walnut – meaning Pashtuns are stupid.
– Another friend tells me that he once got into an argument with an imam of Indian origin in a Chicago mosque because of the imam’s misguided message about Pashtuns as an inherently stupid and uncivilized people. The imam was giving a khutba (sermon) on how to speak to people according to their status and level, and the best example he could use to  convey his point was: “Pathans [Pashtuns] are wild and not too intelligent by nature, so you have to engage them accordingly.”  So our portrayal as a backward, uncivilized, stupid people isn’t perpetrated by Punjabis alone but by many others across South Asia. (The Arabs I’ve met in Jordan, Morocco, and Oman think highly of us, so I don’t think this is a universal presumption about us … except for what Western media has been spreading in recent decades about Afghans as a whole.)
– Throughout Pakistan, also, Pashtuns are frequently presented as abusive, controlling of their women, generally extremely violent, “backward,” obsessed with their “honor,” and so on. It’s also claimed that Pashtuns don’t want their daughters to go to school. This is undoubtedly true for a lot of Pashtun families, but only as much as it’s true for a lot of NON-Pashtun families. (I won’t be lame here and give the example of Malala Yousafzai, though – her case is too unique to be presented as an ordinary Pashtun case.) The reality, however, is that until 2009 when the Taliban banned education on girls in at least Swat, Pakistan, the northwestern province of the Pakistani Pashtuns, Khyber Pashtunkhwa, had the highest rate of females going to school. And personally, all the Pashtuns I know treat their women no better and no worse than the non-Pashtun Muslims I know do.
– In September 2012, I attended a conference that featured and welcomed some of the most prominent and emerging scholars from Pakistan or of Pakistani origin. One of the presenters was an artist who was showcasing and discussing some of her artwork. She had examples from all four provinces and I believe all the major ethnic groups in Pakistan. She had only one example of Pashtuns. Can you guess what that was? You guessed it: something about violence against women! This is the piece she showed:
Curtsey:www.orbala.wordpress.com :  February 14, 2015

This art piece is by Ayesha Durrani, a Pashtun artist from Peshawar.
The curator showed this as an example of artwork from the Pashtuns of Pakistan. The artist painted this when she witnessed (or heard about? I forget the details now) the murder of a Pashtun woman in court who wanted to divorce her husband. Her father and uncles or some other male family members murdered her to protect their honor by ensuring that she doesn’t get the divorce.
I’m not saying such tragedies and injustices against women don’t happen among Pashtuns. But the problem, besides the fact that they DO happen, is that these are used to define us. It’s juts like what the Islamophobic western world/media does to Islam and Muslims. It’s not that Muslims never practice misogyny; it’s that that’s not what defines us. And it’s that misogyny isn’t just a mark of the Pashtuns–or of Muslims at large–but of every culture, every religion, every society; it’s simply that the misogyny comes in different forms from different communities.
In other words, then, when an artist takes a story like the above of an honor-killing case among Pashtuns to present as THE artwork from the Pashtun ethnicity of Pakistan, we’ve got a problem. Honor-killing is sadly common throughout ALL of Pakistan, and when one ethnic group is singled without any qualification, it’s unfair and it’s intellectually dishonest on the “scholar’s” part.
How Pashtuns Talk about Punjabis
Pashtuns are not any nicer or more subtle about their mockery of Punjabis.
– For Pashtuns, any group of people in Pakistan who doesn’t speak Pashto or who is not Pashtun is a Punjabi. That means that all the Baloch, the Kashimiri, the Sindhis, and actual Punjabis are all Punjabis to Pashtuns. I’m not kidding – feel free to verify with any Pashtun you know. Sadly, this also means that all the non-Pashtuns, since considered Punjabis, are then hated, feared, otherized, and mocked. Let’s suppose you’re a girl and you get a proposal from a decent Punjabi family. Your parents will go, “WHAT!! No way in HELL are we ever going to stoop to the level of marrying our daughter to a Punjabi! No!” How common/uncommon Pashtun-Punjabi marriages are, I can’t say for sure, but the ones I do know came with a lot of sacrifices. At the very lest, the Pashtun family lost the respect of other Pashtuns for allowing their child to marry into a Punjabi family. But marriage is just one part of it – although I think if you really want to understand how much your community respects or disrespects another community, note their reaction to marriage within that other community. If they embrace it or at least recognize it as acceptable and fair, then all’s well; if not, then you know they have no respect for the community with whom the marriage isn’t respected. This goes for religions too.
– When the Pashtun women I know go to some gathering, one of the things they’re best at is mocking Punjabis. “Ew, those Punjabis – they’re ugly as monkeys. For us Pashtuns, the Punjabis are like the blacks of America.” (I’m quoting verbatim (translated from Pashto) from a recent conversation among a couple of Pukhtun women at my house.)
– Pashtuns use “daal-khor” to refer to Punjabis. Supposedly, Punjabis eat a lot of daal (lentil), and that’s apparently a bad thing, y’all. Even though all Pashtuns I know also eat daal like crazy, my family and relatives included. So we Pashtuns are no less daal-khora, huh. Uh-oh.
– Pashtuns mock the way Punjabis look (Punjabis are generally a little “darker” than Pashtuns, and unfortunately like the rest of the world, “dark” is considered ugly and “white/light” is considered beautiful); we mock the Punjabis’ habits, culture, traditions, and other lifestyle. When a Pashtun girl dresses in a way that doesn’t please her family/parents, they go, “What! Do we look like Punjabis to you?! We’re Pukhtuns! We don’t dress like that.” This dressing style can be anything depending on the family: showing arms (like wearing a sleeveless shirt), wearing a sarree, wearing tight clothing, not wearing a parruney, and so on. The idea is that Punjabis are indecent, be-sharam (shameless), immodest; that their women are “loose” and the men don’t care enough to control them or decide for them what to wear. You get the point.
How the Racism/Bigotry/Mockery is Different and How it’s Similar
Since I know for a fact that the hatred, mockery of each other among Pashtuns and Punjabis is entirely mutual, I should explain why Pashtuns feel more like the victims and are less willing to admit that they, too, are just as bad with their perpetration of racism.
– On the Pashtuns case, it is generally more private. The racism, the mockery takes place more inside intimate spaces like the home. On the Punjabis’ side, however, their mockery of Pashtuns is more public and we witness it on national TV. The portrayal of the Pashtun man as violent, bearded, chewing naswaar (tobacco, snuff), abusing his wife and daughters, being an extremist religious man are all common in Pakistani dramas, for example.
– Pashtuns mock Punjabis in Pashto, Punjabis mock Pashtuns in Urdu. Punjabis don’t know Pashto, but since Pakistan’s national language is Urdu, Pashtuns (and other racial minorities) have to know it and they do know it. So we come to hear and read all these “Pathan jokes” about us in addition to the despicable way we’re talked about in the media. Punjabis, however, don’t have any access to how we speak about them because they don’t know our language. And so, for example, I once went to a Pashtun gathering where a couple of Punjabi women were also invited because the hosts were close to them. One of the hostesses was passing out mithaai (sweets), and as she passed them around, one of the Punjabi women took a couple of the sweets instead of just taking one or just a tiny little piece. So the hostess makes this unpleasant, ugly face and says to the Pashtun women what would be translated as: “Dude, what the hell – these ugly, greedy people! They don’t even know how to pretend to be decent and greedily want to have all the mithais!” Um. Yeah. Because the Punjabis had no idea what was just said about them, they couldn’t react or defend themselves.
So, basically, Punjabi racism against Pashtuns is more institutional and so the Pashtuns feel it more because they have access to it. Pashtun racism against Punjabis is generally less accessible to Punjabis, so the Punjabis don’t feel it as much.
The racism, bigotry, mockery is similar in that: both sides, due to a miserable lack of understanding and knowledge about each other, they both have a false notion of how the other treats its women, for example; or because how the other practices Islam; or how the other conducts marriages and so on. We Pashtuns think the Punjabis are “loose,” indecent, immodest, don’t care about their women, are all prostitutes themselves and sell their daughters around; they think we’re controlling of our women, extremist, and sell our daughters!
But, dude, just because some of the Punjabis we see on TV are bad people or because they dress differently from how we think all women should dress, doesn’t make them less respectable than us, folks!
A Message to Pashtuns:
Stop denying that we’re just as bad as the Punjabis when it comes to hating, stereotyping, judging wrongly and unfairly, and mocking. We’re just as wrong as they are when they mock us, and we need to educate ourselves about them and learn to live in harmony for a better world.
A Message to Punjabis:
Your stereotyping Pashtuns, your mocking us, your hating us, your picking on us seriously is getting out of hand. Educate yourselves about us so you don’t remain ignorant about us and arrogant in your thinking and lifestyle. You’re no better than us – nothing about you is better than us. We’re an honorable and valuable people, and so are you. Your thinking that you’re better is getting you nowhere, and it definitely doesn’t increase your value in our eyes.
To both Punjabis and Pashtuns:
Stop hating each other, goddamnit. Hasn’t history taught you a thing? Love and respect for all is the only way towards peace!

Ranjit Singh, The fore- runner of the State of Pakistan

Ranjit Singh ruled over the present geographical area of Pakistan. His Sikh empire can be considered as the fore runner of modern Pakistan.
Ranjit Singh the Maharajah of the Sikh empire

Ranjit Singh
The Sikh maharaja Ranjit Singh ruled over the greater part of what is now Pakistan. His capital was Lahore and he consolidated his rule from Kashmir in the North to Sind in the south. He also fought a series of unrelenting wars against the Afghans and defeated them decisively. This is an important point because the Sikhs under him were the only Indian community to ever defeat the Afghans. All other communities from the Rajputs, Marathas, the South Indian states of Vijanagram et all were in the end decisively defeated by the Moslems. This is a fact of history. In such a scenario what did Ranjit Singh represent? Indians recognize his greatness, but I sometimes wonder how do Pakistanis see him now?
The Empire of Ranjit Singh

Two factors stand out in the rule of the Sikhs under Ranjit Singh. Firstly, it must be understood that the majority of his subjects were Moslems.When I say Moslems; I am referring to Punjabi Muslims only. Secondly, he was a benevolent ruler who never converted anybody to the Sikh religion. This is borne out by the fact that the overwhelming majority of the present areas of Ranjit Singh’s empire still remain Moslem. So where do we place Ranjit Singh?
One fact that cannot be denied is that India was never one cohesive nation. Even during the reign of Aurangzeb, independent kingdoms like the Mahratta kingdom under Shivaji were a reality. In fact Jinnah cited these examples of independent empires, including the one of Ranjeet Singh, in his discussions with Gandhi and Lord Mountbatten. Perhaps there is a lot of truth in his arguments.

Jinnah and Punjabi Nationalism
Jinnah was aware of Punjabi nationalism and as such he did not wish to divide Punjab.This was the background of his offer to the Sikhs to join Pakistan. Perhaps he had the rule of Ranjit Singh in mind. He is reported to have stated to Mountbatten that “A Punjabi is a Punjabi before he is a Muslim or Hindu”. This identity was given by Ranjit Singh.

However the Sikhs did not accept Jinnah’s offer and Punjab was divided. Many Pakistanis now do feel that Ranjit Singh stood for Punjabiat( Glory of Punjabis). He was not a religious fanatic and never converted anybody to Sikhism. But his subjects loved him. Once he accepted a hand crafted copy of the Koran as a gift and remarked that perhaps God gave him one eye, so that he could see all religions equally. What a great man!
Ranjit Singh and His Campaigns in the North West
Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s genius lay in the fact that he cobbled together a number of principalities to forge an independent state from Kashmir to NWFP consisting of Punjabis and Pashtu’s who professed the Moslem,Sikh and Hindu faiths. All credit to him for forging such a state. This state had its own Army and government as well as aforeign policy. Ranjit Singh laid the foundations of Punjabi nationalism also, that reared its head during the independence struggle.

Lessons of Ranjit Singh’s campaigns

One of the most poignant lessons that the present Pakistani state can learn is from the manner Ranjit Singh and his Generals waged a war against the Wahabi-led Islamist insurgency in that period led by Syed Ahmad and Shah Abdul Aziz. It will not be incorrect to state that these are the ancestors of the modern Taliban and Al Qaeda. The Wahabi had declared ‘jihad' against Ranjit Singh’s army and used the Pathans tribesmen against his state , which in any case was a Moslem majority state. Ranjit Singh and his Punjabi army crushed this earliest insurgency of the Taliban, capturing Peshawar which had been under the Afghans since the time of Mahmud Ghaznavi. It is often mentioned that the British and Russians failed in subduing the tribal area. A lot many commentators are alsoforecasting a US defeat in this region. However, Ranjit Singh proved that his Punjabi Army could decimate this insurgency. He did it with élan and the US forces must take heart from his exploits.

Ranjit Singh as the Fore runner of the Present Pakistan State
Today, the Pakistan Army is again fighting a similar battle. The antagonists are the same and the area also is the same. The purpose is to safeguard another Muslim majority state Pakistan against a “Jihad” unleashed by ultra fundamentalists. Let us hope they win this war. I would like to quote Yasser Latif Hamdanis in Pakistan defense forum. He states ‘My interest in Ranjit Singh is purely from a Pakistani angle. Just as we admire Tipu Sultan but do not become Mysore Nationalists, we don’t become Punjabi nationalists by admiring Ranjit Singh. This is however an attempt to honor one of the greatest son of this soil from whom the Pakistani nation state can learn a thing or two in state-craft . Thus it will not be incorrect to state that Ranjit Singh’s empire was the fore runner of the state of Pakistan as it exists today. Anyone seen the map of present day Pakistan and the empire of Ranjit Singh ? Are they similar ?

Meet the author

Madan G Singh
A man who spent his early years in Air Force. An avid writer with over4000 articles and 50 short stories published.Two novels on the anvil for publication.

Curtsey: http://news.wikinut.com/

Reppin Your Hood: Zabān, Pehchān and Pakistani Rap
POSTED BY HAMZAH SAIF 

This is the second article in a three part series exploring rap in Pakistan. It profiles two Pakistani rappers, a Sindhi and a Punjabi, rhyming to preserve language and reinvigorate ethnic traditions. The first essay of the series, tracing the development of contemporary Pakistani rap productions, is available here. 
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Shahzad Meer (right), who goes by Rapper Meer Janweri, with fellow Thatta artist Wahab Rocx
Thatta is a historic city in south-eastern Sindh renown for its ancient necropolis, which is among the largest in the world. Once a Sindhi cultural capital, it is now among the smaller cities of a Pakistan bifurcated into the mega-metropolises of Lahore, Karachi, Islamabad and Peshawar, and everything else. Shahzad Meer, or Rapper Meer Janweri, grew up in Thatta. His parents are from Dadu, a comparably sized Sindhi city about 300 kilometers north of Thatta. His grandfather moved from Dadu to Thattha. Shahzad’s Sindhi is accented with the twangs of Dadu the crispness of Thattai Sindhi. “Northern Sindhi,” he describes it.

Part of Thatta’s necropolis: Nizam al-Din’s Tomb with polygon pavilion (Photo Copyright UNESCO)
He responds excitedly when I ask him why he raps in Sindhi.
“I was hoping you would ask me that! When you arrive in Thatta, the ricksawallah (rickshaw driver) has an Urdu song playing, maybe a Punjabi song, maybe even an English song, but never a Sindhi song. What has happened to the rich musical tradition of Sindhi?”
Language and culture are also center-stage in a chat with Kasim Raja, a rapper from Jhelum in Punjab. Kasim’s rhymes pointedly eschew Urdu, associated with urbanity and ushered by the strongarm modernism of the state. He raps in Punjabi, Jhelum’s language of centuries of vintage.
“People don’t know their heritage,” Kasim says. “Punjabis who live in large cities such as Lahore don’t know what village they’re from. A Punjabi without a village has no value. People who forget their history can never prosper.”
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Punjabi rapper Kasim Raja (right) smoking sheehsa in his ancestral village
The arrival in Pakistan of the productions of San Francisco-based Punjabi rapper Bohemia invigorated the country’s rap movement. The rhymes had been languishing shackled to English; Bohemia introduced them to the fiery and familiar vernacular of Punjabi. The contours of Bohemia’s popularity — and the linguistic indigenization of Pakistani rap that his music sparked — were deeply dictated by the history of language politics in the country.

Bohemia The Punjabi Rapper performing at popular Pakistani TV music series, Coke Studio
Language and identity have had a torrid history in Pakistan stretching back to the formation of the nation, when Urdu was prioritized as a marker of national identity. Identified as the language of the Muslims, Urdu quickly found itself the beneficiary of the literary and intellectual largess of right-wing nationalists, who were eager to consolidate a narrative for the new ‘Muslim’ country. Other languages found themselves unwelcome in this story. The mother tongue of less than a tenth of the country, Urdu was crafted as the language of the people and was aggressively foisted on the linguistically diverse new country.
Resistance from partisans of Pakistan’s other languages was strident. For Shahzad’s province of Sindh, Sindhi linguistic nationalism emerged as a force with the creation of the country. Tensions between Urdu speaking Muhajirs (post-partition migrants from India) and the indigenous Sindhi-speaking population became increasingly hostile with the amalgamation of West Pakistan into a single administrative entity in 1951. The erasure of Sindh as a province under this “One Unit” scheme closed the space for Sindhi to be recognized and implemented by the state as a provincial language. Like other Pakistani languages, Sindhi was subordinated to Urdu, which became the Unit’s official language. This perhaps became the foundational quarrel between Sindhi and Urdu partisans.
Subsequent tensions bubbled into some of the most violent riots in Pakistani history. In 1972, after the loss of East Pakistan, and under ethnically Sindhi Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, the Sindh Legislative Assembly began to consider instituting Sindhi, alongside Urdu, as a required subject from grade 4 to grade 12 in all schools.
So ferocious was the Muhajir reaction that a July 1972 editorial in the Urdu daily Jang was headlined, “Urdu ka jinaza hai, zara dhum se nikle” (“it is Urdu’s funeral; let’s see it out with bombast”). The riots that followed were among the worst in the country’s history.
In 1983, under the dictatorship of Zia-ul Haq, whose emphasis on Islam as a national unifier privileged Urdu as a salient means to achieve this unity, Sindhi-language nationalists rioted against Urdu-language public signage in rural parts of the province. Sindhi nationalism was not confined to the rural areas, and in 1988, nationalists opened fire in Hyderabad, killing mainly Muhajirs.
Rapper Meer Janweri – Shahzad – is quick to assert he is no advocate of violence, and takes pains in his track Piyar Jo Siphai to advocate ethnic harmony, However, his rueful reflections on the absence of Sindhi from the ricksawallah’s playlist follow a trajectory of Sindhi language rejuvenation against the Urdu-ization of Pakistan by the state.

Rapper Meer Janweri (far left) with his crew
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“I look at myself, and ask, am I Sindhi? Yes, and Sindhi is my language.
Then why am I listening to Bohemia?”
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One day in 2006, a few years before Bohemia’s music became popular in Pakistan, Shahzad tuned into the radio and heard a Bohemia track. Previously unfamiliar with rap, and immediately struck by the heavy bass that is the hallmark of many Bohemia songs, Shahzad called the radio station to ask who was playing.
Quickly, Bohemia became a foundational artistic inspiration for Shahzad. Shahzad soon had Bohemia’s tracks on repeat even though he didn’t fully understand the rapper’s Punjabi. Shahzad says that it was in fact through Bohemia that he has learned a majority of his Punjabi. “Aur aap toh jante hain idhar Punjabi aur Sindhi ke taullqat idhar kaise hain” – “You are aware what Punjabi and Sindhi relations here are like,” he adds pointedly referencing tensions between the two ethnicities.
Listening to rap inspired a deep passion in Shahzad, one that needed urgent expression. In 2009, he produced his first track, a remix of a Bohemia song. Although Shahzad had no lyrics on the track, he had been penning Sindhi poems since early in his school days, publishing them in his school’s magazines. These poems soon found a place in his subsequent tracks, and transformed into the rhymes of Shahzad’s first Sindhi rap tracks.
But these rhymes weren’t just in Sindhi.
Shahzad is sensitive to the porous boundaries of languages, and to the osmosis of Urdu words into Sindhi vocabulary. His rhymes retreat into a carefully cultivated “pure” Sindhi. “Pakki sindhi – jaise kehte hain juttaan wali Punjabi,” he says – hardcore Sindhi, like Jutt Punjabi – referring to a Punjabi popularly perceived as relatively free of Urdu influences.
Shahzad’s rap attempts a resurrection not only of a distinct Sindhi language, but also a Sindhi culture. His songs aren’t just in Sindhi, he also sees them as a continuation of the long Sindhi tradition of Sufi poems. While other Pakistani rappers, prominently BillyX, rap about topics deeply taboo in Pakistani society – sex and intoxicants – Shahzad seeks to reinvigorate a more traditional subject matter. But why through rap? Why resuscitate a tradition through a medium that is foreign to it? He likens it to wearing western dress when going to school; the medium does not compromise the message.

Rapper Meer Janweri performing at a Sindhi culture celebration at a public university in Sindh
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“What language do you most like to speak?” “Sindhi,” says the Sindhi. “Pashto,” says the Pakhtoon. “Balochi,” says the Baloch. “Urdu,” says the Punjabi.
Description of the dialogue between the characters of Ahmed Farhani’s play, “Skit # 5” from Punjabi Zaban Nahi Maray Gi (The Punjabi Language Will Never Die). Published circa 1980.

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Punjabi rapper Kasim Raja
Like Shahzad, Punjabi rapper Kasim Raja aims to rejuvenate a linguistic and cultural identity through his rap. But, unlike Sindhi, Punjabi ethnic identity has arguably held a less marginal space in Pakistan. Punjabis are seen as the hegemonic ethnicity in Pakistan, and taunts of ‘Punjabistan’ are not infrequent.
Although Punjab enjoys a privileged position in Pakistan, Farani’s 1980s play introduces an important dimension. While the other ethnicities in the play identify their own language as their favorite tongue, the Punjabi says their favorite language is Urdu. Certainly, urban elite Punjabis have frequently been implicated in promoting Urdu over their own language, and the theme of having sold one’s history makes frequent recurrence in Punjabi revivalism.
The Punjabiyat movement, which had been dormant for several decades, gained new vigor in the early 1980s. The introduction and meteoric box-office rise of gore-violence films featuring the character of Maula Jat, a recognizably archetypical rural Punjabi as a protagonist gave Punjabiyat expression in popular culture. Maula Jat was hyper-masculine, of recognizably rural and “authentically Punjabi” sensibilities, and a stark divergence from the suave, urbane Urdu-speaking protagonists who had dominated the silver screen in the preceding decades. Immediately identifiably cultural artifacts of rural Punjab were mobilized: barrak, the practice of verbal dueling, and the gandasa, the traditional axe of Punjabi sugarcane harvesters featured prominently in Maula Jat’s arsenal.

Popular Maula Jat poster
Concurrent with this vitalization of rural Punjabi masculinity in popular culture was an invigoration of Punjabiyat in literary high-culture. Led by Urdu- and English-literate Punjabi elites, Punjabi language literature was intrepidly politically charged, and sought to recall in Punjabi minds historic Punjabi heroes forgotten by the state’s national narrative. Historical folk figure Raja Puran of Sialkot, Sikh anti-colonial icon Bhagat Singh, and Dulla Bhatti who resisted Mughal Emperor Akbar’s annexation attempts were prominently mobilized for a historically vigorous Punjabi identity. The reclamation of a lost selfhood became a central concern of this literature, and Urdu was stridently denounced as a cannibalizing language that had devoured Punjabi identity. This was an unacceptable departure from the neatly deconflicted official history, where all subcontinental Muslims lived in harmony. Not surprisingly, several of these publications were banned.
Kasim Raja’s rhymes resonate strongly with these themes. “I could have started rapping in Urdu, but I am not just rapping. I am rapping because the Punjabi village life appeals to me, and I want to promote the Punjabi language, and the lost Punjabi culture.”
The location of authentic Punjabiyat in the village and in historical heroes is prominently evident in Kasim’s tracks. It is no accident that his first production, Puran, is an homage to his ancestral village. “I want to highlight my village,” he says, and the desire is obvious. Other tracks such as Number 1 Pind offer such details of Puran’s history as who founded the village (Raja Pahar), and when its first official school was established (1905). Similarly, the lyrics of an upcoming track feature the Punjabi nationalist heroes of Bhagat Singh and Dhulla Bhatti.
This rediscovery of the Punjabi ethnic self in Muslim as well as non-Muslim historical figures is consonant with the greater Punjabiyat movement, which affords an inclusive identity that welcomes Indian and diasporic Punjabis. “My father used to tell me of a time when Sikhs used to live next to us as neighbors. Punjab used to be one,” says Kasim Raja, “we have one blood, we look the same, and we get up to the same antics.” He looks to his Indian counterparts as examples of Punjabis who successfully and appropriately assert their ethnicity. “Look at the Indian musicians; they work their Punjabi culture into their songs.”

“Punjab, save Punjabi language and Punjabi culture.”
A photograph promoted by Kasim Raja’s official Facebook page
This pan-Punjabiyat affords an avenue to diasporic Punjabis to influence movements back in their regions of origin. In Pakistan, diasporic Punjabis find space in Punjabi identity in ways that parallel the reception of NRIs (Non-Resident Indians) in neighboring India. The financial remittances resultant from mass Punjabi emigration are a frequent source of pride in the community. Kasim raps:
“Munde gaye saday UK, USA / Mehnat naal kamay kinne kinne paisay / Holi holi inna ne note gar vaije / Hon vade vade ghar vekho kaise kaise.”
“Our boys went to UK, USA / With hard work they stacked money / Steadily they sent notes (money) home / Now look at all these magnificent houses”
But this close linkage with the diaspora is also a source of concern for the official national narrative. As Indian rapper Yo Yo Honey Singhand Pakistani-Dutch rapper Imran Khan combine diasporic and indigenous experiences in musical productions that are consumed in both Pakistan and India, they create a Punjabi identity that renders the divisions of 1947 increasingly faded. Though examples of this are prolific, lyrics from Toronto-based Punjabi rapper Humble The Poet capture the sentiment well. Protesting the frequent identification in Canada of Punjabis with Indians, he asserts the ethnicity’s spread across the two countries. “We 100 million strong and the ‘P’ in Pakistan… Sweet chocolate skin, I’m not Indian / Four knuckles to your eye if you call me that again.”
The resonance with Kasim, who considers fraternity with all diasporic Punjabis, is obvious, and unsettles the nationalist narratives of both India and Pakistan that emphasize irreconcilable difference between Indian and Pakistani Punjabis.
As Kasim’s raps and comments turn increasingly distant from official history, I ask him about the Pakistani-Punjabi relationship. “Has Pakistan treated Punjab well? How has Punjab treated Pakistan?”
I sense him avoiding this politically charged query. “Pakistani borders are patrolled by Punjabis. But we do not assert our identity like Indian Punjabis do.” His hedged response is expected. It is typical of Punjabi cultural revivalists who, understandably, do not want to incur the wrath of the state.

Punjabi rapper Kasim Raja posing with his car
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“Just like cricket, we have made rap our own.” – Xpolymer Dar of the Islamabad-based rap crew, Rap Engineers.
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Although rap has been deeply indigenized and Pakistani rappers learn from each other, they also frequently look abroad for artistic fabric. The rhymes of diasporic South Asians  particularly find ears and emulation among Pakistani rappers.
As nations with significant South Asian immigrant populations, American and British governments are not unaware of the influence of the musical productions from their territories. They patronize rap in Pakistan, using it as an opportunity to promote positive views of their countries. They provide Pakistani artists performance venues, and introduce them to South Asian and Muslim hip-hop artists from their countries in hopes of presenting a welcoming face of their governments.
However, many Pakistani rappers hold political views that are deeply rooted in nationalist conversations that are suspicious of such Western overtures. The final article in this series explores the personal, artistic and political negotiations of Pakistani rappers who avail these furnishings.
This article is deeply indebted to Alyssa Ayres’ book, Speaking Like a State, for its discussion of language politics in Pakistan. 

About Hamzah Saif
Hamzah is an aspiring nerd. In the meantime, he authors the Pakistan column at the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, and is a frequent contributor to other progressive publications. His research interests include post-colonial theory, feminist and queer theory, Marxist theory and social justice movements in Pakistan and Afghanistan. He hopes to have a more succient sentence to express his interests in a few months.
Curtsey/source link: : http://ajammc.com/2014/05/05/reppin-your-hood/ MAY 5, 2014 ⋅

The absence in Punjabiyat’s split universe

AJAY BHARDWAJ

T
Nationalist politics and official patronage to a selective narrative of Partition have not succeeded in wiping out the memory of a composite pluralistic culture
The partition of Punjab in 1947 created a paradoxical situation that Punjabis had never experienced before: they were one people, but with two mainlands now — India and Pakistan. In that sense, Punjab ceased to exist; by and large, Punjabis took to perceiving their world through the prism of nation states and national boundaries, shaped by whichever side of the divide they found themselves in.
In the process, the self became the other. The universe of Punjabiyat — a shared way of life — was marginalised. It was replaced by perceptions of contending identities, which have found an echo in the dominant power politics of east Punjab these past 65 years. However, the idea of Punjabiyat has not been totally erased. In ways seen and unseen, it continues to inhabit the universe of the average Punjabi’s everyday life, language, culture, memories and consciousness.
LIVING PARADOXES
Born almost two decades after Partition, my first realisation of a composite Punjab, ironically, was through the presence of absences. Behind my grandparents’ house in our village Akalgarh, in district Ludhiana, is a narrow street. To this day it is called Rajputan de Gali (the street of the Rajputs). This is where the influential community of ‘Rajput Muslims,’ as they were addressed, lived before Partition. The villagers’ reference to the Maseet Wala Gurdwara (literally the mosque turned gurdwara) is yet another symbol of the once powerful presence of Muslims in Akalgarh.
Similarly, there is a pond called Taru Shah da Toba, named after a wandering fakir Taru Shah, who preferred to stay on in our village. Over the years his shrine in the old graveyard has grown in size and stature. Yet there are no Muslims in the village.
To me, these living paradoxes spoke unequivocally of the presence of an absence of Punjabi Muslims from east Punjab. It was a reminder that any imagination of Punjab which excluded Punjabi Muslims would only end up ghettoising east Punjabi society.
The last six decades have witnessed two parallel trajectories in east Punjab as a response to Partition. One trajectory is defined by a dominant mode of politics in the domain of national contestations; the other, reflecting an organic response of people in their everyday lives, emphasises local continuities.
CONTESTATIONS & CONTINUITIES
In spite of occasional expressions of bonhomie during a cross-border cricket match, offerings of prayers at each other’s holy shrines for the benefit of competing media cameras, or photo-ops centred on prisoners granted amnesty across the border, it is a fact that politics in east Punjab has always engaged with west Punjab strictly within a nationalist framework — just like India would deal with Pakistan.
Strangely, the State’s Akali leadership, which is never shy of confronting the Centre on any issue, big or small, imagines Punjab no differently. Such is the influence of national boundaries in imposing constricting visions that Punjabi Muslims and west Punjab have been rendered completely invisible in the conceptualisation of the Punjabi self by this brand of politics in east Punjab.
For instance, the complete silence over the killings of Punjabi Muslims in east Punjab during Partition could be explained away by the nation state as a “side effect” of the birth of a nation. But, equally, east Punjab’s political class has chosen to be silent on this issue of Partition, which had a totally different meaning for Punjabi Hindus and Sikhs who shared so much in common with Punjabi Muslims in terms of culture, language, traditions and spirituality.
In all these years, the same east Punjabi political class has shown little interest in articulating any expression of regret for the killings of Muslims during Partition. As for the idea of a reconciliation which would help recover the self banished as the other in 1947, that has never been part of any political agenda.
This gives rise to a significant question. If this is how the State’s political leadership has envisioned Punjab, how is it any different from the Hindutva politics of Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan? Often, the justification of this silence stems from a positioning based on playing the blame game. It is a political stance that has been used by the likes of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi to invoke Newton’s third law of motion during the killings of Muslim minorities in his State in 2002.
In the year of the Gujarat killings, the Rashtriya Sawayamsevek Sangh (RSS) held a massive function in the heart of Amritsar to honour its cadres who had actively participated in the genocide of Muslims in 1947, ostensibly to protect the Hindus and Sikhs in east Punjab. At this Shaurya Smriti Sammanfunction, (honouring the memory of valour), the RSS made an audacious attempt to appropriate iconic Punjabi revolutionaries of the anti-imperialist movement like Shaheed Udham Singh and Kartar Singh Sarabha.
The counterpoint to this trajectory is to be found at levels closer to the ground, in the responses of the Partition generation that witnessed the genocidal violence of 1947 in east Punjab. In the villages straddling the Malwa region of Punjab, people of this generation can often be heard talking about the fate of the perpetrators of the killings, the accounts disturbing in their sharp details. They never fail to describe how the perpetrators, who were from their own community, met with miserable ends. The widely shared faith of this generation in a morality based on the belief that those who commit inhuman acts, suffer in their own lifetime, that there is always a payback, carries within it a great humanist and universal message.
While shooting my documentaries in this region over a decade, rarely did I come across anyone valorising the killers of Muslims. This fast fading generation’s expressions of guilt and remorse seem to be a way of cleansing the soul, with the potential to heal the scars of a traumatic past and show the path to reconciliation.
MEMORIALISING — WHAT AND WHAT NOT
Yet there has been no acknowledgement of this articulation anywhere on a formal level in east Punjab. No memorials have been erected for the one million people who perished in 1947. At the same time, building memorials has been an unceasing political activity in the State. The pertinent ones in this context are the memorials of Wada Ghalughara, Chhota Ghalughara and the Banda Bahadur War Memorial. They are largely meant to invoke the heroic battles of the Sikhs against the Mughal state’s oppression. The point worth pondering is that these acts privilege a memory that is exclusivist, selective and sectarian, over the historical pluralist ethos of Punjab. This act of institutionalisation of memory is not very different from the manner in which Hindu nationalist forces and the RSS invoke the memory of Maharana Pratap and Chhatrapati Shivaji as saviours of Hindus from Muslim oppression.
Away from the glare of such grandstanding lies the universe of the common Punjabi. In so many villages across east Punjab, people throng the shrines of Sakhi Sarvar — Lakh Data Pir or Nigaha Pir as he is called, whose main shrine is located near Dera Ghazi Khan in Pakistan. This is a vibrant living tradition outside the domain of the dominant faiths of east Punjab that has survived Partition — and is evident in multiple spaces of shared spirituality, especially Sufi shrines.
The political class has never bothered to argue on behalf of such cross-border traditions which speak of multiple expressions of identity. It is more interested in picking and choosing elements which have the potential to harden the identity politics of Us against the Other.
THE SILENCING OF LANGUAGE
There is one more interesting dimension to this rubric and it has to do with language. Post-Partition, in west Punjab, the imposition of Urdu virtually decimated the Punjabi language; in east Punjab, Urdu became a casualty of Punjabi. I remember having an animated conversation about Urdu with four elderly men under a pilkhan tree in a village in Ludhiana some years ago. “A beautiful language, with nuances neither Hindi nor Punjabi can equal,” said one. “It’s our language, forged from Arabic and Punjabi,” said another. The third one remembered how, when Partition was announced, “all of us in Class III, studying lesson number 14 in Urdu, threw our Qua’ida in the air and said, ‘Urdu ud gaya, Urdu ud gaya’ [Urdu has flown away].” The fourth friend ruminated: “We used to think Urdu belonged to Muslims; nobody knew it was a language.”
Here, too, the dominant trajectory of politics, with a skewed sense of Punjab’s history, continues to deny the organic links between Persia and Punjab — cultural, spiritual and linguistic. It has ghettoised the Punjabi language by keeping Urdu and Persian at bay. Ironically, while people in villages celebrate Gaus Pak Pir from Baghdad, students in Punjab are denied the option of studying Persian or Urdu as a second language.
This underlines the nationalist perspective echoed by east Punjab politics; it is certainly not a Punjab perspective.
(Ajay Bhardwaj is a Delhi-based documentary filmmaker. ajayunmukt@gmail.com)
Curtsey:The Hindu:  August 15, 2012

The Fault Line Between Pashtuns and Punjabis in Pakistan

By Selig S. Harrison
To American eyes the struggle raging in Pakistan with the Taliban is about religious fanaticism. But in Pakistan it is about an explosive fusion of Islamist zeal and simmering ethnic tensions that have been exacerbated by U.S. pressures for military action against the Taliban and its al-Qaeda allies. Understanding the ethnic dimension of the conflict is the key to a successful strategy for separating the Taliban from al-Qaeda and stabilizing multiethnic Pakistan politically.
The Pakistani army is composed mostly of Punjabis. The Taliban is entirely Pashtun. For centuries, Pashtuns living in the mountainous borderlands of Pakistan and Afghanistan have fought to keep out invading Punjabi plainsmen. So sending Punjabi soldiers into Pashtun territory to fight jihadists pushes the country ever closer to an ethnically defined civil war, strengthening Pashtun sentiment for an independent "Pashtunistan" that would embrace 41 million people in big chunks of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
This is one of the main reasons the army initially favored a peace deal with a Taliban offshoot in the Swat Valley and has resisted U.S. pressure to go all out against jihadist advances into neighboring districts. While army leaders fear the long-term dangers of a Taliban link-up with Islamist forces in the heartland of Pakistan, they are more worried about what they see as the looming danger of Pashtun separatism.
Historically, the Pashtuns were politically unified before the British Raj. The Pashtun kings who founded Afghanistan ruled over 40,000 square miles of what is now Pakistan, an area containing more than half of the Pashtun population, until British forces defeated them in 1847, pushed up to the Khyber Pass and imposed a disputed boundary, the Durand Line, that Afghanistan has never accepted. Over Pashtun nationalist protests, the British gave these conquered areas to the new, Punjabi-dominated government of Pakistan created in the 1947 partition of India.
At various times since, Afghan governments have challenged Pakistan's right to rule over its Pashtun areas, alternatively pushing for an autonomous state to be created within Pakistan, an independent "Pashtunistan" or a "Greater Afghanistan" that would directly annex the lost territories.
Fears of Pashtunistan led Pakistan to support jihadist surrogates in the Afghan resistance during the Soviet occupation in the 1980s and, later, to build up the Taliban. Ironically, during its rule in Kabul the Taliban refused to endorse the Durand Line despite pressure from Islamabad. Afghan President Hamid Karzai has also resisted, calling it "a line of hatred that raised a wall between the two brothers."
The British got the most rebellious Pashtun tribes to acquiesce to their rule only by giving them formal autonomous status in their own "Federally Administered Tribal Areas" (FATA). This autonomy was respected by successive Pakistani governments until the Bush administration pressured former president Pervez Musharraf into sending his army into those areas in 2002, displacing 50,000 people. Since then, Predator strikes have killed more than 700 Pashtun civilians.
So how should the Obama administration proceed?
Militarily, the United States should lower its profile by ending airstrikes. By arousing a Pashtun sense of victimization at the hands of outside forces, the conduct of the "war on terror" in FATA, where al-Qaeda is based, has strengthened the jihadist groups the U.S. seeks to defeat.
Politically, U.S. policy should be revised to demonstrate that America supports the Pashtun desire for a stronger position in relation to the Punjabi-dominated government in Islamabad.
The Pashtuns in FATA treasure their long-standing autonomy and do not like to be ruled by Islamabad. As a March 13 International Crisis Group report recognized, what they want is integration into the Pashtun Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP).
The United States should support Pashtun demands to merge the NWFP and FATA, followed by the consolidation of those areas and Pashtun enclaves in Baluchistan and the Punjab into a single unified "Pashtunkhwa" province that enjoys the autonomy envisaged in the inoperative 1973 Pakistan constitution.
In the meantime, instead of permitting Islamabad to administer the huge sums of U.S. aid going into FATA, the Obama administration should condition the aid's continuance on most of it being dispensed in conjunction with the NWFP provincial government.
Al-Qaeda and its "foreign fighters," who are mostly Arab, depend on local support from the Taliban for their FATA sanctuary. Unlike al-Qaeda, with its global terrorist agenda, most of the Taliban factions focus on local objectives in Afghanistan and FATA; they do not pose a direct threat to the United States. U.S. policy should therefore welcome any new peace initiatives by the secular Pashtun leaders of the Awami National Party, now ruling the NWFP, designed to separate Taliban and Taliban-allied Islamist factions from al-Qaeda. As in Swat, military force should be a last resort.
In the conventional wisdom, either Islamist or Pashtun identity will eventually triumph, but it is equally plausible that the result could be what Pakistani ambassador to Washington Husain Haqqani has called an "Islamic Pashtunistan." On March 1, 2007, Haqqani's Pashtun predecessor as ambassador, the retired Maj. Gen. Mahmud Ali Durrani, said at a seminar at the Pakistan Embassy, "I hope the Taliban and Pashtun nationalism don't merge. If that happens, we've had it, and we're on the verge of that."
Selig S. Harrison is the author of the report "Pakistan: The State of the Union," based on a six-month study of ethnic tensions in Pakistan issued last week by the Center for International Policy. A former Post bureau chief in South Asia, he has written five books on the region.

Curtsey:Washintgom Post,  Monday, May 11, 2009
Source link:    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/10/AR2009051001959.html

The Khalistan Movement in Punjab

Widespread Sikh demands for an independent state rather than just greater autonomy under a reformed federalist India are a relatively new phenomenon. The actions of the central state have been key to the shift from communal self-awareness and religious revival, to linguistic ethnonationalism, to secessionism.
The commitment of the Indian state upon independence to forging state borders around linguistic groups encouraged pursuit of a state for Punjabi-speakers, a goal ultimately realized only in 1966. A combination of economic forces (particularly the frustration of those disadvantaged by the ‘green revolution’), unmet demands for greater devolution of power from the central to the state government, and religious revivalism among Sikhs, compounded by a series of harsh crackdowns by the central state and mounting antagonism between Sikhs and Hindus, led to demands for a sovereign Sikh state of Khalistan by the 1980s. These demands were articulated perhaps even more stridently abroad, among the Sikh diaspora, than in India. However, by the mid-1990s, Sikh militancy had tapered off and politics had begun to normalize anew.
Orientation
India is home to approximately 16 million Sikhs. Sikhs constitute a majority in the Punjab (61 percent, with most of the rest Hindu), but just under 2 percent of India’s total population. What is now referred to as Punjab has shrunk in size since independence in 1947, not least since India lost almost 66 percent of the state to Pakistan at partition. In the colonial period, Sikhs constituted only 14 percent of Punjab’s population. Punjab today consists of 5,033,000 hectares and has a population of just over 20 million (70 percent rural, 30 percent urban) (Deol 2000). Rural Sikhs have been concentrated since partition in the eastern third of the previous region, where they have sustained intensive and reasonably productive agriculture. Its economy based on agriculture, Punjab is a prosperous state and represents the “granary” of India. The region is the birthplace of Sikhism and home to numerous historic Sikh shrines. Punjab has strategic significance since the region borders Pakistan and Kashmir.
The Punjab region was under Hindu rule for centuries, then under Islamic dominance for five hundred years. Maharaja Ranjit Singh (1779-1839) then established a short-lived Sikh empire. Sikh political power collapsed on 29 March 1849, when the British conquered Punjab after two Anglo-Sikh wars. During the colonial era, the population of Punjab was plural, with a Muslim majority in the west, a Hindu majority in the east, and Sikhs prevalent in the center. Under colonial rule, Punjabis were favorite military recruits and Sikhs were heavily over-represented in the armed forces (comprising around one-third of the force by World War I). Both Muslim and Sikh peasants benefited from a network of canals developed in western Punjab, and Punjabi peasants in particular enjoyed a protective patron-client relationship with British administrators (Tatla 1999:16).
Independence in 1947 and the partition of Pakistan from India brought a massive reorganization of Punjab’s territorial boundaries. Nine years later, Patiala as well as Punjab and East Punjab States Union (PEPSU) were incorporated into Punjab. These borders shifted again in September 1966, with the Punjab State Reorganization Bill. The southern, Hindi-speaking plain districts formed the new state of Haryana; the northern, Hindi-speaking hill districts merged with neighboring Himachal Pradesh; and the remaining Punjabi-speaking areas formed the new state of Punjab. Those who invoke Khalistan as a Sikh homeland tend not to be specific about to which incarnation of Punjab they refer (Oberoi 1987:30).
Sikhs differ in religion, but not in language, from other ethnic groups in northern India. However, even the Punjabi language is now closely identified with Sikhs, as wider use of Punjabi has declined since the spread of schools and colleges under colonial rule. The community has “succeeded in acquiring a high degree of internal social and political cohesion and subjective self-awareness,” as well as political significance within the Indian state (Deol 2000:2). Sikhs have no history of antagonism with Hindus (and Sikhism originally derived from Hinduism in the late medieval period); relations with Muslims have been less placid. Sikhs were generally loyal in a political sense toward India until 1984, despite their strong sense of constituting a separate community with its own history, language, religion, and territory. This duality became generally problematic only after the central government attacked the Golden Temple in Amritsar, Sikhs’ holiest shrine, in June 1984 (Tatla 1999:11).
History of the Khalistan Movement
Precolonial and colonial period
Sikhs trace their ancestry to ten gurus. The first was Nanak (1469-1539); the last was Gobind, who founded the Khalsa Panth (Society of the Pure, marked by its dress code and initiation ritual) at the turn of the eighteenth century. The value system of Khalsa is egalitarian, with collective and spiritual authority vested in the holy book, Guru Granth (compiled by another of the ten gurus, Arjan). Sikh identity is based more on history, myths, and Punjab-based memories than on an abstract creed. The religious tradition of the Khalsa Panth, “subsumes social, cultural, political and territorial identities” (Tatla 1999:14). Most Sikhs came from the lower social classes of the Punjabi Jat peasantry. The significant factors in Sikh identity include allegiance to the ten gurus and identification with their teachings, the foundation of congregations and pilgrim centers, the convention of a communal meal, and the Guru Granth. The most visible markers of Sikh identity are the “five Ks,” the external symbols declared by Guru Gobind: unshorn hair, a comb, a steel bracelet, short breeches, and a sword. In addition, the suffix Singh (“Lion”) has been common especially among Sikh men since the eighteenth century and the Golden Temple at Amritsar has been the foremost center of Sikh pilgrimage since the same era. Territory has not been key to Sikh identity until recently, though it first became an issue at the time of independence, when the British showed a willingness to let Hindus and Muslims divide up Punjab and granted statehood along religious lines.
By the late nineteenth century, both Hindus and Sikhs elites had embarked upon competing religious revivals, making communal lines sharper and more antagonistic. The Arya Samaj (Aryan Society) movement developed among urban Hindus in northern India and the Singh Sabha movement (1870-1919) among Sikhs. The former was not overtly political – focusing largely on linking Hindu religious values with modern life – but it spread anti-Sikh propaganda in the late 1880s and later formed the basis for radical Hindu parties like the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The Singh Sabha (the most important of a series of similar groups) focused on weeding out remnants of Hinduism from Sikhism. Young, educated Sikhs found themselves disillusioned with the Arya Samaj (which at first had seemed compatible with Sikhism) and wanted to re-evaluate Sikh identity. The movement took up issues such as mass education, reform of social customs, women’s rights, economic development, and theology, including through the establishment of educational institutions and newspapers. Despite differences of opinion about specific issues among Sikh reformers, their main thrust “was about clear demarcation of Sikh communal boundaries and the defence of the Sikh religion from attacks by other religions” (Deol 2000: 73). The question of Sikh identity had become a controversial legal and public issue by 1880s, especially in light of challenges to the Sikh faith by the Arya Samaj. In the meantime, new, vernacular print media (for instance, using the Gumukhi script in Punjabi printing presses) further elaborated group consciousness and ethnic boundaries.
Part of the aim of Sikh reformists was to retain control of religious practices and institutions. The Akali Dal formed in 1914 to take over control of Sikh shrines. Since the 1920s, the Akali Dal has presented itself as sole representative of the Khalsa Panth, arguing that the religious and political interests of Sikhs are inseparable, that one’s identity as Sikh transcends all other identities, and that Sikhs’ loyalty to the central state must be contingent upon the state’s recognition of the community as a collective group with historic “theopolitical status.”
A period of nonviolent noncooperation against colonial authorities by Sikhs peaked with the Jallianwallah Bagh massacre of 13 April 1919, when troops opened fire on a peaceful gathering. The incident prompted a restructuring of the management of the Golden Temple. Tensions between Akali activists seeking control of Sikh shrines and local government resulted in recurring conflicts and culminated in a massacre at the Nankana shrine. These struggles put strains on the generally amicable Anglo-Sikh relationship and helped consolidate the relationship between Akalis and Indian nationalists. Concerned with the escalating controversy over control of Sikh shrines, the colonial government instituted the Sikh Gurudwaras and Shrines Act of 1925, which conceded management and control of all Sikh religious institutions to the community.
The government handed over management of Sikh gurdwaras (temples) and shrines to the Akalicontrolled Shiromani Gurudwara Prabahandak Committee (SGPC), formed in December 1920 by orthodox Sikhs. The SGPC holds regular elections which are almost always won by the Akali Dal. The SGPC controls significant material, institutional, human, and moral resources. Akalis’ ties with the politically-important SGPC has allowed them to help shape Sikh identity through intermediate institutions, historic shrines, schools, and missions, including the promulgation of Sikh heroes, honorifics, holidays, symbols, and so forth rather than Indian “national” ones. The Akali Dal thus emerged as an important political party with the 1925 act (Tatla 1999:30-4; Telford 1992:973-4).
Like the Akali Dal, the SGPC has tried to represent itself as working for all Punjabis rather than just Sikhs (i.e., it has assumed a more political than just religious stance). Shared language, traditions, and culture have resulted in strong bonds between Sikhs and a large number Punjabi Hindus despite communalism. After the 1925 act, however, “The primary political objective of the Akali Dal was to safeguard Sikh religious liberty by maintaining and promoting separately the political existence of the Sikhs and securing greater political leverage for Sikhs” (Deol 2000:82). As a dispersed group and permanent minority in Punjab, and one with strong historical, cultural, and even religious ties with Hindus, the Sikhs did not demand a separate state initially, but focused on questions of representation. Separate electorates for Sikhs were granted in 1921. The Akali Dal also urged Sikhs to participate in the nationalist campaign.
Nationalist fervor was never predominant in Punjab, despite some revolutionary groups, mostly because of preferential British policies and the fact that the consociational Unionist Party of Sikh, Muslim, and Hindu rural leaders formed the local government. This phase was undermined by Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s assertion of the aim to create a separate Muslim state. Sikhs were caught between Muslims’ vision of an Islamic state and the Congress Party’s Hindu-dominated India. Sikhs demanded an Azad Punjab (Free Punjab), not as a separate Sikh state, but as province in which no single community could dominate; the population would be 40 percent each Hindu and Muslim and 20 percent Sikh. The British deemed such a state impractical and Indian leaders rejected the plan. Then, in March 1946, declaring Sikhs a nation, the Akali Dal adopted a resolution calling for a Sikh state to protect Sikh economic, religious, and cultural rights. Akali leaders gave up these demands only upon promises from Congress leaders that Sikhs would have special status in independent India (Tatla 1999: 18-20; Deol 2000: 82-3). Partition and the internal migration it sparked (there had been approximately two million Sikhs on each side of the new border) left the Sikhs concentrated in a more compact geographical area rather than a small, dispersed minority. As such, Sikhs could better protect their language, culture, and religious traditions. Partition ultimately changed the Sikh claim on the Punjab as homeland and holyland from an “imaginative vision into a realistic project” (Tatla 1999:22). The Akali Dal continued to press for a unified Punjabi-speaking state after independence.
Upon independence, India adopted a unitary constitutional structure. The Congress Party government scrapped the colonial system of weighting representation for minorities and reservation of seats, except for scheduled tribes and castes, and ruled out the principle of selfdetermination for regions and nationalities for fear of territorial disintegration. It was the language issue that most endangered Indian unity at the time of independence. The controversy was primarily between Hindu and Urdu, with Gandhi’s suggestion of Hindustani as the national language narrowly defeated in a 1946 vote. To resolve the linguistic issue, all major regional languages were granted status in India’s constitution. However, Hindi, the language of the north Indian Hindu majority, is India’s official language, with English coexisting for official purposes. Moreover, a massive reorganization of states in the 1950s-60s aligned territorial boundaries with linguistic ones. Punjabi, Sindhi, and Urdu were the only three major languages not considered for statehood in this reorganization. This omission spurred the Akali Dal’s first major agitational movement, which began in August 1950.
Sikh nationalism in the postcolonial period
The Sikhs changed from a religious congregation in the sixteenth century, to an ethnic community in the eighteenth century, to a nation in the late twentieth century. Even in the 1960s, the Akalis were fighting for a culturally congruent region; they only extended their claim to statehood in the 1980s. The evolution of the Sikh community and the fact that the demand for a separate Sikh state has only recently come to be articulated is traceable to economic factors (especially the green revolution and the dislocation or alienation of the peasantry that has accompanied the commercialization of agriculture); tensions in Indian federal-state relations with increasing centralization of power and the Congress Party’s manipulation of regional elites to build up its electoral base; changes in social communications (the spread of literacy, development of a vernacular press, and addition of language to the otherwise religious symbols bonding the community); and the religious ideals of Sikh community (particularly the emphasis on being a community of warriors and martyrs) (Deol 2000; Tatla 1999). As Tatla explains, “Sikh ethnic conflict should be viewed as a ‘nationalist project’ thrown up by the modernization of a traditional Sikh society in contact and in conflict with certain imperatives of hegemonic features of Indian state nationalism” (Tatla 1999:13).
The radical changes entailed by the green revolution have been critical to the development of the Khalistan movement. Small farmers have been marginalized, alienated, and dislocated. The government combated shortages in particular areas by preventing the free sale of agricultural products; pricing issues and rising costs for agricultural inputs (including fertilizers, electricity, and river water) have reduced the margins for wheat and rice production, squeezing small farmers’ profits in particular. Official repression has propelled aggrieved peasants into armed struggle on ethno-regional lines. Educated youths, particularly from families of small-scale farmers, find their chances of employment limited by the lack of a significant industrial base in Punjab to take the place of agricultural work as well as by the migration of cheap labor from other provinces. Uneven development has also aggravated environmental disorders. Moreover, wealthier farmers want better terms of trade from the central government. Akalis have identified the central government, dominated by the Hindu bourgeoisie, as the culprit to give a target to these grievances.
The nature of the Indian state and the direction of Indian nationalism are also critical to the evolution of the contemporary Khalistan movement. Part of the conflict represents a constitutional crisis, which intensified upon the election of Indira Gandhi in 1971. Central government and state elites held differing attitudes toward economic development and agriculture, reflected, for instance, in the history of the Land Reform Act and in “conceptions of the overarching governmental and legal structure within which these problems ought to be solved” (Leaf 1985:480). Given prevailing taxation policies, the central government has a bias toward industrialization and commercial growth, or urban development, while state governments are more oriented toward agriculture. Indira Gandhi’s government sought to strengthen the central government vis-à-vis the states’, especially in terms of economic development strategies (while Punjab and most other states preferred decentralization), making these conflicts more intense (Leaf 1985). Conflicts over control of resources have played out notably with regard to river water. With the separation of Punjab and Haryana, Punjab felt it was paying the costs for canals without gaining benefits in return and that Haryana lacked rights to the rivers in question, especially at times of shortfalls in water supply and hydroelectric power generation.
Moreover, issues of religious authority and orthodoxy have arisen with modernization, rising prosperity, urbanization, and the commercialization of rural society, especially since the Akalis have made pragmatic alliances with Hindu political parties. As more orthodox groups came to challenge the Akalis, Congress exploited these divisions – and religion remains the dominant social bond among Sikhs, despite the institutions of the modern Indian nation-state. The central government offered at least token support to the Nirankari sect of Sikhs, who clashed violently in 1978 with Sikhs led by Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, for instance, and an Indian Airlines aircraft was hijacked in 1980 to protest the arrest of Bhindranwale in connection with the vigorously-pursued investigation of the murder of the head of the Nirankali movement. Questions of control over religious institutions have also been involved, as represented in the Sikh demand for an all-India Gurudwara Act rather than leaving control of Sikh shrines in the hands of state-level temple management committees or in the refusal of the central government (which holds a monopoly on broadcast rights) to grant a radio license for the Akalis to broadcast Sikh ceremonies from the Golden Temple. In addition, the Hindu resurgence today equates being Hindu with being Indian. Such a stance is considered exclusionary by non-Hindus, since “it equates assertions of the separateness of their religious traditions with treason” (Mahmood 1996: 244). Rising literacy rates and the availability of oral forms of communication (for instance, cassettes were key in the rise of the charismatic Bhindranwale) have furthered these processes. On the other hand, the movement has been slowed down by the strong institutional linkages between the traditional, bourgeois Sikh leadership and existing political and economic structures, as well as by the organizational weakness of Sikh guerilla groups (Tatla 1999; Deol 2000).
All along, practical and electoral considerations tempered Punjabi Sikhs’ drive for independence, such that no major Sikh leader (even Bhindranwale) demanded outright independence. Combining religious fervor and political realism, he Akali Dal’s usual strategy has been to share power at the provincial level and to promote Punjabi nationalism by offering to form a coalition government with Punjabi Hindus (Tatla 1999:30-34; Kohli 1997:336). As Indira Gandhi and the Congress Party tried harder through the 1970s to divide Sikh voters and consolidate the party’s grip on Punjab state politics, the Akali Dal had to up the ante by demanding greater control over Sikh affairs and edging closer to demanding a sovereign state (Kohli 1997:336).
• 1950s – 1970s
Language became a symbol of group identity for Sikhs and central organizing issue for the Akali Dal. The party argued for the creation of a Punjabi-speaking state, presented as a linguistic issue. Deol claims, “However, the fundamental issue was not so much a linguistic one as a question of the rights and claims of a minority community. .... Thus, the language controversy became a symptom of a deeper quest for recognition and power by a minority community in a multi-ethnic state. … The main driving force of the Punjabi suba [state] movement was that the Sikh leadership saw a separate political status for the Sikhs as being essential for preserving an independent Sikh entity” (Deol 2000: 94, 98). At the time, Sikhs comprised 35 percent and Hindus 61 percent of Punjab’s population, leaving Sikhs worried about their survival as a separate entity and their political leverage. The aggressive campaigns of the Arya Samaj in favor of Hindi and against Punjabi among Hindus in Punjab exacerbated the situation.
In 1952, with India’s first general elections, the Akali Dal issued a memorandum pressing for the establishment of a culturally congruent Punjabi-speaking suba. Since the drive for a Punjabi state was articulated largely through Sikh religious organizations, religious motivations were important. However, the basis of the state was supposed to be linguistic. The States Reorganization Commission (formed in 1953) rejected the memorandum because it did not recognize Punjabi as significantly different from Hindi and because the movement lacked the general support of people in the region. Sikhs were more upset by the former justification – the rejection of a separate status for the language – than of their demand for a state (Deol 2000:95).
The rejection of Akali demands prompted the party to launch the Punjabi Suba Slogan Agitation of 1955. The campaign used political demonstrations and nonviolent tactics. 26,000 Sikhs were arrested in these campaigns (Deol 2000:96). After a series of compromises with the central government in 1960-61, including the merger of the heavily-Sikh PEPSU into Punjab, and a change of party leadership (from Master Tara Singh to Sant Fateh Singh) in 1962, the Akali Dal launched its second campaign for a Punjabi-speaking state. The latter campaign shifted from a demand for a state with a 56 percent Sikh majority to a secular demand for a Punjab based on language and culture, without regard for the population percentage of Sikhs. This secular strategy was to placate the Indian government, which remained suspicious of religious demands after partition. Nonetheless, in 1965, the party adopted a resolution calling Punjab the homeland of Sikhs and India their motherland (Telford 1992:970).
The central government eventually agreed to the reorganization of Punjab in 1966, after the death of Prime Minister Jawarhalal Nehru, who had consistently rejected the Akalis’ demand as communal. The reorganization created a Punjabi suba in reward for Sikhs’ efforts in the Indo- Pakistan War that had broken out the previous year. With the September 1966 Punjab State Reorgnization Bill, for the first time, Sikhs formed the majority of the population of Punjab (54 percent Sikh and 44 percent Hindu). The Hindi-speaking south broke off to form the state of Haryana, and the Hindi-speaking northern region merged with neighboring Himachal Pradesh.
The Akali Dal insisted upon the need for Sikh political unity if the religion were to survive (Deol 2000: 98). Nonetheless, in the 1960s and 1970s, the Akali Dal could not form a government on its own (though it formed coalition governments from 1967 onward) as its electoral base was too narrow. Sikhs were divided among the Akali Dal, Congress, and small communist parties due to caste and other cleavages. So for example, in 1977, the Akali Dal formed a coalition government with the Janata Party. The Akalis had to present themselves as comparatively moderate and secular, since too nationalistic a stance would bring down their government in Punjab, and because they could not too aggressively attack a central government also dominated by the Janata Party (Telford 1992:971-3). Moreover, between 1967 and 1980, as the Congress-led central government “changed decisively from the Nehruvian policy of accommodation to an active manipulation of provincial governments,” three Akali coalition governments were dismissed by the center, even as the Akali Dal sought more concessions for provincial powers (Tatla 1999:22-24). For instance, Emergency Rule was instituted for nineteen months beginning in June 1975 in consequence of legal challenges to Indira Gandhi’s reelection in 1971 – although the imposition was justified as being to halt corruption and cope with economic problems. Some measures under emergency rule were beneficial and helped to combat political corruption but other policies were less benign, such as an attempt at mass sterilization. The vulnerable position of party moderates gave space for more nationalistic Akalis. Tatla explains, “Akali leaders’ changing perception, from religious nationalism to ‘Punjab nationalism’, was as much to do with changes of leadership from urbanite Sikhs as with socioeconomic changes in the Punjab.” This was particularly the case when combined with the incorporation of more Sikhs from the lower classes or economic sectors, which “demanded a more liberal vision than a traditional religious nationalism” (Tatla 1999:24-25).
The Anandpur Sahib Resolution drafted in October 1973 showed the shift among Akalis as the party tried to appease its Sikh constituency and appeal to Sikh nationalists. The resolution outlines the guiding policies and programs of the Akali Dal. The core political demand of the resolution is “to preserve and keep alive the concept of distinct and independent identity of the Panth and to create an environment in which national sentiments and aspirations of the Sikh Panth will find full expression, satisfaction and growth” (quoted in Tatla 1999:27). The document offers seven key objectives to reach this political goal:• transfer of the federally-administered city of Chandigarh to Punjab rather than leaving it shared with Haryana; • readjustment of the boundaries of Punjab to incorporate certain Sikh-populated, Punjabi-speaking areas contiguous to the state; • provision of a measure of provincial autonomy for all Indian states vis-à-vis the center; • land reform (so as to benefit the weaker in the population), nationalization of key industries, and central government investment in establishing heavy industry in Punjab; • promulgation of an all-India gurudwara act to bring all Sikh shrines and temples under the control of the SGPC; • protection for Sikh minorities outside Punjab; and • non-reduction of the recruitment quota for Sikhs in the armed forces.
Although controversial, the Anandpur Sahib Resolution was endorsed by a significant number of Sikh intelligentsia, servicemen, and politicians. The Akali Dal denied that the resolution envisaged autonomous Sikh state of Khalistan, but just a system under which Sikhs could live without interference in their religious way of life (Deol 2000: 101-2). The Resolution’s demands were actively pursued, however, only as Hindu-Sikh and center-Punjab relations deteriorated in the early 1980s.
• 1980s – 1990s
Faced with declining provincial power under the centralizing government of Indira Gandhi, Akalis mobilized the Sikh peasantry in a major campaign for Punjab’s autonomy in 1980. The initiative centered around a combination of economic, cultural, constitutional, and religious demands. Between August 1980 and September 1981, the Akali Dal held seven peaceful agitations. The party decided in February 1981 to strive for the implementation of the Anandpur Sahib Resolution. The resultant Dharam Yudh Morcha (Righteous Struggle) of 1981-84 presented four key demands: recasting the Indian constitution to increase states’ autonomy, the return of Chandigarh to Punjab, state control over river waters, and an all-India gurudwaras act. “However, its major concern was a radical renegotiation of powers for the centre and the states, and an explicit recognition of India as a multinational state” (Tatla 1999:27). In September 1981, as the SGPC adopted the slogan, “Sikhs are a nation,” the Akalis submitted a list of forty-five demands to the central government. The demands reflected the Anandpur Sahib Resolution’s core objectives along with two new ones: halting the reallocation of river water from Punjab to non-riparian states and a reduction in government control over hydroelectric installations; and recognition of Sikh personal law. These demands were reduced to fifteen as negotiations began in late 1981.
The Akali Dal’s adoption of more narrow demands like the constitutional recognition of Sikhs as separate “nation” and declaration of Amritsar as a “holy city” followed the raising of the Khalistan slogan by non-Akali Sikhs in 1981 and a sudden decline in Sikh-Hindu relations after the murder of Punjabi Hindu press baron Lala Jagat Narain in 1981 (discussed below). The mainstream Akali leadership still preferred negotiation to confrontation, if only to retain the support of key Sikh industrialists, businessmen, professionals, and landowners who could not afford to cut themselves adrift from India through attachment to a regional separatist movement, but was not entirely “moderate” given the more radically separatist preferences of some factions in the party and the persistence of confrontation between the Akali Dal and the Indian state (Major 1987:46-48).
The central government responded to the rising Sikh movement with a campaign of manipulation and repression, justifying their actions in terms of saving India from dissolution. Moreover, Congress wanted to break up the Akali Dal because of its success as an opposition party and alliance with the Janata Party upon Congress’s defeat in 1977, to end Akali domination of the SGPC, to end Akali domination of SGPC, and because the Akali Dal was opposed to the extension of police power (Deol 2000: 103-4). The Congress Party took steps to foment disunity among Sikhs and took punitive and repressive measures against movement leaders, affecting – and radicalizing – Sikhs as a community in the process. The key such instance was the attack on the Golden Temple in 1984. This strike was seen by Sikhs in Punjab and elsewhere as sacrilegious and as an attack on their community’s dignity and integrity. It shifted many Sikhs’ loyalty toward Punjab and strengthened Sikhs’ feelings of collective identity and fate (Tatla 1999:28).
One of the ways the central government sought to capitalize upon rifts within the Sikh community was by supporting dissenting voices. Most prominent among these was Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, the leader of an orthodox sect, whom Congress leaders supported as counterweight to the Akali Dal starting in 1979. However, Bhindranwale soon became an outspoken critic of Congress. Though he probably accepted some financial support from Congress in the 1979 SGPC elections, Bhindranwale exploited first Congress, then the Akali Dal, in his effort to overcome the hegemony of the Akali Dal. He aimed to rejuvenate Sikhism, promoting orthodoxy and austere living, and to establish himself as a leader of the Sikh panth. He came to the fore especially for his attacks against the Congress-linked Nirankaris, who had already been declared enemies of the panth in 1973 by priests of Golden Temple because of doctrinal differences. In 1978, Bhindranwale precipitated a violent confrontation with the Nirankaris. After he gave a stirring sermon at the Golden Temple, his followers marched out and clashed with a Nirankari procession in Amritsar. This incident marked the beginning of the radicalization of Sikh politics. Within three years, Bhindranwale had become one of the most popular Sikh leaders in Punjab (Telford 1992:974-6; Deol 2000:104).
Bhindranwale developed a mass base among the emerging underclass of educated Jat Sikh youths, mostly from Amritsar and Gurdaspur, produced by the green revolution. He allied with the All-India Sikh Students’ Federation (AISSF), a group which drew most of its support from poorer to middle-income Sikhs (not all of them students). The Akali Dal, in contrast, was comprised mostly of more middle class and urban or prosperous farmers, primarily from the Malwa region. While Punjab was wealthy overall, the benefits of the green revolution were spread unevenly. In addition, at the time of partition, Pakistan inherited the core industrial sector of the Punjab region and there had been little industrial development in the state since then. Most militants were youths from farming families in areas that did less well, such as the Majha region, suggesting a regional and class dimension to the conflict (Telford 1992:969-81). The AISSF had been formed in 1943 by the Akali Dal to bring the Sikh intelligentsia closer to the party. The organization was intimately involved with Akali politics, fighting for an independent Sikh state at partition, then for a Punjabi suba. The AISSF has always been on the militant end of the Akali spectrum. However, the AISSF was in disarray by the early 1970s. The AISSF became hugely popular when under the presidency of Amrik Singh (as of July 1978) and with the help of Bhindranwale, it started touting the ‘repression’ and ‘victimization’ of Sikhs. The AISSF echoed Bhindranwale’s ambiguous stance on Khalistan (neither for nor against secession). By May 1981, the group had nearly 300,000 members and links with important militant Sikh groups in Punjab and outside India, despite being banned. The AISSF was mostly concerned with insults to the Panth and questions of Sikh identity (Major 1987:49-51). The revival of the AISSF and popularity of Bhindranwale put pressure on the Akali Dal (Telford 1992: 982-5).
As of the early 1980s, the vernacular press in the Punjab was active from both sides in fomenting the religious divide between Hindus and Sikhs. The assassination of newspaper mogul and Arya Samaj leader Lala Jagat Narain in September 1981 sparked off incidents of mob violence. The government charged Bhindranwale with the assassination. Meanwhile, acts such as arson by the police drew sympathy from a broad array of Sikhs (Deol 2000: 104-5). Under Sant Harchand Singh Longowal, the Akali Dal formed an uneasy, mutually exploitative coalition with Bhindranwale and launched a campaign of demonstrations and passive resistance against the central government in August 1982. 30,000 male and female volunteers were arrested in two and a half months, though the government eventually released all of them as a conciliatory gesture. In late 1982, the Akali Dal announced that it would hold peaceful demonstrations in Delhi during the Asian Games. Government harassment to prevent their doing so (including against prominent ex-servicemen) further antagonized Sikhs (Deol 2000: 106). Despite the resumption of negotiations, no settlement was found, not least because of divisions among Sikhs supportive of the more hardline Bhindranwale or the more moderate and ready-to-compromise Akali leadership (Deol 2000:105). The violence escalated in Punjab, with bank bombings, railroad station burnings, the killing of politicians, the desecration of religious places, and more. Bhindranwale was generally considered to be the main organizer of a terrorist campaign that caused the random killing of several hundred Hindus. After an attack on a bus carrying Hindu passengers, fearing mass unrest, the Indian government dissolved the Punjab legislative assembly in October 1983, placing the state under President’s Rule (central government control). However, the violence and agitation continued (Deol 2000:106).
The Akali Dal launched a mass non-cooperation campaign in June 1984, preventing the movement of food grain out of Punjab and stopping payment of land revenues and water rates to the government. In response, the government sealed Punjab’s borders and imposed censorship; set a curfew at Amritsar; and cordoned off the Golden Temple at the time of the anniversary of the martyrdom of its founder, Guru Arjun, when an estimated 10,000 pilgrims were there. Bhindranwale, who had made himself a target for retribution, had set up his headquarters in the Golden Temple. In doing so, he effectively dared the authorities to violate the temple to capture him.
On 4 June 1984, in an operation codenamed Bluestar, 2,000 army troops moved in to arrest Akali leaders inside the temple. This action incited thousands of Sikh peasants to converge upon Amritsar. The military dispersed the crowds and launched a full-scale attack on the Temple, taking control of it. In the process, an estimated 5,000 civilians, including Bhindranwale, and 700 officers were killed.1 The army also attacked forty other gurudwaras where Sikh activists were allegedly hiding. The temple sustained substantial damage in the attack, including to manuscripts and other artifacts. In the wake of the attack, “The entire Sikh community was outraged, not so much by the death of Bhindranwale but by the all-out assault on their premier shrine by the Indian army” (Deol 2000:108). A number of Sikh troops deserted the military and tried to march toward Amritsar, several Sikhs resigned from Parliament or other government posts, and Sikh intellectuals returned government-given honors in protest. The government rebuilt the shrine, but their doing so was popularly seen as the government’s again taking control and attempting to humiliate the Sikhs.
In the following months, the government conducted Operation Woodrose, arresting and sometimes torturing or killing thousands of Sikhs, including all prominent Akali leaders, and instituting ordinances for detention without trial, extraordinary rules for evidence, and so on. Most of the AISSF’s rank and file went underground, though a number of leaders were arrested or killed. Also, a large number rural Sikh youths crossed the border into Pakistan. The state was sealed off with additional troops, martial law was declared, complete press censorship was established, and the Golden Temple was occupied militarily. Leaf suggests that this disproportionate, inappropriate response just “served as evidence of what [Bhindranwale] was trying to prove:” Indira Gandhi’s government’s hostility to Sikhs and shift away from basic democratic procedures and toward autocracy (Leaf 1985:494).
The Indian government explained its own perspective in the July 1984 White Paper on the Punjab Agitation (Government of India 1984). The report pinned the agitations in Punjab since 1981 on the Akali Dal. The government labeled the movement communal, extremist, and inhumanely brutal; said it engaged in secessionist and anti-national activities; and claimed it involved criminals, smugglers, and anti-social elements who took advantage of situation for their own ends. According to the report, secessionists and terrorists had been stockpiling weapons in the Golden Temple and other gurudwaras, while secessionist and anti-national groups supported by foreign organizations seeking India’s disintegration were attempting to drive a wedge between Hindus and Sikhs. The Akali Dal, explained the government, had surrendered leadership of the movement to terrorists who were not willing to negotiate reasonably with government. For its part, the government had met consistently with the Akali Dal over the demands in the Anandpur Sahib Resolution since 1981. The government had made concessions, agreed to further study (for instance, on the river water issue), or explained how current system was adequate (for instance, regarding the holy status of Amritsar or the teaching of Punjabi in schools). The Akali Dal did not unequivocally denounce the killings, arson, and looting or misuse of shrines for weapons accumulation that came along with expressions of communal separatism. Between the Akali Dal’s tolerance of militancy and violence and the support for Khalistan (even via violence) from abroad, the situation had become incendiary by 1984. The army was called in to control terrorist, extremist, and communal violence, including by attacking the military-trained terrorists in the Golden Temple, who refused to lay down their arms and surrender. The report explained that the army found weapons, ammunition, explosives, and arms manufacturing capabilities on temple grounds. Hence, concluded the report, “The action which the Government has had to take in Punjab was neither against the Sikhs nor the Sikh religion; it was against terrorism and insurgency” (Government of India 1984:26).
On 31 Oct 1984, Indira Gandhi was assassinated by two Punjabi Sikh guards from her own security force, presumably in retaliation for the attack on the Golden Temple. Anti-Sikh riots promptly broke out in several parts of India. 10,000 Sikhs were murdered2 and 50,000 were rendered refugees in Delhi, while a huge amount Sikh property was looted or burned. Media and human rights organizations’ reports implicated politicians and other authorities in coordinating or facilitating the attacks, but the government refused to order an official inquiry into the riots. This reluctance further enraged Sikhs: “The actions of the government dramatically compounded the alienation felt by the Sikhs and gave ample credence to the widespread belief of an official conspiracy against the Sikhs” (Deol 2000: 109). As Leaf describes, almost all Western press interviews of victims “expressed disillusionment, a sense of betrayal, and sadness. Many said they no longer considered India their country; they would rather live anywhere else” (Leaf 1985: 495). At the same time, even progressives in India remained largely ambivalent regarding the attacks against the community, as Sikhs had been happy (“distributing sweets”) upon Indira Gandhi’s death, and because of “the recognition that in the face of India’s unspeakable poverty the Sikhs have been, in fact, a privileged community in economic terms,” while some were religious “fundamentalists” (Mahmood 1996:141). Punjab remained largely isolated from the outside world from June 1984 through July 1985 by rigid press censorship and the presence of an army of occupation. Journalistic sensationalism and a dearth of unbiased information meant news from the period tended to be highly distorted and labels (“moderate,” “extremist,” “fundamentalist,” “terrorist,” “secessionist”) carelessly applied (Major 1987:42-58).
The Akali Dal and SGPC threatened further agitation if the government did not release a number of detained leaders and institute an inquiry into the pogroms of November 1984. A group of Akali leaders were released in March 1985 and Sant Harchand Singh Longowal was reinstated as head of the party. In May 1985, the Akali Dal demanded a government apology and official inquiry into the riots, the withdrawal of draconian judicial and anti-terrorist measures then in force, the release of additional detainees, and more, but still insisted that the party did not want a separate Sikh Khalistan. The government, headed by Rajiv Gandhi since December 1984, invited Longowal for secret negotiations. The result was the Rajiv-Longowal Accord of July 1985. The agreement did not directly concede any Akali demands, but referred several issues to committees for further study. Some Akali leaders called the accord a sell-out. Indeed, as Rajiv Gandhi’s political position became more tenuous, the government failed to implement the accord as planned, undermining the Akali Dal’s authority. The AISSF, too, denounced the Rajiv-Longowal Accord as inadequate, arguing that it ignored issues like the treatment of Sikh army deserters, the plight of thousands of Sikh youths in detention, the abuse of powers given to police and military under “Black Laws,” and the question of punishing the instigators of the November 1984 riots.
Division within the Akali Dal led to the formation of a rival United Akali Dal, led by Baba Joginder Singh (Bhindranwale’s father). The AISSF forged strong links with the United Akali Dal. Together, the two groups campaigned for a boycott of the September 1985 Punjab elections, then concentrated on building up opposition to the Akali Dal-led regime that won in a clearly communally-divided race (Major 1987:49-51). Unrest continued amid the flow of 20-30,000 Sikh refugees into Punjab from other parts of the country and the assassination of Longowal in August 1985 (Deol 2000:111).3 In May 1986, the central government again took control of Punjab in light of continuing acrimony between the Sikh government and its Sikh opponents. Tatla explains that the central government’s policies exacerbated the situation, as it: “defined a limited demand for regional autonomy as ‘secessionist’, and dismantled the means to pacify an ethnic community’s ‘public humiliation’ by dismissing a popularly elected Akali government in May 1987” (Tatla 1999:29). Overall, despite the extent of violence and distorted rhetoric, “genuine commitment to the creation of a separate Sikh state is still rare within the Punjabi Sikh community; it is, in fact, strongest among overseas Sikhs” (Major 1987:57-58).
As Kohli describes, “once mobilized, Sikh militants very quickly gained political advantage over moderate Sikh leaders” (Kohli 1997:337). He suggests the move toward succession was primarily a political ploy for most moderate Akalis, but once the discourse had shifted in that direction, any efforts moderates made to work with the central government just undermined their leadership: “normal politics made the moderates look like opportunists not worthy of a leadership mantle” (Kohli 1997:337). As a militancy and repression cycle first set in, Indira Gandhi refused to compromise in 1982-84 on non-secession “bread and butter” issues like control over river waters, agricultural subsidies, and Chandigarh, as she did not want to seem to be appeasing minorities. That recalcitrance weakened Sikh moderates and privileged militancy. When in 1985, Rajiv Gandhi offered some compromises as well as elections in Punjab that year, the level of violence dropped. However, when Rajiv Gandhi found himself unable to implement those compromises, Akali moderates were again undermined and the militancy/repression cycle returned (Kohli 1997: 337-8).
A guerilla force, the Khalistan Commando Force (KCF), developed among Sikhs motivated by Bhindranwale and his messages or else antagonized by Operations Bluestar and Woodrose. Sikh village youths in particular were driven to terrorist acts by the army and police force’s misuse of power. Most were motivated by a sense of injustice and inequality, although the religious context and presumed moral imperative to restore social and economic justice, was seen to validate armed resistance. The strength of the guerilla groups (which got arms via Pakistan and Afghanistan) surged in 1987-88, although these efforts were uncoordinated at first. Among the “terrorists” were a large number of former Naxalites (Maoist-inspired revolutionaries), suggesting some continuity – though it is unclear how much – between the radical youth struggles of the early 1970s and Sikh terrorism of the early 1980s. It was those with trade union experience who initiated attempts to resurrect the guerilla movement after most movement leaders were killed or driven underground in 1984. Some informal gangs of smugglers and criminals also joined forces with Sikh militants to take advantage of the unsettled situation. From 1987 on, the central government set its security forces loose in Punjab, granting them extraordinary discretionary powers in combating Sikh militants. The government was more concerned with suppressing militancy via brute force and counter-insurgency than with remedying the underlying causes of the conflict. Extrajudicial killings, torture, anonymous arrests, and more were prevalent, along with another assault on the Golden Temple (Operation Blackthunder, in May 1988). Indian paramilitary forces eventually eliminated most of the Sikh activists involved. In the meantime, civilians were squeezed between warring security forces and militants. By 1991, civilian casualties accounted for nearly three-fourths of all killings. Amid the situation of general lawlessness, any who could abandoned their land and migrated to the cities (Major 1987:55-6; Deol 2000: 112-14).
The guerilla movement (comprised of around twenty militant organizations in Punjab) was fractured by rifts over policies and tactics, plus struggling with finding sufficient resources and recruits, by 1988 and increasingly so by the early 1990s. The question of whether to raise social reform issues during the period of armed struggle or to hold off on these was especially divisive. Moreover, given the nature of the movement and high casualty rate, there was a constant need to recruit new guerillas but no time for ideological or disciplinary training. The necessarilydecentralized organizational structure of the guerilla organizations and weakness of prevailing institutional structures aggravated the situation. Importantly, too, the guerrillas had lost ideological credibility and their support base among much of the Sikh community by 1991-92. Initially, the movement had gotten a sympathetic response from the Sikh professional classes, even if these individuals would not themselves risk reprisals or endangering their institutional ties to the government by engaging in overt political protest. As the movement’s methods became more violent, however (attacking Hindus on a train, assassinating candidates for office, etc.), that support waned, especially since the government fostered rifts among Sikh political factions through incarceration or harassment (Deol 2000: 112-15). Although a core of militants remained committed to Khalistan, by the early 1990s, the ideological coherence and moral purpose of the movement had faded with the escalation of violence and the poor economy a decade of instability had wrought (Telford 1992:986).
Approximately 15,000 Sikhs died before the state gained the upper hand in 1992. The popular outcry against human rights abuses (especially from among the Sikh diaspora) led the government to appoint a National Human Rights Commission in September 1993 as well as to hold a farcical election (boycotted by all the major parties) in February 1992 to bring back “democracy.” In those polls, Congress formed the state government with a mere 8 percent of the popular vote. The Chief Minister was then killed in August 1995 by a suicide bomber (Deol 2000:116-7). The Akalis were allowed back into the political field in 1995 and an Akali Dal/BJP coalition came to power with the February 1997 elections. In the end, the Indian state proved strong enough to retain control, even if just through brute force in containing or repressing Sikh militants until waning popular support and flagging recruitment rates caused the militancy of 1980s to dwindle (Kohli 1997: 337-8). Tatla concludes, “The realpolitik of resources bargaining and distribution has returned, the Indian state has ‘managed’ another ethnic conflict and the aggrieved group has retuned to normal politics by sharing power for the state government” (Tatla 1999:30).
Responses from the state
The actions of the Indian state clearly influenced the course of the Khalistan movement, reshaping Sikh identity and radicalizing what otherwise may have been a far more benign initiative. First, the Congress Party’s acceptance during the colonial era of the principle of linguistic states helped fuse territoriality and Sikh ethnicity. When the new government then refused to carve out a Punjabi-speaking state – seeing demands for a Punjabi suba as a Sikh communal ploy, wary of the security threat implied by having such a state on the border with Pakistan, and fearing that caving in would sour relations between Sikhs and Hindus – the issue became more incendiary. The struggle to attain the Punjabi suba that was finally realized in 1966 forged a nexus between Punjab and Sikh consciousness, such that Sikhs evolved into an “ethnoterritorial community” (Oberoi 1987:31-40). Moreover, “modern institutions, such as the state and census reports, reinforced the fusion of linguistic and communal identities.” Hindi became tied to Hindus and Punjabi to Sikhs, with popular mass media such as the vernacular press compounding these impacts (Deol 2000:101).
Sikhs’ feelings of marginalization are understandable inasmuch as the post-colonial Indian state is an “ethnocracy” that has privileged dominant Hindus both through their disproportionate recruitment into civil, military, and government elites and by using Hindu cultural attributes and values to define the national ideology, history, language, religion, and moral values. India’s institutions, constitution, laws, and power arrangements empower the dominant ethnic group. In fact, the postcolonial state has dismantled rules and safeguards for fair representation of minorities that were established under British rule in favor of universal franchise and constitutional centralism (both of which disadvantage minorities and regional nationalisms). At the same time, the rise of Hindu nationalist parties (especially the BJP) has helped to forge a new, more unified Hindu identity (although this project remains incomplete) and added anxiety for religious minorities. These trends could mean greater homogenization rather than maintenance of a pluralist vision of the nation-state, further alienating Sikhs and other minorities (Tatla 1999:34-39).
Kohli highlights the significance of the degree of institutionalization of the Indian polity over time in how minorities’ claims have been handled. In the 1950s, India was relatively wellinstitutionalized as a polity. Congress was firmly in control and the civil service and armed forces were professional. Nehru could thus be relatively accommodating of opposition and of demands for self-determination; he was secure enough that granting concessions showed magnanimity rather than threatening his position. Some of these political institutions weakened over time, such that, “if the 1950s were a decade of relatively effective institutions, the 1960s are best thought of as a decade of transition during which the nationalist legacy declined, political competition and challenges to the hegemony of the Congress Party increased, and a new type of political system – a more populist system – with noninstitutional methods of securing electoral majorities was created by Indira Gandhi” (Kohli 1997:331-2). Indira Gandhi was more suspicious of challenges than Nehru had been, and re-centralized power. Political institutions weakened further in the 1970s and 1980s, especially as “personalistic leaders damaged the institutions that constrained their discretionary powers” (Kohli 1997:331-2). Congress was largely destroyed as an institution; the police, civil service, and armed forces grew less professionalized and more political; parliament lost efficacy; and the judiciary became less autonomous. The disintegration of the Congress Party in the late 1970s led to the manipulation of regional elites and appeals to dominant Hindu voters to save the “nation in danger” and to avoid allowing in a “foreign hand” or dealing with “agitators and extremists.” Still, Rajiv Gandhi (especially in the first two years of his tenure) and Narasimha Rao were both more flexible than Indira Gandhi had been (Kohli 1997:331-3).
It was largely the uncompromising stance of the centralizing state that spurred the metamorphosis from seeking devolution of powers to seeking sovereign statehood. Tatla asserts, “The struggle for a Sikh state arose as a direct result of the Indian state’s action at the Golden Temple. … Given the Sikhs’ religious tradition of tolerance and the Akali Dal’s experience of coalition politics, a yearning for statehood could find accommodation in a federalized Indian polity” (Tatla 1999:34). Particularly with regard to significant economic issues, “Punjabis have been consistently frustrated by impositions of the central government. There is no real claim on the part of the central government that its measures are in the interest of Punjab; Punjabis furthermore cannot even see how they are in the interest of India as a whole” (Leaf 1985: 490-1). Since the late 1970s, Punjabis have identified the problem of an anti-farmer/rural bias in the structure of the government. Most important mainstream Punjabi (Sikh and otherwise) groups and parties have proposed the solution of “federalism,” and “not based on ‘Sikh fundamentalism,’ separatism,’ or any sort of terrorist ideology” (Leaf 1985: 491).
As Sikh demands went unmet or even unacknowledged as legitimate, as described above, particularly in the 1980s, the population became progressively more disenfranchised and more centrist politicians were silenced in favor of voices from the fringes (Leaf 1985: 491). Most dangerously, Indira Gandhi used her access to national and international media “to consistently describe the opposition as religious fanatics who advocated secession and separatism motivated by ‘communalism’ and ‘regionalism.’” She referred more often to extremists’ than to moderates’ actions and statements to substantiate this characterization, until “In the end it became selffulfilling prophecy. It had the logical effect of magnifying the extremists and discouraging the moderates, even through they never actually ceased to try to present their case. It had the political effect of tapping the well of prejudice that is available wherever there are religious and ethnic differences and of gaining widespread acceptance in India and the world for the idea that the conflict was indeed communal and religious – that the anger of the Punjabis was irrational and antinational and that tolerating it would be tantamount to allowing India to drop back into the eighteenth century. Punjabis in their turn were aware of this misrepresentation of their concerns and its acceptance, and it only increased their frustration and anger” as well as their willingness to tolerate and not to root out extremists like Bhindranwale (Leaf 1985: 493). Continuing strife drove a wedge in Punjab between rural Sikhs and urban Hindus and between the two major parties involved (Akali Dal and Jan Sangh).
Most clearly, Operations Bluestar and Woodrose (the 1984 attack on the Golden Temple and subsequent sweep of Akali Dal leaders) “far from curbing extremist activity … fomented considerable alienation among a broad cross-section of the Sikh population” (Deol 2000:111). The anti-Sikh riots that followed and the government’s failure to curb or investigate the violence provided fertile ground for Sikh separatism to develop, including as represented by guerilla groups. Sikhs in India and abroad felt oppressed, insulted, and inadequately accommodated in the Indian state, so more aggressively sought an alternative.
Key issues
As described in detail above, the key issues motivating the Akali Dal and more radical Khalistan movement activists are political, economic, religious, and social. Class and regional differences have influenced groups’ preference for negotiation and compromise with the central government or radical opposition and secession: those with less to lose have generally been less staunchly moderate.
The Anandpur Sahib Resolution, drafted by a working committee of the Akali Dal in 1973 in response to the failure of state officials to resist central impositions, articulates the core issues at stake throughout the Punjab crisis. The document lists two principles and four aims, with ten programs to secure those (mainly religious) aims, as well as seven more politically-oriented objectives. The main grievances expressed in the resolution are: to add to the state the main Punjabi-speaking regions left out in the 1967 delineation (which included sites important to Sikh history) despite acceptance of the linguistic criterion; to limit central government intervention to defense, foreign affairs, post and telegraph, currency, and railroads in the states; to develop a more “federal” Indian state, with all states equally represented at the center; and to eliminate discrimination against Sikhs and other minorities in government service and civil life outside Punjab. Issues such as the cost of agricultural inputs in relation to support prices, canals, the relative industrial development of Punjab, and employment opportunities were also included.
Much of the support for an independent Sikh state of Khalistan has come not from the Akali Dal or other local parties, but from Sikh expatriates abroad. The Sikh diaspora comprises approximately two million Sikhs (of eighteen million total), located primarily in England (the largest community), Canada, and the United States. Most had been rural peasants, driven abroad, for instance, by land rights legislation that created unfavorable economic and social conditions in the early twentieth century. Sikhs represent an increasingly middle class or prosperous community abroad. While some diasporic Sikhs supported the idea of secession much earlier, after the events of 1984, the community offered vociferous support for the formation of an independent Khalistan. Support for Khalistan by diasporic Sikhs is generally attributed to anomie or alienation from migration; the desire to establish power and credibility as a community; and
the strong ties these Sikhs have consistently maintained with Punjab through kinship, culture, and economic links (Deol 2000). Tatla, for instance, suggests that, “there appears to be an interplay of culture, group consciousness and the uncertainty of migrant status in the host society,” with the desire for a homeland in which such threats would not arise (Tatla 1999:210). Similarly, Mahmood suggests that there has been a reinscription of Sikh identity among the diaspora onto a territory, much as has occurred with Zionism. As such, “it seems clear that the power of the Khalistan idea is enhanced, not diminished, by the dispersion of Sikhs outside of Punjab and India. And this is expressed in monetary, political, and moral support for Khalistan from diasporan Sikhs despite the fact that many or most would not move to Khalistan if it were indeed created” (Mahmood 1996:254).
The Sikh diaspora represents a critical resource for the Khalistan movement. It maintains contacts with human rights organizations in Punjab, lobbies in the United Nations and via groups like Amnesty International, and has direct links with the main political parties of Punjab. The diaspora has also provided the movement with funds, support, and mobilization since the 1960s. Groups in the Punjab have had ties to Sikh societies abroad since the colonial era. These ties increased as Sikhs set up Singh Sabhas in the Far East, East Africa, and elsewhere. Antiimmigration measures and general racism spurred new sorts of Sikh organizations in North America. Sikhs have been organized there since the early twentieth century to coordinate their activities, to support Indian independence, and to counter racial discrimination and antiimmigration laws. For instance, the Khalsa Diwan Society formed in 1907 in Vancouver and the revolutionary organization, Hindustani Workers of the Pacific Coast (known as the Ghadr, or “Revolution,” Party), formed in San Francisco soon after with the primary objective of liberating India from Britain. The latter enjoyed wide support from Sikhs in North America and began publishing a weekly newspaper in November 1913. Ghadr’s first phase (1913-18) highlighted nationalist rhetoric, but its second phase (1916-19) was more socialist. An incident over a Japanese passenger ship transporting 346 prospective Sikh migrants to Canada, the Komagata Maru, mobilized the community (and also garnered considerable sympathy in Punjab) in May 1914. The passengers were not allowed to disembark in British Columbia, then the ship was returned to Calcutta. A fracas ensued when the Sikh passengers refused immediately to board a train to Punjab. Eighteen were killed and others were wounded or interned. Such incidents fostered a militant mood (Deol 2000:118-21; Tatla 1999: chap. 4).
Diasporic Sikhs made a “feeble demand” for a Sikh homeland for the first time in the 1940s, but this only became an issue in the 1960s, then gained momentum only in the 1980s and especially after 1984 (Deol 2000:121-3). Anticolonial intellectuals first agitated both for Indian independence and for the special status of Punjab. Overseas Sikh political groups maintained links with Punjabi parties from the 1960s: with the Communist Party of Punjab and leftists groups, organizing around immigration, racism, and workers’ rights; with Congress; and with the Akali Dal. Issues of Sikh identity, the teaching of Punjabi, religious practice, and dress have been particularly significant to these organizations. The idea of Sikh separatism appealed to few in Britain or Canada before 1984, although the unwillingness of the Indian government to intervene for Sikh issues in those countries encouraged some support, as did reports of atrocities against Sikhs in India or of violent conflicts among factions (with the Indian government criticized for encouraging problematic sects) from the late 1970s on. A small group in Vancouver even applied to the UN for “observer status” in 1981 and set up a “Republic of Khalistan” office in 1982. The Akali Dal’s 1981 Dharam Yudh Morcha campaign for Punjab’s autonomy got much support from diasporic associations, with marches, resolutions, and more in Canada and Britain, and Harchand Singh Longowal, president of the Akali Dal, appealed directly to diasporic Sikhs to raise awareness and support. The demand for an independent homeland then became a major rallying point among the community when Indian forces invaded the Golden Temple. This incident triggered a strong emotional reaction, as it was interpreted as a threat to the community, such that all Sikhs were vulnerable and affected. The attack thus fostered a sense of collective fate, affected the dynamics of Sikhs’ religious identity, and weakened the attachment of Sikhs abroad to India (instead of to their Sikh identity and host country). The rise of effective new leaders helped to sustain the movement beyond easy initial phase of mobilization. The movement has also fostered connections among constituencies (centered largely around gurudwaras) of the Sikh diaspora in various countries, and not just with Sikhs in Punjab (Deol 2000; Tatla 1999).
References

1. Deol, Harnik. 2000. Religion and Nationalism in India: The Case of the Punjab. London: Routledge.
2. Government of India. 1984. White Paper on the Punjab Agitation, a Summary. New Delhi: Government of India Press.
3. Kohli, Atul. “Can Democracies Accommodate Ethnic Nationalism? Rise and Decline of Self- Determination Movements in India.” Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 56, No. 2 (May, 1997), pp. 325-344.
4. Leaf, Murray J. “The Punjab Crisis.” Asian Survey, Vol. 25, No. 5 (May, 1985), pp. 475-498.
5. Mahmood, Cynthia Keppley. 1996. Fighting for Faith and Nation: Dialogues with Sikh
6. Militants. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
7. Major, Andrew. “From Moderates to Secessionists: A Who's Who of the Punjab Crisis.” Pacific
   Affairs, Vol. 60, No. 1 (Spring, 1987), pp. 42-58.
8. Mitra, Subrata K. “The Rational Politics of Cultural Nationalism: Subnational Movements of South Asia in Comparative Perspective.” British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Jan., 1995), pp. 57-77.
9. Oberoi, Harjot S. “From Punjab to ‘Khalistan’: Territoriality and Metacommentary.” Pacific Affairs, Vol. 60, No. 1 (Spring, 1987), pp. 26-41.
10. Tatla, Darshan Singh. 1999. The Sikh Diaspora : The Search for Statehood. London: UCL Press.
11. Telford, Hamish. “The Political Economy of Punjab: Creating Space for Sikh Militancy.” Asian Survey, Vol. 32, No. 11 (Nov., 1992), pp. 969-987.

Meredith Weiss 25 June 2002
Curtsey: http://www.sikhroots.com/sikh-literature/operation-bluestar/3038-the-khalistan-movement-in-punjab

The other Punjab
NADEEM F. PARACHA 

Illustration by Abro

Ever since Pakistan’s tumultuous birth in 1947, much has been said and written about the topic of ethnic nationalism(s) in the country. This has always been a thorny and controversial subject because elements advocating the importance of exhibiting nationalism based on the linguistic and cultural injunctions of an ethnic community have always been dealt with suspicion by the state of Pakistan.
If we keep aside the fact that more than 97 per cent of Pakistan’s population is Muslim, this same population is then not a homogenous lot. In fact, even within its religious homogeneity there are sectarian, sub-sectarian and intra-sectarian divisions, with some of the various groups rather antagonistic towards one another.
Pakistan is made up of various ethnic groups that have their own languages, historical trajectories, and cultural traditions. Picturing such a diversity as a threat (to the unity of the country), the state of Pakistan, right from the word go, has launched various projects to concoct ideas of a unified nationalism to overcome and neutralise identities based on ethnic moorings.

Punjabi nationalism over the years

Naturally, such projects have created tensions between the state and various ethno-nationalist groups who accuse the state of Pakistan of trying to whitewash their centuries-old ethnic heritages with (what these groups believe is) an ‘artificial ideology’ invented by the state.
What’s more, the antagonistic ethno-nationalist groups have for long maintained that the state enforces such an ideology to safeguard the political and economic interests of the ‘dominant ethnic communities’.
Till the late 1960s the so-called dominant ethnic groups were supposed to be the Punjabis and the Urdu-speakers (Mohajirs) who had a monopolistic influence on the workings of the armed forces, the bureaucracy and large economic enterprises (and thus politics).
In this scenario ethno-nationalism in Pakistan was thus mostly the vocation of non-Punjabi and non-Mohajir ethnic groups, mainly Bengali, Sindhi, Pakhtun and Baloch.
According to the narrative weaved by some prominent Sindhi and Baloch ethno-nationalists, after the separation of the Bengali-majority East Pakistan in 1971, the state began to gradually co-opt the Pakhtuns who then began to replace the Mohajirs as the other dominant ethnic elite (along with the Punjabis).
By the 1980s Pakhtun nationalists had lost considerable appeal among the Pakhtuns but the same decade saw the emergence of ‘Mohajir nationalism’.
Ethno-nationalists have continued to accuse the ‘Punjabi-dominated state’ of usurping the economic and political interests of the non-Punjabi communities, sometimes in the name of Pakistani nationalism and sometimes in the name of religion.
Academics studying the phenomenon of ethno-nationalism in Pakistan usually stick to tendencies such as Sindhi, Baloch and Pakhtun nationalisms (and, in the past, Bengali nationalism, and now even Mohajir nationalism).
Nevertheless, what gets missed in the more holistic study of the said issue is a nationalism that is actually associated with what is usually decried to be a hegemonic and elitist ethnic group: the Punjabi.
This is not due to there being not enough activism and literature available on ‘Punjabi nationalism’ as there is on other ethno-nationalist tendencies in the country.
The Punjabis have for so long been seen as the dominant ethnic group, very few scholars have actually got down to study curious occurrences such as Punjabi nationalism.
Also, compared to other ethno-nationalisms in Pakistan, Punjabi nationalism is a more recent phenomenon.
According to cultural historian, Alyssa Ayres (in her book, Speaking Like A State), Punjabi nationalism largely emerged in the 1980s. Part of it was a reaction to the emergence of the Saraiki language movement that looked to separate the Saraiki-speaking areas of the Punjab from the rest of the province.
Till the late 1960s, Saraiki was considered to be a dialect of Punjabi, but Saraiki nationalists disagree and treat their language as a separate linguistic entity.
Ayres suggests that many Punjabi intellectuals considered the Saraiki movement as ‘yet another attack on Punjabi.’ They bemoan the way Punjab as a whole has been lumped together as a hegemonic province. They complain that a Punjabi actually has to let go of his culture and adopt ‘alien languages’ (English and Urdu), if he wants to escape economic marginalisation.
Just as the purveyors of Sindhi, Baloch and Pakhtun nationalism of yore, ideologues and advocates of Punjabi nationalism too emerged from progressive backgrounds.
They did not attack the non-Punjabi ethnicities for denouncing Punjabis; instead, they turned in anger towards the elite sections made up of fellow Punjabis. They accused them of neglecting the Punjabi language and forgetting the Punjabi culture — first to appease the British, and then to the state-backed promoters of Urdu — just to maintain their personal influence and power.
Though literature in this context had begun to trickle out in the 1970s, it was the publication of three books between 1985 and 1996 that finally gave Punjabi nationalism its most cohesive literary shape.
The first was Hanif Ramey’s Punjab Ka Muqadma (The Case of Punjab). Ramay was a founding member of the PPP; and a leading ideologue behind the party’s populist concoction called ‘Islamic Socialism’ (late 1960s).
In his 1985 book, Ramay suggests that the Punjabis turned against the Bengalis to safeguard the interests of those who had imposed Urdu (‘a foreign language’) upon them (the Punjabis).
Ramay continues by claiming that had the Punjabis continued to respect and love their own language, they would have understood the sentiments of East Pakistan’s Bengalis, and would not have turned against them.
The book was promptly banned by the intransigent Zia regime.
The ban did not deter Syed Ahmed Ferani from authoring Punjabi Zaban Marre Gi Nahi (The Punjabi Language Will Not Die) in 1988. This is an even more radical expression of Punjabi nationalism. Here Ferani describes Urdu as ‘a man-eating language’ that made Punjabis kill fellow Punjabis and then people of other non-Urdu ethnic groups. This book too was banned.
The third major work in this context is a novel authored by Fakhar Zaman called Bewatna (Stateless) in 1995. Zaman, another former PPP man in Punjab, wrote an allegorical lament about how (he thought) the Punjabis (by adopting alien languages and cultures) have become aliens on their own soil. The novel, too, was banned.
Unlike certain more radical branches of non-Punjabi ethno-nationalisms, Punjabi nationalism (so far) has not been separatist and has remained largely a literary pursuit, only calling for the Punjabi language to be given its rightful place.
This nationalism’s scholars constantly evoke tales associated with various Punjabi Sufi saints and anti-colonial heroes to emphasise the point that the Punjabi culture was spiritual (instead of orthodox) and chivalrous (instead of hegemonic or exploitative).
In a landmark decision, the Lahore High Court (in 1996), overturned and lifted the ban on all three books.
Echoes of this nationalism can still be heard in the Punjab, though. In a TV talk show about three months ago, the current Defence Minister and a senior member of the ruling PMLN, Khawaja Asif (who hails from the Punjab city of Sialkot), lamented that all kinds of ‘alien cultures’ have been imposed in the Punjab.
He specifically mentioned the erosion of Punjab’s original culture and traditions that were being replaced by a culture imported by those (including fellow Punjabis) who have for long resided in Arab countries.
And though Khawaja Asif never called himself a Punjabi nationalist, his lament did bear the tone first set by Punjabi nationalists.
Curtsey:DAWN.COM, Sunday Magazine, May 31st, 2015
Smokers’ Corner: The other Punjab By Nadeem F.Paracha
Source link:: http://www.dawn.com/news/1184953/smokers-corner-the-other-punjab

The Politics of Privilege in Pakistan: Punjab’s Domination
Collateral Damage 

By Jahanzeb Hussain
The ethnic dynamics of Pakistan are often overlooked, especially by the foreign observers of Pakistan. One of the reasons is that the international focus is solely on terrorism emanating from the country’s tribal areas, which glosses over the inter-provincial and ethnic relations inside Pakistan. When looking at the India-focused terrorist groups based in Punjab, most analysts fail to link this type of terrorism to ethnic and provincial dynamics of the country. On the other side of the spectrum, the international Left desists from any sort critical analysis on Pakistan for its own ideological reasons, which also contributes to the general ignorance about that country. Critical reflection is also absent in the Pakistani diaspora for reasons of identity politics and self-defence.
Pakistan does not escape laws of society and imbalances exist in the country just as they do in any other country. Pakistan’s economic and class imbalances are well-known, but what is less know are its ethnic and linguistic fault lines. In a two-part essay, we give a primer on the politics of privilege in Pakistan. The essay on Urdu privilege can be read here. This article focuses on the Punjab’s domination over Pakistan.
Colonial India

The standard practice of imperial powers has been to find native collaborators in the lands they invade. No foreign power is able to rule another land without willing, local partners. The local partners are often the already privileged classes and they collaborate with invading powers in order to maintain and increase their privileges. In the case of India, the British found partners in the landed gentry of the Punjab. As the English moved deeper into that province and built irrigation canals, they required the help of the landed classes of that province to implement their plans. In return of their help, the Punjabi gentry further consolidated its power over the land and the peasantry.
Punjab also became the biggest contributor in terms of manpower to the British army in India. During the Indian War of Independence of 1857, it was only for the soldiers sent to the British rescue by the Punjabi landlords that the colonizers were able to crush the uprising. The British were on the verge of defeat but their faithful servants from the Punjab were on hand to save the day for their masters. After the uprising was brutally crushed, the British were able to reign supreme in India until 1947.
However, the Punjab stayed loyal to the British until the very end. As the movement for independence was gaining momentum and it was only a matter of time before the British would leave India, the Punjabi nobles maintained their stance against independence. Punjab was governed by the Unionist Party, whose official position was that the British should stay in India. The Unionist Party also made sure that Jinnah and the Muslim league, which advocated for Pakistan, did not gain any ground in the province. In fact, the Muslim League had to take direct action in the Punjab so that it could dislodge the Unionist Party. Driven by the desire to maintain their hold on power, the Punjabi nobles proposed to Indian nationalists such as Nehru to keep India united even if the British leave. They told Nehru that they would be able to rule over India together after the British depart, by the virtue of the strong Punjabi presence in the Indian army. Gandhi, on his part, never campaigned in the Punjab. When asked why, Gandhi would say, “sara sooba CID ka sooba” (the entire province belongs to the British intelligence).
Post-Partition

After independence and the Partition, Nehru made sure to decrease Punjab’s domination in the Indian army. In Pakistan, however, this was not the case. Even though that province was opposed to independence, let alone the creation of Pakistan, it nonetheless found in itself in a position of power in the new country, thanks to the size of its population and its domination in what was now the Pakistani army. When Pakistan aligned itself with the US in the Cold War, Punjab found yet another foreign patron for its army. As it was the case previously, renting out services to foreign powers brought numerous privileges to the native collaborators. The Pakistani army is a reflection of Punjab’s dominance over the rest of Pakistan’s provinces. Preventing progressive movements from taking root was – and is – not only a requirement to maintain the American hegemony in the region, it is also a necessity for Punjab so that it can maintain its hold over Pakistan. For the Punjab, in particular, nationalism of the other provinces was – and is – the biggest threat to its power. The alliance between the US and the Punjabi-dominated Pakistan army, therefore, has been mutually beneficial.
Punjab and Bangladesh

The first major benefit that the Punjab reaped thanks to the American patronage of the Pakistani army was its ability to annihilate East Pakistan. East Pakistan was the country’s biggest province in terms of population, thanks to which it won the elections and had the right to form the majority government. But the Punjab was not ready to handover power to another province, especially to the Bengalis, since Punjabis considered the Bengalis to be racially inferior. The Punjabi-dominated Pakistani army invaded East Pakistan in 1971 and massacred around 4 million Bengalis and raped somewhere between 200,000 to 500,000 Bengali women in the space of less than 2 years. When the Pakistani soldiers raped Bengali women, they would tell them that they are being raped so that they could have Punjabi children. What happened in Bangladesh is a textbook example of racial purity and genocide. Eventually, East Pakistan gained independence and the country of Bangladesh was born. But, the Bengalis achieved freedom only after being put through the worst genocide since the end of the Second World War.
In the case of Bangladesh, the Punjabi establishment found a partner in Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the so-called champion of the Third World. The leader of Pakistan Peoples Party was just as unwilling to handover power to East Pakistan as the Punjab was. However, he played right into the hand of the Punjab because of his recalcitrance since the erasure of East Pakistan further strengthened the former. Moreover, after taking care of East Pakistan, the Punjab did not need Bhutto anymore and was quick to remove him when General Zia got him hanged for murder charges. This moment is important in Pakistani history since the Punjab not only got rid of the rival province of East Pakistan, but it also removed from the equation Bhutto who, coming from Sindh with his populist slogans, presented another threat to the Punjab, its nobility and its army.
Punjab and Balochistan

Balochistan is another province bearing the burnt of the Punjabi domination. The province of Balochistan had made it explicit that it did not wish to join either Pakistan or India and wanted to remain an independent state. Notwithstanding their wishes, the province was invaded and forcibly annexed by Pakistan right after the latter came into being. Balochistan is endowed with a tremendous amount of natural resources. It is from this province that Pakistan gets its gas for fuel. But the only province not to benefit from these natural resources is Balochistan. Instead of responding to the legitimate grievances of the Baloch people and giving the province its due, the army has launched 5 military operations in Balochistan over the last 6 decades. The fifth operation is ongoing, with systematic kidnappings, torture and killings of Baloch intellectuals, professionals, students, and activists. A detailed analysis of the extent to which Balochistan is exploited can be read here, and a general overview of kidnappings and the killings of Baloch people can be read here. What should be mentioned in this article is that the violence against Balochistan is similar to what the Bengalis faced, especially taking into account the racial factor. More importantly, suppressing Balochistan so that its resources could be stolen is an integral part of Punjab’s domination of Pakistan. As was the case with Bangladesh, the Punjab is not the only province to exploit Balochistan. Sindh benefits greatly from the present setup, whereas the Pashtuns are deeply involved in the “Kill and Dump” policy of the Pakistani army. Nevertheless, keeping Balochistan under the thumb is fundamentally a Punjabi policy and is designed to uphold the primacy of the Punjab.
At present, the province is governed by middle-class, Baluch nationalists. Even though the Nawaz Sharif has welcomed this setup in Balochistan, the country’s secret services have not stopped their “Kill and Dump” operations. The consequence of this is that Balochistan is continuously humiliated. The final result of Nawaz Sharif’s policy would be that the Punjab would walk away from taking any responsibility, citing that they had allowed Baloch nationalists to form government, therefore the latter should take the blame. The Punjab would thus maintain its claim that the other provinces, as well as ethnicities, are incompetent  and that it is unfair to accuse the Punjab and the Punjabis of failing the other provinces. The Punjab will not only uphold itself as a province but also as a race.
Punjab, Sindh and the Mohajirs
Sindhis and the Urdu-speaking Mohajirs are two other groups to suffer greatly from the politics of the Punjab. In Karachi and Hyderabad, the goal of the Punjab has been to divide these two groups in order to rule over them. There used to be unity among Sindhis and the Mohajirs in face of what they called the Punjabi establishment. To break the bond, the establishment inserted criminality into the equation and promoted the ethnicization of politics in Karachi and Hyderabad. Drugs and arms, which became abundant after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, were used to destroy the youth and progressive movements in Karachi, which was a city that gave Pakistan its most enlightened ideals. This is similar to how CIA and the FBI introduced cocaine into Black ghettos of America in order to break the spirits of that population. The ISI supported the MQM against Sindhi nationalists, which led to the two populations turning against each other. There have been several paramilitary operations in Sindh against both Mohajirs and Sindhi nationalists. The infamous Rangers, a paramilitary police force, are sometimes termed the ‘Punjabi Qaumi Mahaz.’ They are the military wing of the Punjabi lobby that advocates heavy-handed measures  against the MQM and other ethnic groups in Karachi. The racial dynamics of the Rangers’ operations in Karachi cannot be ignored.
The root of ‘Islamic extremism’

The use of Jihadi militias is another tool of the Punjab. What is called Islamic extremism in Pakistan is, in fact, a consequence of this domination of Punjab. A part from the more formal means of violence, the Punjab has relied on Jihadi groups and their propaganda to subdue progressive and nationalist movements in other provinces of the country. Islamist propaganda has been used to contaminate the minds of the youth to the point that the country’s population cannot even think straight. In addition to this soft power, the Jihadi hard power has been deployed to combat nationalism of the provinces. Jammaat-i-Islami, which is South Asia’s main Islamist party, has been a reliable partner in this, alongside many other violent, sectarian groups such as the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. The Jammaat’s two militia groups, As-Shams and Al-Badr, collaborated with the Pakistani army in the massacres Bengalis in the 70s. They are presently active in Balochistan on behalf of the Pakistani state. These Jihadi groups based out of the Punjab are often called India-focused. Though it is true that these groups are used by the Pakistani army against India inside the Indian territory, their primary purpose has been to nullify centrifugal forces inside Pakistan, as well as countering a once-enlightened political culture of the country, especially in Karachi.
Punjab often claims that it is the cleanest province of Pakistan since it does not experience the violence and the crimes that take place in Karachi, for example. It is true that Punjab does not experience these things, because it actually exports all of its crimes to other provinces. Moreover, when the Punjab proclaims that it is the cleanest province, it also means to say that the Punjabis are the cleanest race in Pakistan.
Behind the ‘Ideology of Pakistan’

The use of Islam brings us to what is known as the ideology of Pakistan. As per this ideological construct, Pakistan is one nation under one religion, one army and one language. There are no Sindhis, Balochis, Pashtuns or Punjabis. The consequence of this ideology is that regional identities are erased and any show of regionalism is not only seen as anti-Pakistan, but also anti-Islam. Since the Punjabi identity continues to reign supreme in Pakistan, the removal of other regional identities under this ideology further upholds Punjab’s supremacy.
Automatically, being anti-Pakistan and anti-Islam also means being an Indian and Western agent, since the ideology of Pakistan also purports that the country is under constant threat of attack by the enemies of Islam. Taking decisive action against such forces thus becomes permissible as well.
One nation and one language is an interesting phenomena and deserves careful attention. The Punjab has allowed the North Indian culture to become the high-culture in Pakistan, with Urdu being the national language. The dream of creating Pakistan was a fantasy of Muslim intellectuals of India who wanted to recapture the glory of the past when Muslims ruled India. The Punjab is more than happy to let the Mohajirs from Delhi, Hyderabad Deccan and Lucknow revel in their refined culture and language, as well as their misplaced since of achievement in the creation of Pakistan, as long as the real power remains with the Punjabis. The Punjab hardly ever complains about the North Indian high-culture, even if the elite in Lahore feel jealous and inferior to the Urdu-speaking elite of Karachi. Just as one nation under one religion helps negate provincial identities and uphold the already-dominant Punjabi identity, one nation under one language helps erase the languages of Sindhis, Balochis and, in the past, the Bengalis. The question of language of the provinces is one of the biggest cleavages in Pakistan, and the promotion of Urdu as the national language of a multi-lingual country is a method of defeating regional identities and nationalism, to the benefit of the Punjab. Thus, Urdu, which is not even the language of the Punjab, becomes a tool to maintain the Punjabi dominance over the country. The Urdu-speaking Mohajirs cannot be said to have gained any benefit from Urdu being the national language since, for all practical purposes, English is the language of esteem in Pakistan and one cannot progress in society and in any prestigious profession without a solid grasp of English.
Pakistan: A larger Punjab

What is therefore known as Pakistani nationalism is basically Punjabi nationalism. The cries to liberate Kashmir are particularly ironic since every liberation movement inside of Pakistan has been brutally crushed by the Punjabi-dominated army. There have been military actions in Balochistan, Sindh and East Pakistan, while the state has been manipulating the Pashtuns of the KhyberPakhtunkhawa province since the creation of Pakistan. The country’s founder, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, was the first one to send tribal militias from there to Kashmir, calling for the liberation of Kashmir since they are our Muslim brothers. The focus on the Indian oppression in Kashmir provides the Punjab with not only an excuse to build up its army, but also to take attention away from its own crimes against the rest of the provinces of the country. By positing Kashmiri nationalism as the only nationalist struggle worthy of Pakistan’s attention, the Punjab takes focus away from the legitimate nationalist movements inside the country.
What is therefore known as Pakistan is in fact larger Punjab. In many cases, this is the case literally. Land grabbing and stealing of water by the Punjab are some of the main causes for regional disparities in the country. Prime agricultural and residential lands in Sindh and Balochistan have been allotted to the Punjabi-dominated army. In Balochistan, the army cantonments have basic amenities, especially gas, which the rest of the province does not have, even though gas in Pakistan comes form Balochistan. In this province in particular, the army cantonments are seen by Baloch nationalists as Punjabi colonies and a sign of occupation. Since the Baloch population is very small, the influx of Punjabi army officers is considered a way to undermine and threaten the Baloch characteristic of the province. In Karachi, all the prime residential areas belong to the armed forces. Officers from the Punjab get to live in these areas with subsidized housing while they are on active duty. Once they retire, they get houses and plots for an incredibly cheap rate which they then sell for market prices. Owning massive swaths of land in Karachi is part of Punjab’s economic hold on Karachi, which is the country’s largest revenue producing city by far. The ease with with Punjabi officers can obtain housing and land in the upscale areas of Karachi is not reciprocated for Urdu-speaking officers in Lahore, for example. Due to the racialist nature of Punjab’s domination, it is practically impossible for a youth from a non-Punjabi ethnicity to find employment in Lahore and Islamabad. For the Punjabi youth and professionals, on the other hand, Karachi is a source of employment and income generation. Even Karachi’s police is almost 70% Punjabi. However, it is impossible to imagine that Lahore’s local police could be made up of 70% Urdu-speaking Mohajirs.
Many often note, rightfully, that the Partition and the creation of artificial borders between India and Pakistan was tragic. But what is often ignored is that, while the creation of new borders was tragic, the erasure of many borders was equally tragic as well. With the creation of the Pakistani nation-state, historical entities such as Sindh, Bengal, and Balochistan were destroyed. The ‘natural’ border among these provinces was eliminated and the Punjab sought to impose itself on all these nations and ethnicities in the new setting that was Pakistan. The attempted annihilation of these nations by the Punjab is a civilizational disaster.
Jahanzeb Hussain is the editor of Collateral Damage
Curtsey:collateraldamagemagazine.net

The Punjab, Punjabi and the contradiction within

A rare sight: A shop displays sign board in Punjabi "Billay di Hatti" [Shop of Billa] in Raja Bazaar, Rawalpindi.

Over the last few weeks, I have been meeting children from different parts of Punjab. They were between 3 to 5 years of age, and included the children of my friends and extended family. I was pleasantly shocked to hear these kids speakin Punjabi.  “Kithay chalay o”, “aa ki aey”, “ki karde paye o” are some of the Punjabi phrases I recall having heard.

Punjabi is the most widely spoken language across Pakistan. However, most of the people in Punjab, especially in urban centers, do not encourage their children to speak their mother tongue, Punjabi.

But “kids will be kids” and they will always find ways to learn new things. So, through methods best known to children, they quickly pick up the language, continuously learning (mimicking to be more precise) from various people around them and their parents, as the adults speak in Punjabi among themselves regularly. The end result is that the children learn Punjabi quite effortlessly; such is the beauty of mother tongue.

Incidentally, in your average Pakistani school, a child goes through the experience of learning two new languages, English and Urdu. As reading Quran and prayers are also considered as mandatory teachings in the Pakistani society, he / she learns Arabic as well. So, a 3-5 year old child in Punjab starts to learn almost four languages at this stage. Other than this, the teaching of all other subjects is also via the medium of Urdu or English.

However, as far as the effectiveness of learning is concerned, it is in the best interest of any child that primary education be imparted in mother tongue. Children learn more efficiently and quickly if he / she start learning various subjects in his / her mother tongue instead of learning a completely new language first. This is the reason when a 3 year old enrolls in a nursery class he / she naturally reads “Meem Kukri” instead of “Meem Murghi” (which is enforced on him / her) because he / she already knows and relates to the picture of a hen as a “Kukri”.

However, in Pakistan, it is a popular practice to label a child as an “illiterate” and “uncivilized” if he / she speaks in Punjabi. This is why parents try their best to refrain from speaking in Punjabi with their kids. Somehow, one cannot blame the parents as the harsh reality is when a 3 or 4 year old kid enrolls in school and begins to speak in Punjabi with the other children or teachers, he / she is promptly tagged as “illiterate”. Needless to say, it’s quite depressing for young minds. Naturally, the parents want to prevent this from happening. Hence, the mother tongue is sacrificed.

In addition to this, there are strong arguments that “talking about ‘people not encouraging their children to speak Punjabi or their mother tongue is like dishonoring their mother’ is just a hollow slogan”. This line of argument strongly believes that it is common knowledge that in real life knowing Punjabi is not of any use and learning Urdu and English are more important for education and a career. When I look at the current scenario, I realize that for all practical purposes this line of thinking is not entirely wrong. One has to get a job after all! Again, Punjabi is forced out.

Frankly speaking, discrimination against the Punjabi language is nothing new in our society. It started during the British period with the end of Sikh rule in Punjab. Later, it was somewhat obtusely assumed that Urdu is the language of Muslims, Hindi,of Hindus and Punjabi, of Sikhs. By this oversimplified formula not only our land divided on the basis of religion but languages were also divided on the same basis. Today, in Indian Punjab one observes the regular usage of Punjabi everywhere – signage on the highways, in schools, colleges, universities and in public offices. This is exactly why Mian Shehbaz Sharif, the Chief Minister of Pakistani Punjab, while visiting the Indian counterpart delivered a speech in Punjabi to win their hearts!

But I am afraid I have rarely heard the Chief Minister of Punjab or any other leaders delivering a speech in Punjabi in Gujranwala, Faisalabad or any other city of the Pakistani Punjab. This is what I call the inferiority complex of us Punjabis in Pakistan.

It is obvious that Punjabis are living in some kind of confusion. It is a bitter truth that Punjabis have gradually destroyed their own language, as we never confidently owned it. Inspite of being the largest spoken language in Pakistan it is not taught in any schools! You wouldn’t find any sign boards in Punjabi anywhere in Punjab (except “Billay di Hatti” shops in various cities).  As I see it, the future of Punjabi in Pakistan is not bright.

Strangely, quite contradictory to this phenomenon of our self-denial, there is this interesting practice of Punjabi being popularized all across, without Punjabis even wanting it to! And the reason behind this is the televised musical program, Coke Studio – Pakistan.

I am sure, you would have heard on countless episodes of Coke Studio, numerous Kalams of Baba Bulleh Shah or Sultan Bahoo being performed by the participants. Be it Bulleh Shah or any other Sufi poet of Punjab, it is becoming quite a fashion to be associated with their music as an enthusiast. Don’t we simply love to listen to them and share Punjabi music by whatever means available to us and feel good that they project the secular and moderate culture of Punjab? Many people were introduced to Baba Bulleh Shah or Punjabi Sufis after the launch of Coke Studio. I feel, it is quite ironic that today we actually rely on a corporate giant and thankful to them for introducing Punjabi to the world because at the same time, we hate this language too!

This contradiction in our behavior baffles me completely.

However, I see rays of hope, coming from completely unexpected quarters though. Recently, a friend who shifted from Karachi to Lahore, complained “why the hell everyone speaks Punjabi here? I spoke to Rickshaw drivers, shopkeepers and a few other people and everyone replied to me in Punjabi!” It was a welcome realization that Punjabis have not completely given up on their mother tongue, at least not yet. It was a relief that at least a visitor to Punjab has realized that Punjabi is the language of Punjab. Deep inside, that made me immensely happy.
Curtsey:Shirazhassan.blogpost.com  :Wednesday, January 22, 2014
Source link: http://shirazhassan.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-punjab-punjabi-and-contradiction.html

The Punjabi Pakistan
Raza Habib Raja

The selective way of presenting history in Pakistan conveniently ignores the fact that at its creation, there were two large sometimes contrasting and sometimes overlapping movements. The first was primarily centred around Muslim identity and tried to actually bargain a better position for its bearers. This movement though ended up in carving a separate homeland for the Muslims, nevertheless did not have that strong separatist thrust at least in the beginning.
However, the Islamic identity itself was not the only identity assumed by Muslims as strong ethnic nationalist tendencies existed particularly in the region which later became Pakistan. Thus the ethnic nationalist movements in Khyber Pakhtoonkwha and Baluchistan existed even before the partition. Let’s not forget that Khyber Pakhtoonkwha and Baluchistan were not fully comfortable when they “opted” for Pakistan. At best their support for Pakistan was tepid. West Pakistan at its creation was a multi-ethnic region with strong individual demands for greater autonomy based on linguistic and ethnic lines. The residents were largely Muslims but at the same time they also gave importance to their ethnic linguistic identities.
East Pakistan had a more or less uniform language and culture and at that point supported Pakistan as they perceived the creation of that state as synonymous to sufficient degree of autonomy.
One thing grossly overlooked by the establishment is that ethnic-based nationalism flourishes and may even embrace separatists tendency if the state is seen as biased. Nationalism is not merely preservation of identity; it is very much intertwined with the concept of state. If state is perceived as unjust, secessionist movements will most likely find a hearing. Ernest Gellener actually defines nationalism in the context of injustice. The deprived and excluded, if belonging to some common ethnicity, will revolt and will form nationalist expression built around that ethnicity and may end up striving for a state of their own.
Another important fact is that, identities based on linguistic cum ethnic lines cannot be made to disappear through superimposition or playing up the religious factor particularly when discrimination and exclusion is based on such lines. Yes being a Muslim is an important part of the identity, but at the same time so is the ethnicity and language. The latter would assume supremacy in an environment of discrimination, whether real or perceived.
Keeping this situation in mind, where five major ethnic nationalities existed with a strong tendency to demand a sufficient degree of economic, social and cultural autonomy, the best bet to keep the state of Pakistan intact was to allow sufficient autonomy at the provincial level to ensure that ethnic expression was not stifled. However, here came the crucial error. The Pakistani establishment at that time and ever since has assumed that allowing provincial autonomy and greater ethnic expression coupled with decentralization would weaken the federation. Moreover, it erroneously assumed that the two nation theory negated fostering of regional identities.
These two assumptions have accounted for the various ideological, political and administrative missteps which the state has taken over the years to “tackle” the issue of ethnic diversity and nationalism. Instead of accommodating ethnic diversity the central idea has been to negate it through various means.
As pointed out quite eloquently by Mr. Stephen Cohen in his book The Idea of Pakistan that Pakistani leaders have not fully grasped that in an ethnically diverse state most politics is of identity and closely linked to issues of pride, status, jobs and social equality. They seem convinced that ethno-linguistic demands are an economic problem, not a political problem, and if other means fail, a military problem.
There are a wide range of administrative, political as well as ideological blunders which the largely Punjab dominated centre and establishment have committed over the past 60 years and with devastating results. These blunders have proven to be counterproductive to the original aim of keeping the state intact in a smooth manner and have created alienation in the other ethnicities. But the ill effects go beyond harming the harmonious relations between the ethnicities. These have actually had catastrophic effect on the other aspects also.
The ideological drive which places a strong emphasis on Islamisation actually also tries to counter the issue of ethnic identities. The aim has been to ensure a strong centre as it has been viewed critical for the integration of the state. The policy of Islamisation has not been carried out to radicalize the population but chiefly as a political tool to subdue nationalistic forces. Even state sponsored Talibanization was partly done to diffuse Pushtoon ethnic identity and amalgamate it into state preferred Sunni Muslim identity. Needless to say that it has produced catastrophic results and continues to produce such results.
In fact we have not learnt anything from the history and instead of trying to address ethnic nationalist demands, have continued to counter it by efforts to play up the Islamic factor to diffuse ethnic identity and demands. The Islamic drive became more vehement after the secession of East Pakistan. Instead of getting to the root of the problem which was OVER CENTRALIZATION AND PUNJAB’S DOMINANCE, our response has been to play up Islamic identity in order to overcome the ethnic forces. The fundamental assumption is that ethnic demands would weaken the state and therefore if ethnic identity can be “replaced” or at least superseded by Islamic identity, the state would survive.
Of course ideological thrust on fostering Islamic identity has been carried out to chiefly supplement the administrative, political and economic set up in which the centre dominates.
Pakistan has in fact continued with the colonial structure with minor amendments to “adjust” it to its ground realities. This structure with a centralized bureaucracy, powerful feudal structure, huge powers vested in the centre and a large army is chiefly designed to ensure a powerful centre. One has to go into pre-partition times to understand about the structure and rationale of this brand of state structure.
The British created a new breed of feudal lords with proper legal title while retaining monopoly on the sole use of violence as coercive measure. This clever tactic insulated the populace from the state as it created a layer while ensuring that monopoly of violence (state’s coercive power). The landlord while legal owner of the land had to exclusively rely on a centrist state to tackle with any trouble at the local level. Thus state eventually evolved as a mere enforcer rather than a body responsive to the local concerns. Its prime concern by design was ensuring authority of the centre.
On a broader level the state was structured with powers vested in the centre and provinces were to be ruled with limited autonomy. The act of 1935 which also became the source of inspiration for all the subsequent acts was again centrist in orientation. These two important characteristics which were designed by British, a foreign ruler, to ensure “insensitive” hegemony of the centre and Pakistan’s establishment as well as political class with centrists tendencies continued to persist with it. The post-colonial state is actually an extension of the colonial state but with the changed central government. This structure was deliberately allowed to continue to ensure preservation of a centre-oriented state. This structure is bound to create resentment at the local/provincial level and is designed for the IMPERSONAL kind of ruling.
In this structure the centre more or less controls the revenue and expenditure. And the centre is dominated by Punjab. The population wise allocation of revenue and Punjab’s dominance in the “establishment” institutions such as civil services, judiciary and above all armed forces has created resentment and given rise to grievances. The revenue and resource allocation is highly controversial and automatically gives rise to feelings of exclusion which invariably will be manifested in strong tides of nationalism and occasional political violence around the question of scecession. The revenue generated from other provinces is spent on Punjab disproportionately. Likewise, the royalties from resource usage of smaller provinces do not proportionally match up the benefits derived from such usage. The resource rich Baluchistan despite enabling Pakistan to save billions of dollars because of natural gas gets paltry amount of royalty in return. It remains a poor province despite benefitting Pakistan a lot. If today there is a strong resentment in Baluchistan’s middle-class, it arises from these grave injustices not due to so called grand conspiracies of foreign powers.
The current structure is skewed, whether deliberately or inadvertently, in favour of Punjab. Hence, not surprisingly, the identity of Punjab’s middle-class is strongly reminiscent of official version of what constitutes a Pakistani. The other provinces increasingly identify themselves on ethnic lines even though all may not be harbouring secessionist aspirations.
Moreover, several blunders have been committed in the past to ensure preservation of the dominance of the privileged centre. One was the tactless imposition of One Unit, which in the name of administrative “efficiency” tried to subdue the ethnic-linguistic expressions within the mould of governance. The One Unit scheme was a disaster and effectively sealed the fate of Pakistan unity. It ripped open the already smouldering wounds and needlessly aggravated the situation eventually leading to dismemberment of the country in 1971.
The administrative blunders have always been supplemented with violent and unconstitutional methods of dealing with the nationalist forces. The centrist tendencies manifested in violence as Bengalis were crushed using military, a pattern which has repeatedly been used. The culture has developed where autonomy if voiced is construed as a danger to the state and is handled with force. We did not learn the lessons with Bangladesh and repeated the same with Baluchistan repeatedly. Baluchistan has literally experienced several uprisings and brutal retaliations from the state. The ongoing insurgency is not the first such insurgency as it has been preceded by insurgencies in 1958, 1960s and 1973-77. And the provincial governments have also been dismissed and at times on the explicit charge of “conspiracy to dismember Pakistan”.
Right now as Pakistan is fighting for its existence and bearing the brunt of its ideological blunder of promoting political Islam to tackle ethnic diversity, the time has come for us to learn our lessons. The foremost lesson is that dissent can only be addressed by addressing the root causes which are often emanating from exclusion and discrimination. Use of ideological engineering and tactics of coercion and intimidation will not strengthen the federation but weaken it.
Another lesson which needs to be learnt and particularly by democracy-skeptic Punjabi middle-class, is that an ethnically diverse country needs democracy even if it means scarifying governance. Ethnic diversity needs consensus at every step and the way it has evolved in Pakistan the need to negotiate and renegotiate the relationship terms between the provinces will increase with time. Only democracy provides the framework as well as the forum to do so. Only democracy provides the mechanism which can tap the voices of the provinces and project them for discourse at the national level.
Therefore, this nonsensical yearning for army rule has to stop. Armed forces have always dealt with coercion and since they largely hail from Punjab, they have only succeeded in instilling hatred in the smaller provinces against it. While media and urban middle-class of Pakistan have been lynching the PPP government at the top of their voices, the party actually deserves praise at least on provincial autonomy front.
Curtsey:www.pakteahouse.net: May 24th, 2012

The Punjabi Soldier
By Steven Purewal

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On August 4th 1914, Britain declared war on Germany, and with it the British Empire was swept up into a vortex of death and destruction that would come to be known as the Great War. At its end, national boundaries would be redefined across Europe, Asia, and Africa, four world Empires would crumble, and over 9 million would lose their lives.
A Lost History
This year represents the centennial of that war, an occasion for the English speaking world to commemorate the allied victory in which the dominions of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand so famously rallied to the defense of their sovereign; King George V. What is often forgotten however is that the first to answer the call of Empire before any of these was India. By the end of the war, the all volunteer Indian Army would suffer more casualties than Canada or Australia, yet the Indian story remains untold. The men of Punjab comprised the majority of that army, and despite fighting across the globe in France, Iraq, Palestine, Africa and Gallipoli, the memory and glory of these Punjabi soldiers have been lost to time.
Looking at it through today’s lens, it can be difficult to understand why the ruled would enter the fray for their ruler. However, this would not be the first time a great empire had their colonies fight as part of the imperial forces. The Roman army’s adaption to include a range of nationalities from its dominions was a key factor in the construction and government of their empire. The British Empire at its height was an even greater enterprise within which select groups of the colonized found a role. In the 19th century, the Irish and the Scots, once fearsome enemies of the English, would fly their banners at the vanguard of Britannia’s armies. And so it was with the Punjabi, whose recruitment into a vast imperial enterprise began immediately upon the annexation of the Punjab.

The fall of the Kingdom of Punjab
In the Anglo Sikh wars of 1846 and 1849, the British faced a ferocious adversary in the Khalsa forces of the Kingdom of Lahore. In Maharaja Ranjit’s Singh army, a courageous peasantry had been finessed in the art of war by French general’s who had fought under Napoleon; the Punjab was indeed unlike any power in India. Towards the end of the wars with the Sikhs, a London newspaper would report that the battle of Chillianwala on January 13th 1849 was one that had left the British Laurels drenched with blood. Five regimental colours had been lost, the feared corps of Dragoons had retreated and that it was “doubtful as to which had sustained a greater injury from the conflict.” In this battle the Punjabi soldier’s true mettle was on display, for in previous encounters rival factions within the Punjabi elite had conspired with the British for the destruction of the Khalsa forces and the upstart Jat Sikh aristocracy ushered in by Maharaja Ranjit Singh.
The British after annexation of Punjab maintained a healthy respect for Punjabi soldiers. Punjab had been appropriated through an inducement to treachery, rather than the outright might of the British army. The echoes of that pact reverberate up to this day as it was the state of Kashmir that topped off the bounty for the anti Khalsa element of Punjabi leadership. After annexation, a mutual admiration between the gentlemen soldiers of the British and the warrior saints of the Punjab would ensue. For the Sikhs, the British represented a neutral power. Indeed, after the collapse of the Sikh kingdom of Lahore, Hindu or Muslim, ascendancy would have been unworkable. The British were, at that time, the most martial nation on earth, an empire worthy of some admiration and made for a powerful partner for a minority group such as the Sikhs, who had been betrayed by some of their own countrymen.

For the British, the Sikhs represented a potential ally against the scourge of the Afghan – who, in 1842, had inflicted upon them an embarrassing defeat in the 1st Afghan War. With the annexation of the Punjab, they inherited a volatile border with Afghanistan. The Sikhs were the power that had defeated the Afghans, driving them out of Punjab and going on to claim the Trans-Indus territories of Afghanistan, including the Afghan summer capital Peshawar, as their own.
The British were quick to realize that governing Punjab with a heavy hand would be unwise in the face of the war-like Punjabis. The Rajputs, the warrior aristocracy of north India, considered the bearing of arms as the only acceptable profession. For those Jats who had thrown down their ploughs for sabres at the calling of the Gurus, to fight the good fight against an oppressor was enshrined as their religious duty and martyrdom had become a tradition. Thus a paternalistic system of imperial rule was set in motion for Punjab’s development, setting its trajectory apart from India and ensuring the loyalty of the Punjabi people. A loyalty Britannia would lean on more than once in the coming years.
Guardians of Empire
The first critical chapter in the story of this alliance occurred less than 10 years after Chillinawalla, during the Mutiny of 1857. Rebel Hindu and Muslim soldiers, mainly from the higher castes east of the Jumna, had positioned Bahadur Shah of the old Mughal Empire as the figurehead for their uprising and in doing so had raised an age old enmity with the Sikhs. Seizing the chance to attack Delhi, the Sikhs zealously extracted revenge against the last vestiges of the Mughals who had committed untold atrocities against the fledgling Sikh community of the 18th century. This ‘loyalist’ fervour proved decisive in quelling the Mutiny, and Punjabis were to be rewarded with imperial recruitment policies that would immediately favour enlistment of men from the Punjab. Within a couple of decades, Punjab would be transformed into a garrison state, not only for India but for all of the empire’s eastern possessions.

During this era a close fellowship developed between British Indian Army officers and the Punjabi soldier – camaraderie perhaps unrivalled in the history of armies. Within this ‘Punjabified’ British Indian Army, men of different races and religions lived, fought, bled, and died together in distant outposts of Empire that stretched from Africa to China. In many parts of the east, the very face of the British Empire was a turban clad Punjabi in an Indian Army uniform standing side by side with the Sahib. While it may be difficult to explain to outsiders the bonds between soldiers, it should be clear that without this camaraderie a Punjabi dominated army would never have supported a century of British rule.
Janet Roberston, a retired nurse from Queen Alexandra's Royal Army Nursing recall’s many a story she heard while talking and reminiscing with WW1 and WW2 veterans during the 1960’s.  
“WW1 had only ended 43 years earlier and I heard the stories first-hand from veterans. Many were in their 60's and 70's as it turned out they had ‘fabricated’ their ages and had signed up as 14 and 15 year old boys in search of adventure and excitement. I often heard British veterans say that a cheer would go through the ranks when they heard the "Punjabi pipes" and saw a regiment of turbaned men marching towards them, and it was commonly voiced, "Thank God, the Indians have arrived" or "Thank God the Punjabis are covering our flank".  I wasn’t surprised to hear of their presence in the Far East, due to the close proximity, to what was then, the Indian Empire. What I didn't realize was the extent of that respect and esteem."
"On one occasion I had the pleasure of getting to know Field Marshal Viscount Lord William Slim. A man of courage who rose from the lowly rank of private to the highest rank in the British army, he was as tough as they came. He knew the men of Punjab very well, having commanded 14th Ferozpur and 15th Ludhiana Sikhs during the Burma campaigns in WW2. He told me an incident he once witnessed of Indian coolies being mistreated – “they wouldn’t push around the fighting soldiers of the Indian Army. Nobody would shove them off the pavement without getting hurt. You are in good company when you are with the Sikhs.”

Band of Brothers
Beyond the camaraderie between ruler and the ruled was the unity fostered amongst the Punjabis themselves. Within the secular forces of Maharaja Ranjit’s Kingdom, nationalist Punjabi Muslim forces had fought alongside Khalsa forces against the enemies of Punjab - Afghan and Briton alike. Under the British mixed class regiments, Punjabis would continue to vie for glory as one cohesive force, in which the ‘Izzat’ (respect) of the regiment or ‘Paltan’ superseded that of any individual creed. In the second Afghan War of 1878, an escort of a Punjab Frontier Force regiment faced an army of Afghans in Kabul, surrounded and with all British officers dead.
The outnumbered Punjabis were given a chance to lay down their arms, but to a man they elected to stand their ground. Led by a Sikh officer, Jemadar Jewand Singh, even the Muslim Punjabis sepoys chose to die defending the Izzat of their regiment. Regimental pride would spur single class regiments to epic actions, including 21 soldiers under siege from 10,000 Afghans at a remote windswept fort called Saraghari on India’s Northwest Frontier in 1897. Refusing to surrender and fighting till the last round, those 21 soldiers of the Queen cost the Afghans hundreds of lives. This unique camaraderie between bands of brothers even transcended the arbitrary 1947 line of partition when opposing Generals Harbaksh Singh and Baktiar Rana met to formalize a cease fire for the 1965 Indo-Pak War. To the astonishment of the UN observers the generals, on meeting, hugged like long lost brothers.

In the span of a few short decades after the 1849 annexation, the military’s secular and interventionist policies had cemented its position as the central authority in colonial Punjab. On the back of many hard won glories by Punjab regiments, the military administration wielded the largest budgets within the Government of India, and successfully transformed the province into a model of stability and prosperity. The rural Punjabis, both Muslim and Sikh, from which the rank and file of the army were primarily enlisted, had become the beneficiaries of an enterprise that spanned a globe. Abroad, from policing the Empire in the east, to celebrating in all the pomp and circumstance of the Empire in London itself, the Punjabi peasant was a celebrated transnational citizen of empire. At home, the predominance of the Punjab within the ‘jewel in the crown’ that was India would be asserted by King George V in 1911 at his Coronation Durbar in Delhi, then a part of the Province of Punjab; Calcutta had stood as capital city of India for 150 years but it was now to be replaced by Delhi.
Just three years later, the second chapter in the strategic relationship between the ruler and the ruled would again be memorialized in blood. In August 1914, Britain would face off against a European superpower for the first time in a hundred years, in what would be a fight for its very survival and the future of the world.

To be continued in the Next Issue:
On declaration of war, Britain’s standing army of 125,000 was quickly overwhelmed by a German army nearly 1 million strong. With the ports of the English Channel in peril, the situation was dire and Britain was compelled to ask the Indian army to mobilize to fight for the first time in Europe. The Indian Corps, comprising regiments from the Punjabi heartlands of Amritsar, Jalandar, Ludhiana and Ferozpur, were the first to arrive in the defence of Britain.

About the Exhibit
Duty Honour & Izzat - The Call to Flanders Fields
The centennial of the 1914 – 1918 First World War (WW1) is an historic opportunity not only for Canadians to commemorate those that lost their lives, but also to engage today’s youth and diverse communities about the significance of the sacrifices that were made. In collaboration with Simon Fraser University and the Indian Ex- Servicemen’s Society of BC, Indus Media Foundation Canada ( IMFC)  is producing an exhibit for this Fall to highlight the significant contribution Punjabis made to the war effort. For more information on exhibit dates and lower mainland venues please visit: www.IMFC.org

ALL IMAGES COURTESY OF Indus Media Foundation
Curtsey: http://www.darpanmagazine.com/magazine/feature/the-punjabi-soldier/

'Tis Time To Learn From Ranjit Singh
AYAZ AMIR

 Mystics and divines, poets and singers, men of enterprise and of daring, of quality and base instinct, the best dancing girls in the entire sub-continent, Punjab has given birth to them all. 

What, through some quirk of geography or history, it has never been able to produce is the able ruler.

But for a single exception: for over 2000 years, from Alexander’s invasion to the Partition of British India in 1947, only one ruler of ability and distinction in its turbulent history, the great Maharajah Ranjit Singh. 

Apart from him, governors and vassals in plenty but no independent ruler, principally because Punjab was never an independent kingdom except when Ranjit Singh raised it to that status.

Afghan kings, kings of Turkish origin, Mughal emperors … but only one Punjabi king. 

So while Punjab had other strong traditions, in agriculture, music, poetry, dancing, and, I daresay, the sycophantic arts which come so readily to subjugated people, the one tradition its superior classes lacked was that of leadership.

They knew best how to scrape and bow before authority. They were good at carrying out orders. But in 1947, history placed upon their shoulders the task of creating a nation and giving that nation a sense of direction. 

And they were not up to it, because nothing in their past had prepared them for this. True, Punjab’s elite classes, in alliance with the Urdu-speaking elites who had crossed over from India, managed to create order out of the chaos of Partition, a remarkable feat in itself. 

A country was thus born but something else as important proved elusive: the quest for nationhood.

Small wonder, misgivings arose from the very start, not everyone feeling that they were equal citizens of the new state, certainly not the people of East Pakistan who despite being in a majority felt excluded from decision-making. Baloch nationalists were unhappy, Pakhtun nationalists aggrieved, they who had been in the forefront of the struggle against the British. 

And winds of religiosity beat down upon the land, making what were still called minorities uneasy.

Jinnah had said that religion had no place in politics, the gist of his famous address to the Constituent Assembly just a few days before independence. 

But here something else was happening, religious rhetoric becoming more powerful even as political and economic performance lagged far behind.

Paranoia as regards India, an insecurity which sought relief in military alliances with the United States, an obsession with religious chest-thumping, truly bizarre in a Muslim majority country where Islam should have been the last thing in danger, or the least in need of artificial props -- of such humours was concocted the doctrine that came to be hailed, and indeed flaunted, as the ideology of Pakistan.

The Baloch had no fear of India. For them Kashmir was a distant proposition. In Sindh where there was a large Hindu population, the people had no problem with India or Hinduism. Neither did the Pakhtuns have any mental problems with India, despite being very religious in their everyday outlook. 

In the tribal areas and in places like Swat there were Sikh and Hindu communities which felt safe and co-existed happily with their Muslim neighbours.

But it was altogether different with the official Punjabi mind and that of the Urdu-speaking elites where flourished the demons of fear and insecurity, more as a political tactic than a psychological necessity because it was a good way to keep the rest of the population in line. And because these classes dominated the upper echelons of the armed forces, the ethos of the services came also to be imbued by the same fears and compulsions.

Paradoxically, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who should have been the most enlightened man of his generation fanned the flames of this anti-Indianism more than anyone else, perhaps calculating (although there can be other theories on this score) that beating the anti-India drum would best appeal to the Punjab masses. 

But when the wheel came full circle the movement against him in 1977 received its most powerful impetus in Punjab, and it was the Punjab bazaar and trading classes which bayed the loudest for his blood.

When Gen Zia went looking for allies against Bhutto he found the fiercest in Punjab. When President Ghulam Ishaq Khan and the ISI sought to contain Benazir Bhutto in her first prime ministership they groomed a champion in the form of one Mian Nawaz Sharif, a scion of Punjab. The fateful enterprises promoted in the name of ‘jihad’ found some of their first votaries and loudest advocates in Punjab.

Land of the five rivers – what hast thou not wrought? 

From thy bosom arising Guru Nanak and Bulleh Shah, Shah Hussain and Waris Shah, Iqbal and Faiz and Munir Niazi, Bade Ghulam Ali Khan and Kundan Lal Saigal, Rafi and Noor Jahan, not to forget the great Sir Ganga Ram who had no equal when it came to giving, and Shaheed Bhagat Singh and his companions who had no equals when it came to laying down their lives in the cause of freedom. 

At the same time, land of our fathers, home to so much nonsense at the altar of faith and righteousness.

Pakistan today is largely what Punjab, for good or ill, has made it. Indian Punjab is a small part of India. Pakistani Punjab encompasses the best and worst of Pakistan. The social conservatism on display in our midst, the mental backwardness, the narrowness of outlook, the triumph of hypocrisy, the destruction of national education, the muddling up of national priorities, the temples erected to the false gods of national security – so much of this, alas, can be traced to the incapacities of Punjab.

Perhaps Ranjit Singh was an aberration, a historic anomaly – out of the mould and thus one of a kind.

Our Punjab today certainly has nothing in common with his kingdom. 

In Ranjit Singh’s army found service men of all races and religions. There were Mussalman battalions in his army and his head of artillery was Mian Ghausa, just as his principal wazir was from the Faqirkhana family of Lahore. And his favourite wife was a Muslim, Bibi Gulbahar Begam.

The PML-N has been in power in Islamabad twice before but in different circumstances, Nawaz Sharif not quite his own man in his first incarnation and, despite his huge majority, an unsure man in his second. 

He now comes as someone who has seen and experienced a great deal. So can he make a difference? Disavowing his past, does he have it in him to write a fresh history of Punjab?

Another thing to remember about the Lion of Punjab (the only lion, others all fake and imitations) -- Maharaja Ranjit Singh -- is that he knew how to handle his Afghan problem. He defeated the Afghans and took Peshawar from them. 

Peshawar was part of the Sikh dominions annexed by the British. So if Peshawar and its environs are a part of Pakistan today it is because of that earlier Sikh conquest, half-forgotten in the mists of time. 

As Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan go prattling about talking to the Taliban they could do worse than study the Maharajah’s approach to the Afghans.

So can we get our historical compasses right? 

For over 2000 years on the soil of what is Pakistan today no independent realm or kingdom existed except two: Ranjit Singh’s Sikh Kingdom and the state of Pakistan. 

The first was a success, a well-run entity, at least as long as the Maharajah was alive; the second is the shambles that we have made over the last 65 years.

Now there comes an opportunity to redeem our past. Question is, can the new rulers of Pakistan be half as good as their most illustrious predecessor, the one and only King of Punjab?

[Courtesy: The News]
June 2, 2013
 

True daughter of the Punjab
Mahmood Awan

Afzal Tauseef, a progressive writer and columnist, fought too many battles, faced so many betrayals but never surrendered

Amrita Pritam called her “Suchi Dhee Punjab Di” and the book she compiled about her in Hindi was titled Doosre Aadam Ki Beti. Both these titles so grievously symbolise the uprooted daughter of the Punjab who fought too many battles, faced so many betrayals but never surrendered.
Jeth maheenay di tat Ree dopehr dhallay, main jammi taaN Dai Jhanddo boli: ‘Ha’ay Ni, eih taaN KuRi Jamm Pa’e, Ha’ay Ha’ay Palothee di KuRi (When I was born on a hot afternoon of May, Dai Jhanddo lamented “Oh God! It’s a girl, Oh No…the very first child is a girl!). Afzal Tauseef composed this unwelcomed arrival in her biography where she narrated voices who suggested of killing the baby girl and telling others that it was a boy who was born dead.
Afzal Tauseef was born in Simbli, Nawan Shahar, Jalandhar in 1936. At the time of partition, all her paternal family members were massacred. She depicted this horrible tragedy in Lahu BhijjiaN BatkhaaN where family ducks are slipping on the blood wet floors of her family house. She and her mother survived because they were at her grandmother’s house in Pind Qaum, Ludhiana while her father who was a police officer was on training in Phillaur (Jalandhar). She was the only surviving child of her family.
Tauseef then moved to Balochistan where her father got posted. She eventually came back to Punjab for higher education and completed her MA English from Government College Lahore. She then started teaching at the College of Education until her retirement. Actively associated with Pakistan People’s Party, fought against the military regimes of Ayub Khan and Ziaul Haq, spent years in hiding and detentions and courageously faced intelligence agencies, cases of treason and military trials.
She authored more than thirty books including her autobiography Mann diyaaN VastiaaN(Where the heart is), East Punjab travelogue Vailay Day Pichay Pichay (Following the past), essays about Punjab Ke’da Naa Punjab (What is Punjab) and remarkable short story collections Tahli mere bachRay (My kids, O Sheesham tree), Amman vailay millaN gay (We will meet in the time of peace) and PanjjeevãN ghanta (The 25th hour). She was a permanent member of Punjabi Adabi Board and also served as board’s vice president for years.
She won numerous literary awards in West and East Punjab including Masood Khaddarposh, Lambra Sath, Naag Mani as well as the Millennium award. She also received the Life Achievement Award given by the Denmark-based Asian Writers Association that was awarded to her in an emotional event held in her birth town Simbli. Many of her books have been transliterated into Gurmukhi script and published in India.
Tauseef was nominated many times for the prestigious Pride of Performance award by the military and civilian governments of Pakistan but she always rejected. However, in 2010 she agreed to accept the same offer. While talking to Newsline in November 2009, she gave her reasons which explain her principled life and times, she said: “When a senior police officer representing Ziaul Haq came to me offering the Pride of Performance with a prize of eight murabbas of cultivatable landholding, I had refused point blank. Because, one, all my life I had written against the very system that was being perpetuated by Zia. Two, my acceptance would have led to the indictment of 41 other comrades in the Libya Conspiracy Case in which I had been named a party. So, my answer had been that to be remembered as a freedom fighter and revolutionary were far greater awards. That having been named as the best teacher by 25,000 students was a far greater honour. That I did not care for the bait of a landholding because my grandfather had owned three villages in undivided India. That my late father who had been the Quaid’s security officer in Ziarat had made no claims against his ancestral holdings, despite being in a position to do so, even while others were making fortunes. But yes, now I will accept the Pride of Performance because I have been convinced by friends that the award comes as an honour not from the establishment, but from the country that I have fought for. That it is my right.”
Tauseef was a strong advocate of provincial autonomy and was one of the few Punjabis who voiced her support for the Baloch cause within the confines of the federation. She was utterly against the landholding elite as well as the Baloch Sardari system. She was a people loving secular thinker who considered growing Mullahism as an existential threat to her homeland.
Among all these challenges, love for Punjab and Punjabi language became her green corner. She worked tirelessly for the language rights of her beloved people. She spearheaded the concept, actualisation and establishment of the Punjab Institute of Language, Art and Culture (PILAC) in Lahore. However, when everything was accomplished bureaucrats arrived in their chauffeur-driven cars and she was silently sidelined. Pain of this betrayal stayed with her till the end.
In one of her last public appearances while addressing a charged gathering of Punjabi writers and workers in Lahore on August 8, 2009 she summed up her lifelong Punjabi language activism. This is like her ‘Nobel lecture’ to us, she said: “I may not be a Punjabi nationalist in the sense you are but I write at least 35 essays in favour of Punjabi Language every year. After reading all the world’s literature I can proudly say that Punjabi is one of the best languages of the world. However, it seems we are doomed; there is nothing left except pain. We are surrounded by darkness, there is no hope for the light. Rains have disappeared in the skies and river Ravi has dried up. Since long no one has fought the case of our Punjab. Our songs have muted, since long. Punjab is without a guardian (Nah Bullah, nah Waris, Punjab La-Waaris). There was a Punjab once from Delhi to Peshawar and from Shimla to Rajasthan. That was the blessed land, the Punjab of Baba Nanak. Then they snatched our language, our identity and our pride. They talk of dividing Punjab again. Every day new vultures arrive to prey on our land and demand their portions. They [vultures] even start fighting among themselves.”
Tauseef was a naturalist who loved animals, flowers and gardening. She spent most of her life in Governmental residences and in one of her short stories she herself appears as a protagonist and narrates the story of a woman who spends many months in growing various seedlings and creating a garden. When spring arrives and flowers start blossoming, she receives an order to vacate the house as new allottees have arrived. Her blooming garden was ruined in Simbli and all her life, she remained a homeless child of the divided Punjab.

She never came to terms with this division and wrote so painfully in her East Punjab travelogue while visiting her birth town: “Kal loki jaduN mainu vaikhan gay tay kehn gay ‘Eih Simbli vãliaaN di dhee ay, Chaudhary Niamat Khan di Bhateji, Mehndi Khan di dhee, Vichaari pehli vaar aaee ay’. [Miary Vadkaay] Mussalmaan kiss tarah ho’ay mainu patta nahi par Mussalmaan hoN day Jurm wich 1947 vich apni dharti tay maaray ga’ay mainu patta ay. UnhaaN apna des chaddaN tu inkaar keeta….issay wajja tu ohnaaN day ghar da sona tay sonay vargyaaN dhiyyãN Lutte’aaN GyaaN.”
She never married and during the last years of her life she went into deep depression, grew bitter and stopped seeing even her very close comrades. During the last days of her life she used to stay awake all night busy arranging her bookshelves. She always wished for a Punjab research library as big as The Library of Congress for the sole purpose of holding all Punjab related books written in any language.
In one of her last meetings with her writer friends Nasreen Anjum Bhatti and Parveen Malik she didn’t utter a single word. When pushed to talk she mourned: “SaryaaN gallaN ai mukk gayyãN nay” (There isn’t anything left). Rest in peace mother, downtrodden kids of your muted land will always miss the shine of your presence: Khaali reh ga’ay matt Muhammad, khãnay majlas vaalay.
Curtsey:The News January 11, 2015 

Turn Right: Sindhi Nationalism and Electoral Politics
By Muhammad Qasim Sodhar

Artist: Zahra Malkani | Dadu 1960 series
Recently, an unprecedented 10 party electoral alliance was formed in Sindh between several nationalist groups and right-wing mainstream political parties, including the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N). Sindhi nationalist groups who have hitherto stayed away from electoral politics, announced their arrival on the electoral stage. Electoral politics in interior Sindh has been historically dominated by the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), while Mutahidda Qaumi Movement (MQM) dominates in large urban centers such as Karachi and Hyderabad. The main objective of this alliance is to defeat the PPP and MQM.
One can understand PML-N’s motivation for forging this alliance in Sindh where they have no political standing of their own. But, how do we make sense of the aims of the nationalist groups of Sindh? Why do they need this ten-party alliance? What can we expect from the nationalist in the coming elections? And most importantly, what can be the consequence for an alliance with the biggest party of Punjab – a province that has serves as the existential other of Sindhi national identity?
To answer these questions, we will have to consider both the historical context of nationalist politics in Sindh and the current dynamics of electoral Pakistan in Pakistan.
Historical context of nationalist politics in Sindh
Sindh has a long tradition of nationalist politics, and the political consciousness of the people is shaped at a very early age through stories of the many sons and daughters of the soil who sacrificed their lives for their homeland. Sindhi nationalist poets like Shaikh Ayaz have written poems eulogizing the heroic efforts of Raja Dahir against the invading Arab imperialist forces of Mohammad bin Qasim. The stories of the bravery of Hosh Muhammad Sheedi (Hoshu Sheedi), the African-descent commander in-chief of the Talpur rulers of Sindh, are also well known. When Charles Napier took his forces to sack and conquer Sindh in 1843, as “revenge” for the humiliating defeat of the British at the hands of the Afghan tribes during the First Anglo-Afghan War, Hoshu Sheedi led a brave charge against the British in the Battle of Dubee near Hyderabad. In the face of impending defeat, Hosu Sheedi famously raised the slogan:
MarsooN, MarsooN, Sindh na DdesooN
(We will die! We will die! but we will not give up Sindh)
The same spirit was evident during the the early twentieth century, when nationalist and anti-colonial politics was at its peak in colonial India. This was the time of Ghulam Murtaza Shah (G.M. Syed), lovingly known by the people as “Saeen,” who blended Marxism and Sufism to present the founding doctrines of Sindhi Nationalism. G.M. Syed started his political career by organizing Sindhi hari (peasants); he was elected to the Sindh Legislative Assembly in 1937. His played a central role in getting resolution in favor of Pakistan passed by the Sindh assembly, the first such act by any assembly in British India. The scheme called for the establishment of a federation comprising of Sindh, Punjab, Balochistan, NWFP, Bengal, and Asaam, with full autonomy to be given to the provincial units. Later on in his career, disillusioned with the politics of Pakistan,  G.M Sayyid established Jeay Sindh Mahaz. Several factions of which now support full independence of Sindh.
The early decades of an independent Pakistan saw a brutally centralized rule by the military and civilian bureaucracy, which used heavy-hand tactics to suppress any demands of provincial autonomy and the rights of ethnic-nations. An example of this was the “One-Unit” plan imposed by Governor General Ghulam Muhammad in 1954, which remained in place during the decade of military rule under Field Martial Ayub Khan. This scheme dissolved the all the provinces of West Pakistan (Sindh, Punjab, N.W.F.P. and Balochistan). There was no major resistance movement against the one-unit scheme in the Punjab–it seems that they had given up on their identity as Punjabi and taken on the garb of being Muslim and Pakistani.
A peculiar mix of leftist and ethno-nationalist politics, resulting in the National Awami Party (NAP), was the principle opposition to the military regime of the 1950s and 1960s. When the national leaders of Sindh, Balochistan and N.W.F.P united under this banner and resisted the imposition of One-unit, both in its administrative and identity dimensions, the state used coercive measure to stop the nationalists’ resistance. For a while all the major jails of the country were filled with political prisoners.
If we focus on electoral politics, the decade of 1970s saw both the appearance of the Pakistan People’s Party riding the wave of anti-establishment sentiments, and the gradual demise of united nationalist and left-wing politics. The relationship between the PPP and natinoalist parties remained a strained one, marred with conflicts and tensions.
PPP always relied on the cooperation of the Sindhi nationalists to gain power. Consider the aftermath of the judicial murder of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy (MRD) during the 1980s. Nearly all the nationalist and patriotic parties joined PPP in the MRD movement. However, when PPP came in power after the 1988 elections, after being given a strong mandate by the people of Pakistan, the Benazir government appointed General Zia’s close friend Ghulam Ishaque Khan as the President as part of a deal with the Establishment. This backfired as two PPP governments were dissolved during the 1990s through the use of “unconstitutional” measures put in place by General Zia. The PPP once again played the victim.
The tension between Sindhi nationalism and the fascist brand of Mohajir nationalism is an important factor in the calculus of Sindhi nationalist politics.  PPP has never shied away from claiming to represent Sindhi people and forming alliances with the MQM. When not in power, PPP presents itself as the true representative of Sindhi and a true friend of oppressed nations of Pakistan. But when in power, they start singing songs to the tune of “compromise is the best policy,” and form coalition governments with MQM.
But the story of the politics of major political parties is not our major concern. Let’s get back to analyzing the internal dynamics of the politics and factions of the Sindhi nationalists.
 Who are the Sindhi nationalists?
There are two major schools of thoughts among the nationalists of Sindh. The first group shuns parliamentary politics and to found a separate independent state of Sindhu Desh. This group largely consists of the various factions and sub-factions of the Jeay Sindh Mahaz, whose foundations were laid down by G.M Syed in the 1970s. The major parties included in this group are Jeay Sindh Qomi Mahaz (JSQM Bashir Khan Qureshi group) led by Qureshi’s son Sanan Qureshi;  JSQM Abdul Wahid Arisar group;  Jeay Sindh Tehreek (JST) led by Dr Safder Sarki;  Jeay Sindh Mehaz (JSM) led by Riaz Chandio;  and Jeay Sindh Mutahida Mehaz (JSMM) led by Shafi Burfat.
The second group comprises of parties who are in favor of parliamentary politics and do not want separation of Sindh from Pakistan. They want a renewed social contract between the people and the state, based on the original Lahore Resolution of 1940 which promised autonomous status to the provinces. The main political parties belong to this group are: Qomi Awami Tahrik (QAT) led by Ayaz Latif Palijo;  Sindh Taraqi Pasand Party (STP) led by Dr. Qadir Magsi;  Sindh United Party (SUP) led by Jalal Mehmood Shah;  and Sindh National Movement (SNM) led by Ali Hassan Chandio.
No doubt that the nationalist parties are fragmented and have differences of ideology and strategy. But, at the same time, there is a lot of common ground to build alliances if the time and issues call for it. One example is the Kala Bagh Dam issue. All these groups are united in their unanimous opposition to the construction of this dam. The same spirit was evident when the PPP-MQM coalition government passed the Sindh People’s Local Government Act 2012—all the nationalist groups united against SPLGA and PPP had to withdraw the bill.
The current ten party alliance also has roots in the alliances against SPLGA 2012. Let’s look at this alliance closely.
 Ten party electoral alliance
The alliance consists of several mainstream political parties such as: PML (N), PML (Functional), Jamiat-e-Islami, Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam, Jamiat-e-Ulema Pakistan, Pakistan Sunni Tehreek, and National People’s Party. It also includes Sindhi nationalist parties such as: the Sindh United Party, Sindh Taraqi Pasand Party and Qomi Awami Tehreek. The main objective of this alliance is to defeat PPP and MQM in coming elections.
Many have supported the idea of this alliance, but there are clear ideological rifts among the so-called allies. We see a combination of religious and right-wing parties such as JI, JUI, JUP, PST, and even PML-N to a certain degree. Then there are the nationalist parties with their more progressive and left-wing agenda. Qomi Awami Tehreek led by Ayaz Latif Palijo is a considered by many as a “left-wing” party since its inception.
The alliance then is obviously relying on more strategic calculations, beyond ideologies and manifestos. We have seen in the past as well, for instance MRD, All Parties Democratic Alliance, and Poonam alliances in Sindh all had strange mixes of conflicting ideological groups.
The big debate in the case of this particular ten party alliance is regarding the role of Punjab. Critics raise the question that if Sindhi nationalists have been always been against Punjab and Punjabis, at least in their political discourse, how is it that they have not suddenly become allies?
One must keep in mind that the Sindhi nationalist parties part of the alliance, including Qomi Awami Tehreek, Sindh United Party and Sindh Taraqi Pasand Party, have never talked against Punjab and Punjabi people. Rather, their political discourse has always been against the establishment and ruling class of the Punjab—identified as the main culprits whose policies go against the interests of the people of Sindh.  Sindhi nationalists groups that engage in negative propaganda and political diatribe against the Punjab and Punajbi people as a whole include the various factions of Jeay Sindh that want separation of Sindh from Pakistan. None of these groups are part of the alliance.
Another point to consider is the shift in the behavior of Nawaz Sharif. His removal from the premiership and subsequent deportation in 1999 at the hands of the military dictator General Musharraf, seems to have left a lasting effect on Nawaz Sharif. His attitude and policy regarding issues of non-Punjabi nationalist and people of Sindh has seen a complete shift and he has also been a vocal critic of the military establishment. It remains to be seen whether this change in discourse will result in actual deliverance of justice to the people of Sindh. It is quite possible that like PPP, PML-N will also forget all its promises once (and if) it gets power.
Still the chance of sitting in the assemblies through this coalition is an appealing prospect for many nationalist leaders and parties, who will be contesting the elections for the first time. This “new” factor quite possibly can win them supporters against the incumbent PPP and an alliance with PML(N) has its benefits, as PML-N is the strongest contender in these highly competitive elections.
Divisions within the ranks
The internal conflicts have already started playing out. Consider the provincial assembly constituency, PS-47 Qasimabad (Hyderabad). Both the president of Qomi Awami Tehreek  and chairman of Sindh Taraqi Pasand Party, Ayaz Latif Palijo and Dr. Qadir Magsi respectively filled papers to contest elections from this constituency. It was only after considerable pressure by other members of the alliance that Dr. Qadir Magsi withdrew his nomination papers. However, at the time of writing, Sindh United Party which is also part of the coalition had decided to field a candidate, Latif Junejo from PS-47 Qasimabad, which is a clear breach of an electoral alliance.
It might have been better for these three nationalist parties to contest the elections under the banner of “Sindh Provincial Nationalist Alliance (SPNA)” which consists of Qomi Awami Tehreek, Sindh Taraqi Pasand Party and Sindh United Party. These nationalists had struggled collectively under the banner of SPNA against the Muhajir Sooba Tehrik (Migrant Province Movement) that had emerged in the main urban centers of Sindh, including Karachi, Hyderabad, and Mirpurkhas. The nationalist were also united in their agitations against the SPLGA 2012 under the banner of Sindh Bachayo Committee (Save Sindh Committee) and they displayed their strength by drawing out large support during their protests, jalsas, and strikes.
But it seems that the leader of feudal dominated PML (F), Peer Pagara has benefited the most from these united nationalist agitations. He arranged several successful public gatherings and protests against the SPLGA in Hyderabad with the help of nationalist parties, and also managed to take the credit even with his minimal contribution.  From the outside it may seem that Peer Pagara’s party is a representative political party of Sindh, though this is not the case.
The alliance has a collective manifesto and the main goal of defeating PPP and MQM in coming elections.  The alliance would have better served the people of Sindh if it had expanded beyond these goals in atleast three ways. First, it should provide a clear program of improving the lives of the people of Sindh. Second, there should be no coalition with MQM under any circumstances. But most importantly, the alliance could have put the Kalabagh dam issue to rest once and for all.  It must be noted that the stance of PML-N is not entirely clearly on this very sensitive issue. One brother, Shahbaz Sharif, stands and Lahore and claims that his party will construct Kalabag dam at all cost. The other brother, Nawaz Sharif, visits Sindh and promises that the Kalabag dam will not be constructed without consensus of all provinces. If PML(N) forms the government at the Federal level, it will have the ability to put this issue to rest. This may be an opportunity lost for the Nationalist.
The ten party alliance has the potential to counter the alliance of convenience between PPP and MQM which only serves their narrow interests.  I expect the alliance to give a tough time to the PPP, because previously Sindhi people had no other viable option available to them.  They won’t affect a clean sweep, but their gain will be PPP’s loss.
If they do affect an upset, this will be a testament to the built-in accountability mechanism of democracy, where the people will oust PPP since it failed to deliver. The sincerity of the nationalists with the people of Sindh is still an open question. In the end, all parties participating in elections make promises. One can hope that the same principle of accountability that gets the nationalists elected will also force their hands for the betterment of the people.
Muhammad Qasim Sodhar is a student at Quaid-i-Azam University and writes regularly for Sindhi language publications. He can be reached at qasim_quaidian AT hotmailDotCom

Curtsey: www.tanqeed.org. May 2013

Ustad Daman, Nationalist Punjabi Poet
By Nadir Ali

The Poet Laureate of the Twentieth Century Punjab
On his death Habib Jalib said ‘Ustad Daman was a great nationalist. He represented faithfully the opinions and desires of the deprived folk. People cannot forget him.’
Faiz Ahmed Faiz on being asked why he did not write poetry in Punjabi, replied that he could not compete with the old masters like Sultan Bahu, Bulleh Shah, Waris Shah and others. The only one who could be ranked with them today was Ustad Daman.
Born on 3rd September 1911 in Lahore as Chiragh Din – his father was a tailor and his mother a washerwomen. In an interview the Ustad said that since his mother was a washerwoman, his mind remained clean: his father being a tailor implied that he could stitch torn fragments of life with patches of love.
He went regularly to school for his primary education. Afterwards he had to work and find time for going to school and passed his matriculation examination. He could not continue his education further. However, at the young age of 7-8 years he started writing and reciting verses.
In 1930 he stitched a suit for Mian Iftikhar-ud-din. When Mian came for the delivery, Ustad Daman was singing his own verses, which impressed Mian Sahib greatly. He invited him to recite his poem at a public meeting organised by the Indian National Congress. He became an instant hit and Pandit Nehru, who was there dubbed him as the ‘Poet of Freedom’. He first wrote under the pen name Humdam, which was later changed to Daman. The title ‘Ustad’ was bestowed on him by the people. After that he became a regular participant in these meetings. He believed that the unity of Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs was essential, if the struggle for freedom was to be carried on successfully. An example of his patriotic poetry may be given.
‘In China the Chinese are grand,In Russia they do as they have planned.In Japan its people rule over its strand.The British rule the land of England,The French hold the land of France,In Teheran the Persians make their stand.The Afghans hold on to their highland,Turkmenistan’s freedom bears the Turkmen’s brand,How very strange is indeed this fact,That freedom in India is a contraband.’
During the partition in 1947 he lost his wife and child, he was later re-united with them – only to lose them to disease, for which he could not afford the treatment. His poor friends had to chip in for the burial. As he was a Congressman, his house was burnt and his library and writings were destroyed. He shifted to a verandah of the Shahi Mosque, where he spent the rest of his life. After this he kept no record of his poetry and whatever is available to us today is due to the efforts (and memory) of his admirers.
After the partition, he visited India for a Mushaira, where he recited his poem (given below), ‘We may not speak but in our hearts we know/ you have lost and we too have lost in this divide.’
The poem was enthusiastically received and Pandit Nehru requested that he stay on in India. He refused, saying ‘Panditji, it is difficult to part from the soil of one’s birthplace.’ Later on many cases were foisted against him and he had to spend time in prison. On another visit to India, he was again asked to stay on, but he said, ‘I prefer to live in Pakistan, even though it may be behind prison walls.’ (To a similar request by Sardar Jafri, Habib Jalib replied ‘Here the mullahs will put me in prison and there the pandits. So where is the choice.’)
He wrote Sufi poetry and poetry against the British rule. After 1947, he continued to write about the troubles which beset the people and exposed the machinations of the so-called political leaders:

‘A Trinity of Gods rule Pakistan,Nazim, Azam and Zafrullah Khan’.
(Those three being then the Governor General, the Commander-in-Chief and the Foreign Minister respectively).

Later on he continued to write against Ayub, Yahya Khan, Bhutto and General Zia. One of his great poems is on General Zia’s ‘Martial Law’ yet, strange to say, Zia had to pay a tribute to him after his death.

However in the 1965 war against India, his stand became for a short while communal (unlike Faiz, Jalib, Farogh Bukhari and others. But here many on our side of the border were bitten by the communal bug too). There is a curious silence about the events in East Pakistan in 1971. Perhaps he was too shell-shocked or perhaps the record is no longer available.
He also wrote a few film songs – in Punjabi and Urdu – due to the insistence of the progressive actor Allau-ud-din Khan (who also roped in Habib Jalib). However, he made a great contribution to the genre ‘Heer’. He had great respect for Waris Shah’s poetry but complained that Waris Shah’s Ranjha had less the features of a Punjabi peasant– he was more of a dandy of the Lucknow style. The musical rhythym and lyricism of Heer has a distinctly Punjabi flavour and is not amenable to translation, and I have not been foolhardy enough to try it. However, sometimes, his ‘Heers’ became a song of protest:

‘A man can do whatever he wants,
Agreed, that calamitous times are still ahead.
Let Ranjha just set off to Takht Hazare
Soon Jhang of Syals will crumble under his tread.’
(Here Ranjha stands for the exploited class and the Syals for the exploiters.)

In November 1984 he was suffering from very poor health. Faiz visited him and requested him to shift to a more comfortable place but Daman refused. However he had to be shifted to the Services Hospital medical ward, where Habib Jalib was a fellow patient. Faiz died on 20th November and Daman said that, despite his illness, he would go to lend his shoulder to Faiz’s bier. Habib Jalib was also ill. As the Punjabi poet and author Ahmed Saleem reports,
‘The (Faiz funeral) procession was stopped. Ustad Daman, a mentor of Faiz, who was hospitalised, insisted on being carried and stood there unwilling to leave his side.’

A few days later, on December 3, 1984 Ustad Daman too passed away.

Many tributes were paid to him (including as mentioned above, by General Zia). Habib Jalib wrote two Punjabi poems and one in Urdu on his death. Jalib’s collection of Punjabi poems was dedicated to Ustad Daman. One of his Punjabi poems is given below in translation.

‘He lived in a hut, but wore the poets’ crown,Amongst people, as Daman, he won renown, This poet who wore the crown.
He did not became a courtier, as others did, Not even in forgetfulness did he do the establishment’s bid,For poor deprived people he laid his life down,
This poet who wore the crown.
The oppressors were laid low by his poetic might,Amidst tempests, his lamp continued to give light,With pride he will be remembered in every village and town,
This poet who wore the crown.’
Curtsey: pakistanprayers.blogspot.com :Sunday ,April 09,2006

What Punjab can do and what it has never done
  Ayaz Amir

Islamabad diary

Mystics and divines, poets and singers, men of enterprise and of daring, of quality and base instinct, the best dancing girls in the entire sub-continent, Punjab has given birth to them all. What, through some quirk of geography or history, it has never been able to produce is the able ruler.

Except of course for a single exception: for over 2000 years, from Alexander’s invasion to the Partition of British India in 1947, only one ruler of ability and distinction in its turbulent history, the great Maharajah Ranjit Singh. Apart from him, governors and vassals in plenty but no independent ruler, principally because Punjab was never an independent kingdom except when Ranjit Singh raised it to that status.

Afghan kings, kings of Turkish origin, Mughal emperors but only one Punjabi king. So while Punjab had other strong traditions, in agriculture, music, poetry, dancing, and, I daresay, the sycophantic arts which come so readily to subjugated people, the one tradition its superior classes lacked was that of leadership.

They knew best how to scrape and bow before authority. They were good at carrying out orders. But in 1947 history placed upon their shoulders the task of creating a nation and giving that nation a sense of direction. And they were not up to it, because nothing in their past had prepared them for this. True, Punjab’s elite classes, in alliance with the Urdu-speaking elites who had crossed over from India, managed to create order out of the chaos of Partition, a remarkable feat in itself. A country was thus born but something else as important proved elusive: the quest for nationhood.

Small wonder, misgiving arose from the very start, not everyone feeling that they were equal citizens of the new state, certainly not the people of East Pakistan who despite being in a majority felt excluded from decision-making. Baloch nationalists were unhappy, Pakhtun nationalists aggrieved, they who had been in the forefront of the struggle against the British. And winds of religiosity beat down upon the land, making what were still called minorities uneasy.

Jinnah had said that religion had no place in politics, the gist of his famous address to the Constituent Assembly just a few days before independence. But here something else was happening, religious rhetoric becoming more powerful even as political and economic performance lagged far behind.

Paranoia as regards India, an insecurity which sought relief in military alliances with the United States, an obsession with religious chest-thumping, truly bizarre in a Muslim majority country where Islam should have been the last thing in danger, or the least in need of artificial props – of such humours was concocted the doctrine that came to be hailed, and indeed flaunted, as the ideology of Pakistan.

The Baloch had no fear of India. For them Kashmir was a distant proposition. In Sindh where there was a large Hindu population, the people had no problem with India or Hinduism. Neither did the Pakhtuns have any mental problems with India, despite being very religious in their everyday outlook. In the tribal areas and in places like Swat there were Sikh and Hindu communities which felt safe and co-existed happily with their Muslim neighbours.

But it was altogether different with the official Punjabi mind and that of the Urdu-speaking elites where flourished the demons of fear and insecurity, more as a political tactic than a psychological necessity because it was a good way to keep the rest of the population in line. And because these classes dominated the upper echelons of the armed forces, the ethos of the services came also to be imbued by the same fears and compulsions.

Paradoxically, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who should have been the most enlightened man of his generation fanned the flames of this anti-Indianism more than anyone else, perhaps calculating (although there can be other theories on this score) that beating the anti-India drum would best appeal to the Punjab masses. But when the wheel came full circle the movement against him in 1977 received its most powerful impetus in Punjab, and it was the Punjab bazaar and trading classes which bayed the loudest for his blood.

When Gen Zia went looking for allies against Bhutto he found the fiercest in Punjab. When President Ghulam Ishaq Khan and the ISI sought to contain Benazir Bhutto in her first prime ministership they groomed a champion in the form of one Mian Nawaz Sharif, a scion of Punjab. The fateful enterprises promoted in the name of ‘jihad’ found some of their first votaries and loudest advocates in Punjab.

Land of the five rivers – what hast thou not wrought? From thy bosom arising Guru Nanak and Bulleh Shah, Shah Hussain and Waris Shah, Iqbal and Faiz and Munir Niazi, Bade Ghulam Ali Khan and Kundan Lal Saigal, Rafi and Noor Jahan, not to forget the great Sir Ganga Ram who had no equal when it came to giving, and Shaheed Bhagat Singh and his companions who had no equals when it came to laying down their lives in the cause of freedom. At the same time, land of our fathers, home to so much nonsense at the altar of faith and righteousness.

Pakistan today is largely what Punjab, for good or ill, has made it. Indian Punjab is a small part of India. Pakistani Punjab encompasses the best and worst of Pakistan. The social conservatism on display in our midst, the mental backwardness, the narrowness of outlook, the triumph of hypocrisy, the destruction of national education, the muddling up of national priorities, the temples erected to the false gods of national security – so much of this, alas, can be traced to the incapacities of Punjab.

Perhaps Ranjit Singh was an aberration, a historic anomaly – out of the mould and thus one of a kind.

Our Punjab certainly has nothing in common with his kingdom. In his army found service men of all races and religions. There were Mussalman battalions in his army and his head of artillery was Mian Ghausa, just as his principal wazir was from the Faqirkhana family of Lahore. And his favourite wife was a Muslim, Bibi Gulbahar Begam.

The PML-N has been in power in Islamabad twice before but in different circumstances, Nawaz Sharif not quite his own man in his first incarnation and, despite his huge majority, an unsure man in his second. He now comes as someone who has seen and experienced a great deal. So can he make a difference? Disavowing his past, does he have it in him to write a fresh history of Punjab?

Another thing to remember about the Lion of Punjab (the only lion, others all fake and imitations) is that he knew how to handle his Afghan problem. He defeated the Afghans and took Peshawar from them. Peshawar was part of the Sikh dominions annexed by the British. So if Peshawar and its environs are a part of Pakistan today it is because of that earlier Sikh conquest, half-forgotten in the mists of time. As Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan go prattling about talking to the Taliban they could do worse than study the Maharajah’s approach to the Afghans.

So can we get our historical compasses right? For over 2000 years on the soil of what is Pakistan today no independent realm or kingdom existed except two: the kingdom of Lahore and the state of Pakistan. The first was a success, a well-run entity, at least as long as the Maharajah was alive; the second is the shambles that we have made over the last 65 years.

Now there comes an opportunity to redeem our past. Question is, can the new rulers of Pakistan be half as good as their most illustrious predecessor, the one and only King of Punjab?

Email: winlust@yahoo.com
Curtsey:The News Friday, May 31, 2013