Daily Times

The movement for Pakistan was controlled by the political elite, which belonged to Muslim minority areas such as the United and Central Provinces. Based in a minority setting, the Muslim League envisioned a separate and sovereign homeland in Muslim majority areas such as Punjab, NWFP (now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa), Sindh, Balochistan and East Bengal. Owing to the multiplicity of variables, the struggle for Pakistan remained successful. Hence, with the partition of British India, the subcontinent observed the unprecedented cross-migration of more than 20 million human beings with different religious, sectarian and ethnic identities. Broadly put, the majority that crossed over from Pakistan to India included the Hindus along with a significant proportion of Sikhs. On the other hand, the majority of migrants from India to Pakistan consisted of Muslims along with a smattering of Christians and Zoroastrians.
Since a majority of the migrants came from East Punjab and settled in West Punjab, they assimilated with the local population within a short span of time. However, the mohajirs, who came from the non-Punjab areas of India, faced issues of assimilation and settlement. Dr Mohammad Waseem, a prominent Pakistani political scientist, notes: “Unlike in Punjab, refugees in Sindh defied integration in the local society because of their linguistic, cultural and historical remoteness from Sindhis. These differences were patterned along sectoral lines. As many as 63.9 percent of refugees in Sindh lived in urban areas, 86.16 percent in Hyderabad district and 71 percent in Sukkur. In Karachi, there were only 14.28 percent speakers of Sindhi in 1951 as opposed to 58.7 percent who spoke Urdu as their mother tongue. Thus, Karachi became a mohajir city overnight. The government of Pakistan carved the city out of Sindh in July 1948.”
The mohajirs were comparatively a privileged community in the pre- and post-partition period. They were dominant in politics, the civil bureaucracy and also business. However, “They occupied an inherently insecure position in terms of electoral politics. Prime Minister-designate Liaquat Ali Khan, who was a mohajir, was inducted into the Constituent Assembly in place of an elected member from East Bengal. The mohajir leadership chose to bypass the Constituent Assembly, which had been elected by the Muslim members of the Legislative Assemblies of the Muslim majority provinces comprising Pakistan, and which was therefore dominated by ‘locals’. It shunned elections, which would lead to its exit from power. Instead, it operated through the higher bureaucracy, which was dominated by migrants of both Punjabi and mohajir extraction. Mohajirs, who were only three percent of the population, had 21 percent jobs. Among senior jobs, mohajirs had 33.5 percent in the federal bureaucracy in 1973 and 20 percent in the secretariat group in 1974. However, their share came down to 18.3 percent in 1986 and 14.3 percent in 1989 respectively,” narrates Dr Waseem.
What can be deduced from the foregoing is that migrants with Punjabi and Urdu backgrounds dominated politics, the state, and businesses in Pakistan from the country’s inception in 1947 till the consolidation of Sindhi nationalism in the 1970s. Little wonder then that Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, a Sindhi, took political advantage of the socio-economic ‘grievances’ faced by native Sindhis on account of the ‘mohajirisation’ of the state. Moreover, along with the Sindhis, other non-migrant indegeneuous ethnicities such as Seraikis, Pashtuns, Baloch and even Punjabis were marginalised institutionally and structurally. Such cumulative marginalisation of the nativist politics, economy and culture was, in my view, one of the reasons for the military coup d’état against the mohajir-led civil bureaucracy in 1958 and its subsequent support from the locals, especially from Punjab. Since the military’s recruitment areas consisted of primarily Punjab and the NWFP since British days, the former privileged its catchment areas in terms of socio-economic development. The civil bureaucracy, which was now a junior partner in managing the state, was instrumental in implementing the so-called development thesis on behalf of the World Bank and IMF in the 1960s.
However, during the 1970s, politics in Pakistan was more contentious. On the one hand, both the civil bureaucracy and military assumed an apparently apolitical character. Moreover, their organisational structure was affected by the Bhutto-led civil government. On the other hand, Zulfikar Bhutto introduced certain institutional and legal measures to assuage the nativist discourse of the Sindhis. The Sindhi Language Act is a case in point. As is already mentioned, the mohajirs’ dominance came to a gradual decline under Bhutto. For example, Bhutto’s nationalisation policy impacted mohajir businesses negatively to the extent that the latter started feeling marginalised economically, culturally and politically. As the 1950s and 1960s gave birth to Sindhi grievances among others, the 1970s ushered in mohajir cleavages. Zia’s 1977 martial law only proved a catalyst. The anti-Bhutto and anti-PPP mohajirs rationally allied with the anti-Bhutto Zia (himself a mohajir) to reassume a position of relative power. In this respect, the non-elite and socio-economically marginalised urban mohajirs organised themselves in terms of the Mojahir Quami Movement (MQM) in 1984.
Interestingly, the MQM defined mohajirs as those who “(i) migrated to Pakistan from Muslim minority provinces of the subcontinent at the time of partition, (ii) are not considered to belong to any of the nationalities of Pakistan, neither Punjabi, nor Sindhi, nor Baloch, nor Pakhtun, and (iii) migrated from those areas of East Punjab whose language and culture was not Punjabi.” Moreover, being “a policy-neutral, ideologically agnostic and pro-status quo party”, the MQM believed in the strong personality cult of Altaf Hussain and the politics of confrontation from day one. For this purpose, Sindhi landlordism was vociferously challenged. The PPP was politically and electorally opposed within and outside parliament during 1988-1990 onwards. However, the MQM supported the Islami Jahoori Ittehad (IJI) on behalf of the military led by General Aslam Beg (a mohajir). The latter was lenient on the party’s politics of violence and extortion. However, General Asif Nawaz Janjua ordered Operation Clean Up in June 1992 when the MQM “abducted and tortured a serving army officer, Major Kaleem Ahmad. The army claimed that it had gotten hold of maps of Jinnahpur or Urdu Desh,” writes Waseem. General Janjua’s death, change in army command and strategy along with the political dynamics of the country saved the day for the MQM, and the latter reinforced its political and economic clout in Sindh. Moreover, in 1997, the Mohajir was replaced with Muttahida to claim an extra-ethnic character. Nevertheless, electorally, the MQM remained a non-elite, urban ethnic party grounded in Altaf Hussain who took refuge in the UK. The MQM was further strengthened in the bureaucracy and in business under Musharraf (a mohajir). Nevertheless, the contours of Pakistan’s economy and security changed in the context of the 21st Amendment.
The recent military-led operations in the country can be viewed accordingly. Nevertheless, the MQM has once again played with the ethnic card while labelling the Rangers operation a conspiracy of the Punjabi army and Punjab. Such rhetoric, in my view, will ultimately disfavour the MQM politically and organisationally since the state is comparatively more advanced in means of legitimate violence. Therefore, a resort to the law and courts is a better option for the MQM and even the military.

The writer is an independent political scientist with an interest in China’s politics, foreign policy and culture. He tweets at ejazbhatty