Usually, Karachi is identified with
red, the colour of the blood of those unsung and unknown peddlers, hawkers, drivers, plumbers and shopkeepers, who are felled every day by a most efficient killing machine that is running round the clock in the metropolis, under the eyes of the law enforcement agencies, and in absolute disregard of, if not connivance with, the political masters of the city and the province. But these days, the city’s new identity is black and red; the black of the graffiti covered walls and public spaces demanding a new mohajir province, and the red of those who have been killed and injured while protesting the division of the province.
Leaving aside the constitutional, historical and moral bases of the mohajir province, even for practical reasons, such a demand seems nothing more than a fantasy because Sindh is a province whose cities and towns host the interspersed communities of the Sindhi and Urdu-speaking people, among others, and whose metropolis stands practically compartmentalised into ethnically demarcated political arenas. Any idea of carving out a neat ethnic political entity out of this jumbled-up demography would be nothing but pushing the province into an unceasing civil war, and the country to the brink of an abyss. Yet, it must be answered: why a mohajir province? Is it for ‘identity’ or socio-economic and political assertion?
If it were ‘identity’, then it would negate the mohajirs’ ‘Pakistani identity’, which, at least, the elder Urdu-speaking generations have upheld on the strength of their sacrifices for an ‘Islamic’ Pakistan. Indeed, the majority of the Urdu-speaking electorate in Sindh voted for the Islamists, the exponents of Pakistani identity, until the Mohajir Qaumi Movement (MQM) emerged as a muscular, ethnic flag-bearer of the Urdu-speaking community. But the MQM’s strong-arm politics soon brought it into conflict with other ethnic groups, the Islamists, the mainstream Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and even the state apparatus. Initially, the Sindhi nationalists perceived it as their ally against the Punjab-dominated centre, but later fell out with it.
However, after facing a massive crackdown by the state machinery and a rising counter-identity (violent) resistance from the Sindhi-speaking, Punjabi, Pathan and Baloch people, the MQM changed its ethnic tack and declared itself a ‘national’ party, Muttahida Qaumi Movement. However, the recent reassertion of mohajir identity has put the MQM’s ‘denunciation’ of ethnic politics to test. It is not ‘officially’ espousing the mohajir province. However, the areas under its influence are splashed with mohajir province slogans and some of its leaders are showing sympathy for the new province in their TV talk shows.
Indeed, a senior party leader and provincial minister called the division of Sindh a ‘fait accompli’, referring to the violence and loss of lives that took place in Karachi in the wake of an attack on the Love Sindh rally. It was organised by the Awami Tehrik of Ayaz Latif Palijo and attended by a host of MQM’s local rivals — the Awami National Party, the PML-N, Sindhi nationalists and Liyari Amn Committee. But the proponents of the new province must factor in the changing demographics and socio- psychological perspectives in Sindh. On the one hand, the old agro-based relations are disintegrating, releasing the surplus populace, which is taking to the cities, including Karachi. On the other, a sizeable number of the Sindhi-speaking middle-class — professionals, entrepreneurs, public servants, NGOs, rights activists, media, writers, academics and political forces — has also surfaced over the urban landscape of Sindh.
Therefore a quest for the ‘ownership’ of Sindh’s physical and political space is writ large upon the face of the emerging Sindhi-speaking Sindh. It is unhappy with the ‘folly’ of the earlier generations that lost urban Sindh to outsiders in the spirit of religious bonhomie and humanitarianism. And it is despondent with the PPP’s leadership for ‘betraying’ its electorate in Sindh. Therefore, many of the unemployed and socially oppressed youths are turning to a nationalistic narrative. It sees Sindh as receiving a raw deal from a state that has snatched its towns and cities, grabbed its natural resources, denied it economic and social dividends, and punished its people for their secular and pacifist beliefs, benefiting those who have taken up arms in the towns and metropolis.
Juxtaposed to this view is the one that emphasises the increasing sense of deprivation among the mohajirs, and hence, demands for a mohajir province. It is contended that the socio-political realities of urban Sindh, once dominated by the Urdu-speaking populace, are turning against them as now they have to compete with a host of other contenders to the city’s commercial, industrial, corporate and capital markets. They feel they are no more enjoying an economic, social and political leverage over the state despite the fact that Karachi contributes three-fourths of the revenues to the exchequer. There is no doubt that the Urdu-speaking youth is also facing a range of civic and economic problems, including housing, transport, and employment issues. But here lies the rub.
Karachi has a history of illegal immigrants — Afghans, Iranians, Bengalis, Biharis and Burmese and so on. But the current crisis began in Karachi during General Ziaul Haq’s martial law when ethnic riots occurred. The situation grew worse during General Musharraf’s rule (MQM was in government), when a huge swell of economic migrants and war-displaced populace belonging to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, south Punjab and northern Sindh swept Karachi’s labour markets and physical space. Obviously, the MQM, which then dominated the city government and much of the province, ignored this demographic shift in a city that needed cheap labour to run its developmental projects and commercial and industrial engines.
But with Musharraf’s exit and the MQM’s loss of city government, a tug-of-war ensued between the new and the old stakeholders to Karachi’s political space, causing perpetual violence, and now the demand for a province. But the proposed ‘decapitation’ of Sindh is fraught with disaster. With its industrial south, agrarian north, logistically significant east and resource-rich central-west, neither the province is divisible geographically, nor its people, who have lived here for centuries, can be rent asunder socio-politically. Yes, the country would surely slide into an irretrievable abyss.
The writer is a lawyer and academic. He can be reached at [email protected]