Mohajir Ethnic Nationalism in Pakistan: El Dorado Gone Sourстатья из журнала
Аннотация: Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Acknowledgments I am indebted to Stephen Castles, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Partha Chatterjee and Gyan Pandey for their invaluable comments on an earlier version of this paper. The list of politicians, academics, journalists and activists who generously spared time for me during my fieldwork for this paper in 1997–98 is too long to be accommodated here. But while thanking them all, I would like to especially express my gratitude to Mazhar Abbas, Zaffar Abbas, Eqbal Ahmed, Hamza Alavi, Sabihuddin Ghousi, Arif Hassan, Ghaurul Islam, M. A. Jalil, Tausif Ahmed Khan, Hamida Khuhro, Khalid Mumtaz, Farooq Sattar, Imdad Hussain Shah and A. R. Siddiqi. I am also grateful to the anonymous referee whose comments and suggestions made me clarify many a point. Notes 1See Rushdie, Citation1995, p. 87. 2For a detailed discussion of this point of view, see Adeel Khan, Politics of identity: Ethnic nationalism and the state in Pakistan, New Delhi: Sage Publications (forthcoming). 3Of seven prime ministers during 1947–58, two, Liaquat Ali Khan and I. I. Chundrigar, were Mohajirs. A conservative Mohajir ideologue, Ishtiaq Hussain Qureshi, was minister of refugee rehabilitation and then of information. A Mohajir educator, Dr Mahmud Hussain, was education minister. Chaudhri Khaliquzzaman and I. I. Chundrigar were governors of East Bengal and Punjab (Callard, Citation1957, pp. 342–45; Ahmed, Citation1998, p. 132). 4The remainder of the 17 per cent was allocated to all other provinces and princely states of West Pakistan (Waseem, Citation1997, p. 227). 5Since 1988, of five chiefs of army staff, two – General Mirza Aslam Beg and the current military ruler (1999–), General Pervez Musharraf – happen to have been Mohajirs. 6A motion demanding a ban on all parties, apart from the Muslim League, for 21 years, was debated in the constituent assembly in 1954 (Noman, Citation1990, p. 24). 7For one of the most interesting accounts of the first decade of Pakistan, see Ayesha Jalal (Citation1991). 8In a paper based on interviews with women from rural and urban Sindh and Punjab, Nighat Said Khan (Citation1996) has noted that the 90 middle- and lower-income interviewees said that they had not come to realise a dream, but had fled from a disaster, whereas the 10 upper-income women with professional backgrounds said that theirs had been a conscious choice to migrate. But the paper does not indicate the area from which these women migrated, and therefore is of little help. 9In an interview with the MQM ideologue, Hasnain Kazmi, in 1997 in Karachi, when I pointed out to him this condescending attitude, he responded: "It is not a condescending attitude. It is an attitude based on facts. Sindhis did not have education we introduced modern education to them. They were under the traditional and superstitious version of Islam we introduced them to rational Islam." 10A highly respected Mohajir journalist who was among the founding members of the Marxist Progressive Writers' Association of India told me, off the record: "I have no sympathy for the MQM and its politics but I do believe that Sindhi culture is uncouth and unimaginative." 11It needs to be noted here that there is a widespread romanticised secularist view of Sufi Islam as very tolerant. As Kakar (Citation1995, p. 21) has pointed out: "Many a Sufi was openly hostile to the religion and social practices of the Hindus, paranoid – even at the zenith of Muslim power – that the Hindus would obliterate Islamic laws, Islam, and the Muslim community if they ever captured political power." It is more useful to see Sufi Islam as a culture-belief-based system, and modernist Islam as an ideology-based system. 12The MQM chief, Altaf Hussain, while responding to a question on whether his support for "a free, democratic system, with no interference from the army" meant his "support for the 1973 constitution, and the MRD's (Movement for Restoration of Democracy) demand for fresh elections", replied: "No. We don't support anything which doesn't include the word mohajir" (Herald [Karachi], September 1987). 13Information in this and the following paragraph is adapted from Altaf Hussain's interview with the Herald (Karachi) in September 1987. 14 Herald (Karachi), September 1987. 15I owe this information to journalist Mazhar Abbas, Sabihuddin Ghousi and Tausif Ahmed Khan. 16I owe this insight to a senior police officer who provided me with detailed accounts of how the ISI would instruct him on dealing with the MQM. 17I owe this information to Brigadier A. R. Siddiqi, former director of the Pakistan Army's Inter-Services Public Relations. 18Sindhi nationalist and historian, Dr Hamida Khuhro told me this in an interview that was published in The Frontier Post, April 1990. In the same interview, she also said: "And it was not just by chance that the situation became worse after the 1983 movement in Sindh. Immediately after that we saw the rise of MQM…which was created by the military rulers to counter the Sindhis' anger at and dislike for martial law." 19I owe this insight to Sabihuddin Ghousi of Dawn (Karachi). 20One of the early MQM slogans goes: Sindhi Mohajir Bhai Bhai, Dothi Naswar Kahan say aiee [Sindhis and Mohajirs are brothers. Where have these Punjabis and Pukhtuns come from?]. 21I am indebted to Khalid Mumtaz, a Karachi lawyer, who was an MQM supporter in its early days, for this information. 22Sabihuddin Ghousi, interview with author, Karachi, 1998. 23I owe this point to Zafar Abbas, the BBC correspondent in Islamabad. 24See Mohammed Hanif's report in Newsline, November 1992. 25During the 1992 army operation against the MQM, a number of torture cells were unearthed at its headquarters. 26Khalid Mumtaz related to me that he had personally witnessed such an incident. 27One such attack occurred at the daily Dawn, Karachi, in the early 1990s. The MQM workers forced their entry into Dawn's offices and held the editor, Ahmed Ali Khan, hostage, threatening him with further action if anything against the MQM appeared in the paper. The BBC correspondent, Zafar Abbas, was attacked and beaten at his residence. 28The list was published in The News (Karachi), 14 October 1994. 29A former MQM provincial minister, M. A. Jalil, made this claim in an interview with me in 1997. 30 The News (Karachi), 14 October 1994. 31 Herald, Special map "city of death", 1996.
Год издания: 2004
Авторы: Adeel Khan
Издательство: Routledge
Источник: Asian Studies Review
Ключевые слова: Politics and Conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Middle East, South Asian Studies and Conflicts, South Asian Studies and Diaspora
Открытый доступ: closed
Том: 28
Выпуск: 1
Страницы: 41–56