tthhee MMuuhhaajjiirrss ooff SSiinnddhh aass yyeett

aannootthheerr ddiiaassppoorriicc nnaattiioonn,, ccrruusshheedd

bbeettwweeeenn tteerrrriittoorryy--bbaasseedd nnaattiioonn--

ssttaatteess,, aanndd ssuuffffeerriinngg ffrroomm aann

aallmmoosstt ttrraannsshhiissttoorriicc lloonnggiinngg ffoorr aann

hhoommeellaanndd ooff iittss oowwnn..............................

TThheeyy ((MMuuhhaajjiirrss)) ffeelltt ttoo hhaavvee ttwwoo

ooppttiioonnss.. OOnnee,, iinnccrreeaassiinnggllyy

ddiiffffiiccuulltt,, ooppttiioonn wwaass ttoo bbeeccoommee aa

llaabboorr mmiiggrraanntt aanndd iinn ttiimmee bbeeccoommee

ppaarrtt ooff aannootthheerr nnaattiioonn.. TThhee ootthheerr

ooppttiioonn,, iinn ccaassee ooff eessccaallaattiioonn,, wwaass

ttoo ddeeffeenndd KKaarraacchhii aanndd HHyyddeerraabbaadd

aass MMuuhhaajjiirr tteerrrriittoorryy aanndd bbeeccoommee aa

mmaajjoorriittyy.. RReeaadd ffuullll

ppaappeerr …………………………………………

aann eeyyee ooppeenneerr ffoorr ssiinnddhhii

[ T y p e t h e c o m p a n y

a d d r e s s ]

[ T y p e t h e p h o n e

BByy OOsskkaarr VVeerrkkaaaaiikk

BBaacckk iinn

DDiiaassppoorraa:: ''FFuunn''

aanndd NNoossttaallggiiaa

AAmmoonngg MMuuhhaajjiirrss

iinn PPaakkiissttaann

………………..

Back in Diaspora: 'Fun' and Nostalgia Among Muhajirs in Pakistan

BByy OOsskkaarr VVeerrkkaaaaiikk,, - Paper given at South Asia Workshop, University of Chicago -

The title of this paper contains three conceptual terms which are the key words of this

presentation. They are diaspora, fun and nostalgia. Not all of them are regular theoretical

concepts. 'Fun' in particular might raise several questions and I am sure that I cannot

answer all these questions in this presentation. My aim is to introduce the term and indicate

why I find it an useful concept and also to relate it to the other two terms, diaspora and

nostalgia. I think that the three terms together can give us a good idea of the position of

Muhajirs in the last two decades of the past century, in particular how this position has

changed. In very general terms I would say that the 'fun' that was so typical of the 1980s

has been replaced by the nostalgia of the late 1990s, and this, in turn, has revived the

notion of diaspora among Muhajirs.

Before moving on to these three key words, then, I want to say a few introductory words

about the people we are actually talking about, Muhajirs. I don't think I have to explain to

you that Muhajirs are partition-related - or, from the Pakistani point of view -

independence-related migrants who travelled from India to Pakistan after 1947. Still, that is

not the whole meaning of the term Muhajir. Although it is true that immediately after

independence, all migrants could be called Muhajir, more recently the term is only used for

a smaller, more specific portion of these migrants. The term no longer connotes to the East-

Punjabis who travelled to the West-Punjab and are widely believed to be totally assimilated

with the local population. Today, the term Muhajir only includes the mostly Urdu-speaking

migrants who came to Pakistan slightly later, from 1948 onwards. Most of them came from

urban settings in North-India. And they settled in Sindh - in Karachi as well as Hyderabad

and small smaller towns in this province. The term Muhajir had always been used for these

migrants, yet it was more common to use other names, such as Urdu-speakers. It was only

in the mid-1980s, with the founding of the Muhajir Qaumi Movement, the MQM, that the

term Muhajir was again on everybody's lip. Today, the term Muhajir has therefore as much

to do with changing social relations in Sindh as with independence-related migration.

In a way, this already brings me to the main argument I want to make - and that is an

argument about the notion of diaspora. It is, as we will see, an important notion in present-

day Muhajir identity, and unlike 'fun' it is of course a well-known and often-explored theme

in recent academic debates, and one of the themes of the Globalization Project. Diaspora is

intrinsically connected to the nation and its territory, the homeland. In the works of a whole

range of scholars, one is confronted with the notion of diasporic nations in search of an

homeland and lost within a world of territory-bounded nations which have divided the

available land on this planet among themselves. The imagination of diaspora can thus be a

cause of collective anxiety, desire as well as political aspirations, whereas the settled nations may look at the diasporic nation as a threat to its existence.

Given the attention that is given to the issue of diaspora - rightly, I think - it only seems a

matter of time for a study to appear that will describe and analyze the Muhajirs of Sindh as

yet another diasporic nation, crushed between territory-based nation-states, and suffering

from an almost transhistoric longing for an homeland of its own. In fact, I have recently

seen an article, that is part of a work in progress, which argues precisely this. It can, in

other words, perfectly well be argued that the notion of diaspora not only gives Muhajirs of

today a sense of displacement, but also that the notion has been among Muhajirs since their

migration, or perhaps even longer, and that, thirdly, this notion is itself one of the reasons

why Muhajirs have become or remained a distinct group in Pakistan. In other words, their

own fear has significantly contributed to the realization of that fear. Always feeling distinct,

and fearing that this feeling would one day turn against them, they have indeed become, in

Mary Douglas' words, an 'abomination' towards the end of the 1990s.

There is a lot to say for this and yet I think that the argument falls short insofar as it fails to

take into account that the diasporic identity, and the anxiety of displacement, seems to be

from a much more recent date. Or rather, the notion of diaspora itself is not new, but it

seems to have been fairly absent for, perhaps, several decades after independence. I would

therefore be inclined to endorse only part of the argument I just sketched. I think it can

hardly be denied that diaspora and displacement are central features of Muhajir identity

today. Yet, I am not so sure that this has always been the case. And that leads me to think

that the notion of diaspora has returned with a vengeance because of a rather recent

reevaluation of Muhajir's history and place in Pakistan rather than because of a given

problematic position as migrants.

This is, in fact, one of the claims I want to make this afternoon. Initially, independence-

related migration was not at all interpreted as a new chapter in the history of a diasporic

people. It was, initially, not talked about as an uprooting process. Migration was - certainly

collectively, but I think also in many cases personally - rather experienced as an home-

coming - or even a second birth into an homeland finally found. Migration was initially very

much the end of the nation's diasporic destiny. This is in fact expressed in the term Muhajir

that refers to the Islamic exodus that marks the beginning of the Islamic calendar. When

learning about Muhajirs today, one can of course never forget that Muhajirs, as a group,

were among the most vocal nation-builders in the first few decades of independence. To a

very large extent they managed to make Pakistani nationalism into a profoundly migrant

nationalism. In that sense, Pakistan forms an intriguing reminder to the fact that, although

nations are connected to an homeland or have a longing for an homeland, the imagination

of several nations also rests heavily on collective memories of migration, travel, movement.

Israel is of course an example that comes easily to mind, but one can think of others. The

US, or the Americas in general, are also examples. The comparison between Pakistan and

the US was in fact made in Pakistan itself, in the 1970s, when Sindhi intellectuals became

increasingly afraid that they would be marginalized in Sindh, and in order to express that

anxiety said that they were on the verge of being 'red indianized', that is, of sharing the fate

of the native Americans in the New World.

I think, therefore, that the present-day Muhajir diasporic identity and the sense of being

displaced, and of having been so for already many, many generations, should be seen in

relation to more recent political developments in Pakistan, and especially in Sindh. This is, I

think, not simply a story of Muhajirs gradually losing their privileged position after the first

democratic elections of 1970, as is often argued - or rather, taken for granted. I think the

story is slightly more complicated. The transition of the democratic political process that

began to set in the late 1960s were, indeed, the background for the founding of the Muhajir

Qaumi Movement in the mid-1980s, but initially the MQM was, in my view, not a

reactionary, conservative, nostalgic movement of an overprivileged people under threat. It

was, rather, a future-oriented, energetic, perhaps even revolutionary movement of

particular groups of Muhajirs who had not, till then, had the chance to speak for Muhajirs as

a group. These groups were, in class - or 'caste' - terms, the relatively poor, those people

who the middle class would normally slightly condescendingly call 'the uneducated'. And

these groups were also, very profoundly, the youth, the second generation of the migrant

population.

It is probably true that some sense of diaspora and nostalgia is part of the high cultural

ashraf culture of the Muhajir elite and has been so for some time. In the 1990s, however,

nostalgia has spread over much larger segments of the Muhajir population. This is, I think,

primarily the result of the disillusions caused by the unfulfilled hopes triggered by the MQM

in the 1980s. Together with the power abuse and the violence - ethnic violence as well as

state violence -, this disillusion towards to end of the century led to a nostalgia for

authoritarian rule, a more general phenomenon in Pakistan which gives some legitimacy to

the recent military takeover, and, in the case of Muhajirs, to a renewed self-imposed status

of a diasporic nation.

Let me, then, look at these issues a little closer. First of all, I should mention that what I

say today is based on a dissertation research I started in 1995 and for which I did fieldwork,

as well as some work in archives, in Karachi and Hyderabad. Most of the fieldwork was done

in a place called Pakka Qila, in Hyderabad. Some of you may know that in 1990 it was the

site of what was probably the most bloody incident of civil violence in Sindh since 1947.

As for diaspora, it is of course clear that this notion is not new in Pakistan. It can in fact be

argued that the diasporic identity is at the root of Pakistan's existence. As Ayesha Jalal has

described, the idea of Indian Muslims as foreign to the Indian soil was a nineteenth century

idea, invented and promoted from within the North-Indian, Urdu-speaking, Muslim elite

itself. It were Muslim poets who wrote of themselves as 'guests' to Hindustan, guests who -

like guests tend to do - had already stayed too long. It was initially also a profoundly

nostalgic notion as it was linked to the so-called Andulucia syndrome, the idea of having lost

an empire and a civilization in India. This self-imposed foreigness, which is also a typical

ashraf inclination to lament the loss of India and look to the sacred cities in Arabia for

consolation, was an important cultural underpinning of the Two Nations Theory. Yet, in the

form of the Pakistan Demand, the Muslim otherness lost much of its nostalgic quality and

became an incentive for nationalist action.

After independence, migrants soon began to arrive in Hyderabad and Karachi, and this soon

led to tension about the rehabilitation of Hindu evacuee property. Pakistani historiography

tends to picture this period as a time of great Muslim solidarity as migrants were welcomed

by the Sindhis as formerly the muhajireen by the ansar of Medina, and there were certainly

examples of this, but it is also true that both groups felt entitled to the abondoned Hindu

property and that this regularly led to fights and sometimes riots. It is actually interesting

that this tension found a riotous outlet in Hyderabad during the Ashura processions of 1950.

It seems that, since no ethnic idiom was as yet available, the long-standing Sunni/Shi'a

controversy provided the cultural images with which to make sense of tense social relations.

These incidents are however collectively forgotten or, at least, downplayed. There is now a

strong tendency in Karachi and Hyderabad to look at the 1950s and 1960s as a period of

hope, opportunity, hard but rewarding work, and, indeed, solidarity. In novels and short

stories about these days, Karachi appears as a city of light, humor, diversity and wonder.

These stories were mainly written later, but contemporary newspapers also portrayed

Karachi as a city 'blessed for having no history', a city of the future. This was, I think,

preeminently a Muhajir as well as a postcolonial elitist view and it left little room for looking

back. It mixed a widespread belief in the possibility of social reform and economic progress

with a program of Islamic modernization along the lines of Muhammad Iqbal, and it

provided the possibility of interpreting the personal act of migration as a liberating,

character-building process linked to the destiny of the nation.

This urban optimism went well with the dominant nationalist discourse of the 1950s and

1960s, even though the Muhajir dominated Muslim League was soon replaced by the

military as the most powerful state organization. The urban, bilingual - Urdu and English -

postcolonial middle class continued to formulate Pakistani nationalism in high cultural,

Islamic modernist terms. This ideology accounted for the sometimes patronizing, sometimes

downright condemning attitude towards a range of popular practices that were considered

traditional, rural, regional and backward. One set of such practices were particular beliefs

and practices associated with holy shrines. The remedy against this so-called superstition

was thought to lie in formal education.

As it happens, these shrines became major centers of rural and regional protest and

resistance in the 1960s. Having been essentialized as the focal-points of a traditional,

regional culture that had to be transformed into a new mentality in line with Muslim

nationalism and Islamic modernism, these shrines were now adopted with pride by groups

of students and intellectuals from the smaller provinces as indeed their spiritual centers

which had to be defended against the state's new colonialism. Two such shrines are located

in Sindh. One is the shrine of Shah Abdul Latif, an eighteenth century poet who composed

his verses in Sindhi, a rare move when Persian was still the language of culture. He lies

buried near Hyderabad, in the geographical heart of the province, and his shrine has

become a major pilgrimage center for Sindhi nationalists, as well as many other people. His

main hero, Sassi, the heroine of a popular love story, has herself become a symbol of Sindhi

identity. She is highly commercialized too, as you will find Sassi soap, Sassi sweets and

even Sassi travel companies in Sindh.

The second shrine that became a center of protest is the shrine of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar in

Sehwan Sharif, in North-Sindh. Located near Larkana, the hometown of the Bhuttos, this

shrine became the spiritual center of the Pakistan People's Party. Whereas Shah Abdul Latif

is known for his serenity, his 'ishq - a comtemplative, 'cool' kind of love - Lal Shahbaz

Qalandar is a so-called mastan, an ecstatic, intoxicated mystic, associated with a 'hot'

whirling dance danced on the rhythm of big drums and a song with the famous lyrics dam-

a-dam mast qalandar. In the 1960s and 1970s, this song became the PPP's party-song and

it was typically sung in an angry, pent-up tone by young, dedicated party supporters.

In orientalist writings, Sindh had already been portrayed as a place of mysticism, of Sufism

- the more positive evaluation of the image of Sindhis, and especially Sindhi Muslims, as

superstitious, fanatical and most of the time drunk. But now, with the help of these two

saints, this image of Sufism was turned into Sindh's essential identity and a powerful

argument against the Islamic modernist discourse. The two saints actually came to

represent two brands of Sindhi nationalists, which were typically at odds. Shah Abdul Latif's

'ishq became the basis for the Sindhi separatist G.M. Syed's almost Gandhian style of the

white clothed, politics-renouncing politician, whereas the more energetic and masculine

Bhutto family went to Sehwan Sharif for inspiration.

All this is important to understand the position of Muhajirs in Sindh and Pakistan. Around

1970, a time of a tense political situation and of the first violent street clashes between

Sindhis and Muhajirs, an almost orientalist mode of ethnic stereotyping was formed in which

Sindhis were, according to one's point of view, either pure mystics or backward fanatics,

and which made Muhajirs out to be essential modernists. Like the Sindhis, Muhajirs, too,

were left two options as they could choose between the 'liberal' modernism associated with

Muhammad Iqbal or the 'Islamist' modernism of Maududi. And in both versions, territory, or

the notion of homeland, was poorly developed. The reformation of character promoted by

both was rather symbolized with images of travel, exodus and pilgrimage, hajj and hijra.

These stereotypes lived on throughout the 1970s, which were, like elsewhere in South Asia,

a period of what has been called 'aristocratic populism' (Bose & Jalal 1998). Perhaps this is

the point to say a few words about certain similarities in the postcolonial history between

India and Pakistan, similarities which are perhaps better seen from the Pakistan

perspective. In both countries, popular protest against a postcolonial regime that was liberal

in rhetoric but quite authoritarian in practice led to regimes in the 1970s which were popular

in rhetoric and remained authoritarian in practice. And in the 1980s, regimes in both

countries returned to the sentiments of partition in processes which have been called the

'communalization of politics' in India and 'islamization' in Pakistan. And in both countries, all

this developed into a major crisis of the state and a tendency within the postcolonial elite to

retreat into the private sector, in so-called 'ghettos of the rich', which in Pakistan are never

far away from international airports. The differences are of course as interesting as the

similarities. In Pakistan, new, what I would hesitantly call, 'demotic' nationalist movements

of the 1980s and 1990s had an ethnic, rather than a communal outlook, and were more or

less successfully kept under control by the army, a kind of state within the state, that has

managed to escape the public contempt for the state and the political process.

'Populism' in Sindh meant a gradual Sindhification of nationalist discourse. Not only did

critics of the PPP complain that the song of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar had practically become

the national anthem of Pakistan, Shah Abdul Latif's shrine was also incorporated into the

national heritage. During the World Cup Cricket of 1996, for instance, Latif's heroine Sassi

became a dance show to apprise 'guests of the glimpses of the culture of the Indus Valley

which is Pakistan today'. A territorial element was added to Pakistani nationalism which

portrayed Pakistan as the land of the Indus. Recently a book appeared under the title 'The

Indus Saga' which tries to write the history of Pakistan as the history of the Indus Valley,

ignoring developments taking place in what is now India. Perhaps more importantly, a third

element in the national identity of Pakistani citizens was added. The Pakistani identity had

always consisted of two elements: one was part of the umma or universal community of

Muslims and of the millat, a term that referred to the Ottoman system of communities of

loyalty and protection and that was used in Pakistan to explain its western border. Now a

third community was added, the qaum, typically translated as 'ethnic group', and four of

those were officially recognized, coinciding with the four provinces so that there was a

Punjabi, a Sindhi, a Pakhtun and a Baluchi qaum. Stalin's nationality theory as applied in

Central Asia was very often used to explain the place of these qaum within the nation.

As this change of discourse went hand in hand with measures that were

unfavorable to Muhajirs - nationalization of Muhajir owned companies, the threat

of the introduction of Sindhi as the provincial language, a reservation program for

civil service jobs and places in educational institutions that de facto discriminated

between Sindhis and Muhajirs - it is often believed that the founding of the MQM

was a reaction to these policies. It was perhaps to be expected that Muhajirs

would try to defend their migrant nationalism against the introduction of

territorial and ethnic elements which, clearly, contained the risk of turning

Muhajirs into incomplete citizens. But the reaction, when it came, was surprisingly

more ambiguous. In simple terms, the MQM adopted, rather than attacked, the

discourse of ethnicity, proclaiming that Muhajirs were also a qaum - an ethnic

group, not so much connected to a shared homeland, but rather bound together by

the collective experience of migration. For many outside the MQM, this peculiar

mixture of ethnicity and non-territorial nationalism was rather incomprehensible

and illogical. For the MQM supporters themselves, however, this act of

unexpectedly and even absurdly connecting of categories which were widely

believed to be essentially opposed was new, exciting and provocative. To proclaim

Muhajirs to be a qaum was clearly a provocation of the strict non-territorial

migrant nationalism of Muhajirs inclined to the modernism of either Iqbal or

Maududi. But it was also a provocation of Sindhi nationalists who held that a qaum

identity had be based on territorial attachment. I think that this sense of absurdity

was perhaps one of the main reasons for the MQM's success.

Let me explain this by giving another example of this disrespectful way of blurring ethnic

categories and stereotypes. This is the story of how Altaf Husain, the paramount leader of

the MQM, was given his title of Pir Sahib. This happened one day when he travelled to

Karachi in the company of Pir Pagaro, a well-known politician in Sindh, and the head of the

brotherhood of the hur. From the urban point of view, the hur are perhaps the most typical

Sindhis. You find them in the northern areas of the province, far away from any major city,

and they have a reputation of being totally devoted to their pir, which in the Islamic

modernist view is of course hard to understand. When the two leaders arrived in Karachi -

the Pir Pagaro impressively dressed in his wide garments and his tall turban, the barely

thirty year-old Altaf next to him in kurta pyjama sporting a fashionable pair of sunglasses -

the Pir was welcomed by a small group of supporters who addressed him as Pir Sahib. Soon

the much more numerous group of young MQM supporters start doing the same, which was,

initially, an extremely good joke. It was a splendid provocation to compare the two leaders,

so utterly different, to each other. And because it was so funny, the joke was often repeated

and in time ceased to be a joke and became reality. Today, it is common practice to talk

about Altaf Husain as the Pir Sahib of the MQM.

It is perhaps a strange, equally provocative comparison, but I sometimes have the idea that

the early MQM was to its young supporters what a community of English soccer hooligans,

as described by Bill Buford, is to its individual members. How unusual the comparison may

be, it may also be a comfort for the old cultural elites of both England and Pakistan that

there is still something that binds the two countries together. Both MQM supporters and

English soccer hooligans are peer-groups of young males in which one can earn status

through practical joking. This joking may take the form of the kind of popular poetry soccer

supporters invent in concert while watching soccer matches. Their songs and slogans are

usually characterized by a sense of misplacement, words don't fit together, or don't fit the

occasion, and that's what makes them so funny. But the joking may also become more

violent as internal pressure on the basis of masculine pride may lead the group members

into acts of arson, looting, etc. The literature on male peer groups suggest that the line

between pranks and vandalism is thin and often crossed without much consideration. And in

my discussions with MQM supporters in Pakka Qila, I was often told stories about youthful

days of breaking taboos, secret outings, everlasting friendships and narrow escapes that

would never ceased to be good stories. They also admitted that it was a time they regularly

burnt property of people they didn't like or scared people by shooting bullets in the air and

that they had found much enjoyment in such practices.

The 'fun' of the early MQM, then, had at least two qualities. It provocatively blurred ethnic

categories, a process for which Thomas Blom Hansen, in his work on the Shiv Sena in

Bombay, has used the term 'recuperation'. In Bombay, he claims, Hindu militants

recuperate from the Muslims the image of masculinity and physical strength. In the case of

the MQM, young Muhajirs can be said to have recuperated from the Sindhis particular

practices and images that had been denied to Muhajirs as the staunch defenders of Islamic

modernism. Their slogan Mast Qalandar Altaf Husain is an example of this. In a partly

serious, partly jokingly manner, it linked the MQM to the hot passions of a Sindhi mystic

saint. Similarly, the MQM copied from the PPP its colorful public meeting full of music and

dance. Significantly, the ajrak - the shawl of the Sindhi peasant which is another recognized

symbol of the Sindhi culture; the Sindh Museum in Hyderabad devotes two large rooms to

its many variations - this ajrak was highly fashionable in the late 1980s among hip, urban

Muhajirs. I think it is also important to realize that these provocations were also, and

perhaps even primarily, meant to challenge those segments of the migrant population who

liked to think of Muhajirs as essentially modern and disciplined. Apart from being at odds

with other ethnic groups, the early MQM was also involved in a generational conflict as well

as a provocation of the ashraf middle class.

A second aspect of the 'fun' was the social irresponsibility and the violence created within

the cohorts of young males which together made up the MQM. I think that the same peer

group dynamics which made it possible to collectively ridicule existing ways of thinking

about social distinctions, were also instrumental in fostering a particular form of violence. To

be sure, I don't think that the spectacular increase of violence in urban Sindh since 1985

can be explained in these terms. It is clear that other factors were at play: the presence of

several militant political and student organizations fighting, the fragmentation of state

forces which made talk about the state's monopoly on violence all the more laughable, or

the violent clashes between criminal organizations linked to the war economy in

Afghanistan. Yet these factors accounted for the big incidents which were still rare enough

to make the headlines of newspapers. On a more daily level, social life in a city like

Hyderabad was increasingly spoilt in the late 1980s by groups of MQM supporters

conducting such 'practical jokes' as lavishly lunching in restaurants, then scaring the owner

to death by offering to pay in bullets, and leaving without payment. This probably

contributed as much as to the growing ethnic tension as the more bloody clashes between

militant or criminal groups, if not more.

In slightly more general terms, then, I think that the MQM can be seen as an exponent of a

new kind of nationalist movement. Unlike the nationalism of the postcolonial nation-building

segments of the population, which drew heavily on culture, tradition, education and speech,

the new nationalism is more like a 'street nationalism' in which competitive

masculinity, physicality and 'fun' are key values. This transition is perhaps a matter of

degree rather than a radical break for what I would call 'official nationalism' of course relies

on state forces where such values as masculinity and physicality can also be found. Yet the

fact that young, male peer groups have a much more central place in movements like the

MQM does, I think, make a profound difference. I am actually thinking of a term that would

fit these movements of the late twentieth century. I have rejected a whole range of options,

such as, 'street nationalism', 'mass' or 'demotic' or simply 'new' nationalism and haven't

found the right term yet. So suggestions are welcome.

Another aspect of the early MQM is that the movement stirred many expectations and

visions of change. Perhaps the atmosphere of expectations itself was more important than

the actual content of these expectations. These were rather vague. One talked about the

'MQM inqilab', the MQM revolution, which celebrated change simply for the sake of change.

But during my fieldwork I was often told that those days of hope and expectations were

gone. Support for the MQM seemed to be on the wane. I had the impression that people

were waiting for an alternative. Some had already found it in a new religious movement.

The decline of the MQM had set in in 1992 when state prosecution came down hard on the

MQM. In a series of so-called Operations Clean-up, the street forces of the movement were

eliminated and the leadership forced to leave the country. This had gradually affected the

party's grip on the typical MQM neighborhoods in Karachi and Hyderabad. Even in Pakka

Qila, widely known as one of the proverbial strongholds of the movement, the party was

condemned for its power abuse.

The main reason it still received some sympathy was because of the state violence directed

against the party. All the more, because the state was now widely considered to be

captured by other ethnic groups. Generally speaking, the idea was that Punjabis controlled

the white collar state jobs in the assemblies, the courts, etc, whereas Sindhis did their dirty

work on the streets as policemen. Together with the sense of disillusion about the decline of

the MQM, this notion of a captive, unreliable, hostile state created a new feeling of being

unsafe and unsheltered in Pakistan. With the MQM, as the party to defend them, almost

defeated, one speculated whether the UN would come to their rescue in case

militant Sindhis, backed by state forces, would force them out of their homes. The

statement that 'They will one day drive us into the Arabian Sea' was one of those

conventional wisdoms I regularly heard. The fate of Biharis in Bangladesh also worried

many people. These people had gone to Pakistan in 1947 and then their country was taken

away from them in 1971. Since successive Pakistani governments did not let them come to

Pakistan, they had nowhere to go. In Hyderabad, one felt that this could also happen to them and people were sometimes afraid that they would end up in a UN refugee camp in some distant desert.

Muhajirs in Pakka Qila, then, did not feel like aliens in a strange country. They described

their position rather as a people living in a land conquered by foreigners. And in

that sense, they now saw a continuity in the history of Indian Muslims, who were time and

again forced to leave, from India, from Bangladesh, and now, possibly, from Pakistan. What

worried them most was the absence of another potential homeland outside Pakistan. Having

forced to go as far as the western-most point of the subcontinent, they could not travel any

further as a nation. They felt to have two options. One, increasingly difficult, option

was to become a labor migrant and in time become part of another nation. The

other option, in case of escalation, was to defend Karachi and Hyderabad as Muhajir territory and become a majority.

Let me, by way of a conclusion, point out the rather complex dynamics of various

formulations, reformulations and counterformulations of Pakistani nationalism. The issue of

territory was introduced only late. Although the idea of Pakistan as a Greater Sindh, a

territorial entity stretching all the way from Karachi to Kashmir, was actually formulated for

the first time already in the early 1940s by G.M. Syed - then still the leader of the Muslim

League in Sindh - this territorial formulation of Pakistan was out of the picture for a long

time. It only came back in official discourse in the 1970s and it has always sat

uncomfortably with the more dominant notion of the Pakistani nation as a non-

territorial community imagined in Islamic traditions of religious travel. The

remarkable thing about the MQM was that it, in its own disrespectful way of dealing with

ethnic and national categories, tried to work out a reconciliation of both the territory-based

and the migration-based notion of nationalism by proclaiming Muhajirs to be an ethnic

group without a sense a territorial attachment. I believe that it is the failure of this effort in

the 1990s, due to the MQM's own violence as well as state oppression, that has generated

the feeling of nostalgia and displacement in which the diasporic identity could again emerge.