Ethnicity and nation
Rasul Bakhsh Rais
The writer is Director, Area Study Centre, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad
The provincial elites prefer to define and structure Pakistani nation in terms of a composite political entity. This implies roughly three things. First, the constituent units have inviolable rights, and these rights must form the basis of relationship with the central authority. Second, the cultural and political hegemony of the state is impermissible as it violates the basic sense of being of the units. Third, the distribution of political power in the system must be rearranged or reworked in a fashion that it satisfies fundamental concerns of the various groups. The political language of this prescription is autonomy, decentralisation, participation, and democracy.
In an ethnically diverse country as Pakistan, nation formation must be regarded, first and foremost, a political process based on a “social contract” among the member groups to share political power and material rewards of living together. This is precisely what the ethnic elites or provincial leaders have demanded of the Pakistani state. Most of the provincial parties and ethnic groups have consistently struggled for the preservation of cultural and political rights. Their demands have ranged from greater political autonomy to the recognition of nationalities and national rights but within the framework of a unified Pakistan. The issue of four nationalities – Punjab, Baloch, Pushtun, Sindh – has been misrepresented by every one with some influence and power, the media, the religious groups and even mainstream national political parties. Recognition of four or even more nationalities would in no way undermine national solidarity. Rather, inclusionary politics would integrate ethnic interests with the notion of Pakistani nationhood.
Understanding the ethnic mix in Pakistan would be necessary in order to understand the question of identity. The existing provincial boundaries of Pakistan as inherited from the British India are not ethnic boundaries. Although main ethnic entities form the clusters in the provinces, most of the ethnic and linguistic groups are interspersed and widely distributed across the provincial boundaries. Large concentrations of Pushtuns in Balochistan, Balochis in Sindh and Punjab, Punjabis in Northwest Frontier province, and Muhajirs in urban areas of Sindh blur the ethnic boundaries. Such a mosaic and intermixing carries potential both for conflict as well as for integration. Except the Muhajir group, all other ethnic transmigrations have occurred over the centuries that have well defined territorial domains. Therefore, the ethnic issue does not lend itself to a clear definition along the provincial lines. It is a three in one problem: Provincial autonomy, preservation of group cultures, and distributive justice.
However, the provincial identities are tagged with the identities of the majority ethnic groups. This is the way they have evolved, and are recognised by others. A sense of separate identity of each group is deeply rooted in history, which the interplay of some common cultural forms and religion can’t dissolve by themselves. And, there is hardly any need for taking away or giving up historic identity. We need to recognize that the politics and ideology of identity is primarily about self-preservation as a cultural entity, and about political rights.
The diversity of the units or their internal compositions do not pose any threat to the state by themselves. Quite often it is the repression by the state and its authoritarianism that poses threat to its internal harmony, peace and stability. Because denial of rights provokes protest, and in some conditions, violent outbursts, that ignites a cycle of resistance and repression. In our case, the provincial elites in particular felt deprived of their due share in power; they looked upon the state elites at the centre as masters, not friends. Their concerns of autonomy, citizenship rights and participation in the economic and political process of the state are as justified as the demand for Pakistan itself. It is the absence of democracy and inadequate power sharing arrangements that produced frustration with the state, strengthened groups feelings, and has in the past, led to armed struggle for the restoration of rights.
The case of NAP, frequently labelled by its detractors as secessionist, illustrates this point. Allowing the party to form governments in Balochistan and Frontier provinces in 1972 vastly changed its perspective on the national question. The Party was the first to adopt Urdu as the provincial language and confined its demand for Pukhtunistan to renaming the Frontier province. But when its Balochistan government was dismissed in February in 1973, its Balochi wing took up arms and launched an insurgency that lasted four years. There is too much to learn from this painful experience. There is no escape from including all ethnic and regional groups into political arrangements. We need to rethink nation formation strategy in terms of political participation and decentralisation. The devolution process has not touched the question of provincial autonomy so far, but it appears to be on the agenda of the present government. The question of what type of autonomy and in what specific area shouldn’t be left to the experts in the NRB, but must referred to the provincial elites. Some of them have inflated image of themselves and the political language that they use doesn’t fit into the mainstream political thinking, but still it is important that their views must be heard and accommodated.
The policy of strong central government combined with authoritarian has resulted into a weak Pakistani state. Weak in terms of political capacity to integrate ethnic groups or cultivate a sense of strong Pakistani nationalism among them. Almost all the ethnic groups from the smaller provinces have consistently demanded greater provincial autonomy, decentralisation of power and devolution of authority. These are some of the aspects of the Pakistani polity that the present regime must address. But there is vast gap in the thinking of the military and the regional groups on how these principles can be operationalised.
The leaders of the Pakistan Oppressed Nationalities Movement (PONAM), a new coalition of about twelve small factions of diverse ethnic identity have pressed for the restoration of democracy and even rewriting of the Constitution in a con-federal image. Some of their demands may not find popular expression, as the electoral support base of most of these groups is negligible, but they may continue to remind that devolution without democracy may only transfer the locus of authoritarianism and fail to resolve the broader issue of political power and provincial rights.