Tag Archives: Mohajirs

Sindh, Sindhi

Qaimkhani Rajputs, held gathering in Tando Allahyar district of Sindh and said they are neither Urdu speakers nor Muhajirs. They said, “we are Sindhis.”

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Indian partition migrants from Rajasthan say they are Sindhis, should not be considered Muhajirs or Urdu speakers

The Indian partition refugees from pre-partition Indian state of Rajasthan, known as Qaimkhani Rajputs, held gathering in Tando Allahyar district of Sindh and said they are neither Urdu speakers nor Muhajirs. They said, “we are Sindhis.” Such was said through the community leader Sabir Qaimkhani who was also a Vice Mayor (Naib-Nazim) of District Tando Allahyar. He also said that his community wants the unity of Sindh. News Courtesy: Daily Awami Awaz.

Courtesy: Sindhi daily Awamiawaz + Rights and Movement
See more » http://rightsupdate.blogspot.in/2014/11/indian-partition-migrants-from.html

Pakistan, Politics, Sindh

Altaf Hussain’s call for Separation of Karachi – By Saeed Qureshi

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The MQM chief Altaf Hussain‘s conditional call for separating Karachi city from Pakistan comes closer to the independence of Singapore from Malaysia in 1965. The Singapore separation from Malaysia that it willingly joined in 1963, was the result of extreme strife, unbridgeable disagreements and ethnic bitterness between the Chinese origin population and the native Malayans mostly Muslims. Is it also the blue print of Jinnahpur that was later swept under the carpet?

Altaf Hussain the fiery and unbridled chief of MQM has enslaved or indoctrinated his Muhajir community, mostly settled in Karachi city after their migration from India in 1947. By his rigid and merciless authoritarianism, instead of integrating, he has isolated his community from the mainstream populace of Pakistan. MQM is basically a movement for the sake of Muhajirs as an ethnic entity and not for the Pakistani nation.

Since its formation in 1984 as Muhajir Qaumi Movement and later renamed as Muttahida Qaumi Movement in 1997, the imprint of MQM in the minds of the people is that of a kind of mafia or an entity of roughnecks or extortionists. It is believed that the special death and terror squads within MQM kill, kidnap and torture their rivals including the critics from within the MQM fold.

There has been also a prevailing impression that has gained ground, that the extortions or the obnoxious “Parchi system” was first started by MQM to raise funds for the organization to become financially robust for carrying out its political and apolitical activities. Undoubtedly Altaf Hussain has proven to be a great and unassailable master and unbending and strict lord of his party.

He can summon the multitudes of Urdu speaking Pakistanis and Muhajirs within a matter of hours and with one call. They all gather at a venue with their heads down and hands motionless unless raised to cheer or clap for the scathing tirade of their great master. They sit rather motionless for hours together listening to his long, dreary and high pitched discourses as if they have been bewitched or mesmerized. There is a gossip that anyone who does not clap or come to the assemblage is dealt with vindictively.

Several pioneering cohorts and companions are alleged to have lost their lives in all these years ostensibly due to their opposition of the ruthless leader with symptoms of indiscretion. Their names are in the public knowledge.

Continue reading Altaf Hussain’s call for Separation of Karachi – By Saeed Qureshi →

News, Pakistan, Politics, Sindh

Karachi: a Tower of Babel? By Roland DeSouza

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Excerpt;

…. Over the next three censuses, the proportion of Urdu speakers in the city peaked at over 50 per cent but the Pashto speakers slowly began to increase. In the 1998 census, in a population of 9.8 million, the Urdu speakers showed a declining trend of around 45 per cent while the Pashto speakers moved upwards to ten per cent.

Projecting these trend lines into the future, in less than thirty years the number of Pashto speakers will exceed the number of Urdu speakers. ….

Read more » The Express Tribune

http://tribune.com.pk/story/365643/karachi-a-tower-of-babel/

Pakistan, Politics, Sindh

Sindhi middle class politics

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By Javed Ahmed Qazi

Sindhi politics are a paradox. When there is democracy, the political pendulum swings towards the PPP, and when there is dictatorship, people support ethnic politic parties.

The ethnic parties that represent the middle class hardly ever win legislative assembly seats. But when they called strikes recently, the entire province came to a standstill. And that is a sign the middle class is starting to matter.

Although separatist movements are more popular in Balochistan, their flags are not displayed openly. SindhuDesh flags are seen all over the Sindh.

In his book Idea of Pakistan, Stephan Cohen says: “An independent Sindh would block the access of the rest of Pakistan to the sea. Separatist movements there were intolerable to the central government and a mixture of inducement and punishment was applied to keep the nationalist sentiments in check.” But “Sindhi separatist feeling still exists today, and political unrest runs deep”.

Sindhi nationalists are generally anti-establishment, and are not ready to stop supporting the PPP for either ZulfiqarMirza or MarviMemon.

The hub of middle-class Sindi politics is the Qasimabad town of Hyderabad. For a long time, Sindh University in Jamsharo supplied its cadres. Dr QadirMagsi, Bashir Qureshi, and Gul Muhammad Jakhrani began politics when they were students. But partly because of the ban on student unions and partly because of two streams of education, that has changed.

Hyderabad is also the hub of Sindhi press, and editorial pages specifically address issues of ethnic orientation – governance, economy, taxes, and long standing water related debates.

The middle class has grown substantially all over the province in the last few decades, but the economy is not entrepreneurial. Most middle-class professionals are teachers, journalists, retailers, clerics, government employees, or skilled workers.

The birth of the middle in Sindh began in the 1970s when Zulfikar Ali Bhutto gave out government jobs, set up universities and built roads in the province. But eventually, he also sternly suppressed middle class political voices.

The ethnic Sindhi middle class has traditionally been wary of the Punjabis as well as the Mohajirs. While President AsifZardari has helped pacify the Mohajir-Sindhi differences in the recent past, issues between the two groups remain unresolved.

Ethnic Sindhis also have concerns about distribution of river water with Punjab and are especially concerned about the proposed Kalabagh Dam.

Sindhi politics have been secular and Sufi-leaning so far, but Taliban-friendly seminaries have recently made inroads in northern Sindh. The development has specifically concerned Sindh’s Hindu community, but Shias are comparatively safe.

A vast majority of Sindhis is Sunni, but they have immense respect of Shias. Many Sindhi feudals are also Shia. A large number of Sufi shrines are taken care of by Shias, and even Hindus have a say in the affairs of those shrines.

Hindus and Muslims lived peacefully in Sindh before Partition, and the Sindhi middle class accuses the feudals of having instigated Hindu-Muslim riots for political gains. Middle-class Sindhi politicians were popular in Sindh before the riots, it is said, and Shiekh Abdul Majeed Sindhi defeated Sir Shahnawaz Bhutto, father of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, in the 1937 elections.

Sindhi ethnic parties had also supported Sheikh MujiburRehman, because there was a perception in Sindh that the Bengali nationalist movement and Sindhi nationalist movement had common goals and a common rival – the middle class of Punjab.

The demand for an independent SindhuDesh was first made in 1973, but it has never been as popular as the separatist movement of Bangladesh, or even the recent separatist movement in Balochistan.

Courtesy: Friday Times

News, Pakistan, Politics, Sindh

Violence in Karachi exposes deep divides

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By Karin Brulliard

SINDH: KARACHI, Pakistan — A trash-strewn dusty street here became a front line in recent ethnic battles that killed 100 people in four days.

Now, in the aftermath, residents speak of the street as though it is a chasm, dividing the population of this oceanside city of 18 million and even Pakistan itself.

On one side, people known as Mohajirs, long the dominant group in this economic hub, seethingly point to bullet-scarred and burned houses and demand a new province that would be theirs alone. On the other side, Pashtuns who migrated here in recent years after fleeing an Islamist insurgency in their native northwest also point to bullet holes, and some express worry that a sort of ethnic cleansing is to come.

“Now they are asking for their own province,” Adnan Khan, a Pashtun whose brother was fatally shot by unknown assailants this month, said of the Mohajirs. “Next maybe they will ask for their own country.”

Karachi, Pakistan’s most diverse city, is once more spewing violence that goes unchecked by police and is stoked by thuggish politicians. While the fierce Taliban insurgency seeks to overthrow the government from mountain hideouts hundreds of miles away, the city’s battles are laying bare the deep ethnic, political and sectarian cleavages that pose an additional threat to this fragile federation — as well as an impediment to its unity against Islamist militancy.

When Pakistan parted from India in 1947, it fused vast spans of ethnically and linguistically distinct populations under the common cause of Islam. But the state has struggled to define Islam’s role as a social adhesive. The powerful, Punjabi-dominated military, meanwhile, has aimed to suppress various nationalist movements, even while sometimes backing ethnic and sectarian groups as tools for influence. Politics remain cutthroat and largely localized. The result, some say, is a nation hobbled — and increasingly bloodied — by factionalism.

“Why are they fighting in Karachi? Because they have not become Pakistani yet. People have not become a nation,” said Syed Jalal Mahmood Shah, the Karachi-based leader of a small nationalist party that represents people native to surrounding Sindh province. Mohajirs, like Pashtuns, are themselves migrants to Karachi: They are Urdu-speaking Muslims who fled Hindu-majority India at partition.

Escalating clashes

Shifting demographics are the root of the fighting in Karachi, where an influx of ethnic Pashtuns from the war-torn region along the Afghan border is challenging the Mohajirs’ long-standing grip on the city. The struggle is waged through assassinations, land-grabbing and extortion, and it is carried out by gangs widely described as armed wings of ethnically based political parties. The Urdu speakers, represented by the dominant Muttahida Qaumi Movement, or MQM, accuse the Pashtuns of sheltering terrorists in Karachi; the MQM’s main rival, the Awami National Party, or ANP, says the city’s 4 million Pashtuns are ignored politically. But the violence is escalating to new levels, and residents say ethnic tensions are sharpening.

Courtesy: → Washington Post

Culture, Current Issues, Pakistan, Politics, Sindh, Sindhi

Problems of Sindhi Nationalism – What way forward?

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Written by Dr Beenish Shoro

Excerpt:

…. In Pakistan the national question exists in its worst form because Pakistan itself is an example of a failed nation state. Pakistan was created as a result of the partition of the Indian subcontinent as the British imperialists and the local/national bourgeois leaders feared that a united national liberation would not stop there but would move towards a social transformation that would overthrow landlordism, capitalism and the imperialist strangle hold. To avoid a socialist revolution they conspired and split the movement along religious lines that led to the reactionary and traumatic partition of a land that had more than five thousand years of common history, cultural and socio economic existence.

Pakistan was founded not as a nation state, but as a state made up of nationalities. Even the abbreviations which form the word Pakistan are a testimony to this fact. This corresponds to its belated character. … National oppression has been brutal and rough ever since the country came into being. ….

….the separation of Bangladesh, the inability to resolve regional and sectarian disputes, the inability to sustain a clear concept and direction to Pakistan’s Nationalism and finally failure to create a modern cohesive nation state.

Pakistan’s political system is dominated by elite groups. In addition it faces the dilemma of chronic military rule. ….

….Sindh, the southern most province of the state possesses one of the most varied demographical set-ups in Pakistan. There is a very fragile ethnic balance between Sindhis and non-Sindhis. After partition many of the immigrants from Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh in India moved mainly to Karachi, but also to Hyderabad, Sukkur and other cities of Sindh.

This massive influx of Mohajirs from India and other nationalities resulted in a greater control of people from this transmigration over the economy, jobs and posts in the state apparatus. Although this phenomenon had a greater impact on urban Sindh, the deprivation was felt also in rural Sindh especially amongst the Sindhi middle classes. The acquisition of State and other lands by Punjab Generals and other settlers further aggravated this feeling of national deprivation amongst the Sindhi populace. There are several other factors which fuelled these sentiments. ….

….At the heart of nationalist sentiments in Pakistan is the perception by non-Punjabis that the Punjabi nationality dominates the economy, politics, society and the state. There is considerable evidence to support this perception. First, Punjabis constitute a majority of the population, approximately 60%; second, they dominate the civilian bureaucracy and the military; third, the Punjab is by far the wealthiest and most developed province in the state. And this perception is ironically fuelled by governmental policies designed to assuage such perceptions. ….

…. G. M. Syed can rightly be considered as the founder of Sindhi nationalism. He formed the Sindh Progressive Party in 1947 and demanded provincial autonomy within a socialist framework. In 1953 he formed the SindhAwami Mahaz. G. M. Syed himself a middle sized landlord represented the grievances of that class as well. …

… There have been several movements in Sindh over the last 60 years but there are three very significant mass upsurges that shook the echelons of power in Islamabad. These are the movements of 1968-69, 1983 and to some extent that of 1986. All these movements had different intensities, character, orientation and motivations. …

… Zia was the son of a Mullah who had migrated from Eastern (Indian) Punjab and was American-trained at Fort Bragg. His atrocities, his make up and his background were enough to provoke massive hatred from the masses in Sindh. Zia’s repression of the Sindh was no less than the brutalities of British colonialists inflicted upon the mass of the subcontinent and other colonies. All this unleashed a glorious movement of the Sindhi masses against the military dictatorship. Although this movement had significant nationalist overtones, fundamentally it was linked to the general class resentment against this regime.

The movement failed because the regime was able to foster ethnic and nationalist discord especially in urban Sindh and in other main cities and provinces of Pakistan. In Karachi the Pakistani state devised the instrument of the MQM, the Punjabi Pushtoon Ittehad, Islamic fundamentalists and other reactionary outfits to break the momentum of struggle that was developing along class lines.

Still the movement raged on. In such circumstances whenever national antagonisms coincided with class contradictions they became especially hot. According to the official figures 1263 innocent people were slaughtered by the army in rural Sindh while thousands more were injured. There are heroic episodes of resistance that have now become legends in Sindhi folklore. …

… In 1986 the movement in Sindh was actually the last nail in Zia’s coffin. …

… If we in Sindh should achieve “freedom” through the same phenomenon as in Bangladesh we may well get freedom from non-Sindhi capitalists, but we will be all the more cruelly exploited by Sindhi capitalists and landlords. These nationalists do not want freedom from poverty, misery, unemployment; they just want freedom to establish control over their own market where they could extract a huge surplus by squeezing the last drop of the workers’ blood.

The feudal landlords want freedom to exploit the peasants and working class …

… We will take revenge for the crime of partition of India through the formation of a Red Revolutionary Subcontinent. As Comrade Lal khan says, “The unification of the Indian subcontinent will be on a much higher plane than the 1947 Partition.” …

To read full article :→ Marxist.com

Life, News, Pakistan, Politics, Sindh, Video

Karachi, Sindh : the shadows of violence & target killings

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Sindh: People of Karachi join Asima Choudhry to discuss who is responsible of violence & target killings in Karachi? The language of the program is urdu (Hindi).

Watch other parts of program – Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Courtesy: Dunya TV (Program “In Session” with Asma Choudhry, 22 January, 2011)

via→ ZemTV → You Tube Link

Pakistan, Personalities, Politics, Sindh

De-coding G. M. Syed

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Sindh Diary : Sindhi Nationalism and G. M. Syed

by Ali K. Chishti

Born in 1904, G.M Syed was a descendant of a saint buried in his native village of Sann. He would later become one of the most controversial and paradoxical public figures of Pakistan. After founding the Sindh Hari Committee, he became an active Muslim League leader during the 1939 communal riots in SukKar for which he would later, during a visit to India in the 1980’s would apologize. Syed would later also apologize to the people of Sindh for having “moved the resolution demanding the creation of Pakistan in the legislature of Sindh before independence and partition”.

G.M Sayed was indeed one of the greatest Sindhi political visionaries ever produced. It was G.M Syed who joined Muslim League and ultimately did a lot for Sindhi Nationalism and founded Jeay-e-Sindh Movement, after the creation of Pakistan. In “The Sole Spokesman” by Ayesha Jalal writes interesting accounts of G.M Syed’s politics before the partition; that G.M Syed was in open revolt against Ghulam Hussain’s ministry whom Jinnah mistrusted and obviously there was history behind it. By September 1945 a bitter three-way struggle for League ticket had broken out between G.M Syed, Khuhro and Ghulam Hussain Hidayatullah. The clash between the President of Sindh Muslim League (G.M Syed) and the Province’s premier climaxed in the former’s expulsion from the organization in January 1946. G.M Syed complained to Jinnah was that the Minister’s support of the landed elite’s interests was unpopular and was retarding the Pakistan cause. G.M Syed was obviously over-shadowed.

In 1947 post-partition, Syed had founded the Sindh Progressive Party (SPP) which laid down the foundation of Sindhi nationalism. From the very inception, the SPP opposed the two-nation theory and initially sought great provincial autonomy for Sindh; a very constitutional approach. In subsequent decades, Syed would demand independence of Sindh out of frustration and nothing else. By 1953, Syed consolidated Sindhi nationalist groups like the Sind Awami Jammat, Sindh Jinnah Awami League, Dastoor Party and Sindh Hari Party to form the Sind Awami Mahaz which became the fore-runner to the creation of the Jiya Sindh Mahaz (JSM) which was formed in the 1960’s.

The religious aspects of G.M Syed’s politics had widely been ignored. He was secular to the core and mocked mullah’s hijacking of Islam and was a victim of many fatwa’s in return by the hard-line mullah’s. He was not only a political giant but preached religion too claiming to be a descendant of the Prophet because of the “Syed” linage. S.M Syed took his inspiration from a range of men he considered prophets of mysticism including Bhudda, Christ, Muhammad (P.B.U.H) and even Gandhi, the philosopher Ibn Arabi and Rumi the poet who was executed for his famous theosophical, “ I am God/ Truth” (Ana’l Haq). G.M Syed is in fact one of the main persons who turned Shah Abdul Latif Bhati of Bhit Shah into a Sindhi National poet.

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