If Muhammad Ali Jinnah happened to be on the Quetta-bound bus of Shia pilgrims on June 28, the self-proclaimed custodians of Islam would have killed him, along with 13 others. They would do so because Jinnah was a Shia and that would have been reason enough.

Jinnah, for most Pakistanis today, is the Quaid-e-Azam — the man above any sect in the Islamic Republic. As the Republic he founded increasingly becomes a place where minorities feel vulnerable, it would be remiss to forget that the founder of the country was a Shia. Born into an Ismaili family, he later converted to the Twelver (isna ashri) branch of Shia Islam. He died in 1948 and his sister, Miss Fatima Jinnah, filed an affidavit in the Sindh High Court stating that her brother was a “Shia Khoja Mohamedan”. Liaquat Ali Khan, the first prime minister of Pakistan, jointly signed the affidavit. Khaled Ahmed, in his book Sectarian War, documents in detail how the last rites of the Quaid were performed according to Shia stipulations. Jinnah’s Shia colleagues such as Yusuf Haroon and Hashim Raza attended the namaz-e-janaza (funeral prayer) at the Governor General’s House, while prime minister Liaquat Ali Khan waited outside in the adjacent room. After the Shia funeral prayer, the nascent state took the body for Sunni last rites at the grounds where now stands the Quaid’s mausoleum in Karachi. Miss Fatima Jinnah passed away in 1967 and in her case, too, private last rites were performed according to Shia guidelines and the state-sponsored namaz-e-janaza followed it.

Sunni militant outfits portray Shias as lesser Muslims and thus, lesser Pakistanis. This commandeering of state discourse on Islam from the 1980s onward has emboldened the militants to take up arms against their coreligionists in select parts of Pakistan.

The demonisation of members of both sects denudes members of their complex human identity and reduces them to a single attribute. The demonised is then treated as a tumour in society that needs to be eliminated. A group reduced to a single trait often becomes prey to pogroms — organised massacres of a particular ethnic group. Phrases from medical science and language of sanitation come handy. Adolf Hitler went for ‘total solution’ to cleanse Jews from German society. Following the assassination of Ms Indira Gandhi in 1984, at the hands of her Sikh bodyguards, her supporters murdered thousands of Sikhs around Delhi in a matter of days. The year 2012 marks the 10th anniversary of pogrom of Muslims in the Indian state of Gujarat where thousands continue to languish in refugee camps.

Finally, a massive massacre accompanied the birth of Pakistan. What is now Indian Punjab, cleaned its territory of Muslims and from the Pakistani side of the Radcliffe Line, Hindus and Sikhs were wiped. Karachi, the first capital of the country, was cleansed of its affluent Hindu population. The anti-Hindu riots of January 1948 convinced hesitant Hindus to head to India. These cleanups became possible once Hindus and Sikhs were robbed of their complex socio-economic identities and reduced to being members of antagonistic faith groups.

Ordinary Pakistanis would be surprised to learn that once even Jews lived in Pakistan without much fear and in 1947, Peshawar had two synagogues. In the 1980s, Karachi’s Magain Shalome Synagogue was demolished to make way for a shopping centre.

Two prevalent myths in Pakistan about the perpetrators of pogroms and the reasons behind religious militancy obfuscate the issue.

Popular media portrays perpetrators as crazy and deranged Muslims. The fact is quite opposite. Religious militants are a product of socialisation, common in public and private religious education, where the emphasis is on certain denominational affiliation to override all other associations and treat other groups as potential enemies of Islam. Militants may be few in numbers but they are not a crazy lot.

Secondly, the idea that the religious militancy will simply go away when the Americans leave Afghanistan is another form of complacency. The American military presence in the region and the manner in which it has lost the battle of winning the hearts and minds of locals is certainly a contributing element but the rot of sectarianism coupled with militancy predates 2001 and, with the way things stand, will outlive American departure from Afghanistan. Ordinary Pakistanis generally hold no violent grudge against religious, ethnic and other minorities. What is worrisome is the hesitation of state authorities and non-Shia clergy to rein in on the rising tide of militant sectarianism in Pakistan.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 6^th, 2012.

Association with the US has landed Dr Shakil Afridi a prison sentence of 33 years. It could also cost Ms Farahnaz Ispahani her seat in the National Assembly. Rehman Malik is groping for papers to prove that he has renounced British citizenship, something that the Supreme Court has so far refused to accept.

Duality in a puritan country, especially in times of heightened sensitivity about sovereignty, can lead to the end of an individual’s membership in the national parliament. However, it presents a good opportunity to flesh out a few layers about the many dimensions of citizenship in a globalised world.

What learned judges in Pakistan are doing through their judgments on dual citizenship is rehearsing script from, what Benedict Anderson, a leading American theorist of nationalism and author of the seminal book Imagined Communities (1983), terms the “classical nineteenth-century nationalist project — which aimed for the fullest alignment of habitus, culture, attachment, and exclusive political participation”. The second part of the 20^th century saw the globe neatly carved into nation states and the two documents, birth certificate and passport, came to denote citizenship. Anderson considers the modern passport “counterfeit” in the sense that passports are “less and less attestations of citizenship, let alone of loyalty to a protective nation-state, than claims to participate in labour markets”.

For rich Pakistanis — who pretty much can buy American or Canadian passports — acquiring citizenship of a Western country is purchasing the right to flee Pakistan in case things do not turn out in their planned ways. Pakistanis who can afford this expensive insurance policy, through money or skills, of the right coloured passport avoid long lines at airports and other such inconveniences that a holder of the green passport is subjected to when travelling or living in the West.

This particular class of the rich and privileged from the Third World in the age of globalised capital operates armed with the iPhone, credit cards and electronic air tickets for transcontinental flights. How else does one explain a boy from a small town in India joining his brother in Karachi, marrying a Dutch woman and working in a Dutch lab, developing nuclear weapons in Pakistan, and exporting their parts to North Korea. Toryalai Wesa left Kandahar in 1991 became a Canadian national and returned to Kandahar as governor in 2009. Asma al-Assad, wife of the embattled Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, was born and raised as a British national but now happens to be the first lady of the country that may be bombarded by British fighter jets.

Looking at dual citizenship as a sign of dual loyalty may be correct legally but says little about an individual’s relations with either the country of his birth or with the one he chose to become a naturalised citizen of. Such individuals are loyal to neither in the traditional sense of the word since in the law of any country loyalty means faithful allegiance to one’s lawful sovereign or government. Rich globetrotters from the third world carrying multiple passports are primarily concerned about their interests, and in this, citizenships and passports are merely a means of achieving convenience. Expecting complete loyalty from them to their country of birth or to the adopted land is an illusionary demand. Ms Ispahani, if she indeed withheld the information of her US citizenship, was not telling the inconvenient truth.

The Pakistani state allows, even encourages and lures, multiple citizenship holder Pakistanis residing in affluent countries to participate in Pakistani society as economic investors, and to be proverbial ambassadors of Pakistan in the country of their residence. All leading parties have their external wings where misaligned citizens have heated discussions on Pakistani politics in cosy living rooms in suburban America.

Oaths of citizenship in countries like the US and Canada have the imprint of the 19^th century nationalist model demanding new entrants into the nation to abjure their past. But the reality is different. The Supreme Court of Pakistan is well within its rights to stick to the literal stipulations of oaths, whether that of US citizenship or of becoming a member of Pakistan’s parliament. But, we, analysts are interested in political and social practices where those who take the oath seldom remember what the contents of that oath were. Assembled in the halls where oath of citizenship are administered in the US, the new Americans are less interested in taking up arms for America and more in getting the passport that will allow them visa-free travel to destinations they have been wanting to visit. The Supreme Court has construed the wording in the oath of US citizenship as renouncing citizenship of Pakistan by someone born in Pakistan. The US Department of State website is more in tune with today’s labyrinth of dual nationality issue than the archaic oath of citizenship. It says: “The concept of dual nationality means that a person is a citizen of two countries at the same time … US law does not mention dual nationality or require a person to choose one citizenship or another … The US Government recognises that dual nationality exists but does not encourage it.”

Dual nationals occupying important political positions can be doubly accountable. Having the passport of an advanced industrial country is always a useful escape route when the going gets tough in one’s country of birth. When caught on the wrong foot, the privilege of dual citizenship can draw excessive and exacting demands of oath that ordinarily are violated in spirit by most members of parliament. Ms Ispahani made the choice of withholding information of her US citizenship for which she might pay a legal and political price in Pakistan. Thanks to her US passport, she can safely stay in the US as her lawyers sort the legal mess she has landed herself in. Few Pakistanis have that luxury.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 14^th, 2012.

Ajmal Kamal’s article “Competing narratives of Partition violence” published on these pages on June 2, considers my article in Dawn (May 27) titled “Manto and Sindh”, worthy of intellectual engagement. I thank him for expressing critique in a constructive tone and my reply is written in the same spirit.

Ajmal sahib agrees with me that the Partition experience in Sindh and Punjab was different because Sindh did not undergo fratricide; but when I wrote that: “The violence against Sindhi Hindus and their mass migration to India was a tragic loss scripted, orchestrated and implemented by non-Sindhis in Sindh” he considers it ‘uncomplicated explanation’. Ajmal sahib, approvingly paraphrases PV Tahalramani’s view that the exodus of Sindhi Hindus was the result of a concerted campaign conducted by the leaders of the Sindh Muslim League during 1946. To substantiate the claim, he relies on a quotation attributed to Ayub Khuhro, premier of Sindh during the Partition period, by PV Tahilramani in which Khuhro is reported to have said: “Let the Hindus of Sind leave Sind and go elsewhere. Let them go while the going is good and possible; else I warn them that a time is fast coming when in their flight from Sind, they may not be able to get a horse or an ass or a gari or any other means of transport.”

Ajmal Sahib does not explicate and contextualise Tahalramani’s assertion. Nor does he mention actions of Khuhro that would attest the assertion that exodus of Sindhi Hindus was ‘scripted, orchestrated and implemented’ by Sindhi Muslims. Whereas, there is ample evidence to back up my statement that non-Sindhis and the newly established central government of Pakistan orchestrated and implemented the exodus of Sindhi Hindus.

The lone source Ajmal sahib has cited is not a thoroughly researched book but a ‘polemical brochure’ written by the then-secretary of the Sindh Assembly Congress Party, PV Tahalramani, in November 1947 to persuade the Indian state to intervene in Sindh. Let’s look at the role the Sindhi leadership in the days immediately following Partition and compare it with the role of some key figures of the central government on the matter of anti-Hindu riots. Because of space constraints I will only briefly refer to the political leanings and the role of the Sindhi Hindu leadership of that time in facilitating the migration of Hindus from Sindh. The exodus of Hindus from Sindh cannot be seen in isolation from the influx of refugees in Sindh and the setting up of the central government of the newly-founded state of Pakistan in Karachi.

Sindh’s governor, Francis Mundie, described Sindh in the days leading up to Partition as a place which “characteristically carries on almost as if nothing had happened or was about to happen”. It changed when, according to Hamida Khuhro, Karachi rapidly became “a vast refugee camp”, making Jinnah “extremely worried about the mass exchange of population which was taking place and the bloodshed that accompanied it…. In fact Jinnah told Ayub Khuhro, premier of Sindh, categorically that he expected to retain the minority communities in Pakistan. Khuhro fully agreed with Jinnah. Hindus, he felt, ‘were an essential part of the society and economy of the province’. The events took an ugly turn in Karachi and Hyderabad (where) the new arrivals were entering and occupying houses where the owners, particularly Hindus, were still living, and throwing out the owners”.

Congress leaders advised Hindus to leave Sindh which was viewed by the Sindhi Muslim leadership as a ploy to deprive Sindh of its merchants, bankers, and sanitation workers. According to Brown University’s associate professor of history Vazira Zamindar’s book The Long Partition and the Making of Modern South Asia (Columbia University Press, 2007): “Ayub Khuhro, the premier of Sindh, and other Sindhi leaders also attempted to retain Sindh’s minorities, for they also feared a loss of cultural identity with the Hindu exodus.” The Sindh government “attempted to use force to stem” the exodus “by passing the Sindh Maintenance of Public Safety Ordinance” in September 1947. On September 4, 1947 curfew had to be imposed in Nawabshah because of communal violence. It turned out that the policies of a local collector resulted in the exodus of a large Sikh community of Nawabshah to make room for an overflow of refugees from East Punjab. The Sindh government took stern action to suppress the violence.

The Sindh government set up a Peace Board comprising Hindu and Muslim members to maintain order in the troubled province. PV Tahilramani was secretary of the Peace Board. He is the one who rushed to Khuhro’s office on January 6, 1948, at around 11am to inform the chief minister that the Sikhs in Guru Mandir areas of Karachi were being killed. According to Khuhro, senior bureaucrats and police officials were nowhere to be found and he rushed to the scene at around 12.30 pm where he saw “mobs of refugees armed with knives and sticks storming the temples”. Khuhro tried to stem the violence and Jinnah was pleased with his efforts.

The prime minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, was angry with Khuhro when he went to see him on January 9 or 10. Liaquat said to Khuhro: “What sort of Muslim are you that you protect Hindus here when Muslims are being killed in India. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself!” In the third week of January 1948, Liaquat Ali Khan said the Sindh government must move out of Karachi and told Khuhro to “go make your capital in Hyderabad or somewhere else”. Liaquat said this during a cabinet meeting while Jinnah quietly listened. The Sindh Assembly passed a resolution on February 10, 1948, against the Centre’s impending move to annex Karachi. The central government had already taken over the power to allotment houses in Karachi. Khuhro was forced to quit and Karachi was handed over to the Centre in April 1948.

The above facts made me write that the violence against Sindhi Hindus and their mass migration to India was a tragic loss scripted, orchestrated and implemented by non-Sindhis in Sindh. I will happily withdraw my claim when furnished with the evidence to the contrary.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 5^th, 2012.

When in doubt about internal sources of foreign policy, one need look no further than Pakistan. An analysis of newspaper reports on the recommendations of the Parliamentary Committee on National Security, presented during March 20’s joint parliamentary session would suggest that it is an attempt to gain lost ground, coupled with naive expectations and sound bites for television tickers. Whether parliament will gain the lost ground in the making of Pakistan’s foreign and security policies remains an open-ended question. Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, leader of the opposition in the National Assembly, has indicated the opposition’s unwillingness to be part of any resolution tabled on the issue. His concern is that such resolutions were passed in the past but never got implemented. He is right in saying so, and in that statement lie the answer to the limits of civilian politicians in crafting Pakistan’s national security policy.

How is parliament trying to gain the ground that it has lost on the issue of security policy? The Committee’s key recommendation offers some insight into the civilian strategy when it says that “any use of Pakistani bases or airspace by foreign forces would require parliament’s approval”. The above assertion is part of a statement of fact and part of a message with two audiences in mind, namely; the Pakistani armed forces and the US. The incontrovertible fact is that the US uses Pakistan’s airspace to launch drone attacks and most of these planes flew from the Shamsi airbase before the Americans were asked to leave. The Pakistani military approved of the arrangement with Washington and it would seem that its civilian politicians were not in the loop. And it would seem that the recommendations are part of an effort to bring parliament back in the equation. Whether this objective will be attained depends on several conditions. America’s relations with Pakistan are at a low point and the military has little to lose by conceding ground to parliament at this point. The US has made clear its intention of continuing to use drone attacks and it will be the politicians who will have to take flak of the public outcry when drone attacks don’t stop. The parliamentary committee recommends “the cessation of drone strikes inside Pakistan”, without clearly specifying recourse in case Washington does not pay heed. The armed forces have little to lose if the parliament is willing to take the beating on confronting the US. The opposition will accuse the government of being high on words and low on action. The only possible gain here is if the Committee succeeds in making it obligatory to have parliamentary approval for future national security policy decisions. It is too early to say whether that would be the case or not.

Having secret agreements with foreign governments is nothing new to statecraft but striking such deals verbally over matters of national security in the 21^st century is something few nations can afford. The Committee has also recommended that “no verbal agreement regarding national security shall be entered into by the government or any other ministry or department”. Without naming any department or ministry, the committee clearly implicates Pervez Musharraf’s regime of substituting formal agreements with verbal assurances. Credibility is not something policymakers are known for, either at home or abroad, and recourse to violation of sovereignty comes handy in such a situation. It would be an achievement on an unprecedented scale if the Committee can build consensus in parliament to rule out verbal agreements over national security matters.

Based on what has appeared in the newspapers, naivete is not altogether absent from the Committees recommendations. For example, it says “there should be prior permission and transparency on the number and presence of foreign intelligence operations in Pakistan”. Expecting foreign governments to abide by this suggestion is asking them to abdicate what is in their national interests. I am sure, Pakistani spooks do not wait for permission from host governments before engaging in activities on foreign soils. Transparency and intelligence gathering do not go together for any nation.

A major drawback of the military’s monopoly over national security policymaking is a resulting lack of expertise on the subject in the case of elected civilian politicians. Under such circumstances, someone who has studied hotel management makes it to the rank of foreign minister. It will take dogged determination and abiding interest in matters of national security policy on the part of the civilian politicians as they attempt to enter the world thus far occupied by the military men. All efforts in that direction, including the recommendations of the parliamentary committee are a welcome departure from the past.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 22^nd, 2012.

In an op-ed titled “Be strong, not hard”, published in these pages on February 21, Ejaz Haider problematises conflict in Balochistan and offers suggestions to Islamabad on how to tackle the crisis in the troubled province. The premise of his argument is on the assumption that all states are alike when it comes to dealing with people wanting to secede from them. He puts it unequivocally in following words: “Balochistan is indeed Pakistan’s internal issue. Those who want Balochistan to secede from Pakistan will get the state’s full reply. That too, given how states behave, is a foregone conclusion. Hell, states don’t even let go of disputed territories and care even less about whether or not people in those territories want to live with them.”

Historical and empirical evidence of the late 20^th and early 21^st centuries, fortunately, does not validate Ejaz Haider’s claim. States do care if people living in their jurisdictions want to stay under existing arrangements or not. Contrary to Ejaz Haider’s claim, states do let go of people and territories through peaceful means.

I will cite three cases where the states in question have behaved peacefully while dealing with political actors who have championed the cause of independence from them. My argument, therefore, is that not all states are alike and the outcomes of independence movements vary significantly.

Let us look at the former Czechoslovakia, a state where leaders peacefully decided in 1992 to split into two countries — Czech Republic and Slovakia. In 1989, Vaclav Havel’s Civic Forum led the peaceful movement against the communist regime. This movement because of its ability to affect political change through nonviolent means got the title of the Velvet Revolution. Viladimir Meciar’s Movement for a Democratic Slovakia emerged as a leading party in Slovakia demanding greater autonomy for the region. Unable to get along in a federation, the Czech and Slovak leaders passed the law on December 27, 1992 to go their separate ways. Three years into the Velvet Revolution, Czech and Slovakia opted for the velvet divorce.

The Quebec sovereignty movement in Canada is another case where the central government has chosen to deal with the demand for sovereignty through peaceful means. The Parti Quebecois (PQ), pro-sovereignty party in Canada’s second most populous province, was in power in the 1990s. The PQ held a referendum in the province in 1995 asking people if they would like to form an independent country. The PQ lost the referendum by a razor-thin margin of less than one per cent. The Canadian government, at no point, had indicated or implied the use of force to suppress the Quebec separatists.

Lastly, let us look at Scotland where the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) under the leadership of Alex Salmond has decided to hold referendum in the autumn of 2014 on the independence of Scotland from the United Kingdom. London has not mobilised forces, conventional or nuclear, to prevent tiny Scotland to get out of mighty United Kingdom.

Scottish Secretary Michael Moore says that any referendum held without Westminster — seat of the British power — backing would not be legally binding and can be legal challenged. Mr Moore, however, does recognise the SNP’s right to hold a referendum. David Cameron, the British prime minister has said that ‘Scotland will vote to remain part of the UK.’ Cameron is selling the idea of a unified UK to Scotland on the ground that together they can meet challenges, mainly economic, more effectively than on their own. Mr Cameron recognises that ‘the choice over independence should be for the Scottish people to make.’ The prime minister made it clear that he is ‘not going to stand here and suggest Scotland couldn’t make a go of being on its own, if that’s what people decide.’

Examples of Canada, former Czechoslovakia, and the United Kingdom illustrate that not all states are alike when it comes to keeping or letting go of disenchanted populations and regions within their territories. Thus, the argument that in essence all states are the same is a fallacy that is neither theoretically useful nor empirically sustainable.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 23^rd, 2012.

Shahid Javed Burki, in an article titled “The urban-rural divide”, published in the June 20 issue of this paper, has made an alarming assertion that Pakistan’s existence as a unified state will be defined by the way the urban-rural divide finally gets resolved. This shocking prognosis could have been taken seriously only if it was backed up by convincing empirical and historical evidence. What we have instead are sweeping generalisations, usage of concepts without adequately defining them, and, above all, a portrayal of the country’s past and present rid with contradictions.

For example, in the second paragraph it says “the British, in fact, had adopted a number of policies to reduce the influence of the Muslim community in the affairs of the country in which they now ruled”. But the third paragraph begins with the sentence: “Once the British established control over what is now Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, they used the state to protect the Muslim community from the economic power of the Hindus and Sikhs”.

The evidence offered to back up these points is sketchy at best. In fact, exclusive reliance on the religious lens to look at complex and variegated trajectories of British rule in India leads to such contradictory statements.

Then there is a jump to the post-independence period where the ‘urban-rural’ divide is assigned centrality to the social conflict and Burki argues that there was “sudden infusion of urbanism into a culture that was predominantly rural” which “led to the conflict between ‘the insiders’ and ‘the outsiders’”.

This is factually incorrect because a majority of Pakistanis in that period lived in what was East Bengal and the landed community did not lead Bengali society. Furthermore, carelessly using terms interchangeably where ‘rural’ becomes ‘insiders’ and the ‘urban’ becomes ‘outsiders’ will not pass the test of empirical rigour.

The author suggests that “Pakistan was governed by a ruling elite that drew its powers from the outsiders — the muhajir community” and these rulers had “a strong urban bias in their thinking”. We are not provided with any examples that would set this so-called period’s urban bias apart from the rural bias.

We are told that the urban bias was “corrected when the military came to power under General Ayub Khan” as he and his troops had deep roots in rural Pakistan.

A couple of simple examples will illustrate how the ‘urban-rural divide’ is ill-equipped to explain policies pursued by the ruling classes of post-independence Pakistan. There were no land reforms during the ‘urban bias’ period of 1947 to 1958. Even the badly implemented land reforms legislation was introduced under what Burki terms the ‘rural bias’ regime of Ayub Khan. Far from being a rural-bias regime, the ‘first military dictatorship dutifully followed the development state model’ whose ideological mantra included industrialisation and urbanisation.

The only, and I believe overrated, evidence Burki finds of rural-bias was the appointment of Nawab Kalabagh as the governor of West Pakistan. According to Burki, the nawab “froze the process of change and the political ascendancy of the refugee community that had begun to occur with the founding of Pakistan”. That an individual can “freeze” the process of change is indicative of the author’s rather static view of Pakistani society.

Sadly, the article does not clearly convey what is meant by “resolving” the urban-rural divide and how it can singularly determine if Pakistan will continue its unified existence.

What the article does demonstrate is the author’s static view of history and his lack of appreciation of the dynamic of the change that Pakistani society is presently undergoing. These shortcomings, in my humble opinion, are a result of the author’s reductionist approach of oversimplifying Pakistani society into neatly divided ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ sectors.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 30^th, 2011.