The Seraiki card

PPP strategists thought the creation and promotion of Seraiki identity would have a lasting effect on the region.

Finally, the report of the parliamentary commission on carving up new provinces is out. What the commission has produced is a piece of shoddy political work that is not going to help the country restructure the present federating units. Rather, it may polarise ethnic communities, regions, provinces and political parties and make the task of creating new provinces more controversial than the issue has been so far.

First, let us admit that dividing provinces along ethnic, historical or administrative lines is always a controversial matter and not an easy one to deal with in a polarised and over-politicised society like Pakistan’s. Unlike India, we have retained the colonial boundaries of the provinces, except that we created the province of Balochistan with the disbanding of the one unit system by a martial law regime in 1969. Another anomaly was that Bahawalpur maintained a province-like status until the formation of One Unit in 1954 when it was absorbed into Punjab. It was a questionable move on the part of the Punjabi bureaucracy and the dominant political class. Their real interest was in the fertile lands of the Bahawalpur state. The results of that move are obvious to all of us in the changed demographic character of this formerly princely state. Today, Punjabi settlers from other parts of Punjab dominate the political economy of the Bahawalpur division.

The people of Bahawalpur resisted the change in their status peacefully and by democratic, political means. They formed the Bahawalpur Suba Mahaz (BSM) and contested the 1970 elections on the Bahawalpur province platform. They won a clear majority on the provincial and national assembly seats. This was the only region that escaped the Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (ZAB) wave.

The PPP government then, with a firm hold over Punjab under ZAB, gradually extended its sway over Bahawalpur by making political deals and aligning the powerful figures in the area with the PPP. Within a few years, the BSM disintegrated.

One of the moves that the PPP strategists thought would have a lasting effect on the region was the creation and promotion of Seraiki identity. The issue of a common Seraiki identity of various regions that spoke the same language had been on the agenda of Sindhi and Seraiki intellectuals and activists for almost a decade already. The convening of a National Seraiki Conference in Multan in 1974 introduced a new discourse on Seraiki identity. Not much has been written about the first Seraiki convention — the actors, the motives and the effects of this movement.

The Seraiki identity, over time, became firmly, widely accepted and owned by the speakers of Seraiki language in different regions of Punjab, as well as the other three provinces. Whatever the motives of the first-ever Seraiki Conference, Seraiki has caused gradual fading of other names of the same language — Multani, Riasti, Jatki, Dervi and Jangli.

Being the largest numerically, Punjab is unquestionably the real centre of power in Pakistan. During the past one year, we have seen clear outlines of strategies by major political parties for winning over the political elite and the population of Punjab. The PPP has been deft in presenting the proposal for a South Punjab province to win the hearts and minds of the Seraiki people. It has forced the PML-N to agree on the division of Punjab. The PML-N, by insisting on creating two provinces, Bahawalpur and Seraiki or South Punjab, may prevent a political consensus on the numbers of new provinces, but not on the division of Punjab.

The PPP appears to have played the Seraiki card rather too well. How best it can translate its support to the Seraiki province into electoral victory in the Seraiki region is yet to be seen, but already the Seraiki province has emerged as a popular political issue.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 29^th, 2013.