Severing the roots

In March 2010, I visited Zambia for the first time. Among the many incredible people I met was the family of a researcher at the University of Zambia in Lusaka. The family had been settled in Africa for a few generations, but maintained their South Asian roots through language, food preferences, marriage ceremonies and other customs. They were exceptionally generous and invited me over to their place. At dinner, the father of the researcher told me that their ancestors had moved to Africa well before the partition of the subcontinent, but soon after 1947 they reached out to both Indian and Pakistani authorities. The Indian authorities facilitated their connection and created avenues for them to stay connected, find ways to engage and travel, but there was dead silence from the Pakistani side. The family tried many times over the course of the next several decades, but there was never any interest from Pakistani authorities. Eventually they gave up. This was despite their strong ancestral ties to the part of South Asia that was now in Pakistan and their deep desire to stay connected with the land of their forefathers.

Initially I had thought that it was a unique instance – a one-off kind of a thing. Yet, I heard the same stories over and over again all over Africa. When I was working in Zanzibar I met those who had come from Karachi before 1947, or parts of Sindh or Punjab, but found the doors of reconnection closed. The stories in Kenya and mainland Tanzania were no different. Among the many people of South Asian heritage that I met, one or two families had tried to return but there was no interest from the Pakistani authorities to help them connect with their roots. The Indian response, despite these communities having little connection with the land that is now India, was much different. As a result, many of these people I met continue to visit India, sometimes as often as several times a year, but have lost touch and desire to come to Pakistan.

I was reminded of these stories last week as I spent time with Abdulrazak Gurnah, the Zanzibari-British author and the 2021 Nobel laureate in literature. Professor Gurnah is one of the most distinguished writers and literary scholars of our time, and has written with immense grace and moral clarity about colonialism, identity, longing and migration. His stories often depict the life of the common person in the coastal towns of east Africa. Among his stories are characters who are of South Asian descent, including those who would come from the lands of modern day Pakistan. Over dinner he told me about his childhood and the people he came across who were not just from other parts of Africa but also Karachi and parts of Balochistan. He was surprised to learn that many people in Pakistan (myself included) would never learn of our ties to east Africa, and the common cultural heritage. What I did not tell him that we continue to fail those in Africa who do want to build on the roots that were laid out generations ago.

Unfortunately, very few voices in Pakistan have highlighted how we are poorer because of our ignorance and disregard of a common heritage. Some have made the economic argument – that we should connect with communities in Africa and it is good for our trade and commerce. That argument is important and valid. But I believe that there is another, and perhaps stronger, argument as well. That argument is about knowing who we are, and how we have been connected to the world. In a country where we continue to define with every new government our identity, and choose arbitrary (and often fictional) points of reference, knowing actual facts about how our own people are part of a rich tapestry of global cultures can do us plenty of good.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 2^nd, 2023.

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