Beyond the Cultural Nationalism

The contemporary crisis of Sindhi nationalist politics is not merely the outcome of state repression. But it is rooted in unresolved class contradictions and a retreat from material politics.

Suffyan Laghari

Last year, in March, during Ramzan, I had just begun my MPhil journey at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad. It was that time of the year when Islamabad still carried a mild trace of winter which was not the harsh cold of peak winter days, but a lingering chill accompanying short days and long evenings. Fasting was not physically difficult because the days were short and manageable. Although intellectually and politically, those days felt unusually heavy.

While I was settling into academic routines, navigating unfamiliar classrooms, reading lists, and conversations shaped by theory and abstraction. But outside the university, history was unfolding in a far more violent and urgent manner. Students at Sindh University Jamshoro, were confronting the state directly. Sindhi nationalist student organizations marched from the Sindhiology gate of Sindh University towards the National Highway, staging a sit-in against the proposed construction of six canals on the Indus River and the expansion of corporate farming projects, particularly in the Saraiki belt of Punjab. These projects were framed by the state as development and efficiency, reflecting what Harvey (2005) describes as the neoliberal logic of accumulation through dispossession.

The state’s response against the students’ sit-in was violent. Peaceful, fasting students were faced with Laathi Charge and assault. This violence was not simply an act of repression but it was a clear assertion of a development paradigm that treats dissent as disruption and resistance as disorder. Watching footage of the crackdown from Islamabad, I felt a familiar anger, but also something deeper in me, which is a sense of political exhaustion mixed with moral clarity. Their only “crime” was refusing to accept a development model that treats water as a marketable resource rather than a shared lifeline. I was struck by how familiar this pattern was within Pakistan’s postcolonial governance structure, where centralized power repeatedly overrides peripheral voices (Alavi, 1972).

It is important to understand that the resistance against the canals and corporate farming was not only a political disagreement over resource distribution but it was a refusal to accept the neoliberal imagination that reduces rivers, water, land, and nature into commodities. At its core, this resistance articulated a different ethical and political vision, one that viewed the Indus not as an economic input, but as a living entity with its own rhythm, history, and right to exist. This perspective resonates with critical ecological thought that challenges the commodification of nature under capitalism (Moore, 2015).

In Sindh, the river is not simply water flowing through canals but it is a memory, livelihood, and survival. By opposing corporate farming and canal construction, protesters were also resisting a worldview that reduces water, land, and ecosystems into marketable assets. The movement challenged the free-market logic that treats nature as lifeless property, arguing instead that rivers, land, and ecosystems possess intrinsic value beyond profit. This struggle, therefore, stood at the intersection of ecological justice and class politics.

In Islamabad, Sindhi students at Quaid-i-Azam University, including myself, organized a protest outside the National Press Club under the banner of the Mehran Students Council MSC. Students from other universities of the Capital joined us, also leftist groups, progressive lawyers, and civil society members. While this protest demonstrated solidarity, On one hand, there was solidarity, a genuine sense of shared outrage and collective memory. While on the other, there was an uncomfortable awareness of distance, distance from Jamshoro, from rural Sindh, and from those whose lives are directly shaped by the river’s flow. That protest, while necessary, also became a moment of reflection for me, a point from which I began to critically rethink the contemporary condition of Sindhi nationalist politics. It also exposed a structural gap between urban student activism and the everyday material struggles unfolding in rural Sindh.

This gap reflects a deeper crisis within contemporary Sindhi nationalist politics. Historically, Sindhi nationalism emerged as a response to colonial dispossession and Post-Partition centralization, offering a collective framework for dignity and autonomy (Ansari, 1992). But later on, in its present form, it is increasingly marked by ideological stagnation and class detachment.

In recent years, the rise of religious extremism in Sindh, which is often supported by informal networks, selective state patronage, and Waderas has reshaped the political terrain. Rather than confronting these forces through materialist politics, sections of Sindhi nationalist discourse have retreated into cultural essentialism, particularly through the romanticisation of a Pre-Colonial Hindu elite past. While emotionally appealing to certain educated strata, this strategy remains disconnected from contemporary class exploitation, caste oppression, and agrarian inequality. As Fanon (1963) warns, when nationalist politics collapses into cultural nostalgia without material grounding, it risks becoming a “sterile formalism” incapable of mobilising the oppressed. In Sindh, this has resulted in a discourse that increasingly speaks about the people rather than with them.

The movement against the six canals initially held transformative potential. It could have united peasants, fisherfolk, small farmers, and urban workers around a shared material concern, which is control over land and water. Although, as the movement evolved, it increasingly came under the influence of urban middle-class lawyers, professionals, NGOs, and professional civil society actors.

While their involvement brought legal visibility and media attention, it also shifted the struggle away from grassroots leadership. The movement was translated into petitions, court hearings, and expert debates, heroic spaces that often neutralize mass politics rather than strengthen it. This reflects a broader tendency in postcolonial societies, where popular movements are absorbed into elite-driven frameworks that leave underlying power relations intact (Chatterjee, 2004).

As a result, Sindhi nationalist politics today appears confined to universities, cities, and intellectual circles. While these spaces remain important for ideological production, their dominance has produced a nationalist subject that is increasingly urban, educated, and detached from rural and informal labor realities. This shift mirrors broader class recomposition under neoliberal capitalism (Harvey, 2005).

The most serious consequence of this transformation is the exclusion of Sindh’s most marginalized communities, which are basically landless peasants, Samat and Dalit groups, fisherfolk of the Indus delta, bonded laborers, and informal workers. Despite being most affected by ecological destruction and dispossession, these groups rarely shape nationalist leadership or ideology. Their exclusion illustrates what Anderson (1983) describes as the selective imagination of national communities, where some lives are rendered central while others remain invisible.

My own experience in left-oriented student politics, particularly within organizations like the National Students Federation, has repeatedly highlighted this contradiction. Efforts to foreground class struggle, labor alliances, and caste oppression often encounter resistance from nationalist actors who perceive class analysis as a threat to cultural unity. That’s why Marx (1867) reminds us that any politics which ignores material relations of production ultimately serves existing power structures.

Moments like the Jamshoro crackdown and the Islamabad protest reveal both the urgency and the limitations of Sindhi nationalist politics. They expose the need to reimagine nationalism not as a cultural performance or elite discourse, but as a material struggle rooted in land, water, labor, and ecological justice.

The contemporary crisis of Sindhi nationalist politics is not merely the outcome of state repression. But it is rooted in unresolved class contradictions and a retreat from material politics. Without re-centering marginalized communities and challenging neoliberal commodification of nature, Sindhi nationalism risks becoming symbolic rather than transformative.

The question should no longer be whether resistance exists in Sindh. There is no doubt that a movement for national liberation and popular resistance is alive in Sindh. The pressing question, however, should be whether this ongoing struggle can be transformed into a genuinely pro people’s politics, one that does not confine nationalism to the narrow framework of territorial sovereignty, but instead embraces the full complexity of Sindhi society, across all its layers and dimensions. Such a politics should not merely insist on being Sindh-based but it must be sufficiently comprehensive and coherent to include the struggles of all oppressed communities and classes within the region. It should not remain confined to symbols, press clubs, or seminar culture, but must be rooted among the people, ensuring that every marginalized voice in Sindh is heard, represented, and accounted for.

References:

Alavi, Hamza. “The State in Post-Colonial Societies: Pakistan and Bangladesh.” New Left Review, no. 74 (1972).

Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 1983.

Ansari, Sarah F. D. Sufi Saints and State Power: The Pirs of Sind, 1843–1947. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Chatterjee, Partha. The Politics of the Governed: Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of the World. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004.

Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. Translated by Constance Farrington. New York: Grove Press, 1963.

Harvey, David. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Marx, Karl. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume I. Hamburg: Otto Meissner Verlag, 1867.

Moore, Jason W. Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital. London: Verso, 2015.

Read: Postcolonial Oppression and National Question

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Suffyan Laghari is a researcher and activist from Badin, Sindh, pursuing MPhil at NIPS, Quaid-i-Azam University. With a BS in Anthropology from the University of Sindh, his research focused on left-wing student politics, the representation of marginalized communities in Sindhi Nationalist politics, and social movements. He served as Central General Secretary of the National Students Federation (NSF) and is a former Research Associate at LUMS University Lahore.