Julien Levesque

[The study of Sindhi nationalism has remained over-determined by the question of the allegiance of Sindhis to the Pakistani state. The movement has not been examined for itself but only from the vantage point of its success or failure. As a result, it has mainly received attention when sudden outbursts of violence seemed to threaten the stability of the state. However, few have attempted to examine what connects disparate events of ethnic violence and opposition to the central state with a broader understanding of what being Sindhi entails. Rather than address questions of failure or success, this article shows that the construction of a nationalist “idea of Sindh” has been a continuous process throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It also illustrates how an aspirational middle-class played a central role in this process. The article focuses on how three generations of Muslim men, who shared similar trajectories yet have unique social characteristics and repertoires of contention, constructed, reinforced, and disseminated the Sindhi nationalist discourse. This process translated into institution-building in the cultural sphere and contributed to the political outlook of a large section of Sindhi politicians on the left of the spectrum.]

Sindhi Nationalists and Sindh’s Political Arena

In mainstream electoral politics, Sindhi nationalism as a discourse and Sindhi nationalist parties have had a much more significant impact than their relatively low numerical strength may suggest. Journalists and commentators often decry the use, when the PPP seems to be losing ground in public opinion, of the so-called “Sindh card” – that is, the conscious reference by politicians to injustices committed against Sindhis by the Pakistani state. However, they rarely explain the appeal of such references for Sindhi voters, seeing only a misuse of public sentiment by shrewd office-seekers. Analysis should unpack this fact: how does Sindhi nationalism as a discourse connect separatist and autonomist parties with mainstream political agenda-setting in Sindh and Pakistan?

Such a question is approachable from the angle of political socialization. Many active members of the PPP, the Awami Tehreek, and the Jiye Sindh movement share similar social trajectories. Until the 1990s, they made their political socialization in the same context – the universities and colleges of Sindh – where they read G.M. Sayed, communist literature, and the poetry and stories written by Sindhi litterateurs since the 1950s. As a result of this intellectual training, they share a political outlook rooted in left-wing principles and nationalist leanings. However, they differ on the ultimate place for Sindh as independent or part of Pakistan and the strategies for reaching it (e.g., electoral, or non-violent opposition). They also often took part in the same struggles: although G.M. Sayed refused to support the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy in the 1980s, many of his supporters chose to individually participate in MRD protests, as they considered it as a movement of resistance against the military regime, whose primary social moorings were in Punjab. As a result of a common political socialization, a large section of the Sindhi political class forms a network of interpersonal connections, sometimes dating to student days.

The common intellectual background and personal interconnections made it possible for many nationalists from Jiye Sindh and Awami Tehreek to defect to the PPP. One of the current stalwarts of the PPP in Sindh, Gul Muhammad Jakhrani, is a case in point. A man of the “third generation,” he asserted himself as a Sindhi separatist leader in the 1980s, and, along with Bashir Khan Qureshi, established a separate faction when the old guard of Jiye Sindh Mahaz refused to accept them on the allegation that they were involved in violent and criminal activities. He remained an active member of various separatist groups until the mid-2000s and eventually joined the PPP to run (successfully) in a by-poll election in late 2008. During his mandate as Member of the National Assembly (2008–2013), Gul Muhammad Jakhrani’s public interventions adopted an emotional, nationalist tone, arguing for the defense of Sindh’s rights, invoking the ancientness of Sindhi culture, and denouncing the injustices that Sindhis must now endure.

Such transfers of activists from Sindhi nationalist groups to mainstream parties – due notably to state repression and career opportunities the fringe par- ties cannot offer – have been happening since the 1970s, thus contributing to the diffusion of the nationalist idea of Sindh. The dense network between nationalist parties and the PPP – and, since the 1990s, NGO s – indicates that they participate in a single political arena, in which separatist parties have endorsed their own institutionalized space as pressure groups. Causes raised by nationalist and autonomist parties tend to be taken up by the PPP on the electoral stage and in elected bodies. There are specific issues on which the Sindhi political class stands united. One of these is the water-sharing problem, Sindh being in a dependent, riparian position in relation to upstream Punjab, Pakhtunkhwa, and Kashmir. In the mid-2000s, the autonomist party Awami Tehreek managed to garner significant support against the construction of the Kalabagh Dam on the Indus River after Pakistan’s President General Pervez Musharraf publicly revived the project in December 2004. Numerous political actors and intellectuals came forward, alleging that the proposed barrage would impact an already water-stressed Sindh. They signed a “Charter of Demands” that retold Sindh’s narrative of grievance from Pakistan’s inception and argued in favor of significant autonomy. About 900 people signed the charter drafted by the Awami Tehreek. Many political parties (including various autonomist parties, the PPP, religious parties such as the Jamiat Ulama-i Islam, the Punjab-based Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz) and civil-society or cultural organizations (such as the Sindhi Adabi Sangat and the World Sindhi Congress) supported it. According to the text itself, the charter was approved by “more than sixty thousand Haree [peasant] & mazdoor [laborer] activists.” Except for one signatory, however, Sindhi separatists were conspicuously absent from the petition because of its clear autonomist stance. While the Awami Tehreek was instrumental in building a platform to voice a united opposition, separatist groups who had not signed the charter mobilized public opinion by bringing people onto the streets, staging sit-ins, and conducting hunger strikes against the Kalabagh Dam project. Opposition by Sindhi politicians against the project has been constant since Zia ul-Haq pushed for it in the 1980s. The Sindh assembly has repeatedly voted unanimously in support of resolutions against the project, as have the provincial assemblies of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Baluchistan. When the PPP came to power at the center in 2008, it chose to shelve the project, but the debate is regularly rekindled by politicians from Punjab, bureaucrats, or the military. This widespread consensus that translates into political decisions within the institutional realm stems from the sense of shared interest that rests in the belief that Sindh exists as a political community and is entitled to rights over its territory and population – in this case, the rights of a lower riparian.

This example shows that public controversies in Sindh are often constructed in connection with nationalist conceptions of the political community. This fact is possible because many Sindhi politicians in the PPP and other mainstream parties have experienced shared political socialization along with separatists on Sindh’s university campuses. Other examples could include questions of decentralization (the 1973 Constitution, the 18th amendment, Local Government Bill, NFC award), resources (oil, gas, coal), or the management of immigration (significantly, in recent years, internally displaced persons from the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas).

Conclusion: Co-constructed Nationalisms?

A key argument in this article is that focusing on whether Sindhi nationalism is or is not a failure has overshadowed much of what it has achieved. The incapacity of separatist and autonomist parties to shake the Pakistani state diverts attention away from better understanding the “idea of Sindh.” It deflects attention away from how nationalist principles inform understandings of Sindh and Sindhi identity and their broad diffusion in the Sindhi public sphere. Instead of focusing on failure or success, this article shows that constructing a nationalist concept of Sindh has been a continuous process spanning the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This process translates into institution-building in the cultural sphere and contributes to the political outlook of a large section of Sindhi politicians on the left of the spectrum.

As this article highlights, the Sindhi nationalist discourse should be understood as socially constructed. Three generations of Muslim men, sharing similar trajectories but with distinct social characteristics and repertoires of contention, reinforced and disseminated it. After Pakistan’s independence, members of an aspirational middle-class crafted and promoted the idea of Sindh. Moreover, I showed that the production of the idea of Sindh implied a tremendous creative engagement on its proponents. In the process of “folklorization,” Sindhis identified specific cultural elements – notably Sufism and folk culture – that have been turned into identity markers by scholars before becoming ubiquitous in the public space, particularly in visual productions. With an aim to identity assertion, Sindhis established cultural institutions that were later replicated at the national Pakistan level. This paper also highlights the central role of G.M. Sayed as the founding father of Sindhi nationalism, both in the realm of ideas and institutions. Finally, this article opens the way for further study into the impact of Sindhi nationalism on society and politics in and beyond Sindh. Not enough is known about the way critics or opponents have engaged with Pakistan’s nation-building project. This article thus points towards the fact that scholars should examine Sindhi nationalism in its co-constructive relation with the Pakistani state’s conception of nationhood. Greater exploration of Sindhi nationalism and its relation to the Pakistani nation-building project would yield more detailed knowledge on the socio-political transformation that it induced. This exploration could start with missing or overlooked aspects of the narrative depicted here in this article. Examples include the 1940s Hur movement, the differing conceptions of “Sindhiyyat” by Sindhi Hindus and minority groups like the Sheedi, and the links between the various nationalist movements in Pakistan’s “smaller provinces.”

In recent years, the Pakistani state apparently seeks to subdue nationalist demands by replicating a Chinese model (i.e., economic growth through infrastructural investment with limited political rights). But nothing eliminates the possibility of new instances of widespread nationalist mobilization in Sindh. Since 2013, the Pakistani state’s severe repression of dissident organizations has targeted not only terror groups, but also ethno-nationalist political outfits (like the MQM in Karachi as well as Sindhi and Baluch nationalists). This crackdown has strongly weakened Sindhi nationalist parties after several years of heightened activity under PPP rule at the central level. Yet, the revival of Pashtun nationalism under the umbrella of the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement suggests that there is scope for ethnic politics in Pakistan. For Sindh, the central authorities’ capacity to accommodate Sindhis within the power structure and grant them economic opportunities on par with Punjab and Karachi is likely to remain a significant determinant.(Concludes)

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Julien Levesque holds a Ph.D. (2016) in Political Science from Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris. His doctoral research focused on nationalism and identity construction in Sindh after Pakistan’s independence.

Courtesy: Brill

(Originally published by Journal of Sindhi Studies – Edited by: Matthew A. Cook (USA) and Michel Boivin (Paris). The primary focus of the Journal of Sindhi Studies (JOSS) is the Sindh region, located in southern Pakistan. However, Sindhis live in other parts of Pakistan as well as in India and across the globe. The journal accepts submissions that address the people of Sindh, regardless of their current geographic location. JOSS aims to shed interdisciplinary light on the “Sindhi World.”)

Click here for Part-I, Part-II, Part-III, Part-IV, Part-V

Part-VI

The post Beyond Success or Failure: Sindhi Nationalism and the Social Construction of the “Idea of Sindh” – VII first appeared on Sindh Courier.

Julien Levesque

[The study of Sindhi nationalism has remained over-determined by the question of the allegiance of Sindhis to the Pakistani state. The movement has not been examined for itself but only from the vantage point of its success or failure. As a result, it has mainly received attention when sudden outbursts of violence seemed to threaten the stability of the state. However, few have attempted to examine what connects disparate events of ethnic violence and opposition to the central state with a broader understanding of what being Sindhi entails. Rather than address questions of failure or success, this article shows that the construction of a nationalist “idea of Sindh” has been a continuous process throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It also illustrates how an aspirational middle-class played a central role in this process. The article focuses on how three generations of Muslim men, who shared similar trajectories yet have unique social characteristics and repertoires of contention, constructed, reinforced, and disseminated the Sindhi nationalist discourse. This process translated into institution-building in the cultural sphere and contributed to the political outlook of a large section of Sindhi politicians on the left of the spectrum.]

Beyond Mobilization: The Broader Diffusion of the Idea of Sindh

While the promoters of the Sindhi nationalist discourse after Pakistan’s independence mainly belonged to an aspirational middle-class, the diffusion of the idea of Sindh impacted society more broadly. This impact appears in the widespread recognition of Sindhi identity markers as expressions of Sindhiness or even signifiers of Sindh. At the parades and shows that take place during the yearly cultural festival (the “Sindhi Saqafati Diharo” or “Sindhi Topi Day”) initiated in 2009, no one seems to question the constructed nature of the symbols that people brandish. To all, they are nothing but the symbols of Sindh.

To understand how the nationalist way of thinking about Sindh spread in society and changed the way people conceive of themselves and act in public space, one needs to apprehend nationalism beyond nationalist parties and beyond nationalist mobilization. Nationalism is not simply a political stance (i.e., believing in and advocating the independence of Sindh). It is also a social process – the transformation by which a particular criterion of belonging, such as an ethnic criterion, becomes the principal category through which individuals think of their society and its divisions. This redefinition implies that the link between the “cognitive dimension” of nationalism and “ethnic boundaries” is crucial to understanding nationalism. In other words, we need to look at the contest between people and groups of people in spreading or imposing their ways of thinking about the social world – and how, in this process, this same way of thinking about the social world is constituted and changes social relations. To better apprehend the broader contribution of Sindhi nationalism to Pakistan’s politics, this section examines how the idea of Sindh translated into the institutional realm – cultural policy on the one hand and electoral politics on the other.

Cultural Policy: Institutions for a Pluralistic Idea of Pakistan

The imprint of Sindhi nationalism is perhaps most evident in the realm of cultural policy. The historical and cultural narrative of Sindh as a distinct socio-political entity, although it infused the Pakistan project, soon clashed with the centralized and abstract conception of the Pakistani nation that was gradually defined in the 1950s and then promoted by the state after Ayub Khan took power in 1958. The nation-building project of the Pakistani state aimed at producing a citizen not defined by primordial attachments – linguistic, tribal, or caste-based – but by language (Urdu) and religion (Islam). This ideal pervaded the new teleological narrative that became official textbook history: authors like Ishtiaq Hussain Qureshi and Sheikh Muhammad Ikram propounded, under the auspices of the Pakistan Historical Society and the Institute of Islamic Culture, a view of South Asia that sought to highlight the distinctiveness of Muslims, justifying the “natural” aspiration for a separate state that led to the birth of Pakistan.

Against this official history, Sindhi researchers – historians, folklorists, literary specialists – elaborated on the narrative of Sindh sketched during the separation movement. While the idea of Pakistani-ness rested on abstract denominators of identity, Sindhiness was, in their view, concretely rooted in a shared cultural experience. This experience stretched since the days of Mohenjo-Daro and in concrete ties that made Sindhis one people – language and shrine-based religiosity standing out prominently in the list of collective binders. Not only did G.M. Sayed write books that expounded this political vision, but Sindhi researchers reinforced this myth of origins by invariably starting their inquiries from the Indus civilization, whatever the subject at hand. A good example of this approach is the influential Sindhi boli (Sindhi language) written by Siraj ul-Haq Memon in 1964. It describes Sindhi as the mother of Sanskrit and other north Indian languages, and the Indus civilization as a golden age that engendered both the Vedic and Mesopotamian civilizations:

Manan Ahmed summarizes the contemporary resonance of the opposition between Pakistan’s official discourse and the Sindhi nationalist narrative. He states: “The memory of a 5,000 year old Sindhi qaum is rigorously debated in everyday public spaces with just as much fervor as the originary myth of the nation-state of Pakistan is preached to the citizens of Pakistan.”

Interestingly, the scholars behind the Sindhi historical narrative worked with state support and provincial cultural institutions often sponsored their research. Like educational measures, such cultural institutions had their roots in government pre-independence initiatives at the provincial level. In 1940, G.M. Sayed, education minister in Mir Bandeh Ali Khan Talpur’s cabinet, founded the Central Council for the Support of Sindhi Literature (sindhi adab lae markazi salahkar board). This council, in December 1951, became the Sindhi Adabi Board. The SAB, headed by Muhammad Ibrahim Joyo, had serious ambitions concerning research and publication. Its program included writing a ten-volume history of Sindh (never completed), a linguistic project (grammar and dictionary), and a plan for folklore documentation that was to comprise 47 volumes. The person that was leading the latter project, Nabi Bakhsh Baloch, later became the director of another Sindhi cultural organization: the Institute of Sindhology, first established in 1963 as the Sindh Academy, before being renamed in 1970 in a way that, inspired by Indology or Egyptology, expressed its founders’ hope of constituting “Sindh Studies” as a recognized discipline. Nabi Bakhsh Baloch later coordinated the establishment of yet another cultural institution, the Sindhi Language Authority, in 1990.

Apart from the continuity in people, there was a palpable intellectual filiation, as these three institutions constructed a nationalist body of knowledge. On the one hand, Sindh-centric history-writing produced the material that a nationalist narrative could rephrase, which highlighted heroes of resistance against invaders and enemies. On the other hand, the folklore documentation project, drawing inspiration from colonial ethnography, collected, indexed, and hence fixed what scholars saw as the fast-disappearing Sindhi culture. The project categorized cultural diversity to create unity: a variety of ways of living and speaking, now labeled Sindhi, was presented in books and museums, such as the Sindh Museum in Hyderabad or the museum of the Institute of Sindhology in Jamshoro. Thus, cultural institutions engaged in a process of folklorization, which I define as inventorying and re-enacting cultural practices and references to turn them into essentializing, conscious identity markers eventually. The result was a conception of Sindhi culture reduced to specific elements – tales, songs, dress, and craftsmanship – now ready to acquire new political meaning as expressions of Sindhiness.

The cultural policy of “Sindhology” pursued in Sindh had an impact at the all-Pakistan level. When Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto came to power in the early 1970s, he bent the official unitary doctrine towards a more pluralistic vision of Pakistan and its population. Instead of defining the Pakistani citizen in terms of Islam and Urdu, official nationalism now acknowledged “regional” cultures as part of the “national” whole. To showcase this new state nationalism, Z.A. Bhutto had an international conference organized on Sindh in March 1975 (all four provinces were to have similar events). Perhaps more importantly, he established the National Institute of Folk and Traditional Heritage, more commonly known as the Lok Virsa, in 1974. The Lok Virsa was a direct reproduction at the national Pakistan level of the Sindhi institutions and notably engaged in documenting Sufism and shrine culture as expressions of “popular” Pakistani culture. Z.A. Bhutto’s government officially promoted this inclusive nationalism, and the historical narrative was perhaps best phrased by the prominent PPP leader Aitzaz Ahsan, a reputed lawyer and former minister. In his book The Indus Saga and the Making of Pakistan, Aitzaz Ahsan dissociated the foundation of Pakistan from the two-nation theory and portrayed it as the logical outcome of a profound civilizational difference between Hind – the Gangetic plains – and Sindh – the Indus valley. Whether he knew it or not, Aitzaz Ahsan was reiterating a distinction that, drawn from medieval Arabic and Persian manuscripts, was central to Sindhi nationalist claims of cultural and political distinctiveness throughout history.

The official cultural policy of Pakistan, without discarding the state’s founding principles, fluctuated over time. After Z.A. Bhutto was ousted and hanged, Zia ul-Haq again emphasized Islam as the common denominator and patronized groups that promoted such a vision – religious parties and their scholarly organizations. Celebrating the cultural diversity of Pakistan – in Sindh, celebrating Sindhi culture – again became subversive. In this way, shifts in state policy displaced the limit between acceptable cultural assertion and inflammatory political statement, acting as a major structuring factor in what cultural institutions could or not publish. Yet folklorization is, by essence, equivocal. If folklorization can be an act of resistance against a homogenizing state policy, it may also serve to neutralize the subversiveness of identity assertion by representing the said identity as rigid “museified” cultural heritage. In Sindh, folklorized culture was used in different ways by Sindhi separatists and by Z.A. Bhutto and the PPP. The former extolled the folklorized vision of Sindh as the ultimate justification for their demand of independence. Conversely, Z.A. Bhutto used the same conception to assimilate Sindhi identity within a broader framework of Pakistani nationhood – depoliticized but preserved. This use would not have been possible without the intellectual and political engagement of the previous generations of Sindhis in constructing an idea of Sindh as a socio-political unit. (Continues) 

__________________

Julien Levesque holds a Ph.D. (2016) in Political Science from Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris. His doctoral research focused on nationalism and identity construction in Sindh after Pakistan’s independence.

Courtesy: Brill

(Originally published by Journal of Sindhi Studies – Edited by: Matthew A. Cook (USA) and Michel Boivin (Paris). The primary focus of the Journal of Sindhi Studies (JOSS) is the Sindh region, located in southern Pakistan. However, Sindhis live in other parts of Pakistan as well as in India and across the globe. The journal accepts submissions that address the people of Sindh, regardless of their current geographic location. JOSS aims to shed interdisciplinary light on the “Sindhi World.”)

Click here for Part-I, Part-II, Part-III, Part-IV, Part-V 

The post Beyond Success or Failure: Sindhi Nationalism and the Social Construction of the “Idea of Sindh” – VI first appeared on Sindh Courier.

Julien Levesque

[The study of Sindhi nationalism has remained over-determined by the question of the allegiance of Sindhis to the Pakistani state. The movement has not been examined for itself but only from the vantage point of its success or failure. As a result, it has mainly received attention when sudden outbursts of violence seemed to threaten the stability of the state. However, few have attempted to examine what connects disparate events of ethnic violence and opposition to the central state with a broader understanding of what being Sindhi entails. Rather than address questions of failure or success, this article shows that the construction of a nationalist “idea of Sindh” has been a continuous process throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It also illustrates how an aspirational middle-class played a central role in this process. The article focuses on how three generations of Muslim men, who shared similar trajectories yet have unique social characteristics and repertoires of contention, constructed, reinforced, and disseminated the Sindhi nationalist discourse. This process translated into institution-building in the cultural sphere and contributed to the political outlook of a large section of Sindhi politicians on the left of the spectrum.]

The “Post-Bangladesh” Generation (1970s–2000s): Radicalization and Violence

Protest in the late 1960s spread to the whole of Pakistan. Eventually, it led to the end of Ayub Khan’s military dictatorship, the abolition of the One Unit scheme, the reinstatement of West Pakistan’s provinces, and the organization of the first democratic general elections in December 1970. In 1971, after the central authorities refused to accept the election results, East Pakistan seceded and became the independent state of Bangladesh at the cost of a deadly civil war. The country lost its Eastern half because the central authorities failed to accommodate the demands of one of the state’s constituent parts.

Two years after the independence of Bangladesh, G.M. Sayed, who had expressed support for the demands of the Bengali leader Mujibur Rahman before the latter turned separatist, radicalized his political rhetoric and embraced the cause of an independent Sindh – “Sindhudesh.” Accordingly, he reoriented his political party: the Jiye Sindh Mahaz, founded the previous year as an autonomist party, changed its stance to advocate Sindh’s separation from Pakistan. Despite his political isolation, G.M. Sayed enjoyed strong support among Sindhi students: various splits within left student groups had led to the creation of the Jiye Sindh Students Federation in December 1970, which later became the student wing of the separatist Jiye Sindh Mahaz. Soon, the University of Sindh became a separatist bastion, as the JSSF won elections to the students’ union almost every year.

The social profile of these students – the third generation of Sindhi nationalism – was not fundamentally different from that of the second generation. However, what distinguished them was the context of their political socialization, in which being able to use and face violence became an increasingly important quality. Many of the new Sindhi leaders, including the future cadres of the nationalist parties, were trained in this violent environment. Some of JSSF’s activists indeed developed new coercive methods. They intimidated Urdu-speaking students – especially at the time of the first “language riots” in 1971 and 1972 – and sympathizers of other political groups – the opposition to the 1973 constitution by nationalists pinned Sindhis against Sindhis. Weapons became available on campuses and used in isolated clashes or targeted actions. In the first instance of lethal violence, two students were killed at the University of Sindh in October 1973. In July 1975, some JSSF students abducted an Urdu-speaking provincial minister. In the 1980s, the use of weapons extended to collective action as political rivalries gave way to ethnic conflict, with each group – Sindhi, Mohajir, Punjabi – represented by its organizations. Emerging as a student leader increasingly entailed organizing protection and retaliating violently, but student organizations also engaged in protection racket and developed links with bandits.

In the late 1980s, the new turbulent leadership clashed with the old guard – the founders of the Jiye Sindh Mahaz – over violence, initiating a systematic and recurring process of fragmentation for the nationalist party. Other differences instilled division within the ranks: the question of the boycott of the electoral process, the place granted to non-ethnic Sindhis within parties and alliances, the links with criminal groups, and personal rivalries. Despite attempts at unification, factions within the Jiye Sindh Movement went from two in 1990 to about a dozen in the 2010s. Fragmentation led to the diversification of the repertoire of action of nationalist parties that claim G.M. Sayed’s heritage: some have abandoned the separatist goal and accept electoral politics; others follow non-violent non-electoral politics, in effect becoming pressure groups; and a small fraction has opted in the 2000s for armed struggle.

For the third generation, violence also came from the state. In November 1973, with the “disappearance” of a Hindu teacher from the University of Sindh, who was close to the Jiye Sindh Mahaz, Z.A. Bhutto initiated dealing with subversive political groups through extrajudicial killing, often named “enforced disappearances” in Pakistan. The various military operations initiated by the state from the 1980s in Sindh have often made an insufficient distinction between political opponents and criminals, thus creating widespread resentment within the population against the military.

Sindhi student leaders also distinguished themselves with their capacity to face violence and play a defensive role if needed, thus including violence in the repertoire of Sindhi nationalism. On September 30, 1988, a group of armed men on motorbikes drove through Urdu-speaking neighborhoods of Hyderabad and shot indiscriminately at people, leaving more than 250 dead, and initiating a series of killings against Sindhis in retaliation. Many think Qadir Magsi, the leader of the “Taraqqi Pasand” wing of the JSSF, had planned this move, along with the dacoit Janu Arain.

Ethnic violence contributed to segregating communities, as there was a significant migration of Urdu-speaking people who had settled in the countryside and the small towns of Sindh to the cities of Hyderabad and Karachi. Urban expansion established new ethnically homogeneous neighborhoods within these two cities, such as Latifabad and Qasimabad in Hyderabad.

The violent context within which nationalist activists were socialized left them more exposed than their elders to economic hardships. The overall atmosphere on university and college campuses deteriorated, pulling down the level and quality of education. The administration often closed campuses for months because of disturbances, increasing the duration to obtain degrees and lowering their value. Students who graduated from colleges and universities in Sindh were poorly trained to face the job market, with often poor spoken and written English and sometimes uncertain written Urdu. While many in the second generation had benefitted from Bhutto’s rise to power, young university graduates in Sindh in the 1980s risked being part of the urban proletariat in case of a failed social mobility. This situation was particularly the case for political workers who had been more involved in their activism than their studies. Moreover, because they boycotted most elections, nationalist parties had little to offer in terms of political career. Nationalist parties thus seemed to accept a role as pressure groups, able to raise issues then taken up by mainstream parties.

Combined with state repression and violent clashes with other groups, this made it difficult for nationalist workers to maintain their level of commitment. Many settled for one of the following three options to pursue their political engagement outside nationalist parties – when they did not simply go back to their village. Some chose to move abroad, mainly to the UK and the US, often both for political and economic reasons, and to take part in community organizations that lobby for Sindh’s auto-determination – the Sindhi Association of North America (founded in 1986) or the World Sindhi Congress (1988). Others joined the vibrant Sindhi vernacular media that emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s: the editors and journalists working with the two leading Sindhi newspapers, Awami Awaz and Kawish, nearly all have been “comrades” (active in left and nationalist groups) in the past. Others still found employment within the budding network of NGOs, both international and local. The latter, such as the Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum, often work as advocacy and lobbying groups rather than development organizations. Since the 1990s, this network of political activists, NGO workers, and journalists, thrives in the Qasimabad neighborhood of Hyderabad – the center of the educated Sindhi middle class.

In the 2010s, many sympathizers remained in favor of the separatist cause and mobilized on specific occasions. The large “Freedom March” held in Karachi in March 2012 is a case in point. However, the chief organizer, the Jiye Sindh Qaumi Mahaz (Long live Sindh National Front), has lost ground since then. Its leader, Bashir Khan Qureshi, died in mysterious circumstances shortly after the march, precipitating the party into dynastic politics as his inexperienced 19-year-old son was promoted to the leadership position. Police and military operations initiated after Nawaz Sharif came to power in 2013 further rolled back the organizational capacity of nationalist parties and reduced their presence from public spaces. However, the crackdown on nationalist organizations did not destroy the networks and connections between like-minded people sympathetic to the nationalist cause.

Thus, as this section shows, Sindhi nationalism is not a reflex reaction that occasionally expresses itself in an anti-state outburst. Instead, it is a discourse centered on an idea of Sindh shaped by various political and social actors over a century. These actors built on their predecessors in defining what Sindhi identity means and how it is represented. They also added to the repertoire of action of nationalist organizations. It would be a mistake to reify “Sindhi nationalism”: the political demands based on the “idea of Sindh” changed according to the historical context. Yet the contributions of the three generations acted upon an idea of Sindh rooted in an ethnic understanding of human societies.

From the separation movement to supporting the Pakistan project, to attempts at building a loyal opposition and later separatist positions, the very idea that Sindhis constituted a cultural and historical entity that deserved a political existence remained the principal driver. At times, the idea of Sindh informed actions that sought to challenge the nationalist narrative promoted by the state. However, it was not always the case. The idea of Sindh seemed compatible with the Pakistan project to many Sindhis in the 1940s, and Z.A. Bhutto gave a central space to Sindh in his cultural policy predicated upon the idea of Pakistan being composed of four ethnic groups. (Continues)

____________________

Julien Levesque holds a Ph.D. (2016) in Political Science from Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris. His doctoral research focused on nationalism and identity construction in Sindh after Pakistan’s independence.

Courtesy: Brill

(Originally published by Journal of Sindhi Studies – Edited by: Matthew A. Cook (USA) and Michel Boivin (Paris). The primary focus of the Journal of Sindhi Studies (JOSS) is the Sindh region, located in southern Pakistan. However, Sindhis live in other parts of Pakistan as well as in India and across the globe. The journal accepts submissions that address the people of Sindh, regardless of their current geographic location. JOSS aims to shed interdisciplinary light on the “Sindhi World.”)

Click here for Part-I, Part-II, Part-III, Part-IV

The post Beyond Success or Failure: Sindhi Nationalism and the Social Construction of the “Idea of Sindh” – V first appeared on Sindh Courier.

Julien Levesque

[The study of Sindhi nationalism has remained over-determined by the question of the allegiance of Sindhis to the Pakistani state. The movement has not been examined for itself but only from the vantage point of its success or failure. As a result, it has mainly received attention when sudden outbursts of violence seemed to threaten the stability of the state. However, few have attempted to examine what connects disparate events of ethnic violence and opposition to the central state with a broader understanding of what being Sindhi entails. Rather than address questions of failure or success, this article shows that the construction of a nationalist “idea of Sindh” has been a continuous process throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It also illustrates how an aspirational middle-class played a central role in this process. The article focuses on how three generations of Muslim men, who shared similar trajectories yet have unique social characteristics and repertoires of contention, constructed, reinforced, and disseminated the Sindhi nationalist discourse. This process translated into institution-building in the cultural sphere and contributed to the political outlook of a large section of Sindhi politicians on the left of the spectrum.]

The Political Itinerary of Sindhi Nationalism’s Main Ideologue

In his inaugural speech to the December 1943 Annual Session of the All-India Muslim League that took place in Karachi, G.M. Sayed described Pakistan as the Indus valley restored to its former political unity:

I welcome you all to the land of Sindhu. By Sindhu I mean that part of the Asian continent which is situated on the borders of the river Indus and its tributaries. But as time went on the name began to connote a smaller and smaller area, until now it is assigned only to that part of the land which is watered by tail end of this great river. Today again fully aware of this fact, we are moving to weld together these different parts into one harmonious whole, and the new proposed name, Pakistan connotes the same old Sindhu land.

At the time, G.M. Sayed was one of Sindh’s main protagonists of the Muslim League, the party that campaigned to establish a Muslim state in India. A few months earlier, in March 1943, he had moved a resolution in the provincial assembly by which Sindh endorsed the Pakistan project and was the first province to do so. Convinced to act in the best interest of Sindh, G.M. Sayed then promoted the Pakistan project. However, he later turned against the state and is now remembered by many as a traitor who advocated a separate Sindh.

G.M. Sayed was born in 1904 in colonial Sindh. The British had annexed Sindh to their colonial possessions after defeating its rulers, the Talpurs, in 1843. For most of the colonial period, the British administered Sindh as part of the Bombay Presidency but made it a separate province in 1936. G.M. Sayed was born the heir of a spiritual lineage, a Sayyid – a person thought to descend from Prophet Muhammad – and a sajjada nashin – the hereditary custodian of a Sufi saint’s mausoleum. Thanks to these qualities, he was invited to participate in political meetings at an early age. In February 1920, Makhdum Moinuddin of Khiyari asked him to the first provincial session of the Khilafat movement, which fought against the abolition of the Caliphate following World War I. Being a sayyid and sajjada nashin bears particular significance in the religious context of Sindh. According to Kumar and Kothari, Sindh has “non-textualized religious practices” in which shrine worship plays a central role. Some authors attribute these characteristics to Sindh’s relative isolation from the main power centers – a “simplistically static picture” of Sindh as a margin that scholars are now beginning to re-evaluate. Endowed with a pedigree that made people look up to him for leadership, G.M. Sayed emerged in the late 1930s as a pro-Pakistan Muslim Leaguer. Although he had previously done a stint in the Congress Party, he now agitated on “communal” terms during the Masjid Manzilgah affair, a conflict between Hindus and Muslims over the use of a religious place.

However, G.M. Sayed soon fell out with the Muslim League and its central leader, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, and the party eventually expelled him in 1946. While he had previously propounded the Pakistan project, he now began to fear negative fallouts of the birth of the new country for Sindh. Indeed, on August 14, 1947, Pakistan’s independence initiated tremendous demographic, social, and economic change as Sindh became the political and economic center of the new country. Karachi became the capital of Pakistan: the city not only hosted the new federal administration but also, along with other main urban centers of Sindh, offered shelter to hundreds of thousands of (mainly) Urdu-speaking refugees from India. By 1949, more than 700,000 immigrants had settled in Sindh, which significantly affected the language balance when combined with the departure of many Sindhi Hindus and Sikhs in 1948. The number of native Sindhi speakers fell from 87 percent in 1941 to 67 percent in 1951 and 55.7 percent in 1981. This fact was particularly the case in Karachi, as the city swelled in the years after partition. From about 435,000 inhabitants in 1941, its population rose to 1,126,000 in ten years. The city is now often thought to host more than twenty million inhabitants (although the last census in 2017 counted a little under 15 million people). Various subsequent waves of migration into Sindh kept fueling population growth.

These changes fed G.M. Sayed’s disaffection with Pakistan. The state’s repressive moves to thwart his political initiatives did not help: between 1958 and 1966, G.M. Sayed was under house arrest. This period was also when, during Ayub Khan’s military dictatorship, Sindh was merged with West Pakistan under the One Unit scheme. After Pakistan’s independence, G.M. Sayed gradually elaborated his thought and developed a framework to think about Sindh in nationalist terms that viewed the region as a cultural and historical entity that deserved to exist as a political unit. His numerous writings over four decades brought variegated tropes into a coherent nationalist discourse. He dwelled, for instance, on Shah Abdul Latif, an eighteenth-century Sufi, as a “national poet” of Sindh, Sindh’s particular spirituality beyond religious practice, the continuity of Sindhi culture through history, or the heroes of Sindh’s past.

But the main turn in G.M. Sayed’s political career happened in late 1973 when he declared himself in favor of Sindh’s independence. Two years after the formation of Bangladesh, G.M. Sayed, who had expressed support for the demands of the Bengali leader Mujibur Rahman before the latter turned separatist, radicalized his political rhetoric and embraced the cause of an independent Sindh – “Sindhudesh.” Several causes may explain this radicalization: the independence of Bangladesh, G.M. Sayed’s total distrust of the Pakistan army and central authorities following the bloody military operation against Bengali and Baloch separatists, and his disappointment with Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who showed himself ready to compromise with the army in his quest for power. In his writings, G.M. Sayed described the adoption of a separatist stance as the last option. Indeed, a reluctance might be inferred from the absence of any sudden grand or bellicose declaration of separatism. Instead, his new political outlook seems to have taken shape progressively throughout multiple public speeches in 1972 and 1973. His later books clearly argued for Sindh to become free and for the break-up of Pakistan. His political party, the Jiye Sindh Mahaz, and its student wing became public advocates of Sindh’s independence. In the political arena at this time, G.M. Sayed grew more isolated. His 1970 campaign had been an utter failure. He was placed under house arrest by Z.A. Bhutto’s government in August 1972 because it viewed him as fueling ethnic tensions in the wake of the provincial government’s attempt to restore the official status of Sindhi.

Nonetheless, G.M. Sayed’s political stance, if obstinate, often seemed ambiguous to observers. Justified in terms of the pursuit of “Sindhis’ rights,” his support for the separatist cause appeared at times blind to the actual suffering of Sindhis. G.M. Sayed, driven by his opposition to Z.A. Bhutto, his family, and his political legacy, refused to support the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy (MRD) in 1983, a multi-party coalition led by late Bhutto’s daughter Benazir and her Pakistan People’s Party (PPP). The military violently crushed the massive uprising in Sindh, but G.M. Sayed did not budge. Although he argued that the MRD stood for the preservation of Pakistan while he sought to break it, many saw this move as personal rivalry trumping political concerns. It eroded his credibility by making him appear as an apologist of Zia ul-Haq’s military dictatorship. On the other hand, the two crucial actors of the MRD in Sindh – the PPP and the Awami Tehreek – gained immense popularity as the parties who fought against the army’s might.

At the same time, G.M. Sayed’s support for the separatist cause also sometimes seemed to falter. In 1984, his failed attempt to bring a non-separatist at the helm of the JSM only served to accentuate the discrepancy between the leadership and the activists, who vehemently reiterated the Sindhudesh cause. G.M. Sayed seemed ready to forego the pursuit of independence when he could make electoral gains. When democracy returned to the country in 1988, he attempted to bring several parties into an electoral alliance, the Sindh National Alliance (Sindh Qaumi Ittehad). However, after initial negotiations, the other leading player, Rasul Bakhsh Palijo, and his Awami Tehreek messed up the project by refusing to allow space for Sindh’s Urdu-speaking population, represented by the Mohajir Qaumi Movement. To him, the proposed alliance had to be named “Sindhi National Alliance” (Sindhi Qaumi Ittehad) – a coalition of and for ethnic Sindhis – rather than “Sindh National Alliance” – including all populations of Sindh. Meanwhile, in a period of acute ethnic tension that soon led to repeated violent conflict in 1988–1990, G.M. Sayed met with the MQM leader Altaf Hussain. The SNA fell apart, and its members or associates fared poorly in the 1988 elections, both in the national and provincial assemblies. Yet, the SNA allowed for nationalist parties (whether autonomist or separatist) to emerge as a pressure group that forced the elected PPP representatives to step back on specific issues. It was the case with a plan to repatriate “Biharis” from Bangladesh: Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto abandoned the project in 1989 when the SNA and the JSM protested it.

In April 1995, G.M. Sayed died, leaving a fragmented and controversial heritage. But many of the issues that had nourished Sindhi resentment in the 1950s were still matters of conflict. It was true for the place of the Sindhi language and culture, the use, management, and distribution of resources (mineral, hydrocarbons, water, land), and the question of immigration into Sindh. According to the 2017 census, Sindh now has about 48 million people, or 23 percent of Pakistan’s total population, for about 16 percent of the country’s territory. Although the federal capital of Pakistan moved to Islamabad in the late 1960s, Karachi remained the main harbor and the economic hub of the country, contributing the largest revenue share to the federal exchequer. In addition, the development of irrigated agriculture over the twentieth century and the discovery of natural resources (oil, gas, and coal) reinforced the economic importance and strategic position of Sindh. (Continues)

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Julien Levesque holds a Ph.D. (2016) in Political Science from Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris. His doctoral research focused on nationalism and identity construction in Sindh after Pakistan’s independence.

Courtesy: Brill

(Originally published by Journal of Sindhi Studies – Edited by: Matthew A. Cook (USA) and Michel Boivin (Paris). The primary focus of the Journal of Sindhi Studies (JOSS) is the Sindh region, located in southern Pakistan. However, Sindhis live in other parts of Pakistan as well as in India and across the globe. The journal accepts submissions that address the people of Sindh, regardless of their current geographic location. JOSS aims to shed interdisciplinary light on the “Sindhi World.”)

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The post Beyond Success or Failure: Sindhi Nationalism and the Social Construction of the “Idea of Sindh” – II first appeared on Sindh Courier.

By Julien Levesque

The contrast between the Sindhi nationalist discourse and the statements of Barelvi pīrs like that of Ayub Jan Sarhandi bring to light the ‘contested nature of Sufism’ and the ‘struggle over representations’ that takes place between differing visions of Sufism and Sindhis. On the one hand, nationalists invoke a Sufism stripped of its Islamic character and its ritual practices in order to promote the idea of a cultural essence of Sindh that allows for the peaceful communion of various religious groups within the single entity that is the Sindhi nation.

Let us not naïvely deduct that Sindhi nationalists are free from all forms of prejudice when it comes to religious minorities. They are in fact very much the product of their society. Their lack of knowledge and interaction with Hindus is often plainly visible and many activists and sympathizers seem content with repeating that ‘no one may distinguish Hindus from Muslims in Sufi shrines in Sindh’ (which is debatable).

One must then take the Sindhi nationalist discourse on Sufism for what it is: a performative discourse, which asserts the unity of Sindhis regardless of their religion in order to bring about this unity. This discourse also plays a role of identification between ‘loyal Sindhis’ who share the same vision. On the other hand, Barelvi pīrs involved in the events we mentioned build their spiritual and temporal authority upon a Sufism that posits itself within the ambit of Islam and that is inscribed in a long tradition of political engagement, a tradition much transformed with the rise of sectarian violence in the past decades, as documented by Philippon (2011).

The most elaborate development of this position against G. M. Sayed’s thought and his ‘ethnicized Sufism’ were made by an important conservative intellectual, Maulana Muhammad Musa Bhutto. At the time of its release in 1967, G. M. Sayed’s book Jīan Ditho Āhe Mūn caused a stir in Pakistan. Fatāwā and aggressive reactions targeted G. M. Sayed as he not only attacked the political foundations of Pakistan but ignored one of the most crucial tenets of Islamic dogma: the belief in the finality of Muhammad’s prophecy.

Maulana Musa Bhutto, a Naqshbandi Mujaddidi ‘ālim associated with the Jamaat-e Islami, wrote several books to counter G. M. Sayed’s influence directly. Although his main concern is to set straight the misconceptions (ghalatfahmiyan) about Islam that have spread among the Sindhi youth because of G. M. Sayed, he sometimes leaves the ground of theology to respond to G. M. Sayed’s political vision of Sindh and attempts to analyze the Sindhi leader’s personality.

In 1990, Musa Bhutto published a direct response to G. M. Sayed entitled Islām par I’tirāzāt kā ‘Ilmī Jā’iza (‘A learned examination of objections on Islam’), in which, after summing up Sayed’s ideas, he looks at several philosophers and personalities (such as Toynbee, Gandhi, or M. N. Roy) and examines the concept of wahdat al-wujūd and the life of major Sufis, like Bāyazīd Bistāmī and Junayd Baghdādī (M. M. Bhutto 2002). When I interviewed him in Hyderabad, Musa Bhutto expressed a strict criticism of G. M. Sayed’s conception of Sufism. According to him, G. M. Sayed argues that God has no reality but is a human creation and that prophets, far from carrying a divine, revealed message, were nothing but wise men of their time. Prophets’ teachings are therefore neither eternal nor complete but human experiences, as a result of which new religions can be founded on the basis of today’s experiences. Maulana Musa Bhutto accuses G. M. Sayed of instrumentalizing the message of Sufi saints to establish a new religion in which man is worshiped.

Whereas G. M. Sayed indeed asserts that ‘a Sufi should not necessarily be the follower of any particular theology’ (Sayed 1986), Musa Bhutto reclaims Sufism as an Islamic tradition. He therefore justifies the rituals that G. M. Sayed rejects: the ban on eating pork cannot be ignored on the pretext that it is a pre-Islamic tradition.

A similar line of argument can be applied to the circumambulation around the Kaaba in Mecca. Referring to Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi, the reformer of the Naqshbandī tarīqa, he insists on the necessity for Sufism to remain within the bounds of sharia. Arguing that any form of mysticism that pulls one away from the sharia and the prescriptions of Islam is non-Islamic, Musa Bhutto refutes any resemblance between the conception of wahdat al-wujūd and the philosophy of Vedanta which, he claims, allows anything to be the object of veneration and leads to polytheism. Musa Bhutto believes that the concept of wahdat al-wujūd has been misused to justify the veneration of new idols in the name of Islam.

Musa Bhutto shows respect and admiration for G. M. Sayed, acknowledging the quality of his books on Sindh’s past, but expresses puzzlement at Sayed’s unorthodox views on Islam. He writes: ‘In the matter of explaining religion, G. M. Sayed is either really completely victim of misconceptions or he intends to strike a blow on Islam with wrong interpretations’ (M. M. Bhutto 2002). In a letter addressed to G. M. Sayed in 1989, Musa Bhutto wonders what can be the causes for Sayed’s persistent opinions and suggests a few reasons. He first considers G. M. Sayed’s emotional personality, which made him unable to control his feelings, unlike other seasoned politicians. He also blames G. M. Sayed’s association with the Theosophical Society, which influenced his thinking into considering all religions equal.

Although Musa Bhutto embraces Sufism as an Islamic mystical tradition, his writings illustrate the fact that not all Sindhis consider Sufism to be one of the foundations of Sindhi identity.

Conclusion

The place of Sufism in Sindhi identity construction after 1947 is far from being univocal. The wide diffusion of Sufism as a symbol of Sindh in the public arena may first mislead the observer into thinking that a consensus exists, but a finer analysis reveals that the reference to Sufism can work as an identity marker only so long as it acts as an ‘empty signifier’ (Laclau 1996), potentially all-inclusive for Sindhis. The success of Sufism as a symbol of Sindh indeed relies in many ways on a non-polemic, consensual definition of Sufism as a quietist search for divine union that condemns the accumulation of wealth by the living representatives of saints.

However, while nobody seems to reject Sufism as such, there are debates over its concrete meaning and its relation to Sindhi society.

The proponents of the idea of Sufism as a characteristic of Sindh and Sindhi identity believe that Sindh possesses a specific ‘Sufi culture’ which has ensured the peaceful coexistence of various religions throughout time. They often share similar social trajectories, being members of the educated middle class and having made their political socialization in the same environment, the campuses of the universities and colleges of Sindh. Formulated by G.M. Sayed, this conception is borne by Sindhi nationalist and autonomist groups, who see themselves as the protectors of Sindh’s ‘Sufi culture’ and promote an identity discourse that stands in opposition to Pakistan’s unitary nationalism by putting forward an alternative understanding of Islam. This conception meets strong contestation from some representatives of Sufism in Sindh, and notably from members of the naqshbandiyya mujaddidiyya such as Muhammad Musa Bhutto or Pir Ayub Jan Sarhandi.

Not simply an opposition of discourses, these two conceptions translated on the ground into competition between groups that seek to impose their ‘principles of di-vision of the social world’, as can be seen in the examples of Rinkle Kumari and Bhuro Bhil. Nationalists identify the ‘loyal (halālī) Sindhis’, the true sons of the soil who may be Hindu or Muslim, in opposition to those who have come under the influence of the extremism that they see as promoted by the state or, worse, who have become actors for the state. Mian Mitho and Pir Ayub Jan Sarhandi posit themselves are flag bearers of Islam and dismiss the nationalists as ‘Indian agents’–that is, not entirely true Muslims. Thus, the ‘struggle over representations’ around Sufism and Sindhi identity brings out two competing performative discourses, each rooted in certain social groups.

Nevertheless, Sufism is now widely used as a symbol of Sindh in various public arenas and in the media – much beyond nationalist circles. What now needs to be better understood is the plurality of meanings and understandings of Sufism that have permitted this diffusion – a process through which the idea of Sindh as a land of Sufis lost much of its subversive dimension.

(Concludes)

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Julien Levesque holds a Ph.D. (2016) in Political Science from Paris. His doctoral research focused on nationalism and identity construction in Sindh after Pakistan’s independence. Before joining CSH, Delhi he was Adjunct Associate Professor at EHESS in Paris. As a researcher at CSH, Julien Levesque focuses on South Asian Islam and Muslims from the perspective of political sociology. More precisely, his project is to study the social and political role of sayyids, a group generally described as the elite among the elite of Muslims in South Asia.

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The post Sindhis are Sufi by Nature: Sufism as a Marker of Identity in Sindh – Part-V first appeared on Sindh Courier.