The midnight’s children

Lt Gen Bhopinder Singh (Retd)

AS PM Modi invokes the Balochis from the Red Fort, the restive Pashtuns continue to wage their battle along the Durand Line, the Sindhis are angrily cooling their heels with their PPP in opposition, and the Punjabis are on the ascendancy with the PML(N)-led government in Islamabad — there is an almost forgotten set/race of people that is fighting its own existential crisis in Pakistan, the Mohajirs (Arabic for immigrants). The 6.5 million-odd migrants, euphemistically called ‘Urdu-speaking’ Muslims, who chose to migrate from India to Pakistan (0.7 million went to East Pakistan, now Bangladesh) in the aftermath of the Patition, are the ‘Midnight’s Children’ who partook in the largest mass migration in history.   

Like all immigrants, the ‘natives’ looked askance at Mohajirs for doles like land grants and government job preferences. Settling mostly in Karachi and urban centres of Sindh, this hardworking lot availed of import-export opportunities and created a cluster of small-scale industries to reach a certain affluence that became the envy of the Sindhis, Baloch, Pashtuns and the majority, Punjabis. The first open demonstration of the virulent strain came to the fore with the presidential election in 1964 that saw General Ayub Khan (a Pathan) trounce a ‘Mohajir’ Fatima Jinnah (the late president’s sister). Soon Ayub Khan went about shifting the national capital from Karachi (Mohajir dominated) to Islamabad and initiating a deliberate reverse-affirmation in favour of the Pathans and Punjabis to break the monopoly of the Mohajirs and forge an unwritten and continuing alliance of the Punjabi-Pathan domination in the corridors of the government, and most importantly, the army. The Sindhis joined in the plunder, with Zulfikar Ali Bhutto declaring Sindhi to be the sole language of Sindh and refusing to accommodate demands of the Mohajirs (40 per cent of Sindh’s population) to include Urdu, even as an additional language. This led to violent protests and a subsequent governmental acquiescence was not without a sting in the tail as more affirmative incentives were given to competing ‘natives’ to retain the heat on the hapless Mohajirs.

The advent of General Zia-ul-Haq in the late ’70s, himself a Mohajir, couldn’t control the societal animosity and undercurrents against the Mohajirs as he was primarily engaged in securing and consolidating his own position by pandering to ultra-religious elements and simultaneously doing the West’s jihadist bidding during the Cold War era. This constant targeting, defenselessness and fear among the Mohajirs led to the creation of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM, formed from the earlier Mohajir Students Organisation), with the mercurial and maverick Altaf Hussain as its head. This formation was perennially involved in gun-letting and bloody turf wars against the Sindhis and Pathans in Karachi. Used and abused tactically by Zia-ul-Haq, first to neutralise the PPP, then by the PPP itself, and later by the Muslim League, the MQM was involved in an unending saga of intrigues and manipulations for national electoral results. Often, the MQM was faced with unbridled brutality at the hand of the government (who outsourced the dirty job to the rival ‘Haqiqi’ faction) and to the Rangers to reign in MQM foot soldiers — all this led to reverse ghettoisation and reverence for the MQM and Altaf Hussain. His popularity soared even further, with the Mohajirs seeking solace and redemption against an insensitive regime, with the MQM emerging as the sole voice of the cornered Mohajirs. The second-class treatment for Mohajirs got firmly institutionalised with the term ‘terrorist’ apportioned on Altaf Hussain who had to flee to London in 1992; and the term ‘Mohajir’ itself acquiring a certain pejorative implication. This set of people, who actually extracted the working concept of the two-nation theory to create Pakistan, strangely faced questions of loyalty towards Pakistan, with the then PM Benazir Bhutto, who went as far as stating that “different blood flows in their veins”, which compelled Altaf Hussain to famously state” “Though the Pakistan government sympathises with the Muslims of Kashmir and Bosnia, it has been deaf to the cries of help from these stranded Pakistanis.”

Mohajirs are nearly 8 per cent of the population, with the MQM as the fourth largest national party. Today, the MQM and the Mohajirs, at large,  are facing the latest governmental ire for the temperamental outbursts of Altaf Hussain, who on a recent diatribe against the nation, said: “Pakistan is cancer for entire world” and that “Pakistan is headache for the entire world. Pakistan is the epicentre of terrorism for the entire world. Who says long live Pakistan... it’s down with Pakistan”. This was enough provocation for the Pakistani establishment to unleash immediate clamp down, even more severely than before, while the Pakistan-based MQM leadership was left with no option but to ostensibly remove Altaf Hussain from the leadership post, and appoint a local leader, Farooq Sattar, to drown the local dissonance.

Even though the Mohajirs boast of punching above their weight, in terms of contribution to Pakistan, with prominent people like presidents Pervez Musharraf, Zia-ul-Haq, nuclear scientist Dr AQ Khan and philanthropist Abdul Sattar Edhi — they fight discrimination, marginalisation and suspicion on their societal legitimacy. 

The local MQM will be tested to its limits to safeguard Mohajir interests. Altaf Hussain controlled MQM destiny (even though he has been in exile for 24 years, out of the 36 at the helm of party affairs), but the most powerful symbol of Mohajir identity — ‘Quaid-e-Tareek’ Altaf Hussain — has been relegated to the dustbins of officialdom that will sooner than later, test the patience of the much-maligned Mohajirs. Even today, a strike call from ‘Altaf Bhai’ could potentially bring Karachi to a grinding halt.

If Balochistan is the flavour of the month in India, it is the Mohajirs who are possibly facing the same levels of disenchantment (if not more than Baloch). Ironically, it was Altaf Hussain who led the first open rebellion against the State, when as the exiled leader of the progeny of the two-nation theory, he confessed on Indian soil: “The division of the subcontinent was the biggest blunder... it was not the division of land, it was the division of blood.” 

The Mohajirs are not grabbing headlines internationally, though a bloody repression on them continues, making short shrift of the underlying rationale of Pakistan, the two-nation theory — the same regressive and fraternal, religion-based principle it seeks to invoke in Kashmir to make its flawed point.

— The writer is a former Lt Governor of Andaman & Nicobar Islands and Puducherry