Keray pasay jawa manjee kithay dawa

As we move from crisis to crisis a constant refrain we hear is that we, Pakistan, the country, the people, are a benighted nation. How did we become a benighted nation and why do we continue to be one? Is it that we seek to absolve ourselves of all responsibility of having achieved this benighted status?

While everyone may not agree with the war, everyone agrees we are at war, at war with ourselves, which presents a host of additional problems and threats. Today over two-and-a-half million Pakistanis find themselves displaced and at the mercy, hospitality and generosity of their fellow citizens. This displacement was preceded by a well-orchestrated campaign designed to create and instil fear in the hearts and doubt in the minds of potential host communities. If the intention was to label every Pakhtoon a terrorist, it failed. The assertion was rejected by civil society and the matter took on a different hue–coloured now by the cry for national rights–the IDP’s were told that Sindh did not want them. Raising the banner of Sindhi nationalism and drawing on support and numbers from the MQM, the many Sindhi nationalist parties banded together to save Sindh from another foreign invasion.

That Sindh has many unresolved and unaddressed issues, there is no question. That its leadership has failed to articulate its grievances, there is no dispute. That the big issues are provincial rights, water and the National Finance Award, there is no argument. The question is, what have the many presidents and prime ministers from Sindh done to address these issues? Be it Zulfikar Ali Bhutto or Asif Ali Zardari and the many in-between, they have paid lip service to these grievances by making them a part of their manifestoes, but have done little or nothing to resolve them.

Today the nationalists are vocal again. This time the MQM seems to have added to their voice. Coming together on the issue of the IDPs they managed to shut the province down for a day; quite a feat, given that for the past 62 years they have not been able to reach a consensus on anything, nor have they been able to clearly articulate exactly what it is that they want. Do they want the implementation of the 1973 Constitution in its original form? Or strict adherence to the 1940 Pakistan Resolution, which talked of nation-states? And what about the concurrent list? Should it be abolished in toto or in part? How should all these issues be framed? Should the provinces have the right of secession? How would they like the water policy to be framed? What parameters do they propose for the NFC? Will the ministry for provincial coordination finally frame its terms of reference?

These are questions our political leaders need to answer, and the fact that they remain unanswered raises the issue of the need for real and effective leadership. Sindhi’s today are of the view that they are being turned in to a minority in their own province. But who is a Sindhi? The great saints, writers and poets, including Lal Shahbaz Qalander, Mirza Kuleech Beg, Sachal Sarmast and Shah Abdul Latif Bithai all migrated to Sindh. Even that great Sindhi nationalist leader G M Syed’s ancestor came from Arabia. Indigenous Sindhi tribes are the Maach, the Kohis, Bheels, Magwars and others. They are all nomads and right at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder. Their place having been usurped by those who came after them, reminding us of the fact that people are migratory and that it is all about time, a matter of who came first. A bit like the man who occupies the first compartment on a train and then tries to keep everyone else out though they have the same rights of travel as he does. It is these contradictions that have taken the Sindhi nationalists nowhere. The result has been a plethora of nationalist parties and factions of parties fighting mostly amongst themselves. At best they have nuisance value in that they are able to call the odd strike in the interior rural areas but politically it is much more dangerous than that.

There is nothing more dangerous than fear and then pointing at an individual or group and make them the reason for your fear. The people who seek to do this need to remember the fact that they too are immigrants. Whenever they came, the fact is they came, and from somewhere else. People move all the time, internally and externally, seeking resources, better prospects for themselves and their children. They may be driven by famine, by war or by economic conditions. Whatever the reason it is a phenomenon that has always existed. The real question is, how do you deal with it?

Ask those who would prevent the IDPs from entering Sindh what would have happened had Pir Ilahi Bakhsh built camps in 1947 to intern immigrants with a view to expelling them, rather than residential colonies for those who came to Sindh in the aftermath of the partition of India. It is a question of humanity, but it’s being made a political issue. An issue where citizens of a country are being told that they are not free to travel and live in any part of their own country. They should not forget 1947 where a new country was created out of Muslim-majority provinces and where despite the fact that there was no invitation for the Muslims of other provinces to migrate there was a mass migration. They came destitute and were rehabilitated. It is important for the leadership of the MQM to remember this when they seek to stop the IDP’s at the borders, to empathise with their plight and to remember how they were received when they arrived at the Sindh border.

The people from Swat, Buner and Dir are not public enemy number one, nor are they Taliban or terrorists. They are ordinary people who are fleeing the Taliban and their brutal regime, their homeland has been turned into a battleground and they have nothing. They are Pakhtoons, the same people who have contributed in a major way to the building of Karachi, who do the work that many won’t do in upper Sindh, who build roads and run the transport services and who form a major chunk of our military.

And Sindhi nationalists need to think this through very carefully. If they restrict the rights of Pakistani citizens to move and live within the country on the basis that their majority within the province could be altered, the same argument can be used to keep them out of Karachi and other cities in Sindh. Too dangerous to contemplate, but contemplate it they must, and decide if it is a precedent they are happy to live with.

Today’s fight is not just against an ideological terrorist but also to ensure that those suffering the most are not isolated, do not feel that the rest of the country does not care. Pakistan may be benighted today, but there is no reason it should stay that way. Pakistani’s have demonstrated that they want better, that they are done with the distortion, name-calling and sound-bite solutions they hear on TV everyday in response to complicated problems. It is time for our political leaders to come forward and change not just the way they do politics but bring policy to the table that works for the citizen, and implement it.