The Mohajir conundrum

Karachi is often referred to as the ‘mini Pakistan’ and a battle is raging over its political control between the Mohajirs and the other ethnic groups such as the Sindhis, Pathans and the Punjabis. This battle is as old as the history of Pakistan is, when the majority of Mohajirs, fleeing India in the aftermath of Partition, migrated to Pakistan, mainly Karachi, because Quaid-e-Azam, whom they ‘worshipped’ (Jab Quaid-i-Azam Zinda hai, Gandhi ki tamana kaun kare) preferred to make this city as the seat of power as well as his abode.
Being the die-hard adherents of Jinnah’s epic struggle for a separate Muslim homeland, based on the idea of the ‘Two Nation Theory’, they thought that they were both the architects and heirs to the ‘throne’ of Pakistan, notwithstanding the perceptions of the natives, who looked upon them merely as ‘panahgir, mohajir, tilyar, Hindustani, new Sindhis or the unsettled Sindhis’ to name a few sobriquets. While the Mohajirs believed that they were the chief custodians and upholders of Pakistan’s ideology, the non-Mohajirs viewed them just as ‘idlers’ or ‘misfits’, who had migrated to make an easy living in their ‘dreamland’- Pakistan.
Nonetheless, in the early years, the ‘natives’ did extend a helping hand to them in the Islamic traditions of ‘Ansar-e-Medina’, however, this feeling of brotherhood soon withered due to the absence of any common ethno-lingual bond with them. Some half-hearted attempts were made to create better relations between the Mohajirs and the locals such as the establishment of ‘Anjuman Khuddam-i-Pakistan’ in Karachi, in 1948, to teach Sindhi to non-Sindhis and to familiarise the Sindhis with Urdu, but as the Pakistani society was steeped in parochial tribal, feudal, ethnic and linguistic linkages, the Mohajirs remained very much like a square peg in a round hole.
Unlike each of the other native ethnic groups in the country that had a history of hundreds or thousands of years as the sons of the soil, the Mohajirs were regarded as a rootless ‘imagined community’ claiming their identity on an ‘imagined ideology’ (remember the Muslims of India existed as a distinguishable community in the subcontinent well before they reformulated their identity on the idea of the ‘Two Nation Theory’). Thus, their identity was in its infancy when compared with the natives. The Pathans can be quoted as a pertinent example. When Abdul Wali Khan was questioned whether he was a Muslim, a Pakistani or a Pathan, his confident reply was that he was “a 6000 year old Pakhtun, a 1000 year old Muslim and a 27 year old Pakistani.”
This problem of integration with the natives compounded by the way Mohajirs located themselves in Karachi. By mid-1950s, residential colonies in Karachi such as Aligarh, Bihar, Delhi, Agra Taj, Punjabi Saudagaran, Banglore Town, etc were set that clearly reflected the areas in India from where their inhabitants had come from. This meant that these colonies would ‘shut their doors’ at the people belonging to other areas and ethnicities. Ironically, those, who criticised such ‘provincial basis’ of refugees’ settlement, were not heeded to. What these enclaves did reveal about the outlook of their inhabitants was explained by a contemporary US report that stated, “These groups and communities live in compact societies, their efforts and energies are to all intents and purposes exclusively reserved for their respective members. They marry only within their respective group and insofar as possible offer employment only to members…” That is why, we, now, hear of ‘no-go’ areas in Karachi where citizens of other ethnic groups are not welcomed.
Side by side the issue of integration, there was fierce competition between the Mohajirs and the Sindhis over the acquisition of employment, property, social amenities such as water, and political power in the legislature as well as the Karachi Municipal Corporation. One of the earliest clashes in April 1949, in which twelve people were killed and twenty-eight injured was over the distribution of property. In 1953, the acute shortage of water in Karachi added to the persisting tensions when fights broke out over access to taps in some of the refugee camps. In August 1955, the monsoon exposed the inadequacy of the city’s drainage system as fifty thousand became homeless due to heavy downpours. This situation compelled the Central Minister for Health and Works, Dr A M Malik to admit that despite government’s efforts to improve refugees’ conditions, it had not been able to solve even one-tenth of their problems.
The next year witnessed growing friction between the Mohajirs and the Punjabis, when the police action against some criminal elements caused an anti-police agitation from July to September 1956 because the Mohajirs contended that Karachi’s civil and police administrations were heavily staffed by the Punjabis and, therefore, allowed Punjabis to get off ‘scot-free’ in spite of complaints lodged against them. The year 1957 encountered tension in Lyari, when, its residents not only complained of being denied basic amenities but also protested against any settlement of refugees that would cause the displacement of Karachi’s existing residents, and cited the example of Golimar from where old residents were allegedly ejected to settle the new arrivals.
As if all this was not enough, the year 1958 saw a Mohajir-Pathan clash in north Karachi in which a few people lost their lives and curfew had to be imposed because the gory incident had aggravated into a communal riot due to a dispute between the two groups over access to water facilities and possession of vacant land. The riots, killings and curfew highlighted the alarming lawlessness in the city. To restore public confidence, the Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industries held a conference in April 1958 that demanded the imposition of a three-month martial law in Karachi so that the army could sort out the mess. Interestingly, this demand surfaced just six months before General Ayub actually clamped the martial law over the whole country.
It is true that in the nascent years of Pakistan, the Mohajirs were considered a potential political force to reckon with; therefore, the central government tried to be accommodative so that their feelings of insecurity and discontent could not be exploited by the opposition parties (Hussain Shaheed Sohrawardy repeatedly tried to exploit their resentment to his political advantage in vain). But after the assassination of Prime Minister Liaquat Ali, considered to be the last of the refugee ‘Mohicans’, the influence of the Mohajirs in the government and politics registered a sharp decline. Ayub Khan’s government hastened this decline because a large number of senior bureaucrats that he sacked from the federal government were actually Mohajirs. The access of Mohajirs to the corridors of power became more distant, when he shifted the federal capital from Karachi to Islamabad.
Since then, they have been struggling to carve a niche for themselves in the national polity, particularly in Karachi, where they are the largest ethnic group. The creation of the Mohajir Qaumi Movement in 1984 (renamed as Muttahida Qaumi Movement in 1997) under Altaf Hussain with the tacit approval of General Zia-ul-Haq, who later admitted, “I did not quite realise the serious consequences of my decision,” has actually tried with mixed results to win back the power that the Mohajirs lost with the ascension of General Ayub.
The writer is an academic and a journalist. He can be reached at [email protected]