Center-Periphery Relations and Ethnic Conflict in Pakistan: Sindhis, Muhajirs, and Punjabis

Virtual protest with tangible effects? Some observations on the media strategies of the 2007 Pakistani anti-Emergency movement

“…Characterised by multiple meaningful fragmentations such as class (see Alavi 1983) and ethnicity (Wright 1991), heavily influenced by domestic economic structures that have had to confront 'savage capitalism' (Pasha 2001), and being mostly occupied (and constrained) by different military rules, Pakistani civil society is now profoundly influenced by the long-reaching consequences of international politics (see, for example, Ali 2008) and the diversification in public engagement of religious groups that go beyond the long tradition of religious parties such as Jamaat-i-Islami (see Blom 2011). The new media opportunities of the Musharraf years are one of the aspects that shall heavily figure in future analysis of the transformation of civil society in Pakistan.…”

Discrimination is what ethnic groups make of it: subjective perceptions of peripherality among the Mohajirs of Pakistan

“…The onus of such works is to understand how a change in government policies since the 1970s crystallised Mohajir ethnic identity. These studies lay emphasis on the following major arguments and indicators including: ‘Mohajir alienation and ethnic polarisation’ (Ahmar ), ‘decline of Mohajirs from their previous position of cultural and bureaucratic superiority’ (Azad ; Kennedy ), ‘relative deprivation’ (Haq ), ‘promulgation of quota system and greater recognition of Sindhi language’ (Malik ); ‘peripheralisation of the Mohajirs’ (Wright Jr. ) and ‘Mohajirs an economically privileged community, which is now being denied political privileges’ (Bengali and Sadaqat ). The second, more recent, theoretical tradition is steeped in a micro‐analytical framework prioritising ethnographic, anthropological and sociological tools and is concerned primarily with the fetishization of violence within the MQM as a matter of ‘fun’ (Verkaaik ), as a corollary to Karachi's social fabric based on ‘ordered disorder’ and ‘routinisation of violence’ (Gayer ) and to the psycho‐social dynamics bordering on ‘hypermasculinity’ based on engagement with Mohajir ‘killers’ (Khan ).…”

“…What is stated is what is generally believed and explained. The primary insight of value that emerges from the macro‐structural analysis pertains to the fact that Mohajirs identifying themselves with the MQM belonged to middle and lower‐middle class Mohajirs, not the elite Mohajirs (Haq ; Wright Jr. ); and that there was intra‐ethnic conflict within the Mohajirs themselves (Siddiqi ). Hence, socio‐economic conditions as drivers of Mohajir peripherality as propounded by the Mohajir ethnic entrepreneurs themselves are re‐presented for analysis without questioning the ethnic entrepreneurs' interpretation of those facts.…”

Reconstituting Selves in the Karachi Conflict

“…According to Wright (1991Wright ( ), 1947 represents the era of the dominance of Urdu-speaking immigrants in Pakistan (see Ahmar, 1996;Shaikh, 1997;Verkaaik, 2004). A segment of this population, the Muslim elite that had received the benefits of a colonial education, comprised 55.6 percent of the Civil Service of Pakistan (Shaikh, 1997).…”

“…When the capital of Pakistan shifted from Karachi to the new city of Islamabad, the balance started to shift towards the Punjabis (Tan and Kudaisya, 2000). The position of Urdu-speaking immigrants declined under Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (1971-7), a Sindhi, who decentralized the power of the bureaucracy, and uplifted the Sindhis, by creating rural quotas in jobs and education (Wright, 1991). Also, by this time, the state after successive military-led governments had become very militarized, and Punjabi hegemony had become entrenched (Rizvi, 2000).…”