Indian Express March 19, 2011

The demand for a Seraiki province

Rashed Rahman

The long standing incipient, sputtering movement for a Seraiki province encompassing the southern areas of Punjab has received a fillip from an unexpected quarter of late. Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani told a rally in Multan the other day that the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) would include in its manifesto for the next elections the demand for a separate Seraiki province.
The prime minister’s announcement took everyone by surprise, since the ruling PPP had never before paid heed to the agitation for a Seraiki province that had been gathering force in recent years. Analysts saw this unexpected turnaround as the PPP’s attempt to kill three birds with one stone. One, it would add something ‘new’ to what the PPP could offer the electorate in its traditional stronghold of southern Punjab (resting on a large landowners’ political base), since its basket of ‘achievements’ during its ongoing tenure was pretty empty. Two, it steals the thunder of the Seraiki nationalists when the largest mainstream party adopts the demand. Three, the reduction of Punjab in area and population as a consequence would weaken the ‘fiefdom’ of its on-again-off again ‘ally’, the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) (PML-N).
Centred on the ancient city of Multan (whose geneology is even older than Lahore), such a province, were it to be carved out of Punjab, would include all the Seraiki-speaking areas, virtually the whole of southern Punjab, including the State of Bahawalpur, which was incorporated into the erstwhile West Pakistan province when One Unit was imposed in 1956. Linguistically, culturally and in terms of political, economic and social deprivation, the proposed Seraiki province would enjoy homogeneity. It would also allow the assertion of these rights in contrast to the perceived discrimination over long years at the hands of Takht Lahore (rule from Lahore). Historically, this contradiction between Takht Lahore and Multan dates back to pre-Mughal times.
The defunct princely Bahawalpur State has never, until recently, been able to garner enough critical mass for the demand of restoration of the state. Since the February 2008 general elections that ushered in the present democratic dispensation, Mr Mohammad Ali Durrani, the former Information Minister under General Pervez Musharraf, has spearheaded this restoration demand. Cynics attribute his departure from the King’s party of the general, the Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid), and his embrace of the Bahawalpur State cause to thwarted ambition within the folds of his erstwhile party, rather than a sudden ‘awakening’ to the rights of his mother area vis-à-vis restoration of the dissolved state.
Unlike India, which since independence has seen many new states carved out of larger provinces, this would, if it were to come to pass, be a first for Pakistan. The demand for linguistic, cultural and political redemarcation has come in the past from almost all the provinces of what is now Pakistan, without finding favour with successive rulers, both military and civilian.
For example, the Pashtuns in northern Balochistan (including the provincial capital Quetta) have hankered since independence for merger with the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly North West Frontier Province) province to their north, or a Pashtun province separated from the Baloch areas of Balochistan. This demand forms the centre-piece of the manifesto of a regional party based in this area called the Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party. However, this demand has remained confined to the party’s circles and failed to find traction within the power structures of Pakistan.
The Hazara division within Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a Hindko speaking area, last year saw a major agitation for a separate province when the North West Frontier Province was renamed Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the latter also a name achieved after a long and twisted history of agitation against the colonially-imposed former title. However, the main political party in the Hazara area, the PML-N, after leading the agitation for a separate Hazara province through its local leadership, had second thoughts at the central leadership level (Nawaz Sharif) and did not press the issue to a successful conclusion.
The Muttahida Qaumi Movement (formerly Muhajir Qaumi Movement) of self-exiled leader Altaf Hussain was accused at one time of seeking to carve out a separate province from the cities/urban areas of Sindh province, including Karachi, a corridor linking Karachi to Hyderabad, and possibly other cities of Sindh where Urdu-speaking migrants from India at the time of partition were in a majority. This new province was dubbed ‘Jinnahpur’. That fancy proposal too sank without a trace and is now history.
Lacking democracy throughout most of its existence since independence, Pakistan has been ruled overwhelmingly by military and civilian dictatorial or authoritarian regimes. In such dispensations, the question of autonomy and rights for the provinces subsumed within One Unit since 1956 and only restored in 1970 (not to mention East Pakistan that is today Bangladesh), assumed the position of a central plank in the struggle for democracy. East Pakistan achieved independence as Bangladesh after much bloodshed and military suppression, Balochistan is currently going through the fifth insurgency since independence, Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have a history of struggles for their rights. It was not until the 18th Constitutional Amendment brought in by the current democratic government led by the PPP that the issue of provincial autonomy has been recognised and enshrined in the constitution. The process of devolution of powers to the provinces is ongoing even as these lines are being written.
But in the process of the final success of the provinces on the autonomy issue, the space for further devolution/separation/carving out new provinces does not at present seem promising. Partisan political considerations such as reducing Punjab’s size through the creation of a Seraiki province in its southern reaches to weaken the rival PML-N may inform the PPP’s sudden conversion to that cause, but there is little doubt such a move would bring immense satisfaction to the Seraiki-speaking people of southern Punjab and also correct the present imbalance in the federal structure of the state, in which Punjab alone has more population than all the other three provinces combined (around 60 percent). Whether the Seraiki dream will come true is not certain just yet. It would require an extraordinary altruism above and beyond the call of duty on the part of the entire Pakistani political class to converge on the constitutional amendment required to create a new province, an altruism that has remained conspicuous by its absence in Pakistan’s chequered history.