A major rally by several Sindhi nationalist parties under the Sindh Bachayo Committee has been planned for Sept 29 in Karachi as the culmination of a drive against the influx of IDPs from Fata.

The agenda — stopping the ‘import’ of religious extremism in Sindh and defeating a ‘67-year-old conspiracy’ which, through calls on Sindhis to display their patriotism and Muslim brotherliness, actually works to turn indigenous Sindhis into a demographic minority in their own province and thereby destroy their culture. Sindhi nationalist discourse continues to be marked by the heavy stamp left by the events of Partition and the deluge of migrants from India that marked Sindh’s experience of independence.

Pakistan is a country formed first as an idea based on religious commonality, and only later mapped onto a bounded territory. Pakistan had been imagined as a ‘Muslim homeland’, but despite the fact that its territorial borders had not been delineated until the eleventh hour, there appears to have been some psychological awareness if not full emotional acceptance among the general population that if the state actually emerged as distinct and sovereign, rather than as an autonomous unit within a broader Indian federation, all Hindus and Sikhs would not become citizens of India, and all Muslims, however fervent their support for the Muslim League, would not become citizens of Pakistan.

A certain slackness of discourse around the idea of the promised Muslim homeland would, however, return to haunt Pakistan, which was founded on a pledge to represent the interests of not just citizens within its physical borders, but also the Muslims ‘left behind’ in Hindu-majority India.

This looseness of definition culminated in a situation in May 1950, only three years after partition, where, as recorded by historian Sarah Ansari, Sindh’s Inspector General of Police allegedly requested permission to open fire on Muslim refugees from India who were trying to cross into Sindh even after official warnings that it was against their interests to do so.

Since the onset of colonial modernity, Sindh’s historical experience has been marked by repeated waves of immigration and haunting fears of demographic marginalisation

Sindh, it was claimed, was bursting at the seams; and Karachi, the province’s main urban centre and Pakistan’s federal capital, was already groaning under the unbearable burden of migrants who had upset the ‘demographic balance’ of the province severely — for every Sindhi Hindu who was leaving, two non-Sindhi Muslims were arriving.

Ansari’s research demonstrates that a strong strain of nativist mobilisation was already visible in Sindh’s politics before the creation of Pakistan. Colonial irrigation schemes had expanded Sindh’s cultivated area, causing an influx of settlers from up country as well as other bordering provinces. A ‘Sindh for Sindhis’ movement had already taken shape — in 1937, the Sindh Legislative Assembly was debating the definition of a ‘native of Sindh’, and the 1940s saw growing pressure to distinguish between Sindhis and non-Sindhis for employment in provincial services.

Despite the fact that nationalist mobilisation in favour of Partition highlighted communal difference between Sindhi Muslims and Hindus (the latter enjoying a greater share of commercial, educational and administrative activities because of a strong historical tradition of literacy), Sindh’s overwhelming expectation in voting for Pakistan was greater autonomy and the independence to pursue a distinct Sindhi identity. This gave way to a growing sense of frustration when, in the wake of partition-inspired violence, the provincial government accepted large numbers of non-Sindhi migrants, which completely transformed the demographic balance of Sindh’s urban centres, migrants’ rehabilitation placing an enormous burden on the provincial administration.

Although a complete transfer of minority populations had come up in discussions of Partition, it is doubtful how imminent this scenario was deemed to be, especially since the hypothetical ‘land corridors’ linking East and West Pakistan with each other and with Hyderabad Deccan (corridors into which Muslims from places like Bihar and the United and Central Provinces could be herded if worst came to worst) had ultimately not been granted, and any idea that Delhi with its considerable Muslim population could serve as the joint capital of the two countries of India and Pakistan ultimately appeared a crazy dream. A complete evacuation of India and Pakistan’s minorities, though never impossible, could only have been seen as a worst-case scenario by Jinnah’s team.

After all, at the very heart of the partition plan was the understanding that the emergent ‘Muslim’ and ‘Hindu’ states would each retain their minorities, and fair treatment of their respective minorities by the majority populations would contribute to safeguarding the rights of their own coreligionists across the border. Else, each state could intervene with the other to argue the cause of its psychological, if not physical, citizens.

(File photo 2009) Camps of internally displaced people from Malakand about 50km from Karachi.

The unprecedented and incomparable communal violence in partitioned Punjab dealt a blow that ultimately struck at the very foundations of this ‘hostage theory’. The riots here had been so bitter, and the ‘cleansing’ of Muslims and non-Muslims from East and West Punjab so nearly total, that a mass reversal of the exchange of minorities was dismissed as impracticable. It was decided that evacuees from this region would be rehabilitated in their new host countries in the ‘space’ vacated by fleeing minorities.

This decision would have severe repercussions for Sindh, as Pakistan’s official acceptance of the Muslim evacuees from Punjab would make the issue of ‘repatriation’ of Muslim evacuees from the former United Provinces (UP) and other regions much more difficult to negotiate with a less than eager Indian government which had already rehabilitated Hindu evacuees from West Pakistan in the homes of some of the Muslims who had fled UP. It would also make it harder for Pakistan to stem further arrivals of Muslim evacuees from Indian states.

Locals in Sindh watched with mixed feelings as not only East Punjab’s migrants overflowed from West Punjab to settle in Sindh, but non-Sindhi evacuees also continued to arrive here from elsewhere in India following each episode of communal violence there. It was not until the 1950s that the Pakistani government nerved itself to send out a clear signal to Muslims in India (now seen as ‘Indian Muslims’) that while Pakistan’s heart remained open to all the Muslims of the subcontinent, it did not automatically follow that its doors would be open to them as well.

Meanwhile, the Sindh Government’s panicky measures to prevent Sindhi Hindus from selling their property and evacuating to India (thereby leaving key positions of employment open not to Sindhi Muslims, but to the more experienced non-Sindhi migrants) had failed to halt a ‘slow but steady’ exodus of Hindus from Sindh. The Pakistani government, in its interest to retain whatever religious minorities it still had, complained to the Indian government that Congress leaders, in providing assurances of a ready welcome to Sindhi Hindus, were making it too easy for Hindus to evacuate from Pakistan.

A discourse of ‘boundedness’ developed quite rapidly after 1947 in Pakistan’s national imaginary of a ‘Muslim homeland’, though not perhaps rapidly enough to prevent the sudden transformation of Sindh’s ethnic composition, or to prevent what is perceived by many Muslims in India today as a weakening of their social and demographic strength due to the migration of so many members of their ‘community’ to India.

As historian Vazira Zamindar argues, it not only became clear that it was impossible for Pakistan to physically absorb the entire Muslim population of India without a further addition of territory, but an idea also developed that Pakistan could only really accept roughly the same amount of evacuees that had departed from it. It was with this point of view that authorities in Sindh attempted to divert the flow of evacuees who entered the province away from the ‘already full’ Karachi to other areas in Sindh where ‘space’ was still available.

Today, once again, we are faced with similar fears among certain Sindhi nationalists who argue that the IDPs from Fata will end up settling in Sindh permanently, further disturbing an already disturbed ‘demographic balance’. Yet there are indications that despite all the protests and difficulties, displaced persons from Fata continue to make their way to Karachi to avail the support of relatives already settled here.

It seems that the voicing of local concerns could neither prevent the affectees of Partition from converging in Karachi and nor may it be able to prevent many of the internally displaced from Fata and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa from seeking refuge and employment here. Thus the question arises whether, instead of pouring their energies into protesting Karachi’s inundation by ‘outsiders’, it would not be more worthwhile for Sindh’s inhabitants to focus on demanding an increase in the capacity of Pakistan’s biggest metropolis to provide better services for both its old and its new residents.

The writer is a doctoral student in South Asian studies.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, August 31, 2014