Last week, protests erupted in Umerkot, a city located at the edge of the Thar Desert in Sindh. The protests were held to condemn the extrajudicial killing of a doctor who had been accused of committing blasphemy. The Sindh government confirmed that the accused was killed by the cops who had arrested him. His dead body was then snatched by some ‘fanatics’ and set on fire. 

This horrific incident shocked a large number of ethnic Sindhis, who are in majority in Sindh outside the province’s multi-ethnic capital, Karachi. For over two decades now, Sindhi media and Sindhi scholars have been airing concerns about the ‘radicalisation’ of Sindhis. 

However, the Sindhi-majority regions of Sindh have not witnessed as many incidents of ‘religiously motivated violence’, as have the country’s other provinces — especially Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP). For example, according to a 2022 report, out of a total of 1,415 cases of blasphemy registered by the police between 1947 and 2021, 1,098 were in Punjab and just 173 in Sindh.

Even though there were even fewer such cases registered in KP and Balochistan, these two provinces (and Punjab) have witnessed far more incidents of sectarian violence and Islamist militancy than Sindh. However, Sindh’s ethnically diverse capital Karachi is somewhat of an exception. Its streets witnessed sectarian warfare in the early 1980s and then, from the mid-2000s, the city became a hub for various Islamist groups to raise money for their militant activities, through extortion, kidnappings, robberies, etc. 

Incidents of violence and killings in the name of religion in Sindh are the remnants of a state-sponsored project that is no longer in play — but also indicate that secular forces need to secure social spaces they have abdicated to extremists

In 1979, the state had started to roll out an ‘Islamisation’ project. Sindh, apart from its capital Karachi, somewhat succeeded in avoiding the impact of the project. Over the decades, though, the project began to mutate and started to be navigated from below. It eventually fell in the lap of multiple segments of the polity. These segments began to use the contents of the project for lucrative evangelical purposes, and to accumulate social power. In many cases, the contents were also used to bolster anti-state Islamist militancy. 

Karachi, despite being impacted by the outcomes of the project, has remained largely secular due to its diverse ethnic make-up, massive size and cosmopolitan nature. The rest of the province, on the other hand, which has a Sindhi majority, has often frustrated many attempts to radicalise this majority. This is largely due to the inherently pluralistic and ‘moderate’ disposition of Sindhis. 

In a 2021 study, the Karachi-based researcher Imtiaz Ali noted that “Sindhis have unwaveringly discarded those who have denied their traditions of tolerance.” According to Ali, “the progressive literature widely circulated in Sindh has played a huge role in developing resilient minds.” Ali adds that Sindh’s arts are influenced by Sindhi poetry that is largely feminine in nature and tightly tied to Sufism. This has shielded Sindhis from being overwhelmed by the outcomes of the ‘Islamisation’ project that has wreaked havoc in Punjab and KP. 

Those concerned about the rising incidents of religious extremism among Sindhis are of the view that the incidents are the outcome of the resources and effort that the state once invested in its bid to ‘Islamise’ the Sindhis. These efforts were part of a larger scheme formulated by the state that wanted to ‘Islamise’ polities in Sindh, Balochistan and KP. The state believed that ‘political Islam’ and a vigorous propagation of Islamic rituals were effective tools to neutralise Baloch, Sindhi and Pakhtun sub-nationalisms. 

The scheme was a success in KP, mainly due to Pakistan’s role in the anti-Soviet ‘jihad’ in Afghanistan, which was lavishly bankrolled by the US and Saudi Arabia. Some political commentators have suggested that, since Pakhtuns by nature are religious, the state was able to lure them towards more extreme expressions of the faith. These expressions were being propagated by the state and by its Islamist assets to romanticise the Afghan insurgency against Soviet troops. As a result, secular Pakhtun sub-nationalism lost a lot of traction in KP. 

The scheme to radicalise the ethnic Baloch in this regard was not as successful, though. Baloch society can be conservative, but it is inherently secular. Most Baloch insurgencies before the recent one were driven by leftist ideas. However, Balochistan’s ‘Pakhtun belt’ was more receptive to the ways of the scheme. 

Indeed, while the overriding purpose of the scheme was to neutralise Sindhi, Baloch and Pakhtun sub-nationalisms, one of the spillovers of the scheme and of the ‘Islamisation’ project was the eventual radicalisation of Punjab — the country’s largest and most powerful province. In fact, the scheme was often viewed by non-Punjabi sub-nationalists as the work of Punjabi elites. This is thus a case of the chickens coming home to roost. Another ironic outcome has been the recent alliance between secular Baloch separatists and militant Islamists in Balochistan. 

However, the claim that such schemes are still being rolled out may not hold much truth anymore. With China firmly in the picture and anti-state Islamist militancy stalling Pakistan’s new economic and regional aspirations, the state is now trying to assert itself against the outcomes of its own schemes. It is clearly planning to completely overcome these, even if this requires an entirely reformed state structure in the areas of economics, judiciary and even within the military establishment. This is unfolding in plain sight. 

This is why the increasing frequency of sporadic, religiously motivated violence in Sindh is probably a belated outcome of a scheme that is no longer in play. This violence in Sindh is more the handiwork of groups who, years ago, had entered through a window that was opened in Sindh by the scheme. Gradually, through madrassas [religious schools], these groups began to flex the contents of the now-defunct ‘Islamisation’ project. The groups are trying to accumulate social power and influence because they have found no mentionable electoral traction in the province.

The ‘left-liberal’ Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) remains Sindh’s largest political party. It has won four consecutive elections in Sindh, from 2008 onwards. Its vote bank has continued to swell. The sweeping PPP wins in Sindh have made sure that no Islamist groups or their allies are able to enter the Sindh assembly. Sindhi sub-nationalists, who were once at the forefront of maintaining the indigenous secular disposition of Sindhis, have disintegrated. In fact, recently they were seen riding on the coattails of conservative/anti-PPP Sindhi elites. 

With Sindh electorally secured, the PPP will have to invest a lot more in the social areas that have been vacated by the Sindhi sub-nationalists and are being occupied by the radical Islamists. It’s time that the party secures these areas as well.

Published in Dawn, EOS, October 6th, 2024