Thirty-something Jibran Qureshi was not among the large number of people who converged on Bagh-i-Mustafa in Hyderabad to listen to the disembodied voice of Muttahida Qaumi Movement supremo Altaf Hussain on Friday. He was in fact flying a kite from the rooftop of his Latifabad house. However, he could not help overhearing Hussain speak over a public address system from the safety of his London residence or office demanding a separate province for the urban population of Sindh, a rather incorrect code word for Urdu-speaking migrants from India in a multi-ethnic area.

“Create a separate province for Sindh’s urban population if you [the Pakistan People’s Party and nationalists] don’t consider Urdu-speaking Sindhis full Sindhis,” rasped Hussain as the faithful audience roared out their approval.

Pouring himself a cup of tea from a cobalt blue teapot at his automobile workshop in Qasimabad, a Sindhi majority area, on a nippy Saturday morning, Qureshi says the locality — no stranger to ethnic strife — has been on edge since Hussain’s controversial speech.

“I belong to the Urdu-speaking community. I have been working as a mechanic in Qasimabad for the past six years. I have received nothing but affection from my Sindhi-speaking colleagues. Such statements merely drive a wedge between people living in peace and harmony. If violence breaks out — and now it is nearly certain that it will — all of us will suffer.”

Qureshi’s assessment about the possibility of the outbreak of violence was not off the mark. Hours later activists belonging to a nationalist party burnt tyres and for a time blocked the highway connecting Karachi and Hyderabad, though they obligingly — and somewhat hurriedly — removed the roadblocks for a fast-moving army escort accompanying Chinese engineers.

Similar protest demonstrations were staged across major Sindh cities not only by nationalist parties, who are apt to seize the first opportunity to take offence, but also by equally outraged lawyers.

Qureshi says he does not remember what weapons were used during the last ethnic riots that broke out among members of the Urdu- and Sindhi-speaking communities in the interior of Sindh. Growing lawlessness has caused Pakistani society to have lately become awash with deadly weapons, he reasons.

“If ethnic violence — triggered by this statement and subsequent protests — breaks out, far more people will be killed than they were in the 1980s or 1990s,” he says as his co-workers repairing a greasy piston stop for a while to listen to the dark prognosis.

Qureshi’s views are echoed by Amir Chandio who owns a shop in Latifabad, an Urdu-speaking majority locality. Chewing paan with a strong smell of cardamom, Chandio says he will not think twice about using weapons to protect his family and property if the city descends into ethnic violence.

“To be honest, a small entrepreneur like myself has four weapons, two of them unlicensed. I’d have no hesitation in taking the law into my own hands if my family or my business concerns are attacked. Wouldn’t you do the same?”

But the idea of self-defence, howsoever extreme or noble, does not appeal to everyone. For Niaz Ahmed Memon, a prosperous Sindhi-speaking builder credited with quite a few successful projects, it is no option. Using choice words for all the political parties of Sindh, Memon argues that if past experience is any guide the tension and uncertainty sparked by MQM chief Hussain’s controversial demand for a province will be exploited by extortion gangs.

“We pay protection money to gangs of all the political parties in Sindh. All of them. Now even bearded lads from the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan come and demand money. When there is so much tension — so much anticipation of things getting worse — such demands naturally go up. I don’t know if when I go out of my office today I will be killed because I am Sindhi or Sunni or Barelvi or whatever…such is the level of uncertainty,” says Memon before he asks all his employees to leave his cavernous office on Autobahn Road, the commercial and shopping artery of Hyderabad, so that he could be candid about political parties and their extortionate practices.

With the MQM now putting a diversionary spin on Hussain’s statement — that it was in fact a demand for equal rights and not for a province for Urdu-speaking people — few can figure out what prompted the MQM chief to revive the convenient controversy. What is certain is that fear will haunt Sindh for some time and the gulf between the two communities will become a little wider.