Pakistan's Sindhi Ethnic Nationalism: Migration, Marginalization, and the Threat of

"Indianization"
Author(s): Adeel Khan
Source: Asian Survey, Vol. 42, No. 2 (March/April 2002), pp. 213-229
Published by: University of California Press
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PAKISTAN’S SINDHI ETHNIC
NATIONALISM
Migration, Marginalization, and the
Threat of “Indianization”

Adeel Khan

It is a measure of the political system of Pakistan that

Sindh is the most developed province in the country, while its indigenous
people are, after the Baloch, the most marginalized. In no other region of
Pakistan is the divide between urban prosperity and rural deprivation as wide
as it is in Sindh. Due to the concentration of commerce and industry in its
capital city, Karachi, Sindh has the highest per capita income in Pakistan,
while its rural inhabitants are among the country’s poorest.1
Such a striking disparity has made Sindh a hotbed of various kinds of na-
tionalism ranging from separatists and right-wing autonomists to socialist in-
tellectuals and left-wing peasant groups. An interesting characteristic of
Sindhi politics, however, is that since the first free national elections in 1970,
Sindhis have overwhelmingly voted for a federalist party, the Pakistan Peo-
ple’s Party (PPP), founded by Sindhi politician Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. His
daughter, Benazir Bhutto, now leads the PPP.
This article examines the roots of ethnic nationalism of the indigenous
Sindhis, who come predominantly from a rural background. The main thrust
of the argument here is that their nationalism is the product of and a response

Adeel Khan is Associate Lecturer in the School of Health, University

of New England, Armidale, Australia.
Asian Survey, 42:2, pp. 213–229. ISSN: 0004–4687
2002 by The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
Send Requests for Permission to Reprint to: Rights and Permissions, University of California
Press, Journals Division, 2000 Center St., Ste. 303, Berkeley, CA 94704–1223.
1. Anwar Syed, The Discourse and Politics of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (London: Macmillan,
1992), p. 191. According to one estimate, soon after partition Sindh’s per capita income was
40% higher than that of Punjab’s. See Theodore Wright, “Center-Periphery Relations and Ethnic
Conflict in Pakistan: Sindhis, Muhajirs, and Punjabis,” Comparative Politics (April 1991), p.
301.

213

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 214 ASIAN SURVEY, VOL. XLII, NO. 2, MARCH/APRIL 2002

to the interventionist nature of the modern Pakistani bureaucratic state. Al-

though identity, culture, industrialization, print capitalism, and class do play a
role in the formation of ethnic nationalism, it is only an auxiliary one. Sindhi
ethnic nationalism developed as a response to the treatment that individuals
of this category get from the state.

Historical Background
The social and political landscape of Sindh traditionally has been character-
ized by isolation from the power centers, repressive feudalism, the strangle-
hold of the pirs (religious guides), and exploitation by settlers. Because of its
geographical location, Sindh was a peripheral region throughout Mughal rule
in India. Sindhi clans resisted the central state’s attempts and rebelled against
its heavy revenue demands; therefore the Mughal system could not be applied
in its entirety. Hence, the political and socio-economic structure that devel-
oped in Sindh was different from the northern regions of Punjab and the
North West Frontier Province (NWFP).
The British took over Sindh in 1843 and after four years made it part of the
Bombay Presidency. Although Sindh’s autonomous status came to an end,
the local elite’s power and prestige were left intact for both political and
administrative reasons. Gradually, however, the modern state apparatus
started to intervene. This infusion brought about some significant changes in
Sindh in local power relations and economic structure.
Sindh’s historical experience has shaped its modern history in a way that is
quite distinct from that of other regions of Pakistan as well. In most parts of
the pre-colonial India, there were no individual owners of land as the state
itself was the supreme landlord. The situation in Sindh, however, was quite
different. By the time the British took over, powerful individuals had already
become the de facto owners of land during the Talpur’s rule (1782–1843).
These de facto landowners had established one of the most repressive feudal
systems on the Indian Subcontinent. As a consequence, Sindh had developed
into becoming more of a fiefdom of the local elite rather than a part of the
central power. This situation did not change under British colonialism, as the
British applied no uniform agrarian policy to all regions; rather, it varied
according to the particular conditions of a region and the influence and power
of the local elite.
Despite colonial interest in developing Karachi as a port city, Sindh re-
mained isolated across its mountains, deserts, salt flats, and swamps. It was
regarded by some as “a backwater, out of touch with the rest of the Presi-
dency and out of sympathy with it.”2 Though administratively part of the

2. Anil Seal, The Emergence of Indian Nationalism: Competition and Collaboration in the
Later Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), p. 68.

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 ADEEL KHAN 215
Bombay Presidency, its legal and governmental system remained different.
Most of the Bombay Legislative Council enactments did not apply to Sindh,
which was ruled under a separate system of government and an almost inde-
pendent judicial system.3

Pre-Partition Politics
All these factors helped shape the future course of Sindhi politics, especially
the post-partition politics of regional and ethnic nationalism. A Karachi-
based Hindu trader-politician, Harchandra Vishindas, first made the demand
for the separation of Sindh from the Bombay Presidency in 1913. His call
was couched in the usual nationalistic jargon of “Sindh’s distinctive cultural
and geographical character,” but in actual terms it was the voice of a compar-
atively fragile commercial class of Sindh that felt threatened by the more
prosperous Bombay traders.4 Vishindas was soon joined by a Sindhi Muslim
politician, Ghulam Mohammad Bhurgri, who, though originally a wadero
(landlord), was a successful London-educated lawyer representing the Mus-
lim urban interests.
In 1909, the colonial administration, faced with the growing radicalization
of the nationalist forces, had adopted a strategy “to encourage provincial am-
bitions, and particularly Muslim provincial ambitions, to offset challenges to
its authority at the centre.”5 The Morley-Minto Reforms introduced an
elected element to the provincial councils and for the first time it was allowed
that provincial grievances could be voiced and provincial governments be
confronted with them. With the official blessings, Sindhi waderos and pirs,
too, became active participants in provincial politics.

Separation of Sindh
In 1936, Sindh was separated from the Bombay Presidency and accorded the
status of a province. The campaign for the separation of Sindh was based on
the belief that Sindh had lost its distinct identity under the Presidency, but the
underlying reason was the step-motherly treatment that Sindh was subjected
to by the Presidency’s administration. That Hindus had a majority in the
Presidency and Sindhi Hindus grew more prosperous during that period
helped to create a communal wedge between Hindus and Muslims. After the
separation, while the communal feeling did not disappear, it undoubtedly lost
intensity. Muslims now enjoyed a solid majority in the province and there-
fore they had little reason to worry about the dominance of a Hindu minority,

3. Ibid., p. 69.
4. Sarah Ansari, “Partition, Migration and Refugees: Responses to the Arrival of Muhajirs in
Sindh during 1947–48” in Freedom, Trauma, Continuities: Northern India and Independence,
eds. D. A. Low and Howard Brasted (Delhi: Sage Publications, 1998), p. 186.
5. D. Page, Prelude to Partition, p. xii.

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 216 ASIAN SURVEY, VOL. XLII, NO. 2, MARCH/APRIL 2002

however prosperous and influential it might be. This Muslim majority status
would also later shape the Sindh Muslim community’s attitude toward Mus-
lim League (ML) politics.
Sindhi politics during the decade prior to Partition were marred by inter-
personal and factional squabbling between waderos. But these issues would
take a backseat to a more overarching one: whether Sindh should become
part of Pakistan or not. Within a few months after the separation of Sindh, a
non-communal party, Sindh Ittehad Party (SIP), was formed on the pattern of
Punjab’s Unionist party. Its sole objective was to protect the interests of
Sindhi rural elite, both Muslim and Hindu. During the 1937 elections, the
SIP won the largest number of seats in the provincial assembly.6 At that
time, the ML was virtually non-existent in Sindh and could not even win a
single seat there.

Support for Pakistan

The decade before partition saw Sindh as a politically unstable province
where the making and breaking of governments and ministries had become
routine. The task of exploring Sindhis’ aspirations became even more diffi-
cult because Sindhi Muslims consisted of mainly two classes, the waderos
and the haris (landless tenants). The middle classes were insignificant in
number.
Yet another source of repression was the pirs, who not only were some of
the largest landlords in the province but also held sway over the spiritual life
of Sindhis, as religious guides and messiahs. Such almost total control over
the temporal and spiritual beings of the majority of Sindhi Muslims, coupled
with the lack of communication and education facilities, made it difficult to
know their real desires and preferences.
In the 1940s, there were only two political forces who had a presence
throughout India: the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League. De-
spite the growth of regional political forces, Sindhis had to choose between
the two main national political parties. The pitfalls of an alliance with the
Congress were many: the Congress’s radical anti-imperialism and confronta-
tional politics did not suit the interests of the Sindhi elite, while the domi-
nance of the Hindu minority over the economic and administrative sectors of
Sindh remained an unhappy feature that from the Sindhi Muslims’ point of
view could become even worse under Hindu-dominated Congress rule. Fur-
thermore, at least two of the Congress’s professed objectives appeared omi-
nously threatening to the interests of Sindhi elite. First, there was the
Congress’s promise of land reforms, which the Sindhi elite, whose numbers

6. G. M. Sayed, The Case of Sindh: G. M. Sayed’s Deposition for the Court (Karachi: Naeen
Sindh Academy, 1995), pp. 18–19.

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 ADEEL KHAN 217
included some of India’s largest landowners, did not even like to be men-
tioned, let alone implemented. Second, there was the Congress’s plan for a
strong central government, which allowed little autonomy to the provinces.
Furthermore, Congress’s politics of mass mobilization were not attractive to
the Sindhi elite. Sindhi waderos abhorred the idea of any contact with the
haris for that might have led to awakening of the latter’s political conscious-
ness and the weakening of wadero control.
On the other hand, the ML’s elitist and communalist politics were more
palatable to the taste of the Sindhi elite and more suitable to their interests.
As recipients of official honors and titles, the Sindhi Muslim elite felt more
comfortable with the ML’s so-called constitutional rather than confronta-
tional politics. Also appealing was the League’s demand for autonomous
Muslim states within the Indian union. Therefore, in 1943, ML members in
the Sindh Assembly passed a resolution demanding “independent national
states” on the basis that “no constitution shall be acceptable . . . that will
place Muslims under a Central Government dominated by another nation.”7
However, this did not mean that Sindhi politicians were in favor of the
ML’s demand for Pakistan. Ayesha Jalal has argued that one of the most
influential ML politicians, Ghulam Hussain, was “an outspoken enemy of the
Lahore resolution [later called Pakistan Resolution]” and “all against Paki-
stan.” According to Jalal, Ghulam Hussain believed that even Mohammad
Ali Jinnah himself (Pakistan’s founder) did not have his “heart in the propo-
sal at all.”8 For the Sindhi elite, the situation was a careful balancing act;
they feared Hindu domination under India’s rule and Punjabi domination in
case of the formation of Pakistan.

The Growth of Sindhi Ethnic Nationalism

A prominent Sindhi nationalist, Allah Bux Soomro, was a staunch opponent
of Pakistan. Shortly before he was killed prior to Partition, he is reported to
have said to G. M. Sayed, a separatist Sindhi nationalist who had once sup-
ported Pakistan: “You will get to know that our difficulties will begin after
Pakistan has come into being. . . . At present the Hindu trader and money
lender’s plunder is worrying you but later you will have to face the Punjabi
bureaucracy and soldiery and the mind of UP.” Soomro then emphasized:
[A]fter the creation of this aberration (Pakistan) you will have to struggle to
fight its concomitant evils.”9

7. Ayesha Jalal, The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Paki-
stan (Lahore: Sang-e-Meel Publications, 1992), p. 110.
8. Ibid., p. 109.
9. Sayed, The Case of Sindh, p. 46.

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 218 ASIAN SURVEY, VOL. XLII, NO. 2, MARCH/APRIL 2002

From the Sindhi point of view, it was a prophetic warning. Soon after
Partition, many Sindhis realized that the creation of Pakistan did not mean
independence for them rather but domination of another kind. As Allah Bux
had warned, they had to face the Punjabi bureaucracy and military, as well as
the mind-set of Muslim settlers, the Mohajirs. Soon after Partition, Sindh
was to lose the distinctive regional identity it had regained after its separation
from the Bombay Presidency. The most visible aspect of this transformation
was the replacement of the regional language, Sindhi, by the language of the
north Indian Mohajirs, Urdu. Urdu was not used in Sindh even during colo-
nial rule. Based on this author’s 1997 and 1998 interviews with prominent
Sindhi politicians, it is not surprising then that most Sindhis believe that for
them the most repressive form of colonialism started after the creation of
Pakistan.10
As detailed above, Sindh was one of the most impoverished provinces of
Pakistan despite having agricultural surpluses. Its capital, Karachi, however,
had rapidly become an important commercial and industrial port city. Kara-
chi had been the birthplace of Jinnah. Because of its modern infrastructure
capacity, Karachi was selected to be the capital of the new state. Following
Partition, Karachi attracted the bulk of the Urdu-speaking Muslim refugees
from India. Sindhis initially welcomed these two developments, but eventu-
ally they proved to be a burden.

The Influx of Refugees

The partition of British India posed a daunting problem for the administration
of the nascent state of Pakistan. Sindh was one of the provinces that was
comparatively least affected by communal clashes. However, Sindh was the
one most affected by the influx of refugees that accompanied Partition.
There were many political, economic and cultural reasons for how Sindhis
would eventually respond to the refugee problem. All these factors left indel-
ible marks on the ethnic interaction within the province; relations between
Sindhis and Pakistan’s other ethnic groups, especially with Punjabis and
Mohajirs; and, of course, on the relationship between the province and the
central government. The initially sympathetic Sindhi response to the refu-
gees’ plight did not turn into opposition and antagonism for reasons of pro-
vincial particularism. Rather, the economic downturn, marked social
upheaval, a deteriorating law and order situation, the growing indigenous fear

10. The interviews were conducted during September-December 1997 and again during Au-
gust-November 1998 in Karachi, Hyderabad, and Islamabad. The individuals I met in Karachi
included Gafoor Ahmed Naib Amir, Ishtiaq Azhar, Hussain Haqani, Fakhrudin G. Ibrahim, Arif
Hassan, Ghaurul Islam, M. A. Jalil, Hasnain Kazmi, Hamida Khuhro, Nisar Khuhro, Ghulam
Mustafa Shah, Imdad Mohammad Shah; in Islamabad, Zafar Abbas, Eqbal Ahmed, Iqbal Jafar;
in Hyderabad, Ibrahim Joyo and Rasul Bux Palejo.

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 ADEEL KHAN 219
of being swamped by outsiders, and the Pakistani state’s less-than-sympa-
thetic response to Sindh’s grievances combined to feed the growth of Sindhi
ethnic nationalism.
After the initial influx of refugees, it became obvious to most Sindhis that
the situation for them would not be a simple matter of welcoming their Mus-
lim brethren. Having to cope with refugees seemed likely to transform their
life for the worse, for the simple reason that the incoming Muslim refugees
were destitute while the departing Hindus were predominantly prosperous
people who had been managing Sindh’s economic and commercial life. An-
other problem was that the number of incoming refugees was too large to
manage. As a consequence, the massive influx generated social disorder in
what had been to that point a comparatively peaceful province. Sindhis fur-
ther believed that the Muslim refugees were responsible for the communal
violence that had led to the large-scale Hindu exodus.
In May 1948, after a heated debate the constituent assembly resolved to
turn Karachi into a centrally administered area. Sindhi politicians protested
that their province was being symbolically beheaded and the Sindh Muslim
League Council adopted a resolution censuring the decision for creating a
“grave and deplorable” situation in the region.11 But turning a deaf ear to the
protests, Jinnah urged the Sindhis to accept “willingly and gracefully” the
decision of the “highest and supreme body in Pakistan.”12 On July 23, 1948,
Karachi was placed under the direct control of the central administration.
Following Partition, Sindh experienced severe economic stress, caused by
the departure of prosperous Hindus, the arrival of a large number of destitute
Mohajirs, and devastating floods. The situation was exacerbated by the loss
of Karachi, which was a major source of Sindh’s revenue. The central gov-
ernment had promised to pay compensation, but Sindh only received six mil-
lion rupees for an estimated loss of around 600 to 800 million rupees.13
The center’s interference in Sindh’s affairs did not stop there. More draco-
nian actions were yet to come. To muzzle the opposition to the influx of
refugees, in August 1948 the governor-general issued a proclamation under
Section 102 of the Government of India Act 1935 and declared a state of
emergency. The declaration was issued on the grounds that “economic life of
Pakistan is threatened by the circumstances arising out of the mass movement
of population from and into Pakistan.”14 The outcome of this decision was
that more refugees from Punjab were forced onto Sindh.

11. Ansari, Partition, Migration, and Refugees, p. 97.

12. Chaudhri Muhammad Ali, The Emergence of Pakistan (Lahore: Research Society of Paki-
stan, 1973), p. 252.
13. Nadeem Qasir, Pakistan Studies: An Investigation into the Political Economy 1948–1988
(Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 24.
14. Ali, The Emergence of Pakistan, p. 267.

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 220 ASIAN SURVEY, VOL. XLII, NO. 2, MARCH/APRIL 2002

The One-Unit Scheme

One of the most damning acts of the Pakistan government to undermine re-
gional identities of various ethnic groups was the imposition of the One-Unit
scheme on the four provinces of West Pakistan. The idea of amalgamating
the four provinces into one administrative unit might have been as old as
Pakistan itself, for the state had come into existence with an anomalous
power arrangement: Bengalis formed the majority of Pakistan’s population,
but state power was in the hands of the Punjabi-Mohajir axis. In any repre-
sentative dispensation, Bengalis would overturn that arrangement. The
Pakistani ruling elite had no intention to allow such an eventuality.
Because of the Bengali majority in the constituent assembly, the issue of
One Unit was never discussed there during its seven-year existence. When
the proposal was put before the ML parliamentary party, it was defeated by
32 votes to two. But that did not stop the Punjabi-Mohajir-dominated estab-
lishment from pushing through a proposal that they had begun to articulate
soon after Pakistan’s creation on the basis of “administrative efficiency,
greater economy, and as a foil against provincialism.”15 General opposition
to the plan was based on two considerations. First, the plan was perceived as
a West Pakistani attempt to obstruct the Bengali majority and create a sem-
blance of parity between the two unequal wings. Second, it was believed that
the intention, the methods adopted, as well as the content of the scheme were
arbitrary and in violation of democratic norms.
The imposition of the One-Unit scheme represented the first serious blow
to whatever little democratic political process there was in Pakistan. Its im-
plementation had necessitated, first, the dissolution of an unwilling constitu-
ent assembly on October 4, 1954. This was followed by the dismissal of
provincial governments who were opposed to the plan. On March 27, 1955,
the governor-general amended the Government of India Act 1935 through an
ordinance that empowered him to create the province of West Pakistan com-
prising Punjab, Sindh, the NWFP, and Balochistan.
Sindhi reaction to the plan was resounding and unequivocal: the commu-
nity saw it as an attempt to establish Punjabi domination over the smaller
provinces and negate their regional autonomy and ethnic identity. Sindh’s
chief minister, Pirzada Abdus Sattar (1953–54), was supported by 74 out of
110 Sindh assembly members in his opposition to the plan. This sizeable
opposition did not impress the central government. Instead, the elected chief
minister was dismissed and replaced by an unelected individual, Ayub
Khuhro. Ironically, Khuhro had been disqualified under the Public and Rep-

15. Ayesha Jalal, The State of Martial Rule: The Origins of Pakistan’s Political Economy of
Defence (Lahore: Vanguard Books, 1991), p. 197.

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 ADEEL KHAN 221
resentative Offices (Disqualification) Act (PRODA) from holding a public
office for seven years.16
Punjab was the only province to benefit from the new arrangement at the
expense of the smaller provinces. Sindh was to bear the heaviest brunt. Dur-
ing Pirzada Abdus Sattar’s chief ministership, the Sindh government’s
agenda included demanding the return of Karachi, resisting the award of
Sindhi land to civil and military personnel, building irrigation works, and
promoting Sindhi culture and literature. But after the implementation of the
One-Unit scheme, all Sindh-oriented policies were shelved and resources
channeled to national projects. The promotion of Urdu as a national language
was expedited and the use of Sindhi language systematically discouraged in
municipal administration. In 1958, Urdu replaced Sindhi as the medium of
instruction. After the construction of Kotri Barrage, the number of Punjabis
settling in the province suddenly increased in the 1950s when the newly irri-
gated land that had been created was allotted to army pensioners, mostly of
Punjabi origin. Of the land irrigated by the Guddu Barrage, 598,525 acres
were reserved as state land. By 1971, 142,473 acres were allotted to non-
Sindhis, mostly Punjabis.17 Sindhi nationalist, G. M. Sayed, quoting a Pun-
jabi writer, Azizuddin Ahmed, claims that from 1958 to 1963 75% of the
allottees were non-Sindhi.18

Sindhi Nationalism during the Bhutto

Interregnum, 1971–1977
On March 30, 1970, the Province of West Pakistan (Dissolution) Order was
promulgated. Three months later the former provinces of Punjab, Sindh, and
the NWFP were reconstituted. In addition, Balochistan was also accorded the
status of province. This order ended the One-Unit scheme. In the same year,
Pakistan held its first free general elections. Instead of leading to a unified
elected government, the results of the elections provided the stimulus for
Bengali disenchantment. The West Pakistani establishment refused to trans-
fer power to the majority party in parliament, the Awami League, because its
support came exclusively from East Pakistan. In one year’s time, after a

16. The purpose of PRODA was to grant the governor-general arbitrary administrative pow-
ers. Under the provisions of PRODA, the governor-general was not required to consult his min-
isters. PRODA also allowed the governor-general to disqualify those politicians who “incurred
the displeasure of the central government.”
17. The allottees included civil and military personnel, Punjabis displaced by the construction
of Mangla Dam and federal capital areas, Islamabad and some frontier tribesmen. For detailed
figures, published by the government of Sind, see Herbert Feldman, The End and the Beginning:
Pakistan 1969–1971 (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1976), p. 57.
18. Sayed, The Case of Sindh, p. 146.

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 222 ASIAN SURVEY, VOL. XLII, NO. 2, MARCH/APRIL 2002

bloody civil war and the armed intervention of India, Pakistan’s eastern wing
had seceded to become the independent state of Bangladesh.
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was not only Pakistan’s first elected prime minister—
he was also a Sindhi. Bhutto’s PPP had won 62 out of 82 seats in Punjab, 18
out of 27 in Sindh, one in the NWFP, and none in Balochistan. Obviously,
Bhutto had come to power on the basis of support from the largest province
of Pakistan, Punjab. For this reason, he could not be expected to rule against
the interests of the dominant province. However, neither could he ignore his
support base in Sindh. It was a difficult situation in which the two provinces
that had voted for him had a clear clash of interests.
Nontheless, without hurting the Punjabi interests and provoking the wrath
of his main constituency, Bhutto promoted certain policies at the federal and
provincial levels that benefited Sindhis. He did so at the expense of another
dominant group, the Mohajirs, which was already losing out its privileges to
the Punjabis who had also become the overwhelming ethnic majority after the
secession of East Bengal.

The Impact of the Language Riots

The termination of the One Unit scheme was, for Sindhis, only a partial rec-
ognition of their distinctive regional and ethnic identity. Sindhi nationalists
and intellectuals next demanded that the Sindhi language be restored as the
medium of instruction. When Mohajir students protested against the move,
violence ensued that resulted in Sindhi students burning the pictures of the
Punjabi poet, Mohammad Iqbal. This act was significant because Iqbal was
the individual credited with having first conceived of an independent state for
Indian Muslims and was therefore a major symbol of Pakistani nationalism.
Mohajir students retaliated by burning Sindhi books in the Institute of
Sindhology.
The clamor of Sindhi demands became all the more boisterous after the
PPP came to power in December 1971. In July 1972, a parliamentary bill
was introduced in the Sindh provincial assembly to make Sindhi the medium
of instruction. The bill had clearly stated that “Sindhi and Urdu shall be
compulsory subjects for study in classes four to 12 in all institutions in which
such classes are held.”19 However, the pro-Urdu lobby interpreted the grad-
ual recognition of Sindhi as a detriment to the usage of Urdu. The bill’s
introduction led to Mohajir violence against Sindhis in Karachi and the burn-
ing of the Department of Sindhi at Karachi University. Mohajirs were further
alarmed by an unofficial move by the Sindh assembly to make it compulsory
for government employees to learn Sindhi within three months.

19. Tariq Rahman, Language and Politics in Pakistan (Karachi: Oxford University Press,
1996), pp. 124–25.

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 ADEEL KHAN 223
The situation between Sindhis and Mohajirs deteriorated further when del-
egates to a central government-appointed committee proposed demands
deemed unacceptable to members of the ethnic group to which they did not
belong. The committee, generally known as the language committee, was set
up soon after the language bill in July 1972. It comprised some of the most
prominent and representative academics and politicians from both ethnic
groups. The Mohajir team included I. H. Qureshi, Ghafoor Ahmed, G. A.
Madani, A. B. Haleem, and Hussain Imam, whereas the Sindhi team included
Sheikh Ayaz, Qazi Faiz Mohammad, Mohammad Khan Soomro, Ali Bakhsh
Talpur, and two Sindh government ministers, Qaim Ali Shah and Dur Mo-
hammad Usto. The committee first met on July 10. However, it did not
reach an agreement. Some of the Sindhi demands were directly related to
provincial autonomy. One was the recognition of Sindhi as not only the offi-
cial language of Sindh but also one of the national languages of Pakistan.
They also called for the recognition of Pakistan’s four provinces as being
“four nations living in a confederation.” They further demanded the return of
the land that had been given away to non-Sindhi military and civil officials;
the provincialization of the railways, post, and electronic media; and, an in-
creased share for Sindh of the water from the Indus River. Other demands
that called for the establishment of a militia comprised indigenous Sindhis
and the appointment of the same to all the top administrative posts in the
province.
Mohajir delegates issued their own demands. Although Mohajirs consti-
tuted approximately 20% of Sindh’s total population, they called for equal
status for their language, Urdu.20 Mohajirs also demanded a 50% share in all
the top administrative posts in the province and an exclusive reservation of
technical and professional colleges in Karachi for themselves. Finally,
Mohajirs also demanded that the city of Karachi should be made an autono-
mous entity.

The Quota System

Another contentious issue was that of the quota system. A quota system bi-
ased in favor of Mohajirs was introduced in 1948 to redress the regional
inequality in representation in public employment. By 1951, Sindhis had be-
come a minority in Karachi with 57.1% of its population being Mohajir.21
Before Bhutto’s election, the martial law government of General Yahya Khan
(1969–71) had already worked out a new formula to rid the quota system of

20. Even as late as 1981, the census showed that Mohajirs formed 24% of Sindh’s population.
See Charles H. Kennedy, “The Politics of Ethnicity in Sindh,” Asian Survey 31:10 (October
1991), p. 941.
21. Shahid Javed Burki, Pakistan under Bhutto 1971–1977 (New York: St. Martin’s Press,
1980), p. 12.

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 224 ASIAN SURVEY, VOL. XLII, NO. 2, MARCH/APRIL 2002

its urban bias by devising a 3:2 representation formula for rural and urban
population, respectively, in provincial and federal services.22
During Bhutto’s period, further changes were made to the system. Kara-
chi’s separate share was scrapped and the merit category was reduced from
20% to 10%. While all four of Pakistan’s provinces were designated a share
on the basis of their total population, the situation in Sindh was different.
There, the huge gap between the rural and urban sectors meant that the pro-
vincial share would be subdivided further into 11.4% rural and 7.6% urban.
The Bhutto government made a conscious effort to increase Sindhi repre-
sentation in the state and public sectors. But given the decades of Sindhi
underrepresentation, it required years of concerted effort to rectify the numer-
ical imbalance. The Punjabi-Mohajir-dominated civil and military bureau-
cracy presented a major obstacle to administrative reform.

Military Rule and Sindh

In July 1977, after weeks of unrest following the contested results of a gen-
eral election, General Zia ul-Haq deposed the elected government of Zulfikar
Ali Bhutto. Zia imposed martial law, suspended the Constitution, and within
two years had Bhutto hanged following a dubious trial.
For most Sindhis, Zia’s military rule was perceived as that of an occupying
army, primarily because Sindhis were underrepresented in the military. Paki-
stan’s army is almost exclusively Punjabi and Pakhtun, who combined to
make up over 95% of the military. Pakistan’s army alone is estimated to be
60%–65% Punjabi and 30%–35% Pakhtun.23 But the disproportion extends
to other areas of government. Despite reforms in the quota system, Sindhi
representation in the civil services has also been marginal. According to the
1981 census, Sindhis composed 11.7% of Pakistan’s population, but only af-
ter extensive efforts did the share of Sindhis in senior administrative posts
rise from 3.6% in 1974 to 6.8% in 1983.24
Under the period of Zia’s military rule, the channels through which Sindhis
were able to articulate their demands became scarce. All those individuals
employed during Bhutto’s rule were expelled from government and public
sector jobs. Pent-up Sindhi anger against the military exploded in August
1983 when the Movement for Restoration of Democracy (MRD) called for a
countrywide protest against military rule. Response to the MRD’s call in the
rest of the provinces was lukewarm, but in Sindh it turned into a massive

22. Mohammed Waseem, “Affirmative Action Policies in Pakistan,” Ethnic Studies Report
15:2 (1997), pp. 228–31.
23. K. B. Sayeed, “The Role of the Military in Pakistan” in Armed Forces and Society: Socio-
logical Essays, ed. Jacques Van Doorn (The Hague: Mouton, 1968), p. 276; and Kennedy, The
Politics of Ethnicity, p. 946.
24. Ibid., p. 943.

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 ADEEL KHAN 225
popular agitation. So spontaneous and widespread was the unrest there that
not only the military rulers were perturbed but also the MRD leadership itself
was surprised. Indeed, the intensity and potency of the unrest was unprece-
dented in the history of the province. Many Sindhi protesters resorted to
jailbreaks as well as attacks on police stations, banks, and trains. It soon
became obvious that the administration in rural Sindh was faced with an up-
surge that bordered on civil war. The army was called in and the administra-
tion launched a massive witch-hunt of political workers and PPP
sympathizers. The military regime labeled the unrest a conspiracy to create a
separate state of Sindhu Desh.
But the brutal military response to the agitation proved to be the first seri-
ous blow to the military regime. During Zia’s rule, the generals had every
reason to take the intensity of the Sindhi sentiments seriously and they inten-
sified their persecution of Sindhi rural opposition. Paradoxically, the military
leaders sought to divide the Sindhi nationalist leadership based on their
mixed support for Bhutto.25 The military regime soon made attempts to har-
ness anti-Bhutto forces in Sindh, but one of the problems was that Sindhis
had almost totally rejected Sindhi nationalist parties and voted for Bhutto’s
PPP. In the 1970 general election, for example, the PPP had won 18 of the
27 national assembly seats in Sindh. However, the PPP secured only 28 seats
of the 60 in the Sindh assembly. Mohajirs had predominantly voted for two
religious groups, namely, the Jamiat-i-Ulema Islam (JUI) and the Jamat Is-
lami (JI). During the brief period of electoral rule, the Sindh nationalist par-
ties did not win a single seat. The so-called father of Sindhi nationalism, G.
M. Sayed, lost his constituency to the PPP’s candidate. The trend continued
in the 1988 elections, when Sindhi voters favored the PPP and rejected all
nationalist groups, with the PPP increasing its share of the vote from the
44.9% gained in 1970 to 47%.
Despite such evidence of strong support for the PPP, the military regime
still made attempts to coopt some Sindhi nationalist leaders—Zia ul-Haq
even paid a visit to G. M. Sayed. On the other hand, the military encouraged
the Mohajir constituency in Sindh to engage in its own brand of ethnic polit-
ics. Until then, most Mohajir protests had centered on an activist student
organization, the All-Pakistan Mohajir Students Organization (APMSO). But
by a few months after the Sindh agitation, the APMSO had become the back-
bone of a broader political group, the Mohajir Quomi (National) Movement
(MQM). Some circumstantial evidence shows that the formation of the

25. One of the Sindhi nationalists, Hamida Khuhro, told the author in an interview in 1997:
“It’s very difficult for me to say anything positive about Bhutto.” G. M. Sayed is reported to
have said: “These brainless Sindhis worship Bhutto who was hung by the Punjabis after he had
served their purpose.” Cited in Hassan Mujtaba, “Sindhi Separatism: Myth or Reality?” News-
line (Karachi), February 1992, p. 41.

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 226 ASIAN SURVEY, VOL. XLII, NO. 2, MARCH/APRIL 2002

MQM was encouraged and even financially supported by the military re-
gime.26
Interestingly, the unabashedly anti-Sindhi and anti-Bhutto MQM found its
most visible sympathizer in the person of G. M. Sayed. The MQM and
Sindhi nationalists shared some objectives. After the abortive Sindhi agita-
tion, Sindhi nationalists realized that they needed support from the major
towns of the province, which were (and are) predominantly Mohajir. As for
the MQM, its flirtation with Sindhi nationalists was also based on pragmatic
considerations. The MQM considered Sindhis to be a lesser threat than it
perceived Punjabis to be. The movement also wanted to avoid a Bangladesh-
like situation.
But despite their common anti-Punjabi-Pakhtun rhetoric, the MQM and the
Sindhi nationalists were unable to reconcile their clash of interests. By 1987,
the MQM had become an important political group in Pakistani politics with
widespread support among Mohajirs. For all intents and purposes, the MQM
had become the sole representative of Mohajirs. In contrast, the Sindhi na-
tionalists were by no means the representatives of Sindhis, who had instead
remained loyal to Bhutto’s PPP. Inevitably, Sindhis and Mohajirs locked
horns in a series of violent acts, starting with the September 1988 killings in
Hyderabad.

The Post-Zia Period: The Violent

Province
It is the tragedy of countries such as Pakistan where an institutionalized polit-
ical system does not exist that individuals rather than institutions play a deci-
sive role in any political change. The country’s political system has
continuously been dominated by military and civil bureaucracy and so has
always been dependent on the appearance—or disappearance—of an individ-
ual on the political scene. Thus, it was only after the mysterious death of
military dictator General Zia ul-Haq in a plane crash in 1988 that the Paki-
stani state establishment opted for party-based elections.
In the November elections that year, the right-wing alliance called the Is-
lami Jamhoori Ittehad (IJI, Islamic Democratic Alliance) was unable to defeat
Benazir Bhutto and her PPP. It emerged as the political party with the largest
share of votes in both the national and Sindh provincial assemblies. The
party’s margin of victory, though, was rather thin. In the national parliament,

26. In a personal interview, Brigadier A. R. Siddiqi, former director of the Pakistan army’s
Inter-Services Public Relations, said that MQM chief Altaf Hussain was “very close to the dep-
uty martial law administrator of Sindh. Hamida Khuhro told me that when the Sindh chief
minister, Ghous Ali Shah, was accused of giving Rs 30 million to Altaf Hussain, the chief minis-
ter said: ‘I helped it (MQM) to cut Jamat Islami to size’.”

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 ADEEL KHAN 227
the PPP held only 93 of the body’s 207 seats. Obviously, it was in no posi-
tion to form a government on its own and to seek coalition partners. The
MQM, meanwhile, was the third largest group with 13 seats, with the IJI in
second place with 55. In the Sindh provincial assembly, the PPP swept the
rural constituencies, winning 67 of 141 seats. The MQM took second place,
sweeping the urban votes and winning 26 seats. The Sindhi nationalist
groups could not secure even a single seat.
Under these circumstances, it was only natural for the PPP to seek MQM
support, which could enable formation of a government at the federal level.
Such a coalition could have left the PPP in a better position to deal with the
deteriorating situation in Sindh. This, however, was no easy task, for the
MQM was virulently anti-Sindhi while the PPP was the de facto representa-
tive party for that ethnic group. Nonetheless, despite the difficulties the PPP
and the MQM were able to reach a compromise and the MQM supported the
PPP’s bid to form a parliamentary government in Islamabad.
Owing to the cementing of this alliance, Benazir Bhutto became the prime
minister that December. After an 11-year absence, a popular Sindhi political
leader was once again ruling Pakistan. But the PPP’s tenuous victory
presented new challenges. The Zia years had led to the entrenchment of the
army’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) into almost every sector of the state
and society. The ISI had backed the creation of the PPP’s strongest oppo-
nent, the IJI. More electoral difficulties were created for Bhutto by the fact
that, although the PPP had won a majority of the national assembly seats in
Punjab, it had lost the Punjab provincial assembly to the IJI.
The situation in Sindh was precarious. Although the PPP had secured the
support of the MQM, the traditional enmity between Sindhis and Mohajirs
could hardly permit the alliance to be tension free. There was little chance
that the PPP-led coalition would last long with Pakistan’s largest province out
of its control and ruled by its archenemy, the IJI’s Nawaz Sharif. Moreover,
Sindh was in the grip of rural dacoits (bandits) and urban terrorists. Benazir
Bhutto’s government was dismissed in August 1990.
By the time of Bhutto’s dismissal, the Sindh law and order situation had
deteriorated to almost total breakdown. The antagonism between Sindh’s
two major ethnic groups had reached new lows. The PPP can be blamed for
its inability to arrest the deteriorating situation in the province, but no inde-
pendent observer can accuse it of contributing to make the situation worse.
During the less than two years of Benazir Bhutto’s rule, the ISI had played an
active role in keeping the situation in Sindh as explosive as possible. The

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 228 ASIAN SURVEY, VOL. XLII, NO. 2, MARCH/APRIL 2002

agency did this as part of its overall strategy to undermine the PPP-led coali-
tion government.27
After the 1990 election, the MQM entered an alliance with the IJI. The
coalition formed governments at the national level as well as in Sindh. But
despite being part of the government, the MQM continued to support terrorist
activities in urban Sindh. On the other hand, rural Sindh remained under the
control of Sindhi dacoits. Often young and unemployed, they included doc-
tors and engineers whose jobs were terminated by the military regime. It is
not surprising that in 1984, some of the most notorious dacoits were operat-
ing from the student dormitories of Sindh University. No less depressing was
the situation in urban Sindh, where unemployed Mohajir youth, seeing little
hope of a better future, were attracted to the terrorist activities sponsored by
MQM and wreaked havoc on the life of Sindhi urban dwellers.
In mid-1992, the IJI government launched an army action, called Opera-
tion Clean Up, against both Sindhi dacoits and the MQM terrorists. Al-
though the operation succeeded in its crackdown on the former, it was less
successful in breaking the latter’s hold over urban centers of Sindh. The
violence continued. In the city of Karachi alone, snipers killed 1,113 people
in 1994. By 1995, Karachi had become the most dangerous city of Asia, with
a murder rate that reached 2,095.
In 1993, the PPP was once again voted to power at the national level. With
the army’s operation having failed to control violence in urban Sindh, the law
and order situation in the province was one of the main challenges for the
PPP government. In 1995, the further escalation of violence in Sindh led the
government to launch yet another brutal crackdown on MQM militants. The
1995 crackdown used the combined force of various security agencies under
the command of the Ministry of the Interior. The operation was more suc-
cessful than preceding ones and as a result the urban centers may have be-
come less violent, though they are still far from being safe.
In 1996, the PPP government was once again dismissed. Nawaz Sharif’s
Pakistan ML (PML) came to power for 1997. Despite the PPP’s successful
anti-terrorist operation, Sindh remained a problem province. Using the con-
tinuing violence in Sindh as an excuse, Nawaz Sharif’s government dis-
missed the elected provincial government in Sindh in 1998. He imposed
direct rule and appointed one of the prime minister’s advisers as the central
government’s representative in the province. That arrangement remained un-
changed until General Pervaiz Musharraf’s military takeover of October
1999.

27. I am indebted to some senior police officials in Karachi and Hyderabad, who did not want
their names to be disclosed, for the information on the ISI’s intervention in the civil administra-
tion and its clandestine activities.

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 ADEEL KHAN 229
Despite the violence, as far as Sindhi ethnic nationalism is concerned, the
decade of 1990s can be termed as one of indifference. The lack of interest in
ethnic-based nationalism in the post-Zia period is the most striking aspect of
Sindhi politics. An overwhelming majority of Sindhis voted for the PPP and
only a few for the Sindhi nationalist groups. Sindhis political radicalism ap-
pears to revive during periods of military rule. The reason for that is quite
obvious: Sindhis have virtually no representation in Pakistan’s army.

Conclusion
What emerges from this article is that Sindhi nationalism is a response to the
modern state system, one that was introduced by the colonizers and became
more interventionist after the creation of Pakistan. Under colonialism, Sindh
was relegated to the status of agricultural hinterland where its resources were
exploited but the services sector neglected. After Partition, the province was
turned into a refugee center, its land given away to outsiders, its resources
channeled to serve the center and Punjab. Moreover, its provincial autonomy
was violated, and, through the One-Unit scheme, its regional identity was
eliminated and language displaced.
Under the circumstances, to label Sindhi sentiments with the misleading
charge of provincialism or narrow nationalism not only betrays the repressive
assimilationism of the Pakistani state but also reveals the dominant groups’
attempt to deny the existence of inequality and exploitation to which Sindh
has been subjected. Despite the Sindhis’ overwhelming support for the
PPP—and their rejection of nationalist and separatist groups—that they have
remained suspect in the eyes of the establishment speaks volumes about the
nature of the Pakistani state system.
After two separate army and security agencies’ operations, Sindh may no
longer be the most dangerous province in Pakistan. Nevertheless, it contin-
ues to be a troubled, rather than troublesome, province. The situation shall
remain so until what is perceived to be the highly centralized state system of
Pakistan is changed. That possibility does not seem probable in the near
future, especially in the context of ongoing military rule.

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