By Rasul Bakhsh Rais
The dream of creating ethnic provinces anywhere in the world, and more so in Pakistan with a history of regional inequality, ignites popular feelings and emotions. Playing with emotions, raising false or true hopes, and using rhetoric that will make a party, group or a leader acceptable is part of politics. It is more so in the transitional democracies, like Pakistan. It is quite natural in competitive politics even in its developmental phase to win popular support that cannot be taken for granted. How to influence public mind and get it on the side of a political party is an old art that political class has perfected for now hundreds of years. This art works within the spectrum of promise and performance.
Performance while holding public office is the most difficult thing, particularly in the circumstances of Pakistan, facing sever crises: insecurity, insurgencies, social, ethnic and political conflicts. But then how a political party or parties can bring the country out of theses crises is a clear test of their political skills, capacity, leadership quality and commitment to the nation. There is hardly any country in the world that has not faced the problems that Pakistan is facing today. Our view is that the parties in the coalition at the centre and governments in the provinces could do better than what they can show us today. They could showcase their achievements and successes in areas like social and economic development, education, opportunities for citizens and compete for next elections, leaving the choice to the public to judge which party and government did better.
Actually there is very little to show to the public; rather populism, wasteful projects, overblown size of the governments and inability to extract resources from those who earn more or rich has slowed down our progress during the past four years or so. The alternative to performance is promise—not the potential or credibility to do something but rhetorically committing to issues, schemes and ideas like carving a Seraiki province out of Punjab.
Dividing Punjab is an old political idea that has gripped the minds of the parties and groups for various reasons, ethnic and political, hoping that they would gain popular support from within the districts in Southern Punjab that constitute about forty percent of the population. For decades, some of the nationalist Seraiki groups and leaders, using symbols of language, constructive ethnicity, history and politics of grievances, have demanded a separate Seraiki province. Except in the new middle classes of this region, mainly settled in the urban areas of Central and Northern Punjab, the idea didn’t capture popular audience.
What has changed the dynamics of the Seraiki issue is its ownership by one of the main national parties, the Pakistan Peoples Party. For years, though, some leaders within the PPP have internally debated the pros and cons of supporting the demand for a Seraiki province. What made them somewhat cautious on coming public on this issue was fear of losing support in rest of the Punjab. Either that fear doesn’t exist or they now believe that benefits of going for the Seraiki province are likely to be greater than the expected political loss in other parts of the province.
It seems that game for Seraiki province is all set, players in place and President Asif Ali Zardari, the sharpest political strategist, has given the go ahead—let the game paly. While on a visit to South Punjab, he advised Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani to develop a consensus in favour of Seraiki province. But it is not for the first time that the PPP leaders have raised the Seraiki province issue. Yet another political flag that Zardari has unfurled is that of a Seraiki Bank—if the idea materialises, will further add material to the development of Seraiki identity. They adopted this issue in response to the demand by some PML(Q) leaders to create Bahawalpur province with the geographical boundaries of the former princely state. The Bahawalpur province demand is much older, more popular and with the practical evidence that people of the former princely state returned the candidates of the Bahawalpur Suba Mahaz in greater numbers in the 1970 elections than any other major party. Even charisma and popular appeal of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, so wide and broad in West Pakistan, couldn’t match the popular passion for Bahawalpur.
It is this history in mind that the PML(N), the dominant party in the Punjab today, has responded to the call for Seraiki province by supporting the idea of Bahawalpur province. Shahbaz Sharif has recently remarked, “Bahawalpur province should have been restored after the dissolution of one unit.” The PML(N), it seems, is not comfortable with the idea of an ethnic based province, if and when it materialises, but primarily based on administrative grounds.
True Bahawalpur and Multan are historic regions, have deep sense of identities of their own and were states for centuries governed by rulers that indigenised and acculturated. It is the choice of political language and some political objectives in mind that one may refer to the both as ethnically one unit or as two different parts but with so much common between them—language and culture. The idea of a Seraiki province containing all present divisions of Southern Punjab may not be as popular in Bahawalpur as it might be in the Multan and Dera Ghazi Khan divisions. We might even see resistance to the Seraiki movement on account of fears in Bahawalpur that they would lose their historical identity, power and control over their resources.
We also need to keep in mind the general, larger and long-term politics of the Punjab while analysing positions of the two major parties on the Seraiki-Bahawalpur issues. Punjab is the biggest political prize and it will be the major political arena of contestation for PML(N), PPP and the emerging PTI that has yet to open its cards on the twin issue. There are two serious questions here. First, how much popular support either of the proposed provinces is likely to generate for the major political parties? How realistic is the division of the Punjab and creating the Seraiki province?
In a region where the feudals rule, and they form the traditional electoral class, issue-based politics may not generate greater enthusiasm than it had for the Seraiki cause in the past. The castes, tribes, voting blocks and close rival networks of social support system sustained by social solidarities and patronage determine the outcome of elections in Southern Punjab. Seraiki issue may add a flavour, a colour but not a great substance. No party opposing it at the public level may even diffuse the issue.
This brings us to the second question. No party may oppose it because, practically, creating any new province will require much larger national consensus than we can realistically expect to emerge. There are two further reasons to ponder about. One is that the division of Punjab on any imagined ethnic grounds will create a greater momentum for division of Balochistan, Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) on ethnic basis. Fearing this, the support to Seraiki issue by parties from other provinces may not go beyond a slogan, whose utility has yet to be tested in the real waters of electoral politics. Finally, creating provinces requires constitutional amendment with two-thirds majority which is apparently not practical for foreseeable future. The provincial assembly further checks carving out a province or provinces out of the current constituent provinces of Pakistan; no majority is likely to preside over division of the province. The major parties may play the Seraiki game for a while until they feel that the idea of more provinces will hurt them politically on their own provincial turf—PPP in Sindh as MQM would press for Karachi or a much larger area as a new province. There are similar ethnic divisions within Balochistan and KP. The issue is not that the current four provinces constitute natural units; the issue is that creating more provinces will require much broader national consensus and involve serious political thinking. The current politics of opportunism will only ignite passions, cause divisions, and conflicts without any positive gain for the Seraiki regions or the parties peddling the Seraiki issue.
The writer is an academic and analyst.
