By HARSH PANDEY
Pakistan’s elections are scheduled to happen on February 8th this year. 2024 marks a year of elections worldwide in democracies and states claiming to be democracies. Pakistan has its on-and-off stints with democracy, and elections are generally orchestrated by its military. The current favourite party of the military in this election is the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), which is based in Punjab. Pakistan is an ethnically diverse nation-state contrary to the popular imagination of people understanding it as a Muslim state. However, the state establishments have tried projecting the same, claiming that Pakistan is ‘one’.
A Quick Recap
When Pakistan was imagined as a state during the early 1940s, its founding fathers envisioned it as a state for Muslims where minorities would have special rights along with respect for the diverse ethnic and cultural mosaic. However, soon after the state building, the relatively federal structure that was imagined became a thing of the past. Pakistan’s newly developed state machinery started curbing the autonomy movements in East Pakistan Balochistan and took Karachi from Sindh, creating critical tensions among the newly formed state. The impact of using Urdu as an official language of Pakistan caused the breakaway of its largest province, east Pakistan, now called Bangladesh. In its more than seventy years of existence, Pakistan has faced nationalist/separatist movements from all its ethnicities except Punjab. Its reasons go back to the British colonial empire of India.
During the reign of the British empire in undivided India after the 1857 mutiny, the concept of martial race was inducted where Jats (an ethnicity in India and Pakistan divided into Hindu, Muslim and Sikh religious identities), Gurkhas and Rajput were identified as martial races and inducted in erstwhile British India Army. After the partition, Punjabi Muslims were in overwhelming numbers in Pakistan’s military establishments, which was critical for the survival of the state. Punjabi land-owning elites formed a crucial part of the initial political milieu in Pakistan. Despite Punjabi as the primary language, the Punjabi elite of Pakistan overwhelmingly supported Urdu as a national language for two main reasons. First- Urdu was visibly popular during British Punjab as Lahore was a crucial literary centre. The second reason was that the Punjabis’ involvement in this critical decision made them feel powerful because they decided to accept Urdu. However, other provinces could not accept the same as they had their own national identities in the making, particularly in the case of Bengali, Baloch and Sindh. In contrast, for others, such as Pashtuns and Saraikis, it was the question of economic and social mobility apart from their identities. Acceptance of Urdu made Punjabi elites, along with Urdu-speaking migrants from North India, guardians of Pakistan’s newly developed state.
Importance of Punjab in Pakistan’s Nation-State
Of the four provinces of Pakistan, namely, Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab is the largest. It sends 173 elected representatives to the National Assembly of Pakistan, whose length is 336. Interestingly, any party maintaining a stronghold in Punjab eventually wins the elections. Other than that, the most venerated institution of Pakistan, its military inherited about 29 per cent of the total strength of the British Indian Army, who were predominantly Punjabis. After the death of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Pakistan was governed by Liaquat Ali Khan, who was born into a family of landed elites in erstwhile British Punjab. It is also critical to note that he was a person of finance, and his policies greatly benefitted the landed elites. The policies of land reforms that came into the reign of General Ayub Khan and Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto were somewhat used to sustain the grip of landlords over the lands, considering the ratio of population density in South Asia. For comparison, the upper limit of landholding after the reforms during General Ayub’s time was 500 acres of agricultural land. In India, it differed in different states, ranging from 5 to 25 acres of irrigated land.
These policies greatly benefitted the agrarian elites of Punjab and sustained the rooted inequalities among the population. The separatist and national movements that developed in Pakistan after its independence, whether it was Bengali or Sindhi and Baloch. All have suffered because of Pakistan’s Punjab lens. It was two Punjabi Generals, Yahya Khan and Tikka Khan, who are known as the Butcher of Bengal, causing the genocide of lakhs of innocent Bengalis during the 1971 Bangladesh liberation war. Sindhi nationalists accuse Punjabis of stopping their water supply as Punjab, being a riparian state, controls the flow of water to Sindh. It is critical to note that other provinces of Pakistan have visible fault lines, for example, the Muhajir identity of Karachi in Sindh and Hazara in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Punjab appears as a monolith in all that, but it’s not; in Southern Punjab, the speakers of Saraiki claim themselves as a separate ethno-national identity, but their demands have not yet been fulfilled.
Why Punjab is a critical case in the upcoming General Elections of Pakistan?
As mentioned earlier, Punjab claims most of Pakistan’s national assembly seats. Punjab (Rawalpindi) is also the centre of the military where this politics generally operates. The bureaucratic-military alliance within the deep state operates from here. It is essential to note that after Gen. Pervez Musharraf’s reign ended in Pakistan, all four of its Army chiefs after him were of Punjabi origins. Current Pakistan Army Chief Gen. Asim Munir is of Punjab descent. Before that, Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa, who headed the Pakistan military for about six years, was also a Punjabi person by origin. Bajwa superseded four Let. Generals to gain the chief’s post. The same story goes on with Gen. Raheel Sharif and Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who were both of Punjabi origin. Interestingly all these officers come from second-generation families serving Pakistan’s military, showing the excellent patronage network that has been built over the years by its deep state.
The current general elections, which will most probably happen on February 8th, will be an election dominated by the electorates of Punjab because the military signalled Nawaz Sharif’s acceptance, who is also an ethnic Punjabi politician. Punjab’s domination in Pakistan’s politics is a direct military domination over other provinces of Pakistan. Pakistan’s military has tried experimenting with a non-Punjabi outsider, Imran Khan. As his populist politics increased in popularity, he was removed from the post via a no-confidence motion. Imran’s supporters vandalised the military establishments. It was an unprecedented event in the history of Pakistan because the military is one of the most revered institutions in Pakistan.
The induction of Punjab’s politicians into the centre stage of Pakistan’s politics again will assure a hostile Pakistani military that power is still in its hands. However, whoever will come to the post of Prime Minister of Pakistan will have to walk on eggshells because of its collapsing economy and tense security situations. However, as the grip of Pakistan’s power will again go into the hands of Punjab, other provinces will be left with just one option: wait and watch. It may be reflected in increasing separatist and nationalist movements in the coming years.
The author is a PhD Candidate in the School of International Studies, JNU, New Delhi.
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