Between Independence and Autonomy: The Changing Landscape of Ethno-nationalist Movements in Pakistan

Abstract

Since its inception, Pakistan has faced challenges of ethnic-nationalism from her ethnicities. State efforts to mold these diverse identities into one communal Muslim identity have been continually resisted by the different nationalities comprising Pakistan. The demands of ethno-national movements have fluctuated between independence and autonomy, depending upon the relation between the state and the respective ethnic group. Sometimes the demand for autonomy has expanded into a desire for independence, as was the case with Bengali ethnic nationalism. At other times, the desire for independence has shrunk to a demand for autonomy, as manifested by Pashtun nationalism. This shift is explicated through the relationship between the state and ethnic groups. The author analyzes this shift through the prism of Paul Brass’s instrumental theory of elite competition. The factors that contributed to the success of Bengali nationalism in achieving statehood and the failure of Baloch nationalism to do so are viewed through Ted Gurr’s concept of relative deprivation. The integration of Sindhi and Pashtun ethnic groups into the state structure is explained via Andreas Wimmer’s notion of ownership of the state.

Driving Ethnicity Through Instrumentalism: Genesis of Sindhudesh Movement

“…The ruling elites of Sindh supported provincial autonomy regardless of the fact how detrimental it will emerge for Pakistan. But the current political units have worked hard for the representation of Sindh and catering the grievances to minimize the vacuum for separatist movements (Khan and Mushtaq, 2017).…”

Geographies of nationalism

“…Indeed, the rapid growth of xenophobic and animosityfueled nationalist storylines, espoused by far-right politicians and populist leaders across the world since the mid-2010s has sparked new interest among scholars, who suddenly became anxious about the perceived threat of these forms of nationalism to the cosmopolitan worldview that they once took for granted. This newer scholarship on the geography of "exclusionary nationalisms" or "ethno-nationalism," aims to show how hate-based and exclusionary scripts of nationalism work to territorialize a community within an imagined "pure" (or "purified") homeland (e.g., Avni, 2021;Anderson and Secor, 2022;Bescherer and Reichle, 2022;Bosworth, 2022;Chatterjee, 2021;Conversi, 2020a;Cunningham, 2020;Dahlman, 2022;Decker et al 2022;Dempsey, 2022aDempsey, , 2022bDevadoss and Culcasi, 2020;Dossa, 2021;Flint, 2004;Getzoff, 2020;Goalwin, 2017;Goonewardena, 2020;Hart, 2020a;Khan, 2022;Koch and Vora, 2020;Kolstø and Blakkisrud, 2016;Luger, 2022;Mulej, 2022;Mullis and Miggelbrink, 2022;Nagel and Grove, 2021;Shoshan, 2016;Singh, 2022;Stock, 2020;Wondreys and Mudde, 2022;Yiftachel and Rokem, 2021).…”

“…Nationalism is an inherently affective phenomenon because it is tied to the experience of community, of “what Max Weber called a Zusammengehorigkeitsgefuhl , a feeling of belonging together” (Brubaker, 2004: 46). As geographers have long shown, nationalism is a spatial expression community because it “is fundamentally an ideology and political action program designed to convert land into national territory” and is thus “a mode of constructing and interpreting social space” (Kaiser, 2002: 231; see also Anderson, 1988; Herb and Kaplan, 1999; Hooson, 1994; Kaplan, 2018; Kaplan and Herb, 2011; Knight, 1982; Mayer, 2000; Murphy, 1990; Storey, 2001; Williams and Smith, 1983).…”