Violence and Ethnic Identity Politics in Karachi and Hyderabad

Abstract

From the mid 1980s onwards, urban Sindh has often been in the grip of ethnic violence. The Muhajir Qaumi Movement (now known as the Muttahida Qaumi Movement), established at around the same time, has played a central role in these conflicts. Most analyses interpret the violence as an escalation of already-existing communal differences between various migrant groups in cities like Karachi and Hyderabad. In this paper I argue that violence itself has often been constitutive of ethnic identity and ethnic mobilisation. Tracing the background of the language of ethnicity in Pakistani politics since Independence, I analyse how ethnic identity politics and violence have often gone hand in hand, beginning with the student activism of the late 1970s and developing into full-scale ethnic conflict during the 1980s and 1990s. This enables us to move away from primordial and communal interpretations of ethnic identity towards an analysis of ethnic identity in terms of political mobilisation.

Underprivileged Women Impacted by Ethnic Violence: Deconstructing Lives

“…Once described as the city of lights in the 60s and 70s, it is now a metropolitan center of mayhem where peace pivots on the extensive deployment of security forces [20,49]. Since the mid 80′s, the predominant trend of violence in Karachi has been that of ethnic conflicts in disadvantaged neighborhoods, receding and rekindling without any substantial foundation [22,39,72,82].…”

“…Additionally, the perpetual surge of Pashtuns in Karachi from the Pakistani province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has led to immense competition for ethnic and socio-political space in the city. The migration of Pashtuns has spawned continuous tensions between the Pashtuns and Mohajir ethnic groups which have led to battles, bloodshed and heavy losses of lives [ 70 , 82 , 87 ]. The Karachi carnage is an armed battle between the two groups fighting turf wars for control of resources and land [ 26 , 81 ].…”

“…The Karachi carnage is an armed battle between the two groups fighting turf wars for control of resources and land [ 26 , 81 ]. It is particularly the Mohajir women who have suffered the consequences of tensions between Pushtuns and Mohajirs [ 1 , 9 , 21 , 37 , 39 , 62 , 82 ].…”

From Partisan Universal to Concrete Universal? The Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement in Pakistan

“…As mentioned earlier, these conflicts themselves were overdetermined by issues around indigeneity and displacement of the “indigenous” Sindhi and Balochi‐speaking people of Sindh (Ahmed 1998b). Several years of highly toxic conflict and military operations followed, engulfing Pashtuns, Sindhis, and Urdu‐speaking migrants, violently producing “ethnicity” through minimal difference and particularised space (Verkaaik 2016). This internecine urban warfare led to an ethnically enclavised structure of feeling, whereby the potential cosmopolitanism of Karachi and its popular classes gave way to serialisation along lines of ethnicity and locality.…”

Sindh, 1947 and Beyond

“…In the process, Muhajirs came to constitute Karachi as an essentially Muhajir city; indeed, from the 1980s onwards, it became the 'last Muhajir bastion, a city so utterly connected to the fate of Muhajirs as a diasporic people that they would never give it up lest they be exterminated'. 43 This was partially in response to the anxieties surrounding the inflow of new migrants from within Pakistan itself and from neighbouring countries. From the 1960s onwards, Karachi witnessed a new influx of migrants from Punjab, the former North West Frontier Province and rural Sindh, a process that accelerated from the 1980s because of the war in Afghanistan.…”