The many faces of life in Pakistan

                         The many faces of life in Pakistan



The U.S. Congress’s just-released ‘Country Reports on Terrorism’ for 2018 has mentioned that Pakistan failed to “significantly limit” Punjab-based militant outfits like the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM). Earlier, in September, speaking in Torkham, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan had warned his countrymen against going to India to fight jihad, stating that such actions would amount to doing “injustice to Kashmiris”. Coming at the height of the war of words between the two countries, the statement was a rare admission by a Pakistani leader that infiltration from that side of the 740-km Line of Control, as well as the international border in Punjab, is a fact.
Over the years, most of the Pakistani militants who crossed the border, and were caught by Indian security personnel, had one element in common — they were all from the Punjab province. Contemporary discussions on extremism originating from the province are mostly framed around the Pakistani military’s support to these extremist groups. However, there are many other variables rooted in the Pakistani Punjab’s society that also need to be understood.
The dominant province
Punjab overshadows other provinces in Pakistan primarily due to its size, resources and representation in elite institutions. It can be broken into three broad sub-cultural units: the Punjabi-speaking eastern and central Punjab; the Pothwari-speaking northern Punjab that includes Rawalpindi and Islamabad; and the Saraiki-speaking southern Punjab.
Eastern and central Punjab is linguistically akin to the Indian Punjab. The Kartarpur Corridor falls in this zone. Many of the residents there belong to families who had migrated from India during Partition. They are mostly settled in Lahore, Sialkot, Lyallpur (Faisalabad), Montgomery (Sahiwal) and Gujranwala. In his seminal book Pakistan: A Modern History, British historian Ian Talbot wrote, citing Pakistani academic Mohammad Waseem, that “the five million migrants [from the Indian side of the border] have both provided a major support for Islamist parties and shaped the Punjab province’s strong anti-India and pro-Kashmiri leanings.”
In addition, a less-acknowledged fact in Partition studies is the massive outflow of Muslims from the plains of J&K, mostly the southern part i.e. Jammu, in 1947. The extent of that migration can be gauged from the changes in Census data. Jammu district’s Muslim population, which was 37% in 1941, came down to about 10% in 1961.
According to the 1948 West Punjab Refugees Census, the number of Muslims who migrated from J&K, most of them from Jammu, was 2,02,600, the highest outside east Punjab. Muslims from Jammu plains mostly settled in areas around Sialkot and Lahore.
These past events, along with the constant turbulence in J&K’s politics, are selectively interpreted by Punjab-based, Kashmir-centric terrorist outfits to gain legitimacy. In the last 30 years, LeT, claiming to be fighting on behalf of J&K, has mostly drawn recruits from the eastern and central areas of the Punjab. The Mumbai attacks terrorist Ajmal Kasab was from Okara district, located near the Indian border.#fastitlinks.com
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