Law and order — the Sindh syndrome
The warning signals about Sindh have been quite apparent for some time but one must have a comprehensive and learned analysis embracing the social, political and economic factors tracing the origins of the law and order problem in Pakistan in general and Sindh in particular. Unfortunately intellectuals from both sides of the spectrum tend to project parochial viewpoints that may be counter-productive in seeking practical long-lasting solutions for a very human problem. The approach must be more even-handed and compromising, keeping in mind the existing realities, the wide-ranging fall-out of the ethnic strife can only be assuaged in a comprehensive, multi-faceted solution.
There are two aspects of the law and order situation, the urban and the rural problem, manifesting itself in political terrorism and criminal activities in the urban areas, the order of malfeasance being reversed in the rural areas, criminal activity being far ahead of political terrorism. Unfortunately, political terrorism and criminal activities are now submerged with each other as the militants among the political activists decide that there is profit to be generated from outright crime and conversely, the dacoits having decided that their misdemeanours would be seen in a romantic light if they associate political activism with their shenanigans. The net result has disappearance of the fine line between crime and democratic aspirations, leading to anarchy, a state of insurrection exists in the rural areas.
The stock song of Sindhi nationalism is that the root cause of the present situation can be traced to the overwhelming migration since 1947 and the disparity against Sindhis is mainly due to the overwhelming number of immigrants from the Urdu speaking areas of British India in the upper reaches of bureaucracy. Wherever migration tends to overwhelm the local inhabitants there is going to be trouble, when it exceeds economic fail-safe limits in urban areas there is going to be a serious law and order problem, force-multiplied by the economic aspirations and suspicions (even if ill-founded) of different ethnicities. The sorry lot of the mass population that either (1) belonged to the soil already and (2) braved the excesses of the journey from Hindu-dominated areas to their concept of a land of freedom cannot be blamed on the civil servants of one community alone. The Urdu speaking elite of civil servants cannot be accused of sowing the seeds of dissension between ethnic Sindhis and the immigrants, or new Sindhis, so that their disunity would allow for uncontested and continued bureaucratic rule. In reality this policy discriminated against locals and non-locals alike unless they belonged to that elite. The question devolves down again to one of economic overtones, an insoluble equation between the haves and have-nots, irrespective of their ethnicity. The immigrant Sindhis, except for a privileged elite that lived off the fat of the land, huddled themselves mainly into miserable shanty-town sanctuaries in Karachi, Hyderabad, Sukkur and Mirpurkhas, wherever the very basic needs of their existence could be met. One could hardly expect droves of them to settle in the rural areas, particularly because very few of them come from the rural areas themselves.
All cities in the world have a saturation point, beyond an economic fail-safe limit, anarchy has to result. The port city of Karachi has been particularly hit by the calamity of excess migration, externally and from within the country. In the composition of approximately 9 million inhabitants of present day Karachi, the overwhelming majority (more than 4 million) are those who originated from the Urdu speaking areas (and their descendants) of former British India but there are also significant other races which inhabit this city. Most prominent are those originating from the Punjab, constituting 1.75 million (including about 600,000 from former East Punjab and Kashmir) of the inhabitants, about 1.25 million Pathans, 300,000 Balochs, 150,000 Iranians, 250,000 Afghans, 750,000 Bangladeshis and assorted lots of Burmese Muslims, Sri Lankans, etc. A total of 350,000 Sindhis are submerged in this flood of humanity (increasing from 50,000 to 300,000 from 1947 to 1972 and only 50,000 more from 1972) and one may well ask did the Sindhis not settle in number in Karachi between 1947 and 1972 in any number? Analysts agree that (1) they were not entrepreneurial in nature (2) were not involved in the same proportionate ratio of population to trade and craft in comparison to the other races who came to Karachi because of (a) necessity and/or (b) expertise and (3) those Sindhis who did work in Karachi found it expedient to head for the villages in Sindh for the weekend, a natural Sindhi affiliation for hearth and home, much apparent in the lack of volunteers for the Armed Forces. After the overwhelming preponderance of Mohajir majority in the urban areas was displayed in the language riots of July 1972, (1) fear and (2) discrimination were added to the first two factors in keeping the Sindhi population from growing in any number in Karachi and/or the other major urban areas of Sindh.
To highlight one statistic, there are 750,000 Bangladeshis in Karachi today, rising from a maximum of 45,000 who remained behind in 1972. This tremendous increase to more than double the Sindhi populace in the last decade, including the outlying Goths of Karachi, has been because of a number of reasons. In the early 1970s the PPP slogan tilted the balance of dominance between employers and employee to the employees. While this was a logical conclusion of years of callous employer domination of the 60s, the industrialists had become allergic to trade unions. The 1977 Martial Law reversed the trend back to employer domination. Combining with the tremendous opportunities opened up in the Gulf (Dubai Chalo!), it caused the number of industrial labour available in Karachi to diminish rapidly along with the supply of trained domestic servants. The Pathans have traditionally been in transportation and construction, along with skilled/unskilled Punjabi labour also headed Gulf-wards, both from Karachi and up-country. To fill this great employment vacuum, impoverished Bangladeshis underwent untold miseries to traverse the breadth of India to come to Pakistan. The old system of contract labour favouring the Industrialists was revived. The 600,000 or so Bangladeshis working in Landhi, Korangi, Nooriabad and Kotli today get far less wages than the minimum specified by Pakistan labour laws. They can hardly form Trade Unions since they are illegal immigrants, thus becoming bonded labour, a form of virtual slavery. If our intellectuals get out of their drawing rooms, they will find that out of the one million job openings in Karachi of the past decade, whether new employment slots or replacement, most have been taken up by these illegal Bangladeshi immigrants. The persistence of this vacuum could have been fatal for our economy so one can safely say that they have contributed in some manner to Pakistan’s economy. The local administration is directly involved in this conspiracy of silence but only a small elite of industrialists have derived direct economic benefits.
Most problems have economic overtones, wherever there are more employment opportunities exist in the world, there are less law and order problems. There is no use casting blame and aspersion on the excesses of the past or its supposed perpetrators, there was never any concerted mass discrimination against any ethnic group, there was only discrimination by the rich and/or the elite against the poor and impoverished of all nationalities, whether Mohajir, Sindhi, Punjabi, Pathan, Balochi, etc. Our vision must then work to dissipate this population saturation to offset economic disparity. If the cities of Sindh are saturated, the Pakistan coastline is open for economic exploitation. Because of the opening of Central Asia, economic emancipation for our people may be at hand provided we all pull together and refuse to get embroiled into debilitating invective and argument. We must take into consideration that the ethnic Sindhi is an endangered species in the urban areas of his own Province and feels he may also become a minority soon. The fears of the sons of the soil must be assuaged as the core of any solution.
The rule of law must be restored to the Province of Sindh, we cannot sit back and allow the rape of morality to overtake the mass conscience of the people of Pakistan. Those who perpetrate heinous crimes have no place in our society claiming to be Islamic. The feeling persists that crimes against humanity which we are increasingly being made aware of are being ignored by the law enforcing agencies or even being perpetuated by them. Effective steps must be taken to force-multiply our reaction or this perception may not be enough to contain anarchy from spreading. The least we can do is to carry out social ostracisation of the criminal elements, eschewing their money and power. This is easier said than done in a society which only recognizes wealth as the final arbiter of a place in that society. When morality is thus compromised at the altar of greed and symbolism, the implementation of justice becomes selective. Whenever justice is deemed to be partial, its inherent credibility becomes suspect. The solution to Sindh’s problem lies in even-handedly rooting out the extremists and criminals from our society including those within the administration who cannot be distinguished from criminals. Why are the Military Intelligence (MI) Detachments in Karachi so successful in catching kidnappers and criminals in great numbers in disassociation of the civil law enforcing agencies? Why have the police and its associate agencies failed to be that effective? The answer is simple, the genesis of the law and order may have roots in the shortcomings and discrepancies of the past but the present portents have a more immediate background. When criminals function in the name of justice, justice becomes a crime.
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