We are a few months away from the general election, which, signs tell us, if held, will be fought with an astonishing ferocity in the face of nasty political polarisation created by the forces ensconced in the formal and informal power structures with their open and hidden agendas. Season of the election whenever it descends on this country is a time when our vision is further blurred by the ‘Kukkar Kheh’ (a Punjabi phrase that literally means the dust raised by roosters) raised by panjandrums of power and politics. It’s a time when the dead rise from their graves and angels appear in the thin air reminding people what they lost in the past could gain in the future provided they vote a particular set of politicians into power.

One of the issues surfaced in the run-up to the forthcoming election is that of carving new provinces. A small breakaway faction of the ruling PML-N in the Punjab, comprising Seraiki and Punjabi speaking political opportunists who have nothing to offer to the people in terms of concrete programme, scrambled to raise the slogan of Janubi Punjab Suba (South Punjab Province) to garner electoral support in their constituencies from some segments of the middle class in the south. The root of the issue is in a specific nature of historical development of Punjab, centralisation of authority and absence of good governance.

When you visit any federating unit of Pakistan what stares you in the face is diversity; linguistic, ethnic, racial, religious and geographic. The phenomenon is not Pakistan specific. The defining feature of the whole of South Asia is diversity which is simultaneously a source of enrichment and a threatening chaos. The situation, at best, results in an uneasy or tense coexistence of diverse communities and, at worst, in an open enervating conflict that rips them apart. The middle class proponents of a new province in Punjab are desperate to raise the political temperature in order to intensify the movement and their opponents try hard to put a damper on it. An ugly expression of this ill-informed debate on the issue can be seen on the social media where activists, pro and anti, intensify their campaign quoting right and wrong reasons in a free-for-all debate that makes one puke because deep-rooted lingual biases and ethnic hatred are displayed with sickening relish in the garb of political views to mislead the guileless.

Realising the grave implications for the federation, Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi very wisely intervened last week to inject some sanity into the hullabaloo which is getting weird by the day.

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“Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi has invited all the political parties to a dialogue to reach a consensus on the issue of creation of new provinces in accordance with the demands of the people of Punjab, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan,” reported this paper last Sunday. In order to reach a consensus political parties and public representatives need to consider a plethora of factors that constitute each community and federating unit. The most significant among the factors are language, ethnicity, geography and historical rights as a separate administrative unit or potential of being a viable separate administrative unit. Take, for instance, the case of south Punjab province.

As the election nears, phony patricians and unruly hoi polloi of politics of south Punjab and provinces, especially that of Sindh, cry themselves hoarse to make carving of a new province from Punjab an election slogan but at the same time, with a thin veneer of hypocrisy, declare that they want it on administrative basis, not on the basis of language or ethnicity. Why not a Seraiki Province based on language and ethnicity? It’s to be remembered that till the 1960s writers and poets of that region wrote in a standard literary language they themselves called Punjabi. And all the clans and castes, barring a few Baloch tribes on the periphery, share their ancestral roots with, what they call, the Punjabis.

Sindhi and Pashtun political parties, in particular, fear for the fallout if Seraiki province is created on the basis of language. If they make language the raison d’etre of a new province, they would be asked a simple question; why not make the district of Dera Ismail Khan and Sindd’s Seraiki speaking adjacent areas part of this new province! One is sure Mr. Bilawal would start shouting; ‘Marsoon Marsoon, Sindh nah Desoon (We will die but will not concede any part of Sindh to anyone else)’. They firmly believe Punjab is up for grabs as there is no one to defend the legitimate rights of Punjab. Any conflict however small it may be on the political landscape of Punjab is a source of immense vicarious pleasure for them.