One of the oldest movements for a separate province is found in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s districts in Hazara division on the left side of the river Sindhu which is being suppressed by coercive action. Some years back the movement led by octogenarian, Baba Haider Zaman, brought out peaceful supporting crowds on to the streets and KP police, controlled by Pathan elite in Peshawar(a city which is basically Hindko speaking), used excessive force against the protesters, resulting in several fatalities. There is also a simmering demand for a new province in Sindh by the diverse communities of Karachi and adjoining areas which evokes irrationally angry reaction by the PPP and ethnic Sindhi nationalists. It’s a glaring example of double standard by Sindhi politicians who insist that dividing Punjab is kosher while dividing Sindh is a taboo. Some of them openly confess that dividing Punjab is the only way to reduce its political and economic clout in the federation. They forget that ‘cutting Punjab to size’ will have consequences, intended and unintended.

The present day Pakistani Punjab, homogeneously diverse and diversely homogenous, is a product of evolutionary and historical process which can only be reversed at a great cost. India is a good case for study. One may argue that if Indian Punjab can be divided into three why Pakistani Punjab can’t have a new province carved out of it. East Punjab is special case; the Sikh elite with its blinkered vision wanted a Sikh majority province and thus ended up alienating Hindus of Haryana and Himachal Pradesh. Now holed up in small a territory which is denied its share of water, the defiant minority rues the day they achieved the separate Sikh province.

Uttar Pradesh (UP), one of India’s cowbelt states gargantuan in size, is quite relevant to our debate. It had a population of 204m in 2012 (more than the population of entire Pakistan). It’s a well-known fact that whosoever wins the UP, rules India. India hasn’t decided to cut the UP into pieces simply because it’s humongous and thus overshadows the rest of its other states. Another historical fact that shouldn’t be ignored is that India is a union while Pakistan is a federation. India wasn’t created by its states. Pakistan emerged as a sovereign state with the vote of five historical entities (erstwhile East Bengal being one of them), four of which constitute present-day Pakistan.

Pakistani state has a paradoxical nature. It can be oppressive to the point of being tyrannical but can also be vacuous to the point of being irrelevant. It can suppress the people for voicing their legitimate grievances and can be indifferent to parochial demands raised by charlatans that impinge on national cohesion. If and when heavyweights share the high table with the prime minister in order to achieve a consensus on the issue in question, they must keep in mind the ground realities of the federating units. The formula evolved shouldn’t be Punjab specific rather it should be applicable to all units. That’s what fairness demands. If language and ethnicity are accepted as the component of the formula, it should have a decisive weight as a yardstick if and when there is a demand for a separate province in any unit. If the administrative/public convenience forms the core of formula, it must be made applied uniformly throughout the country. Some other factors such as under-development/uneven-development may also be considered.

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Let’s have cursory look at the present situation. When it comes to language and ethnicity, Punjab is most homogeneous. If two persons, hailing from the opposite ends of Punjab, one from Rahim Yar Khan and other from Sialkot, start conversing in their own mother tongues, they can understand each other without interpreter or translator. Can a Gilgiti speaking person from the north and a Hindko speaking person from Kohat in KP communicate with each other if they speak their own languages? Urdu is Greek to a Thari and the Thari is unintelligible for an Urdu speaking Karachi-based Muhajir. A Brahvi can’t communicate to a Pashtun and vice versa.

Again in the matter of ethnicity and kinship, Punjab’s different regions are organically interlinked. Jats, Rajputs, Arains, Awans and Baloch of the south have kinship ties with their counterparts in the central, northern and western parts of the Punjab. Even people of Arab origins of the south such as Syed have blood relations with their clans settled in the other parts of Punjab. Can you find such a commonality between Baltis and Pashtuns in KP or between Sindhis and Urdu speaking Muhajirs in Sindh? Makranis of Gwadar have little to share with Pashtuns in terms of ethnicity and racial kinship. Demographics of the Punjab show that there is an increased mixed population due to the establishment of canal network in the early 20th century, internal migration and the Partition of India. The results of recent census are pending but a safe estimate is that overall percentage of non-Seraiki speaking is more than 45pc in the south. In some of the districts such as Vehari, Bahawalnagar, Khanewal, and Rahim Yar Khan, Punjabis and Rohtakis outnumber Seraikis. These may be hard and unpalatable realities but must not be lost sight of when deciding the destiny of Punjab.

There is an eerie feeling of déjà vu. Sindh-based PPP played the card of Seraiki province in the last general elections in 2013. Despite its vaudeville with apparently all the right noises, the PPP got wiped out from the south Punjab whose case it claimed to advocate. Powers that be should remember that testing the Punjab’s tensile strength beyond a certain point would prove counterproductive. Let’s us wait with bated breath for the results of the forthcoming elections, which, if free, fair and transparent, will demonstrate how popular is the issue at grassroots level.

If creating new provinces becomes necessary at all, politicians and members of the proposed bureaucratic committee or commission engaged with the task must work with economists, sociologists, ethnographers, linguists to take a holistic view of such a complex situation of the country and forge a consensus. They would be well-advised to remember the words of one of the greatest sages of Punjab and pioneer of Punjab’s literary tradition. ‘I am here to stitch, not to cut,” said Baba Farid when presented with a pair of scissors as a gift. — soofi01@hotmail.com (Concluded)

Note: Punjab Notes will start appearing on Mondays from the next week. The next article by this writer will be printed on May 7.