We have millions of expatriates of Pakistani origins settled all over the world. Millions and millions more are ready to leave the country given half a chance. The myriad factors of economic, religious and political nature have created a situation which forces people to look to alien societies as a refuge or a greener pasture. Our concern here, however, is not to unearth multiple factors that accelerate the process of migration but rather what our people when settled abroad do or are forced to make the kinds of choices they make in their bid to carve a future in alien lands.

Remember the great classical poet Sultan Bahu? ‘Shaala musafir koi na theeway, kakh jinhan theen bhaaray hu [May no one be an itinerant / even twigs are weightier than them]’, he says in one of his famous verses. This is how the situation of an alien or a stranger was perceived in yesteryears. Travel was undertaken by people on the opposite extremes. They used to be either highly privileged or the ones who lost their shelter in their homeland due to various reasons. The situation hasn’t changed substantially. The Pakistani immigrant community largely comprises the rich and the vulnerable. The former includes the families of business people, well-placed civil and military officers, and highly skilled professionals. The bulk of the community is from the economic migrants, persecuted religious minorities and independent-minded political/rights activists who are no longer tolerated in their own land because of their dissenting views. The affluent and those who make to upper crust are generally comfortable with the values and social norms of their adopted country. They master the language of their new homeland and adopt its way of life. They in fact try to integrate and succeed in doing so to a large extent.

Middle and working class people hardly try if ever to be a part of the mainstream. Their interaction is usually limited. They rarely meet people outside their workplace. Consequently at best they live amongst their ilk and at worst prefer social isolation which inevitably results in their being ghettoized. What they dread most is the culture of the West where most of them have settled. Liberal cultural and socio-cultural values are their nightmare as they entail openness, respect for gender rights and freedom in the matter of sexual choices. What they worry about most is their children, girls in particular. The very idea of their daughters marrying white men is scary. Horror of horrors, they tremble at the sight of their daughters marrying or running away with men of African origins. In the former case, the driving factor is difference in faith and culture, and in the latter the colour of skin. They would quote verse after verse from religious scriptures rightly asserting that Jews, Christians and Muslims share common religious traditions and culture but such a claim vanishes into thin air as soon as any of their girls declares her intent to marry a Jew or a Christian male she loves. The more conservative section of such people try to move back to Pakistan as soon as they realise their girls are about to be adult with the right to make their life choices.

Now a few words about the segment of enlightened middle and upper middle class expats! They generally are comfortable with Western culture or at least don’t resent the values the West upholds but nevertheless try to perpetuate their lingering connection with their ancestral country by celebrating its culture and language. We back home justifiably welcome and honour expats who write in Punjabi, Sindhi and Urdu or for that matter in any Pakistani language. But there is a contradiction here slightly hidden though. We generally demand of people who have come from elsewhere in Punjab and Sindh, for example, that they should integrate and be a part of mainstream i.e. learn the language of the adopted community and interiorise its socio-cultural values.

Urdu speakers and Punjabis settled in Sindh must learn Sindhi language and give up their separate identity. In Punjab, such a demand is subdued because of horrifying alienation of its people with their culture and language but question is raised by minuscule community of rights activists concerned with rejuvenation of people’s language and culture.

In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a person is not accepted as Pashtun who doesn’t speak Pashto language and is indifferent to PakhtunWali [Tribal code of Pashtuns]. We like the opposite of it to happen when it comes to expats; we expect them to retain their separate linguistic and cultural identity instead of integrating with the mainstream of the society they live in. Doesn’t our attitude smack of double standard?

In our region/ province, we want the minority to integrate with the majority’s way of life and when it comes to the West we expect our people settled there to retain their exclusive ancestral identity rooted in the past in a land they have abandoned. It’s hypocrisy that we want the best of what the advanced world offers in terms of rights and material benefits but are loath to own its values which are a product of its societal advancement. In other words, expats want to enjoy the prosperity of an advanced open society but are happy savouring the miasma of cultural narrowness of their abandoned primitive society. And we back home join them in lauding what is not laudable. The white far right is condemned for making the expats acquiesce to following the norms of their adopted home but we here in our homeland under the influence of narrow nationalism consider ourselves to be forward looking when demand that minorities settled in our regions do the same. We seem to be blind to the selective application of principles we love to flaunt. Do we pause and think that what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. The real question is how to create a balance between demands of integration with the mainstream and retention of inherited identities. The former is needed for greater social harmony and the latter for the retention of richness the diversity offers. So effort has to be made to reconcile the adopted with the inherited. 

— soofi01@hotmail.com