The scholar does not mince words; it is his conviction that leads him to many a dismissal based on the prism through which he has chosen to see and show everything; tact is the word missing from his lexicon; the rush to out the truth takes the better of him at times

The scholar does not mince words; it is his conviction that leads him to many a dismissal based on the prism through which he has chosen to see and show everything; tact is the word missing from his lexicon; the rush to out the truth takes the better of him at times. In this, Dr Khan can be seen exploiting the art of dialectics to his advantage, and why not? He owes this to traumatic years spent in journalism in this country under Gen Ziaul Haq’s martial law. However, the overbearing morality and righteousness guiding his work leaves no room for considering more worldly factors such as a sense of “doing business” as the driving force which, at times, shaped a given community’s and the state’s response in the forms of state and ethnic nationalisms. If the whole gambit weren’t beneficial for a myriad of establishment and ethnic players, they’d all have been out of business by now.

The four chapters that follow examine the rise and fall of the Pakhtoon ethnic nationalism and the rise and rise of those of the Baloch, the Sindhi and the Mohajir. Punjabis have been deliberately kept out of a study dedicated to their cause because Dr Khan insists that there has “never [been] an ethnic movement [in Punjab] confronting the state.” This is well nigh true; but the assertion leaves a rather risque, simplistic impression on the reader; one that also leads the writer to conclude that Punjabis are “the most privileged ethnic group, with control of state power.”

Fact remains that the most chauvinistic of Punjabi rulers backing the establishment belonged to the landed, feudal class, with the middle class only briefly finding its voice heard under Z.A. Bhutto’s brand of short-lived, populist politics. It could not last because it not only roughened feathers of feudals elsewhere, but also because Punjab under Hanif Ramay began to push for more provincial autonomy alongside the other provinces, where such demands were, perhaps, too readily and mistakenly linked to ethic nationalisms.

Just because Nawab Akbar Bugti or Mumtaz Bhutto, for instance, wrap their demands in the garb of Baloch and Sindhi nationalism, respectively, one should not let go of the urge to scratch the surface and get to what lies beneath, and which forms the core of the politics pursued by many nationalist leaders: the equation of feudal interest with the ethnic national. The so-called Seraiki nationalism in pockets of Punjab, by comparison, has remained a non-starter, because the feudal lords from the Seraiki belt have remained busy collecting the spoils in the name of Punjab. Middle class leaders like Dr Mubashir Hasan in the past and Aitezaz Ahsan now, for instance, continue to be co-opted by the feudal Bhuttos and the Makhdooms who ironically have donned the mantle of progressive politics, where there is none to be seen in the working of the People’s Party itself.

Dismissing to a large degree ethnic nationalisms as based on myths, Dr Khan does not question the motives of some of the ethnic nationalists, save Altaf Hussain’s. But even here, he cites the more logical raison d’etre of the MQM: to keep the privileges of the erstwhile Mohajir elite that together with ‘Punjabis’, as opposed to a Punjabi elite, calls the shots. There is a serious lack of distinction being made here between an elite within an ethnic group championing the cause of the people at large, who have remained as distanced and alienated from centres of power as ever. In this Punjabi masses have been as much the victim of an elitist state nationalism as any other ethnic group. The implication inherent in the thesis that all Punjabis are affluent and beneficiaries of state nationalism and hence the absence of an ethnic nationalist movement in Punjab needs to be put in the category of myths, and re-evaluated as such.

The book nevertheless is an original investigation, one of few, if any, into the phenomenon of ethnic versus state nationalism in Pakistan. It should be recommended as necessary reading at the graduate level, with a foot note that says, “a perspective on the subject”. A reading of Dr Tariq Rahman’s work on the development of popular language movements, including one for Punjabi, can complement Dr Khan’s study.