Pakistan_ A Hard Country - Anatol Lieven [130]
On the other hand, urbanization and economic development have given ordinary people in much of northern and central Punjab greater opportunities to exploit the system for their advantage. The power of the really big landowners and tribal chiefs has been much reduced, and has shifted to lower and much more numerous strata of rival landowners and local bosses. This gives people more chance to extract benefits by switching between them. Urbanization has also reduced the role of kinship, though not as greatly as standard models predict.
A combination of the weakness of the state and the power of kinship is one critical reason why urbanization has had a much smaller impact on political patterns and structures than one might otherwise have expected. For in the cities, albeit not as much as in the countryside, you also need protection from the police, the courts and politically linked urban gangs.
Moreover, rather than a new urban population emerging, what we have seen so far is huge numbers of peasants going to live in the cities while remaining culturally peasants. They remain deeply attached to their kinship groups, and they still need their kinship groups to help them for many of the same reasons they needed them in the countryside. Underlying all this is the fact that so much of the urban population remains semi-employed or informally employed, rather than moving into modern sectors of the economy – because these usually do not exist.
How kinship works politically in the cities was well summed up by a young office worker whom I asked in 1988 how he intended to vote in the forthcoming elections. He was from central Karachi, but of Punjabi origin:
I voted PPP in the last elections because it was the will of my uncle, the head of our family, though actually I think the Muslim League has done a better job in government. In previous elections, sometimes he said to vote PPP, sometimes Muslim League, depending on what they promise him, whether they have fulfilled promises in the past, and which of his friends or relatives is now important in that party. He owns a flour mill. He helps us find jobs, gives us the transport to take us to the polling booths, so it is natural that we give him our vote in return. He is respected because of his wealth and because his mother and aunt are the two eldest ladies in our family. Everyone listens to them on family matters. They arrange marriages and settle quarrels. They are very much respected, so uncle is too. But he decides in political matters. The women can’t do that because they don’t go out of the house. They can’t even remember which candidate is which. If you ask them the next day, they have forgotten which is which. That is why we have symbols for parties. They can’t read or write, so we tell them about politics. But I must obey my mother in all personal things. If she had said I can’t take up this job, then I can’t.
It is also worth noting that, as this passage reflects, while women play no role in the outward political behaviour of the family or clan, they are central and can even be dominant when it comes to its internal politics and the balance of prestige and power between its members. If this appeared in public, it would be a matter of shame and ridicule; but as long as it remains within the extended family, family izzat (honour, or prestige) is not threatened.
Anecdotal evidence (which you would be ill advised to ask about in detail) suggests that this can also sometimes be true of sexual relationships. In common with the traditions of the Jat caste from which many Punjabi Muslims were converted, an affair which, if it took place with an outsider, would be punished with death or mutilation, may be tacitly or even explicitly condoned if it is with a close