Pakistan_ A Hard Country - Anatol Lieven [155]
Many Seraiki-speakers are in fact by origin from Baloch tribes. How for example is one to define former President Sardar Farooq Khan Leghari in terms of identity? Is he a Punjabi (the province where his clan holds its land); a Seraiki (by language); a Baloch (by ethnic descent and tribal identification); a Punjabi-speaking Pathan (by marriage); a Pakistani (having worked as a Pakistani official, spent most of his life in national politics and ended as president of Pakistan); or, at bottom and perhaps most importantly of all, hereditary chieftain of his branch of the Leghari tribe? So ‘Punjab’ contains numerous overlapping identities, in a way that helps heavily to qualify ‘Punjabi’ dominance over Pakistan as a whole.
LAHORE, THE HISTORIC CAPITAL
For a land which cradled one of the very first human urban civilizations, Pakistan is remarkably lacking in historic cities, and even those that do exist often have few historic monuments. What war has spared, the rivers have often destroyed, either by washing away cities or by changing course and leaving them isolated and waterless.
The great exception is Lahore, ancient capital of Punjab. The old city of Lahore contains one of the greatest Mughal mosques, and one of their greatest forts, as well as a host of lesser monuments, including the tombs of both Sultan Qutb-ud-Din Aybakh (died 1210 CE), founder of the Muslim ‘Slave Dynasty’ which ruled from Delhi, and of the Mughal emperor Jehangir. Lahore also contains some of the greatest monuments of British rule in the former Indian empire.
In fact, Lahore looks and feels much more like the capital of a major state than does Islamabad – and in the view of Pakistan’s non-Punjabi ethnicities Lahore also often behaves that way. It is some ten times the size of Islamabad, and Pakistan’s largest city by far after Karachi – just as the province of Punjab is home to almost 56 per cent of Pakistan’s population (more than 100 million people) and forms its industrial, agricultural and military core. Punjabis on average are considerably richer than the inhabitants of the other provinces (though, as will be seen, with huge regional variations within Punjab). In Sindh, Balochistan and the NWFP, more than half the population is listed as being below the poverty line. In Punjab, the figure is around one-quarter. If Pakistan is to be broken from within by Islamist revolt, then it is in Punjab that this would have to happen, not among the Pathans of the Frontier; for Pakistan is the heart, stomach and backbone of Pakistan. Indeed, in the view of many of its inhabitants, it is Pakistan.
As described in Chapter 6, the old Punjab elites (themselves often not so old, having been in many cases the product of British land grants) have been greatly changed in recent decades by the entry of very large numbers of ‘new men’ into their ranks. However, these new families have frequently intermarried with old families from the same ‘castes’, and some of those old families also retain considerable wealth and, more importantly, great local power through the leadership of their clans and kinship networks, or the inheritance of shrines and religious prestige.
This can give Punjabi politics a united and clannish air, and covering Punjabi elections in the company of well-born and well-connected Punjabi journalists can be a bit like attending a family party, albeit a pretty quarrelsome one: ‘Will Booby or Janoo get the family seat this time, do you think? Will Bunty get a ministry at last? And isn’t it soooo sad about Puphi Aunty’s marriage?’5
The participants and household members do not even necessarily have to be human. During my last visit, I listened as a great Punjabi aristocratic and political lady conducted an impassioned phone conversation about Punjab politics. I was increasingly bewildered by the fact that not only did the conversation keep switching between English and Urdu, but an increasing number of horses seemed to be wandering into it along with the