Book Review by Dr. Mubarak Ali
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Muhajir As
the Muhajir factor has become very important in Pakistani politics , the
need to understand its role and its impact on our society has also
become important. It is always difficult to analyze any current problem
objectively and impartially because one is either personally or
emotionally involved in it, and that makes him prejudiced .This is fully
applied to the case of Muhajirs in Pakistan. Their politics is looked,
judged and assessed quite differently by different groups, political
parties, and generally by people of the four provinces. Similarly
Muhajirs have their own point of view. One
of the prime objections on the Muhajirs
is: why do they call
themselves Mohajir? It is
generally the case that a name is always given
by a nation or community to another community. The name Muhajir
is attributed to the immigrants by the inhabitants of Pakistan. Besides
being called Muhajir, they are
also called Panahguzin, Panahgir ( meaning of both is: asylum
seeker ); some pejorative names as Makkar( locust ) is also given
to the Muhajirs. As far as the Muhajir themselves are concerned, they
chose the term Muhajir
because in the Islamic history it has some background and meaning. It is a respectable word because it was used for the early Muslims
of Makka who migrated to Madina. Therefore by adopting this name the
community wanted to get a dignified status and demanded from their
counter part the same treatment as the Ansar of Madinah had done to the
refugees of Makka. .No doubt, later on attempts were made to change this
name and assume new ones such as Sindhi or Urdu speaking Sindhis, but
this new name could not get popularity and now they don’t have any
other choice but retain the old name. The author of the book prefers to
call the community as Panahguzin rather than Muhajir. His contention is
that keeping in view the background of Islamic history, Muhajirs, in the
early history of Islam, migrated only on the basis
of ideological commitment which, in his opinion , is not the case
of Muhajirs of Pakistan. By denying the status of the community not to
call themselves Muhajir but Pahahguzin, he not only reduces their status
but also the very base of their migration to a new homeland. The
community repeatedly claimed that its members
migrated from their ancestral homeland only because of ideology
and not because of any material or worldly benefits. There
are two excellent Besides it , there are a number of issues which should
be discussed to understand the psyche of the Muhajir community.The
problem is that instead of discussing the issues concerning the
community logically and scientifically, the author gives an exhaustive
history of the Pakistan movement, which he narrates
conventionally. Although, there is now considerable material to
understand the growing conflict between Muhajir and the Sindhis, the
author has not consulted other source material books which give detail
analysis of the socio-polical, and economic causes of the ethnic
conflict in Sindh. One is Mahmud Mirza’s
“ Aaj ka Sindh” and the other is by Shazad Manzar called
“Sindh kay naasli masail”. In this respect, the book under review is
neither coherent nor analytical. The other weakness which I find is its
language. The author belongs to Delhi where knowledge of good language
was regarded a virtue of a noble family. And a good language meant
poetic and versified
language. The whole book is written in this language along with verses
of famous Urdu poets. Those
who cherish the quality of language often produce weak content devoid of
a solid theme. In my opinion, academic books should be written in simple
academic language rather than in a poetic one. The
other weakness of the book is that structurally it is not well
organized. There are repetitions and contradictions within the
text. Questions are
raised but left unanalysed.
After reading the whole book, I
find that the early Muslim leadership is not challenged and
more blame is hurled on the later politicians and military
leadership.What I believe is important is to challenge the
farsightedness and sagacity of the early leadership who failed to foresee
the future problems.They involved
people emotionally to achieve their ends. It is well nigh
impossible unless we demythologize our heroes and point out their
mistakes. There is also a need to challenge the whole process of the
Partition. Without understanding the past, it is difficult to understand
the present. It
is also important to understand the failure of religious nationalism and
emergence of language nationalism. Muhajirs like other nationalities
made Urdu as a symbol of their identity. If the language nationalism is
appealing the different nationalities of Pakistan , the answer should be
searched in the failure of two The Nation theory. The title of the book is also significant. It is the mausoleum of Qaid-I-Azam which symbolizes the Muhajir community as dead end . For them there Agay samandar hai. Moreover, the tomb also symbolizes the sense of confinement and loneliness. This is what the Muhajir community is facing in Pakistan.
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