Racism and racial prejudice in context of Pakistan

First things first, racism isn’t the same everywhere. The structures resulting in racism are determined spatial-temporally. In that there can’t be one definite criteria or a scope of racism. One thing remains definite and clear though: racism is structural. It is not a betrayal of racial prejudice or hatred by an individual or even a group of people. But if that group of people holds power – social, political or economic – over the group toward which the racial prejudice is shown then it becomes racism. The operative word here is power. When power of the state is arranged in such a way that it places one group of people or a region (dominated by one group of people) over the rest then the result is structural discrimination (toward the rest).

Now, this arrangement of power can be historical in that it can reflect a historical continuity of discrimination or it can be an innovative invention by the elite for the ease of governance. No matter what the case is, it always gives an existential privilege (in a structural arrangement of power) to one region or a group of people. This existential privilege may not be asked for as it can be a convenient instrument of the ruling elite to privilege one and to discriminate others because the ruling elite is drawn from and based on the first group. The morphology of power can be flexible though. It can have spaces of flexibility for ‘upward mobility’ of some people and classes from the discriminated or oppressed regions and people. That becomes either an argument for representational power i.e  that there is no discrimination because there are people of that identity in power, or it becomes an argument for substitution of a whole people by few people. Though identities are socially constructed, in such a structural arrangement of power the identities become fixed and certain linguistic-cultural identities become a bane and others a boon.

Locating racism in Pakistan can be a hard exercise or often a circular one. Historically the nations (people having a certain linguistic-cultural identity) have not been superior to one or another. There had been empires but those empires have not subjected one nation to the other permanently, because they were not operating, consciously, as representative of one nation or the other. The nations which now constitute Pakistan have been historically limited to their lands or regions and thus whatever arrangement there is has little historic tracing. An argument can be made that certain regions were central parts of the previous empires and seats of power (like Lahore in the Mughal empire) while some others (like the Pashtun and Baloch lands) were either ignored or oppressed but then that resulted in different level of development and not of subjugating one nation to the other. The British had their own objectives of power and their legacy has survived them in terms of organizing of the Pakistani state and of arrangement and distribution of power within Pakistan.

Let me have a definition of racism here: a structural discrimination against a group of people on the basis of their identity (always socially constructed like cultural-linguistic, skin color and such). In Pakistan that racism is well and alive. This racism is not a result of centuries of slavery or of measures as inhuman and as oppressive that of slavery but it has grave and observable consequences for a lot many groups of people. The new state of Pakistan borrowed the concept of strategic core and of strategic periphery from the British. For the British the core of the British Indian Empire lay down deep in India and the frontier regions were considered as strategic periphery. Pakistan modified that doctrine because, for the officers of the army trained by the British and they having the power in the new state, was a natural procession of policy.  The strategic core has to be protected while the strategic periphery has to be laid out as an extended border. Thus, the central and northern Punjab became the core (for the obvious reasons of having the army installations and the army recruitment there) and the now Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (including ex-Fata) and Balochistan became strategic peripheries whose only purpose was to protect the core.

This strategic policy was complemented by the logic of capitalist development. Capitalism has this tendency to divide the market into metropolis-satellite divide. The economic activity, capital investment and development are focused in the metropolis and thus the development of the metropolis is relationally linked to the underdevelopment of the satellite/periphery. This logic came into full manifestation with the policies of ‘economic advantage of greed’ and ‘functional utility of inequality’, the rational that undermined all of the policies of economic and social development of the Ayub’s regime and even before that. (The graphs and charts of the investment and development funds can be found in Khalid bin Saeed’s brilliant book, The Political System of Pakistan.)The lion’s share of development went to Punjab to encourage capitalist competition under the logic that when capital is divided it fragments into useless chips resulting in no push in the economic development of the country.

Under the dual forces of strategic core-periphery discrepancy and of metropolis-satellite logic of economic development, a cultural hierarchy also took shape. In that cultural hierarchy one set of narratives and stories were given preference over others. The cultural establishment undertook to set a tone for cultural debate which either erased or underwrote the rich cultural and linguistic traditions of the country. Urdu became not only the lingua franca but also the cultural language and to enter into the realm of literary the debate has to take place in Urdu. Also, because of the desire to seek  legitimacy the new Pakistani state privileged one set of stories of pain i.e of partition over the rest. And over time the literature and cultural activity was limited not only to that language but to a set of narrative stories who were driven by the needs of a cultural legitimacy of the elite of the state. In there too the periphery (the Pashtuns and the Balochs) were erased out as they never had access to Urdu as their literary language nor the dominant literary themes (determined by the cultural establishment) of the time were relevant to their lives and experiences.    

Combined that with the stereotyping the culture and media came of those on the periphery. Being a significant minority the Pashtuns were the dominant target for that stereotyping. The stereotyping first began in caricaturing and clowning of Pashtuns and then later the tropes of Pashtuns being terrorists and brutes were added. The forces of economic underdevelopment as a result of the policies explained made Pashtuns and of other ethnic minorities like Balochs to migrate to the capitalist metropolis and the strategic core. Having been successfully ‘Otherized’ by the media and cultural stereotyping and erased by the literary establishment they became easy targets for discrimination. Thus the discrimination faced by Pashtuns and by other groups from the periphery is doubly-edged. First, they are deprived of their share in economic development and their culture and experience are erased in the national cultural debates. Secondly, they are produced according to set demeaning and dehumanizing stereotypes in the mainstream and thus their humanity is washed away. It is a racism by the state and of that racism one region and the people belonging to that region i.e Punjab are benefitting the most.

But it is not as straightforward in Pakistan to locate and point to instances of racism. First, as explained earlier the argument of representational power is used ie people from this ethnicity or that had been part of the power structure so how can they be discriminated against? And second, what Michael-Rolph Troulliot has called, formulae of banalization are used. That goes as what of the other discrimination that people of the dominant or privileged ethnicity/identity face. And in this nitty gritty of exhaustive recounting of instances the structural racism that some groups of people face is erased. The power arrangement can be flexible to co-opt a section of the oppressed people for logic of its own and then it can also oppress the people who it predominantly give benefits to but that happens under a wider arrangement of structural discrimination against other groups of people.

It can be witnessed that Pashtuns, Balochs and people of other ethnic minorities have been the victims of racism in Pakistan. Pashtuns especially more in the wake of war on terror as they face racial profiling in cities of Pakistan. The need of the day is to first admit that there exists racism in Pakistan and then to challenge the structures resulting in that racial discrimination.