Mohajir Ethnic Nationalism in Pakistan: El Dorado Gone Sour

"To build Pakistan it was necessary to cover up Indian history, to deny that Indian centuries layjust beneath the surface of Pakistani Standard Time. The past was rewritten; there was nothingelse to be done. Who commandeered the job of rewriting history? – The immigrants, themohajirs. In what language? – Urdu and English, both imported tongues, although one travelledless distance than the other. It is possible to see the subsequent history of Pakistanas a duel between two layers of time, the obscured world forcing its way back throughwhat-had-been-imposed." (Salman Rushdie)¹The Urdu-speaking Indian Muslim migrants, Mohajirs, who migrated from the Muslimminority provinces of India to Pakistan after the partition of British India, were themost ardent supporters of the state nationalism of Pakistan until the 1970s. In the late1970s, however, they began to think of their separate ethnic identity and in 1984formed their own political group, the Mohajir Quami Movement (MQM), to assert thatidentity. By the end of the 1980s the MQM had not only succeeded in winning the overwhelmingsupport of the Mohajirs but had also become an increasingly organised andviolent political group, turning the major towns of Sindh province into the most dangerousplaces in Pakistan.