ELECTIONS '98
COMMENTARY
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ARCHIVES

The Rediff Special/ Syed Firdaus Ashraf

Plane to Pakistan

When Rediff Senior Correspondent Syed Firdaus Ashraf travelled to Karachi early this month to meet up with relatives who had migrated to Pakistan, he was unprepared for what he encountered. This is his memoir of that memorable visit.

I belt myself into my seat. And the first thing I hear is the PIA air-hostess announcing that we should pray to Allah for the safety of the flight.

Which is not exactly what I need to hear, as I belt myself in for my first-ever international flight.

So I sit there, within the confines of the Pakistan International Airlines flight taking me from Bombay's Sahar Airport to Karachi, in Pakistan. And within me is a conflict of emotions -- on the one hand, the huge high of knowing that I will shortly get to meet relatives, on the other side of the border, who I have never seen in my life till date; on the other hand the apprehension caused by the air-hostess's exhortation, and chorus of prayers, in Arabic, going up from my fellow passengers.

Just before takeoff, I had my second encounter with the problems associated with international travel -- the air hostess stood at the centre of the aisle, saying a lot of things with a very serious expression on her face. Unfortunately, I didn't understand a word, since it was all said in chaste Urdu.

The flight was pleasant, the time passed with breakfast and the anti-India editorials in the Pakistani papers we were given to read en route. As we neared Karachi, I looked out the window and saw what looked like a lot of marsh, followed by a long stretch of desert. The air hostess told me we were at that point over the Rann of Kutch.

As I listened to the announcement that we were about to land at Karachi airport, the thought that came prominently to mind was that I was about to set foot on the land for which over two million Indian Muslims had sacrificed their lives, the land where, prior to 1947, Indian Muslims had hoped to practise their faith, their lifestyle, openly.

The birthplace of Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah. A land where cow slaughter would not be an issue. Ninety minutes from Bombay by flight, but light years away in the sense that it is all but impossible to make the journey across the border.

This is the land to which my relatives fled, in 1947 and thereafter, after the infamous riots in Bihar.

The flight duly landed, and I stepped out of the plane, and into the precincts of the Quaid-i-Azam Airport, Karachi. It was 1730 hours, Pakistan time.

When I got to the customs enclosure, I saw, in the area where people throng to receive incoming passengers, a board reading 'Welcome Firdaus Ashraf'. Having cleared customs, I went out, making straight for the board, and met, for the first time, all my relatives, who had gathered there to greet me.

We went straight to my grandaunt's home and found more relatives waiting for me. My grandmother's sister promptly burst into tears when she saw me. The place was sheer bedlam. Relatives by the dozen, supplemented by the neighbours, all there to see me, and talk to me. Which they did -- for the most part in chaste Urdu, which left me clueless.

I finally had to tell them that all this chatter was going above my head, and that they had to talk to me in simple, colloquial Urdu if I was to understand them. This, in turn, shocked them, and they wanted to know if Muslims in India didn't understand good Urdu. Not really, I told them, pointing out that Urdu is restricted to some areas, and adding that back home in India, in my immediate family, no one of my generation could speak Urdu.

Needless to say, they were shocked.

The next morning, I boarded a local bus to complete the formality of reporting my name at the Karachi police headquarters. And listened, in some bemusement, to I love my India from Pardes, being played on the music system. Judging by the way many of my fellow passengers were humming it, the song seemed quite popular.

The Mohajir Problem

The Mohajirs are essentially people who migrated from India to Pakistan.

Today, they believe they have not been accepted as Pakistani citizens, or treated on par, by the Punjabis, Sindhis, Pathans and Baluchis. The feeling among the Mohajirs is that it was because of them that Pakistan was created in the first place, and that it is unfair that they are being insulted and humiliated in a land that is as much theirs as anyone else's.

One thing I noticed is that while the hatred among different sections in Pakistan is quite palpable, no one section openly criticises the others. There is a fear psychosis -- a kind of siege mentality -- in the minds of the Mohajirs, who believe they are under constant observation by the intelligence agencies and can expect to be arrested at any moment.

Ninetynine per cent of the Mohajirs I met were supporters of the Altaf Hussain-led faction of the Muttahida Quami Movement. The rival faction, the Mohajir Quami Movement led by Afaque Ahmed, didn't seem quite as popular -- in fact, I was told by several different people that Ahmed floated his party with the help of Pakistan's intelligence agencies, only in order to crush the Altaf group.

The enmity of these two groups is one of the major causes for violence in Karachi -- the rivalry between Altaf and Afaque having turned Karachi into a killing field. So much so that the government has demarcated certain areas as off limits to Altaf's supporters.

Altaf himself is in exile, self-imposed, in London. His fear, apparently, is that he will be killed by Pakistan's secret services if he sets foot inside the country, in the same manner as Benazir's brother Murtaza Bhutto was killed. However, many Pakistani citizens also believe the Research and Analysis Wing, the premier Indian intelligence service, is behind the mayhem in Karachi.

Meanwhile, the unemployed Mohajir youth are very upset with the Pakistan authorities, and they feel their parents blundered by coming to Pakistan. This feeling stems from a perception that they are being discriminated against, that they are not being given proper representation in jobs and such. A lot of them, thus, have developed pro-India leanings, and talk of Akhand Bharat! They hold the view that the entire sub-continent will benefit if trade prospers between the three countries, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Ironically, though Pakistan is a theocracy, regionalism and not religion rules. Thus, when a death by violence is reported, people read the name and go, "Oh, a Punjabi was killed... a Sindhi died..." and so on. It is never a Pakistani, a Muslim, who has died, but always a person from one or the other region. Many Mohajirs, in fact, told me that they had been advised by people from the other regions to return to India.

In this, I found shades of the RSS-Shiv Sena slogans during the days of the Bombay riots, when I repeatedly heard the war cry Kamar me lungi muh me paan, bhaggao sale Pakistan.

Given this region-based diversity, there is still a unity among Karachi-ites, when it comes to economics. Thus, the natives of Karachi feel that 80 per cent of the wealth is generated from their city, and that the rest of Pakistan benefits from their industry.

Plane to Pakistan, continued

Tell us what you think of this feature