Last Sunday Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif had politicians in Sindh cackling like hens trying to protect their chicks against the hawk's attack. In an historically important statement acknowledging the need for cutting up Punjab into more provinces, he also said Karachi should be made a province.
The next day Sharif said he had not made a categorical statement that Karachi should be made a province; that his statement was tentative; meaning that not only Punjab but other provinces also needed to be cut up into smaller units for better administration.
His recognition that Punjab needed to be cut up was important historically since it is the first time that a Punjabi politician acknowledged the necessity for the division of the top heavy province.
No matter the cackling of politicians in Sindh, fact is that there is nothing sacred about the present demarcation of the four province. The PPP founder had also proposed the creation of 14 new provinces for better administration, and such divisions have been debated and discussed off and on since Bhutto's time.
There is, so to say, nothing official about the demand for creation of Karachi into a separate province, but such sentiments have been hotly debated in drawing rooms, clubs, colleges and the University of Karachi. The heated debates result from the fact that there are as many people in Karachi who want separation from Sindh as there are those who do not.
Just because the question has not been discussed openly on the political platform does not mean that the demand for separation of Karachi from Sindh is non existing. Just because the public has not taken to the streets, holding placards and angrily demanding Karachi be made into a separate province, does not mean such thoughts never occurre to Karachiites.
When the city gets stepmotherly treatment you can hear grumbling, otherwise the sentiment remains on the back-burner. The point is that desire for separatism is latent and at times flares up to be voiced loud and clear in every intellectual forum. Just because it has not been politically whipped up is no proof to the contrary. The sentiment is strong especially about inequities of admission & job quotas. The present lot of politicians are hardly intellectual. Furthermore, they do not have a stake in anything but politics. It does not suit any political party with a following in Karachi to voice the demand for separatism.
The MQM, which was the first to reject the idea voiced by Sharif, has ambitions to become a party representing all four provinces. If Karachi became a separate province MQM would be once again reduced to a mainly Karachi political party. The PPP really has no other stake in Karachi than political. In this city, whose life blood is commerce and industry, Mohajirs, Punjabis and Pathans are players while there is virtually no presence of native Sindhis in trade commerce and industry. However, the city is capital of Sindh and therefore they can lord it here whenever they are in power. Their claim, voiced by Khuro, that Karachi is an integral part of Sindh is merely a political fact. Karachi owes its commercial character to settlers and outsiders, starting with the British East India Company.
Pathans are the largest ethnic group in the city. Entering the city mostly as industrial labour during the Ayub era, they have settled here permanently, but it is only recently that the ANP has exploited this large ethnic presence politically. Naturally they would go along with the political sentiment that Karachi ought not to be separated from Sindh. This a strange opinion from the party from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa which did not protest when recently tentative opinions were voiced about creating more provinces out of KP.
A recent public rally in the Punjab which was well attended, led the MQM to think it can champion the demand of Saraikis for a separate province. So if a politician from Sindh can talk about breaking up the Punjab, may not a politician from the Punjab mention the creation of Karachi province?
The argument of Farooq Sattar is that the Saraiki Suba demand is well established as a public demand while there is no such public demand for a separate Karachi province. True, the demand is not there but the sentiment certainly is. If such a sentiment did not exist Sharif would not have mentioned it at all. He does not ask for a separate province of Peshawar, or Quetta for example. Being an industrialist he is well aware of the latent desire of many Karachiites, of all ethnic stripes, who grumble when Karachi is mistreated and wish Karachi was separated from Sindh.
It would be foolish, and dangerous, to ignore the sentiment and pretended it just does not exist. How can you ignore the evidence that the city is completely different from any other city in the country and from urban centres in Sindh in particular? It has its own distinctive character which is neither ethnic nor feudal, the two traits which define other cities in Pakistan. Even Lahore, the other city which has a commercial background, old traditions of feudalism fuel the city's culture and ethos. No other city is as completely bourgeoisie as Karachi.
Karachi has had a separate identity since partition for atleast two decades when it served as the capital of the country. During the period of One Unit there was no question that it would be considered a provincial capital either. When provinces were re-established in the 1970s, after the separation and creation of Bangladesh, it was natural to choose Karachi to be the capital of Sindh. Yet, for all that, it did not become Sindhized.
People often blame the dominance of mohajir culture and Urdu as the reason why Karachi did not integrate with the rest of the province, culturally speaking. No doubt Urdu is a strong language that tends to become the linguafranca wherever it exists, but culturally it has never succeeded in making much impact except in a few cities such as Karachi, Delhi and Lukhnow. Lahore, for example is a centre of Urdu literature but the culture of the city is steeped in provincial ethos. So is the case of Peshawar and Quetta.