TRANSFORMATION OF PUNJABI MAN
Khaled Ahmed's A n a l y s i s
The Punjabis are a great race. They are talented, adaptable to change, gifted with a sense of humour, and possessed of an undying zest for life. They are good company, secure against bouts of suspicion about self-esteem and generous in admitting the superiority of others. But they also have 'flaws'. Taken together, these flaws constitute a kind of personality disorder which makes government virtually impossible. The Punjabi man will sacrifice rules to benefit his own clan, will be 'excessive' in conduct when in power and quick to stampede when under siege. In short, he is incapable of good governance because he will not submit to agreed rules when pushed by opportunism. One wonders how Pakistan can survive if over 60 percent of its population is subversive of the state merely because of its innate collective character?
Stereotyping is not in good taste but the world has always labelled nations and races. All nations exhibit a kind of collective behaviour. Hitler called the British a nation of shopkeepers and was proved right when prime minister Chamberlain signed the capitulating Munich Agreement with him in 1938 'because the British
economy was in a depression'. The Germans are accused of compiling encyclopaedias over issues which require just common sense to resolve. The French are addicted to a kind of enfeebling aestheticism. The Italians have a heroic self-image but are disorderly and incompetent in war. The Spanish and the Hispanics
are too 'oriental' to run their economy honestly. The nations living in the Balkans are intensely nationalist, idealising their narrow hatred of one another. The Poles, the Irish and the Bengalis were once described by Ambassador Jamsheed Marker as nations passionately embracing causes that are impossible of achievement. Alexander Blok described the Russian character as a mixture of European and Asian traits, subject to the pendulum swing of rationalism and fatalism.
The Iranians are inward-looking and proud. The Arabs were negatively described by Ibn Khaldun as too Bedouin at heart to sustain civilisation. His narration of the political history of the Central Asian Muslims is an attempt to describe chaos of character. The hard-working nations living in the Far East are supposed to be culturally insulated. The Chinese have a Middle Kingdom personality and no other land matters more than their Centre of the Earth. The Japanese are insular when they favour export (what goes out) and resolutely oppose imports (what comes in). But everyone in the Far East is supposed to be so highly 'stylised' in courtesy that you can't break into their culture as a foreigner. As opposed to the 'reserved' British personality, the American man is supposed to be open and frank.
The Pakistani stereotypes:
In Pakistan, the stereotyping goes like this. Pakhtun are warlike but hampered in
organisation by their inability to accept leadership in their tribal system. The Sindhi is wedded to his land, devoted to humanism, but limited by his lack of enterprise. The Baloch is completely submerged in the heroic persona of his sardar, the opposite of Pakhtun individualism. The Punjabi is enterprising but strangely given to passivity in the face of status quo. Pakistan's nationalities also have mythified images of one another. The Pakhtuns think the Punjabis cowardly while the Sindhis look at them as a class of merciless exploiters. The Baloch will contest Pakhtun hegemony in their province but join them in their mistrust of the Punjabi. The Punjabis think the Sindhis lazy but submit to the leadership quality of the Pakhtun.
The Punjabi man will adjust and change his identity under pressure from circumstances quicker than others.
This makes him a good entrepreneur, but he tends to be 'visceral' and 'excessive', which undermines his project. In comparison to the Hindu entrepreneur, his weakness springs from this 'anarchy of character'. His urge to succeed quickly distinguishes him from the more 'incremental' Hindu. His commerce is therefore
tinged with high profit-taking and low levels of trust. The Gujrati communities of Sindh who dominate commerce in Pakistan rely on the Hindu work ethic. A seth in Karachi will be prompt in his payments and will thus establish trust. The Punjabi will block payments, live in excessive luxury, but inspire minimal trust. The publishers of Karachi and the chappal-makers of Quetta will not send their goods to Lahore because Lahore never pays up. If you want to do business in Punjab you must set aside crores that will remain blocked in delayed payments.
The Punjabi ethic: The culture of default in Pakistan can be said to be a Punjabi trait followed by elites of other nationalities as a mode of 'revenge', although there is a historical Sindhi wadera trait of borrowing from the Hindu money-lender of Sindh and then never paying up. The Punjabi is a steady character subject to bouts of chaotic behaviour which he expresses usually with regard to food. In Punjab, the annual birthday of Ms Bhutto declines into an assault on the large cake which the workers are supposed to share. The press usually describes these gatherings with expressions like gutham-gutha and toot-parna. The Punjabi mind thinks of orgy when exposed to food. In the PML meeting organised in 1989 by Nawaz Sharif
in an Islamabad hotel, to wrest the party leadership from Sindhi Muhammad Khan Junejo, declined into an orgy of eating. His Punjabi followers fell on the food, ate from the donga, threw the bones on the floor, and wiped their shorba-covered hands with the curtains. After they left the hotel shouting victory, the dining hall looked like a wasteland.
The Punjabi in politics is an opportunist looking for a sharing of the spoils. In 1993, when speaker of the Punjab Assembly, Mian Manzur Wattoo, staged an internal party coup against a deposed Nawaz Sharif, 70 percent of the PML members joined him. When Nawaz Sharif was restored by the Supreme Court within days, the 70 percent immediately shifted their loyalty back to him. They had joined Wattoo complaining that Nawaz Sharif and his chief ministers 'did not do their work'. When under Wattoo and Nakai, Punjab sank further into chaos, the word applied to their rule was sikha-shahi, a reference to Punjab's history which has
moulded the Punjabi man.
History as moulder of Punjabi character:
In the 18th century Punjab, most Punjabi regional potentates undermined one another to stay in power and to avoid rise of any one Punjabi to supreme power. Delhi ruled over a divided and conspiratorial Punjab. No one was sure of his friends and was ready to parley with his enemies for political leverage. The Afghans in the west were seen as a make-weight to the rulers in Delhi. A weak Delhi often caused loyalties to shift westward. The governor in Lahore feared his own satraps more than he feared the Afghans. He flirted with the Afghans (Pakhtuns) and at times invited them to attack Lahore to 'correct' the balance of power. In one instance, he called them in but ran away when the invaders appeared. Historians note that Punjab was always a region of the marches which the invaders occupied as a launching ground against Delhi. Pakhtun king Ahmad Shah Abdali 'used' Punjab again and again for his invasions of India from 1774 to 1793. Marauding armies left their soldiers behind as warlords.
Punjab became an ethnic melting-pot of tribes that looked outward to their original homelands.
When the capital of Pakistan was in Karachi, the Punjabi leaders of the Muslim League in Lahore behaved like the 18th century satraps of the Mughals. If Mamdot was Mir Mannu, who ruled Punjab from 1748 to 1753, Daultana was Adina Beq (d.1758). The Punjab Assembly was reduced to a sulphurous marshland where the
partisans of the two League splinters took their mud-bath. Early history books described the famous scene of bhangra performed by the Daultana men after overthrowing Mamdot, paving the way for ten years of martial law under a Pakhtun, General Ayub Khan. The textbooks described Pakistan's early democracy as
the Lost Decade. Daultana, after successfully undermining the government of UP-oriented prime minister Liaquat Ali Khan, and getting rid of a fellow-Punjabi, gave up politics, as if he had achieved the terminal dream of Adina Beg. Mamdot was notorious for his lethargy while Daultana was a born spoiler and Machiavelli incarnate. Mamdot was programmed to fail, Daultana feared success. The Punjabi man thereafter sought refuge in the leadership of charismatic non-Punjabi leaders. He was in fact reverting to the historical paradigm of 'welcoming invaders' to inoculate himself against the chaos of his own mind.
Punjabi as dominant community:
By reason of their numerical strength, the Punjabis dominated the armed forces. The land forces were always Punjabi, but with time even the navy became 90 percent Punjabi. As the Pakhtun assertion in the armed forces declined after General Ayub, it was time for the Punjabi general, Zia-ul-Haq, to reassert the Punjabi supremacy, after putting to death the charismatic Sindhi prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1979. The majority province was placated by the non-Punjabi leader by putting on the Punjabi war-paint against India. After that, it was easy to enlist Punjabi loyalties which followed a set pattern of obsequiousness. A rebel Punjabi leader Malik Ghulam Nabi recorded in his book that once when prime minister Bhutto was in Lahore a Punjabi PPP leader likened himself to Bhutto's faithful dog as a form
of greeting. The base of the PPP in Punjab partly springs from the fact that the Punjabi fears the tyranny of the fellow-Punjabi. General Zia chose Nawaz Sharif as his satrap in Punjab, carefully nurturing him in Lahore first as finance minister and then as chief minister, to set the stage for a Punjabi assertion in Islamabad.
General Zia in fact chose two satrapies from the among the families brutalised by Bhutto during his regime:
the Sharifs of Lahore and the Chaudhris of Gujrat. In the Pakistan Muslim League (PML) in Lahore Mian Nawaz Sharif and Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain were the strongmen on the basis of their control of city politics in Lahore and Gujrat. Mian Nawaz Sharif's base was the shopkeepers of Lahore with their strong religious connections; Chaudhry Shujaat had emerged as the only man who could rein in the criminal gangs of Gujrat. Both satrapies coexisted within the PML but not without tensions. This was a throw-back to the days of Mir Mannu's 18th century Punjab and the rule of his wife, Mughlani Begum. The claim of the Chaudhris over the leadership of Punjab remained alive though muted in deference to the Sharifs' broad
Punjabi alliance. Whenever a split in the PML appeared imminent - PML was now called PML(N) to indicate Nawaz Sharif's predominance - it was always seen as a split between the two Lahore-Gujrat satrapies.
Punjabi's love of power:
The Punjabi will obey a powerful leader. Nawaz Sharif was a powerful leader who
punished disloyalty. His non-intellectual 'viscerality' was his badge. In power, he consistently declined into 'anarchy of character' linking him with the 18th century adventurers like Shah Nawaz Khan, Yahya Khan, Mughlani Begum and the later Sikh rulers. His largesse was also an excess at the expense of governance.
He benefited beyond reasonable measure those who supported him. He used violence against his opponents which served as the binding force of his party. His gestures were royal, something that a Punjabi satrap will appreciate. Nawaz Sharif's longing for a Mughal identity as a ruler could be a throw-back to Punjab's old longing for the panoply of Delhi. Nawaz Sharif's eating habits were essentially Punjabi with a tinge of Kashmiri languor in them. He had bouts of effete Punjabi moods when in the middle of great national decisions, which are often described as lapses of an extremely short 'attention span'. His removal from the scene is bad for Punjab because another leader with his quintessential Punjabi panache will not be
found. The Punjabi will really not accept a lesser Punjabi as his leader. He touched a collective chord with his exercise of power and sudden paroxysms of disorganisation.
As a majority nationality in Pakistan, the Punjabis form 60 percent of the National Assembly. They can amend the Constitution with this majority. The Punjabi opinion, the Punjabi ideology, becomes the opinion and ideology of Pakistan. This also makes the Punjabi averse to intellectual inquiry. His lack of intellect is not innate but has been forced on him by his compulsion to impose ideology. The non-Punjabi ruler will have to submit to this ideology if he wants to stay in power in the parliament. The other communities hate them for this. They don't always share the passions of Punjabis. The Sindhis and the Baloch tend to be secular-mystical, but the Pakhtuns and the Punjabis are today joined in Pakistan's passion for a more strict religion. In this Punjabi-Pakhtun religious confluence, the Punjabi is in the subordinate position, bringing back the memory of Afghan-dominated 18th century Punjab. The Punjabi man is inwardly lacerated by many things he does against his innate culture. He has abandoned his mother tongue in favour of Urdu, which
testifies to his protean quality, but which must leave a wound somewhere in his psyche.
Khaled Ahmed's A n a l y s i s
The Punjabis are a great race. They are talented, adaptable to change, gifted with a sense of humour, and possessed of an undying zest for life. They are good company, secure against bouts of suspicion about self-esteem and generous in admitting the superiority of others. But they also have 'flaws'. Taken together, these flaws constitute a kind of personality disorder which makes government virtually impossible. The Punjabi man will sacrifice rules to benefit his own clan, will be 'excessive' in conduct when in power and quick to stampede when under siege. In short, he is incapable of good governance because he will not submit to agreed rules when pushed by opportunism. One wonders how Pakistan can survive if over 60 percent of its population is subversive of the state merely because of its innate collective character?
Stereotyping is not in good taste but the world has always labelled nations and races. All nations exhibit a kind of collective behaviour. Hitler called the British a nation of shopkeepers and was proved right when prime minister Chamberlain signed the capitulating Munich Agreement with him in 1938 'because the British
economy was in a depression'. The Germans are accused of compiling encyclopaedias over issues which require just common sense to resolve. The French are addicted to a kind of enfeebling aestheticism. The Italians have a heroic self-image but are disorderly and incompetent in war. The Spanish and the Hispanics
are too 'oriental' to run their economy honestly. The nations living in the Balkans are intensely nationalist, idealising their narrow hatred of one another. The Poles, the Irish and the Bengalis were once described by Ambassador Jamsheed Marker as nations passionately embracing causes that are impossible of achievement. Alexander Blok described the Russian character as a mixture of European and Asian traits, subject to the pendulum swing of rationalism and fatalism.
The Iranians are inward-looking and proud. The Arabs were negatively described by Ibn Khaldun as too Bedouin at heart to sustain civilisation. His narration of the political history of the Central Asian Muslims is an attempt to describe chaos of character. The hard-working nations living in the Far East are supposed to be culturally insulated. The Chinese have a Middle Kingdom personality and no other land matters more than their Centre of the Earth. The Japanese are insular when they favour export (what goes out) and resolutely oppose imports (what comes in). But everyone in the Far East is supposed to be so highly 'stylised' in courtesy that you can't break into their culture as a foreigner. As opposed to the 'reserved' British personality, the American man is supposed to be open and frank.
The Pakistani stereotypes:
In Pakistan, the stereotyping goes like this. Pakhtun are warlike but hampered in
organisation by their inability to accept leadership in their tribal system. The Sindhi is wedded to his land, devoted to humanism, but limited by his lack of enterprise. The Baloch is completely submerged in the heroic persona of his sardar, the opposite of Pakhtun individualism. The Punjabi is enterprising but strangely given to passivity in the face of status quo. Pakistan's nationalities also have mythified images of one another. The Pakhtuns think the Punjabis cowardly while the Sindhis look at them as a class of merciless exploiters. The Baloch will contest Pakhtun hegemony in their province but join them in their mistrust of the Punjabi. The Punjabis think the Sindhis lazy but submit to the leadership quality of the Pakhtun.
The Punjabi man will adjust and change his identity under pressure from circumstances quicker than others.
This makes him a good entrepreneur, but he tends to be 'visceral' and 'excessive', which undermines his project. In comparison to the Hindu entrepreneur, his weakness springs from this 'anarchy of character'. His urge to succeed quickly distinguishes him from the more 'incremental' Hindu. His commerce is therefore
tinged with high profit-taking and low levels of trust. The Gujrati communities of Sindh who dominate commerce in Pakistan rely on the Hindu work ethic. A seth in Karachi will be prompt in his payments and will thus establish trust. The Punjabi will block payments, live in excessive luxury, but inspire minimal trust. The publishers of Karachi and the chappal-makers of Quetta will not send their goods to Lahore because Lahore never pays up. If you want to do business in Punjab you must set aside crores that will remain blocked in delayed payments.
The Punjabi ethic: The culture of default in Pakistan can be said to be a Punjabi trait followed by elites of other nationalities as a mode of 'revenge', although there is a historical Sindhi wadera trait of borrowing from the Hindu money-lender of Sindh and then never paying up. The Punjabi is a steady character subject to bouts of chaotic behaviour which he expresses usually with regard to food. In Punjab, the annual birthday of Ms Bhutto declines into an assault on the large cake which the workers are supposed to share. The press usually describes these gatherings with expressions like gutham-gutha and toot-parna. The Punjabi mind thinks of orgy when exposed to food. In the PML meeting organised in 1989 by Nawaz Sharif
in an Islamabad hotel, to wrest the party leadership from Sindhi Muhammad Khan Junejo, declined into an orgy of eating. His Punjabi followers fell on the food, ate from the donga, threw the bones on the floor, and wiped their shorba-covered hands with the curtains. After they left the hotel shouting victory, the dining hall looked like a wasteland.
The Punjabi in politics is an opportunist looking for a sharing of the spoils. In 1993, when speaker of the Punjab Assembly, Mian Manzur Wattoo, staged an internal party coup against a deposed Nawaz Sharif, 70 percent of the PML members joined him. When Nawaz Sharif was restored by the Supreme Court within days, the 70 percent immediately shifted their loyalty back to him. They had joined Wattoo complaining that Nawaz Sharif and his chief ministers 'did not do their work'. When under Wattoo and Nakai, Punjab sank further into chaos, the word applied to their rule was sikha-shahi, a reference to Punjab's history which has
moulded the Punjabi man.
History as moulder of Punjabi character:
In the 18th century Punjab, most Punjabi regional potentates undermined one another to stay in power and to avoid rise of any one Punjabi to supreme power. Delhi ruled over a divided and conspiratorial Punjab. No one was sure of his friends and was ready to parley with his enemies for political leverage. The Afghans in the west were seen as a make-weight to the rulers in Delhi. A weak Delhi often caused loyalties to shift westward. The governor in Lahore feared his own satraps more than he feared the Afghans. He flirted with the Afghans (Pakhtuns) and at times invited them to attack Lahore to 'correct' the balance of power. In one instance, he called them in but ran away when the invaders appeared. Historians note that Punjab was always a region of the marches which the invaders occupied as a launching ground against Delhi. Pakhtun king Ahmad Shah Abdali 'used' Punjab again and again for his invasions of India from 1774 to 1793. Marauding armies left their soldiers behind as warlords.
Punjab became an ethnic melting-pot of tribes that looked outward to their original homelands.
When the capital of Pakistan was in Karachi, the Punjabi leaders of the Muslim League in Lahore behaved like the 18th century satraps of the Mughals. If Mamdot was Mir Mannu, who ruled Punjab from 1748 to 1753, Daultana was Adina Beq (d.1758). The Punjab Assembly was reduced to a sulphurous marshland where the
partisans of the two League splinters took their mud-bath. Early history books described the famous scene of bhangra performed by the Daultana men after overthrowing Mamdot, paving the way for ten years of martial law under a Pakhtun, General Ayub Khan. The textbooks described Pakistan's early democracy as
the Lost Decade. Daultana, after successfully undermining the government of UP-oriented prime minister Liaquat Ali Khan, and getting rid of a fellow-Punjabi, gave up politics, as if he had achieved the terminal dream of Adina Beg. Mamdot was notorious for his lethargy while Daultana was a born spoiler and Machiavelli incarnate. Mamdot was programmed to fail, Daultana feared success. The Punjabi man thereafter sought refuge in the leadership of charismatic non-Punjabi leaders. He was in fact reverting to the historical paradigm of 'welcoming invaders' to inoculate himself against the chaos of his own mind.
Punjabi as dominant community:
By reason of their numerical strength, the Punjabis dominated the armed forces. The land forces were always Punjabi, but with time even the navy became 90 percent Punjabi. As the Pakhtun assertion in the armed forces declined after General Ayub, it was time for the Punjabi general, Zia-ul-Haq, to reassert the Punjabi supremacy, after putting to death the charismatic Sindhi prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1979. The majority province was placated by the non-Punjabi leader by putting on the Punjabi war-paint against India. After that, it was easy to enlist Punjabi loyalties which followed a set pattern of obsequiousness. A rebel Punjabi leader Malik Ghulam Nabi recorded in his book that once when prime minister Bhutto was in Lahore a Punjabi PPP leader likened himself to Bhutto's faithful dog as a form
of greeting. The base of the PPP in Punjab partly springs from the fact that the Punjabi fears the tyranny of the fellow-Punjabi. General Zia chose Nawaz Sharif as his satrap in Punjab, carefully nurturing him in Lahore first as finance minister and then as chief minister, to set the stage for a Punjabi assertion in Islamabad.
General Zia in fact chose two satrapies from the among the families brutalised by Bhutto during his regime:
the Sharifs of Lahore and the Chaudhris of Gujrat. In the Pakistan Muslim League (PML) in Lahore Mian Nawaz Sharif and Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain were the strongmen on the basis of their control of city politics in Lahore and Gujrat. Mian Nawaz Sharif's base was the shopkeepers of Lahore with their strong religious connections; Chaudhry Shujaat had emerged as the only man who could rein in the criminal gangs of Gujrat. Both satrapies coexisted within the PML but not without tensions. This was a throw-back to the days of Mir Mannu's 18th century Punjab and the rule of his wife, Mughlani Begum. The claim of the Chaudhris over the leadership of Punjab remained alive though muted in deference to the Sharifs' broad
Punjabi alliance. Whenever a split in the PML appeared imminent - PML was now called PML(N) to indicate Nawaz Sharif's predominance - it was always seen as a split between the two Lahore-Gujrat satrapies.
Punjabi's love of power:
The Punjabi will obey a powerful leader. Nawaz Sharif was a powerful leader who
punished disloyalty. His non-intellectual 'viscerality' was his badge. In power, he consistently declined into 'anarchy of character' linking him with the 18th century adventurers like Shah Nawaz Khan, Yahya Khan, Mughlani Begum and the later Sikh rulers. His largesse was also an excess at the expense of governance.
He benefited beyond reasonable measure those who supported him. He used violence against his opponents which served as the binding force of his party. His gestures were royal, something that a Punjabi satrap will appreciate. Nawaz Sharif's longing for a Mughal identity as a ruler could be a throw-back to Punjab's old longing for the panoply of Delhi. Nawaz Sharif's eating habits were essentially Punjabi with a tinge of Kashmiri languor in them. He had bouts of effete Punjabi moods when in the middle of great national decisions, which are often described as lapses of an extremely short 'attention span'. His removal from the scene is bad for Punjab because another leader with his quintessential Punjabi panache will not be
found. The Punjabi will really not accept a lesser Punjabi as his leader. He touched a collective chord with his exercise of power and sudden paroxysms of disorganisation.
As a majority nationality in Pakistan, the Punjabis form 60 percent of the National Assembly. They can amend the Constitution with this majority. The Punjabi opinion, the Punjabi ideology, becomes the opinion and ideology of Pakistan. This also makes the Punjabi averse to intellectual inquiry. His lack of intellect is not innate but has been forced on him by his compulsion to impose ideology. The non-Punjabi ruler will have to submit to this ideology if he wants to stay in power in the parliament. The other communities hate them for this. They don't always share the passions of Punjabis. The Sindhis and the Baloch tend to be secular-mystical, but the Pakhtuns and the Punjabis are today joined in Pakistan's passion for a more strict religion. In this Punjabi-Pakhtun religious confluence, the Punjabi is in the subordinate position, bringing back the memory of Afghan-dominated 18th century Punjab. The Punjabi man is inwardly lacerated by many things he does against his innate culture. He has abandoned his mother tongue in favour of Urdu, which
testifies to his protean quality, but which must leave a wound somewhere in his psyche.
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