Oskar Verkaaik’s Migrants and Militants: Fun and Urban Violence in Pakistan (published by Princeton University Press in 2004) is a seminal contribution to the study of ethnic and religious conflict. It is an influential addition to the study of violence as a site where forms of masculinity perform. Within this sphere, class, identity, and youth interact with the predicament of being neither a ‘settler’ nor a ‘native’. Asking questions such as; ‘how does ethnicity interact with Islam?’ ‘When do migrants become militants?’ And ‘how can fun and violence go together?’; Verkaaik, in a detailed historical ethnography, studies the site of Pakka Qila, a Sindhi fortress in Hyderabad, Pakistan, where Muslim migrants from India, also known as the Muhajir, left their homes to settle in the new Muslim State of Pakistan. Most settled in the Sindh region post-partition of India. Thus, the ethnography aims to study how the Muajirs view their identity in response to the established Sindhi ethnic group surrounding them which, along with the dominant Punjabi ethnic group, hegemonized the State, military and the economy for their benefit, leaving the Muhajir, out of place.
In the introductory chapter, the book focuses on how the experiences of the Muhajirs in postcolonial Pakistan manifested into a political movement in the 1980s and the 1990s in Sindh through the Muhajir Qaumi Movement (MQM — National Movement of Muhajirs), later known as the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (United National Movement). The MQM, under the leadership of Altaf Hussain, claimed to represent the Muhajir population of Pakistan. Across the different phases, the MQM began from being a student-led protest movement within the domains of the university spaces, eventually expanded across the urban locale of Hyderabad and Karachi, cities having prominent Muhajir populations, to become formalised as a political party in 1984, which took part in both the electoral processes as well as engaged with violent measures within ethnic conflicts, especially with the local mostly-rural Sindhi population. “In 1988 the young party, led by largely unknown young men from insignificant family background, swept the polls in Karachi and Hyderabad, luring the population of both cities away from the Islamic parties. Instead, the party declared that Muhajirs were an “ethnic group” or Qaum, on par with other ethnic groups like the Sindhi, Punjabi, Pakhtun, or Baluchi, and entitled to the same right” (p. 2).
In the second chapter, through the analogy of the “culture of ethnicity”, Verkaaik studies how the idea of sacrifice and passion became an important precursor for Sindhi nationalism, which traced its genealogy to Sufistic traditions within the region; and for the Muhajirs, how migration and territoriality became important distinctions which defined their ethnic predicament and became the focal points through which they viewed the idea of the nation (p. 42). These narratives became the prism due to which parties like Pakistan’s People’s Party (PPP) and the MQM emerged. However, what makes the genealogy of MQM important in the narrative Verkaaik has presented, is how the movement relates to various discourses of ethnic identity formation through a process of digression to the Hijra of the Prophet, from Mecca to Medina to juxtapose it over the movement of Muslims from India to Pakistan in 1947, thereby forming an ethnic identity. Herein, Verkaaik studies how the seemingly contradictory identities of both relating to Islam and ethnicity become legitimised through religious digression, taking different forms post-partition (p. 57).
To see the MQM merely as a product of a relationship between ethnic and religious identities would be limiting, for a massive marker which distinguishes the excitement attached to the MQM was its distaste against the powerful Aligarh-educated Muslim elites who dominated the bureaucratic apparatus. As the author adds, “The MQM is primarily a revolutionary party fighting for the rights of the underprivileged strata of the urban population. It is celebrated as a party of the “common people” (am log), promoting social equality” (p. 57). At the same time, the rise of the MQM can also be attributed to the post-democratisation vacuum which emerged after the end of the authoritarian rule of General Zia-ul-Haq. Within this vacuum, the MQM found a way to channel the varying resentments of the urban Muhajir community into a political movement.
In the third chapter, Veraaik gives a detailed narrative that coherently infuses the everyday conversations within the locality of Pakka Qila, incorporating their own experiences as a white man, who’s come for research often being referred to as the ‘gora saheb’ (p. 88). During their stay, Verkaaik examines the kinship network (biradari) within the Qila and how a system of social stratification which has travelled through the migration across borders is often referred to merely, in memory; however, is an existing reality of the 1990s Pakistani society. (p. 90, 104). More importantly, Verkaaik doesn’t merely engage with the places of the living but also with those of the dead. As for them, marked graves become an essential part of history and ritual, especially for the Sufi saints who symbolised the Sufistic tradition of the region as well as those who died during the ethnic conflict, indicating their status of martyrdom (p. 91).
In the fourth chapter, Verkaaik analyses Sectarianism, Violence and forms of masculinity. Verkaaik adds literature on sectarianism in modern Pakistan and how the Muhajir-Sindhi conflict has related and contributed to it. Muharram had become an important site where sectarian conflict between Shi‘ites and Sunnis occurs. However, the event of Karbala, a seminal event in Shi‘ite history, becomes an important memory for co-option for both the Muhajir movement and Sindhi nationalism. At the same time, modern sectarianism has influenced this movement in the language of the militants, who delegitimise the other ethnic group and often refer to them as ‘closeted’ Shi‘ites. (p. 101). Regardless, what makes this a rich ethnography, are the conversations which Verkaaik narrates to understand the intricacies of how masculinity performs itself within the movement, especially related to issues of fun, violence, generational difference, and charismatic authority; through interlocutors like Badruddin, Kanwar, Habib, and the meetings of the party that makes the narrative highly interpersonal (pp. 107-109, 112, 115).
Verkaaik believes that violence which emerges during the proliferation of the MQM across the Sindh region has become a sphere where participants could engage in what can be called a space of vulgarization. “MQM supporters sometimes used the Urdu term tamasha, probably best translated as “spectacle.” More commonly, they used the term fun. Fun challenged propriety and questioned the symbolic coherence of dominant discourse in a ludic way…What MQM supporters called fun can be seen as a transgression of ethnic categorization and a ridiculization of high cultural Islamic modernist values and discourses. Fun gave young party members and supporters a sense of agency that enabled them to identify with the movement” (p. 118).
This book becomes an important addition to theories of violence. Verkaaik adds that every day-conflict between ethnic groups becomes an arena of digression to a narrative of historicised conflict. For Verkaaik, one needs to be cautious while seeing points of violence within ethnic conflict as static objects of inquiry, especially in terms of defining the boundaries (p. 63). They argue how although ideas of purity become important distinctions between ethnic groups which lead to violent action in cases of conflict, however, it is the period of violence and ethnic conflict where the boundaries of what is pure and impure becomes solidified (pp. 138-139). Additionally, how the MQM through its phases, first displays narratives of the Hijra and the need for mobilisation, however, upon acquiring power and legitimacy as a political party being part of coalitions, manoeuvres through differing narratives of martyrdom, injustice and tyranny, thereby showing differing positions which, the leadership has held, to deal with the impeding political crises’ (p. 160).
The theme of the final chapter is the disillusionment of the young members of the MQM with the movement, the state and politics in general and their move towards terrorism and militancy. In the long term, the MQM became institutionalised, which, while pleading against tyranny and injustice, developed a mechanism where it catered to terrorism, corruption, and arbitrary interventions in the daily life of the people of Hyderabad and Karachi (p. 166). Fighting in the name of Insaaf (justice), many followers became fed-up with the continued rhetoric, often feeling abandoned by the exiled leadership, which they believed had become like the parties they fought. However, new domains of expression of masculinity emerged where being framed as a ‘terrorists’ became a badge of honour as it indicated their progress in becoming ‘revolutionaries’ (p. 169).
The book becomes an emulative form of ethnography from which future political anthropologists should take inspiration. Whereas, for academics, it becomes a critical interjection where the disciplinary boundaries which have been imposed between political science, history, sociology and anthropology can be dealt with through rich participatory observation while keeping in mind the limitations which this methodology has. The problem with the book was the lack of first-hand accounts of women who became significant contributors to protests, often becoming victims of military violence, especially, during the 1990 ‘Operation Clean-Up’. Secondly, I felt a bit muddled on the sectarian affiliation of the MQM, at points being sympathetic to victims of sectarian violence, often co-opting analogies. However, at other times, denying association with any sectarian identity and often being active participants in sectarian conflict. Nonetheless, I believe this book would be a great addition for fellow researchers to engage with such intricate concepts as it provides comparative and interactive analogies as to how masculinity performs in erstwhile colonies, especially when one relates to the rise of paramilitary forces in other States in the region, and how tropes of ‘effeminacy’ and admiration of the ‘other’, some highly orientalist depictions of communal relations, contribute to the rise of religious nationalism especially, in contemporary South Asia.
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Arman Hasan is pursuing an MA in Sociology at South Asian University (SAU).