Introduction: background, research question, and theoretical position
Since the Islamization, specifically the Sunni-ization, of the state apparatuses and the social milieu under the Zia regime, Sunni-Shia confrontations have been escalated.[1] Gilgit-Baltistan (GB hereafter), a part of the contested greater Kashmir region, is the only Shia-majority state in Sunni-majority Pakistan. However, in GB, this sectarian/doctrinal conflict between Sunni and Shia does not translate into popular support of Shia-affiliated Islamic political parties. Since GB’s first assembly election in 2009, before which GB was directly governed by Islamabad, the popular vote has favored the ruling party of Pakistan. In 2009 the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), then the ruling party, won the majority. In 2015 the Pakistan Muslim League (N) (PML-N), then the ruling party, won the majority. And in 2020, it was Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI). All three of them are secular-oriented or Muslim Democratic parties.
Therefore, what are the main factors that have made Shias in GB, on a communal level, keep supporting the ruling party of the country, instead of the Shia-affiliated parties—Islami Tehreek Pakistan (ITP) and Majlis Wahdat-e-Muslimeen (MWM)—that are demanding, in one way or another, equal rights on behalf of the Shia community in Pakistan?
I have reviewed three strands of literature in order to justify my research question—religious minority status and condition, secularism, and electoral politics. I will lay out some key points from each strand of literature as well as my responses to them, in the context of which my research question emerges. In terms of the issue of religious minorities, the existing literature that I have examined tends to emphasize on traumatic experiences of religious minorities per se by overlooking several other points;[2] firstly, religion is not the only identity marker of a religious minority member; secondly, some violence is not religious in and of itself but is also extended to everyone who is included in the affected and vulnerable groups; thirdly, religious minorities are not ahistorical or unchanging.
Regarding secularism, my main critique of the existing scholarship that I have examined is that although secularism in Pakistan has been analyzed both as an ideology and as a discursive formation, the analytical focus remains in the political center both territorially—in Pakistan proper—and thematically—on the issues of women’s rights, the blasphemy law, etc.[3] In other words, in the country’s periphery where the territorial, legal, and administrative statuses are not definitive, the analytical lens through which secularism should be discussed might be different.
Lastly, as for electoral politics, the literature that focuses on religious party politics tends to limit its focus on the “high” politics—the party’s history, ideology, and leading figures—or on the urban contexts where extensive networks of religious institutions and communications have been established.[4] The body of literature that looks into the electoral politics of the three major secular parties, although much more comprehensive both methodologically and thematically, is not analytically satisfactory when it is applied in a place like GB where the communicative networks for political parties are underdeveloped, the law is unevenly enforced, and there is not a long history of electoral politics.[5]
In order to understand the consecutive failure of MWM and ITP, I will build my analysis on Peter Van Der Veer’s theoretical approach[6] of the formation of a religious community or, on a national scale, religious nationalism as well as insights of habitus from Nobert Elias. Therefore, my theoretical stance is that a religious community, often based on a preexisting organizational structure, sustains and transforms itself within a nation-state context through a set of discourses that disciplines and unifies the body and mind of its members.
I will demonstrate that the consecutive electoral failure of MWM and ITP could be explained by their failed attempts to form a Shia community in GB that would electorally support these two parties. Then, I will show that the GB legislative assembly election is not as simple as any other Pakistani provincial election that is a test to the democracy in Pakistan; however, it is, in principle, a test to the sacredness of the Pakistani nation as a (Sunni-)Muslim-national community vis-à-vis the identity of being a Pakistani transcends any regional or sectarian identity. Securing a majority in the GB assembly election by the national ruling party is one important part of the repeated process of sacralizing the political in a region where the foundation of the Pakistani nation is still questionable.[7]
Therefore, the most contested front is not on the religious, i.e. the Sunni-Shia divide, but on the political, i.e. the contest over the territory, the history, and eventually the consciousness of people in GB—in short, the sacredness of a nation-state—between the Pakistani government and the GB nationalist movement. The contestation over the political is the larger context where the ruling party tries to win in order to legitimize itself in GB and ultimately in the whole of Pakistan. To prove these two major arguments, I will rely upon legal documents and decisions, demographic data, party declarations, discourses, information on Facebook, as well as the biographical data of Shia imams in GB.
The failure of forming a regional Shia religious community
On an organizational level, the legal and constitutional foundation of GB’s status needs to be discussed, on which any organizational structure stands. According to the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan as of 2021, GB is not nominally included in the territories of Pakistan,[8] given its status of being part of the disputed Jammu and Kashmir. There is one Supreme Court decision over the status of GB worth mentioning in Al-Jehad Trust v. Federation of Pakistan 1999. The Court ruled that “People of Northern Areas are citizens of Pakistan for all intents and purposes and like other citizens of Pakistan have the right to invoke any of the fundamental rights;” however, the Court also said it could not decide what type of Government (capitalized in the document) GB should be given nor could it decide whether people of GB could be given representation in the Parliament, because GB’s location is sensitive and “it may not be in the larger interest of the country” to give them these rights.[9] Therefore, the constitutional ground upon which Shia political parties in GB stand is ambiguous. Legally speaking, they operate outside of the Pakistani nation-state context, where things they have done might be deemed as being against the larger interest of the country without due process.
Moreover, organizationally, the current political system in GB has inherited and perpetuated, to a large extent, the colonial administrative structure, from which to this day, the ruling party of Pakistan takes advantage of in the GB assembly election. Before 1947, GB was under the dual control of the Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir, a Sikh ruler, and the British, represented by the Gilgit Agency; and between the people and the administrative center, there were a group of local rulers, Rajas, and Mirsas power brokers. After 1947, the Pakistani government inherited the colonial system by assigning Mohammad Alam to take charge of the Gilgit Agency, and the colonial Frontier Crime Regulation was still in force. Then in the 1970s, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto replaced the agency system with a more regular administrative system, known as the Northern Areas Council and changed the regional name to “Northern Areas of Pakistan.” The last reform was the “Gilgit-Baltistan Empowerment and Self-Government Order” in 2009, which renamed the region as “Gilgit-Baltistan” and established two governing bodies—the Gilgit-Baltistan Legislative Assembly, whose members are elected by the people and the Gilgit-Baltistan Council in which the Pakistani government has strong control.[10] Thus, the ruling party of the Pakistani government has been able to benefit from the colonial legacy of the organizational structure of the local administration.
Therefore, the question would be how this rigid organizational structure, which is saturated with interests of the establishment, i.e. the military, PPP, and PML-N, etc., adapts to the rapid changes in the political center of Islamabad, for example the landslide victory of PTI in 2018. Regardless of the issue of whether PTI could be considered as a part of the establishment already, in the 2020 election, the number of winning candidates who joined the election on the ticket of PTI was 10 in a 24-seat race, compared to 13 winning candidates on the ticket of PPP in 2009 and 15 for PML-N in 2015. However, an unprecedented number of independents joined the race in 2020 and 6 of them, having won the seats, later joined the PTI.[11] This means that the organizational structure of the GB electoral process can adapt to the political climate of the country and always favors the ruling party, since it is in the interest of the country. Both ITP and MWM, which were established in 2012 and 2009 respectively, do not have any organizational advantages compared to the ruling party.
On a discursive level, first and foremost, the infrastructures for transportation and information circulation are underdeveloped in GB. As of 2011, based on the statistics from The World Bank, road density is low in GB, where it usually takes more than 24 hours to reach the nearest sizable city. GB is not connected to the national electricity grid or broadband internet, and approximately 46.6% of people have access to electricity, 8.7% to telephone, and 17.7% to TV.[12] More importantly, the percentage of people who can get access to mass media varies drastically across different districts in GB; for example, as of 2017, only 13.3 % of woman in Diamer watch TV at least once a week compared to 66% in Gilgit.[13] It means that the discursive circulation through mass media by political parties is limited to certain urban districts in GB.
On top of the poor infrastructural network for mobilities of people and information, the linguistic and religious diversities are another barrier for cross-district discursive circulation. More than ten languages are spoken in GB. Religiously, southern Diamer is exclusively Sunni, Shias dominate in Baltistan, and Ismailis dominate Hunza-Nager and Ghizer. There are also small groups of Nurbakhshis and Christians.[14] Besides the Sunni-Shia division, each religious community often has its own education system; for example, the Ismailis receive educational resources mainly from Aga Khan Foundation, whereas the Shias and the Sunnis have their respective madrassas that are usually tied to Iran and Saudi Arabia. And their educations could differ from each other quite a lot, especially when religious education is concerned.[15] To further prove my point that it is hard to achieve a cross-district network of religious-political discourse, I examined a list of Shia imams biographical information.[16] The commonalities that I found shared among Shia imams are that almost all of them were educated in Iran for years, and once returned, they often chose to stay in their birthplace and did not engage in politics. However, it does not mean that nowadays there is no circulation of religious hatred, but the internet could be shut down and roads could be blocked by the government without due process. In other words, forming a consistent and widespread set of discourses that taps into Shia’s traumatic feeling and then translates it into votes has been extremely difficult, which in most cases ends up with street violence instead of electoral support.
Another major point is that both MWM and ITP are not regional parties, both of which aim for the whole country. On the ITP’s Facebook front-page, just recently, it said kesī qaum hain hum!!!! (what a nation we are!!!!),[17] since the ITP’s fundamental aim is to achieve a Shia Pakistan. For MWM, its declaration says its primary aim is to secure the sālamīt (integrity) and istěhkām (stability) of Pakistan. Despite being on the opposite sides of the political spectrum, both of them function within the context of the Pakistani nation-state where the status of GB is still awkward, at least legally.
Finally, in terms of habitus, according to a large body of ethnographic accounts on various religious-ethnic communities in GB,[18] not only are the inter-communal relationships and the relationship between each community and the state convoluted, but also the intra-communal dynamics, like the Ismailis and the Twelver Shias, could be as much different and confrontational as the ones between communities. Therefore, given their short time of presence in this region, the Shia political parties have not able to tap into most Shias’ feeling and synchronize the parties’ political agendas with people’s daily life. One major assumption is that the Shia political parties could attract a significant number of Shia voters who have been affected by the Sunni-Shia divide; however, either some of the reasons that incite the divide are not religious per se or the violence due to the divide runs so deep that people, without full citizen rights, are reluctant to talk about let alone being vocal about it by supporting certain political agendas.[19]
As for the state, namely the GB government, the Pakistani government, and the military, its presence is very much palpable by most people everyday in GB—by ways of being employed by or involved in various state-sponsored mega-projects, the presence of the military and roadblocks on major roads, and the declaration of emergency whenever the state feels necessary to do so.
Thus, having examined the three levels of analysis, different from what is suggested in the reviewed literature on secularism, the presence of the secular state in GB has saturated the institutional, the discursive, and the habitual in an undemocratic and terrorizing fashion, since at the end of the day, the political aims for a hegemonic representation of GB, i.e. GB as an unalienable and unquestionable part of the Pakistani nation.
The Contestation over the Territory, the History, and the Name
As I showed, in GB given its ambiguous constitutional status, colonial legacy, and strategic geographic location, the political has saturated in GB, which has consumed the religious, the legal, etc. Therefore, voting for a minority party (the Shia parties included) is not as simple as declaring one’s religious identity or political philosophy but seen as a nationalist/separationist (in the eye of the authority) declaration. Therefore, it leads to my second argument that the contestation over the political, i.e. the sacredness of a nation-state, between the Pakistani government and the GB nationalist movement is the larger context where the ruling party has to win the majority in order to legitimize itself not only in GB but also in the whole Pakistan. I will analyze a GB nationalist party Balawaristan National Front (Naji) (BNF-N) by following the three-level analytical model to prove that BNF-N has managed to form a district-scale GB nationalist community that seriously challenges the nationalist narrative of the Pakistani government.
First and foremost, founded in 1989, BNF-N, although its organizational base is regionally confined in the district of Ghizer, is the only party, not even for PPP, PML-N, and PTI, that wins a district majority in all three GB assembly elections in 2009, 2015, and 2020. This kind of solidarity among its electorate base demonstrates how well organized the party is in Ghizer. BNF-N, recently, have also formed the Balawaristan National Student Organization (BNSO) in major cities of Pakistan, like Karachi, Lahore, and Islamabad, which are able to give financial support as well as raise the party’s publicity in Pakistan proper.[20] For many BNF-N activists, the GB assembly election is not the end but the means through which the Balawaristan nationalist ideology can be spread across GB and mobilize as many people as possible to achieve the eventual autonomy of the Balawaristan nation.[21] In other words, BNF-N strategically participates in the establishmentarian electoral platform to achieve an ideological goal that transcends the organizational boundaries set up by the Pakistani state.
On a discursive level, BNF-N is one of a few minority parties in GB that have opened local branches in both Sunni-dominated and Shia-dominated districts, because BNF-N claims to transcend the religious divide and unite all religious communities in GB under the common aim of achieving GB nationalist autonomy. Therefore, unlike the Shia political parties, BNF-N has paved its way to establishing a cross-district discursive network in GB.
One major part of BNF-N’s electoral base consists of the youth of GB who having been educated in Pakistan proper, i.e. in Karachi, Lahore, and Islamabad, have come back and contributed to the GB nationalist movement. They are more comfortable with modern social media that helps to disseminate BNF-N’s political agendas and discourses much quicker and expansively than other parties whose electorates are largely still unable to access these technologies. Nawaz Khan Naji himself is quite active on his Facebook with 12,587 followers compared to 1,879 followers of the MWM-GB’s Facebook page and 5,497 of ITP’s. Naji apparently presents himself as a charismatic leader who makes speeches on policies and nationalist ideologies without forgetting listening to people’s everyday concerns.[22] In contrast, Kazim Mesam, the only winning candidate on the ticket of a Shia party in the 2020 assembly election, is very much a professional politician who comments mainly on relevant political issues and policies while showing his closeness to PTI occasionally.[23]
On a level of habitus, BNF-N has been able to win the hearts and minds of its electorates to the extent that people have started attaching “Balawar” to their names, the most forceful way to align one’s identity with BNF-N as well as with the GB nationalist movement.[24] BNF-N’s policies and messages are being conveyed simply and understandably, so that ordinary people can talk about them in daily conversations. I end with an anecdote that a hotel owner who supports BNF-N changed a presumably state-imposed slogan “yahan siyasi guftagu mana hai” (political discussions are prohibited here) to “yahan siyasi guftagu pe pabandi nahin hai” (political discussions are not prohibited here).[25] This incident captures the essence of the confrontation between the Pakistani state led by the ruling party and the GB nationalist movement, i.e. who has got the authority to draw the line between the sacred nation-state from the profane others. And this contestation has taken place on all three levels of analysis as I have just suggested.
Conclusion:
Indebted to Van Der Peer’s and Elias’ theoretical insights, I analyze the formation of a religious-political community through its organizational structure, discursive formation, and habitus of its members. Therefore, instead of answering the question in a taken-for-granted Shia-regional versus Sunni-central divide, I suggest a new way to see the electoral failure of the Shia parties in GB; without preexisting organizational foundations, the Shia parties are not able to establish cross-district discursive network let alone integrate their philosophies into people’s everyday life. Given the colonial legacy and the constitutional ambiguity, the presence of the central state, both structurally and viscerally, has been pervasive in people’s daily life. Securing a majority in the GB assembly election by the national ruling party is one important part of the process of sacralizing the political. However, the process for the political to achieve its ultimate sacredness—a complete hegemonic representation of the world—is never completed, as I showed that BNF-N is the best example of a rising regional nationalist movement that has been contending the Pakistani nationalist narrative and domination over GB.
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Al-Jehad Trust v. Federation of Pakistan 1999 SCMR 1379, https://cite.pakcaselaw.com/pdf/155957/AI-JEHAD%20TRUST%20VS%20FEDERATION%20OF%20PAKISTAN,%201999%20SCMR-SUPREME-COURT%201379%20(1999).pdf, accessed Apr 25, 2021.
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[1] For example, 150 Shi’i killed in Gilgit by Sunni mobs in 1988; 18 Sunni Sipah-i Sahabah Pakistan (SSP) workers killed in Gilgit in 1991; over 200 killed in five-day Shi’i-Sunni fighting in Pachinar in 1996; etc. in S. V. R. Nasr, “The Rise of Sunni Militancy in Pakistan: The Changing Role of Islamism and the Ulama in Society and Politics,” Modern Asian Studies 34, 1 (2000), pp. 141. Recently, 26 Shia pilgrims killed in Baluchistan in 2011; 2013 Quetta bombings targeted mostly at Shia communities; etc. https://www.dnaindia.com/world/report-28-shia-muslims-shot-dead-by-lashkar-militants-in-pakistan-1589572 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-21489756 [2] For example, Farhat Haq, Sharia and the State in Pakistan: Blasphemy Politics (New York: Routledge, 2019), 1. Sadia Saeed, Politics of Desecularization: Law and the Minority Question in Pakistan (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 10-11. Linda S. Walbridge, The Christians of Pakistan: The Passion of Bishop John Joseph (New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), xi. [3] For example, Leonard Binder, Religion and Politics in Pakistan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1961), Chapter 6. Tarik Jan et al, Pakistan between Secularism and Islam: Ideology, Issues & Conflict (Islamabad: Institute of Policy Studies, 1998), Part 1, 5, 7. [4] For example, Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, The Vanguard of the Islamic Revolution: The Jama’at-i Islami of Pakistan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994). Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, Mawdudi and the Marking of Islamic Revivalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996). Afak Haydar, “The Politicization of the Shias and the Development of the Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Fiqh-e-Jafaria in Pakistan,” in Pakistan: 1992, ed. Charles H. Kennedy (Boulder: Westview Press, 1993), 82. Muhammad Qasim Zaman, “Sectarianism in Pakistan: The Radicalization of Shi’i and Sunni Identities,” Modern Asian Studies 32, 3 (1998). Humeira Iqtidar, Secularizing Islamists?: Jama’at-e-Islami and Jama’at-ud-Da’wa in Urban Pakistan (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2011). Irfan Ahmad, Islamism and Democracy in India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010). [5] For example, Gareth Nellis and Niloufer Siddiqui, “Secular Party Rule and Religious Violence in Pakistan,” American Political Science Review 112, 1 (2018): 50. [6] Peter van der Veer, Religious Nationalism: Hindus and Muslims in India (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1994), Chapter Two. [7] In light of Jocelyne Cesari’s point that the sacredness of the nation has displaced the sacredness of religious sites towards the political community, this essay sees securing votes in GB for the Pakistani state means securing the boundaries of the sacredness of the nation. Jocelyne Cesari, “Time, Power, and Religion: Comparing the Dispute over Temple Mount and the Ayodhya Sacred Sites,” Journal of Law, Religion and State 9 (2021): 95-123. [8] “The Republic and its territories,” The Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/Pakistan_2015.pdf?lang=en, accessed Apr 25, 2021. [9] Al-Jehad Trust v. Federation of Pakistan 1999 SCMR 1379, https://cite.pakcaselaw.com/pdf/155957/AI-JEHAD%20TRUST%20VS%20FEDERATION%20OF%20PAKISTAN,%201999%20SCMR-SUPREME-COURT%201379%20(1999).pdf, accessed Apr 25, 2021. [10] Martin Sökefeld, “Anthropology of Gilgit-Baltistan: Introduction,” EthnoScripts: Zeitschrift für aktuelle ethnologische Studien 16 (1) (2014): 11-16. [11] Statistics from Gilgit-Baltistan Assembly website, https://gba.gov.pk/, accessed Apr 25, 2021. [12] Pakistan - Gilgit-Baltistan economic report : broadening the transformation (English). Washington, D.C. : World Bank Group. http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/939151468062972670/Pakistan-Gilgit-Baltistan-economic-report-broadening-the-transformation, accessed Apr 25, 2021. [13] Planning & Development Department, Government of the Gilgit-Baltistan and UNICEF Pakistan. 2017. GB Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey, 2016-17, F report. Gilgit, Pakistan: P&D Department, Government of the Gilgit-Baltistan and UNICEF Pakistan, 231 http://www.gilgitbaltistan.gov.pk/DownloadFiles/PDD/MICS_GB_1617.pdf, accessed Apr 25, 2021. [14] Sökefeld, “Anthropology of Gilgit-Baltistan,” 17. [15] Magnus Marsden, Living Islam: Muslim Religious Experience in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), Chapter 6. [16] Sayyid Husain Arif, Taẕkirah-yi ʻulamā-yi imāmiyah-yi Pākistān Shimālī ʻAlāqahjāt (Islamabad: Imāmiyah-yi Dāruttablīgh, 1994). [17] Islami Tehreek Pakisan Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/Islami-Tehreek-Pakistan-504732639645127/?ref=page_internal, accessed Apr 25, 2021. [18] For example, Marsden, Living Islam. Maria Beimborn, “Christians in Gilgit: Negotiating subalternity and citizenship,” EthnoScripts: Zeitschrift für aktuelle ethnologische Studien 16 (1) (2014): 67-95 Muhammad Azam Chaudhary, “The Ways of Revenge in Chilas, Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan: Shia-Sunni Clashes as Blood Feuds,” EthnoScripts: Zeitschrift für aktuelle ethnologische Studien 16 (1) (2014): 97-114. [19] Azam Chaudhary, “The Ways of Revenge in Chilas, Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan.” [20] Sohaib Bodla, “Making a Nation in High Mountains: Balawars and Balawaristan Nationalism in Ghizer District of Gilgit Baltistan,” EthnoScripts: Zeitschrift für aktuelle ethnologische Studien 16 (1) (2014): 126. [21] Ibid, 134. [22] Nawaz Khan Naji Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/navazknaji/, accessed Apr 26, 2021. MWM GB Official Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/MWM-Gilgit-Baltistan-Official-431949496957816/?ref=page_internal, accessed Apr 26, 2021. ITP GB Official Facebook pafe, https://www.facebook.com/ITPGB/, accessed Apr 26, 2021. [23] Kazim Mesam Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/mesam.blti, accessed Apr 26, 2021. [24] Bodla, “Making a Nation in High Mountains,” 133. [25] Ibid, 135.
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