Separate Seraiki Province – A Political Struggle

Pakistan is an ethnically diverse country. There are different ethnicities in Pakistan and most of the ethnic minorities are oppressed and they don’t have their fundamental rights. Seraiki is also one of the subjugated ethnicities in Pakistan. There are 35 million people are seraiki in Pakistan but they don’t have their identity as an ethnicity. If we talk about the political rights of Seraikis or other ethnic minorities then we came to know that they don’t even have their political rights. There are three main divisions in which seraikies are in majority. In those divisions, Multan, Bahawalpoor and Dera Ghazi Khan are included. In these divisions, majority people are seraiki speaking and they claim that their language and culture is totally different from Punjabis. There are different nationalist movements and some individuals are struggling in south Punjab for the separate seraiki province. Its very interesting to know that South Punjab is a political hub of main stream politics, the reason behind is that the people of South Punjab are angelic and they believe the storyteller politicians. If we look at the history of politics in South Punjab, then we can’t see anything admirable. In every general election, all the mainstream political parties promise to make a separate Seraiki province but after every election nothing happens.
This happened in the general election of 2018 as well when some politicians of South Punjab made a Janoobi Punjab Sooba Mahaz and Khusro Bakhtiar was the president of JPSM. In JPSM, most of the politicians were from PML-N and before the general election of 2018 all the members of JPSM decided to join the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and their demand was the formation of new province in South Punjab. Separate Seraiki province was also the part of manifesto of PTI but of course it was a bogus technique for getting vote from South Punjab. After the election, most of the members of JPSM was granted with the different ministries and after getting ministries they didn’t speak a single word in the favor of seraiki people or seraiki province. Basically, this happened in the past as well but every time in a different form. So, the seraiki people are basically the victim of feudal mindset of Seraiki politicians. If we talk about the literary side of South Punjab, then we can say that Seraiki poets and intellectuals have a great contribution for the cause.
The people of South Punjab demand the separate province because they understand that their language and culture is totally different and they have their own identity. They demand their seraiki province on the base of language and literature. All the seraikis believe that they have their own culture and have their own rituals which are completely different from Punjabi culture and rituals. If we talk about the Pakistani state, then we can say that the behavior of state with the seraiki region is like a step mother. There is military involvement in some areas of South Punjab. In Cholistan dessert, the illegal allotment of land is an issue now a days and sources say that there is military involvement in the illegal allotment of land as documented in (Zameeno Ki BandarBant) a book by Rashid Rehman.
The small provinces make the federation strong and there is need to understand that the seraiki province will make the federation strong and it will be beneficial for the seraiki people as well. Its very difficult to mange the financial issues of Punjab and after the creation of seraiki province, it would be much easier to divide the resources between the South Punjab and Central Punjab. If the people of South Punjab want a separate seraiki province, then they need to resist against the people who are in power. They need to understand that the resistance against the people who are in power is the only way to get their identity.
Seraikistan Zindabad