The Overlooked Problem of Pakistani Racism.

Are we Pakistanis racist? If racism is defined as discrimination
against individuals on the basis of group attributes, I think we are
horribly so.  The usual connotation evoked by the traditional
Western usage of "racism" is the practice of favoring the
light-skinned over the dark-skinned, and we are certainly guilty of
this (despite being dark-skinned ourselves).  For example, we refer to
lighter skin as "saaf rung" (clean color) and darker skin as "kam rung" (less color) when in fact the color of dark skin is anything but less; skin color is a bargaining point in matrimonial arrangements; and there seems to be a statistically significant preponderance of darker-skinned people in the lower socioeconomic classes and of lighter-skinned people in the upper ones (I'm not quite sure how this has come about).  There also remains the agonizing (but undisputed) fact that even a mediocre gora continues to command more respect and attention in Pakistan than the most
talented of Pakistanis, well over 50 years after the end of British rule. So we're certainly guilty of traditional fair-over-dark racism.  And, although most or all of the world is guilty of the same thing, that obviously doesn't make it right and we should fight it as much as we can, in ourselves as well as in others.

So much for that. The problem with us, however, is that things don't
stop there. Beyond this "first-line" fair-over-dark racism is another
kind of racism, something altogether different, more pervasive and I think much uglier - the reality of discrimination against individuals based on their ethnic and provincial origins.  In Pakistan, this practice, in addition to being widespread to the point of almost being considered a given, also finds official sanction in our government's policy of allocating jobs and university admissions based on provincial and regional quotas.  I have no survey data here and I base this on simply anecdotal observations, but perhaps most of you will agree that we have nurtured all kinds of (mostly negative) stereotypes about each of the ethnic groups in our country, that in social, professional and business encounters most Pakistanis will think nothing of favoring persons of their own ethnicity regardless of the merits of the situation, and that the practice is becoming more common, more entrenched.  I hope all of you will agree that this is all wrong, dead wrong, and needs to be urgently rooted out.

Since one of the best ways of perpetuating a problem is to ignore
it, perhaps the first step is to start talking about it, openly but with insight, introspection, reasoning and calm.  Ethnic racism as practiced by Pakistanis is still a taboo subject with us.  It is so charged a topic that even the nominal vocabulary - punjabi, sindhi, mohajir, pathan, baluchi, and so forth - seems to connote something negative, something sinister or debasing.  Everyone knows ethnic racism is flourishing in Pakistan but it hasn't yet been elevated to the status of an "issue" by either the media or, to my knowledge, government or academia.  Certainly, this sort of talk is not considered to be within the permissible limits of polite conversation.  This is terribly unfortunate, I think, because the
problem really deserves to be an "issue" in our lives; it is a cancer
eating away at our country and we need to confront it head-on and conquer it.

Look at what America has done with the question of race. I
realize it is fashionable to critique the United States as a transparent example of moral and social hypocrisy, but it is undisputed that federal and local initiatives in America have converted racial discrimination from a way of life to a shameful practice unprotected by government or society. I believe critical to this conversion has been the liberty and readiness to air the issue in the media, in academic forums, in books and journals and consequently in the American mind.  This national confrontation with
race creates the delicious paradox that makes America appear to be the
most racist of countries when in fact it is probably the least. I think there are important lessons here to help us deal with ethnic racism in our own country and lives.  We've got to make it an issue, talk about it, explore and study it.  It will make us uncomfortable as we confront the extent and depth of bias but can anyone seriously question the need for doing this? After all, how desperately illiterate does one have to be to make judgements based on someone's Punjabi-ness or Mohajir-ness or Sindhi-ness or...