Why Aren’t Muslim Women Converting to Christianity?

The quota for jobs for these regions was meant to bring their elites into the national circuit in education and jobs and thus keep their perceived grievances from developing into hard political demands. In regional terms, this represented a slow but steady current of opportunities moving in the direction of the upcountry areas in terms of new jobs at the expense of the southern part of Pakistan, especially urban Sindh. Itcontributed to the emergence of a politically restive mohajircommunity in Karachi and other cities of that province

The new quota system did not provide a separate share for Karachi. That city was no more a separate administrativeentity and had become the capital of the province of Sindh after the dissolution of the One Unit in 1970. The mohajir nationalist elements represented bythe MQM maintain that the population of Karachi has grown from one million in 1951 to an estimatedtwelve million in the 1990s which would require a massive increase in the quotafor that city. The MQM leadership condemned what it considered a grossly unfairquota of a mere 2% for Karachi instead of one that should be many times higher. Itmobilized the mohajir community on thisissue and thus made political capital out of it. However, it is generally notrealized that there is actually no more a separate quota for Karachi or any other city of Pakistan. Instead, what is really at stake for the mohajirs is their representation in theprovincial and federal services at the level of Sindh.In recent years, certain mohajir activistelements have abandoned their outright opposition to the quota system and haveaccepted the logic of proportionate representation in education and employment.They now demand that their share should be fixed according to their increasedratio in the population of Sindh and Karachi. They claim that the 60:40 ratio of rural-urbanpopulation in the province of Sindh which hadprovided the basis for the provincial quota system had now changed to 40:60 intwenty years because of successive waves of migration into urban Sindh from the upcountry provinces of Punjab and the NWFP,from interior Sindh and from the neighbouringcountries such as Iran, Iraq, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. Thepremier mohajir party, the MQM, hasdemanded a new quota according to the latest population figures and claimed thatthe results of the censuses held in 1972 and 1982 were grossly tampered with inorder to bring down the number of mohajirs.9 It demanded thata new census should be held as soon as possible and a new schedule for quotashould be provided on the basis of findings of that census. Unfortunately, whena preliminary effort in this direction was made in the form of a householdcensus in 1992, both mohajirs and Sindhis allegedly returned grossly inflated numbers.

Successive governments in Pakistan have failed to hold a census ever since 1982. The Benazir Bhutto government (1993-96) constantly balked overthe issue of holding a census. The current Nawaz Sharif government announced that a census be held inOctober 1997 but then postponed it for six months. As long as actual figuresfor urban and rural sectors in Sindh are not known,no change in the current structure of the quota system can be visualized. Theproblem was compounded by the fact that hundreds of thousands of mohajirs lived in small cities and townsoutside the three main cities of Karachi, Hyderabad and Sukkar which weretogether designated as urban areas for the purposes of quota. Therefore, theywere unable to use the urban quota and were effectively disenfranchised foremployment purposes. A large number of Sindhis wholived in the three mohajir cities’managed to get a share in the rural quota

In this context, the relevance of the wide abuse of domicile certificates for appointment of jobs against provincial/regional quota needs to be mentioned. During the first decade after partition many of those who migrated from India were able to enter the civil service, thus shuttingout local candidates from their due share in these services. Often they madedeclarations that they had resided for over a year in such provinces as Sindh, East Bengal and the NWFP where competitive conditions were easier. Later, they generally did not have any connection with their domiciled province. In 1956, the government of Pakistan tried to check recruitment of migrant candidates ‘on spurious grounds’ by requiring them to provide ‘proof of three years’ residence/education in the Province against whose quota they claimed to be considered.10 However, the condition of a stay of three years was deemed to have been satisfied in various cases such as foreign education, parents’ domicile in the province, parents’ residence outside the province due to ‘exigencies of service’ and so on.11 This allowed awide abuse of the provision for domicile by migrant candidates even after theofficial move. Two decades later, when the quota system based on a regional anda sectoral basis had been already implemented in Sindh, the abuse of domicile by new migrants from Punjab and the NWFP turned tables against the mohajirs. The practice of getting and usingcertificates of domicile in Sindh for entry into theservices by residents of other provinces emerged as an explosive politicalissue. The provision for a three years stay in the province for the purpose ofdomicile was misused to scandalous proportions, especially by the upcountrymigrants. This made the political situation potentially volatile. Therequirement of belonging to the region pushed the potential candidates for jobsfrom outside the region to getting fake domicile certificates showing that theywere local inhabitants. The fact that the higher bureaucracy was recruited onan all- Pakistan basis and Punjab got the lion’s share in the administrativehierarchy meant that Punjabi civil servants, especially police officials, couldbe easily approached for providing the ‘service’ of issuing fake certificatesto Punjabi immigrants into Karachi. This has led to the MQM’sdemand for a requirement of stay in the area for 20 years along with the familyas a prerequisite for issuing a domicile certificate.12 In this way,policies of ethnic preference combined with the relatively lax conditions forgetting a local domicile involving all kinds of corrupt practices created anexplosive situation as far as representation of mohajirsin the services was concerned. It is instructive to see that between 1973and 1983 all ethnic groups identified with their respective provinces increasedtheir representation in the services with the only exception of the mohajirs whose share declined from 30.1% to 17.4% for all grades and from 33.5% to 20.2% for senior grades.13 As thefollowing table shows, this trend continued during the years except that theshare of Punjabis insenior grades grew even higher.

Source: Charles H.Kennedy, ‘Managing Ethnic Conflict :The Case of