Pakistan by Anatol Lieven

Author:Anatol Lieven
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: non.fiction, History
ISBN: 9781610390217
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Published: 2011-04-12T00:00:00+00:00

PUNJABI HISTORY AND THE IMPACT OF MIGRATION

Punjab is panch aab, the ‘Land of the Five Rivers’: the Indus, and its four great tributaries, the Chenab, Ravi, Sutlej and Beas. As its name suggests, the northern parts of the province at least have a degree of geographic and historical unity, reflected in the Punjabi language. The southern parts of Punjab were converted to Islam, beginning more than 1,000 years ago (largely by Sufi preachers). Thereafter the region was usually ruled by Muslim rulers based elsewhere, mostly in Delhi, but sometimes in Afghanistan or even Persia.

The only Punjabi state to rule over the whole of Punjab was that of the Sikhs, a radical movement within Hinduism that (although heavily influenced by both Islamic monotheism and local Muslim Sufi traditions) arose in reaction against Muslim rule in the late sixteenth century. In the course of the eighteenth century, the Sikhs conquered more and more of Punjab from the decaying Mughal empire, and under their greatest ruler, Ranjit Singh (ruled 1801 – 1839), united the whole of Punjab, including Multan to the south, in one state. However, some 60 per cent of Ranjit Singh’s subjects were Muslims.

After Ranjit Singh’s death, the British conquered Punjab in two wars in the 1840s. These saw some of the hardest-fought battles the British ever had to undertake in India; yet, by a curious paradox, the Punjab was to become the heartland of British military recruitment in the Indian empire, with results for the state and society that have profoundly shaped the whole of Pakistan to this day, and provide some of the foundations for military power in Pakistan.

As related in Chapter 5 on the military, the British created a powerful synthesis of modern Western military organization with local traditions, and underpinned this with a system of land grants to reward loyal soldiers and recruiters. The British military system was entwined with the vast irrigation projects started in central Punjab by the British; the new ‘canal colonies’, in what had formerly been wasteland, were intended not only greatly to increase food production (which they did) but to provide both men and horses to the British Indian army.

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