By Kaleem Kawaja

There is no end in sight to the plight of the Urdu speaking Muslims of the Indian subcontinent who are spread over Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. Nearly sixty years after the partition of India their social, economic and political situation in all three countries continues to be precarious. The Muslims of erstwhile India have been tragically trifurcated into almost three equal parts.

In 1947 and since then Muslims of all ethnic shades in India have continued to pay a heavy price for the creation of Pakistan. Today in India while Muslims of other ethnic origin have started making a courageous and difficult effort to carve out a role for themselves in the Indian context and to become a part of the Indian mainstream, a segment of the Urduwala Muslims continue to emphasize the symbolic elements that have lost their relevance, and continue to be emotionally attached to the West Asian Muslim countries. This seriously draws their energies away from their real problems lack of security, backwardness in education and socio-economic arenas.

In Bangladesh where most Urduwala Muslims migrated only as a second choice due to their perception of themselves as being of West Asian origin, they alienated themselves from the Bengali Muslims. They remained aloof from the Bengali Muslims. When Pakistan split up in 1971, they sauffered immeasurably, since Bengali Muslims perceived them as colonists, not fellow countrymen.

At the same time they started having problems in West Pakistan also. Today in Pakistan the Urduwala Muslims including the generation that was born in Pakistan itself, are sharply alienated from fellow Sindhis, Punjabis, Pathans and Balochs. Despite some genuine grievances their forming a separate political party - Muttahida Qaumi Mahaz, their demand for the recognition of Muhajirs as a separate nationality, demands for a separate province, and their unending conflagration with other Pakistanis is mind boggling. They seem disillusioned in the Wesrt Asian heaven where their parents and grandparents led them in search of tranquility.

Now in the twentyfirst century is there hope that the dilema of the Urduwala Muslims will end ? If the Eastern European nations can reject Communism after seventy years, because they did not see any duture in it, is it too much to ask the Urduwala Muslims to re-examine their fixation with West Asia which inhibits their assimilation in an East Asian ocean, which is their real origin and where they are destined to remain for ever? After all this fixation has already caused immense harm to them. Also an overwhelming majority of the Muslim Ummah lives in the East.

Is it not worthwhile for the Urduwala Muslims to evaluate why despite being a talented people they are in hot water everywhere? Is it their myopic social and cultural orientation or are they chasing a set of impractical values? What is the use being imitation West Asians? Why not be what they really are and become a part of the mainstream where they live? Surely that does not conflict with their being a part of the universal Muslim ummah.