No to Ethnic Divisions

  Noor Muhammad Gojal, Hunza

Email: gulmitwala@gmail.com

Creating an enabling social environment for human development has to be a thoughtful and considerate process. The 'constitutional package', crafted by bureaucrats, lacks public legitimacy & ownership; and this also clearly exhibits in the case of Hunza–Nagar. Calculating the repercussions of ethnic divisions is not a Herculean task. It only requires a little comprehension of human societies and a bit of political wisdom.

At one end societies are progressing towards bracing a global identity while on the other there are people who still are eager to divide our society on the basis of race and ethnicity. The names of Hunza and Nagar have historical legitimacy, strong global recognition and deep public support & ownership. Why on earth would, then, someone think to change the regions' name, that too, without including all the stakeholders in the process? If changing the name is imperative, for whatsoever reason, the process of renaming should be transparent & representative to the demography of the valley.

Keeping in view the inclusive approach in sharp contrast with exclusive approach, the abbreviations of Hunza and Nagar have been and coined together that form Hunnar District (Hun, taken from Hunza and Nar from Nagar). This combines the communities of both places and one cannot receive any ethno-linguistic smell or otherwise, which hurts the communities living in Hunza and Nagar. It is also noteworthy that there is no significance of Nagar and Hunza rather the entire Northern Areas without upper Hunza (Gojal) that makes the valley the most strategic, having the international borders like Shimshal, Khunzhrav, Misgar and Chipursan within its area. So, how come the community of this most strategic region is neglected?

It is a pity that while the package claims to offer the communities sweeping 'decision making powers' the decisions are already made in privacy and leaving the community leaders in darkness. Vested interest leaders want to destabilize the region's harmony and thwart the developmental process that has been started, mainly, by some biased NGOs. This, it seems, is yet another of their attempts.

Changes are being reported in the geographical and administrative structures for the sake of electoral constituencies in the region keeping in view again the ethno-linguistic perspectives. Baltit, a densely populated Burushaski-speaking village, is being hooked with the Gojal tehsil--predominantly inhabited by the Wakhi speaking community: thus, to craft a new constituency. The population of Gojal, more or less  20, 000 , is lesser than that of Baltit and other smaller wards surrounding it. This offers a déjà vu win for any candidate who speaks Burushaski, in any election in the near future.
 

The key beneficiary of this administrative shift would be particularly the Burushaski speaking titular Mir of Hunza, Ghazanfar Ali Khan and his family as well as ill-willed advisors.    Due to his new arrangement, these concerned persons would be able to play and ensure their linguistic card on the one hand, and on the other party-affiliations as Ghazanfar himself is within the PML and his wife as a novice PPP member.  To whom it may concern? In this connection, Ghazanfar and his divide and rule advisors   are to be held accountable for engineering such hatred and further divisions among the peaceful communities of Hunza.

In addition, it is also noteworthy that Mir Ghazanfar has a greater say and meddling in the region's trade and economy. His family has widely been accused of high level corruption at the Silk Route Dry Port Sost, located in Gojal valley.

It is high time for those people of Hunza and Nagar who are concerned about the region's peace to raise their voices against these unjust, ill intentioned and mischievous decisions by the so-called tunnel-vision leaders or otherwise.