British Muslim Politics

Examining Pakistani Biraderi Networks

P. Akhtar

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9781349446049
  9781137275158
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137275165
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: European Politics
• Index: Social Sciences

Although there has emerged a huge interest in the Muslim communities in Britain since 9/11 and 7/7, few academic studies have focused on the political processes within Muslim communities and the impacts these have on civic engagement. This book examines the political biographies and religious identities of British Muslims of Pakistani descent.

1

Setting the Scene: Post-War Pakistani Migration and Settlement

This chapter begins with a survey of the early post-war migration and settlement of Pakistanis in the UK. Insights from the early anthropological literature on the Pakistani population in Britain are used alongside retrospective interviews with individuals – their migration biographies – to provide an understanding of the context within which subsequent socio-political attitudes and behaviours were formed and to assess the influence of biraderi networks on these developments. The chapter illuminates the importance of kinship networks that developed from the expanding social roles of Pakistanis between migration and settlement. The migration of men, women and children are dealt with separately, highlighting the very different migration and kinship experiences based on gender and generation. The male experience of migration presented a particular set of issues focused on, though not limited to, employment and accommodation. Family reunification and the arrival of wives and children broadened the parameters of male migrant experiences in British society. There was a gradual, tacit acknowledgement by the migrants that their stay in the UK would be for longer than had previously been imagined. Yet many still had faith in an eventual – if somewhat delayed – return to Pakistan (Anwar, 1979).

The migration of Pakistani women to the UK was, in large part, through the channel of family reunification. Very few, if any, Pakistani women came to the UK as primary economic migrants in the first significant wave of migration between the 1950s and 1960s. Pakistani women have come to the UK primarily as economic migrants, usually as domestic workers and child-minders for wealthy Pakistani families, but these migrants are not significant in number and they did not come from Kashmir, the region from which the majority of ‘wave’¹ migrants hailed. Like Bangladeshi migrant women from Sylhet, the immigration rules which allowed women entry into the UK were dependent on their status as wives or mothers (Gardner, 2006); for the vast majority of Pakistani women, family reunification has been their route into Britain. In more recent times, Pakistani women from Kashmir have migrated to the UK as primary migrants, mostly as students.² Nevertheless, it is the case that in the 1950s and 1960s most Pakistani women migrants entered the UK as the spouses of male migrants. Their arrival in British cities did not significantly increase the presence of Pakistanis in the public arena. First-generation Pakistani women migrants were often housewives who rarely entered the labour market or indeed travelled very far beyond their residence; geographical mobility was limited due to a number of factors, including language barriers. It was their concerns regarding children and school life which brought Pakistani migrants into the wider public consciousness. Subsequently, issues relating to integration, primarily concerning migrants’ value systems and the state’s responsibilities towards accommodating these values, became important, especially in the arena of education.

Context of migration

A useful starting point in understanding the social organisation and civic engagement of Pakistanis is the post-war migration after 1945. Although this is by no means when the story of Pakistanis in Britain begins – indeed, as Patricia Jeffrey notes, ‘the destinies of the Indian subcontinent and of Britain have long been intertwined’ (2010: 2) – it was nevertheless in the 1950s and 1960s that large and unprecedented numbers of immigrants from the sub-continent arrived in the UK. The broad factors for this can be divided into ‘pull factors’ – labour opportunities in the UK – and ‘push factors’ – primarily the building of the Mangla Dam. I will examine each in greater detail.

Re-building Britain: Labour shortages

Unlike the ‘Empire Windrush’ which brought West Indian immigrants to Britain in 1948, there was no symbolic episode for the arrival of Pakistanis. Single men came to work – specifically to help rebuild Britain after the war. The majority of Pakistanis in the UK – the post-war-wave migrants – originated from Mirpur in Azad Kashmir (Nielsen, 1984). Mirpur was where British steamship companies recruited their cheap labour. Some of these seamen jumped ship, especially between 1943 and 1949 when there was an acute labour shortage in England (Rex and Moore, 1967: 115). Many British companies set up recruiting agencies in former colonies to encourage labour migration: ‘In India and Pakistan textile and other companies advertised for workers and some workers were directly recruited by employers’ (Anwar, 1994: 5). Europe had just ended a war and needed to build itself again. It opened its doors to guest workers and economic migrants, in particular from former parts of the British Empire. Workers from the former colonies were not the first choice of those recruiting to combat the labour shortages (Castles and Miller, 2008), but they were the ones that responded. For many Pakistanis, as with the New Commonwealth immigrants more widely, work in the UK offered the chance of a better life. The pay may have been poor, and there may have been compromises made on living conditions, but both parties benefited and, of course, there was a tacit agreement on both sides that the relationship would not last forever.

The Mangla Dam

It has been suggested that this migratory flow was also influenced by the partition of British India in 1947, which resulted in the newly created Islamic Republic of Pakistan³ and led to one of the largest displacements of peoples in history. However, the creation of Pakistan largely affected migrants from the Punjab and not Azad Kashmir, from where the majority of Pakistanis in the UK now came. A more important factor in the Pakistani Kashmiri migration was in fact the creation of the Mangla Dam (Anwar 1979, 1994).

The building of the Mangla Dam in Azad Kashmir contributed to the displacement of a significant number of people within a small geographical region. In the 1950s, a joint international project (UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Germany and the USA) attempted to build the world’s largest dam, in the Mirpur region. Between 1960 and 1967, around 100,000 people (18,000 families) were moved (Anwar, 1979, 1994). Families received cash compensation for their houses and, for those with at least half an acre, cash for their land. Farmers who had larger plots were given land in exchange within Punjab. The presence of large numbers of Pakistanis in Britain is a direct result of the displacement caused by the Mangla Dam and the arrangement at governmental level to admit them into Britain (Allen, 1971, cited in Khan, 1979: 67). Since they came from Mirpur, they are often referred to as ‘Mirpuris’.

Pioneer peasants

The vast majority of post-war-wave migrants from Pakistan to the UK came from rural areas (Dahya, 1972–1973: 25, cited in Joly, 1995: 46). Whilst ‘distinguishing migrants in this way’ is problematic, in that it works to ‘reinforce the stereotype that “urban” means “educated” and “rural” means “uneducated” or “illiterate”’ (Shaw, 2000: 19), these distinctions are very much part of the self-narration discourses of Pakistanis.⁴ Many of the pioneer-generation Kahmiris I spoke to saw themselves as ‘sider sardeh bundeh’, simple people. The post-war Pakistani migrants experienced rural-to-urban migration at the same time as international migration. They experienced an overnight transformation from villager in Kashmir to British city-dweller ‘faced with the requirements of an urban, industrial society’ (Brah, 1996: 24).

In the early academic literature, the typical Pakistani was described as a ‘peasant-turned-worker’ (Rex and Moore, 1967: 164) who came for a better life, to make some money and return to his ‘homeland’. He was a rural village man, taking his place in the mills of northern England and the factories of the Midlands (Joly, 1988: 32), a ‘shy country boy’ who found ‘England somewhat bewildering’ but who nevertheless – and despite his illiteracy – found economic success, often as a shopkeeper (Rex and Moore, 1967: 119). Interestingly, however, in retrospective interviews with this generation of migrants, narratives of migration focus less on the bewilderment of life immediately after migration and more on the networks of kinship which helped them to get settled in work and home. Ali Nobil Ahmad writes that his informants ‘preferred to talk about the rewards they reaped […] than dwell on what they had endured in the factory’ (2008: 158).

The ‘Homeland’

Mirpur district in Azad Kashmir is situated in the north-west of Pakistan. Azad, or ‘free’, is the term by which Pakistan denotes the western section of the old state of Jammu and Kashmir (Khan, 1979: 59). It is a poor, subsistence-farming region with a history of labour migration. Figures on emigration from Pakistan are difficult to obtain; nevertheless, authors of a report published by the Sustainable Development Policy Institute entitled ‘Pakistan’s National Emigration Policy: A Review’, postulate that the majority of emigrants ‘are based in middle-eastern states working as short-term contractual workers’ (Jan, 2010). There is even less official statistical data on emigration from Kashmir, but my research interviews suggest that the Middle East and the UK are the two most popular locations for economic emigrants from the region. Whilst emigration to the Gulf is often temporary, migration flows to the UK are more varied, with permanent emigration being the most prevalent.

And it is emigration to the UK of significant numbers of individuals and families from Kashmir that has contributed to the many dramatic changes to the area. Recently, there have been improvements in transport infrastructure so that there are fewer tongas (horse and buggies) and more cars and motorbikes. During my research visits to Kashmir in 2008 and 2010, it was possible to travel on new roads in villages funded by individuals from the UK. Many British Pakistanis maintain transnational ties with Pakistan, and return to visit relatives and attend weddings and funerals. Building a road is seen as a virtuous deed, since it aids the travels of many people, and having a road going right to one’s house bestows status on the individual and the family. Traditionally, houses were kucha (temporary) mud huts, but as economic migrants have sent remittances back home pakka (permanent), or more durable stone houses, are now common. Indeed, there has in some instances, been a dramatic change of materials used for house-building, moving from ‘mud’ huts to ‘marble’ houses, as those who have been economically successful abroad build large, marble villas. Thirty years ago, Verity Saifullah Khan described accommodation in the region as ‘two or three rooms leading into a walled courtyard or compound with animal shelters and an open-air kitchen’ (Khan, 1979: 60). Now, many of the villages where such accommodation would have been common are dotted with multi-storey villas with European-style kitchens and washrooms. And whereas thirty years ago, divisions in the village were made between those who owned land and those who didn’t (Khan, 1979: 60), in the modern villages of Azad Kashmir the divisions are now between those who have family abroad⁵ and those who do not. These examples highlight some of the changes that have occurred in the ‘home’ country context. Whilst in this book the focus is on the social and political attitudes and behaviour of Pakistanis in the UK, it is important to place this within the wider context of transnational migration flows, and the research is informed by work in both countries.

As well as Pakistani migrants sending economic remittances to their country of origin, social remittances (Levitt, 1998) are also a part of the migration process. Whilst the majority of Pakistanis are Muslims, there are numerous differences in language and culture – though almost all follow Sunni Islam. Khan notes that people had ‘a relatively uncritical acceptance of the traditional scheme of things’; she goes on to argue that ‘the questioning of tradition and self-awareness comes with contact and experience of alternative lifestyles and values’ (Khan, 1979: 62). Over thirty years ago, when Khan did her research, there was little outside contact, and many people had an uncritical acceptance of life patterns. Immigration to the UK and the subsequent social remittances to Pakistan have led migrants and those left behind to question aspects of tradition and culture. During a visit to Pakistan in the summer of 2008 I came across an example of religious remittances from the UK to Pakistan. Travelling along a road in a small village in Sensa in the district of Kotli in Kashmir, I came across women wearing burquas,⁶ not traditionally associated with Kashmir. They were carrying bags of rice, and as they went further ahead, they put down their bags of rice, took off the face coverings. My driver told me that the shop gave away free rice to women who wore the burqua and men who grew beards, and that they also gave away free literature on ‘real Islam’. I found out that the person who was renting the shop and giving away these free bags of rice and literature was a British-born taxi driver from Nottingham who had gone back to Pakistan to preach ‘real Islam’ to his ancestors, whom he believed were following the ‘wrong’ Islam. This highlights the fact that migration does not necessarily stop with individuals leaving their home country to travel to another. Links are often maintained, and through these ties, changes in the belief systems and everyday behaviours can occur in both countries. It also clearly shows that remittances are not just economic.

I will deal with some of these changes in religious practices and beliefs in Chapter 7; for now it will suffice to point out that although there is no caste system in Islam, ‘clear vestiges of pre-Partition social structure’ remain, so that there is a ‘general hierarchy of castes (with landowning castes at the top, and service castes lower on the scale) […] the caste which corresponds to the family trade (quom) (Saifullah Khan, 1979: 60). These hierarchies have been destabilised through mass migration, so that the fortunes of the lower orders have been transformed and their statuses changed through members migrating and sending money to relatives. Similar processes have been noted by Katy Gardner: in her work with Bangladeshis in Britain she notes that families and villages that have experienced ‘Londoni’ (synonymous with British) migration are startlingly different (Gardner, 1993). Individuals, families and entire biraderis have had their status changed in this way. Nevertheless, the importance of kinship networks for individuals and families has remained important.

The primary social unit in the Kashmiri village household is typically the three-generational family: grandparents, sons and their wives and children. Women are expected to move in with their husbands’ family after marriage, but patterns of international migration have impacted upon this tradition too. So now, when a son in Pakistan marries a family member in the UK, he often migrates to live with or near the bride’s family (Charsley, 2006). Property is held in common, and resources pooled. Migrants often feel obligations towards family members left back in Pakistan, and this has aided the phenomenon of cousin marriages, whereby children in the UK are married to close family members in Pakistan thus enabling the wider family to share in the economic gain made from migration as well as to retain family ties (Shaw, 1988; Shaw, 2000). Decisions about family matters are made communally, but the head of the household, who is the eldest biraderi member, has final authority (Khan, 1979: 60). My research highlights the importance of biraderi for British Pakistanis from the migration and settlement of the pioneer generation right through to the civic and political engagement of contemporary British Pakistani communities.

Biraderi (‘Brotherhood’)

Biraderi is a context-dependent designation in Pakistan of a co-resident set of kin and affinities, which may be stretched to include absent members (Ballard, 1994b: 45). Biraderi can be divided into two broad constituent principles: descent and the ties between contemporaries (Shaw, 1988: 99). Descent, understood as blood lineage, includes ‘all the men who can trace their relationship to a common ancestor, no matter how remote’ (Raza, 1993: 2). It is through ‘ties between contemporaries’ that the more malleable or socially inclusive aspect of biraderi can be best understood. Such ties allow non-blood relations to enter into the fold of biraderi networks. In trying to identify the composites of the biraderi network, Alavi (1972) notes its ‘sliding semantic structure’, distinguishing between the biraderi of ‘participation’ and the biraderi of ‘recognition’. In a similar vein, Wakil (1991) separates ‘effective’ biraderi relations from the biraderi at large. Yet these categorisations of ‘core’ and ‘peripheral’ biraderi members are more complicated in practice, as Rex and Moore found in their study on Birmingham in 1967, noting that: ‘co-villagers are freely referred to as cousins and we experienced difficulty in sorting out blood relationships from village ties’ (Rex and Moore, 1967: 117).

The biraderi system has no basis in Islam (Raza, 1993: 2).⁷ It is a cultural practice from Pakistan, part of the heritage of pre-partition India, which continues to play a pivotal role in the lives of Pakistanis, specifically in rural communities such as in Azad Kashmir. Like the structured hierarchies within the Hindu caste system, hierarchies exist between biraderi groups, so that land owners and landowning farmers (Rajas and Chaudries, respectively) are at the top; trades families, like the morchies (shoe repairers), are in the middle and the artisan families, like the masalis (drummers), are at the bottom.

In relatively homogeneous, rural Pakistani villages, salient demarcations of identity cut along lines of kinship, not along lines of religion or nationality. Spatial organisation is also along biraderi lines, and whilst relations are mostly courteous but distant between different kinship groups, there is a phenomenon known as marn-jeen,⁸ when people from different biraderis visit each other on occasions of births and deaths. And so, in everyday village life, interactions are with immediate kin and the wider biraderi network. It has been noted that in Pakistan ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Setting the Scene: Post-War Pakistani Migration and Settlement
• 2 Politics of Immigration and Settlement Politics: State Responses, Masculine Corporatism and Biraderi Leadership
• 3 Rushdie, the Limits of Biraderi Politics and Muslim Organisations
• 4 Biraderis and Biraderi-Politicking in Contemporary Politics
• 5 Changing Identities and Biraderi across Generations
• 6 Young Pakistanis in the Public Sphere: ‘New’ Community Organisations
• 7 From Cultural Religion to Political Islam and the Revival of Sufi Traditions
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index