Pakistani Diversity

Q’s comment, on Kabir’s excellent post, deserves to be reproduced in full.

Several points are wrong here:

I have never actually met a Pakistani who thinks they are Arab or Turk ethnically. Claiming lineage is not ethnicity, not even the Syeds identify with Arabs although they will try to flex their Syed status occassionally. Many Syeds in the family, never heard anyone claim they were ethnically Arab.

Ergutral did not make people in Pakistan think they were Turks, what they identified with was the Islamic history and mannerisms being portrayed. A pasthun guy told me that it portrayed ‘our history’ and while I completely understdood the ‘our’ part because he was using it in an Islamic context (because he is a proud Pasthun, not Arab or Turk), but I did correct him that it was mostly fiction.

The claim that Pakistanis are ethnically indistinguishable from North Indians is also wrong. This just refuses to acknowledge the vast diversity of languages, cultures, clothing and mannerisms that are found in Pakistan and North India. The difference between a Pakistani Muhajir from UP and Sindhi is night and day and you will have to live it to understand it. The difference between even Saraiki and Punjabi from Majha belt is night and day. When you live in a cosmopolitan city like Karachi and you see these different groups up close, you will realize there are many differences as their are commonailities and that stereotypes are not lies.
Educated people from different groups can paper over these differences because of their common Urdu/English education but the differences are stark on the rural level.

Pakistani Pasthuns are also very distinguishable from Afghan Pasthuns. This is also apparent when you peek past the surface. The Pashtuns are divided in North South (their dressing & accent is different). KP is more fertile by several magnitudes than any part of Afghanistan, which shows in the cuture. Pakistan has more settled areas and Pasthuns here are less tribal. The FATA Pasthuns share similarly with Afghans more than they do with Pasthuns in areas like Swat, Peshawar, Nowshera etc. The Pasthuns and Baloch unity is just a myth, most feuds in Balochistan are between Pasthuns and Balochs over land and there is no unity between these so called “Iranic” groups because the entire premise of Indic/Iranic is wrong.

There is no dividing line between any cultures, this is just Indian propganda to claim Pakistani lands. There is no ”Indic” and ”Iranic” these are just language groupings. Take a look at Gujjars in KP, or Punjabi tribes on the Potohar, these guys share more culture with Pasthuns than with most Punjabis.

So to deny the diversity that exists within Pakistan and lump everyone together with North India (which I am sure is 3x more diverse) is just incorrect.