Following Pakistan Peoples Party’s (PPP) chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari’s speech at his party’s rally in Multan on Friday, which concluded with a promise of a separate province for the area, Seraiki nationalists have offered mixed reactions to the announcement.
Rana Faraz Noon, the Seraikistan Democratic Party head, says the PPP’s promise would force other parties to make the new province part of their manifestos.
Pakistan Seraiki Party president Dr Nukhbah Langah, however, calls it an “election stunt and a Seraiki vote securing strategy”.
“The PPP did not change the name of their party unit of Seraiki Wasaib,” she said, while referring to the PPP south Punjab chapter.
She said that PPP co-chairman Asif Zardari promised a Seraiki bank during his tenure as president but that was not established.
On the national language bill in the Senate, the PPP did not include Seraiki in it.
“Three cheers for the PPP for speaking for us but why the party has shied away from calling it a Seraiki sooba,” questions Zahoor Dhareeja, the president of Seraikistan Qaumi Council Pakistan.
He says that speaker after speaker at the massive rally kept calling our wasaib as south Punjab, which is incorrect.
“We lay our claim from Bahawalpur to Khushab districts, and Khushab, Mianwali, and Dera Ismail Khan, all Seraiki-speaking districts, do not fall under the southern part of Punjab,” he explains.
He sees Seraiki as his identity and says that if the PPP gave identity to Pashtuns by renaming their province as Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, why not the similar approach for the Seraiki belt.
Seraiki nationalists had pinned great hopes on the PPP rally and done spadework to convince the party to raise the slogan of the province for the Seraiki belt.
When he landed in Multan, billboards and banners inscribed with demands for a separate province welcomed Bhutto-Zardari.
Such banners had popped up everywhere in the city days ahead of the rally.
Local newspapers published front-page ads and special supplements on behalf of Seraikistan Democratic Party general secretary Asif Khan.
But all the publicity material missed the word “Seraiki”.
Asif Khan acknowledges that there are some concerns within the PPP regarding raising the slogan of the Seraiki province.
He, however, calls it a milestone for the nationalists that the PPP chairman wears a Seraiki ajrak (a unique form of blockprinted shawls), calls Seraiki the language of four provinces, and promises to raise a new province for the area.
“Let us not make the name a big issue at this stage,” he says.
Rana Ibrar Khalid, a journalist with a deep interest in Seraiki issues, offers an explanation.
He says that when a commission for a separate province was formed by the Zardari government in 2011 under Senator Farhatullah Babar, powerful circles had warned the PPP not to use the word “Seraiki”.