Who gets to say what “Pakistaniness” is? How can we evolve the discourse to be more inclusive of Pakistani settlers in the West, and realize that, indeed, what happens in Pakistan affects Pakistanis everywhere? The diaspora may not live within the core of socio-political explosions — and are removed from the physical reality experienced by many Pakistanis who live back home — but the aftershocks are certainly felt by us all. Even by the Pakistanis who assimilate deeply into Western culture and know very little about day-to-day life back in Pakistan, perhaps preferring to remain ignorant.
Then there are those Pakistanis in the West who are so deeply ashamed by their ethnicity or citizenship marker that they tell others they’re “Persian” or something similar to gain more respect. I have witnessed this shame around being brown, or Muslim, or both due to the (hyper) invisibilization that comes with such identity markers. We are meant to fit neatly into the drawers of many white people’s unconscious biases. So, the responsibility to understand the complexity and nuance in our identities, and to be inclusive, falls not only on Pakistani shoulders back home but on nation-states in the West as well.
The “South Asian” umbrella term is not accessible to nor desired by all from the region. While some rebuttal against the use of umbrella labelling may be nationalistic in nature, this resistance is also linked to trauma, particularly Partition trauma, which was the largest mass migration of the twentieth century and resulted in the loss of lives, land and livelihood. It is violent for the multicultural liberal Canadian settler state to assume our experiences as “South Asians” are homogenous, especially when the Indian subcontinent is at the forefront of this identity marker. What choice do we have but to accept such an umbrella term, other than to resist it and appear exclusionary, or worse, immigrants defying a colonized land for which we should be grateful — a nation-state that coerces us to pledge allegiance to the monarchy that bled our land dry?
You’re not one of us
I’ve felt pretty triggered in the past by the inclusive/exclusive dichotomy. I have received message requests often, from people I do not know, who say things to me like, “you live in Canada, don’t get involved in Pakistani matters, we are fine, thank you.” It hurts me, because not only did I grow up in Pakistan, but I cannot safely return to live there. I chose the hope of revolution and contributing to radical social justice movements over privilege and the idea of a home. I sacrificed and lost the latter.
I would love to return permanently. But the reality is, I likely would not be who I am nor as able to do the work that I do if I were in Pakistan — and none of this takes away from my Pakistaniness and what I would do for the community. I believe in the importance of using one’s privilege for the betterment of the community, and of resistance and talking back. And the reason I am feeling particularly triggered is because I know other Pakistani settlers in the West (there are more than 3 million of us here, and 4.6 million in the Gulf nation-states!) are feeling the same: insignificant, excluded and isolated from participating in pivotal discourse.
As overseas Pakistani women, there is a specific criterion we must meet at all times to be included. If we’re too “liberal,” forget about it. If we fit the threshold for modesty, “purity” and “womanhood,” then we are less likely to be excluded; we have a greater chance at fitting into the image of what Pakistaniness should be. Any woman who falls outside of these margins can go to Hell. They’re better off in the West. We don’t want them interfering in our business. But as brown women, we’re also viewed as lesser-than here.
This mainstream discourse in Pakistan often excludes not only Pakistani settlers and expatriates in the West (people who have spent much of their lives in Pakistan, or people who identify as Pakistani yet have never visited), but minorities (gender, class, ethnic, religious, ability) within Pakistan itself who are silenced and discouraged from joining important conversations on socio-cultural and political issues, whose opinions are not only shut down but worse. Members of these minorities are often abducted and/or killed, such is the reality for many Baloch journalists and resistance figures who speak against their oppressor, the Pakistan Army. And while Pakistanis abroad such as myself still have an identity to hold on to, for many others, the loss of their national identity has resulted in identity disassociation, even splitting, which can create an unrelenting tension in one’s psyche.
But such newly-crafted identities are equally picked on by Western counterparts. The number of times I have been mocked by white folks in the past decade I’ve been here, for mispronouncing a word, or for a hint of an accent, or for being unable to speak conversational French in Québec, is appalling. On the other end of the spectrum, I’ve been praised for code-switching so well, and for “not seeming like a brown person.” The erasure of my cultural socialization and identity is something that white supremacy continues to praise.
Borders, boundaries
Pakistanis — whether settlers in the West or minorities back home — are affected by the globalized effects of Pakistan’s political climate. But we are also impacted by the racist and homogenous assumptions made about Muslims and brown folks everywhere. These affect us in a particularly racist and isolating fashion in the West.
I lived in Dubai during 9/11, so I did not feel the haunting racial profiling and violence against Muslims in the West that followed quickly after.
But when I moved to Canada, I heard many stories and accounts of Islamophobic, racist and arbitrary violence against brown people, especially women who wore hijabs and bearded Muslim men. This violence is compounded for Black Muslim folks. I then knew that I was privileged to have missed out on such overt and direct white supremacist violence. I grew up in two Muslim-majority countries where Islamophobia was unknown to me. (I was, however, hyper-aware of anti-Desi racism in the Gulf states, where being upper-class or Muslim did not make much of a difference, because you were from the Indian subcontinent first — but that’s a separate conversation).
I am guilty of expressing distaste toward Pakistanis and even Muslims in the diaspora myself. When I first moved to Canada, I would grow irritable at both their invisibilization of their Pakistaniness and their overindulging in Desi culture, their showing off of their cultural awareness, and their vast enthusiasm for consuming as much as they could.
I used to think, but you didn’t grow up there, you didn’t go through what I did, even though I was privileged — and most importantly, you didn’t watch suicide bombs go off in front of you or watch children die as they were killed during bombings or earthquakes. You didn’t see any of those things! This thought process was rather dramatic and unfair, I now think to myself.
I wanted to justify my gatekeeping of Pakistaniness. I labelled some Pakistani-Canadians eccentric for their “over-religiosity.” But in actuality, I grew up far more privileged than they had, even though it was in Pakistan. And I believe much of my desire to categorize more religious Pakistanis as “the Other,” was projecting my own splitting identity, in an attempt to desperately hold on to the fragmented pieces of myself that were already shattered in my life as an upper-class, upper-caste, westernized and urban elite woman in Pakistan.
This identity resulted in an inability to fully connect with the majority of people within the nation-state I am a product of. It resulted in a longing for something I could not fully grasp: the experience of the majority. But after being disowned as a young woman in my twenties, I transitioned into living as a working-class adult in the Canadian nation-state, where my past privilege allowed me to succeed more than a lot of other brown immigrants/settlers. Migration trauma is real. Displacement trauma is real. Islamophobia is real. Whether it means hyper-fixating on culture, distancing from it completely, or simply wanting to go home, it is something we share. Relatedly, we are not to be blamed for settler-colonialism, but I do believe as settlers we have a responsibility to be allies for Indigenous sovereignty.
East, West
Being in the West is not the pipe dream many think it is. It is, in certain ways, a privilege. There is a bit more fairness in the system. An emphasis on healthcare (despite its own myriad of cons). Functional public transit. It is far easier, as a Pakistani woman, to live independently. There is freedom of movement (the fear of walking alone at night as a woman never leaves you, though), and of course there are beneficial social assistance programs.
But at the cost of what? Spending months searching for minimum-wage employment? Tolerating racism, sexism and discrimination, which not only leaves one strapped for cash but possibly homeless? At the additional cost of leaving behind your family, your home, and having no choice? Not all of us choose to be in the West.
Many do, whether out of privilege or necessity — but many are simply trying to survive. If we are not currently disabled, eventually we will be — and settling in a nation-state that seems to prioritize its healthcare is a big deal for most, especially perhaps those who have lost loved ones to polio or to under-staffed/overworked government hospital care back home. We are not to be blamed for feeling the need to leave our formerly colonized nation-states that have, unfortunately, not yet been able to recover from two centuries’ worth of violence and looting.
Beyond the daily, material realities come the ideological realities. Accompanying a cacophony of anti-immigration and Islamophobic movements in the UK, a ”movement” is also occurring in the nation-state of Canada. Its shape is similar to how ethno-religious minorities are attacked in their own homes back in the East, many of whom seek asylum or refugee status in the West out of desperation. We are expected to be good citizens in the West, yet we are excluded by these movements. We are victims and survivors of police brutality and far-right white supremacy. We experience medical racism. We brown, Indigenous and Black women are also underpaid, far lower than white and East Asian women (who are nevertheless still subjected to violence).
Many brown men I know have spent countless hours in isolation, without any of their belongings, while ICE officers held on to their Pakistani passports. This attitude does not change when we have foreign passports. As a Canadian passport holder who is visibly brown and whose birthplace is Islamabad, I am routinely secondary-screened at US airports. Even though I code-switch so well! But I’m dressed like I’m cool and westernized?? I don’t have an accent! How dare you bomb swab me twice!! Do you know who my father is?
No matter what elitist private schools I had attended, no matter how westernized or even entitled I believed I was: I am, ultimately, a brown body to the white gaze. Nothing more.
Accountability, utopian futures
As the climate apocalypse arrives and our communities continue to die, we need to stick together. This culture of exclusion is heartbreaking; it is harrowing and it is hurtful, because residing in Canada doesn’t subtract from my Pakistaniness. I am not any less Pakistani than I was when I lived there, and I don’t believe anyone gets a say on any of our identities. But these exclusion processes surrounding Pakistani identity, in particular, have been taking place in Canada since the 70s.
We often assume the racial slur “p@ki” is used primarily in the UK, as racist speech is known as “p@ki-bashing” over there, but it was commonly used in Canada as well, especially throughout the 70s. My mother grew up as a Pakistani settler in Canada, and she was frequently on the receiving end of it. This is essentially how racism was birthed — through classist assumptions based on surface-level appearances. On a person’s skin colour, accent and general appearance in the West, and on their religiosity, nationalist sensibilities and maintenance of collective honour back home. And this ignorant and malignant racism that has transcended national colonial borders affects South Asians and Muslims more broadly, not just Pakistanis.
We are so quick to shut the door on those in need. Yet, it is always a pleasant surprise and reminder of our collective belief in a more just world when people come together. The way people in Pakistan came together for my friend Noor Mukadam after her brutal femicide in 2021 was truly magical, but I believe such community care and solidarity needs to be a consistent effort and not one that mostly shows up in the face of devastating and unfathomable tragedy.
And similar to how the West does not have the authority to make claims about our identities, since identity is not fixed so much as circumstantial, so much as prescribed — neither do Pakistanis back home possess the right to police identity and belonging. Without overstepping and proclaiming they understand the current daily realities of Pakistanis back home, diasporic Pakistanis have much to contribute.
We are not to be blamed for wanting freedom or survival. We live in a postcolonial world of whiteness, one in which holding onto my identity is the sole reminder I have that there is a space in which I belong. A space that I fit into, even if it is a tight squeeze and uncomfortable, but a space nonetheless, which welcomes me with open arms.
