Our post-Partition Punjab politics has typically been the power politics between different biradris sharing a specific area. To somehow conclude that Punjab - or any other part of the present Pakistan - has been free from caste divisions, prejudices, discriminations and politics is to affirm our national trend to deny historical and social reality. They encompass the entire area of Pakistan in addition to the areas that are on the other side of our borders with post-Partition India. These terms are used for the entire northern subcontinent - the area above the Vindhya mountains - and, in the context of caste politics, this entire area has common characteristics that are distinct from the area that falls below the Vindhyas. The use of ‘North India’ and ‘northern subcontinent’ as interchangeable terms in the pre-Partition context in my previous columns seems to have led some readers to conclude that the geographical area defined by these terms somehow does not include the present Pakistani province of Punjab. Before I come to the subject of sheer prejudice and violence woven into the fabric of our languages - Urdu and others - I would like to make a small but important clarification.
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