Fluidity and acculturation: the case of Pakistani Punjabis in Brunei Darussalam

Abstract

This paper traces the history of Pakistani Punjabis living in Brunei Darussalam, a community that began its journey long before the country’s establishment as a sovereign country in 1984. The most significant feature of this community is its fluidity because its stay in Brunei is not permanent. This makes the Punjabis a non-local/non-native community, which is markedly different from Punjabi communities living in countries such as Canada, New Zealand, and the UK. While locating the Punjabis within the socio-cultural setting of Brunei Darussalam, the objective of this study is to investigate the lives of Pakistani Punjabis in Brunei as expatriates to gain a deeper knowledge about how their fluid status in Brunei has affected their identity with regard to Punjabiness and Punjabi self, their values and beliefs and whether or not they are a diasporic community.

Keywords:

• acculturation
• anxiety
• diaspora
• expatriate
• family structure
• Pakistani Punjabi
• social identity

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Abbas Zaidi has taught academic writing and media studies in various universities in Sydney. He is completing a Ph.D. in the School of the Arts and Media, New South Wales University, where he tutors in journalism. He is the author of Two and a Half Words and Other Stories (Savvy Press, New York) and Language Shift: Sociolinguistic Lives of Two Punjabi Generations in Brunei Darussalam (Classic Books, Lahore).

Maya Khemlani David is a Professor, Faculty of Languages and Linguistics, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur. Maya David is the Linguapax Prize Winner for 2007. Her publications include The Sindhis of Malaysia: A Sociolinguistic Account (2001, ASEAN, London).

Notes

1. The report is available online at: http://hdr.undp.org/en/media/HDR_2011_EN_Tables.pdf. Accessed on 20 May 2012.

2. Better referred to as (the) MIB in Brunei. This is a Malay expression, which translates as ‘the Malay Islamic Monarchy’.

3. We would like to point out that this paper is about Pakistani Punjabis only.

4. A usual practice in the country.

5. What do we study under the template of ‘sociocultural’? Geuss thinks that sociocultural features of a group mainly include ‘the kinship system, patterns of land-tenure, artistic traditions, religious and scientific beliefs, legal institutions, values, agricultural technology etc.’ (1981, 4). Although this is a comprehensive list, it is fundamentally an impressionistic one. It is the principle of contextual relevance, which determines what variables to be studied of a given sociocultural group. For instance, ‘patterns of land-tenure’ is an irrelevant phenomenon in an expatriate scenario.

6. For the sake of clarity, we would like to repeat that ‘Punjabis’ should be understood as ‘Pakistani Punjabis’ unless specified.

7. The majority of the expatriates in Brunei, the Punjabis included, work in the private sector.

8. The data collected up to December 2012.

9. In Brunei, the main occupation of the Pathans is selling cloth, usually as vendors. Some of them have their own shops.

10. For an update on the Pathan community, the authors are grateful to Rauf Khan, a Pathan cloth vendor who settled in Brunei 40 years ago. He is married to a Malay-Bruneian and is now absorbed in the Malay–Brunei culture.

11. It appears that after coming to Brunei, Mr A and Mr B did not maintain any contacts in Pakistan.

12. We have used the actual name of the person in question because he was happy to be named. Haji Inayat was generous enough to give his time whenever requested. He became a good friend of one of the researchers, the main author of this paper.

13. He came to Brunei on the invitation of a Bruneian he had met in Singapore.

14. Unskilled workers engaged in the building industry.

15. They get indefinite stay permit or in some cases a permanent resident status, but not citizenship. Obtaining citizenship is a very long process.

16. Ahmadis are a sect of Islam which originated in the early twentieth century in Qadian, a village in East Punjab, now in India. They do not believe that the Prophet Muhammad was the last prophet of Islam. They have their own chain of prophets to guide them. They have traditionally been persecuted in Pakistan. It was as a result of an extremely violent campaign launched by the Islamic fundamentalists that they were declared non-Muslim by the Pakistan parliament in 1974. The Ahmadis are intensely hated by the Islamists. In the media, they are portrayed as the creation of colonial Britain (pre-Partition), and now as agents of the United States and the Jews. Thousands of the Ahmadis have left Pakistan. For details, see Valentine, 2008 who provides the history of the Ahmadis and their persecution, and conspiracy theories about them.

17. For a detailed discussion of the state, status and demonization of the Ahmadis in Pakistan, see Zaidi (2012).

18. The evening of every last Sunday of the month is set aside for the dars.

19. The universal Muslim brotherhood.

20. The Islamic system of governance.

21. A religious gathering in which the Prophet Muhammad is praised and blessed.

22. This might change given the present boom in private universities offering high salaries.

23. Officially, half of the members of the international teams playing for Bruneians are allowed to be expatriates.

24. It is a local/Malay term.

25. Called Taraway or Taravi.

26. Many of them offer the Taraway/Taravi prayer in mosques.

27. I refer to the reprint of the 1916 edition.