Chinese in Pakistan: diasporic identity, faith and practice

Abstract

This report explores the Chinese diaspora in Pakistan, whose presence in the region spans multiple generations. The founding members of this community are considered “twice-migrants” in that they arrived in present-day Pakistan via British India and the former East Pakistan. In studying this diasporic community in Pakistan and their migratory trajectory, I pay particular attention to how regions of Asia were connected and the links within the Indian sub-continent in the early twentieth century across the port cities of Calcutta, Dacca, Chittagong, and Karachi. Drawing on firsthand interviews with ethnic Chinese in Lahore, Rawalpindi, Islamabad and Karachi, this report aims to create a picture of what their lives are like, and particularly discusses their adoption of Christianity and its intermixture with Chinese religious ritual in the context of a Muslim-majority society.

Keywords:

• South Asia
• diaspora
• Pakistan
• migration
• religion

Notes

1. See among other works, Purcell (1965), Mackie (1976), Wang (1991), Suryadinata (1995), Ong and Nonini (Ong and Nonini 1996), McKeown (1999), Lee and Tan (2000), Ma Mung (2000), Skeldon (2003), Trémon (2007), and Kuhn (2008).

2. The former name of today’s Kolkata, Calcutta, will be used throughout in this report.

3. The terms “Pakistani-Chinese” and “local Chinese” are used interchangeably in this report to refer to those of Chinese origin born on the Indian subcontinent and holding Pakistani nationality.

4. The research upon which the article is based was made possible through a research grant from the department of Asie-Méridionales et Orientales at the École des Hautes Études des Sciences Sociales (EHESS Paris).

5. Hakka (Chinese: 客家, literally “people from guest families”) are a large minority ethnic group in southern China who speak a distinctive language. Without exception, all the Hakka people living in Pakistan today trace their origins to Meixian, a district of Meizhou City in northeastern Guangdong province.

6. I have used a pseudonym for each informant.

7. According to Ellen Oxfeld (1993) and Jennifer Liang (2007), Hakka migrants to South Asia established these niches as shoemakers and tannery owners due to the Hindu caste system that relegated any work dealing with leather to untouchables.

8. A mehndi designates a temporary tattoo drawn with henna on the hands and feet, as well as the practice of mehndi application associated with Indo-Pakistani marriage ceremonies.

9. A central point about Islam in South Asia is that it is not monolithic. There are multiple complex variations in the ways people articulate, interpret and practice their faith, resulting in significant diversity in individual and collective socio-cultural practices. Beyond the two major currents of Islam, Sunni and Shia, Pakistan, much like the rest of the Indian subcontinent, is home to a variety of sects and Islamic movements.

10. Castes in South Asia that are considered “untouchables.”

11. Pakistanis do not follow the Hindu caste system but speak of a similar system of zat, a term that can be loosely translated as caste (or clan), such as Rajput, Jat, Choudhuri, and Sayyid. Sub-castes are often referred to as biradari, which connotes both a kin group and a territorial group.

12. The Ahmadiyya movement was founded in British India by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1835–1908), considered the promised messiah by his followers. This ideology has aroused opposition from the Muslim majority in Pakistan, leading the former president Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto to declare the group as constitutionally “Non-Muslim.” Ahmadis have borne the brunt of discrimination and violent attacks at times.

13. Islamic studies, also known as islamiat (or islamiyyat) in Pakistan, is a subject formally introduced by adoption of the Objective Resolution in 1949, and was rendered obligatory across all elementary schools during Ayub Khan’s regime (1958–1969). Islamiat has been part of the educational curriculum and is now being taught in almost all schools across Pakistan.

14. Although Buddhism is a constitutionally recognized religion in Pakistan, it is rare to find practicing Buddhists and institutions catering to its followers.

15. Analyzing the religious practices of Pakistani-Chinese is a difficult task, as they are not particularly religious from an etic perspective, and their practices do not resemble the orthodoxy of monotheistic religions in the West. What Sinologists and scholars often refer to as “Chinese religions” is often a set of religious practices that are heterogeneous and of Chinese origin (Goossaert and Palmer 2011). For example, in his doctoral research on a temple dedicated to the Black Dragon King in the Shanbei region (2006), Adam Yuet Chau describes these socio-cultural practices of prayer and burning incense as “doing popular region,” an act creating sociality that is deeply rooted in its political and social context.

16. As Peter Van der Veer writes in his volume Conversions to Modernity (2013), the project of modernity is essential in the globalization of Christianity. While the question of conversion is becoming marginalized in Europe, the rise of missionary societies and projects becomes a “crucial part of the related, world-historical phenomena of colonialism and nationalism in the nineteenth and twentieth century” (1996, 7).