In the context of the pastoral communities of Pakistani shepherds, I mentioned three major ecologies that they inhabit: the flat deserts of Sindh, Punjab and KP; arid bushy mountains in KP and Punjab; and the barren hills of Baluchistan, interspersed with deserts, rocks and shingle. In their case, it is the ecology that dominates the lifestyle and communal structures, even the very variety of sheep, goats or cattle they breed is a function of the ecology and topography. If now, we turn to the agrarian communities of Pakistan, ecological imperatives retain their edge but no longer possess the stranglehold over life that I envision in the case of the pastoralist.
The agricultural communities have two major divisions in terms of the crops they grow, each with two subdivisions in both cases. I exclude here nurseries and the arboricultural sector. That I believe should be included in the category of artisans or artists with a special skill. The two major divisions of agriculture in my mind are the vegetable farmers and those who grow crops. The first can be subdivided into those who grow vegetables that gestate in three or four months, and those who plant potatoes and onions or such vegetables which take about six months or so. On the side of the crops, the distinction is well known because the difference between a cash crop and grains is a common topic in the news. Those who grow grain are virtually assured of food for their own needs and thrive on the surplus they sell. Those who grow cash crops depend on their counterparts for staple grain, like us urban people but thrive on industrial sales of their cash crops. Generally, however, a rural person may well be self-sufficient in grain.
I first visited an artisan village in 1976 as part of my research project on the “Socio-economic Effects of Rural Electrification in Pakistan”. Being close to Lahore then, it is now part of the extended Lahore residential colonies near Niazbeg Thokar. Sultanpur was a carpenter village, but its headman owned several cows as well. Today, the environs of Pattoki, which was just a small and sleepy town when I first passed it on the way between Multan and Lahore, is now a hub of nurseries which feeds the nurseries across the country; nurseries are an urban industry.
So, to return to the agrarian lifestyle. Here the ecological imperative is not the primary factor in the choice of the kind of crop; but the rain dependent areas [barani] do impose a limit on the options of farmers to some extent. The more important aspect in the age of modern technology is the capital outlay available and the resources of the farmer. Even this is either circumscribed or surmounted by the entrepreneurial ability of the farmer. Since our major concern is not the economic aspect of an agrarian polity, these considerations only determine the communal status of the individual within their cohort. I consider this worth focusing on.
There is always a social stratification in human communities, generally based on quantitative and qualitative differences between the possessions of the individual. Other considerations such as age, knowledge, skill, ability or temperament may or may not apply in all communities. However, in the pastoral community, the insularity of the individual/family makes the gap less significant. In addition, there is seldom a major qualitative difference between the possessions of a tribal sardar and the members of his tribe. The leader will have more animals in his heard, more beddings in his loft and more rooms in his house [perhaps to cater to communal demands on his resources]. He will sit at the head of the charpai, or will sit on higher or larger charpai, even one with more refined thread and trappings, but he is unlikely to be radically different. A village headman may well be an absentee landlord with a qualitative difference in the material conditions of his life; this is the threshold between nomadic and sedentary life.
Would you like to speculate with me regarding the degree of difference between the pastoral and the rural life in the environs of Peshawar, Bannu, Islamabad, Lahore, Multan, Quetta, Sibbi, Sukkhur, Hyderabad, Swat, Hunza, Rahimyar Khan, Nawabshah and Khuzdar?
