The India-Pakistan cultural affinity is often framed in terms of cross-border Punjabis, but there is much more to it, with similarities between divided mercantile communities such as Gujaratis being a case in point
In a March 2011 Mint newspaper column, columnist Aakar Patel explained why India is ‘part dysfunctional, fully functional’. He attributed caste balance to it while drawing a parallel with Pakistan, which he argued was a ‘mess’ because it lacks a similar equilibrium. Patel noted there are not enough traders to press for restraint, and there are too many peasants in Pakistan. Baniyas or mercantile communities, he wrote, ‘are brought up to seek compromise, to keep emotion in check, to identify value, to understand capital, to persist.’
Patel emphasized there are exceptions, such as Karachi’s Gujaratis and Punjabi Khatris like journalist Najam Sethi, to ‘the peasant Punjabi (Jat)” and ‘his militant stupidity.’ Sethi vindicated the argument by steering Pakistani cricket out of the messy situation it had been in for nearly a decade. His leadership capped a turnaround with the Sri Lankan cricket team’s return to Lahore for a T20 match on October 29, 2017.
The game was played at Gaddafi Stadium, a few hundred meters from where the team’s bus was attacked in 2009. The assault threatened the future of the sport in the country. As if that were not enough, three top cricketers, including skipper Salman Butt, were found involved in fixing matches and banned the following year.
Nawaz Sharif and the Political Echo of Trade
Then-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif handed over the PCB reins to Sethi amid this mess in 2013. The move stirred up a hornet’s nest. Led by Pakistan’s greatest cricketing icon and opposition leader, Imran Khan, critics questioned Sethi’s credentials. They even alleged he was rewarded for ‘rigging elections’ for Sharif when Sethi oversaw the 2013 elections in Pakistan’s biggest Punjab province as the interim chief minister.
Sethi persisted, digging in his heels through thick and thin as the Pakistani cricket reeled under the back-to-back blows. Within three years, Sethi helmed the successful launch of the Pakistan Premier League (PSL) in 2016 in the UAE after years of inertia under his predecessors.
Sethi proved naysayers wrong when he oversaw the PSL final in Lahore in 2017, two years after Zimbabwe became the first international team to visit Pakistan after the attack. The events paved the way for a star-studded World XI’s visit to Pakistan for a three-match series, which turned out to be the precursor to the Lankan team’s game-changing return. That the Sri Lankan board agreed to play the match eight years after the traumatizing experience forced even Sethi’s worst critics to acknowledge his success.
Najam Sethi and the Mercantile Legacy
Sethi earlier persisted with Misbah-ul-Haq as captain despite a barrage of criticism over his measured, calm, and composed leadership to help repair Pakistani cricket’s battered image in the wake of the fixing scandal. Pakistani cricket had until then been defined by an aggressive and flamboyant style of cricket and leadership of the likes of Jats Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis, and Gujjar Shoaib Akhtar.
Sethi stepped down when Imran Khan stormed to power in 2018, before PSL was fully held in the country. He returned to the PCB after Khan’s ouster in 2022 and oversaw the PSL 2023. Sethi has claimed PSL’s digital viewership this year of over 150 million, surpassing that of the Indian Premier League’s 130 million.
Aakar Patel’s argument also holds for Nawaz Sharif, who too comes from a top business family of Kashmiri origins. Sharif attempted to infuse the pragmatic mercantile approach to Pakistani politics, particularly vis-à-vis ties with India. He championed India-Pakistan cultural affinity and the promotion of trade ties while attempting to put contentious issues on the back burner.
India-Pakistan cultural affinity is often framed in terms of food, language, and culture, mostly of cross-border Punjabis such as Sharif. But the two countries remain more similar than we think, 70 years after British lawyer Cyril Radcliffe drew the line dividing India and Pakistan within five weeks of his first visit to India.
Gujaratis in Karachi: South Asia’s Merchant Class
The culture of divided mercantile communities is another case in point of India-Pakistan cultural affinity. Pakistan’s minuscule Gujaratis, who are concentrated in Karachi, the mainstay of the country’s economy, true to form, contribute disproportionately to it. The contribution of Gujaratis to India’s economy is also significant, as the owners of many of the country’s top businesses.
In his book Karachi: Ordered Disorder and the Struggle for the City, Laurent Gayer writes that the firms based in Karachi controlled Pakistan’s 96 percent private industries in the 1960s. They owned 80 percent of the assets in private banks and insurance companies.
Thirty-six out of 46 large industrial groups were generally in the hands of Karachi-based businessmen from Gujarati Memon, Khoja, and Bohra mercantile communities. The Gujarati trading communities accounted for Pakistan’s 0.4 percent population but controlled the country’s 43 percent industrial capital, according to Gayer. Halai Memons alone owned 27 percent of these industries.
Shared Mercantile Heritage and Economic Power
The domination continues. The House of Habib conglomerate, whose founders were from Jamnagar in the Indian state of Gujarat, among other things, runs Pakistan’s biggest bank, Habib Bank Limited (HBL). HBL was established in Bombay in 1941. It was shifted to Karachi after Partition in 1947 and became Pakistan’s first commercial bank. HBL was among the businesses Gujarati Muslims founded before Partition and relocated to Pakistan post-Partition.
The Gujarati-speaking Memon Mandiwala family was among the pioneers of the multiplex cinema boom that redefined Pakistan’s urban leisure culture. In 2011, they launched one of the country’s first state-of-the-art 3D multiplexes, Atrium Cinemas, leading a trend of luxury cine-going experiences and inspiring similar ventures across Pakistan.
Gujaratis in Pakistan punch above their demographic weight across sectors. Gujarati-speaking business families own five-star hotels, assemble automobiles, and wield outsized influence in financial markets, especially dominating the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX). Business dynasties such as the Dawoods, Habibs, and Valikas, who migrated from Gujarat before and after Partition, have played a key role in Pakistan’s industrial and financial infrastructure.
Gujarati Business Dynasties in Pakistan
The Parsi Bhandara family owns Murree Brewery, one of Pakistan’s most profitable companies and only liquor company, which expanded into non-alcoholic beverages and pharmaceuticals in the 1970s. The Avaris, another prominent Parsi-Gujarati family, own the Avari Hotels Group, a luxury hospitality chain with five-star properties across Pakistan. The family has been among the pioneers of international hoteling standards in Pakistan
The Gujarati industrialist families represent Gujarat’s mercantile legacy, which continues to shape Pakistan’s corporate, hospitality, and beverage industries. The Dawood family migrated to Pakistan from Gujarat after Partition. It became one of Pakistan’s most powerful business dynasties during the 1950s and 1960s under Ahmed Dawood. The Dawood Group was one of the largest conglomerates in Pakistan at its peak, with interests in textiles, chemicals, fertilizers, shipping, banking, and insurance.
The family set up the Dawood Hercules Corporation, a key player in the fertilizer and energy sectors. Karachi’s Dawood College of Engineering and Technology is among the top educational institutes in Pakistan. In the 2000s, the group re-emerged through its holdings in Engro Corporation, one of Pakistan’s largest companies in energy, fertilizers, and food, after Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s nationalization in the 1970s hit the Dawood Group hard with the stripping of its assets.
The political culture of Karachi is similar to Uttar Pradesh and Bihar since immigrants from the two Indian states have dominated the polity in the metropolis. The centuries of togetherness have left many such deeper linkages. Radcliffe’s arbitrarily drawn line cannot erase the India-Pakistan cultural affinity despite seven decades of hate and bigotry.
