ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author discusses a long poem, ‘Sut Serai’ by Aslam Javed, a poet whose Punjabi-speaking family migrated from present day India to Multan during the 1947 Partition migrations. Despite having spent his entire life in the city of Multan and regarding Siraiki as his mother language, he has been excluded from the circle of what Ngugi might term as ‘native’ writers, who regard Siraiki as their maa boli mainly because they are not migrants and their families have been residing in this region and speaking its language for generations. Javed explains the Siraiki natives’ physical and racial attributes in order to distinguish him/her from the Punjabi or Mohajir settler. This effort is also an outcome of his ambiguous self-positioning and desire to physically, psychologically and emotionally identify with the natives. Before suggesting to the natives that they confront the settler, he attempts to distinguish the ‘political self’ from the ‘political other’.
