The linguistic betrayal of the Saraiki people does not merely unfold in bureaucratic documents or census categories—it resounds in the opportunistic rhetoric of political leaders who routinely invoke marginalization when out of power, only to abandon their promises when elevated by the very establishment they once condemned.
From teary press conferences to roaring speeches in southern Punjab, leaders from major parties deploy Saraiki grievances as a performative device—weeping for the dispossessed when powerless, but swiftly turning mute when granted proximity to power. The transformation is not incidental; it is a discursive choreography designed to pacify dissent while preserving elite arrangements.
Political figures who once stood beneath the banners of “Saraiki Sooba” and “linguistic justice” often undergo a dramatic shift in tone, syntax, and message once in office. Where once they named oppression and structural imbalance, they now speak in the register of development and unity. The vocabulary of protest—identity, dignity, recognition—is replaced with bureaucratic euphemisms: “integration,” “mainstreaming,” “resource optimization.”
The concept of “beneficial storying” turned sour aptly characterizes this duplicity. Narratives that once held emancipatory potential are co-opted into empty slogans. Political discourse becomes not a vehicle for recognition but a rhetorical trap—a semantic cul-de-sac where Saraiki aspirations are repeatedly redirected and diluted.
The pattern is recurrent. Party manifestos, campaign speeches, and televised appearances feature a selective use of Saraiki identity—as a sentimental symbol of marginalization, never as a political demand to be realized. Even when leaders are themselves Saraiki-speaking, their linguistic choices in power settings shift decisively toward Urdu or formal Punjabi, reinforcing the very hierarchy they once contested.
This betrayal is compounded by the role of state-affiliated media, which rarely provides sustained coverage of linguistic disenfranchisement unless it aligns with the broader establishment narrative. When a Saraiki leader criticizes central Punjab’s dominance while in opposition, their words are amplified; once in power, the silence is mutual, choreographed, and deafening.
More insidiously, the appropriation of Saraiki identity by powerful figures serves as a mechanism of control. By symbolically “representing” the region, these figures diffuse actual grassroots movements that demand structural change. The result is a performance of inclusion without substantive shift—a rhetorical inclusion that masks material exclusion.
Yet, the people remember. Shakir Shujaabadi’s poetry continues to echo from Multan to Dera Ghazi Khan, reminding those in power that memory resists erasure. Linguistic justice, for the Saraiki belt, is not a seasonal campaign issue—it is a demand etched in culture, memory, and continued resistance.
Until Saraiki is recognized as more than a regional accent or a folkloric identifier—until it is treated as a political identity with rights, representation, and autonomy—the betrayal will continue. Political parties must choose: to speak truth even from positions of power, or to remain captives of a linguistic hypocrisy that will, in time, cost them the very legitimacy they so desperately seek.
