Perceptions of Sindhi Muslims Towards Exogamous Marriages: An Exploratory Study

It has been said that exogamous marriages tend to lead to language shift (Igboanus & Wolf, 2009 & Dumanig, David & Shanmuganathan, 2013). In an early study Gal (1978) found that Hungarian women marrying German men in the city of Oberwat had shifted to German to negate their peasant Hungarian ancestry and to move up the socio-economic ladder. Similarly, David and Dealwis (2011) found in their study of Malaysian Sindhi Hindus that exogamous marriages tend to lead to language shift but is not the only reason for the shift away from the heritage language. Therefore, before mixed marriages take place one should study perceptions of the speech community towards such marriages. In this exploratory study, the perceptions of Sindhi Muslims-men and women and from different socio-economic groups towards exogamous marriages are studied. With this objective, semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten Sindhi Muslim participants (four male adults and six female adults) who live in Karachi. The interviews were recorded, transcribed, coded and themes were generated after formal consent was obtained. The findings show that language choice in the home domain is shifting because of intercultural marriages. Also, such marriages are frequent among Sindhi community members with a high socio-economic status who live in cities. Gender plays an equal role too, as the women respondents showed mixed responses towards exogamous marriages while the male respondents had a more positive perception. Such views and perceptions may affect choice of marital partners and language choice in the home domain.

Pakistans Post 9/11 Domestic Security Challenges: Perils and Prospects of National Internal Security Policy and National Action Plan 2005-2015

The concept of security is a relational phenomenon and is important than other notions. It is synonymous to the territorial security of state and involves with fears of other states with which they interact. In this thesis, I comprehensively explained Pakistan‘s security dilemma since its inception in 1947 and its internal and external compulsions to Western sponsored SEATO and CENTO. The country‘s permanent problem arisen from India which has intensions to destabilize Pakistan or undue the partition. However, Pakistan faced multi-dimensional threats from East to West after 1979 when the Soviet invaded in Afghanistan (1979) and later in the post 9/11 (2001) when again Pakistan become front line state in the world. The arisen of the new threats made it vulnerable to Pakistan and the government introduced National Internal Security Policy (NISP) and National Action Plan (NAP) to prevent terrorism in the country. The result shows that, the military establishment and the law enforcement agencies continue changing their objectives and strategies against the terrorists to combat. Hence, the security establishment must keep pace with those progressions. The state must move beyond the conventional method of banning the groups and evolve a strategy to block militants‘ new channels for generating funds. It is indeed a real challenge for the civil military establishment to curb militancy in the country. The research will prove that the solution to curb this menace of terrorism lies in implementing the National Internal Security Policy (NISP) approach and in the implementation of National Action Plan (NAP) and this is only possible way to strengthened National Counter Terrorism Authority (NACTA) to establish the writ of government. Nonetheless, all segments of nation must be on one page and without the implementation of National Action Plan (NAP) the real peace and harmony will not be achieved.