Should you be deported if you don’t live up to stereotypes? Is having cases registered against you in Pakistan any reason for you to be deported from the UK? The YouTuber Rajab Butt was deported from the UK for this reason.
He was not deported because he threatened the UK’s food supply, which is probably the only reason any self-respecting Butt would find that brings any honour to the Butt clan. According to the stereotype, Butts are hearty trenchermen. Well, actually a little beyond that. One saying goes: they don’t so much eat a lot as conquer a meal.
Rajab Butt is the guy who got into trouble with the Wildlife Department because he posted vidoes on TikTok of himself and a lion cub. He posts videos of himself living the high life, with flashy cars. And guns. But I don’t think he posted any videos of himself at work with a plate of biryani. (Or any other dish. Butts are not supposed to be particular.)
I suspect that Butts developed their reputations for being enemies of food because of their tendency to be wrestlers. I’m not saying that all Butts are wrestlers, but just as not all Kashmiris are Butts, but all Butts are Kashmiris, and some wrestlers are not just Kashmiris but wrestlers. And it is the awesome diet of the wrestlers which has become the ideal all true Butts aspire to.
By the way, here in this city, not all Butts are from Kashmir, even though all are Kashmiri. A lot, indeed the majority I think, are from Amritsar, who (or rather whose families) had migrated at Partition. There is a small admixture of Kashmiris in Lahore, who had migrated from Kashmir, but through some intermediate city. Perhaps the most famous example is that of Allama Iqbal, who came to Lahore and settled here. He was neither directly from Kashmir, not from Amritsar, but from a family that had moved from Kashmir to Sialkot.
But whether a Butt’s ancestors moved directly from Kashmir to Lahore, or first to another city, and then to Lahore, or to Lahore via Amritsar, he likes his nutriment. Thus I’m sure the highlight has a of Rajab Butt’s wedding was not the lion cub, but the menus at the various functions. The UK was perhaps collectively lucky not to have had to provide for those weddings, for after Brexit, the food situation there is noy a problem, but it could come under strain if there were a few more weddings.
The Kashmiri community in the UK does include some Butts, but is mostly Mirpuris, mostly Jats, who are also good at eating, but whose weddings are not causes for famines, The Mirpuri relationship with food is more practical than that of Butts, for whom food and feeding seems to have a spiritual dimension. Khwaja Nazimuddin, the second Prime Minister of Pakistan, is said to have been so fond of eating that he used to stop midway, induce a throting-up to create space, and then jump into the fray once again. (Like the Ancient Romans, who used to tickle their throats with feathers at banquets) Khwaja Sahib was a Bengal, by rights the Nawab of Dhaka, at whose house the All-India Muslim League was formed in 1906. And that was a Kashmiri-origin family. Not Butts, but with the same tradition of hearty eating.
I see that Australia has banned the use of social media by those under 16, and made the internet companies responsible to make sure it doesn’t happen. That’s a little like making a Butt responsible for making sure that wedding guests don’t eat too much. But I’m sure they’ve got a serious problem, because they already have barracking, beer and boorishness. Now they’ve got an Usman Khawaja in their cricketing lineup. A Kashmiri, though not to my knowledge a Butt. Is he a hearty tencherman? That I don’t know, but he should be.
