A Disappointing
Statement
By Dr. Syed Ehtisham
Bath, New York
What many rational people feared
has come about. The movement against military
dictatorship has begun. The campaign against the
military dictatorship is fast degenerating into
an ethnic conflict reminiscent of the worst days
of Zia.
It was perhaps planned that way by the rulers.
Politicians out of power must have been aware
of the possibility. They obviously wanted to make
a clean sweep of the urban centers of the country.
The attorneys and politicians were riding on the
coat tails of the CJ who, thanks to the ineptness
of Musharraf, had morphed into the savior of democracy,
justice and sanctity of law. He had wonderfully
focused all the accumulated disaffection against
the regime. Either the opposition thought that
with overwhelming support in the rest of the country
the MQM would back off. But MQM thrives on confrontation.
It was a calculated risk and it may yet pay off.
While watching the news on ARV TV, I came across
an interview by an ANP leader Zahid Khan. After
lamenting over the events in Karachi and that
news conferences by second string MQM leaders
had been broadcast on radio and TV while Isfandyar
Wali Khan his party leader's statement had been
ignored, he went on to claim that MQM had been
created by a military dictator and was supporting
another.
Then the Khan sahib went on to say that the MQM
was in cahoots with the General who had come with
them from India. This land belongs to us. We had
allowed these people to live here but we will
not let them take a city hostage.
For a responsible leader of a national party-and
he must be pretty big in the hierarchy to give
interviews to international channels, to talk
in that tone and language is outrageous. He needs
to be reminded that but for these Muhajirs there
would have been no Pakistan. Nearly the entire
top leadership of Pakistan movement came from
parts of India which are not Pakistan and from
Bangladesh which decided to secede from the country.
Only East Bengal had a Muslim League ministry
in 1947. Sindh had a coalition. In the Punjab
Unionists ruled while Congress held sway over
the NWFP. Baluchistan was ruled by the governor
general though an agent.
And Ghaffar Khan’ for whom I have the greatest
respect and whose name Zahid Khan invoked several
times, opposed Pakistan to his last breath. He
opted to be buried in Afghanistan rather than
the land that he thought had been enslaved by
Punjabis and Mohajirs.
But to equate all the Urdu-speaking people with
the MQM is akin to equating all the Sindhis with
waderas, all the Baluchis with sirdars, all the
Pathans with taliban and all the Punjabis with
the army.
It is this condescending and disdainful attitude
which had made Ayub so dislikable a person in
Karachi. He had reportedly threatened to have
the Mohajirs thrown into the Arabian Sea. He was
destabilized by the campaign against him in the
city.
It is this patronizing attitude that MQM exploited.
It is this deliberately bred and nourished alienation
that makes the people, most of whom were born
in Pakistan, call themselves Mohajirs while immigrants
to India stopped calling themselves Sharnarthis
in a few years and the government followed suit.
One could accept that a leader of a chauvinist
right wing regional party would speak in such
terms. But for a leader of a so-called progressive
party to do so is beyond the pale.
Till such time as the 'progressive' leaders would
not recognize class distinctions and rise above
narrow ethnicity, democracy in the country will
remain a forlorn hope.
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