KARACHI – The Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) perhaps owes a debt of gratitude to Nasreen Jalil’s mother for having brought her daughter and MA Jalil together – the couple have been stalwarts of the party since 1988, being instrumental components of a party that was once a rogue but now the country’s third largest mainstream entity.
“Jalil often jokes that my mother fell in love with when she first met him. But since she couldn’t wed him, she got me married off to him instead,” laughed Nasreen Jalil while speaking to Pakistan Today on the eve of MQM’s 27th Foundation Day. “Our marriage was purely arranged; we hadn’t even met each other till our engagement. My father had arranged my engagement with someone else, but when the time came, I refused to marry him. But then my mother met Jalil and she wanted me to marry him,” she said.
The couple were bound not only by love and a Nikahnama – their marriage came to be defined by their ideological views, which ultimately found a political expression in the MQM. “We heard Altaf Hussain speaking somewhere, and we were so impressed that we wanted to contribute to the party. We weren’t even thinking of much political involvement at the time; I was a housewife with four children, and was interested in social work,” she said.
But when the couple did enter the MQM, MA Jalil was immediately thrust into the technocrats’ wing while Nasreen Jalil was sent to do seemingly menial tasks. “Election time was near, and Altaf Bhai had formed the Haq Parast Tawun Committee for fund raising. I was deputed to work with Begum Salma Ahmed at the time, and through that committee, we got to personally know Altaf Bhai.
“I ultimately started handling correspondence, and then contracts, as there weren’t many women who had a command over the English language. That’s where the party decided I would be of most use to them,” she said. With the couple knee-deep in political involvement, raising children must have been a concern.
For Nasreen Jalil, her extended family didn’t let her worry much on that account: “It was because of our extended family, particularly my mother-in-law, brother-in-law and his wife, as well as my sister-in-law, that Jalil and I could devote time to the MQM.” When the establishment decided to initiate a crackdown against the MQM on the pretext of an operation against kidnappers in interior Sindh, she explained, differences in the party had amplified.
“Afaq Ahmed and Amir Khan wanted to pursue a policy of terrorism, and Altaf Bhai wanted to get rid of terrorism. Altaf Bhai’s line was supported by Tariq Azeem and Imran Farooq, but eventually, the establishment used the Haqiqi faction to launch a crackdown against us. Haqiqi workers could sit on tanks and come to our areas to pinpoint our cadres and activists, and their families,” she said.
No one was safe from the establishment’s wrath, and the Jalil household was no exception. “There were lots of raids at our residence back then. All MQM MNAs and MPAs had been instructed by Altaf Bhai to go underground, and Jalil also went underground.
“We wanted to protect our friends and relatives – they were under threat simply because of association. We even had to let the chowkidar leave for his safety. We shut our house in June 1992 and stayed away till December. I left for London on June 27, but there were certain arrangements that we had to make.
“I took my youngest son with me – he was not even 20 at the time. We had to send one of our daughters to Toronto, Canada where my brother had sought asylum. My brother had to flee in the early 80s; he was the owner of a newspaper by the name of Sun, and was first persecuted by Zulfikar Bhutto and then by General Zia-ul-Haq. “The other two children – one daughter and one son – were left behind in Karachi. They told us later that they shifted 11 times from their hideouts, as law enforcement personnel wanted to catch them in order to get to Jalil.
“Nothing happened to us personally, but Jalil and our children didn’t have a home for many months. In fact, when I met Jalil after returning to Pakistan, he had developed scabs on his face because he hadn’t seen sunlight for months,” she narrated. Altaf Hussain had already fled to London in 1991 after false cases were registered against him, she explained, but while those in exile were seemingly away from physical harm, news of killings of party activist wore many down.
“I remember how people would call Altaf Bhai in London, and tell him about the death of their closed ones. Altaf Bhai was naturally very affected by this, as he knew many of them. For me, at the time, not all of it registered. They were comrades but I did not know them. Altaf Bhai did. Only once I returned could I truly empathize with his everyday pain – activists who one saw in the night were dead by morning,” she said.
In those dark days, she argued, MQM workers couldn’t appear in public. “Hasrat Mohani’s grandson was picked up from his house one morning, and by evening, his tortured corpse was abandoned in a ground. Then there was a couple, Farooq and Shazia, whose tale of woe is horrendous. Both of them were kidnapped at a time when Shazia was pregnant. Farooq was killed, and Shazia was made incommunicado. Everyone asked, even raised the issue in the National Assembly and Senate, but there was no response. Rais Fatima and Qamar Mansoor were kidnapped from the railway station in Lahore and kept in safe houses.”
With the men away in hiding, it was left to the elderly and the women to run the offices of the party. “Almost all operations in Nine-Zero were being run by women. Farooqi Saheb (first deputy convenor) and then Ishtiaq Azhar from the elder’s wing oversaw things,” she said. According to Nasreen Jalil, the contribution of women in keeping the party afloat at the time is not ignored by MQM chief Altaf Hussain, but the process of inducting women into the party’s fold is more complicated.
“The MQM is a party of the lower middle class and middle class, and some of their morality and attitudes still translate into the party. There are family restrictions on women, many times family obligations that do not let the young and dynamic women participate as actively as we would demand.
“When I think back, I was like an errand boy – running from one place to another to get things done. I rose through the ranks after proving myself, and I had the support of my husband and family. My services were recognised after the ’92 operation, but perhaps, if we were working under ordinary circumstances, I would have been somewhere in the background. I had to fight through a lot of politics and viciousness to get to where I am now. Altaf Bhai would tell me to complain directly to him whenever I had an issue, because he didn’t want Jalil to get worked up,” she said.
How will women come to the fore in the MQM, then? “We work day and night, and that is not everybody’s cup of tea. But then there are women such as Kishwar Zehra and Khushbakht Shujaat who have made their place in the party. One has to be confident and sure of themselves in politics. We are an extraordinary party, and we have extraordinary young cadres. Give us a few years, and you’ll see some very strong women in the Rabita Committee and the party leadership,” Jalil said.
