Pir Pagara was the spiritual leader of the Hurs, a Sufi Muslim community in Sindh celebrated in Pakistan for the long-running guerrilla campaign it fought against the British Raj. Pir Pagara’s father, Syed Sibghatullah Shah, was hanged by the British in 1943 after leading an armed uprising, and a law was passed criminalising the entire Hur community. The Hurs continued their struggle right up to the time of the independence of Pakistan.
After the end of the British rule, Syed Sibghatullah Shah’s two sons, who were in British custody in England, were released and Pakistan’s new prime minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, asked Mardan Shah to return to the newly-created country. On February 4, 1952 Mardan Shah formally assumed his spiritual duties as Pir Pagara.
The Pir’s involvement in politics began after the controversial presidential elections of 1965, which had been called by Pakistani strongman Ayub Khan in the hope of giving democratic legitimacy to his dictatorship. In the event Ayub Khan beat his challenger Fatima Jinnah, the sister of Pakistan’s founder, only after flagrant vote-rigging. After her defeat Fatima Jinnah appointed Pir Pagara head of the Muslim League of Pakistan. Pir Pagara was, however, proud of his reputation of being close to the powers that be and remained close to Ayub Khan and the army high command.
The Pir’s political clout derived from his spiritual influence over the Hurs. When, in 1965, war broke out between India and Pakistan, Hurs volunteered in droves at his behest to blunt the Indian offensive and fought ferociously alongside Pakistan Rangers and regular army units. In the late 1960s Pir Pagara’s Hurs crushed gangs of bandits who were wreaking havoc in Sindh.
Though Pir Pagara never held the reins of power, he became known as a master of the Byzantine political games of Pakistan, characterised by frequently shifting alliances and party splits and mergers. He developed a reputation, among press and politicians, as a power broker who had his finger on the nation’s pulse and as a man whose prognostications were often seen as conveying warning messages from the military to the country’s political class.
He was fond of boasting that it was he who had “made” the political career of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, claiming to have recommended the young barrister to Iskander Mirza, Pakistan’s first president.
Because of his closeness to Ayub Khan, however, the Pir did not join Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party in 1967; he and his followers were, therefore, not looked upon favourably by Bhutto after Bhutto ousted Ayub Khan two years later. When, as president, Bhutto initiated a crackdown on the Hurs, the Pir decided to register a protest by standing in the general election of 1977 in Bhutto’s hometown of Larkana. Though this was largely a symbolic gesture, it led to his being arrested, sparking violent riots that left several people dead.
Pir Pagara supported the coup led by General Ziaul Haq the same year that saw Bhutto overthrown. He, subsequently, had the satisfaction of seeing his protégé, Mohammad Khan Junejo, become Zia’s prime minister.
Later, however, he fell out with both men; and when Zia, following a series of party mergers, installed Junejo as president of the Pakistan Muslim League, the Pir left the party and founded his own, the Functional Muslim League or PML-F, in 1985. In 2010, following a further series of splits and mergers, the PML-F merged with President Pervez Musharraf’s Pakistan Muslim League (Q) as the All Pakistan Muslim League (Pir Pagara).
Syed Shah Mardan Shah was born on November 22, 1928 in the small village of Pir Jo Goth in Sindh, then part of British-ruled India. After his father’s execution he was taken into house arrest by the British authorities, then moved to England with his brother. There he studied at the Major Davis School in Liverpool (where he was said to have been forced to study Divinity, Latin and French) and later moved to Pinner in Middlesex before returning to Pakistan.
If the Western academic curriculum did not suit, his time in England left Pir Pagara with an abiding love of cricket. In 1953 he played in the first Quaid-e-Azam Trophy match as the captain of Sindh against Bahawalpur, his one and only first-class match. Sindh lost the match, and as a right-handed opening batsman, the Pir scored 1 and 15, hitting three fours in the second innings.
In 1956, when Donald Carr’s MCC “A” team visited Pakistan, a three-day match against Sindh was abandoned; the match was converted into a limited-overs game in which the Pir led Sindh against the MCC. As a token of friendship, before the start of the match, he presented every MCC team member with a wrist watch.
He also ran his own Pir Pagara XI, inviting Test players like Hanif Mohammad to play for him, and had his own practice nets in the premises of his home at which he would invite Pakistan’s best bowlers to try their luck against him. Challenging the Pir took a certain amount of courage, however. One opponent, who played for the Government College Hyderabad against the Pir Pagara XI in the late 1950s, recalls that when, during the match, the Pir was struck in the head by a bouncer and fell on the pitch, his Hur followers, who had camped out in the college grounds the night before, invaded the pitch to assault the bowler. Luckily, the Pir was not badly hurt and managed to call them off before any serious damage was done.
The Pir’s greater contribution to the game, however, was as a patron. During the 1950s he funded many aspiring Pakistan international cricketers to train in Britain. He also had a passion for horse racing and served as the president of the Karachi Turf Club.
In 1995, during a time of escalating violence in Pakistan under Benazir Bhutto’s leadership, Pir Pagara survived an assassination attempt when unidentified men fired a rocket at his residence in Karachi.
Earlier this month, he was brought to London for treatment after developing an infection following surgery in Karachi. He died in Wellington Hospital, north London.
Pir Shah Mardan Shah is survived by his wife, four sons and three daughters. His son, Sadruddin Shah Rashidi, has been elected the new Pir Pagara by the Caliphs of the Hur community. THE TELEGRAPH
