The MQM will have to change, if it is not to be chained
The Quaid-e-Tehreek in Tatters (QTT) is usually in an angry frame of mind and on the warpath, the sole exception being when his party, the MQM, is enjoying the fruits (especially the forbidden ones!) of power in the federal and provincial treasuries, preferably in tandem with a military dictator. And more often than not, even that minor exemption breaks down in practice in the case of a civilian government. The oft-repeated threats of resignation which could cause an opportunistic coalition to crumble, always hang over the tenuous arrangement. The unfortunate political partner, of whatever hue, who has been forced into this somewhat embarrassing ‘shotgun marriage’ as a last resort in order to remain in power, is forced to bow before every outrageous MQM whim and fancy. But then he has to save the government and especially his own skin. And the blackmailing MQM mindset comes into its own and extracts its pound of flesh, both literally and figuratively, many times over. At the present moment, the overwrought QTT might delude himself into believing that he is fighting for the patriotic muhajir citizens of Pakistan, but in fact, he is only engaged in a desperate last-ditch struggle to retain his fast dwindling hold on those whose minds and souls he had poisoned with hate, unhindered over the years. With his increasingly ridiculous verbal flip flops and political somersaults (the only kind he can physically perform!), his contemptuous attitude and infantile gimmicks, he has well and truly reached that nervous and unwanted stage where he is his own worst enemy. It has been rightly said, ‘the fool protects himself from everything, but himself’. Or his Big Mouth! Call it what you may, an artificially created Frankenstein monster turning on its creator, an inhuman Grendel bent on overthrowing an established order or society or a bloodthirsty vampire Count Dracula sucking on the blood of its countless victims, the MQM has today been transformed into a nightmare, not on Elm Street, but right here in the sprawling and prosperous city of Karachi.
A classic cult of the personality has been created around its founder-leader, who since 1991 has been operating by remote control out of London. The ‘Saeen’ Altaf Hussain, the Quaid-e-Tehreek (in tatters), is considered a demi-god or a superhuman entity by his diehard followers, his every wish being a decree to them. Like all leaders of this ilk, a supposed infallibility is the hallmark of all his decision-making. He is always right, even when he is clearly at fault. He can say or do no wrong. He is the fount of all power: authority flows from him alone and obeisance is to be made to him only. His adoring (and heavily armed) army of fanatical followers, from a combination of plain and simple love or the more readily recognisable and powerful emotion of fear, hang on to his every slurred word for dreary hours on end, as if were the final and sublime truth. His hundreds of thousands of ordinary supporters display an almost saintly patience, brainwashed as they are by years of hate speeches and the self-pitying ‘innocent’, ‘victimised’ and ‘deprived community’ theme. They are as putty in his pudgy hands. His militant wing, recently much in the news thanks to whistleblowers from within the MQM, could fit in any band of assassins or executioners with effortless ease. ‘He says, my reign is peace, so slays a thousand in the dead of night’.
His politics from an early age has been constructed along ethnic lines. It is the politics of violence, anger, an unthinking mindset, divisiveness, hate and outright lies. He is one of those who, particularly over the past decade, have brought the country to its present misfortune. And recently he has been going too far, off his rocker, it would seem. Apart from the arrogant abuse hurled at the military, there is much talk of going to the International Court of Justice and the United Nations and even of a fast unto death (Gandhi’s ashes would be swirling in his Samadhi) at number 10 Downing Street! The last act, even though it might go on for months considering the leaders’ physical expanse, would still be the perfect occasion to lose all that adipose tissue under some friendly media spotlight.
Unlimited power has turned him into someone akin to a ruthless mafia don, presiding over the sordid ‘businesses’ of extortion, gang wars, target killing, kidnapping for ransom and getting rid of rivals and critics permanently. It must be confessed that today a part of the MQM has degenerated to the level of a Mexican or Colombian drug cartel, a Chinese Triad or the dreaded Japanese Yakuza. But being a political leader controlling large swathes of Karachi and Hyderabad on the side, the London -based British citizen, from the safety of his so-called International Secretariat (which urgently needs to be padlocked and shuttered down), repeatedly says the most vicious and provocative things about the country of his birth, the army, the Rangers, the police, the media or any person who dares to criticise, confront or contradict him. He keeps Karachi and Hyderabad hostage under his ruthless sway, holding out the menace of unending political, economic and social violence. And all the while, his genial hosts in the United Kingdom, otherwise so keenly aware of an ‘axis of evil’, of human rights, terrorism, hate speeches and incitement to violence elsewhere, deliberately and with overt ill-intent towards Pakistan, shamelessly look the other way.
But it was not like that at the beginning, as is apparent from the English translation of Khalid Athar’s compiled biography, Altaf Hussain, My Life’s Journey: The Early Years (1966-1988). Altaf Hussain’s success story (so far), at least with a significant portion of the muhajirs, is not a Cinderella fairy tale of a sudden catapulting from rags to riches or from a nonentity to great fame (or notoriety). It came about by long years of hard struggle for recognition and a personal self-denial, really a typical tale of initial idealism, unfortunately leading to Lord Acton’s oft-repeated maxim of ‘power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely’. A couple of his early experiences were of Freudian significance in his later development, leaving an indelible impression on him. The first ‘etched in his memory’ occurred in 1964 when as an eleven years old kid, he was travelling home with his mother in a rickshaw and witnessed a frightening commotion ahead by men armed with ‘guns, rods and iron bars’, which scared both of them to no end. It was the son and heir, Gohar Ayub, celebrating his father’s election ‘victory’ over Fatima Jinnah in the good old Frontier manner, which one can imagine would have been as tumultuous, if not more so, as ‘whooping it up’ in a saloon in the American (where else!) Wild West. Muhajirs were in the line of fire (literally) for supporting the Quaid-e-Azam’s sister. The second was when he came up against authority, military style. In 1970-71, no doubt with the best of motives, he had joined up as a cadet in then President General Yahya Khan’s National Cadet Service Scheme, a one year endeavour. A minor ‘disagreement’ with a sergeant in the Baloch Regiment over the outcome of a battle exercise led to his being admonished in the following words which he clearly remembered: ‘Who selected you in the army? You people from Karachi living in big cities, drinking tea, wearing teddy trousers! How can you fight a war?’ From this slim evidence of ethnic and racial discrimination (he should have seen the old British Sergeant-Majors or our own Company Havaldar-Majors in full throttle and the brutal ragging that goes on in military academies) was no doubt born his persecution mania, his real and imagined slights from later on in Karachi University and during the early inroads in politics that developed into a full grown hatred of the ‘inhuman’ and ‘prejudiced’ exploiters of the ‘despised, hated, oppressed, victimised, tyrannised muhajirs’. After a couple of tragic shooting incidents targeting the muhajirs, he in a rage ordered his disgruntled followers to sell their television sets and VCRs and to buy weapons, and so the mindset of achieving its ends by violent means was present even at the MQM’s inception, was indeed one of its raison d’être. It may be said that the tragedy of 1971 further hardened his views on the Partition of 1947, and his shocking remarks made in India reflected his post-1971 thinking: ‘Partition of the sub-continent was the biggest blunder in the history of mankind’!
A classic cult of the personality has been created around its founder-leader, who since 1991 has been operating by remote control out of London
But then Altaf Hussain’s vision of the Two-Nation Theory was never that of Allama Iqbal which led to the creation of Pakistan, but closer to that of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, who according to him ‘laid the foundation of this Theory’: ‘He (Sir Syed) was the real architect of the Two-Nation Theory. But Sir Syed had envisaged all the Muslims of the sub-continent as one nation and all the Hindus as another. But what we have done today is that we have recognised the people of the majority Muslim provinces as one nation while excluding the Muslims of the Muslim-minority provinces from being a part of Muslim Brotherhood’(he means the Bangladeshi and Indian Muslims).
From here the slippery road led to a muhajir ‘qaum’ and ‘a separate mentality.’ He alleged that ‘muhajirs have been deprived of any kind of collective or legal identity… In consequence they have been degraded to such a level of humiliation and indignity that, if they are not rescued from it, the situation may end in another national tragedy ‘(like that of East Pakistan, he means). The savage cruelty of the MQM’s militant wing is no doubt rooted in these obsessive and irrational feelings of alleged deprivation of and injustices against muhajirs, as such inhuman violence too needs a deeply felt ideological or spiritual base to sustain it.
The nexus with elements hostile to Pakistan was thus a logical next step. Growing even bolder or bonkers, he openly talks of ‘occupied Karachi’ and the ‘occupied people of Karachi’, exhorts his followers to undergo military training, seeks the help of the Indian intelligence agency RAW and contemptuously badmouths the country and its defence forces. And all this present sound and fury for the reason that the plot of the script is rapidly slipping out of his hands, his ‘empire’ is in grave danger of falling apart or being dismantled by the Rangers’ current operation in Karachi. For years, the national leadership of the PML-N and the PPP ‘would not listen, and if it listened, it would not understand’. Mainstream politicians repeatedly made a ‘devil’s alliance’ with the MQM for petty personal gain, overriding the national interest. But now, the overall political situation and the sentiments of the people are radically different and the MQM will have to change, if it is not to be chained.
Former President General Pervez Musharraf is squarely to blame for the present grave predicament in Karachi. He is its primary architect and chief culprit. When he came to power by seizing power in 1999 he used his dubious ethnic buddies and links to the hilt. The MQM was at that time a spent force, its leadership and vast criminal network smashed and scattered to the four winds. The resurrection of the MQM under the notoriously self-serving National Reconciliation Order is yet another consequence of the disastrous and disruptive rule of the so-called ‘liberal’ Musharraf which has come to haunt the nation today. For the MQM blunder alone (forget his breaking with our traditional Kashmir stance based on UN resolutions or his failure to build the Kalabagh Dam) the former president-general should be made to pay a heavy price.
And, finally, a peep into the past and a warning from history. L Lockhart, in his brilliant study of the Persian ruler Nadir Shah writes: ‘The dissolution of the Mughal Empire had begun towards the end of the long reign of Aurangzeb (1658-1707) and in the dozen years that immediately followed his death three wars of succession hastened the rate of decline. An additional cause of weakness was the emergence, in the reign of Bahadur Shah (1707-1712), of the Turanian (Trans-oxanian or Central Asian), Persian and Hindustani factions. In 1719, Roshan Akhtar, a grandson of Bahadur Shah, was elevated to the throne and took the title of Mohammad Shah… During his reign of 29 years he watched rather than contested the process of disintegration, while his court was the scene of intrigue between various factions’. In a footnote, Lockhart quotes from the Jauhar-e-Samsam of Mohammad Mohsin Siddiqui: ‘Samsam ud-Daula Khan Dauran, the Amir ‘l – Umara or Commander-in-Chief of the Mughal army and one of the leaders of the Hindustani party… was very hostile to the Nizamul-Mulk Chin Qilich Khan (the Viceroy of the Deccan) who was a prominent member of the rival Turanian or Central Asian faction at the court (feeling between these two parties was very intense).’ It was hardly surprising, then, that in the crucial Battle of Karnal on February 24, 1739, the Nizamul-Mulk, who formed the left flank of the Mughal army, ‘putting personal enmity before patriotism’, calmly sat drinking coffee on his elephant, watching from behind a mud wall at a safe distance the slaughter of the Mughal army’s right wing (Sa’adat Khan, Nawab of Oudh of the Irani party) and centre (Khan Dauran) by Nadir Shah’s musketeers, instead of going to their relief as ordered by the emperor. By this inaction and the death of Khan Dauran due to wounds sustained in the battle, the Nizamul-Mulk obtained the post which he greatly coveted, that of Mir Bakshi (Paymaster in Chief) which had been held by the late Commander-in-Chief. Sa’adat Khan, taken prisoner in the fighting, also wanted the post for himself and was furious at being forestalled. He persuaded Nadir Shah to tear up the 50 lacs rupee indemnity (payable in instalments) agreed to by him, and instead march on to Delhi, ‘where an incalculable amount of gold, jewellery and other valuables from the emperor’s treasuries and from the houses of nobles and merchants were his for the taking’. Unfortunately for the Mughals, Nadir Shah followed his advice and emptied the treasury, also taking the fabled Peacock Throne and the Kohinoor diamond back to Persia.
Will our present leaders of all conventional parties, even at this late hour, learn from history, or will they follow the old adage that ‘we learn from history that we learn nothing from history’ by continuing with their unprincipled policies and petty infighting and intrigues, instead of forging unity and an iron front against treacherous foes, both within and without? One also wistfully reflects on what the middle class background Altaf Hussain, a superb organiser, skilful orator (when sober) and shrewd politician, could have achieved at the national level, had he not succumbed to his persecution mania, his violent hatreds, his narrow ethnic bias and last but not least, his slippery descent into consorting with the enemy(ies). And what a different and vibrant country Pakistan would be, with its peaceful port city ‘a beehive of activity’ of the constructive and nation-building sort.
