The ANP and the Jamaat-e-Islami both opposed the creation of Pakistan.
But there is a difference in the way both parties deal with this historical baggage.
The ANP wears its Congress credentials proudly on its sleeve. The Nazaria-e-Pakistan lot used to be beside itself with rage when the term Frontier Gandhi, originally meant as an insult, was actually co-opted by the party, and used with pride!
On the other hand, the Jamaat-e-Islami has had a bit of a complicated relationship with its past. Most of the official Jamaat literature has had those offending statements by Maulana Maudoodi expunged. JI spokesmen tend to start whistling and looking the other way when anyone brings up the party’s opposition to the creation of the country.
And that was all well and good.
But one wonders what inspired the sheer chutzpah of the Jamaat’s current Amir, Siraj-ul-Haq, when he said at a function organised by the party’s student wing, the Islami Jamiat-e-Tulaba (IJT) that the Quaid and Allama Iqbal both would have been Jamiat members had they been alive!
The assembled crowd of the IJT, recently in the news for beating up girls at Karachi University for playing cricket, erupted in applause.
Pakistan is a theatre of the absurd. Do tune in, will you?