Daily Times

“Now, too, revolt is in the air. The Arab Spring, the Occupy Movement and this huge popular assembly in Lahore: which will succeed?” wrote Tariq Ali in his write-up titled ‘Imran Khan’, which appeared in the London Review of Books last week. Before arriving at the monumental conclusion that Imran Khan presumably is the Pakistani variant of the Arab Spring, Tariq Ali recounted Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Benazir Bhutto’s rallies in 1971 and 1986, respectively, at Minto Park, Lahore. Tariq Ali declared: “This gathering was larger than any of those.”

Many of us have great respect for Tariq Ali and his contribution to the progressive cause around the world over the years. But ever since a successful hand at fiction writing in his ‘Islam Quintet’, Tariq Ali has not been able to let go of creative imagination even in his op-eds. He, and for that matter Noam Chomsky and other western leftists, would have one believe that the Taliban are a Pashtun nationalist resistance movement that has pinned down the imperial US in Afghanistan while their Pakistani cohorts a la Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) were waging a class struggle in Swat. And now this gem about my jalsa (rally) is bigger than yours.

I had not seen Z A Bhutto’s rally that Tariq Ali mentions but I vividly recall Benazir’s 1986 arrival in Lahore. Most certainly the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) rally was a huge gathering but larger than Benazir’s mammoth rallies in Lahore and Peshawar? No, definitely not! But it is Tariq Ali’s perception of the ‘revolt’, not jalsa, that raises concern. On June 17, 1979, Tariq Ali’s illustrious father, the late Mazhar Ali Khan, wrote about the great Wali Khan’s stance in tandem with the anti-Bhutto Pakistan National Alliance (PNA): “…the Pakhtun leader’s transmogrification over the last year or so has made many of his former colleagues look upon him as a political weirdo…[sic]”. One wonders what Mazhar Ali Khan might have said about Comrade Tariq Ali making common cause with the Taliban and obscurantism?

Samuel Huntington had described a revolution as “a rapid, fundamental, and violent domestic change in the dominant values and myths of a society, in its political institutions, social structure, leadership, and government activities and policies.” But as blinders of anti-Americanism can do incredible things to revolutionary objectivity, it is pertinent to note that Lenin also had observed similarly: “Revolutions are festivals of the oppressed and the exploited. At no other time are the masses in a position to come forward so actively as creators of a new social order.” Tariq Ali is adept at revolutionary theory and practice, but one wonders if in his zeal he was able to see past the festivity bit.

Has Imran Khan made it to the major league politics? I think it is the objective reality and there should be little doubt about it. Does he represent even the most watered-down version of a revolt against the existing order? That one, we will have to take with a grain of salt. Imran Khan has made a lot of fuss about General Pervez Musharraf’s National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) 2007 but is himself on a spree of signing mini-NROs with what he calls the ‘electable’ candidates. It is interesting to see him come down from his moral high horse and cut deals with the political class that he and his followers have bashed for a good 15 years. The big event turns the harbingers of change to, well, small change in the grand scheme of things. Nothing wrong with negotiations and bargaining, but revolt it is not. The rough and tumble of electoral politics has little to do with revolts and revolutions.

A friend recently asked if we were being too harsh on Imran Khan and the PTI and are holding them to a higher standard. Probably so, but then the PTI chief has consistently claimed to be the gold standard against which every other politician has to be measured, leaving little room to cut him any slack. The PTI now claims to be the Laundromat for washing away all indiscretions but it will really have to prove that it is not just another political Ponzi scheme. In a television interview Imran Khan said that he cannot import candidates from Sweden and has to choose from the available lot. It is essentially a paraphrase of Donald Rumsfeld’s quip that you go to war with the army you have, not the army you want.

However, who better than a professional sportsman would know that there is no shortcut to team building. And that it is not a top-down process either. It is hard to play catch-up if one has failed to prepare upright leaders and electoral candidates for over a decade. War might be imposed on a country and is an emergent situation but electoral politics is a choice and requires meticulous spadework. Something is seriously wrong if a politician who has been the leader of his party for 15 long years can only say, without telling us how, that if he is catapulted to high office, corruption will miraculously disappear and the generals will fall in line clicking their heels. But perhaps more serious is the problem with those looking for a new Ataturk, Khomeini or Lenin in Imran Khan.

In their own way the military dictators, Ziaul Haq and Pervez Musharraf, too were pretenders to Khomeini and Ataturk’s mantle, respectively. They presented themselves as the messiah and were unfortunately accepted as such by some, including Imran Khan. But ‘revolutions’ from above — to borrow Tariq Ali’s words — have never worked. In no time the generals fell back upon a similar coterie of players that the PTI is showcasing today. Interestingly, unlike the PTI, even the dictators first relied on their core constituency before moving on to the wheeling and dealing, first for survival and then to prolong their reign.

Imran Khan claims that President Asif Ali Zardari has exposed all politicians by cutting deals with them. But if gaining Shah Mehmood Qureshi and Sardar Nabeel Gabol’s support is the new measure of ideological success, I am afraid Asif Zardari may have exposed Imran Khan more than anyone else. Still, the PTI and its leader should be welcomed to the centre stage. As to Tariq Ali’s tacit endorsement of the ‘revolt’, one may submit that transmogrification can be political, ideological, or both. There is a fine line between hope and desperation. Falling for small change is an act of desperation.

The writer can be reached at mazdaki@me.com. He tweets at http://twitter.com/mazdaki