Daily Times

In our beloved country, just pick up a subject and you have so much provocative material, so many points, concerns, disappointments and hopes to write about it. The approach may be different, analyzes at variance, conclusions divergent but all relevant to the subject and would help one move with certainty towards understanding it. All the writers will try to clear the layers of fog, dumped by vested interests on an otherwise straight and unencumbered issue. We have had a couple of articles in the leading news papers by known columnists and senior journalist venturing to dig out the real objectives of the Moulana’s current political adventure. They have looked at the dharna from different perspectives. It is well and good – to find out the motives of the leader who has been known for his complex character, political craftiness and penchant for limelight. He is leading a large and old religious-political party whose mainstay remains to be the Madressah students, and which opposed the independence by tooth and jaw, and later jump on the wagon band to benefit from the independence.

The question is why this hapless country has been always subjected to political manipulations, palace intrigues, agitations and abrupt derailment from the path to an acceptable political dispensation. Has this country not been a unique geographical entity to endure constitutional and political setbacks, ideological ambiguity, mal governance and mal administration at the hands of all bureaucrats both civil and military, autocrats, democrats and religious bigots, sectarian fanatics and militant outfits and the painful silence of the majority? Many a nation committed follies in their history incurring pain and misery but were quick in learning enduring lessons and mending their ways to secure their future. Today, they stand out as proud people in the comity of nations.

There has been no pause in the trajectory of adventures in our dear land. We have been indulging in political adventures and experiments, going through trials and tribulations – falling on our face and getting up with a renewed determination and hopes, plunging headlong in failures and disillusionments and then resorting to self-serving interpretation of unwelcome truths gloating over our small successes and forgiving and forgetting shamelessly our blunders. Soul searching has always been out of the bounds of our social, political and ideological bounds. Everywhere we have reports of “all is well”. But what a researcher finds in our society is completely opposed to what has been fed to us to believe. Dishonesty, hypocrisy and falsehood have been pervasive in our society. Social and economic inequity has pushed millions of the population into gnawing poverty. We evade taxes, steal electricity and gas, pilfer public funds but go for pilgrimage in the largest number, contribute generously to religious organizations. We are a people, really made out of special clay.

The politicians, in their claustrophobia, are bent on making every institution controversial if it does not serve their interests and then always look to them for help in regaining their political limelight

We have bent the history of the country to suit our interests. We have rewritten it and introduced it in our national syllabus depriving our young generation to know what actually led us to this state of affairs. We have to dig out old books, printed material to find out how the stalwarts of All India Muslim League who fought the battle of independence under the leadership of the Qaid were gradually maligned and reduced to political wilderness by the civil and military bureaucracy. Nehru was embracing his fierce opponents like Amedkar, Raja Gopal Achari, the Parsi industrialist Bhabha, Sir Modi, Baldev Singh, leader of the Unionist Party Punjab, Sir Garja Shankar Bajpai and many a figure of Dalit, Sanghatanists, Sawarkaris, Unionists, Akali Dals, Communists and secessions. Amedkar, the leader of the untouchables, had fiercely opposed Gandhi and Nehru, was given the unique honour of writing the constitution of India.

The palace intrigues in our land began soon after the demise of the Qaid. The pace of these political manipulations quickened when the four bureaucrats – the sick and old Ghulam Muhammad, Chaudhry Muhammad Ali, Iskander Mirza and General Ayub Khan took over the state affairs after Liaqat Ali Khan. The stalwart Muslim Leaguers like Muhammad Ayub Khuhro, Khwaja Nazimudding, Chaudhry Khaliqumman, Sardar Abdul Rab Nishtar, Raja Ghazanfar Ali Khan, Muhammad Ali Bogra, and Husein Suharwardy, Moulvi Tamizuddin – all were maligned, intimidated, disqualified under infamous PRODA, PODO. Muhammad Ali Bogra was forced at gun point to dismiss the Constituent Assembly; Chaudhry Khaliq was thrown out of the leadership of the party; Khuhro was thrice disqualified, cleared, used and again dumped. Ghulam Muhammad with an impaired speech, understood only by his Italian Secretary jumped from Federal Secretary to Minister and Governor General, Chaudhry Muhammad, a noble man, went straight to the Prime Ministership, Iskander Mirza had quick elevation as Secretary Defence, Governor and President. General Ayub, though Chief of Army Staff, remained hand in glove with them.

The coup de grace against Muslim League came in 1954 after the formation of the One-Unit when Iskander Mirza as President formed the new Republic Party and coerced the legislative members to join it to bring Dr. Khan Sahib as the first Chief Minister of West Pakistan. Thus, the practice of breaking parties into factions, intimidating politicians on flimsy grounds – at least, there were no sound reasons to sideline the above stalwarts -manipulating elections and the governments in power was firmly embedded in our political culture the early which continues unabated to this day. Our politicians so enamoured with power become tools in the hands of powers that may be. They suffer chronically from the lack of patience.

We have the third elected government after the dark years of long military government. The politicians, in their claustrophobia, are bent on making every institution controversial if it does not serve their interests and then always look to them for help in regaining their political limelight. The media always fuels this political scenario. I think this explains the reason of the Moulana’s political adventure.

The writer was a member of the Foreign Service of Pakistan and he has authored two books