Friday, January 15, 2010
http://www.thenews.com.pk/print1.asp?id=218738
When bodies start piling up in Karachi, the gut reaction of the Pakistani mainstream outside Karachi is to blame the MQM. This is a twenty-five year old problem. The MQM’s reputation did not emerge from thin air, but its sustenance is the stuff of three decades of political grandstanding by the GHQ of the Pakistani military, by the PPP, by the mainstream parties of the Punjab (a la the various PMLs), and the opportunism of the ANP. Politics is all about making the best of opportunities. The MQM’s sustained strategy since 9/11 has been to position itself as a secular and liberal political party. This too is opportunistic. Both the demonisation of the MQM brand through associating the party with violence, and the laundering of the brand through associating the party with the “secular” and “liberal” labels are bad ideas. It is time for Pakistan to grow up about the MQM, and time for the MQM to take the lead in helping its brothers around the country come to a new consciousness about the MQM, about Mohajir identity, and about the centrality of Karachi to the Pakistan’s economic, social and political future. Lahore may well be the heart of Pakistan. Karachi is its wallet, its Blackberry and its cologne. Karachi is Pakistan’s mojo.
The mythology being constructed on a daily basis about the MQM’s roots is stupefying. Day after day, leaders of the MQM are given free reign to speak unchallenged about the gloriously secular and liberal foundations of the MQM. The notion of the MQM being a secular and liberal force in Pakistan has tremendous appeal among diplomats assigned to Pakistan and eager to report to headquarters that they can indeed find people that “we can work with”. There is nothing, despite the current obsession with conspiracy theories, sinister about this. But there is something desperately stupid about it. Diplomats who are aching to hear what their memos and briefs already tell them are dangerously pre-programmed to perpetuate their own views of Pakistan. Too often, because of the stakes involved and the dangers of working in Pakistan, history, even very contemporary history, is almost entirely absent from these views. Luckily, anybody that had a pulse and could read in Pakistan during the 1980s and the 1990s should be more than capable of distinguishing between the fantasy of convenient “secular and liberal” talking points and the uncomfortable reality of the MQM’s genesis.
The MQM is an incredible and thesis-worthy object of attention and intellectual affection. Altaf Bhai is not an ordinary political talent. He is, hands down, the finest political mind ever produced by this country (outside the Bhutto family). Period. The PML-N has its Ahsan Iqbals, and though it hasn’t cherished them properly, the PPP has its Aitzaz Ahsans, sure. But the MQM has truckloads of political talent almost always ready to go. Whoever had heard of the administrative juggernaut, Mayor Mustafa Kamal, before he became mayor in 2005? That’s not a one-off thing. The MQM develops young political talent in ways that are more sophisticated and sustainable than any political party in the country.
The MQM’s unique legitimacy as an urban political party is a reality. Its organisational skills and its potential for a serious reform agenda that is deeper and wider than any previously conceived in the country is a reality. The empowerment of disenchanted, disengaged and disenfranchised young men during the late 1980s and early 1990s in Karachi and Hyderabad is a reality. The vibrancy of the MQM’s original agenda and its appeal for the empowerment of Urdu-speaking Mohajirs is a reality. The MQM’s uncontested dominance of the Karachi vote-bank (notwithstanding three iffy seats) is a reality. Most of all, despite desperately wanting to move on, the MQM’s Urdu-speaking Mohajir identity is a reality. Love it or hate it, you cannot ignore it. The MQM cannot be relegated to the political periphery. That is a reality.
Despite its genuine credentials as possibly the most modern and urban political party in Pakistan, the MQM does not have the history, the character or the genetics of a party that can legitimately claim to be secular and liberal. More importantly, the conflation of these two terms is not a demonstration of the MQM’s own politics, but the confusion of Pakistan’s political language, which in turn is informed by Pakistan’s multiple existential crises. There are much more organic things that the MQM can claim to be, including a rare expression of middle-class assertiveness in a country that is all about how much patronage the elite can transfer to a massive underclass that is perpetually in their social, economic and political debt. What it mustn’t claim are things that it is not.
The secularism of the MQM is fantasy because opposing the Taliban does not make you secular. By very definition and instinct, it is a political party that is a manifestation of a centuries-old South Asian Muslim political narrative. The foundation of the Mohajir experience was not a commitment to the South Asian secular dream. The forefathers of the young men and women that made the MQM what it is today would not have needed to change addresses at great cost to get that brand of politics. A strong dash of Muslim identity does not render a people radicals or extremists, obviously. But it does problematise the notion of their secularism. It happens to form the core of the MQM’s ethos. No amount of wordsmithing the MQM’s background can extricate it from its original name. This was, is, and will forever be, the party formerly known as the Mohajir Qaumi Movement.
The liberalism of the MQM is a fantasy because the galvanisation of young Mohajirs in the 1980s was not a spontaneous combustion of liberal ideas in Karachi and Hyderabad. The kids that helped form the All Pakistan Mohajir Students’ Organisation (APMSO), and later the MQM, were actualising their identities. And they were doing so in a very assertive manner. Violence is an inconvenient truth in the MQM’s search for a broader national role in Pakistani governance. That the MQM can achieve that broader role without deconstructing and explaining its violent genesis truthfully is a fantasy. Perhaps most importantly, it is a fantasy that such an explanation can be made without defining what drove the rage of young Mohajirs during the 1970s and 1980s. That rage and its violent expression have scarred the impressions of Pakistanis outside Karachi of what it means to be Mohajir. The idea that words like bhatta and curfew can be separated from the MQM brand because of a series of flattering interviews that feature the secular and liberal credentials of the MQM is a fantasy.
Luckily circumstances offer the MQM a chance for sustainable and long-range rehabilitation. Helping resolve the issue of decentralisation, creating an effective police force in Sindh and negotiating a grand political bargain with the PPP that ends the bickering between these existentially antagonistic entities are just three of many ways that the MQM can start on the road towards an elusive broader national role in Pakistani governance.
Sindhi nationalism’s romance with the Bhutto family is at its lowest point ever. There is unprecedented goodwill between the MQM and Baloch nationalist parties. The PML-N is interested in having a working relationship with the MQM. Most of all, as I’ve written before, the MQM’s degree of comfort with religion and religious symbolism is unmatched. That is not the mark of a so-called secular party. It’s the mark of a seriously tuned-in urban Pakistani political party. If the MQM will expand, it will do so by becoming a trusted brand in the long strip of cities that dot the Indus River in Punjab. Faux chest-beating about secular and liberal values might be hot in the Diplomatic Enclave, but they won’t fly in the heart of Pakistan. The heart knows what it wants. And it doesn’t want fantasy. It wants reality.
If one blames Zia for the destruction of the generation that grew up in his time, than one must surely blame MQM for the same. MQM was and is nothing but a angry-young Amitabh of the late 70s and early 80s. It knew nothing but to take revenge however it comes and at the same time romanticize it for the audience so they keep coming back for the action between the so called good and the bad guys.
Posted by AZ | 15. Jan, 2010, 10:02 amIt’s nice that sensible writing on MQM is coming on to main-stream. My book on Altaf Hussain – his first political biography on him is coming out shortly and on my research on MQM since 1970′s to what is it now today; it’s a far more complex organization which people understand.
MQM indeed allow’s everyone to go on it’s own way without hurting anyone and although secularism is a politically incorrect term. It’s interesting because Mr.Hussain start’s his speeches with Quranic verses ; MQM celebrates Dewali and offer’s rakhi’s to the hindu community apart from actually celebrating Christmas and almost everything. It is due to the Urban-make up of MQM and her constituency which is it-self another topic.
Posted by Ali K.Chishti | 15. Jan, 2010, 11:17 amMr Zaidi seems to miss the finer points in hi article. The extortions , the gunny sack bodies , and the monthly “bhai ke liyay chanda” are all but a few examples of the other side of MQM. I will not be biased and say that the entire party is no good. I see educated and talented politicians in the party but under Altaf Hussain no one seems to emerge. If the urdu speaking community truely and sincerly want representation then in my opinion Altaf Hussain is the most worst candidate for the job. The most educated community of Pakistan has been hijacked by a murderer and a mafia chief. Irony has been pakistan’s speciality
Posted by Hassan Zaib | 15. Jan, 2010, 1:19 pmYour ‘analysis’ of MQM and its cheif is as confused and unclear as the uncertainties of the Mohajirs about their identity-past anf future.
MQM is an spoilt child of establishment, created to punish the Sindhis and the PPP. But as fate would have it, it has turned out to be the greatet shame of the very people who loved it in its formative phase-the Mohajirs.
MQM’s grip over the Mohajir mindset will alienate them not only from the other nations of Pakistan but more importantanly from the Sindhis. It is therefore the Mohajir youth find themseleves suffocated and incircled in Sindh. Hence they wish to go to abroad for settlement. Following the footsteps of their Quaid.
The Mohajirs of Sindh think that they are very ‘smart’ but this is their fantacy, the reality is: they will be the ultimate losers by chosing not to mix with the locals.
history is a cruel task master and its wheels have already started grinding the minds. souls and bodies of the Mohajir locality in whole Sindh.
My dear friend, Mohajirs missed it when they created, sustained the MQM.
Posted by Hussain Molai Sindhi | 15. Jan, 2010, 2:22 pmWhen Mustafa Kamal calls a Pakhtun aged woman bitch in the presence of a hundred people it is not reported in the press.
When he loses his mind in response to a polite and carefully-worded question of a TV anchor, one mainstream newspaper doesn’t publish the story even as a filler.
But when he ‘apologizes’ for his typical MQM abusive language, the “management juggernaut’s apology” finds space in the same newspaper under the headline “Well done, Mustafa Kamal”.
Why wasn’t his misdemeanor published under the headline “Very bad, Mustafa Kamal”? Is it not one-sided journalism? It is. And the reason? You can’t write against the MQM in mainstream.
But nobody can force anyone to write in MQM’s favor either.
So till the time the fascists learn to do politics in an a-fascist manner we should best avoid being ‘objective’
and refrain from praising the ethnic-cleansing machines of the MQM.
You are a good man. Don’t play into the hands of the fascists.
Posted by Objectivity | 15. Jan, 2010, 3:30 pmIts good to read an attempt that has introduced a perspective that demands us to hold our emotions & preconcieved notions and try to re-assess a political party objectively. Politics is iterative mindset and we should not keep our thinking in a static mindset. Ofcourse a news article can not talk about all the fact and allthe dynamics but atleast this article moves us to think dispassionately and rebuild/ improvise our political opinion. well done Mosharraf
Posted by Fauzia Yazdani | 15. Jan, 2010, 6:39 pmTheir is no fantasy about MQM my friend, everthing is a fact. Drills; TT Guns; Bhutta; Sacks and threads are part and parcel of MQM. So is his speech in India, that Pakistan is the biggest blunder of the mankind. How can we all forget this and start fantasizing. No that’s not possible. This party is based on blackmailing, see the recent spade of killing. They are blackmailing PPP and they are good at it.
Posted by Azhar Hussain | 15. Jan, 2010, 8:53 pmOskar Verkaaik (an amazing anthropologist) once did fieldwork in Hyderabad with the Muhajir community as his subject. In a series of interviews he drew upon their ideas of the state and identity which make for fascinating reading. The MQM leadership up till 2004, expounded the notion of the captive state. A state that was captured by Punjabi/Sindhi interests and their pedagogical notions of Islam. The Muhajir idenity was associated with urbane-ness, with a modernized version of Islam in the ilk of Iqbal and Sir Sayed…Hence secularism and MQM are poles apart…what it does show is the remarkable adaptability of the MQM leadership in the present situation. In any case, their ideals of the state and especially their own rhetoric suggests that Islam and Pakistan are still equatable.. and if they dream of electorally stepping into Punjab…then the invocation of religion will become a necessity.
Posted by Umair Javed | 16. Jan, 2010, 12:53 amThe future of Pakistan is support politics of principle. Musharraf and Zardari governments had to back off due to the demands of an independent judiciary. Let’s face it, the MQM and the PPP are parties who are based on the support of personalities and not principles. Karachi is no longer where intellectuals debate ideas, it is where rival ethnic gangs fight each other.
The debates are held in the campuses of Lahore like LUMS, LSE, UCL, BNU, NCA, FAST and so on. Karachi does not have this educational culture (in universities), possibly due to the decades of violence. Politics are still marred by violence and Karachi as a city does not have cohesion. When the supporters of MQM fight for the principle of justice or the freedom of the press as opposed to the orders of Mr. Altaf Hussain, then MQM has a chance of becoming a national party. Right now, the MQM exists to forward the aims of a sub-group, and the politics is dictated by the whims of a leader who refuses to come to his constituents. Say what you want, but Benazir came back to Pakistan as did Nawaz Sharif.
Posted by F Koreshi | 16. Jan, 2010, 2:11 amMosharraf Zaidi has tried his best to portray Altaf Hussain as one of the best leaders produced by the country. Agreed MQM has a vote bank but every one knows how polling stations are systematically occupied by its thugs and the ballot papers are stamped and the seats are won. Extortion from the people of Karachi by this party is undeniable.
MQM by every definition is a terrorist outfit and is controlled by its supremo Altaf Hussain who is controlling his leaders like a mafiosi.
MQM is in reality a Mohajir Qaumi movement. By changing name to Mutahida does not make it representative of all the nationalities living in Pakistan.
Mosharraf has conveniently forgotten 12th May carnage which was undoubtedly perpetrated by MQM. How its thugs pressurised and intimidated justices of the Sindh High Court is well known.
Habits die hard. Altaf will never change. He will continue his terrorist activities and his blackmailing tactics will never change.
He has lived in the United Kingdom since many years and has no declared source of income and yet he is presiding over his secretariat in London where scores are working for him and has many properties and pays nothing to the Inland revenue though he is a British national.
Posted by khobar (London) | 16. Jan, 2010, 5:06 amA well balance article. In my opinoin- MQM is the result of cruel quota system which started alienated Mohajirs. APMSO and then MQM and there was a great sense of deprivation which encourages Altaf hussain and his companions to form the political party otherwise, we would have never seen any party with the name of MQM forsure.
They surely had some bad past and but it was never one sided too. Anyways, MQM has matured a lot in the recent years and showed they are capable of working and justify their the vote which they have been taking. They have worked better than any one. There is no doubt in that.
Posted by Arsalan Kh | 16. Jan, 2010, 9:36 pmExcellent post.
Thanks for writing this important and much needed article. MQM is important to be understood and this serves the purpose to some extent.
Posted by ALE-Xpressed | 22. Jan, 2010, 8:57 pmAn incisive piece on MQM and its politics. MZ is objective but readers in Punjab would tag him as an MQM sympathiser. The military-feudal-civil bureaucracy combine finds it difficult to deal with pliticians elected by a generally literate electorate representing lower and middle class urban masses.
Posted by zohra malik | 27. Jan, 2010, 7:29 pmHello, first time i read your words and seems quite impressive.
Posted by Maha | 03. Aug, 2010, 1:53 pm