A charge sheet — finally

As curtains begin fall on a major political party of the country

Finally, the MQM founder has been charged in London with incitement to violence – in a move that has the potential to bring the curtains down on a major political party of Pakistan which started off from Karachi as a students’ movement in the late 1970s in the name of Mohajir rights. Within years, the party turned into the only electoral choice of the Urdu-speaking community of the country – mainly concentrated in the urban areas of Sindh province – before losing the political track in the late 1980s. The use of violence in politics by the MQM resulted in Altaf Hussain, the party founder, and other leaders fleeing in exile to the UK in the early 1990s. This, however, did not affect the MQM founder’s clout and control over the politics of Karachi, and he continued to call the shots in the multi-ethnic city whose people had learnt to take violence – in all its forms – in their stride.

Through a mix of compliance and resistance, the MQM stayed relevant in the country’s politics till a decade and a half into the 2000s, with its leaders and workers leaving no opportunity to try and make a case for separation – sometimes very openly too. One such occasion came in on August 22, 2016 when the MQM founder, in a telephonic address to party supporters from London, not only raised anti-Pakistan slogans but also called the country “a cancer for entire world”. The address – that was followed by an attack on a media house by party supporters – turned out to be the beginning of the end of the MQM. While it was enough a justification for the state apparatus to make use of legal ways and means to contain the party, it has also landed the party founder in trouble in the UK, where hate speech is a serious crime.

The London police are known for doing a proper homework before taking an accused to the court. And this is what threatens the demise of the Altaf-led MQM which has already fragmented into nearly half a dozen factions.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 12^th, 2019.

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