Khadim Rizvi’s passing

The death of Khadim Hussain Rizvi at the young age of 54 came as a surprise to many. Although wheelchair-bound for several years, the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) chief was not known to be in otherwise poor health. There is a chance, however, that he came down with something during the TLP protests in Islamabad just a few days before his death.

Rizvi’s legacy will be complex. His death leaves a void of sorts in the political far-right. In just a few short years since founding a protest group that evolved into a political party, Rizvi was able to steal votes from several established right-wing religious parties and even get a handful of candidates elected to the Sindh Assembly on what was essentially a single-issue manifesto. Much of TLP candidates' success was based on Rizvi himself, who, objectively speaking, was a crude but highly-effective orator.

Whether the party survives or fades into oblivion is something that we will just have to wait and see. But his party's electoral successes are not the largest concern. Fringe far-right parties have come and gone in the past, picking up and dropping seats along the way.

With TLP, the concern has always been their protests, which, for better or worse, have consistently shut down major cities for days on end, taking their toll on the economy and citizens' lives. Will we see a change in frequency and the levels of violence that have accompanied these protests? These questions also tie into the debate over whether Rizvi was a puppet or a puppeteer, given the timing and targets of his protest calls.

Meanwhile, outside of politics, Rizvi's legacy is debatable, at best. Indeed, the mainstreaming of far-right talking points and language by Rizvi, coupled with the repeated capitulation of the government before him, also gave new confidence to people who often restrained themselves. Rizvi's fans and supporters now feel free to say the quiet part out loud.