Soft, polite words pose uncomfortable questions

Achakzai spoke more like a chauvinist and not a representative of ‘an oppressed nationality.’

Sajid Ahmad, Rashid Godil and Dr Farooq Sattar of the MQM were too late in reacting. Doing this, they essentially focused merely on a loaded sentence that Mehmood Khan Achakzai had uttered during a lengthy but thought-provoking speech in the national assembly.

The Pushtun-nationalists from Balochistan did call Karachi “the city of terrorists.” But what Sajid and his comrades completely failed to counter was the fact that he had also held the MQM exclusively responsible for giving such reputation to the city it always claimed representing “with 85 percent mandate since 1988.”

To be fair to street-hardened and youthful MQM members, Achakzai was surprisingly subtle in demolishing many myths that dominate the mindset of ‘patriotic Pakistanis’ through his speech. Defying his reputation of being frighteningly blunt, this veteran parliamentarian frequently paused on Wednesday to find soft and polite words to pose uncomfortable questions. Even a decidedly vicious prosecutor will find it extremely difficult to locate the ‘offensive material’ hidden in his humble-sounding speech that essentially adopted the form of an academic recall of history.

I am one of his ardent admirers but this time did feel that he spoke more like a chauvinist and not a representative of ‘an oppressed nationality’. He was correct to assert that since its creation in 1747 as a nation-state, Afghanistan maintained its independence even during the heyday of colonialism. The British ruled all lands from Nile to Indus during that period. But dismissively claiming that ‘no Punjabi was ever killed fighting against the colonial power’, he conveniently forgot someone by the name of Bhagat Singh and the massacre at the Jallianwallah Bagh of Amritsar.

The main objective of Achakzai’s Wednesday speech was to insist that populist political leaders in pre-independence territories of present Pakistan were not so motivated by the idea of creating a separate homeland for the Muslims of British India. People like Abdul Ghaffar Khan rather opposed this idea vociferously. Apprehensive of such leaders, Achakzai went on and claimed that successive rulers since 1947 did not allow the democratic polity to take roots in Pakistan. Eventually, the civil and military oligarchs started behaving like the colonial masters and kept spotting and grooming politicians to act as their stooges. With no hint of caution or apology, he also insisted that even the PML-N of Nawaz Sharif was crowded by the same variety of pro-establishment stooges.

Without naming a person or an institution, Achakzai spoke for long to take on those who he believed ‘pretend to teach Islam to Pushtuns on both sides of the Durand Line’. He had books to quote from and continued building the case that by nonstop meddling in the Afghan affairs, “Pakistan is playing with fire and the whole world has lost patience with our games.”

Then he switched to Karachi and began building the argument that the demographic realities regarding Sindhis, Pushtuns and Punjabis who live in Karachi were never reflected, appropriately, in the national assembly of Pakistan. “Thanks to the sly gerrymandering, we are made to believe as if the one and only party represent Karachi,” Achakzai claimed with suppressed anger.

In the name of restoring peace and order in Karachi, federal and the provincial governments have now asked the Rangers to go for a ‘targeted operation’ in that city. Achakzai didn’t sound too hopeful about the outcome. Bluntly addressing Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan he rather told him point blank that to ensure order in that city, “You have to find and punish those culprits who paralyzed life in Karachi for 6 hours on May 12, 2007 when Iftikhar Chaudhry tried to reach there while campaigning for his restoration as the Chief Justice. I volunteer to act as a complainant if you are willing to get the culprits.”

More than eight MQM legislators remained sitting on their benches throughout the lengthy speech of Mehmud Khan Achakzai. Not one of them was seen upset with his nuanced pricks. At least three of them rather heartily joined the hailing desk thumping, when he finished his speech. I seriously suspect that some ‘remote monitor’ finally understood the lethal message of Achakzai’s speech and prompted Sajid Ahmad et al to react. They have tried for sure, but miserably failed to undo the damage done to MQM’s image by confining to refute the claim that Karachi was ‘a city of terrorists’. Let us wait for Altaf Bhai to articulate the counter narrative by addressing us from London via 24/7 channels.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 19^th, 2013.