WAS it decided to observe the centenary of the Muslim League to consider how political parties can be reformed and made representative of the people’s sentiments or as an effort at self-promotion by those who now consider themselves to be members of the ruling Muslim League?

From what has been reported so far in the press, it seems that the latter is more likely to be the case, with the prime minister and the ‘sarkari’ Muslim League’s main office-bearers promoting their own government and its policies.

The international conference held recently in Islamabad featured participants from Bangladesh and the UK, but none from India. Inaugurating the conference, the prime minister was reported to have said, among other things, that there was need to follow the principles of the Quaid-i-Azam who led a valiant struggle and succeeded in achieving Pakistan for the Muslim of the subcontinent. But Mr Shaukat Aziz also had to say, according to a news agency, that despite all hazards Pakistan was growing and now it was a nuclear country on which no one could cast an evil eye. “We know how to defend our borders. We are a peace-loving country but peace cannot be achieved without strength.”

What this had to do with the creation of the Muslim League and the thinking of its forefathers only Mr Aziz can explain. According to another report, he assured the audience that Pakistan was created in the name of Islam and it had to flourish as an ideological, moderate, progressive, Muslim state. Islam promoted peace, tolerance and harmony and Mr Aziz stressed the need to present the true image of the religion.

So is the Muslim League meant primarily to promote the true image of Islam? It is incredible how both the prime minister and the president splurge on religion when they open their mouths when they know that the fundamentalists are unlikely to be impressed by their declarations nor will these be seen as credible by ordinary people. Public comments by our leaders are now so full of mindless statements that they can only make your stomachs turn (with Federal Information Minister Durrani certainly outdoing everyone else, including his loquacious predecessor).

The point of holding the Muslim League centenary should really have been to discuss how political parties have generally failed to represent the people they claim to be their supporters. The Muslim League’s post-1947 history has been particularly depressing. Its main leaders mostly consisted of feudal elements who ran the party according to their own wishes. The death of the Quaid-i-Azam in 1948 and of prime minister Liaquat Ali Khan in 1951 robbed the party of two of its senior leaders, and its disintegration and decline were to follow.

In 1954, the party was totally wiped out from East Pakistan, being defeated by the Jugto Front, and became confined to the West Wing. In 1958, Ayub Khan imposed martial law and demolished democracy (although he is still described as the greatest leader after Mr Jinnah by Gen Musharraf). All parties were banned. But when the 1962 constitution was readied, Ayub Khan also felt the need to create a Muslim League of his own. This was what became known as the Convention Muslim League, set up in Karachi with the help of Mr Z.A. Bhutto. So it became a part of the government.

Those who considered themselves to be old and essential Leaguers such as Mumtaz Daultana formed their own party, which came to be known as the Council Muslim League. When Miss Fatima Jinnah contested Basic Democracy-based elections against Ayub Khan in 1964-65, she did not represent the Council Muslim League, but the combined opposition party, and the Council League began to fade away.

Then of course we had even the Ayub League fading away as the way opened for the Yahya Khan military coup. In the 1970 elections, among the Leagues, perhaps it was the Qayyum League that won the most number of seats, but actually it was the People’s Party that emerged as the main party representative of the people.

One can always disagree with Mr Bhutto’s real intentions, and many Convention Leaguers were to be welcomed into the party by him, but it was his party that hit the hearts of ordinary people in Punjab and Sindh and gave the poor a sense of identity. This is something that has endured over the years, ensuring that the People’s Party remains the biggest vote getter. That when it comes into power, it behaves more like a ‘sarkari’ Muslim League and probably fields more feudal elements in its leadership than other parties is another matter.

This has to be checked but the emergence of the PPP had led to the wiping out of almost all Muslim Leagues except the Qayyum League (and on a much smaller scale the Pagara League in West Pakistan) and in East Pakistan the League was driven away by Shaikh Mujibur Rahman’s Awami League.

The Nawaz Sharif Muslim League probably has a better and genuine representation among the people than other Leagues, but many remember that it was set up by the military leadership through its encouragement of Mr Nawaz Sharif. Its origins have, therefore, never stimulated an outlook that would be sympathetic to the needs of ordinary people. There is little difference between its approach and that of the ruling Muslim League — although, of course, the latter remains fully committed to military dictatorship and military rulers while the former campaigns for the restoration of democracy.

Once a League in power declines and is ousted and persecuted, many of its leaders join the next League in power as we have noticed the Chaudhrys and Mushahid Hussains and so many others move from the Sharif group to the Q League. They call it the Quaid-i-Azam League, but Mr Jinnah would certainly have been appalled at the way it advocates that the current ruler should be kept in uniform and reelected and that military force should be used to decide national affairs. But that is how we handle ourselves and have developed such thick skins that no one feels even a little guilty of what is being done.

Even when the Indian Muslim League, if one remembers history correctly, was formed in 1906, one of its articles was to “promote among the Mussalmans of India, feelings of loyalty to the British Government”. Mr Jinnah was a member of the Indian National Congress then and joined the League only in 1913 when it changed its platform to one of Indian independence, possibly in reaction to the British government’s decision to undo the partition of Bengal. So probably our Q League today and many other Leagues that have been in power have also been moved by feelings of loyalty to the government and the military establishment. They have got elected not because of their closeness to the people and their support but largely because elections have often been fixed and the party has been deftly manipulated.

It’s not merely the Muslim Leagues that have suffered. No party has really bothered to hold genuine internal elections; all have been run by leaders who consider the party to be their birthright. Now we even have the spectacle of leaders of political parties sitting abroad and running their parties from there, summoning their aides to come and consult them when they wish to take decisions. We are said to be moving into fresh elections, and it remains to be seen how political parties get involved.

The Musharraf administration isn’t ready at all to permit Ms Benazir Bhutto and Mr Nawaz Sharif to return to Pakistan and take part in the elections. This underlines the fact that despite everything, rulers continue to fear that opposition parties enjoy greater popular support than their own party (which in any case depends on a coalition with the MQM).

If the centenary was being celebrated of the Muslim League, it might have been a useful idea to consider the weaknesses that beset the party following the partition and the role of its many subsidiaries and formations in backing, rather than opposing, military and autocratic rule.

But what now happens to be our practice is to seek to justify our undemocratic inclinations and repeat praise of religion and moderation, when the two strains contradict each other.

PRESIDENT Musharraf’s Kashmir policy, although well intentioned, is open to serious question. While the government correctly maintains that the past half a century has not yielded the desired objective in Kashmir, this is a valid justification only for eschewing resort to any military means, but not for climbing down to a diplomatic and political surrender.

Unless the government has second thoughts, we seem to be reaching a point where the status quo may well be accepted, with only inconsequential, face-saving changes.

This will amount to foregoing the historic sacrifices of the Kashmiris, their inalienable right of self-determination buttressed by the international legality of UN resolutions, and Pakistan’s own concerns about the security of its territory and water resources left in Indian hands.

The sequence of a continuing climb down by the government on Kashmir started with the assurance in the January 2004 joint statement that Pakistan will not allow the territory controlled by it to be used for terrorist activities, thus implicitly accepting the Indian allegations of a Pakistani role in this regard and leading to a situation where the anti-terrorism obligations of Pakistan have superseded Kashmir at the head of the composite dialogue agenda.

This was followed by Pakistan delinking wide-ranging action taken on a host of confidence-building measures from progress in the composite dialogue and in respect of the dispute resolution. We also went along with large-scale fraternisation between elements in India and Pakistan when the killings, brutalities and persecution in occupied Kashmir continued without respite.

More significantly, the government abdicated its position on the UN resolutions, on the UN-backed demand for a plebiscite and more recently appeared to accept the Indian position against any change in borders. All along, while this continuing diplomatic retreat on our part was in progress, India continued to chant the mantra of “atoot ang” and “no change in borders”. Intermittently, having signalled to the world community and India as to the extent of our diplomatic climb-down, the government attempted some damage control at home by presenting its pronouncements as expressions of conditional intent only.

Surprisingly, the steady climb-down did not stop with government proposals for demilitarisation, self-governance and joint management, which was the negotiating level we had already come down to from our earlier “principled” position on the UN resolutions and self-determination. In the latest interview with the Indian channel NDTV, the Pakistan president spoke of self- rule/autonomy, apart from self-governance, referred to “phased withdrawal” in the context of demilitarisation, and joint supervision and monitoring instead of “joint management” of disputed territories which had been earlier floated by the president, and which had seemingly some substantive, if impracticable, content.

One may be excused for suspecting that the framework or the general outline of the script for the Pak-Indian peace process, commencing from January 2004, had been written in advance with the assistance of our American friends. It appears that the Indians had agreed beforehand not to crow too much or make triumphant noises over the change in Pakistan’s diplomatic position on Kashmir. New Delhi has also rightly realised the inescapable need of saving Islamabad’s face if the Kashmir script has to reach a “happy” ending from the Indian point of view.

At the same time, in order to hoodwink public opinion in Pakistan, periodic noises by the Indian government and opposition will continue to be made suggesting how India was having difficulty in swallowing some of Pakistan’s heavily watered down positions on Kashmir.

Since the usual riposte to any criticism of the government’s present position on Kashmir has been to pinpoint the folly of the military option, it should be clearly understood that war is not regarded by any critic of the government’s present Kashmir policy as a sensible alternative. The alternative to the government’s strategy of abdication is not war but the pursuance of the Kashmir cause through peaceful, political and diplomatic means, while maintaining peace and dialogue with India and devoting the highest priority to the urgently needed economic and social development.

Incidentally, the government has not suggested that the proposed deal with India would release significant sums from our defence outlay for economic and social development, although this would have helped the government’s case for its present Kashmir policy.

If, at the end of the day, India continues to reject our efforts for a just solution, peace and dialogue should still be continued with India but with a strict linkage between progress on Kashmir and substantive cooperation in important areas, including economy and trade. The Kashmiris in the occupied territory would be free to decide their own strategy, which may include non-militant modes of resistance such as passive non- cooperation, non-payment of taxes, strikes and other ways of non- cooperation with the occupying power. History has many instances of a just cause succeeding in the long run despite the prolonged stonewalling encountered in the process.

Realising the implausibility of achieving a just solution at any given time and keeping the issue for activation at a more opportune time is an acceptable course in the given circumstances. This should not involve, however, the abandonment of a historic, fundamental position and the conclusion of a manifestly unequal and unjust agreement under open pressure and disguised duress.

The government is being unfair to the Kashmiris. On the one hand, it talks publicly of a climbdown in its Kashmir policy and on the other, couples this with a repeated assurance that a solution would have to be acceptable to the Kashmiris. In the face of these contradictions, how does the government expect the Kashmiris to hold fast to their cherished aspirations, when confronted with not only Indian intransigence and world indifference but also an about-face by Pakistan?

President Musharraf should not forget a statement in his televised address to the nation, some years back, that “Kashmir runs in the blood of every Pakistani”. Those advising him that this is no longer the case are doing him and the nation a great disservice. The way Kashmir is entwined in the innermost core of Pakistan’s identity and consciousness and the way the Kashmir cause has been an inseparable part of our history, demands that issues as fundamental as Kashmir should be decided not by the government of the day or even by parliament but only through a national consensus.

The writer is a former ambassador.