A FEW friends have taken it upon themselves to help us undertake eye-opening journeys into the past by frequently flashing pages from old newspapers files.

One such Facebook post recently brought back the essence of July 1948 captured by the front page of the famous daily Inqilab of Lahore. The reader is attracted to a variety of stories spread out with the minimum of fuss, not least among them a small item shedding light on the democratic nature of the relationship between the founder of Pakistan and the party through which he practised his politics for many decades.

It goes without saying that the party was a vital link which connected Mohammad Ali Jinnah to the people and their affairs less than one year after the creation of Pakistan.

The news item is related to the issue of who should be in charge of the administration in Karachi. Muslim League Sindh is reported to have asked the provincial set-up to not hand over the reins to the federal government, which obviously had a claim on running Karachi because of the city’s status as the country’s capital.

Work is now under progress to salvage the Muttahida from the enormous weight of its sole maker.

Not only did the provincial chapter of the League choose to assert its choice in the matter, it did so by doing something that would be almost blasphemous in today’s political culture. In adopting its stance, the party overruled the advice it had been given by the Quaid-i- Azam, providing the news story published in Inqilab with the headline ‘Majlis-i-Amal nay Quaid-i-Azam ka mashwara mustaard lkar diya’ ie the working committee (of the Muslim League in Sindh) rejects the Quaid’s advice. The emphasis is on advice.

That, by all signs, did not shake up those minding the newsroom. They displayed the story, filed by the United Press two days earlier — on July 5, 1948 — as an ordinary middle-of-the-page side story. Their focus was far from Sindh and Jinnah sahib on bigger topics of the time, such as Hyderabad (Deccan) and the riches it promised to those in possession of the state.

There might have been some minor hiccups faced by party leaders along the way caused by the less obedient of their colleagues. There might have been some instances of small rebellions erupting even when the all-powerful leaders shed old inhibitions imposed on them by convention and chose to proudly wear more dramatic, even if perfectly justified, titles, such as ‘supremo’.

But amidst all the changes — including perhaps some positive ones — brought about by the demands of the times it took a party in Karachi, a party with a mass following, almost 70 years later to openly disagree with its quaid. And this time, the news was duly flashed for its unique occurrence.

By the time the party could muster and borrow the strength to overrule Altaf Hussain, all old notions about the working of political outfits had been forsaken for individual command — dictatorship. The lessons and formulae about how parties empowered individuals and how individuals were dependent and subject to the party’s will, had all turned obsolete.

Work is now under progress to salvage the party from the enormous weight of its sole maker. It is almost an impossible task. You may take individuals and their once revered Rabita Committees out of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement but you can only wish and hope to delete Altaf Bhai and save the party at his expense.

The ideal of a modern running machine consisting of educated middle-class cadres in a vibrant Karachi to lead the country forward is as distant as it was when the MQM’s precursor arose in Karachi’s campuses in the 1970s. What’s worse, the material to form a party with some resemblance to the dictionary meaning of the term is that much more difficult to find today than it was a few decades back. The sources have dried up. Indeed, they have long been discarded.

The MQM’s current state fully elaborates just how deep the problem is. But even those who must insist on saying the MQM is more a mafia than a party will be hard-pressed to define and name a bunch that could qualify for the exalted title. Amongst the various outfits that are there, the PTI is the one which tried to develop the cadres and create a party, encouraging a few amongst us to compare its organisational evolution with that of the PPP in Punjab after its formation in the late 1960s.

As a measure of the rot and the wrong precedents that have since been set, the PPP enjoyed the fruits of its organisation in the 1970 election, whereas the PTI has been heard wondering whether it had blundered by holding intra-party polls before the 2013 election.

There are the local thugs, the traders with their biradaris and gangs to provide the so-called party its nucleus. There are no student unions, no trade unions to speak of and the professional groups such as those formed by lawyers are inward-looking, lacking the dynamism and movement to push for a popular cause — as did Barrister M.A. Jinnah and his party. The Quaid-i-Azam — and his typewriter — did so dominate the party according to various accounts but the League was still sufficiently beholden to the old principles of democracy to openly disagree with the leader from time to time.

Today, all laments about the opportunities missed by Pakistan must end with what Mr Jinnah (given more time) could have done to set the course right. An even bigger source of regret could be his party’s inability to create the model of an organisation capable of making its presence felt. The system must find that crucial element — a role for the party worker — to evolve in the correct direction. The party is most unlikely to be restored through a toppling of the supremo at the top. There is no option but to begin at the bottom.

The writer is Dawn’s resident editor in Lahore.

Published in Dawn, September 9th, 2016