HYDERABAD: Muttahida Qaumi Movement Pakistan (MQM-P) convener Dr Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui says that his party stands for a new province but only as an administrative unit while those who are describing this constitutional demand as treason are themselves guilty of committing this offence.

He said while speaking at First urban graduate conference on realism and practicalism at a wedding hall in Latifabad on Sunday that slogan of new province was first written on walls and then removed but this time it would be written on people’s hearts.

He said that if divisions or districts could be increased within a province the number of provinces could also be raised. Those who considered provinces indivisible took them in fact as a country, he said.

Dr Siddiqui said that MQM had been a major hurdle to attempts for the creation of Sindhudesh. MQM was held responsible for the creation of certain conditions but the party itself was a product of these conditions, he said.

He said that it was a great irony that since Pervez Musharraf era MQM-P’s ideological asset, philosophy and civilisation suffered weakness. People kept searching for ‘strength’ from outside the MQM by trying to appease establishment or rulers, he said.

“Today, we are here to find this ‘strength’ from within MQM,” he said, adding that enemy always either contained or engaged and Musharraf’s era was a period of engagement while in 1992 MQM was contained.

He said that MQM built flyovers but did not think about education. It created towns but did not think of province. Many universities could have been established if the degree of efforts seen over the last three years for a university in Hyderabad had been made during the last 30 years, he said.

He said that federal university was not the last but the first university in Hyderabad. “I feel ashamed before you for celebrating establishment of a private university and you must forgive me for this,” he said referring to announcement for proposed Altaf Hussain University by Bahria Town in Hyderabad.

He said that MQM-P’s direction today was correct and urged Urdu-speaking community to impose education emergency on them by devoting themselves to the cause of guiding less educated and helping those who were interested in appearing in combined competitive examinations. “We are ready to leave space for you,” he said.

He said that today poor Urdu was spoken by those to whom it belonged. If Urdu had not been here Pakistan would have remained tongue-less. Pakistan’s economy rested on Urdu speakers’ patriotism. The size of taxes collected only in Liaquatabad area in Karachi was equivalent to total tax collected from entire Lahore, he said.

Dr Siddiqui said that people should prepare themselves for enjoying better times now because those who had been beating MQM-P had become tired. Now last attempts were being made to break the community’s spirit, he said.

Published in Dawn, November 29th, 2021