‘Let us revive Jinnah’

MERAJ Mohammad Khan, Fatehyab Ali Khan, Sibghatullah Qadri (QC), Dr Masuma Hasan and Wajid Shamsul Hasan. What would they be talking about other than Pakistan and its politics if by some quirk of fate they were all cast together one evening at Sibghat’s house in London?

True enough, for over four hours they talked and talked and talked about Pakistan, meandering at times down the memory lane back to their student day politics in Karachi until the first two were gobbled up by national politics, Qadri left the country, Masuma married Fatehyab and joined the civil service and Wajid became a journalist.

For those who may not know who these persons are, let me recall what I consider to be the golden days of idealism in Pakistan that ended with the dismemberment of the country in 1971.

Meraj, Fatehyab and Sibghat were all members of the powerful student body, the National Student Federation (NSF). Those were the days of student power the world over. And it was the same in Pakistan. The three in the company of many more used to set the political agenda in the country.

Between 1958 when General Ayub took over the country and until about 1965 when Ms Fatima Jinnah challenged the military dictator in the general elections, most of the major political parties and their leaders had been forced into silence by draconian laws. In this vacuum walked in the student leaders and trade unionists.

In Karachi the newspapers led by Dawn, either deliberately or because of so many restrictions on what to publish and what not to, covered their activities almost on a daily basis on the city pages keeping alive a window of opposition to the government.

In 1961, students led by the NSF marched the streets of Karachi protesting against the deposition of Patrice Lubumba of Congo (now Zaire) by the CIA. Opposition to Vietnam war and Pakistan’s membership of Cento and Seato would bring them on the streets frequently, facing police high-handedness and incarcerations.

Finally, finding it almost impossible to restrain them, the city administration banished them from Karachi. This turned them into national figures overnight as they used their days of banishment to tour the country establishing networks with student bodies in other cities and towns and mobilising student power.

Meraj and Fatehyab reminisced fondly about a number of their colleagues who were with them on this journey, especially Khurram Mirza, Syed Saeed Hasan and Johar Hussain. The first passed away in his early youth, the second in his prime and the third recently.

They even talked with equal fondness about their opponents like Rana Azhar Ali Khan and the late Shahinshah Hussain who were on the right side of the centre while NSF leaders styled themselves as leftist purists. But in the parlance of the 1950s and 60s, the leftists carried the brand name of communists (without having any idea about what it was) and therefore were persecuted relentlessly.

In the early days of the launching of the PPP, Meraj, Fatehyab and the late Saeed Hasan emerged as Mr ZA Bhutto’s favourite youngsters. At one point Mr Bhutto named Meraj as one of his two successors (The other was Mustafa Khar). But all the three fell out with the PPP chairman soon.

Meraj suffered a lot as a result, changed a number of parties since and now appears to be on his own.

Fatehyab joined the Mazdoor Kissan party and continues to be an active leader of the party till to date. Saeed Hasan joined General Zia’s Majlis-i-Shoora before finally saying goodbye to politics and then to the world.

The talk at Sibghat’s house last week was mostly centred on the current political turmoil in Pakistan—the predominance of Islamic extremism and the military in Pakistan’s politics.

Most of the discussion was highly depressing. The two veterans, Meraj and Fatehyab, appeared to believe that the country would finally get out of this trap.

They seem to be looking forward to the days the military and the extremist mullahs on their own would withdraw from the body politic of Pakistan. Sibghat appeared to have lost all hopes in the country.

Dr Hasan, who had retired some two years ago as cabinet secretary in the Musharraf government, preferred the role of a good listener. Wajid now living in exile in London, after having done a stint as Pakistan’s High Commissioner in the UK during the second government of Benazir Bhutto and then suffering incarceration during President Farooq Leghari’s interim government, however, had a suggestion with which none could disagree.

He said: Let us revive Jinnah, let us go to the madressah and the military academies, let us go to schools and colleges, the universities, to farms and factories with his message, and let us redesign the school and college syllabus to infuse the ideals of Jinnah in the minds of the youth.

In his opinion, the country would be able to resume its march on the path to real nationhood capable of facing the present and future challenges if only it could re-anchor the ideology of Pakistan on the lines set by Jinnah on August 11, 1947 and in February 1948. Here is what Jinnah said on the two occasions:

“You are free; you are free to go to your temple, you are free to go to your mosque or to any other place of worship in the state of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed—that has nothing to do with the business of the state….You will find that in the course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the state.” (Aug 11, 1947, Jinnah’s address to the first constituent assembly).

And then in February 1948 in his address to the people of the US, he said: “Pakistan is not going to be a theocratic state to be ruled by priests with a divine mission.

We have many non-Muslims—Hindus, Christians and Parsis, but they are all Pakistanis. They will enjoy the same rights and privileges like any other citizen and will play their rightful part in the affairs of Pakistan.”