Smokers' corner: Real or surreal
In 1991, I worked as a young reporter at an English weekly in Karachi. In those days, newspapers and magazines of the city would often receive photographs of the former Mohajir Qaumi Movement (MQM) chief that were to be published without any questions. The MQM had risen to power in Karachi in 1988, and by 1990 it had reached a peak in its electoral strength and political influence in the city.
I remember the party would frequently send photographs. Most of them showed Altaf Hussain delivering fiery speeches at rallies, but there were others as well, such as one showing him cutting a huge cake with a sword in Hyderabad! For most editors in Karachi, not publishing the photographs was not an option.
In late 1991, the weekly magazine I was a part of received a photograph of a flower. Inside the flower was, what seemed to be Altaf’s image. My editor had no clue what to do with this photo. The photo had come with a note written by a local MQM leader. The note claimed that Altaf’s image had been discovered inside a flower at a park in Karachi.
Why do political parties need to reinforce their leader’s image through mystery or fantasy?
The editor decided not to run the photo. But the next day as the same photo appeared in a few Urdu newspapers, the editor received a phone call from a senior MQM leader. He knew that the weekly had decided not to use the picture in its next issue. He did not ask why. Instead, he simply told the editor that he expects to see the photo in the next week’s edition of the magazine. He must have said this in an intimidating manner because the bizarre photo eventually appeared in the magazine.
Why would a powerful political party need to reinforce its leader’s image through a fantastical claim? Perhaps the party wanted its followers to believe that the leader’s greatness transcended mortal political qualities? Maybe the MQM knew what most of us didn’t. The very next year, in 1992, the state launched a concentrated military operation against the party. An operation against a party whose leader’s image had miraculously appeared inside a flower.
Months after Z.A. Bhutto’s PPP came to power in December 1971, my father was an assistant editor at the party’s official daily Musawaat. He once told me that in early 1972, the newspaper received a photograph which apparently showed a fiery image of a sword in the night sky of Lahore. The image was sent by a leader of the PPP with a note saying that the day Bhutto had taken oath as president, the sword had appeared over Lahore. Not-so-incidentally, the sword was PPP’s electoral symbol during the 1970 elections. Musawaat published the picture and the news item.
In 1974, the progressive Urdu weekly Al-Fateh — of which my father was one of the founders — received a similar image. This time, it was of a sword appearing over Karachi and that, too, at the conclusion of the famous International Islamic Conference that was chaired by Bhutto in Lahore. Even though Al-Fateh was a pro-PPP magazine, the founder-editors of the magazine decided not to run the picture.
Recently, social media was flooded with images of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) chief Imran Khan’s picture projected on a famous tower in Saudi Arabia. Even though the image was fake, PTI’s official Twitter handle milked it, so much so that even some TV news channels ended up running the same image.
However, unlike the fantastical flower image used by the MQM and an ethereal one pushed by the PPP, the PTI used a more conceivable image. The mindset was the same though: reinforcing a leader’s image with a larger-than-life claim. And just as thousands of gullible MQM and PPP supporters had lapped up their party’s claims in this context, so did many PTI fans.