Pakistan's Ideology and Identity crisis

[LordOfTheUnderworlds]

Faces of nationalism
Owen Bennett-Jones
Updated August 17, 2017

 

[Butter Chicken]

Need to revisit teachings in Pakistani madrassas: Army chief Qamar Javed Bajwa

KARACHI: In an unusual move, Pakistan Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa has criticised the role of mushrooming madrassas, which mostly taught only Islamic theology, underlining the need to revisit the religious schools concept in the Muslim majority country.

"I am not against madrassas, but we have lost the essence of madrassas," the Nation newspaper quoted the powerful general telling a youth conference in Quetta, capital of the restive Balochistan province, stressing the need to revisit the religious schools concept.

Speaking at a seminar on 'Human resource development -- opportunities and challenges' yesterday, he noted that there were more religious seminaries established in Balochistan than the modern and quality schools during the past four decades.

"Only religious education is being imparted to the students at all the seminaries and thus the students educated from the seminaries are left behind in the race for development," he was quoted as saying by The Express Tribune.

"We need to look at and revisit the concept of madrassas...We need to give them a worldly education," he was quoted as saying.

Bajwa also commented on the Army's role in Pakistan. The Army enjoys considerable influence over major policy decisions in Pakistan.

He said the Army is a state institution meant to serve the nation.

"Army shall continue to perform its role while national security and development remains a national obligation for all state institutions," the Inter-Service Public Relations quoted him as saying.

 

[LordOfTheUnderworlds]

Sir Muhammad Iqbal and the Ahmadiyya Movement
By Kunwar Khuldune Shahid - November 3, 2016

Anyone remotely familiar with the poetry of Dr Muhammad Iqbal would know of his multi-pronged flirtations with numerous – often paradoxical – ideologies, at the same time. From fluctuating between a poet and a preacher to being the torchbearer of theocracies and personal faith at the same time – from presenting an anti-capitalist case for theism through Vladimir Lenin in Lenin Khuda Ke Huzoor Mein to his appraisal for sultani, while ostensibly challenging the British Raj – from promoting a Pan-Islamist caliphate-lusting monolithic Muslim world spearheaded by the mard-e-momin (inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche’s übermenschen or superman) to propagating individualism through khudi (inspired by Nietzsche’s der Wille zur Macht or Will to Power) – Iqbal’s writing is brimming with beautifully phrased contradictions. Little wonder that one can find Islamists, secularists, democrats, autocrats, everyone quoting an Iqbal verse to forward – and substantiate – their viewpoint.

Iqbal’s staunch followers argue that these paradoxes are actually exhibits of philosophical evolution that the ‘Poet of the East’ manifested during various stages of his writing career. This assertion, however, doesn’t factor in inconsistencies found during the same epoch of Iqbal’s poetry, and quite often in the same book if not the same poem.

Just like his political and social ideological ‘pluralism’, Iqbal’s religious understanding was an amalgamation of a wide array of centrifugal – and centripetal – interpretations of Islam. A perfect implementation of ideas set in Iqbal’s The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam touted as the ‘Bible of Modern Islam’ would be Tahirul Qadri’s recently launched “anti-ISIS, counterterrorism curriculum” in the UK, which relies on selective readings – and understanding – of Islamic scriptures. It could also be called the ‘Bible of Islam apologia’.

Islam’s journey from Sunni Islamism to Sufi Islam, also made a pit-stop at the Ahmadiyya ideology, something that has been heavily debated in the secret chambers of Two Nation Theory enthusiasts. “…in 1897, Sir Muhammad Iqbal took the (Ahmadiyya) pledge,” according to the Daily Nawa-i Waqt, Lahore, 15 November 1953. Ex-General Secretary of the Anjuman Himayat-i Islam, Lahore, Maulvi Ghulam Muhiy-ud-Din Qasoori, confirmed this during the Munir Enquiry. The Munir Report was crucial in sidelining the popular call for excommunication of Ahmadis in Pakistan following the 1953 anti-Ahmadiyya riots. The Munir Report confirmed that “neither Shias nor Sunnis nor Deobandis nor Ahl-i-Hadith nor Barelvis are Muslims, and any change from one view to the other must be accompanied in an Islamic State with the penalty of death, if the Government of the State is in the hands of the party which considers the other party to be kafirs.”

While Maulvi Ghulam Muhiy-ud-Din Qasoori’s assertion of Iqbal’s allegiance to the Ahmadiyya ideology proved to be pivotal in overcoming calls for judicial takfir, it was the same Iqbal whose essay The Muslim attitude towards the Ahmadiyya movement (1935) that presented the case for declaring ‘Qadianis’ a separate community, which was cited in the lead-up to the Second Amendment in 1974 ‘officially’ excommunicating the Ahmadis.

Iqbal had written: “The best course for the rulers of India is, in my opinion, to declare the Qadianis a separate community. This will be perfectly consistent with the policy of the Qadianis themselves, and the Indian Muslim will tolerate them just as he tolerates other religions.”

Whether Iqbal’s regression from labelling Ahmadiyya community “a true model of Islamic life” – as he had asserted in an Aligarh session – to their identification as a separate community altogether, was a corollary of Islamist pressure, or a result of theological self-reflection only he would’ve known best. For, only in 1931 Iqbal had played an instrumental role in the selection of Ahmadi leader Basheer-ud-Din Mahmood Ahmad as president of the All India Kashmir Committee.

The 1930s saw an upsurge in anti-Ahmadiyya protests among the Muslim community, with Jinnah being condemned as an infidel for his visits to the ‘Fazl Mosque’ in London, which was affiliated with the Ahmadiyya community. It was Maulana Abdur Rahmin Dard, the Ahmadiyya Imam who persuaded Jinnah to return to India and it was inside the ‘Fazl Mosque’ that he announced his decision to return. Jinnah staunchly defended the Ahmadis’ right to self-identify as Muslims, and stood by Sir Zafarullah Khan – Pakistan’s first foreign minister – whenever his religious identity was attacked to discredit his political acumen.

According to multiple literary sources, Iqbal regularly visited Qadian following his conversion to the Ahmadiyya ideology in 1897. When the founder of the ideology – who Iqbal had praised as “probably the profoundest theologian among modern Indian Muslims” in a paper written in 1900 – visited Sialkot in 1904 Iqbal, along with his friend Sir Fazli Husain, was in audience with him. While many believe that Iqbal formally left the Ahmadiyya ideology in 1908, his correspondence with the Ahmadi khalifas continued in the coming years. Before 1935 Iqbal had never exhibited any condemnation of, nay disagreement with, the Ahmadi ideology.

Iqbal’s parents are believed to have converted to the Ahmadiyya ideology, along with his elder brother Shaikh Ata Muhammad, which might have influenced his early affiliation with the ideology. Even though narrators suggest that Iqbal himself was inspired by the ‘reformist movement’ as he exhibited in his writings and recorded exchanges with many Ahmadi leaders during his lifetime.

Iqbal’s affiliation with the Ahmadiyya ideology is used by Islamists to discredit his work; and by his staunch followers as an exhibit of his ‘spiritual pluralism’. The actual remnants of the affiliation unfortunately self-manifests in the anti-Ahmadiyya bigotry that prevails in Pakistan – the country whose ideological founding father – and his blood relatives – were once affiliated with the Ahmadiyya ideology.

Iqbal’s critics have long debated over self-defeatism in his writings. With the same man being cited to maintain the faithfulness and infidelity of the same community, in 1953 and 1974 respectively, Pakistani Ahmadis are the most unfortunate emblem of Iqbal’s paradoxes.

 

[AMCA]

THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE > PAKISTAN

Sikh community in Hangu 'being forced to convert'
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Sikh community in Hangu 'being forced to convert'
By Umer Farooq
Published: December 16, 2017
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Sikhs in Hangu say the have friendly relations with Muslims who have always stood up for the community when in need. PHOTO: EXPRESS/FILE

PESHAWAR: The Sikh community raised on Friday serious concerns after ‘being forced to convert to Islam’ by a government official in Hangu district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P).

Lodging a complaint with Deputy Commissioner Hangu Shahid Mehmood, the community members claimed Assistant Commissioner Tehsil Tall Yaqoob Khan was allegedly forcing Sikhs to convert to Islam.

District Nazim Hangu for minority Farid Chand Singh, who filed the complaint, said the community members have been living in the area since 1901 and were never offended by anyone, specifically for religious believes rather lived all their lives peacefully with Muslims.




Singh stated that despite having been a hotbed for sectarian conflicts, residents of Hangu district never harmed them, were never approached by someone to convert to Islam, adding they have friendly relations with Muslims who have always stood up for the community when in need.

“Had it been from someone ordinary, it would have never been felt so offending but when you hear such things from a government official, it becomes something really serious,” Singh told The Express Tribune.

Indian woman in ‘love jihad’ case says was not forced to embrace Islam

“We the residents of Doaba area are being tortured religiously,” read the complaint.

“The Constitution empowers us to defend our religious beliefs against anyone and we want you to call AC Tall Yaqoob Khan and inquire the issue,” the complaint read, adding that the issues should be investigated so that the community could live in Pakistan with ‘love, peace and harmony’.

When asked, DC Hangu Shahid Mehood said members of the Sikh community were offended during talks with the assistant commissioner, which the assistant commissioner never meant.

There was no such issue of converting someone forcefully to Islam; rather, the district administration ensured religious freedom, he added.

“We have ensured religious freedom and safety of the community members across the district and we are clear about it,” Mehmood told The Express Tribune.

However, on receiving the complaint, the community members have been asked for a meeting on Monday to address their concerns, he added.

 

[Kyubi]

Asghar Khan: From Air Marshal to Dogged Opponent of Military Rule in Pakistan
https://thewire.in/212284/asghar-khan-air-marshal-dogged-opponent-military-rule-pakistan/
https://thewire.in/212284/asghar-khan-air-marshal-dogged-opponent-military-rule-pakistan/


To expect 'The Wire' to publish this article came as a surprise to me , but nevertheless this particular article gives us a glimpse of what Pakistan had to go through when there was no prominent thinkers and leaders who could allow the country to prosper with peace and prosperity.

Although we believe that the partition was on account of divisive politics unleashed in Pre-Independent
India that lead to the creation of Pakistan, yet while India survived and prospered as a nation within a Democratic framework, our neighbor did not.

To promote the fundamentals principals of democracy , Air Marshal Asghar Khan strongly opposed the involvement of Military in the aspects of National Governance, and actively involved himself in politics after retiring from active duty. But all his efforts were of no help as the country was plagued with policy paralysis, overt dependence on military to solve internal strife's along with lackadaisical approach of the public in enforcing a civilian leadership. This has bought untold misery to the state of pakistan and created the current state of affairs.

 

[indus]

This is as dirty as it can get. ​

 

[Screambowl]

View attachment 20763

..................................

What kind of Bakchodi is this?

It was king Purshottam who fought the Alexander and Purshottam was not some Abdul he was a Hindu King.

 

[su30mki2017]

confession alert

Muslims don't control information

 

[indus]

Sindhi Hindus forcefully converted to Islam.

 

[Jameson Emoni]

This is as dirty as it can get. ​

... and Congress Party thought it could reason with a country like this.

 

[mayfair]

... and Congress Party thought it could reason with a country like this.

Nope..they wanted to do business with the RAPEs who run that sorry excuse of a country. The business and familial links run deep..

 

[cobra commando]

My Name Is Pakistan and I’m Not an Arab

An extract from 'Points of Entry: Encounters at the Origin-Sites of Pakistan' by Nadeem Farooq Paracha.

https://thewire.in/south-asia/points-of-entry-pakistan-mohammad-bin-qasim

 

[LordOfTheUnderworlds]

https://m.rediff.com/news/column/why-did-vajpayees-bus-diplomacy-fail/20180831.htm

On August 9, 1998, we wrote to the prime minister through the good offices of the minister for external affairs proposing a 'unilateral' peace initiative with Pakistan.

Our logic was that with the nuclearisation of the subcontinent, war as an instrument of politics has become redundant.

...away from public gaze, India, in that year, imported a record amount of sugar from Pakistan, worth nearly $200 million to help that country.

Financial year 1998-1999 was the only year when Pakistan ran up a trade surplus with India, of $27 million.

Where Inpad and Vajpayee went wrong was the belief that Pakistan suffered from a sense of insecurity.

The logic that nuclear weapons and Indian assurance would make Pakistan feel secure and it would embark on the path of peace was flawed.

This also assumed Pakistan to be a 'normal' (as opposed to an ideological) State.

As subsequent events at Kargil and Pakistan's continued support to terror activities in India prove, Pakistan has never felt insecure and has always felt that the break-up/destruction of India was within its capability.

In short, a Pakistan that feels secure will always continue to be aggressive vis a vis India.

It is this notion and unshakeable belief of the Pakistani army that lies at the root of failure of every single peace initiative undertaken by India.

This will end only when Pakistan gets divided along ethnic lines or ceases to exist altogether as an independent State.

Till such time, the best that India can do is keep Pakistan destabilised and insecure so that it has no chance to carry out its aggressive agenda.

 

[LordOfTheUnderworlds]

If Pakistan shuns the term ‘Ancient India’ in its history books, is it entirely to blame?
Haroon Khalid
https://scroll.in/article/892597/if...-in-its-history-books-is-it-entirely-to-blame

 

[Indx TechStyle]

History in service

Illustration by Abro
In August 1947 when Pakistan came into being, its founders almost immediately rushed to describe the new country as an entity which was different from India and had its own history dating back to antiquity.

Pakistan was the result of a political movement by Jinnah’s All India Muslim League (AIML) that had lobbied for a separate Muslim-majority country. The Pakistani sociologist (late) Hamza Alavi argued that the Hindu-Muslim political tensions which preceded the creation of Pakistan were the outcome of economic competition between Hindu and Muslim “salaried classes” in undivided India.

In fact, in his 1946 book Modern Islam in India: A Social Analysis, well-known British historian W.C. Smith wrote that even though many members of the Muslim middle-classes in India had done well to become bureaucrats, judges, lawyers, traders and teachers as a community, they had struggled to expand their economic status due to what they believed were hindrances being created by the Hindu majority.

Doctoring history does not help to build nations but only makes it myopic and distrustful​

In a 1987 essay, Alavi further elaborated his thesis by suggesting that the Muslim salaried classes believed that the overwhelming competition posed by the Hindu salaried classes would evaporate once the AIML was able to carve out a Muslim-majority country in the region.

Indeed, the overriding reasons for Pakistan’s creation were economic and political. But the new state found it necessary to create what Ali Usman Qasmi, in a recent essay for Modern Asian Studies, calls a “master narrative”. This narrative was to explain and justify Pakistan’s creation through an overarching account which was more “historic” in nature.

This was easier said than done. Pakistan shares centuries-old histories with a region Ancient India that has become the republic of India. What’s more, a good part of this history was dominated by ancient Hindu and Buddhist rulers. Also, if the region that had become India needed to be completely divorced from Pakistan’s historical narrative, then this also meant divorcing the long Muslim rule whose epicentre was Delhi.

The challenge to carefully navigate around such complexities and yet be able to weave together a historical narrative inspired by a new country’s distinct nationalist impulses was taken by historian I. H. Qureshi. Usmani writes that Qureshi was not shy about using history for the purpose of nation-building.

In his 1962 book The Muslim Community of Indo-Pakistan Subcontinent, Qureshi — perturbed that the Pakistani nationalist narrative had not been able to detach itself from the histories that the country as a region shared with India — claimed that the Muslims of India were always outsiders. He wrote that they had their own cultures and traditions and happened to rule India without being entirely absorbed by the region’s ancient social and religious currents. Therefore, according to Qureshi, the Muslims of the region were “Muslims in India” and not “Indian Muslims.”

Usmani writes that Qureshi saw the entire history of Muslims in India as a gradual process towards the creation of Pakistan. Qureshi dialed up the notion that the region’s Muslims insisted on exhibiting their separateness. He was thus critical of the inclusive policies of the third Mughal emperor, Akbar. He was also not very forgiving of the role the Sufi saints played during Muslim rule in India because theirs was not a theological creed and was thus, according to Qureshi, absorbed by the region’s non-Muslim currents.

Originally published in 1967, A Short History of Pakistan — a compilation of essays edited by Qureshi — attempted a clean break from shared histories by concentrating on the ancient histories of only those regions that had become Pakistan. This did not mean not discussing non-Muslim pasts but just non-Muslim pasts which only existed in West and East Pakistan.

In this respect, things became even more complex when, in 1971, East Pakistan broke away to become Bangladesh. Qureshi responded by lamenting that Pakistan’s “historical raison d’etre” had not been adequately communicated in school textbooks. He now offered a narrative which transcended geography. In a lecture, the historian said that countries come and go, but religions, such as Islam, stay. Thus, from 1971 onward, not only did the “ideology of Pakistan” became a compulsory subject, it was during this period that Pakistan began being referred to as a “bastion of Islam.”

When Qureshi’s metanarrative became the basis of textbooks in the 1970s and 1980s, K.K. Aziz, a former admirer and collaborator of Qureshi decided to systematically dismantle his mentor’s work. Like Qureshi, Aziz too had been a passionate Pakistani nationalist. But in the mid-1980s, distraught by the “faulty” contents of textbooks, Aziz bemoaned that Qureshi, in his enthusiasm to use history to build a nationalist ideology, had corrupted the whole process of history writing in Pakistan.

Aziz had left the country in 1978, a year after Gen Zia’s reactionary military coup. He returned in 1985 and published Murder of History in which he painstakingly pointed out the many historical inaccuracies present in textbooks being taught to students. A 2009 editorial in Daily Times says that this book had come about after Aziz “felt his growing alienation with the Pakistan nationalist narrative” — a narrative he confessed he had helped Qureshi build.

Aziz’s work flung open the opportunity for many other scholars and historians to emerge and challenge the accuracy of what was being taught as historical fact.

In Textbooks, Nationalism and History Writing, A. Muhammad Tariq writes that, by the late 1970s and 1980s, “The historical legacy of the pre-Muslim period was disowned and the physical geography of the region became irrelevant. Pakistan was no longer to seek its historical roots and traditions in the subcontinent.”

(I don't think that basis of creation of pakistan was history either, it was pure Islam which failed in 1971.:biggrin2

It was as if, after the 1971 East Pakistan debacle, the state had become afraid of the history that it shared with arch-enemy India. Even though this process of divorcing oneself from a shared history of a hated foe has now become prominent in BJP-ruled India as well, many post-Aziz revisionist historians in Pakistan have warned that, instead of making a nation feel secure, tinkering with history only makes it myopic, rootless and distrustful — the opposite of everything progressive.

 

[LordOfTheUnderworlds]

WHAT NOW FOR THE TLP?
Ahmed Yusuf
Updated November 11, 2018

In Islamic history, the Treaty of Hudaibiya is held up as a shining example of a tactical retreat that led to an eventual and grand victory. Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) convinced his people to return home without performing Hajj that year; he argued that the next time round the Muslims would return to Makkah in larger numbers and without the clouds of insecurity and fear hanging over the travelling pilgrims. And they did so the next year, exactly as the Prophet had said they would.

The treaty inked between the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) government and the Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) isn’t quite the Treaty of Hudaibiya, at least not for Khadim Hussain Rizvi’s party. Neither of their two demands were met; the chief justice didn’t resign nor was Aasia Masih sent to the gallows.

This might well be a tactical retreat but, contrary to popular reading of the situation, the TLP isn’t considering the truce as a comprehensive victory. And while commentators have described the agreement as a capitulation of the government, debates in the rank and file as well as among the wider circle of supporters of the party are filled with more questions than answers. Many of these have to do with the party’s patron-in-chief, Pir Afzal Qadri.

QADRI VS RIZVI

In front of the press at the Lahore sit-in, Qadri called out to those working in the home of judges who had penned the Aasia verdict to attack and kill them.

He even made a clear call to soldiers to mutiny against generals. Both these statements, which could obviously attract sedition and terrorism charges against Qadri, were repeated and condemned by Prime Minister Imran Khan in his speech to the nation.

In the media, Qadri’s words were widely described as a fatwa. Since the proclamation was being handed down by a religious figure and that too in the presence of Rizvi, many assumed it to carry a certain legitimacy.

Many except those in the TLP’s rank and file.

“A fatwa is a research paper,” explains one leader. “There is a hypothesis and whoever is writing the fatwa needs to prove their argument. This involves quoting history and jurisprudence. It’s not simply a proclamation.”

But the damage had been done. Rizvi till now has always spoken of the military in glowing terms but, in an instant, Qadri left his party vulnerable to state retaliation. A moment’s loose talk ended up in the TLP being removed from media screens altogether.

For ordinary TLP activists, if the party now faces an operation at the hands of the state, it is because of Qadri.

This is in stark contrast to the veneration afforded to Rizvi. For a party formed to protect the sanctity of the finality of Prophethood, the rise of a figure in whose person both theology and politics rest is a delicate balancing act.

Devotion is a key tenet of Barelvi thought but when it crosses over into political territory, there runs a risk of cults forming. This is also a zero-sum game for a young party: if an organisation revolves around a single personality, then it is bound to collapse after that personality is no longer in the picture.

Some cadres have sought to acquit Rizvi of abetting Qadri. Others have argued that silence is also a position (of agreement), particularly since Rizvi was seated right besides Qadri when the offending words were uttered. But senior leaders point to the role that Rizvi played in rousing the crowd once the TLP were allegedly told they’d be “roasted” if they didn’t end their sit-ins.

“He turned it into Karbala,” explains one veteran leader. “After the threats to wipe out the TLP were made, he relayed the conversation to the crowd and asked those who wanted to leave the venue to leave. And he asked those who were staying behind to be prepared to embrace martyrdom. The mood of the gathering became even more defiant after this.”

In the aftermath of the sit-in, activists now claim that an operation has been launched against their party. Although many TLP supporters were arrested (on charges of vandalism) and later released, key organisers have started going missing. In WhatsApp messages circulated within TLP circles, those who are more active have been encouraged to go underground for a while. The fear within is that a small organisation is being pummelled to a smaller size.

This sparked Qadri into issuing a video statement on social media last week telling workers to stay prepared for an emergency call to return to the streets. A subsequent meeting with the Punjab government, however, cooled tempers down. But the larger question is that, if the state is indeed moving in on the TLP, can an organisation as young as the TLP sustain itself, let alone organise sit-ins?

ORGANISATION

Protesters paralysed the capital city, burning tyres and taking out rallies on the streets, blocking traffic in Islamabad | Tanveer Shahzad/White Star


“A night before the Aasia verdict was to be handed out, we were told from our headquarters to start organising,” relates a senior leader of the party from Sindh. “The verdict was to be delivered at 9am and we were instructed to reach our sit-in venues around 8am.”

But as he took stock of the cadres’ strength in numbers that night, the party organiser realised that he had less than 40 cadres.

“The sit-in was basically organised by these men,” he says, “and the rest were basically ordinary citizens. This trend was repeated in many districts.”

Indeed, the TLP neither has a student operation nor any influence in trade unions, peasant bodies or other mass organisations. The party leadership is largely divided into shuras (consultative bodies): the central shura in Lahore, comprised of senior ulema makes the final call about strategy and tactics. The younger cadre, including college students and graduates, has been engaged in a tier below. Apart from organising, their key jobs include propagating party messages on social media and within party circles. Plans for legislation and governance affairs are managed by specialised committees. As a matter of principle, however, theology dominates over organisational concerns.

During elections earlier this year, the TLP was able to draw on the religiosity inculcated in the holy month of Ramazan. After the elections, the TLP’s belief in their supporters — the so-called “true lovers” of the Prophet — was shown not to be misplaced as twice the party’s call found many takers on the street. But the core remains a committed group of young cadres.

“In many Barelvi families, politics is a bad thing,” says the senior leader of the Sindh shura. “We have been raised with the belief that we have nothing to do with these worldly interactions. It’s only now that we are finding an expression of our anxieties through Khadim Sahib.”

The “anxieties” Shah refers to are ultimately about the sanctity of Prophethood. They are about the perceived removal of that reverence from the actions and preferences of the state. And they are about a certain dislike, even disdain, for what they describe as the state and society’s turn towards “liberal” and secular values.

But emotions do not make a political party. Such is the political inexperience of the party cadre that the TLP has till now struggled to raise and consolidate a second-tier leadership. The central shura, too, does not boast a younger leadership. It is based on the principle of theological seniority. In many ways, theology and governance affairs have been kept separate, with politics made subservient to theology. Such configurations are in large part an outcome of the absolute reliance on Rizvi and his person.

What the party has been able to gather is experience. Through the Faizabad and Dutch cartoon protest and, finally, during these recent dharnas (sit-ins), young activists with no experience of street politics became battle-hardened in protest politics. TLP activists are loathe to call their protests mob justice; their belief is that the “widespread appeal” of their cause can be gauged by the seeming “terror” being felt by the ruling elite and the “liberals”.

And what the party has in abundance is discipline.

One tactical masterstroke captures this best: with a blackout of sit-ins, Rizvi announced that any decision about any facet of the protest would be communicated from the dias in Lahore. This message would then be transmitted along other channels — WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Nothing else was to be believed, and certainly, not a single word being uttered in the media.

In fact, WhatsApp has been the favoured channel of communication for TLP activists because of the ease of transmitting text and video content. Internal WhatsApp discussions after the sit-ins ended are rife with disagreements over how much the TLP won and how much it lost. Some argue that their hand has been strengthened as in the Hudaibiya Treaty; others say they have been put in a position of considerable vulnerability. And as the law enforcement operation against party activists begins, there is a certain fatalism about the party losing whatever gains it has made till now.

“Organisations are constructed through times of adversity,” says the Sindh shura leader. “It looks like we will get pummelled but we’ll emerge on the other side with more clarity about how we want to organise and what the form of our organisation needs to be.”

BATTLING NARRATIVES

A protester in Lahore | M. Arif/White Star


“I was shocked to hear discussions on national television about the TLP,” says one senior organiser who returned home after three days of protesting. “We had become worse than Deobandi militants raised by the establishment who had claimed countless lives in terrorism. Three days of protests were the same as decades of violence and even worse than the PTI’s months-long bid to paralyse the country.”

Till now, the TLP has struggled to assert its narrative over what its adversaries are saying. While TLP WhatsApp groups were sharing videos of activists cleaning up the road and disposing of trash at sit-in venues, many in the public were spreading videos and images of vandalism and loss of property allegedly at the hands of the TLP.

“By choosing to remove the TLP from the screens, they also removed our version of events,” says a central leader. “We lost lives during these sit-ins, not anybody else,” he says referring to the loss of two lives in Karachi.

The TLP narrative is that its activists were told to organise sit-ins but they were strictly to remain peaceful. The vandalism and violence was carried out either by the larger masses who joined in or by elements who wanted to spread mischief, according to the party cadre.

“The banana boy was actually driving his cart towards our camp so that those fruits could be distributed among people,” says the senior leader about the viral video in which a boy driving a cart of bananas was robbed of his produce by men twice his size. “He had been paid for them. And then, as is the norm here with free food, everyone wanted it. The ruckus was created because of that. But since an incomplete picture had gone viral, nobody knew what exactly had taken place and we were accused of beating that child up. The boy appeared later that night in the media to clarify the matter.”

Another leader argues that once the media had shut the TLP out, more fear and more insecurity began to spread.

“For argument’s sake, let’s say that TLP supporters were involved in vandalism,” he says. “For our activists, there is a WhatsApp group where orders to remain peaceful had already been communicated. For our supporters though, we could only have reached them through the media. We could have told them about Khadim Sahib’s orders not to be involved in any act of violence.”

FAVOURED SONS?

But how did the TLP suddenly fall out of favour?

As the TLP sit-in last year in Faizabadstarted making headlines, reports poured in about how the sit-in also enjoyed behind-the-scenes logistical support from various quarters. One channel deemed close to the security establishment, for example, was said to have been providing airtime as well as food supplies to participants of the sit-in. The conclusion of the sit-in, where a senior army official was pictured distributing money to those who had participated, gave further credence to the perception that the TLP was being backed by the security establishment.

In June’s general elections, in which TLP participated and received some 2.2 million votes from around the country, the general feeling was that TLP had been propped up by the establishment to cut into the vote banks of other parties — particularly the PML-N, which had fallen out of its favour. In the latest sit-in, the fact that the army distanced itself from involvement in any action after Prime Minister Imran Khan’s strong speech was further taken as evidence of its soft corner towards the party.

TLP leaders rubbish all such claims.

“Khadim does not take dictation from anyone,” says a leader from the central shura. “He is clear about the role of the military being restricted to defending the borders.”

Another leader points to a speech in Narowal, where Rizvi told the audience that the establishment had asked for the TLP’s nomination for opposition leader before the elections. “Who are they to ask us? This is none of their concern,” Rizvi allegedly thundered at the gathering.

In the recently-held by-polls in Karachi, the TLP was unable to field a candidate because his papers were rejected “without reason.” The returning officer urged them to contest his decision, claiming that it would be overturned at a higher forum.

This begs the question: if the establishment hasn’t created the TLP, and the TLP isn’t willing to toe the line, why does a perception exist that depicts the party as a stooge of the establishment?

Conversations with leaders and cadres reveal that Rizvi is being held in the same regard as Shah Ahmed Noorani, the last leader of Barelvi politics. And like Noorani, Rizvi’s stance on issues of democratic importance is dubbed as pro-democracy.

“Pervez Musharraf was unable to have his Legal Framework Order passed till Maulana Noorani was alive,” says a young ideologue. “Things changed after his demise.”

Similarly, Rizvi is being built up — among his cadre — as a ‘principled’ democrat. Multiple leaders refer to conversations held with their party leader, in which Rizvi tells them that he has only met an army officer once, during Faizabad, when he was requested to call off the sit-in. And that’s the extent of his relationship with the military. Party activists buy this line without any doubt or reservations.

In a sense, therefore, the establishment has far less sway within the party than is generally perceived. The TLP’s own ambitions are far bigger than just a Nawaz Sharif or an Imran Khan. The latest rounds of TLP sit-ins, and particularly with the alleged threats to “roast” them, reveal that the establishment too is concerned about how to put the party on a leash.

Till now, the TLP’s appeal has been in terms of how religion and politics ought to be fused. This is captured by the TLP’s slogan “Deen ko takht par laana hai [we’ll bring religion into power].” But the national discussion in the aftermath of the nationwide sit-ins has been on how religion has been cynically used to further a particular kind of politics. Threats were made by Rizvi, for example, of encircling PTI leaders’ homes if security agencies made good on their threat to target them. Then there is the issue of vandalism and the issue of citizens being put under immense duress for three days, which painted a terrible image of Pakistan at a time when the government is desperate to attract more foreign investment.

Some of this posturing has not gone down well with Barelvi voters. And in a battle of narratives, the TLP is facing an uphill battle to push its response on to its constituents. In the organisation, however, the narrative of Hudaibiya still stands. It’s only a temporary retreat. The party’s eyes are on larger gains.

 

[Indx TechStyle]

Revisiting 1971​

IT is a date which will live in subcontinental infamy: Dec 16, 1971. On this day, the dream of Partition was violently broken and the new, independent country of Bangladesh was born. Pakistan has suffered greatly in more recent times: the Taliban insurgency was the greatest existential threat to state and society since the secession of Bangladesh; and a fifth Balochistan insurgency may be low level in intensity, but is still the longest running in history. Yet, 1971 and the events leading up to it were a cataclysm of incomparable proportions for undivided Pakistan. And perhaps most dispiritingly for modern-era, post-1971 secession Pakistan, there has been a continuing effort to shield the public from the unvarnished, authenticated truths of the war of secession and a wilful failure to apply the lessons of that devastating conflict to Balochistan and the erstwhile tribal districts that have witnessed terrible violence in the first two decades of the 21st century.

If the 1971 war and the events leading up to it are to be widely understood in Pakistan, it is necessary that the Hamoodur Rahman Commission report be fully declassified by the state. Indeed, before and since assuming public high office, Prime Minister Imran Khan has stressed the need for greater transparency and the people’s right to information. Mr Khan could make a signal contribution to national history by fully declassifying the Hamoodur Rahman Commission report and also making public more recent reports such as that of the Abbottabad Commission. All successful, progressive, people-oriented democracies fearlessly examine national failures and debacles, and no matter the wrenching conclusions, strive to learn from them and apply their lessons to avoid or resolve future conflicts. Certainly, India played a role in the secession of Bangladesh and there was an information war of sorts that was also fought at the time. But outright propaganda and facile explanations ought not to contaminate a deeper understanding of a complex set of factors that led to the loss of one half of Pakistan and the creation of Bangladesh.

Unquestionably, East Pakistan was unfairly treated by West Pakistan for much of the quarter century that the two wings were part of the same country. The reluctance of the political and military leadership in present-day Pakistan to abide by the results of the 1970 general election also helped accelerate the crisis. And while arguably Mujibur Rahman and his supporters could have done more to seek a non-violent political settlement after the general election, the stubbornness of West Pakistan’s leaders more than matched that in the eastern wing. Without the Hamoodur Rahman Commission report and serious, fair-minded scholarship, it is not easy to make a historically accurate assessment. But this much is clear: lessons from the past ought to be learned if the conflicts of the present are to be durably resolved.

30 characters rule sucks..

 

[ezsasa]

Presenting Pakistan's Lutyens elite(Minus the power)

 

[The Ultranationalist]

Paki police abducted, sold a hindu girl for 50000 paki rupees.

 

[su30mki2017]

https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/412574-lest-you-forget