The all influential APMSO is now a shadow of its former self

On June 11, Haider Abbas Rizvi, former parliamentarian and Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) coordination committee member who is living in exile these days, shared a photo of his young self on Twitter.

The photo depicts a bespectacled, tall and moustached guy of a wheatish complexion with side-parted hairs, wearing a grey blazer over a turquoise shirt and sporting a badge of the All Pakistan Muttahida Students Organisation’s (APMSO) on the lapel just above the pen tucked in the breast pocket as he stands behind a rostrum covered with the MQM’s tri-coloured, red, green and white flag.

Rizvi chose a verse by Urdu poet Ahmed Mushtaq as the caption for the photo. The verse was: “Naye Deewanon Ko Dekhein To Khushi Hoti Hay/ Hum Bhi Aese Hi They Jab Aaye They Weerane Mein [The sight of young enthusiasts brings happiness to us as we also looked like them when we entered the desert]”

The former MNA shared his old photo on June 11 in reference to the 42nd foundation day of the APMSO, a student organisation which gave birth to the MQM.

Until a few years back, a considerably large number of APMSO activists would gather on the night of June 11 at the Mukka Chowk which used to be inscribed with the slogan, “Distance doesn’t matter”. From there, they would march towards the residence of Altaf Hussain in Azizabad, also dubbed as Nine Zero, carrying candles and shouting slogans.

They would term the event as Youm-e-Tajdeed-e-Ahd-e-Wafa (Day to renew pledge of allegiance). Often, Altaf spoke to them on the occasion over a phone call from London.

However, things have changed now when any association with the MQM founder has become a punishable act and the Mukka Chowk being renamed the Liaquat Ali Khan Chowk after the first prime minister of Pakistan.

It was 1986 when Rizvi joined the student organisation at the age of 18, two years after the MQM came into being. “When I got admission to KU [University of Karachi], I was a naïve person who would return home before sunset. There were no hardcore things in Karachi back then. And I had never thought that I would become a rebel,” he said, talking over a phone call to The News from Dubai where he has been living for past some years since he left the country.

During the MQM’s peak in the era of Pervez Musharraf, Rizvi served as the deputy parliamentary leader of his party. He has been a popular figure among APMSO activists for his oratory skills and more importantly the fact that he started his political career from the student organisation.

Like many APMSO activists, Rizvi’s political life also began due to his opposition for the Islami Jamiat-e-Talba (IJT), the student wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami. “We were more than 100 students in our class and I was the popular one among them. Jamiat made problems for us, insisting that boys and girls should not go along. Fed up with it, we all sat together and unanimously decided that we don’t have to spend our lives like this so we should join a student party to counter the IJT. We looked for the options and chose the APMSO. At that time, some of us also asked if we were Muhajirs (migrants). There were only nine activists with APMSO in KU then and after our joining, they became 115.”

Lobby, the school of APMSO

Located opposite the administration block in KU, the arts lobby has been the sitting area for the APMSO activists. It is said to be the place where Altaf had established the organisation in 1978 along with his fellows.

The APMSO activists at KU have always taken pride in the fact that the student organisation was founded in their varsity, calling themselves as the pioneers.

Rizvi recalls that the lobby was close to the heart of many activists and they followed a self-styled decorum to maintain the place’s so-called sanctity. Smoking was strictly prohibited there and the activists were advised to wear long-sleeved shirts tucked in their pants.

To display their party discipline, they sat in queues at the lobby where they read the organisational literature and listened to the problems of students who came to them for help.

An APMSO activist was supposed to follow a strict code of conduct based on four tenets. Firstly, they had to “blindly” trust their leader (Altaf); secondly, they had to abolish personal ego; thirdly, they had to promote collectiveness and fourthly, they needed to stay connected with the organisation’s philosophy.

The APMSO workers were also supposed to carry out three fundamental works, which included promoting the ideology of their leader, providing ‘new blood’ to the organisation and acting as a reserve force for the MQM in demanding times.

This philosophy was given to the APMSO by Dr Imran Farooq, who was referred to as Dr Sahib. At the age of 50, he was murdered in London on September 16, 2010, a day before the 56th birthday of Altaf. Ironically, the two men booked for his murder were APMSO activists.

However, Hafiz Sheharyar, the chairman of APMSO-Pakistan, one of the three current factions of the former organisation, denied that there was ever any clause in their philosophy that called for blindly following the leader.

“Let bygones be bygones,” he asserted, adding that his organisation was committed to struggling for the rights of the students, regardless of their ethnicities or religions.

“Right now, we believe that the youth in urban centres of Sindh have been subjected to sheer injustice. It is hard for a Karachi student to get admission to KU in comparison to outsiders who land admission to the varsity under the Sindh and Pakistan categories, and in the meantime, there is no university in Hyderabad.”

He said that currently the APMSO strength was between 2,000 and 2,500 and the organisation was present in all the colleges and universities in the urban centres of the province.

Back in the 80s and 90s, it was not the case that the APMSO workers were discouraged from reading anything outside the organisational literature. Mushtaq Ayaz, who is currently the chairman of UC-14 in District Central, served as the APMSO central information secretary while he studied at KU from where he graduated with a gold medal in political science. He said the lobby was a school for him.

Apart from the organisational literature, he read Maxim Gorky, Friedrich Engels, Jeremy Bentham and Winston Churchill, as well as the history of Pakistan there. “This was meant to politically and socially groom the activists so that they could play a better role in the Tehreek (movement) when they stepped into the practical life,” he said.

MQM, the decline of APMSO

According to Syed Aminul Haque, the federal minister for information technology and telecommunication who belongs to the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P), the APMSO had gained members in thousands by 1991.

“We were the most popular party and student organisation in the urban centres of Sindh, specifically in Karachi and Hyderabad, and even non-Urdu speakers were joining us,” said Haque, who also served as the APMSO Nigraan-e-Aala during his student life.

To accommodate the non-Urdu speaking people in the party, the MQM later changed the M in its abbreviation from Muhajir to Muttahida (united) and vowed to struggle for the rights of all the oppressed sections of society.

However, then came the Musharraf era, when according to its critics, the MQM enjoyed a free hand and started corrupting itself and the APMSO. The student organisation has been blamed by its opponents for promoting violence in the educational institutes of the city, even before Musharraf’s era.

Fahim* was 17 when police arrested him with a pistol in his bag, following a clash between the APMSO and IJT activists at the Jamia Millia College in 2007. He was locked up for three to four hours until the MQM pulled strings at the high level for his release.

“I was young and did not understand how these things could affect my life ahead,” he said. “That was the first time, I was arrested. Initially, I was nervous about what will happen if my father got to know about this but thankfully it did not happen and by the fall of night I was home.”

Whereas, the MQM came for Fahim’s help, there have been others whose expectations were not met by the party. Aman was inspired by the MQM’s politics back then. “I thought myself of an untouchable,” he commented.

“I thought I could have anything from the admission to a university to a job in a government sector on the party quota, but I was proved wrong when I, through my unit, applied for the admission to KU. They said I could not have it.”

He, however, used his personal connections and landed a seat in KU. “From that day, I started to become skeptical of their sayings and actions. I felt like being used and did not want to be used again. So I slowly went away from them.”

According to some disgruntled APMSO activists, the organisation started to wane when nepotism and favouritism found their way in its affairs. “If you were a relative of an MNA, MPA or coordination committee member, you could be made sector organiser or member, regardless of whether or not you had that ability,” said Iftikhar*, an ex-APMSO activist.

He also cited ethnic biases within the organisation as a reason for its downfall. “They never said it to my face but they kept a grudge with me because I was a Punjabi. Although, I was completely in romance with the APMSO/MQM philosophy, yet I was never promoted.”

Minus Altaf, the future of APMSO

On the 38th foundation day of APMSO, Altaf addressed from London the organisation’s activists who had gathered at the Lal Qila Ground in Azizabad. It was a largely male crowd with a few dozen women. Many of them had worn white.

The MQM founder told the audience that most of them would be between 25 and 30 years of age and he wanted to discuss an important issue with them — the generation gap — because most of them would be unaware of the APMSO’s history.

Two months later, after the August 22, 2016 incendiary speech, Altaf was completely banned in the country. The APMSO activists, who were taught to keep blind trust in their leader, found themselves in confusion and the split began which has now created three factions of APMSO — APMSO-Pakistan, APMSO-Farooq Sattar and APMSO-London.

Rizvi calls this schism a debacle, saying that the future depends on two things — firstly how the MQM leadership reacts to it and secondly how the Muhajirs, which are the primary vote bank of the party, respond to it.

“We have been through an ideological deterioration and keeping in view our mistakes and shortcomings, we have to look towards the future. If we kept splitting in groups, this will dent us further. This is a matter of survival, if not in a best way then at least in a good way.”

He said that post-August 22, 2016 scenario had been a learning curve for them. “We have been hearing a word Manzil (destination) since always. But what is it actually? A separate province or the rights for all the oppressed people in country? We need to join heads together to devise a way out of this crisis.”

He added that the APMSO and the MQM were aligned in the center-left on the political spectrum and supporters of an egalitarian system and their future political strategy should be based on this alignment.

*Names changed to protect identity