From Musharraf to Qadri

The great revolutionaries of Pakistan, ranging from Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain and Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi to Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed and Sahibzada Ahmed Raza Khan Kasuri are rallying behind Allama Tahirul Qadri to bring about a revolution. The MQM and PTI continue to support Qadri’s movement – overtly or sheepishly depending on the day it is – but without becoming a part of the revolutionary brigade as yet.
Kasuri said in a television show that there is a six-member committee liaising between Qadri and Gen (r) Musharraf. He called himself one of the strategists who will assist Qadri in bringing about this revolution. He said that Qadri will be the ‘rahbar’ (leader) of the revolution and will oversee the functioning of the revolutionary government put in place after the ouster of the incumbent government and the wrapping up of the current political system.
According to him, the four provinces and federally administered areas within Pakistan will be broken down into 33 provinces. Each province will be run by a lieutenant governor. Kasuri also hinted at drawing up a list of more than a hundred pious, clean, honest and God-fearing individuals who will be appointed to run the government and key state institutions under Qadri’s vigilant eye. He said that there will be no Charagh Din and Allah Ditta fighting for elections.
What will this revolution be really about? Qadri says all the right things in his charter about education, health, poverty eradication and facilitating women. In fact, most party manifestoes for the last elections said the same things but put it aside for the moment. If we accept that Qadri is the Imam Khomeini of Pakistan – as he perhaps believes himself to be – who will help the imam in implementing his charter and how? How did the Chaudhry brethren of Gujrat become radical revolutionaries? One has ruled Punjab unequivocally under the martial rule of Gen (r) Musharraf and the other had been the general’s true henchman.
Shujaat served as the stop-gap prime minister for a couple of weeks to help Musharraf engineer placing Shaukat Aziz in that position. What will the revolution do to them? What will happen to Moonis Elahi’s business deals? Will the lands and properties of the Chaudhrys of Gujrat be distributed among the farmers and the workers? Or will cooperatives be made to share the dividends justly between workers, managers and former owners?
Why weren’t these revolutionary changes brought about when Pervaiz Elahi was the chief minister and Shujaat Hussain the real power broker under Musharraf? What pro-poor economic policies did Musharraf pursue during his nine years?
As far as Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed is concerned, he desperately needs to jump on someone’s bandwagon. He goes to every rally organised by the PTI. He gained Imran Khan’s support to secure his National Assembly seat from Rawalpindi before the last general elections. He is a phone call away from the MQM. His politics is limited to a constituency and talk shows on television screens. It is told that his brusque, uncouth and dismissive style brings good ratings to the anchors who invite him to these talk shows because many Pakistani viewers, more so in central and northern Punjab, like a certain kind of loudness in people with power.
Whether they are local or national, the ‘pinj ke rakhho’ (blasting the other) attitude displayed by the leaders make them popular for some time. It gives people an illusion of power about the man. But Sheikh Sahib is too old to be an angry young man forever. We are not sure if this demeanour continues to bring him good votes as well. He has his own faction of the Muslim League – after serving under Musharraf for years. He has been a federal minister more than once under different governments including that of Nawaz Sharif’s in the past. What revolution is he talking about now?
Ahmed Raza Kasuri is a part of Musharraf’s APML. He is the most diligent advocate for the release of the general. He has never been a democrat and never been a believer in all being equal. Can someone who certainly differentiates if not discriminates between people due to their social class or family background call himself a revolutionary? This can happen only in Pakistan in the present time and age.
I would not have gone into his past and explored his revolutionary ancestry had he not made a comment about upstarts making it to parliament in the current system. He completely forgets that how generational elites and affluent middle classes have looted and plundered Pakistan. He mentions Charagh Dins and Allah Dittas but not feudal lords, business tycoons and tribal chieftains coming to power through the same system and fleecing the country and its resources. His father, Nawab Mohammed Ahmed Khan, whose murder in 1974 became the pretext to hang ZA Bhutto in 1979, was a quintessential part of Punjab’s elite.
The way Bhutto’s case was dealt with in Lahore High Court and later in the Supreme Court is known to all. Legend has it that some 33 years before his assassination, Nawab Mohammed Ahmed Khan was the only magistrate willing to sign the death warrant of Bhagat Singh, Raj Guru and Sukh Dev when they were to be hanged in Lahore jail. But that is not always confirmed from historic sources. However, is confirmed by historians is that he was a colonial magistrate in Lahore when these true revolutionaries were hanged. Ironically, he was assassinated at the same spot in Lahore where the gallows stood in 1931 for Singh and his comrades.
Qadri, the self-proclaimed messiah who will be the leader of this revolution, frightens me more than Imran Khan – another messiah who believes that everything will be all right once he becomes the prime minister – as Khan’s ambition remains within human ambit. Although Khan does play upon religious symbolism from time to time, it is known to all that his personal life and conduct have nothing whatsoever in common with what he professes in public processions. He single-mindedly tries to marry the liberal with the bigot in the cadres of his party and the ranks of his supporters.
Khan, for instance, challenged the implementation of Articles 62 and 63 of the constitution, articles related to moral qualifications of candidates for parliament. Qadri, however, used to insist on these being implemented in letter and spirit. On top of it all, he claims to have been receiving divine guidance and messages. That’s a little scary and somehow helps one understand his authoritarian style and totalitarian view of the political order he deems fit for the country, at least in the interim when he becomes the patron-in-chief.
Therefore, while on the one hand Qadri comes across as a moderate and inclusive cleric in terms of his fatwas and his speeches – speaking for elevating the status of women, preserving the rights of minorities, provision of economic opportunities to all and access to legal justice without any discrimination – on the other hand he has also claimed to author the text of the amendment made to the blasphemy law by Gen Ziaul Haq in 1984. Whether Qadri shrouds it in his love for ‘real’ instead of ‘sham’ democracy, his desire not for power but to be a source of power in Pakistan is truly scary.
This reminds one of what Christopher Hitchens said once, “The totalitarian, to me, is the enemy – the one that's absolute, the one that wants control over the inside of your head, not just your actions and your taxes.” Those who were with Musharraf are now with Qadri – a transition from enlightened moderation to counter-enlightenment.
France, Russia, China, Iran – none were functioning democracies when revolutions took place there. Revolutions do not happen in functioning democracies, even if these democracies are not perfect. Only coups happen there. You may choose to call that coup a revolution like Gen Ayub Khan did.
The writer is a poet and author based in Islamabad.
Email: harris.khalique@gmail.com