Pakistan Peoples Party was launched at a convention in 1967 led by the dynamic ambition of ZA Bhutto. He had recently left Ayub Khan’s military regime after serving it as a minister for nine years. When a martial law led by Yahya Khan replaced Ayub Khan, Bhutto succeeded in generating a huge mass movement in West Pakistan just as Mujeeb-ur Rehman’s Awami League led an even larger mass movement in East Pakistan, now Bangla Desh. Both the parties winning the 1970 election laurels faced forces that were more powerful than them. Both were removed/ assassinated by military usurpers. Most of Bhutto’s family met unnatural deaths after him. This has been explained mostly in terms of a ‘punishment’ for their continued ambition and drive. Peoples Party is no longer the party it once. It no longer commands the loyalty of some of the people it initially did.

There were concrete reasons for these developments. In Pakistan, political parties do not part with their founding families. There is no culture of evolutionary politics necessary for the emergence of new leaders with new merit or vision without support from the corridors of power. What happened to Bhuttos also happened to the party and is continuing.

The PPP led by ZA Bhutto had done a great job of rejuvenating the demoralised army and the people after the fall of East Pakistan. It is also credited with having enabled a constitution. However, it did not win the loyalty of the establishment. The PPP government’s ambition for nuclear weapons capability and for a “Muslim Block of our own” were to prove fatal. The poor nation, dealing with the trauma of secession and humiliation, might have done better by focusing on building its industrial and economic prowess. Instead, it fell in the trap of socialist measures suggested by some ‘progressive elements.’ It threatened the established industrial entities and started a totally absurd process of nationalising small and medium industries. The leadership was somehow convinced that such measures would win the sympathies of Soviet Union and China and inspire the working class confidence in the party. It is believed that as one of the architects of Pak-China friendship, Bhutto had already been on the Red List of the US establishment. It is believed that he had some personal rapport with the President Nixon, and had facilitated contacts between him and the Chinese leaders before Nixon’s first visit to Peking. But it does not pay the leaders of a client nation to behave like an equal.

Another feature of Peoples Party’s identity has been its liberalism. Although the party’s slogan spoke of Islam as its faith, it strongly differed with the Jamaat-i-Islami and had a secular image. Pakistan was a tolerant Muslim society when the PPP entered politics. It was closer to being Muhammed Ali Jinnah’s Pakistan than it is today. The Quaid-i-Azam had not yet been converted into a Muslim saint of some kind. Jamaat-i-Islami, alone rejected Jinnah’s view but it was rejected even by other religious groups. The nation had moved more towards a modern industrial identity under Ayub Khan who had defied the clerics on sectarian issues and women’s rights. It was not the Pakistan that seems to welcome the Taliban and the Islamic State. East Pakistan had a huge Hindu minority. It was perfectly normal for Christians, Hindus and other minority religious groups to feel comfortable with Peoples Party.

Meanwhile, in its effort to defeat the Soviet Union, Western international capitalism was pushing Muslims toward a militant Islam, through Saudi Arabia and Pakistan’s Muslim clergy. Anti-Indian sentiment that grew manifold after the fall of Dacca, too, degenerated from nationalism to a theological commitment. The agitation that overthrew the PPP government and enabled Gen Zia’s martial law in 1977, used mosques for its mobilisation. Gen Zia ruled with the backing of madrassas that produced non-state actors for intolerance. The PPP and all entities with a taste for tolerance, then became irrelevant to the Islamic Republic.

The PPP’s current plight seems to validate the view that its two comebacks under Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto and then under President Zardari wre owed to sympathy vote. Over time, the party has grown more ‘normal’ - with rounded corners and edges. Meanwhile, there are claims of Pakistan moving closer to the state of Medina. The remnants of Western influence are no longer effective in street politics. The forces that dismissed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto for good are back. Does Pakistan still care for Peoples Party? One wonders.

The writer is the author of, among other books, Tehzibi Nargasiyat, Mubalghay Mughaltay, and Taliban: a Tip of the Holy Iceberg. He can be reached at mobarakhaider@gmail.com