A People’s Agenda


Written by Ali K. Chishti • Region • March 2011

MQM has recently proved to be one of the most politically active political parties in Pakistan, moving from its very unorthodox stance on many important issues to its de-weaponization bill, nine points agenda and refusal to join the federal cabinet. It started as a student rights group called APMSO (All Pakistan Mohajir Students Organization) at Karachi University. Later, it transformed into an ethnic rights movement for the Mohajirs and branded itself as MQM (Mohajir Qaumi Movement). It has gone through many phases including a full-fledged army operation against it and now calls itself the Mutahida Qaumi Movement.

Altaf Hussain, the founder of APMSO and later MQM, now resides in self-exile in London from where he controls his party. He has over recent months made sure that his vision of MQM with its “Mutahida” identity is pursued by party members with constant engagement with the masses, such as organizing the Bhit Shah event and the National University Conference at its headquarters at Nine Zero.

So what is the MQM’s real agenda? Wasay Jalil, the person in charge of the party’s central information committee tells SouthAsia magazine that, “the agenda is simple: liberal, progressive, a Pakistan free of corruption where economic safeguards for all citizens are insured.” Altaf Hussain in a recent speech asked for something more: he called for more provinces to be created in Pakistan. The same Altaf Hussain some twenty years back had said: “We have made Sindh our permanent home – we have buried our dead here for the welfare of the province… Mohajirs and Sindhis are one. We don’t want a separate province.” So why does the MQM want more provinces now? The answer is simple: MQM is expanding to other parts of Pakistan and supports creation of at least two provinces - Saraiki and Hazara - because MQM thinks it could at least penetrate into the Saraiki belt as previously it has pulled off a huge show in Multan. So, while MQM does give out a call to create more provinces, her reasons are of a strategic nature rather than economic or other.

The biggest question that the MQM faces today is how to bridge its ‘Mohajir’ identity which plagues her to this day and was only recently demonstrated by its central leader Wasim Akhtar. Responding to the PML-N leader Chaudhry Nisar, he burst out with an embarrassing statement about Punjab and Punjabis. The MQM took a stern stand and asked Wasim Akhtar to apologize but to many, the statement from the MQM spokesman had undone whatever work had been done by party in Punjab. A journalist from Punjab visiting the MQM headquarters termed it as “another 12th May.”

Has MQM actually transformed into Mutahida? A fair statement would be that the transformation is taking place and at least the MQM leadership has made sure that the message of Mutahida goes viral within their own party too. The party recently included Pashtun, Sindhi, Punjabi and Baloch members in its Rabita Committee and made sure that they come on television shows to showcase the new MQM image.

The key words in the MQM’s discourse are jobs, not just reforms, political mobilization, not just legislation, ‘leadership’ of the poor and middle class, not only distribution of wealth, and condemnation of the feudal and capitalist elite. Initially, the MQM leadership hailed from the Mohajir working class; it has now developed a class-consciousness and policy-orientation geared towards redistribution of wealth and probably an ideological position towards the left. The typical self-image of the party is couched in a middle class mindset via university students and their commitment to jobs, especially in the public sector.

MQM’s class-consciousness, if any, is unrelated in theory or practice to the ways and means of affecting a transfer of resources between classes, which is understandable. The evolutionary process from which MQM has transformed from initially a students’ rights group to a political movement for the rights of Mohajirs and now a full-fledged political party asking for the rights of 98 percent oppressed Pakistanis regardless of ethnic and religious beliefs, has placed it to the centre-left of the Pakistani political scene. In terms of social origins, the party’s leadership comes essentially from the lower and upper middle class, apart from the strong working class support that the party always had.

The party’s political thinking has centered on a mixture of commonplace morality that appeals to common sense. This has worked both as a catalyst for workers and as a restraint on the articulate classes. In the context of a comparison between feudal, capitalist, democratic and socialist systems, MQM favors a system based on ‘realism’ and ‘practicalism’, reflecting the geography, culture and customs of the society. Hence, through alliances with PPP and parties like Jeay Sindh, MQM’s evolution has actually brought it to Punjab where it wants business. Says key party leader Raza Haroon, “We are offering Punjab and Pakistan a system based on our track record in Karachi and Hyderabad and now it is up to the people to either take it or leave it!”