Six Nations Of Pakistan

The irrepressible Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) leader Altaf Hussain last week finally said what he had been hinting at for months: the creation of Pakistan was a mistake. Addressing a meeting at Acton Town Hall in London last week, Hussain departed from his usual Urdu to declare in slow, measured English. "The division of the Indian subcontinent was the biggest blunder in the history of mankind." Then in Urdu: "What did I say?" Switching over to English, he then repeated his line on Partition all over again.

It was obviously a shrewd method to drive home the point. And the message wasn’t lost. Certainly not in Pakistan where the ensuing outcry gave some indication of the significance ascribed to his statement. It assumes more importance because of the galaxy of other leaders who were present at the meeting. Hussain spoke from "a stage that had a lot of weight," points out an mqm leader - the Mohajirs were joined by Baluch, Pashtoon and Sindhi leaders who’ve formed the ponm (Pakistan Oppressed Nations Movement). But they call it Poonam. And for Gen Musharraf’s regime it’s turning into a dark night.

"I don’t believe that Pakistan can be saved," ponm leader Sardar Ataullah Mengal said at the meeting. The speeches were accompanied by slogans from the audience. Le ke rahenge azadi, they thundered, a thowback to the ‘40s cry: Le ke rahenge Pakistan. "You talk of azadi. That doesn’t mean breaking a nation; if we get our rights within Pakistan, that too is azadi, and we’ll have that at any cost. But then if a greater azadi comes, then you (the military rulers) will be responsible," added Mengal who today is among the most influential Baluch leaders; and whose son Naseer was once chief minister of Baluchistan.

Fifty-three years after independence Baluchis, Pashtoons, Seraikis and Sindhis are not free, Mengal declared. "We’re one kind of people, our rulers are another kind." Punjabis, that is. Indeed, it’s Pakistan’s ruling Punjabis who’ve forced the rest together in a rebellious opposition. "When it comes to enjoyment it’s you; when you need to test missiles and nukes, it is us," Mengal said. The bitterness seems to have wide backing among the Baluchis whose assembly had condemned the nuclear test in their state.

This bitterness was also reflected in the speech of Mahmood Khan Achakzai, who heads the Pashtoon Khwa Milli Awami Party in Baluchistan. "Pakistan is heading towards destruction because of its colonial ways," he said. "It just can’t go on like this. We Pathans did not surrender to the British, we certainly won’t surrender to the isi. You can’t make slaves of us," he said. Ditto Sindh. "We’ve no rights any more," says Syed Imdad Shah, son of the late G.M. Syed, who was in detention for about 30 years. "Our land is occupied, our waters taken, the provincial assembly is now just a debating society." The Sindhi leader said the Sindhis would oppose the Islamisation of Pakistan. "We have always been a secular people, and we want a secular state," he said.

Altaf, the maverick mqm leader, went on to say that the "Titanic of the Islamic ummah" was sinking. "The Titanic didn’t sink suddenly. It sank slowly. They shot off distress flares. But nobody came. And this isn’t a film, it’s a fact," he said. The only way Pakistan could save itself, he said, was through a change in its attitude towards the non-Punjabis: "We didn’t want to hear the truth in ‘71, and Pakistan broke. If you treat us like slaves, a time will come when we’ll get independence and you’ll be without slaves."

The leaders even took on Qaid-e-Azam, M.A. Jinnah. The Mohajirs are not carving out a separate Jinnahpur within Sindh because - and Hussain almost shouted this out - "if we break the country, we will never name it after Jinnah". Hussain now says his next step will be to write a letter to Indian Muslims: "I will inform them about what is happening to us in Pakistan".

Indeed, what was on display was a non-Punjabi, if not anti-Punjabi, front within Pakistan. The joint resolution adopted at the meeting spoke of Pakistan as a ‘multi-national entity’ and said that "the majority of the Muslim population of Pakistan, divorced itself from Jinnah’s Pakistan, created by the Muslims of the subcontinent; thereby the very premise of the existence of the remaining part of Pakistan was lost in ‘71." The resolution describes the three evils of Pakistan as the army, bureaucracy and the intelligence agencies, "all hailing from Punjab, who were responsible for the dismemberment of the country.... They invaded the Baloch, the Pashtoons, the Sindhis and finally they assaulted the descendants of the creators of Pakistan, that is, the Mohajirs." The resolution also says that Pakistan’s smaller nations "have come to the conclusion that, in the existing set-up, they can’t attain their fundamental rights."

Underlying this anger are Pakistan’s economic imbalances. The Sindhis point out that their state contributes 60 per cent of the national income but gets only six per cent from the national budget. While Mengal says that non-Punjabi provinces contribute 90 per cent to Pakistan’s income but get little in return. "Even a beggar from Baluchistan can’t enter Punjab as he can’t beg in their language," he scoffs. The smaller provinces, the thinking goes, feel colonised and believe they are actually paying to be colonised.

While politicians of the Indian subcontinent have a penchant for fiery speeches and hyperbole, what Acton Town Hall witnessed was more than just rhetoric. For, Hussain is still the leader of about 20 million Mohajirs in Pakistan. And while Sindh is pursuing its cultural distinctiveness with louder demands for political separateness, Baluchistan and the north-west are also joining the chorus. In all, there’s no doubt that the cracks in Pakistan are getting wider and increasingly difficult to paper over, or even hide.