Pakistan: MQM’s adulation of the army

By Lal Khan

The main character of the petit bourgeoisie is its erratic and impatient nature. In periods of social lull and stagnation, this class, in its relentless quest to join the ruling elite, becomes the foot soldiers of reaction

The regular provocative and quixotic statements of the MQM’s leadership have become a sort of norm in the political decay Pakistani society has been passing through in the last few decades. Altaf Hussain, in another bizarre outburst from his bubble in London, has once again traversed the ridiculous to arrest the dwindling popularity of the MQM and his personal cult, which is already limited to the particular constituency of an ethnic group. Altaf Hussain’s outburst on a private television channel on Tuesday expounded: “Pakistan is more important than democracy for us and we cannot imperil our country in the name of democracy. If the country survives, democracy would flourish. If the elected regime does not join hands with the army for getting rid of the terrorists then I would suggest the military to step forward on its own.”

The erratic love/hate relationship of the MQM and the army has been ongoing for almost two decades, reflecting the unity and discord of both parties’ vested interests. The people of Pakistan are regularly subjected to the MQM leadership’s public outbursts, oscillating between hysterical displays of extreme hostility, including vile aggressiveness bordering on treason against the state, and opportunistic conciliation with wild gestures of praise and sycophancy. The origins and the rise of the MQM as a mass party of the mainly Urdu-speaking migrants from India after partition in 1947 are deeply rooted in a period of reaction rather than a revolutionary upheaval. It was the darkest hour in Pakistan’s history when the brutal military dictator Ziaul Haq was tormenting society with vicious attacks against the workers and the oppressed masses. The PPP and the left were the main victims of this tyrannical rule. This cruelty in the name of Islam was, on the one hand, trying to break the resistance of advanced sections of society fighting against this exploitative system and, on the other, while using religion and beliefs, Zia was callously trying to drive a wedge between the advanced and primitive sections of society.

Karachi was not just the main commercial, financial and industrial centre of Pakistan but also the bastion of the Pakistani proletariat with a rich tradition of struggle and militancy. The MQM’s birth and subsequent rise on an ethnic basis in Karachi was engineered and patronised by the martial law regime and, subsequently, this venomous prejudice was injected into the social streams of Pakistan’s largest metropolis to break the unity of the workers and their impeccable opposition to the Zia regime. The foundations of the MQM were a paradoxical mix of mainly middle-class students from two ideological adversary student organisations: the Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba (IJT) and the National Students Federation (NSF). With the ebbing of the class struggle after 1972 in Karachi, the nationalistic, religious, sectarian and ethnic prejudices of the past came to the fore. The Mohajirs, faced with a certain social alienation in these rising divisions, converged towards this relatively new student organisation, the All Pakistan Mohajir Students Organisation (APMSO), which later morphed into the Mohajir Qaumi Movement (MQM) with patronage from mafia capitalism. The MQM’s assertion to date is probably correct when it says that it is a middle class organisation.

The main character of the petit bourgeoisie is its erratic and impatient nature. In revolutionary periods some sections, particularly individuals, can play an important role in movements but in periods of social lull and stagnation, this class, in its relentless quest to join the ruling elite becomes the foot soldiers of reaction. From Nazi Germany to present day religious fundamentalism, reaction and fascism derive their social basis from this very class. In its insatiable greed for wealth it resorts to deceptive manoeuvres, violent means and criminal activities in the garb of piety and civility. Karl Marx prophetically analysed the class character of the petit bourgeois in his epic work, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte: “But such an individual, because he represents the petit bourgeoisie, that is, a transition class, in which the interests of two classes simultaneously mutually blunt each other, imagines himself elevated above class antagonism generally. These sophists concede that a privileged class confronts them, but they, along with all the rest of the nation, form the people. What they represent is the people’s rights; what interests them is the people’s interests. Accordingly, when a struggle is impending, they do not need to examine the interests and positions of the different classes. They do not need to weigh their own resources too critically. They have merely to give the signal and the people, with all its inexhaustible resources, will fall upon the oppressors. Now, if, when it comes to the actual performance, their interests prove to be uninteresting and their potency impotence.”

Being in power for most of the last three decades, the MQM is failing to whip up ethnic hatred and frenzy to sustain its social base. In the façade of nationalism, secularism, liberalism and religious bigotry, they have always served this rotting capitalism. The call for a military dictatorship to counteract ‘terrorism’ lays bare the bankruptcy of its political role. This only reinforces the impotence of the political representatives of a corrupt and reactionary capitalist class and its dependency on the state institutions to protect their crimes. That is where their weakness against the military manifests itself. It is not an accident that the main thrust of the MQM’s propaganda is the elimination of feudalism, only the remnants of which remain in Pakistan. It condones and extorts financial booty from the mafia capitalism that is dominating social relations and devastating human existence. The military uses this ethnic tool for its own ends but when it tries to become a Frankenstein monster it tries to rein it in. That has been one of the main causes of the ongoing violence in Karachi for more than two decades. Now, when there are more contenders in the field of this political crime and social repression, the conflagration has escalated. The decline of the MQM’s social support has made it more vulnerable and frazzled with internal conflicts morphing into this raging internecine bloodshed. The military will not bailout a force losing potency. Hence the MQM’s desperate gestures of adulation towards the army will not get much of a response.

As the crisis worsens, the disenchantment, indifference and revulsion towards the incumbent politics and parties as a whole are intensifying. There is a huge vacuum. The military is incapacitated by its own burgeoning internal crisis to take direct power. The social and economic crisis is too deep, too immense and excruciatingly acute for the present system to resolve. There is a seething revolt amongst the masses beneath the surface. When that volcanic lava erupts into a renewed class struggle, it will leave no stone unturned. It will go beyond all the structures and norms that seem to be eternal.