Re: Wali Khan passes away..
Interesting article…
Wasted asset
http://www.nation.com.pk/daily/jan-2006/27/columns1.php
M.A. NIAZI
Khan Abdul Wali Khan’s passing removes yet another of the political leaders who played a crucial role in Pakistan’s crisis years of the 1970s, and while looking back to him and his era, one wonders how events might have been shaped had the anti-democratic heritage of the 1950s and 1960s not acted upon him in that era.
Wali Khan was labelled a ‘nationalist’, a pejorative term, with all its hidden implications of secessionism and ‘anti-Pakistan’ sentiment, but there was a period when he was perfectly willing to play a role on the national stage, and where his considerable political skills made him emerge as a possible Prime Minister. It is one of the wistful pleasures of playing the ‘what-might-have-been’ game to contemplate the possibility.
His family’s political opposition to Pakistan during the Independence Movement was not an insurmountable obstacle. After all, his uncle, Dr Khan Sahib, had been the first Chief Minister-designate of West Pakistan, an office to which he would have succeeded had it not been for his untimely death. If the brother of Bacha Khan could be accepted as Chief Minister of West Pakistan in 1955, why would the son of Bacha Khan have been unacceptable as Prime Minister of the same territory in the 1980s?
Wali Khan was no doctrinaire ideologue. This was proven by the smooth alliances he personally participated in, first with the JUI in the short-lived NWFP Mufti government, where he conceded the Chief Ministership to Mufti Mahmood even though his NAP had more seats, and then with the IJI in 1990, when he again gave the smaller partner, the IJI/PML, the same slot.
Yet he was not a rootless politician, interested only in gaining power. His economics were not radical, but he had a definite view of how a federal structure should empower the provinces. This also made him committed to the cause of democracy and representative government, which also put him in the opposition for long periods of time, including stints in jail, and his trial, along with other NAP leaders, before the Hyderabad Tribunal. Naturally, coming from a smaller province, this was an important part of his platform, but the centralising bureaucratic-military establishment turned a legitimate political and constitutional position into proof of his being anti-Pakistan.
Wali Khan’s integrity was his hallmark, as was his wry sense of humour. The best example of that is his reaction to one of the charges before the Hyderabad Tribunal, that he had been sent Rs 20 million by Indira Gandhi, then Indian PM, through a certain emissary. He filed a civil suit against the emissary for the recovery of those Rs 20 million, arguing that while could not imagine why Indira would send him such a sum, he had not got the money, and obviously the emissary had embezzled money which should have come to him.
Examining his record, it is easier to trace the ‘nationalist’ or anti-Pakistan label to his family rather than to any views of his own. While his federalism fell within the American states’-rights tradition, he was never known for supporting the Pukhtoonistan demand that was linked to his father, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan. One analyst remarked many years ago that Ghaffar Khan’s problem with Pakistan (reflected by his request to be buried in a ‘free country’, Afghanistan) lay in his Pukhtun stubbornness, whereby he found himself on the wrong side of a stand taken in the 1930s, to which he stuck even after Partition.
One reminiscence of Bacha Khan sheds some light on this. Asked in 1948 whether he had accepted Pakistan, his reply was that he had taken oath as a member of the Constituent Assembly. This was a sensible reply, though later the political harassment he faced may have driven him to the conclusion that he was probably right in the first place. His son, on the other hand, must be credited with greater loyalty to Pakistan. He too faced similar persecution, and attempts to give him a bad name and hang him, but he never left the path of patriotism and peaceful politics.
His father was effectively excluded from mainstream politics by the persecution he suffered. It was not his lack of patriotism that was the problem, it was his radicalism. By the standards of his time, there was a lot of occupied territory out there to his left, but it is as if the decidedly conservative establishment of the 1950s wanted to suppress all possible changes to the status quo. Ghaffar Khan was by no means the only political leader to face such treatment in that era, but the masses had to be stirred up against him, and the easiest charge that could be laid was treason.
Of course, it did not help that Ghaffar Khan, what with his old Congress ties, favoured better relations with India. This aspect of his politics, which is a valid stance to take, earned him the title of Indian agent, which was later to be used against his son, as described above. While there was a large section of public opinion which took a strongly anti-Indian position, based on an analysis of the Pakistan Movement and the Congress leadership’s constant betrayals, this did not preclude debate. However, a section of the establishment demanded unquestioning anti-Indian sentiment for two purposes: first, to justify the role of the military in politics, and secondly, to batter politicians with the charge of treason.
There is a strong contrast between how the Redshirts fared after Partition, compared with the other diehard opponents of the Pakistan Movement, and Congress allies, the religious right. The JUI, which derived itself from the anti-Pakistan Congress auxiliary, the Jamiat Ulema Hind, won favour with the establishment by Mufti Mehmood’s support of Ayub Khan. The Jamaat Islami made its peace with the establishment during the 1970s by leading the resistance to Bhutto, another disturber of the status quo. It was then allowed to claim the role of the defender of the ideology of Pakistan, of the state whose creation it had opposed. Like his father, Wali Khan never made common cause with the establishment, though he certainly joined alliances with political forces of widely differing, even antithetical, views.
This brings us to the 1970s, when Wali was also opposing Bhutto, but on his own terms. Bhutto, who broken the hold of the establishment for a brief window of opportunity, probably realised that the only challenger he had for the support of the masses could be Wali Khan. Therefore, it became necessary to destroy him. This was done by the methods of the 1950s and 1960s, in which Bhutto had been trained by his years in the Ayub Cabinet. Bhutto is not to be blamed. First, he must have realised that he was fighting on two fronts: against other political forces, as well as the establishment. It was easier to eliminate the opposition rather than the establishment, even though for this he needed to use establishment methods, and thereby had to co-opt the establishment itself. Bhutto was a man of flaws as great as his good qualities, but perhaps his worst crime was to try to bend the establishment to his agenda, rather than to follow its agenda.
At one level, Wali Khan was a success story. Over the years, he gained the respect even of his political opponents, and even though some of them found him irritating at times, they acknowledged his considerable abilities. However, the question that arises is why he never held public office. Was it just because he was an opposition politician? A combination of circumstances also prevented him breaking out of the NWFP. Particularly by the end of the Zia era, his moment had gone. Not only was he too old, but his stand on the Afghan Jihad divided the NWFP, and also made it difficult for him to do what any non-Punjabi politician has to do to attain power, and which only Bhutto managed to achieve-obtain mass support in the Punjab.
In the end, the question remains: how would Wali Khan have fared if there had been a continuous civilian representative process from the 1960s onwards? Certainly differently than he actually did. That he did not play the role he was actually cut out for, was probably a disappointment for him. But did the nation not lose more? Pakistan has undergone 30 years of military rule, apart from at least another 15 in which the military loomed large, and assumed veto powers. In essence, this has been amateur rule, by men of good will, but untrained in the art of ruling a free people. Leaders of Wali Khan’s calibre would challenge one of the reasons they trot out to justify their interventions: the poor quality of civilian leadership. But in the long run, it is the nation as a whole that loses. We have not had so many politicians or statesmen that we can afford to waste such assets. If Wali Khan’s potential was not fulfilled, Pakistan lost more than he did.
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