Friday 24 July 2009

Wali Khan

Imtiaz Alam

The writer is Editor Current Affairs, The News, and Editor South
Asian Journal

Khan Abdul Wali Khan, the freedom fighter and proud inheritor of
Bacha Khan's Red Shirt legacy, was paid befitting tributes by a
mammoth crowd of mourners, even if both the provincial and central
governments were found wanting in their response to the demise of
one of the co-authors of the 1973 Constitution. The governments
should have officially paid tribute by observing a day or two of
mourning and lowering the national flag in respect for one of
Pakistan's most towering political leaders.

Wali Khan's funeral procession was second only to that of his father
18 years ago, when everyone living along the route to Jalalabad had
thronged the streets to pay their last respects to late Great Khan,
Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan. The difference, however, between the two
occasions was that Bacha Khan's demise was taken as a national loss
by the Pakthtuns across the Durand Line, while Wali Khan's death was
mourned by the followers of a fading legacy. What has Wali Khan
contributed and how will his death affect Pakhtun politics?

Wali Khan came into prominence after his elder brother Khan Abdul
Ghani Khan, the poet, artist and intellectual, bade farewell to
Pakhtun Zalmay and opted to live on the sidelines. This was
essentially the Khudai Khidmatgar (People's Servants) movement that
defined both the agenda and nature of Pakhtun nationalism, during
the independence movement and afterwards. The phase of national
liberation and the part played in it by the Red Shirts defined Wali
Khan's formative years in politics. Along with his father and
thousands of Khudai Khidmatgars, Wali Khan spent many years of his
youth in prison.

The Khudai Khidmatgar movement was essentially a social movement to
alleviate the sufferings of the people and make them aware of their
rights. Ghaffar Khan started his career in public life by initiating
a reform movement in education and the social spheres. Gradually he
built a political base among the Pakhtuns and organised them to
fight for their freedom while discarding violence as a means to
achieve political objectives. Influenced by Mahatma Gandhi's
philosophy of non-violence, Ghaffar Khan did the impossible by
converting otherwise warrior Pakhtuns into peaceniks. The social
pacifist that he was, Ghaffar Khan organised the Pakhtuns while
playing on their fiercely independent character. Although he glossed
over the class question, his political strength came largely from
the peasantry. He taught and practiced a simple lifestyle, humility,
steadfastness and honesty in politics. Thanks to his secular
position, while representing the Muslim majority in the NWFP, he
preferred to work with the Indian National Congress and remained a
very close colleague of Gandhiji.

As the All India Muslim League succeeded in attracting Muslims to
the demand for Pakistan in the last decade of the freedom movement,
the Red Shirts were faced with the dilemma of going along with the
Congress or the demand for a separate Muslim homeland. The last nail
was struck by the Congress leadership when it outrightly rejected
the Cabinet Mission Plan, as opposed to Quaid-e-Azam Mohammed Ali
Jinnah who preferred a confederal scheme over secession. The Khudai
Khidmatgars were left in the lurch by the Congress leadership: they
were given the choice of joining either India or Pakistan, and lost
the vote by one per cent to the Muslim League which was not yet an
established party in the NWFP.

The toughest challenge in the post-independence phase before the
Khudai Khidmatgars was how to adjust to the new geopolitical
realities and mend their relations with the Muslim League
leadership. Ghaffar Khan did not waste time in showing his
allegiance to the new state. He took oath and pledged to remain
loyal to Pakistan. His offer to serve the people fell on deaf ears
and the Red Shirt government in the NWFP was arbitrarily dismissed.
In Pakistan, the new land of opportunity, the peaceful Red Shirts
were massacred at Bhabra on January 12, 1948, and subjected to
brutal repression at the hands of Chief Minister Khan Abdul Qayyum
Khan.

Ghaffar Khan's son Wali Khan rose to prominence during Ayub Khan's
dictatorship and joined the combined opposition to back Mohtarma
Fatima Jinnah in the 1964 indirect election in which the sister of
the father of the nation was defeated thanks to a rigged exercise.
He joined hands with the Democratic Action Committee to demand adult
franchise and a federal parliamentary system. Ayub Khan was forced
to resign under the pressure of Pakistan's most popular upsurge in
1968-69, a movement that was in fact a turning point for Pakistan --
either take a democratic course or get dismembered. The rest is
history.

The National Awami Party (NAP) led by Wali Khan won the elections in
the NWFP and Balochistan and the Pakistan People's Party swept the
polls in the Punjab and Sindh. The Awami League, led by Sheikh
Mujibur Rehman, won all seats but one in what was then East
Pakistan. Unlike Z A Bhutto, who along with most West Pakistani
parties and leaders, supported military action in East Pakistan,
Wali Khan and a handful of other leaders opposed military action and
cautioned against the possible dismemberment of the country. He was
dubbed a traitor by General Yahya Khan, who has gone down in
Pakistan's history as a butcher who dismembered the country to
further his personal rule.

Wali Khan's greatest moment came when he, along with his ally, the
Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, signed a tripartite agreement with the PPP to
frame a new constitution and form governments in the NWFP and
Balochistan. The 1973 Constitution was passed with a consensus and
the credit goes to Wali Khan who in his capacity as leader of the
opposition in the National Assembly preferred democratic principles
over political expediency in making it a bipartisan social contract.
But the return to democracy proved to be short-lived. The Mengal
government in Balochistan was dismissed by Mr Bhutto and the Mufti
Mahmood government in the NWFP resigned in protest.

Provoked by the retaliatory acts of Mr Bhutto, instigated by Chief
Minister Sardar Ataullah Mengal, the NAP council session in the NWFP
shouted down Mir Bizenjo who had warned that a confrontation between
the PPP and NAP would push the latter into the right-wing camp of
the Jamaat-e-Islami and Mr Bhutto into the lap of the army, actions
that would result in the breakdown of the democratic system.
Bizenjo's prophetic warning proved to be true. Democracy, provincial
autonomy and the constitutional rule could have been strengthened
had the PPP and NAP, who were natural allies, not taken the road of
confrontation.

For the third time in their history, the Pakhtun nationalists came
out of their political asylum and Wali Khan led the mainstream
opposition. He was welcomed in the Punjab and attracted big crowds
throughout the country. But Mr Bhutto banned the NAP (later
reincarnated as the NDP) and incriminated all its leaders in the
dubious Hyderabad Conspiracy case. They spent four long years in
Hyderabad jail and were released only after the worst had happened --
General Ziaul Haq's military coup. To his credit, Wali Khan did not
become a part of General Ziaul Haq's political coalition, unlike all
his PNA allies who joined the cabinet. But, genuinely bitter about
Bhutto, one of the few mistakes that Wali Khan committed was his
demand for postponing elections and holding Bhutto accountable. He
later compensated for this mistake after the NDP joined the Movement
for the Restoration of Democracy (MRD), after the hanging of Mr
Bhutto. But the NDP, which reflected a right-wing deviation in
Pakhtun nationalism, raised the dead bogey of Pakhtunistan by
referring to the Kohat resolution that disrupted the MRD's movement
against General Zia.

It was in 1996 that Pakhtun nationalists, along with other left-
leaning and nationalist parties such as Bizenjo's PNP and the Sindhi
Awami Tehrik, formed the Awami National Party on a left-of-centre
platform, thus overcoming the right-of-centre deviation seen since
the beginning of the NDP period. Although the ANP put forward a
joint front with the PPP under Benazir Bhutto, the Pakhtun
nationalists soon drifted back to their rightist tendency and joined
forces with the Islami Jamhoori Ittehad formed by the ISI under the
tutelage of General Hamid Gul. These pendulum-like shifts from
centre-left to centre-right has been a characteristic feature of
Pakhtun nationalism ever since Dr Khan sahib became chief minister.
However, the emergence of the Taliban, the hegemony of their
ideology across the Pakhtun belt, and the victory of the Fazlur
Rehman-led MMA in NWFP shows the erosion of traditional Pakhtun
nationalism and its drift towards the extreme right. While
traditional Pakhtuns are attracted towards the Taliban and the
religious right, the moderate sections are increasingly integrated
into the larger market and power structures of mainstream Pakistan.
Consequently, the moderate and modern sections of Pakhtun society
increasingly see little attraction for an ethnic pull from across
the Duran Line, leaving little room for secular Pakhtun nationalists
in which to manoeuvre.

Wali Khan retired in 1990 after his first defeat in elections and
led the party from behind the scenes. Later his eldest son Asfandyar
Wali Khan, a democrat par excellence and a leader in his own right,
took over the reins of the party after a bitter but successful
struggle with his stepmother Nasim Wali Khan. Now, after the demise
of Wali Khan, the question is: will Asfandyar Wali slip back into a
legacy that has lost most of its shine or will he put in the effort
to emerge as a truly national leader like his august father?

Email: imtiazalampak@yahoo.com

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