The Eclipse of the MQM

#2 Cliftonbridge

"I dont believe in sacred cows"

It seems neither does the MQM, else they'd have waited another 3 months or so before the sacrifice offering. Instead, they decided to go ahead with theirs, using youngster's lives, on the first day of Ramadan ...

Good article, balanced. Much better than that "OMGZZZ FASCISTZZZ" crap. MQM have their votebank in southern sindh in their pocket and its theirs until a more reasonable alternative comes up. However, their expansion into the rest of the country is now more unlikely than ever before.

I dont believe in sacred cows, MQM made some really dumb ass mistakes and if they are the party their vote base credits them to be they need to make sure they never do anything this stupid again. Asses must be kicked and people must be held accountable.
MQM hasnt lost its vote base because no other party can realistically lay claim to being the voice of middle class karachi values which stand in defiance of religious fundamantalism and feudalism. But either the MQM needs to wisen up or they will eventually lose momentum and something else will rise in their place. I personally think they will learn but who knows.
Viqram i think you are partially right but you have forgotten that integration is a two way street and its hard for any ethnicity to blend into another ethnicity even if they want to. Ethnicity is a genetic trait ...you dont just "convert" into it with no questions asked.
The dominant sindhi character at this point is heavily feudal and rural. How is an urban immigrant going to find a place in that mindset? Leave aside the illiteracy and misogyny prevalent in sindhi culture. In all honesty its sindh that needs to change not karachi. It will take some generations but when literacy social justice and womens rights catch on in rural sindh i can guarantee this will no longer be an issue. Because then karachiites will be identify with sindhi values and that will be stronger than genetics.

Depending upon one's ethnicity, the "Urdu Speaking" immigrants from India are either the "Palestinians" or the "Jews" of Pakistan. Educated, capable, competitive, and proponents of an egalitarian value system foreign to the native cultures of the soil, they are objects of a little admiration, envy and jealousy, but mostly hostility - even outright contempt - in most native regions of Pakistan.

Needless to say, their failure to recognize their own culpability for the prevailing state of affairs, particularly in Sindh - due, perhaps, to an exaggerated sense of victim hood, remains among the major obstacles to any foreseeable positive change in the near future.

I think the MQM phenomenon cannot be separated from the acute sense of second-class rights in the country which prevails in the largely lower-middle class and have-not Urdu speaking communities in Urban Sindh. Nor can the impact of the 1971 tragedy, which resulted in the abandonment of quarter of a million Urdu speaking Pakistani citizens in refugee camps in Bangladesh, be minimized on their psyche. It has contributed in far greater measure than is perhaps recognized, to the genesis of the MQM.

While it is not possible to discuss here at length the problems or the future of the Urdu speaking immigrants in Pakistan, it is perhaps an oversimplification to attach undue importance to the current problems of MQM and its waning star in Pakistani politics. Frankly, there is much need for a movement based on the value system which the common Urdu speakers represent in the politics of Pakistan. It is crucial to the evolution of an egalitarian and fairer society in future. However, such a movement, whether it is MQM or by some other name, is unlikely to make any significant impact in Pakistani society at large and Sindh in particular, unless they (the Urdu speakers) realize that their future lies in being Sindhi themselves – not a community apart from the native people of Sindh – and in first striving for the place and rights of entire Sindh within Pakistan.

The thinking of the present leadership of MQM is a question mark in the realization of such a change.