A Friend of Feudalism

#61 Posted by bulleya
“the actual winner of the elections was mujeeb....had mujeeb been allowed to form the govt. as per the constitution, it would have been the awami revolution, you have been mentioning......”

Please don’t take it personally but I might add here for your knowledge that there was no constitution in Pakistan at that time. The 1970 elections were held for the constitution making body or Aien Saaz Assembly. So the question was never about “had mujeeb been allowed to form the govt. as per the constitution” because there was no constitution.

In the subcontinent, very few leaders emerged from the underprivileged background. The rare ones, who emerge from the poverty, ended up becoming avatars. Both Jinnah and Gandhi were of a lower middleclass background. Similarly Mujib, too was from a similar lower middleclass background.

True, Bhutto was from a privileged family but he was able to figure out what works. He used to wear Silk Shalwar Kamiz in the poorest neighborhoods and the people still loved him.

That speaks a little bit about the culture we have in the subcontinent. If you are a man of power, money or come from a known family, the society will respect you. Now in India after multiple cycles of elections, people have just ran out of enough Khandani people to represent them.

As some sane Indians would point out that the malaise is still not completely out of circulation in India. The Nehru family still holds people breathless. Coupled with Indian disease of always admiring the white man and women, we have a new breed of Nehru/Gandhi plus a half white ruling the roost in India. However, I must qualify that by saying that those starry eyed Indians are dwindling in numbers. Some thing a democracy even as fake as Indian democracy can do.

The Bhuttos would not have been a factor in Pakistan by now, if we had couple of good elections and the erstwhile army had allowed these cretins to finish their terms. People in Pakistan would have booted them out a long time ago.

I have discussed this in the past and I have no intention to revisit that in details. However, The Six points program of Mujib was not to keep Pakistan united. It was a program which would have eventually led to the separation of east Pakistan in a few years down the line.

The politicians, who knew some thing about politics in Pakistan, were well aware of that and Bhutto was no simpleton. The army too felt that the time has come to get rid of East Pakistan as Mujib's six points would have destroyed the army rule in Pakistan for good.

Bhutto did support the army and I think it was Bhutto who actually planned how the whole thing would work. Gen. yahya spend days in Larkana in early 1971 consulting with Bhutto over these issues and when they came out of those meetings, east Pakistan's fate was sealed.

Basically, the army was responsible for making the final call. And the day the army action started in East Pakistan, it was clear that there was no going back.
Like many other politicians, Bhutto was opportunistic and had a better grasp of politics in Pakistan than anyone else in generations.

I would like to remind people that Bhutto never campaigned in East Pakistan and Mujib did not campaign in west Pakistan seriously.( Mujib came to Sindh to campaign for his Sindhi friend Qazi Issa of Nawabshah).

So both Bhutto and Mujib knew from the very beginning what is in store.

Bulleya writes "- bhutto's party is the biggest dynastic family party in the history of pakistan....it is the only party in pakistan's history, which has only had one family ruling over it......there is no other political party in pakistan that falls under this category...... "

That is not my concern, my concern was with the people's agenda of the ZAB, not the cooptation of his party by the elites thereafter. Unlike Manto's support of Fatima Jinnah because of MAJ, I do not support the BB because of ZAB. Making the "awam" conscious is a credit that goes to ZAB moreso than anyone else in the history of this country, a consciousness that was deviod of religious (like MAJ) or ethinic (Like Mujib) pretensions...

To be very factual the mizaj of whatever we call Pakistan..& we always consider Pakistan which is a couple of big cities where such fancy subjects as "democracy" are an issue.

The NWFP , when not interfered by western brainwashing aka "education", is the true democractic traditions of Jirgas & solving their problems in their own cultural & traditional ways.

The "feudals" so much maligned have their own system & are no more uglier than the Commissioned officers & Civil Servants, in fact worse because they are not on "welfare"..meaning barking at taxpayers expense. Somehow we equate theater performance and role-playing as a westerner as "progress" ( ritual) ..just as we count savaab as so many times for this or that ritual (like roza ). We are shameless & unabashed "deal-makers". The nanga-pUn going ons in Islamabad, Dubai , Ryadh and London at present is a mirror-image of us....the laughing stock of the world....the self-delusioned "urban" "middle-class" [code words for english speaking, suit wearing, amreeka-palats]

Once when Sardar Ataullah Mengal, NawaB amir Muohammed Khan ( then Gov. west Pak) & Ayub ( Pres. ) were together discussing some matter. When Mengal raised his voice high & chided Ayub, Kalabagh requested him to exercise restraint to which Mengal, aghast said to Kalabagh iright in front of Ayub: " Nawab sahib, this guy is a naukar, he is on wages, how can you ever compare him to you & I"

The worst thing that has happened to both India & Pakistan is this transplanted system of "democracy" & the dissolution of States. Hyderbad Bhopal Rampur have yet been not replaced even to their 10% level in all spheres of activities. The Great Mughals did not interfere in the Panchayat system & never ever disturbed the ground-roots of all culture & tradition

HP writes "However, The Six points program of Mujib was not to keep Pakistan united. It was a program which would have eventually led to the separation of east Pakistan in a few years down the line."

And the eventual seperation of NWFP, Baluchistan and maybe even Sind, facilitated by India; or at the very least a military coup in short succession that would have undone the whole process. Am I wrong?

HP Sain,

Were the 6 Points incompatible with the Lahore Resolution? In my (based on limited knowledge) opinion, not? Would like to have your opinion on this.

Regards

Masadi mian,

"Not disputed by a single historian"

Read "Zulfi Bhutto of Pakistan" by Stanley Wolpert. Let us just say your "facts" are not even considered facts. Since you've not quoted any historian per se... I think your claim- as with most of your "scholarship" is sham.

You still haven't explained why was it that people like Wali Khan - son of Ghaffar Khan- put their faith in Fatima Jinnah despite being Jinnah's doughtiest opponents? So much for your monarchial succession theory. It was because they realised that only Fatima Jinnah had the popular appeal (because she was the sister of Quaid-e-Azam) and integrity required for the job...

Ironic that of all the politicians you blame the one man - Jinnah- who did not create a political dynasty for "monarchial succession" ... just because a wide range of political leaders chose his sister.

Meanwhile Raja Dahir of Larkana... the avid law breaker Mr. Bhutto... self styled Napoleon Bonaparte of Pakistan is some sort of a "democrat" and a "populist". The only thing Zulfikar Ali Bhutto tried to be was Machiavelli's prince... and failed miserably at that because Zia-ul-Haq proved to be even more unscrupulous and dishonest than ZAB.



The slippery pole of Pakistan's decline in the calibre of leadership is perhaps most aptly captured in Gul Hassan's memoirs:

Whenever he could, the Quaid-e-Azam, accompanied by Miss Jinnah, would drive out to Malir in the evening. This was his only relaxation. I always took a spare car, in which Inspector (later SP) FD Hansotia of the police rode behind us. He was permanently assigned to protect the Quaid-e-Azam. There was no other escort. It seems strange when I compare those days with what happens now, when the escort of any dignitary is as menacing as the advance guard of an armoured division, if not more dangerous. On one of these drives, the rail crossing at Malir was shut and our car stopped. I looked around and saw that the train was some distance away, so I went to the gatekeeper and asked him to let us go through, of course telling him who was in the car. He obliged, I returned to my seat next to the driver, Aziz, and told him to move on. He answered that the Quaid-e-Azam had told him to stay put. Just then the Governor-General told me to go and tell the gatekeeper to close the gate. I did as I was bid and resumed my seat. He then said, ‘Gul, do you know why I told the driver not to move the car?’ I replied, ‘No sir’. He said the reason was simple: ‘If I do not obey the law, how should I expect others to do so?’ This brief statement affected me greately. Though the Head of State, he considered himself as bound by law as any other citizen. Such a demonstration is only possible by men who are truly great.

Years later, I was driving with Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to the Chinese Ambassador’s residence for dinner, a day prior to our trip to Beijing in 1971. Bhutto had won the elections in West Pakistan and Yahya Khan deputed him to go to China as the head of a delegation of which I was a member. He asked me to tell him what had impressed me most during my stay with the Quaid-e-Azam. I told him this story. Just then, the driver stopped the car as one of the traffic lights on Murree Road turned red. Having heard me seconds before, he (Bhutto) told the driver, ‘Drive on, no one can stop me!’ This was the difference. The one who had given us Pakistan was law-abiding; the other, who held no office then, was above the law! And he would, when he assumed office, be more disdainful of any such curbs." (Memoirs, by Lt. General Gul Hasan, Oxford, Karachi, 1993, pp. 75-76).

Re: # 66

HP writes:

Bhutto did support the army and I think it was Bhutto who actually planned how the whole thing would work. Gen. yahya spend days in Larkana in early 1971 consulting with Bhutto over these issues and when they came out of those meetings, east Pakistan's fate was sealed.

So in other words Bhutto was the military establishment's B-Team.

Rafi Raza - Bhutto's confidant- claims in his book on Bhutto that Bhutto confessed to Rafi Raza that the military regime under Yahya had rigged the elections in West Pakistan to get Bhutto a mandate to offset the Awami League-National Awami Party alliance.

Pakistan would have been better off with six points. And remember this whole idea of Bangladesh as part of Pakistan resulted from Congress' refusal in 1947 to entertain a United Bengal with Sarat Bose, Suhrawardy and Jinnah had agreed to.

Also:

"In the subcontinent, very few leaders emerged from the underprivileged background. The rare ones, who emerge from the poverty, ended up becoming avatars. Both Jinnah and Gandhi were of a lower middleclass background. Similarly Mujib, too was from a similar lower middleclass background."

Mahomed Ali Jinnah was son of a khoja merchant- who was not very wealthy but not very poor either. By definition he was certainly middle class.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was the son of a Diwan (a minister of sorts) of a Princely state and was born in wealth... though he was by caste the same as Mahomed Ali Jinnah ... and was certainly not a feudal.

I don't know about Mujeeb's early origisn except the oft repeated claim that he used to cycle from town to town following Mahomed Ali Jinnah during the Pakistan movement.

I think Sardar Patel was the politician who emerged from truly humble background but I might be wrong.

Manto mian,

It was quite unfortunate for us Hanuds/Injuns that MAJ (pbuh) was born in a Gujarati Muslim baniya household and MKG in a Gujarati Hindu baniya one. It wud have been much better if the roles had been reversed. In any case, MAJ was far ahead of his times for the IM community of that era.

Regards

Majumdar,

In my view most heterodox communities of a mainstream orthodoxy tend to be far ahead of the mainstream.

I wish that close to the the end of his life... MAJ would have chosen his clients wisely... because a man is known by the company he keeps.

masadi #: i am afraid you are changing the rules as your arguments change......you need to make up your mind on what you stand for:

"...The fact that ZAB made the plight of the common man and the integrity of this nation state his main campaign issue in the elections, and mainstreamed the people as powerful says a lot about his great leadership...."

how did bhutto make the plight of the common man his issue, other than simply making speeches about it.....he certainly wasn't too concerned about the plight of the common man in east pakistan...i hope you agree with this.....

now, in west pakistan, what was his concern?......did he do anything to remove the plight of the common name.....did he remove feudalism; what to talk of the whole country, did he even remove it in his own family?......

".....That is not my concern, my concern was with the people's agenda of the ZAB, not the cooptation of his party by the elites thereafter....."

why is this not your concern?....it is your concern when it comes to usa and to fatima jinnah and to your general concepts of sociology.....but when it comes to bhutto, it is not your concern!!.......

i am not talking of the, "cooptation" of bhutto's party by elites....i am talking about him and his family......his personal views.....the whole party is a single family elitist party...that family is the bhutto family.......how much more elitist can anyone be, then to put one's own personal relatives as the heads of one's own party, which by the way is based totally on feudalism......

.....a feudal family, heading a political party in a third world country is the ultimate peak of elitism.....bhutto founded all of this.....on top of this, bhutto took out the one major awami movement that was about to occur in east pakistan........he did so with the assistance of the military......

there is absolutely nothing more elitist, personally, or publicly than what bhutto did and represented.......this elitism is what you are always arguing against......yet when it comes to bhutto, your argument and principle makes a 180 degree turn.......

you need to look at the actions of people and not the words they speak.......bhutto, in his words, represented what you say......in his actions, and personal life, he represented exactly what u oppose.......

The High Priest of the Church of MAJ responds with the same old bs, he throws a name out but does not show how that "name" disputes even a single one of the indusputed facts that I presented. Those facts aren't in the ancient history, they are well known from PRIMARY documents, from newspapers and papers that are widely available. They are no secret and he repeats his bs about Fatima Jinnah. She LOST, people wanted to capitalize on the entire industry of legitimization of the Jinnah that the creation of Pakistan produced, as monarchial succession, they failed, that is all and that was it...

bulleya writes "masadi #: i am afraid you are changing the rules as your arguments change......you need to make up your mind on what you stand for:"

Nonsense, not changed or being inconsistent in one thing. I challenge you to show me one inconsistency unlike you who was rallying behind Musharraf and the Afghan invasion and now does a turnaround...

Then he writes "how did bhutto make the plight of the common man his issue, other than simply making speeches about it.....he certainly wasn't too concerned about the plight of the common man in east pakistan...i hope you agree with this....."

You make the plight of the common man an issue when you visit every single village in Punjab and listen to the people, you make it a plight when you not only talk the socialism talk but implement it. You make the plight of the common man an issue when you try to get rid of the foreign BS that is keeping your people down. You take care of the people when you try to fix foreign issues that are bleeding the nation, you make the poor a priority when you raise the independance issue on the international forum and represent the poor....not to mention the land reform that was extremely hard to pass in a feudal country, going against the elite that hated the man....catch my drift? Only a fool would stretch himself to the East and fail miserably, but that is no reason to assert that he wasnt concerned with the plight of the common man in the East, if he wasnt he wouldn't have set Mujib free, if he wasn't he wouldn't have jumped the ocean to represent the poor in Africa....you don't have a foot to stand upon Army supporter...

Then he writes "why is this not your concern?...."

It is not my concern because I am not a PPP supporter, I support the efforts of the ZAB alone in trying to mainstream democracy and people power in this country.That he was setting up a monarchial system is your whim. He failed to implement the socialism that he wanted and the democracy that he wanted, after achieving much, the military coopted what little achievement were made. The BB was part of that cooptation, why should I support her? I do not. Bhutto was not an angel or a magician, I am not presenting him as such. He talked the talk of the global poor and he walked the walk in that direction as well. In the Pakistan political scence he was a maverick who went against the structures of Power, in whatever ineffective way but go against them he did, go agaisnt the imperialists he did, and he was punished for that. It would be injustice to take that away from him. In fact his case is the only case that gives me some hope for this nation. MAJ and his church are part of the same game the colonials have been playing with us for centuries, do not think of someone who has managed to push through the corridors of power with direct appeals to the people who loved him, in an environment like Pakistan, to race through reforms, it is a small incremental process unless there is a revolution, and there was no revolution though the catastrophie of 1971 offered him an open window in which to achieve much and he did...

Manto writes "Just then, the driver stopped the car as one of the traffic lights on Murree Road turned red. Having heard me seconds before, he (Bhutto) told the driver, ‘Drive on, no one can stop me!’ This was the difference"

Pakistani scholarship at its best, Ad Hominem and he said she said and "look at his morals" while claiming to be "better than thou". Is that all you can muster fool?
One causes the death of over a million and relegates hundreds of millions to reactionary discrimination and misery, the other goes directly to the people, listens to them and tries to consolidate the resources of this nation for its people. The difference is crystal clear, ZAB anyday!

ZAB in If I am Assassinated

"If I were assassinated" in which he drew the lessons from the experiencie. He said: "I am suffering this ordeal partly because I sought an honourable and equitable middle way between conflicting interests, in order to harmonise the disjointed structure of our society. It seems that the lesson of this coup d'Etat is that a middle way, a modus vivendi, a compromise is a utopian dream. The coup demonstrates that the class struggle is irreconcilable and that it must result in the victory of one class over the other. Obviously, whatever the temporary set backs, the struggle can lead only to the victory of one class, the proletariat."