Sindh resurgent?
Geographically located as a historical transition point, the bitterness in Sindh over Islam’s first advent in the South Asian sub-continent at the point Mohammad Bin Qasim’s sword soon blew away, Muslims and Hindus continuing to live in the region without any rancour for thirteen centuries. Sindh witnessed none of the savagery of 1947, Sindhi Hindus (mostly the wealthy) departing in relative peace for other lands, an enterprising lot they rank today among the wealthiest expatriates. Those that remained have not had to face the recurring upheavals that their Muslim counterparts in India have had to endure over the past four decades. With Karachi’s emergence as Pakistan’s main port city, Sindh, relatively a land of peace, turned into one of opportunity.
For the ethnic Sindhis, refugees brought mixed blessings, becoming a proverbial gift horse. Welcoming them with open hearts and hearths in 1947, ethnic Sindhis became helpless before the tide that has never eased, their frustrations turning into bitterness, exploding into the open confrontation in 1972. The Mohajirs (the term in the present context denoting refugees from India), were blamed for turning the cities of Karachi and Hyderabad (to a lesser extent Sukkur and Mirpurkhas) into areas of ethnic Sindhi minority. The city of Karachi continues to receive all comers from all directions, the ethnic Sindhi has become an endangered species. The reservoir of goodwill that ethnic Sindhis have been imbued with for centuries is now exhausted.
The elections in 1988 gave a split verdict, Ms Benazir becoming Prime Minister of Pakistan mainly because of a historic real-politik decision by the MQM to support the PPP at the Federal level, obviously requiring some reciprocal accommodation for the MQM in the matter of Local Government. Ms Benazir advent to power evoked a spontaneous hope in the hearts of people for change, unfortunately the MQM was being used only as a temporary bridge, one to be discarded. Ms Benazir’s charisma represented a dynamic symbol for economic emancipation that would shun ethnic discrimination. History may debate how her potential was grossly wasted on the altar of political indecision, complicated by the unending greed of those surrounding her, the culpability of her personal self still remains a subject of raging controversy.
Ms Benazir flatly refused to trust Sindhi politicians from her own party with Sindh’s destiny, choosing malleable CMs. Failing to maintain peace in her own constituency, she became unstable on her Federal pedestal. While she dithered and filibustered to maintain the status quo wherein Sindh was ruled by proxy (“let him do what he wants”), Sindh continued to burn till diverse forces came to a consensus to remove her from the PM’s post. Despite its electoral defeat at the polls, the PPP remains perhaps the single largest party in Pakistan, maturity demanded of the PPP central leadership that they should have democratically blocked the ex-PM’s penchant for persisting with this personal motivation in the nation’s state of affairs. Instead of assuaging the partnership with MQM in recognition of their political impact in the major cities of Sindh, no attempt was made to keep an ongoing dialogue even. Her undeniable charisma and popularity created a groundswell whose momentum carried her for 20 months, the bankruptcy of governance by remote control finally caught up with the Daughter of the East (??).
Today, among all of the federating partners, Sindh has the maximum problems, Ms Benazir did nothing for the Province except spout lip-service rhetoric. In short order, the problems are (1) ethnic tendencies (2) disturbed law and order situation (3) over-population in urban areas (4) strain on the socio-economic infrastructure and (5) economic stagnation. Sindh’s financial state is precarious, from a net surplus Province it has become a perennial deficit-ridden one. When people are prosperous, they can bear hardships, economic frustrations force-multiply social problems to unbearable limits. Ethnic riots had multiplied manifold during Ms Benazir’s rule, the final straw was the spate of kidnappings targeting the rich and the elite. The PPP Provincial government inadvertently became an accessory to crime, seen giving sanctuary to criminals.
The PPP had two men eminently fit to become Chief Ministers, Makhdoom Amin Fahim and Jam Sadiq Ali, the latter having the political experience lacking in the former. Sindh needed a ruler who could enforce his decisions without looking over his shoulders. Having spent years as a Minister during the previous PPP regime, Jam Sadiq Ali had in-depth knowledge of the working of Sindh’s administration, wherein he was (and is) widely feared as a man not to cross. As a PPP’s Chief Minister of Sindh Province he could have ensured a lifetime PM-ship for Ms Benazir, as an independent allied to the IJI Government, he stands in the way of her dreams of regaining the PM’s seat. Jam Sadiq has been lethal for Ms Benazir and the PPP, decimating the PPP as a party, wrecking the organisation and demoralising the rank and file (except for a fairly large number who have joined him).
When he came to power as Caretaker CM, Jam Sadiq had one agenda, to come back to power as an elected Chief Minister. That aim accomplished, he has turned his attention to the problems that be-devil Sindh Province. Not blessed with a taint-free tenure as Provincial Sindh Minister 1972-1977, this time around this is a changed Jam Sadiq, a man who seems to have come to terms with himself and his given abilities, a man charged with a sense of destiny, accepting the realisation that he could change Sindh’s fortunes for the better with the opportunity given him, that posterity would recall his rule (and him) in the light.
Problems require intervention, the Sindh Chief Minister is actively engaged in such exercise, to stabilise the Province, he has moved on three fronts, viz (1) opening an era of cooperation with the MQM, thereby avoiding ethnic disturbances in the major urban cities and simultaneously eliminating the safe havens that the bad guys used as sanctuaries (2) honing his own instrument for maintaining law and order, moving effective people into decision-making appointments and generally re-organising the Sindh Police, eliminating the non-effective detachments like Eagle Squad and its successors, the Mohaffiz Force, (3) mobilising internal resources of Sindh to shrug off the economic doldrums that grips the Province.
Jam Sadiq Ali is a consummate politician and politics is the art of compromise. By recognizing MQM’s relative urban majority, the CM achieved a reciprocal recognition from the MQM that it was in their long-term interest to work in collaboration with the ethnic Sindhi majority, a junior partner perhaps but a partner nevertheless. For a democracy to function truly, minority groups must not be isolated, they must be brought into the mainstream, credit must be given to Altaf Hussain for having the maturity and wisdom to reciprocate and bring his flock in from the cold.
Law and order seems to have deteriorated in the rural areas despite intermittent successes. Plans are underfoot to have adequate equipment and better training for the Sindh Police but a lot will depend upon economic resuscitation of Sindh. Before August 1990 Karachi was dying economically, it may even be too late to resuscitate Hyderabad. Evidence suggests that Jam Sadiq has the economic agenda as the highest priority. A lot depends upon bringing Port Qasim into the centre of economic activities so that Thatta’s age-old importance as a commercial centre for Sindh Province is revived. The ethnic Sindhi have-not status is matched by the Mohajir’s inherent economic frustrations, both must be assuaged. The Sindh CM knows that the measure of his success will lie in achieving economic emancipation for all. Rich in material and manpower wealth, these only have to be judiciously exploited for the economic emancipation of Sindh’s own masses.
Even Jam Sadiq’s sworn enemies concede his outstanding administrative abilities. Most of those who now decry him were his (PPP) colleagues during that time and were no closet saints themselves. Some consider Jam Sadiq as a Saint and Satan rolled into one, depending upon which side of him you are located. His one-time colleagues fear him, they know he knows the skeletons in their cupboards. The holier-than-thou protest regarding his alleged consumption of alcohol was hypocritical. The religious precepts are clear about decrying alcoholism but one wonders how many of his critics took a stiff drink before having the courage to criticise him. “Let him cast the first stone, he who hath not sinned”, or some such applies in this case. Jam Sadiq is not a hypocrite, his honesty in accepting that he imbibed alcohol inspires the type of credibility singularly lacking amongst all of us.
During the American Civil War, the Union suffered a series of military defeats at the hands of superior generalship of the Confederacy despite preponderance in numbers and equipment and overall economic dominance. US President Lincoln changed a number of his Field Commanders till General Ulysses S.Grant delivered a series of badly needed victories. As is the price of success, some of Grant’s detractors complained to Lincoln that Grant consumed alcohol excessively. After listening to them patiently, Lincoln asked them the brand of whisky that Grant drank so that he could send each of his generals a case!
Jam Sadiq has in a space of six months stopped Sindh’s slide towards economic and political apocalypse, on the contrary he has made the Province resurgent. Giving due deference to our religious parameters, we need to ask ourselves, “if two pegs an evening has accomplished this much, what would a bottle do?”
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