The allegations contained in the BBC documentary on the MQM are not new, but they do take the evidence that the MQM is hand in glove with RAW to another level. At the same time, there are also questions raised about the ‘smoking gun’, and mean that the Pakistan government’s request that the UK government help it to go deeper into these allegations is not totally unjustified. However, there are serious ethical questions raised, about the protection of sources by journalists.
The heart of the accusation is the disclosure by an unnamed source that an MQM insider disclosed during interrogation that the MQM received money from RAW. The MQM insider is said to have made this disclosure while being interrogated by Scotland Yard over the money laundering allegations which have resulted in self-exiled MQM supremo Altaf Hussain being on bail. In the course of that interrogation, the insider is supposed to have disclosed that MQM cadres have been trained in India by RAW.
The immediate question arises: who was this source? That seems to have been answered, and redacted copies of a transcript of the interrogation have appeared, which make it clear that the disclosure was made by Tariq Mir. However, what credence can be placed in him is not clear. The Indian High Commission in the UK has denied the claim, which means that Mir’s evidence, while not rebutted, is unsupported. The next step would be to identify the police officer who carried out the interrogation, and ask him to give evidence. Mir is also absent from the scene. The transcript has been officially denied.
That means that while the press might have spicy revelations, there is no evidence that can be produced in court. The Pakistan government has really no choice but to ask for help in the investigation, but if the British government says that it cannot force the BBC to reveal its sources, what does the Pakistan government do? As this is not a government in coalition with the MQM, it cannot just drop the matter and move on.
This is an attempt to make the MQM look bad, and the timing, very soon before the local government elections this September, makes it apparent that the attempt is aimed at affecting that result. Another recent development that must be taken into account is the speech Asif Zardari made about the Army. It should be noted that Altaf and Zardari are apparently on the same page, neither having any love lost for either Mian Nawaz Sharif and the PML-N, or for the PTI of Imran Khan.
The PTI is supposed to be the main opponent of both parties in the local body polls, not just in Karachi, where it will come up against the MQM, but the rest of Sindh, where it will be opposed to the PPP, and the Punjab, where it will face all three other parties. It should not be forgotten that the PTI is not just working to replace the MQM in Karachi, but also the PPP nationally. It is also backed by the military, which is also in a tussle with the MQM, through the Rangers, which have been trying to clear up Karachi’s violence, and its target killings and extortion rackets, which are blamed on the MQM.
The sarcastic comment doing the rounds on the social networks, congratulating Altaf for extracting bhatta, or extortion money, from India, is an acknowledgement that the MQM runs Karachi’s rackets. However, the issue arises whether the success of thus removing Altaf and the MQM would resolve the issues that created the support for them in the first place. There seems to be an assumption, manifestly incorrect, that if the MQM disappeared, its support base could be switched to some party of the switcher’s choice, in this case the PTI.
This seems to ignore the fact that the MQM’s criminal baggage has been accepted by its supporters, who are generally law-abiding and decent citizens, because it addresses their grievance that they lack the provincial identity that is so important in Pakistan after the coming into force of the 1973 Constitution.
It is that Constitution which puts such vital areas as education, health and law and order within sole discretion of the provincial government. As the present arrangement shows, it is possible to shut out the Muhajirs from the provincial government, which does not mean merely preventing Muhajir MPAs from becoming ministers, but also Muhajir doctors or teachers from getting postings of their choice. Muhajirs have been subject to this even before the enforcement of the Constitution, and even before Partition. The reason has been that the Constitution merely reproduces the Raj arrangement, where its government of India was done mainly through the provinces, with the central government acting mainly as an instrument of coordination. The Muhajirs had borne the brunt of discrimination in the Congress-ruled provinces after it took office in 1937 in six provinces. It is no longer much remarked that these provinces saw Congress behaving like a Hindu-supremacist body, resembling nothing so much as the BJP today.
Thus the Muhajirs must look to the 1920s, nearly a century ago, for a time when they did not face discrimination on ethnic basis. Though Muhajirs went after various national parties over the years, they found none able to solve their problems. The implications of the MQM failing are immense, for the next step would be something the MQM has already been accused of, but which it has strenuously rebutted: a demand for a separate province. This demand would be the next to be raised.
One problem is that there is no demarcation, which does not leave a larger number of Muhajirs in Sindh. Another is that Karachi is Sindh’s capital. The alternative capital is Hyderabad; which is a Muhajir city. Indeed, as Muhajirs predominate in the urban areas of the whole province, it might make sense to have an entirely new capital. And there is also the reality that, while it has a Muhajir majority, Karachi also houses a large number of other ethnicities. For example, it is the world’s largest Pashtoon city, and is also home to a large Sindhi-speaking population.
Therefore, it seems that there is no solution to this ethnic conundrum, save presumably the abandoning of ethnicity. With a federation in which ethnicity is in-built, that might be too high a price for the people of Karachi to pay, particularly the Muhajirs. Not to mention that this would require a massive constitutional revision.
At the same time, the need to carry along Muhajir opinion should not prevent the government from investigating the charges made. Indian funding and training for the MQM are old charges; it is about time that they were either proved or laid to rest. It is also the first time that the UK has been involved in these charges. As matters stand, the British government has plausible deniability, but is it too much to imagine that it could not prevent at least the interrogation transcript from leaking?