Finding UP, Mumbai, Delhi, Jalandhar and Gandhi in a Pakistan election

Almost all the key parties or their leaders that are in the fray in today’s polls have strong Indian connections.

Among the interesting sights in the port city of Karachi, where campaigning for the general elections in Pakistan took some time to pick up after sedate start, was the Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM) candidate from Gulshan e-Iqbal, Dr Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui, invoking UP and India in chaste Urdu in all his election rallies without fail.

“Those who came from UP or India have been denied jobs in Sindh even though our elders had shed blood for this country,” is his common refrain. His voters identify with Siddiqui when he brings Uttar Pradesh into his fiery speeches. His own family originally hails from UP and migrated to Pakistan post-Partition.

Dr Siddiqui, who was a cabinet minister in the coalition government of Imran Khan, is among the close comrades of Altaf Hussain, who founded MQM to fight for the rights of Mohajirs (immigrants) of Pakistan, the word used to describe those who migrated to Pakistan from India after Partition in 1947.

In an interview with this writer in Delhi in 2004, chain-smoker Altaf Hussain had explained that it is not true that MQM has a support base among only Urdu speakers of Karachi. He said that MQM has deeply entrenched itself among all those who migrated from India, including Bohra, Ismaili and Memon communities. Most of them, according to Hussain, were Gujarati speaking and mostly came from Mumbai or various places in Gujarat. Hussain, himself, has antecedents going back to Agra.

But it is not only the MQM that has Indian links. Almost all the key parties or their leaders that are in the fray in today’s polls have strong Indian connections.

Sharif, Jatti Umra And Jindal

Meanwhile, Pakistani watchers claim that the next PM of the country would be Nawaz Sharif as the establishment (read Army) had already stitched an understanding with Sharif’s party Pakistan Muslim League (N). If Sharif really becomes the PM once again, Jatti Umra, the ancestral village of Sharif family in Amritsar would cheer the achievement of the son of the soil. Sharif still maintains ties with their village. In 2013, the  then Pakistan Punjab chief minister Shehbaz Sharif had visited Jatti Umra to a huge welcome from the locals. Shehbaz, who was the PM of Pakistan till recently, even visited the graves of his elders and his home there. Both Nawaz and Shehbaz had earlier visited Jatti Umra in 1964 with their father, Mian Mohammad Sharif.

Jatti Umra village apart, the Sharif family also has business ties with steel magnate Sajjan Jindal’s JSW group.  Sharif’s family firm ‘Ittefaq’ founded by Mohammad Sharif in 1971, was the biggest steel company in Pakistan. It is said that Ittefaq buys a lot of material from JSW. It may be recalled that when PM Narendra Modi had visited Pakistan in 2015, his visit was facilitated by Sajjan Jindal.

 ‘Gandhi’ In Pak Elections

Can you imagine that there is a Gandhi angle in the Pakistan general election too? The Awami National Party (ANP), which follows the ideology of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, who is also known as Frontier Gandhi, is also in the fray.

You would find some landmark or other in the name of Ghaffar Khan in almost all the major Indian cities. He was a life-long follower of Gandhiji and the Gandhian ideology.

The ANP was founded in 1978 by Ghaffar Khan’s son Wali Khan, who was also a freedom fighter in the Indian independence movement. ANP's political position is considered left-wing, advocating secularism. It is a significant political force in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa region.

Bhutto, Mumbai and Junagadh

The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) has been a significant player in Pakistan politics for decades. ZA Bhutto, the founder of PPP, spent his younger days in South Mumbai. He had his schooling at the prestigious Cathedral School there. When Pakistan became a reality on August 14, 1947, he was in Bombay.

Bhutto’s father, Shahnawaz Bhutto, was the Prime Minister of Junagarh in Gujarat. Bhutto’s mother Lakhibai was a Hindu. Shahnawaz converted her and gave a new name Khursheeda Begum. Her Kshatriya father, Jayrajsinh Jadeja, belonged to Paneli village of Rajkot district.

According to Dr Ravinder Kumar, a noted author and film historian, Shahnawaz married a second time with a film actress from Delhi, Bibbo, who had acted in several Bollywood movies before she left for Pakistan.

Imran’s Jalandhar Roots 

Another potential contender for power in this election, who has now been disqualified and sentenced to long jail terms in the Cipher and Toshakhana cases – cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan – also has strong India connections. His party is contesting the election without any of the fanfare that marked its win in the last election. Imran Khan’s mother, Shaukat Khanum, was from Jalandhar.

Though the Pathan generally avoids talking about his personal life, he visibly melted when this writer asked him in 2007 in Delhi to reveal more about his Jalandhar links. With a smile on his face, Imran Khan said that his mother’s family had been living in Jalandhar for over 500 years. His maternal grandfather Ahmad Hasan Khan was the founder of Islamia college of Jalandhar. Khan also revealed that Shakut Khanam loved the city of her birth and that he had been to Jalandhar to see his family’s roots during the Pakistan tour of India in 1983.”

Jamiat’s Delhi, Deoband Links

And burly Maulana Fazal-ur-Rehman, head of  Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI) Pakistan is expecting some seats in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan. He visits Delhi and Deoband often to meet leaders of Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind . Established as the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam in 1945, JUI is considered as the most powerful religious-political party" in Pakistan, with "proven street power".

The cleric told this writer at a chance meeting in the Delhi ITO office of JUI in 2007  that his father Mufti Mehmood had his education from an Islamic seminary in Moradabad. “Thankfully, we had no role in breaking India,” he had said then. The Maulana even addressed a massive rally of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind at the historic Ramlila ground on December 22, 2013.

Vivek Shukla is a journalist who writes on Delhi's history and South Asian culture and politics. Views are personal, and do not represent the stand of this publication.