THIS IS MY STORY—51
MY JOURNEY THROUGH THE ERA OF AYUB KHAN TO THE TIMES OF IMRAN KHAN.
GHULAM AKBAR
Disenchantment With The Field Marshal
In the fifth year of Field Marshal Ayub Khan’s rule, the romance of the people with his revolution was already losing its intensity. The constitution he had promulgated and the system of the Basic Democracies he had evolved had not been given the kind of public endorsement required for any change to emerge successfully as a genuine revolution. The public representatives who had emerged as the political face of the envisioned revolution were seen as mere stooges in the hands of the powerful bureaucracy through which the dictatorial regime was being run. The figure of Nawab Amir Mohammad Khan of Kalabagh who was West Pakistan’s governor exuded such an aura of despotism that most of the good work that the Field Marshal had done and was doing in the area of industrial development and commercial progress was largely overlooked by the public.
As I have already conceded, my earlier enthusiasm for revolutionary change under Ayub Khan had dissipated. I was finding it hard to condone or endorse Governor Kalabagh’s strong-arm tactics. I have vivid memories of Maulana Abdul Sattar Niazi being manhandled by Nawaz Kalabagh’s hoodlums right infront of Kohistan’s office.
Maulana, a college-time friend of Mamoon Jan Nasim Hijazi, had come to Kohistan’s office for some work. As he was leaving the office in a taanga (horse-driven cart) a few hoodlums appeared from nowhere and dragged Maulana Abdul Sattar Niazi down. Luckily some Kohistan staffers were around who rushed to the scene and came to Maulana’s rescue.
The hoodlums ran away. And Maulana told us they were Nawab Kalabagh’s people. I was already aware of the intense rivalry in Mianwali between the Awan and Niazi clans.
This incident had a telling effect on my appraisal of the moral character of the regime. When I took control of the editorial side of Kohistan, I made up my mind to make Kohistan even more critical of the government than Nawai Waqt was. It was not easy, as Aali Rizvi the Editor and leader-writer was a master in the art of ‘balancing’. Mamoon Jan too had a soft corner for the Field Marshal. The magazine section and the newsroom however were in my direct control. Very soon the newspaper started acquiring an anti-regime tone which did not go well with the administration of Nawab Kalabagh. Resultantly some cuts in government advertisements became visible very early.
Then came the crackdown of Nawab Kalabagh on the agitating students. And the fateful news that Kohistan published under my directive, of the death of three students by police firing. As I have written in the starting chapter of these memoirs, the news had been filed by Habibur Rahman Chapta. He had sworn on Quran in my presence that he had himself seen the dead bodies being removed from the scene in police vans.
