Difficult times for the MQM

The news item that has been popping into the headlines during the past couple of days revolved one way or the other round the fresh split in the MQM. Mustafa Kamal the new maverick of the MQM and some other converts to his cause within this political party have been mouthing bromides against the exiled chief of the MQM. They hold him responsible for all the troubles that are being faced by the urdu speaking population of Sind’s capital. Altaf Hussain, is perhaps, going through the most difficult phase of his political career. He cannot move freely because of a problem in his leg, has put on a lot of weight and over-medication has taken a very heavy toll on his mental faculties also with the result that he is not in a position to strike back with equal force at his detractors. The question is:Can all the blame for spreading linguistic jingoism in Karachi be laid at the doors of Altaf Hussain? Is it not a fact that many other political groups speaking regional languages of this country had already come into being in Karachi before the advent of the MQM? Where would the urdu-speaking population have gone if they had not united under the banner provided to them by him? We shouldn’t forget that there is an equal and opposite reaction to every action. It is the law of the nature. It is also a bitter fact that Zia-ul-Haque exploited MQM to cut PPP down to its size and this further exacerbated the linguistic divide in Sind. There are many political observers who feel that all depends on Altaf Hussain’s health. If he recovers from his ailment well in time, the rumpus created by Mustafa Kamal and his likes would turn out to be a storm in a tea cup but in case he doesn’t survive physically or he takes leave of his senses then, of course, the party which he created to give an identity to urdu-speaking people would split into many factions.
Why the hell did the son of Ayub Khan lead the victory procession after his father defeated Fatima Jinnah in the presidential elections in the locality which housed urdu speaking people who had overwhelmingly voted for her thus rubbing salt into their wounds? Had he not committed that mistake there would have been no armed clash between the non-urdu and urdu-speaking people of Karachi? The MQM was, in fact, born that very day. Didn’t the language riots flare up in Sind when the ‘talented cousin’ of late Bhutto was the CM of that province? Those riots further widened the political divide in Karachi.