THIS IS MY STORY—60
MY JOURNEY THROUGH THE ERA OF AYUB KHAN TO THE TIMES OF IMRAN KHAN.
GHULAM AKBAR………..
A conspiratorial move
When one writes one’s memoirs, one is invariably and understandably caught up in two different and conflicting states of mind. My mindset today in the year 2018 is decidedly different from the mindset which in 1964 had driven me to believe that the government of President Ayub Khan was synonymous with despotism, corruption, nepotism and soullessness. Today I have experienced all kinds of governments since the times of Field Marshal Ayub Khan, and a simple and casual exercise in ‘comparison’ is enough to make me remember the Ayub era with nostalgic fondness. Ayub Khan might not have risen to the high expectations that my generation by and large had associated with his 1958 revolution, but most progress in our history was made in his times, and the quality of living of the poor was least deplorable in his years.
I personally now believe that it was the aura of despotism that the West Pakistan governor Amir Mohammad Khan of Kalabagh exuded which had contributed largely to the disenchantment of most people with the Field Marshal. The politicians who had felt ‘left out’ for years had suddenly sensed their ‘opportunity’ went into quick action. Political parties opposed to Ayub Khan formed a new alliance called Combined Opposition Parties i.e COP. The combined parties gladly received in their fold anyone who was equally as determined to remove Ayub Khan as the other. In the COP we suddenly found strange bedfellows— like Jamaat -i-Islami on the one hand and Awami League on the other hand. There was also Council Muslim League of Daultana and company. Maulana Bhashani’s National Awami Party was also there.
In the hindsight I have excellent reasons to believe that some political parties—specially those with ethnic/linguistic preferences, had connections even at that time with New Dehli, and had been persuaded into creating an organized opposition to Ayub Khan who had come to be regarded as a symbol of Pakistan’s political stability and economic growth the worldover— New Dehli in particular.
Information that leaked out in the subsequent years indicated that at first it had been General (R ) Azam who had been a hot contender for leading the COP, and Awami League’s hot choice. But then the opposition of Jamaat-i-Islami and some other components of the COP to the idea of pitching an ex-General against Ayub Khan for the supremacy of democracy led to the search for other alternatives. General ( R) Azam had played a key role in support of General Ayub Khan’s Martial Law in October 1958, and had been a loyal lieutenant to the Field Marshal till his popularity in East Pakistan as Governor had led to his fall from the President’s grace.
Initially Mantaz Mohammad Khan Daultana and Chaudhry Mohammad Ali had approached Mohtarma Fatima Jinnah, the aging sister of the Father of the Nation, and pleaded with her to stand against the Field Marshal, but Madar-i-Millat had found it hard to place her trust in the same politicians whose deeds had been instrumental in leading to the Martial Law.
