Men with mettle

Politicians like Mairaj Muhammad Khan do not appear on our political stratosphere any longer. They have tended with the decades to fade away into obscurity, and this is what happened with Khan in the last years of his life. The potential he possessed as a man who may have changed at least a part of Pakistan died with him when he passed away at the age of 77 in Karachi after an illness. Mairaj Muhammad Khan was best known as a fiery radical, who openly spoke of his communist ideology as a student leader associated with the NSF at Karachi University during his days there. From this start, he went on to become a founding member of the Pakistan People’s Party, joining the small but determined group of leftists who allied themselves, at least initially, with Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Mairaj was at one time the closest associates of Bhutto. But like others, he fell out with the then prime minister around 1973, when he accused Bhutto of abandoning the socialist foundations on which the PPP had been built. Mairaj had also played a role, as minister for labour, in that government to lead a labour strike, creating a fall out with other members of the government. From this rocky point in his political career, he never again went the mainstream, as the country drifted towards greater conservatism, authoritarianism and orthodoxy.

Mairaj’s attempt to set up his own party never really got off the ground, and as he himself openly conceded, his association with the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, the initial formation documents for which he helped to write, was a gigantic failure. After a fall out with Imran Khan, Mairaj quit the party in 2003 after a five-year liaison during which he had attempted to guide it along a liberal, at least partially socialist, path. He did not succeed. By the end of his days, Mairaj had assumed essentially the status of a thinker who spoke out frequently about national issues but could find no platform from which to take his ideas forward. In this of course lies the tragedy of our country. Had men like Mairaj been able to play a more active role in the political events that unfolded in its earlier days, we may today have stood at a more pleasant point than is the case.