The princes of ‘Takht Lahore’

By: Shafqat Tanvir Mirza

Whether Federal Law Minister Babar Awan has any sense of humour or not but his branding the Sharif brothers ‘princes of Takht Lahore’ is a good piece of bantering. Though it was Abdullah Bhatti, popularly known Dullah Bhatti, who had challenged Emperor Akbar, who had shifted his capital from Delhi to Lahore, and said: “Mein bhoran Dilli dey kingrey bhajjarr paa dian Takht Lahore.” In the recent times, ‘Takht Lahore’ has been used by Seraiki protagonists against the domination of the central Punjab. Akbar and Mughals never recognised the local culture, language and literature of the Punjab and its surrounding areas and the successive rulers of the Punjab till the Sharifs, have been following the emperor by ignoring the language of the Punjab. Consequently, the Punjabis in the last 62 years have earned accusations of exploitation from other partners and the present rulers dubbed ‘Princes of Takht Lahore’ always behaved like the Mughal princes. They were brought up by late generals Zia and Jilani. They in the ecstasy of winning a bigger mandate than the Quaid-i-Azam, insulted senior officers publicly and dismissed them while standing along a canal in front of an official TV camera. They attacked judges and ransacked the Supreme Court. They forced the president to quit who paved way for bringing them in. They cleverly dismissed an army chief sympathetic to them and appointed (in the footstep of the late ZA Bhutto) a junior general as commander-in chief and then did not allow his plane to land in Karachi. Meanwhile, they appointed an army engineer as army chief who did not know even the ABC of army affairs. And incidentally he was a Kashmiri and namesake of the late General Zia. This step cost them their government followed by an exile under an agreement which they signed without consulting their party leader.

Their exile ended only after General Pervez Musharraf was weakened by the stand taken by the fired chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chuadhry, lawyers’ movement and the late Benazir Bhutto’s tactics. They contested elections with the support of fake degree holders and failed to win a majority in the centre or even in the Punjab Assembly. Later, official machinery did some tricks to help them to form, their government in the province. Being revengeful, the Sharifs refused to mend their fence with erstwhile colleagues -- all time supporters of generals.

It is unfortunate that they have been made believe by their supporters that they are the real Quaid-i-Sani for one of them was born on the day Muhammad Ali Jinnah was born. They contested the 2008 elections without any manifesto and their think tanks, if they had anyone, did not foretell them power problems such as water issue, steep fall of rupee against dollar, scarcity of wheat and food items, unusual inflation, heavy expenditure on military actions in the north western areas, IMF games and the Taliban.

Their government in the Punjab is with the coalition of the PPP, but the princes’ party behaves like an overwhelming majority party and has denied the due share to the PPP.

Even before taking oath as chief minister in 2008, the junior prince transferred hundreds of senior and junior officers and the process continues till today. They see solution to every problem in the use of power and force. But with power, they could not get implemented sugar prices fixed by the Lahore High Court and instead challenged the order which showed they were against the poor people at large.

The princes of Takht Lahore were well-aware of anti-Punjab stances by Pervez Musharraf and his unmatchable loyalists, the MQM, who had appointed a Sindhi as Irsa chief. The princes have done nothing in that respect. Pervez Musharraf closed the chapter of Kalabagh and President Zardari followed the policy. When Musharraf suggested that Punjab should be divided on linguistic basis, their closest spokesman wrote a column in daily Jang supporting the proposal. The princes and their ‘family’ columnist does not know that from linguistic point of view the Punjab is the only single-language province in the country.

The present performance of the princes starts from their support to the 18th amendment and the change of the name of the NWFP province as Khyber Pukhtunkhwa. After the change of the name of the province, Hazara suba issue proved another discredit for the princes.

The blunders committed by the princes and their dark horses are several, including Shahbaz Sharif’s appeal to the Taliban to have mercy on the Punjab and in a Jhang by-election, Rana Sanaullah’s collaboration with banned outfits. Their opposition to a 50 per cent salary raise in the federal budget showed their typical feudal mindset. They have supported fake degree holders in by-elections of Multan, Faisalabad and Dera Ghazi Khan. And in support of fake-degree holders, the last invasion of the N-League brigade was on the media through a Punjab Assembly’s resolution. This last act defamed the Punjab in the whole world. Earlier, Punjab was defamed in the world in 1971 courtesy ZA Bhutto, General Yahya Khan and feudal lords of the West Pakistan who were afraid of the Mujeeb’s radical land reforms.

All one can say may Allah guide the ‘Princes of Lahore’ who are not Mughals but live like Mughals and refuse to be Punjabis of Baba Farid, Shah Husain, Bulleh Shah, Sultan Bahu and Mian Muhammad Bukhsh.

Source: DAWN - Friday, 16 Jul, 2010

http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/local/lahore/the-princes-of-takht-lahore-670

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