LAHORE: The poor old qeema wala naan has suffered more than its share of the taunts over its association with politics during all these years.

A hassle-free offering quite popular among Pakistanis and a favourite here in Lahore, the naan is quite often used to symbolise the incentive or bribe politicians offer to woo people to their side.

References to it are naturally all the more frequent when an election is just round the corner, even though the pre-election cuisine has much more variety to it today than during the days when this particular type of naan was evolved at the tandoors from its basic, unstuffed version.

So what is the background to the presence of qeema wala naan in the political discourse and why is it that it is associated with one party more than the others?

The people in Lahore, where the Kashmiris have been prominently experimenting with everything from politics to what people would love to have on the dinner table, are very fond of telling stories about what food has always accompanied election canvassing.

“I recall endless sessions of tea and baqar khanis to keep people gathered at the camp of Mian Nawaz Sharif,” says Ahmed Shah, a resident of the area which has repeatedly returned Mian Sahib to the assemblies, enabling him to seize the office of the prime minister on three occasions. “I think it was the lead up to the election in 1997 (when Mian Sahib was at the peak of his power) when they had set a camp off Lahore Hotel where waiters in uniform would serve the gathering.”

Yes, waiters in uniform attending to the voters, making them feel important. That was a good tactic.

Shah implies it was pure class, the Sharifs having long secured for them the position of trend-setters when it came to serving food and refreshments to those who collected at their election offices.

The bigger the collection, he points out, the bigger the impact on voters with impressionable minds and knowledge that they had earned a few ‘free’ lunches sponsored by the election candidates and their umpteen ever-obliging financiers.

In recent times, utility has ensured a shift towards disposable dinner boxes, and while the hot summer has put paid to anyone ordering of pink Kashmiri tea plus baqar khanis, the availability of single-use ‘plastic’ cups and glasses does add to the prestige of a candidate as it kind of betrays just how much he or she is prepared to spend on the campaign.

In past Lahore campaigns, the qeema wala naan was handy since it did not require a plate – unless you were serving it to some finicky uninitiated pretender who was bent upon destroying the taste by dipping his bites in curd or some unwanted sauce.

It may still be in demand but the old-timers, such as Ahmed Shah, point out that biryani in disposable plates has lately emerged as a convenient, more affordable option “since you could cut the chicken in it into smaller pieces to suit your budget for the day”.

With his comments on the subject, Sami Khan, who runs a shop in Krishan Nagar, Lahore, however, suggests that the regulars at the election offices cannot be forever kept happy on a single-dish diet.

“There has to be variety (change, if you are looking for the alternative) and almost anything in the edible category goes at the election offices these days,” he says.

Khan has seen a few election campaigns in his lifetime and, as a fresh graduate from college then, he was the polling agent of Mian Nawaz Sharif when Mian Sahib contested his first National Assembly election way back in 1985.

That was the election when the qeema wala naan hit the national political stage with all its force, perhaps having lived in the shadows of other events and items that made up the polls paraphernalia during the previous elections.

“At around 3 or 4pm during polling on that day, we, the polling agents for Mian Sahib, were delivered our share of qeema wala naans and a pack of juice,” Sami says as others remember that those on Sharif election duty were not the only ones partaking of the welcome treat.

Mian Sahib was in a spending mood and there was simply too big a quantity of naans available for those around to strictly adhere to the party line – in an election in which only individuals and not political parties were allowed to participate.

The lines were blurred. Then the lines were crossed. Some of those in the camp of the chief Sharif opponent in that election -- a gentleman belonging to the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI), which kept their election-day menu simple -- soon joined the effort to finish off the order from the bakers. That was perhaps the starting point in the prolonged Sharif-JI partnership in Lahore that was only broken in recent decades.

The glut that day of everything that bore the Sharif stamp – right down to the mind-boggling number of vans employed to ferry people to the polling stations and, of course, the qeema wala naan – set the tone for a reputation where Mian Nawaz Sharif and those who fought the election by his side have been considered amongst the most affluent and most generous of all poll campaigners over many elections.

This was no ordinary constituency, boasting some of the finest Kashmiri-origin naan bakers in Lahore, working at the tandoors of Krishan Nagar, Mozang and the famous Gawalmandi – not very far from where the ever-smiling Sufi Ghulam Mustafa Tabassum tried his hand at making kulchas.

It is where the phrase that pokes fun at politicians for enticing their voters with qeema wala naan has its origins.

In a way ‘Naan-League’ preceded by many years the Noon-League, even when those who must see negative connotations in all concoctions such as this one before you must dismiss it as a non-issue.

Published in Dawn, July 4th, 2018