LAHORE: Muzamil Kakar belongs to a district of Balochistan along the border of Afghanistan but he is contesting election from NA-127, Lahore, as a candidate of the newly-formed Haqooq-i-Khalq Party (HKP).

He finds similarities between his native place and his Lahore constituency.

“I am doing politics in the ‘Balochistan of Lahore’, as the areas of the Punjab’s capital like Chungi Amar Sidhu and Harbanspura etc are as underdeveloped as Balochistan. Most of the population in such areas (of Lahore) consists of workers.”

Kakar said it would have been easier for him to join the Pashtun nationalist party or any other mainstream party as all parties called him to join them for their candidature in Balochistan where it was easier for him to find support. However, he did not take the easier path and opted for Lahore to contest election. “Ammar Ali Jan was contacted by PML-N and the PPP but we don’t want to be answerable to any political leader but the masses,” he said.

Two-day litfest opens at Kitab Ghar

Muzamil Kakar was speaking on the opening day of Kitab Ghar literary festival in Rehmanpura area on Saturday. Kitab Ghar is a community-based public library set up two years back.

The HKP candidate added that he belonged to one of the most backward districts along the Afghanistan border which had camps for the Taliban during the Afghan war and they were trained there before being sent across the border.

About his journey in politics, Kakar said when he came to the Punjab University, Jamiat was very strong. “When we were celebrating our culture day in 2017, the Jamiat attacked us that left many students injured including myself. Then an alliance was formed of Punjabi, Baloch and Pashtun students who opposed the IJT.”

In 2019, Muzamil said, they formed the student action committee across the country and worked for restoration of student unions. “We set up 27 libraries in Balochistan. One of our fellows there was targeted and killed.”

Muzamil said he and his other party members faced issues in filing nomination papers, and it seemed that the state, instead of utilising energy in positive ways, was working to control the masses. He said the Left was giving space to the common man in politics just like himself. He considered his party different from other parties for being more connected to the masses and working on public issues.

“The people like Ali Wazir and Baloch protesters appeared as a reaction to terrorism in their areas. They want their issues to be resolved by the parliament that’s why they are sitting in Islamabad and they are not anti-state. People like Ali Wazir and Mohsin Dawar have impacted the mainstream politics and educated people in Punjabi who support them. Ali Wazir still goes to Parliament despite the fact that seventeen people of his family were killed in terrorism.”

Muzamil lamented the land and drug mafia in his area had national flags on their vehicles and they were considered patriotic.

SHARAGHZADEH: Iranian-US scholar Ali Sharghzadeh says he stumbled upon the national anthem of Pakistan in the United States and was surprised to find that it was in Farsi and not Urdu. This led him to do research for the commonalities between Pakistan and Iran.

The founder of Persian Poetics said dislocated nationalism had started in Iran at the start of the last century when the idea spread that the Iranians had more in common with the Europeans than the Middle East. He said Iranians did not go for the Muslim identity and even in the west, they would prefer to live with the white people than those from neighbouring countries.

Ali is working on a translation of Rumi. He said for people in South Asia like Pakistan, there were many translations of Rumi in local languages like Urdu compared to English translations. He suggested to the readers to go for Rumi’s translations in their local languages.

He said women’s resistance movement in Iran had died down now but it’s a matter of time when something else would pop up as women as well as men were angry at the ideological state imposing restrictions like hijab on them.

Published in Dawn, December 31st, 2023