Maulana Fazlur Rehman, S/O Maulana Mufti Mahmud, has thrown his friends and foes into a spin. He went to India without much fanfare. But he was briefed by the ubiquitous ‘‘secret agency’’ for three hours before his departure. Soon, however, it was revealed that he had sought a security escort from the Indian government and been denied his request. But just as his detractors at home and in India were beginning to cluck in disapproval, it transpired that the Maulana had wrangled a high profile meeting with no less than Atal Behari Vajpayee, the Indian Prime Minister, who has so far refused to meet General Pervez Musharraf. But before the tremors could pass, the newspapers were awash with photos of the Maulana ensconced in the company of Sonia Gandhi, the Indian Leader of the Opposition and president of the Congress Party. Thereupon one important meeting was heaped upon another with VIPs like I.K. Gujral, the former Indian Prime Minister and Foreign Minister; with Natwar Singh, the Congress ideologue and former Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan; with Mulayam Singh Yadav, the Samajwadi Party leader, and with Vishnu Hari Dalmia, the chief of the hardline, anti-Pakistan and anti-Muslim VHP. More significantly, the Maulana is said to have had a lengthy chat with Ram Jethmalani, chief of the Kashmir Committee established by Vajpayee, and also with Mirwaiz Omar Farooq, the leader of the All Parties’ Hurriyat Conference. This is an enviable track record for a one-week trip to an ‘‘enemy’’ country that has hitherto perceived the Maulana and his bearded cohorts as fire-spitting, India-hating fundos who furnish much of the cannon-fodder for the holy war or jehad in Kashmir. In fact, the Maulana was more than just an unlikely apostle of peace with India when he broke the news that Vajpayee would visit Pakistan next January for the SAARC summit in Islamabad, a signal craved by our foreign office. He assured the Indians that he was all for the Simla accord on bilateralism and against third-party mediation, especially by the wicked Americans, in the Kashmir conflict, thereby shrugging off General Pervez Musharraf’s oft-repeated assertion exactly to the contrary. And he told the Kashmiris that any solution acceptable to the three parties to the conflict would be acceptable to his party and followers, thereby trashing the official Pakistani line based on the UN resolutions of 1948. He was at his diplomatic best when he candidly admitted that while Pakistan had failed to seal infiltration routes into Kashmir, the bigger Indian Army had fared no better. He also fended off the usual Indian wish about the chances of Pakistan and India becoming one big, great country all over again by saying that this was a ‘‘grand, fanciful and Utopian idea’’ that could be better addressed if and when the leaders of the people of both countries were able to sit around a table and chew on it. All in all, it was a consummate performance that portends the Maulana’s future role in the national politics of Pakistan. He didn’t go without a brief from General Musharraf. But he wasn’t just General Musharraf’s man. That is a throwback to the time when he was Benazir Bhutto’s chosen chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee of the National Assembly in the mid-1990s but remained very much his own man during his travels abroad. Wait for the next news bulletin. Maulana Fazlur Rehman might soon be breaking bread with Hamid Karzai, the President of Afghanistan. Where is all this leading us? It is common knowledge that the Jama’at-e Islami chief, Qazi Hussain Ahmed, doesn’t quite see eye to eye with Maulana Fazlur Rehman on many matters, among them being the issue of whether the MMA should remain in opposition to the government in Islamabad (upon which arises the question of who should be the Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly, Qazi Sahib or the Maulana) or whether the MMA should do a deal with General Musharraf over the LFO that catapults it into the pre-eminent position currently occupied by the disloyal People’s Party ‘‘Patriots’’ who are disliked by their current PMLQ hosts no less than by their erstwhile PPPP parents. It is also no secret that the Maulana is a cunning negotiator who is inclined to clutch at his power base in two provinces even as he eyes a foothold in Islamabad. After all, it is not everyday that his party, the JuI, can aspire to a national pedestal. The last time it made such an attempt — in 1971 when his party was in the charge of his respected father, the venerable Maulana Mufti Mahmud — its miscalculation led to the summary sacking of its coalition governments in the NWFP and Balochistan and the imprisonment of its leaders by a popular dictator. Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s India yatra is significant because it reveals him to be a most pragmatic politician. That is exactly how General Pervez Musharraf likes to bill himself. Therefore in this age of pragmatism we are likely to see a lot of the two of them. (The Friday Times)
