What does the early 20th century campaigner and rabble-rouser Syed Ata Ullah Sha h Bukhari have

in common with Imran Khan? More than you think, according to Ali Usman Qasmi The upset men Those cognizant of the towering figure of Sayyid Ata Ullah Shah Bukhari (d. 1961 ) may consider the comparison of his life and achievements with Imran Khan rathe r bizarre. Not only because both of them hail from markedly divergent background s and different socio-political temporalities. These points of dissimilarity not withstanding, their style of politics, I would like to argue, bear close resembl ances. Shah ji used to say jokingly that he spent half his life in jail and the second half in rail, traveling around India to address public rallies Syed Ata Ullah Shah Bukhari - referred to as Shah ji by his admirers and discipl es - was born in Patna in 1892. He was the scion of a Kashmiri family settled in Amritsar - a city where Shah ji spent his childhood and received education in I slamic learning. His political career commenced when the Khilafat movement was i n full swing. Shah ji soon made a meteoric rise to fame within the circle of Ule ma-led politics of the Khilafat Movement by sheer dint of his fiery speeches. In numerous hagiographical accounts, Shah jis charisma is described in a rather Web erian sense with superlative degrees. What gave him a mesmerizing aura over his followers was the gift of the gab. He is described by his admirers as an orator par excellence whose eloquence had no match in the entire subcontinent during th e first half of the twentieth century. He used his talents to launch a tirade of verbal assaults against the Ahmadis. He visited every nook and cranny of India to publicly condemn Ahmadis. He used to say jokingly that he spent half his life in jail and the second half in rail, traveling around India to address public r allies. The momentum he built up during the 1930s against the Ahmadis snowballed into hatred and violence against them after the creation of Pakistan. After the Khilafat movement petered out, Ata Ullah Shah Bukhari remained committ ed to the nationalist politics of Jamiat-i-Ulema-i-Hind and the Congress Party. It was after the split in the ranks of Congressite Muslims in the wake of the Ne hru Report of 1927 that Shah ji seceded along with his followers and like-minded activists to form Majlis-i-Ahrar in 1929. As the name of this organization sugg ested, Majlis-i-Ahrar (Party of the Free) was committed to fighting against the British for the freedom of India. The Ahrar obsequiously toed the party line of the Congress and in many ways it was, along with Jamiat-i-Ulema-i-Hind, the Cong ress wing of Muslim Ulema. Imran Khan is capitalizing on issues which touch an emotional chord among many P akistanis Shah ji had an equally spirited party cadre. Comprising mostly of artisans, smal l traders and peasant proprietors, his followers and party workers supported him vehemently in opposing the creation of Pakistan - often crossing the limits of moral and reasonable criticism of their political opponents. Imran Khan, on the other hand, is a second-generation Pakistani, born and bred i n the affluent environs of Zaman Park, Lahore. He had nominal understanding of I slamic teachings at the elitist Atchison College before he went to Keble College , Oxford, to pursue a degree in Economics and Politics. He pursued a career as a professional cricketer notching up the loftiest feats as a cricketer and also a s a captain of the Pakistan cricket team. During his years at the top of stardom , Imran Khan was a playboy whose only sense of identification with Islam was by the symbolic gesture of avoiding alcohol and - according to one of his biographe rs - drinking milk at British high society parties. But as his adrenaline levels dipped in his late 30s, Imran Khan increasingly turned towards religion to find solace and spiritual mirth. He became a born-again Muslim after rediscovering Is

lam through the writings of Muhammad Iqbal and Muhammad Asad. He read the Quran w ith translation and commentary and drew inspiration from them. In order to redis cover his ancestral roots, Imran made a trip to the tribal areas where he was fa scinated by the simple lifestyle of the Pashtuns, reminding him of the Muslim wa rriors of yore who had ostensibly been ravaging across the globe for the glory o f Islam and not for material gains. His book on the Pashtuns from tribal areas p rovides an ample testimony of the romantic view that he holds about the people o f that region in much the same vein as Sir Olaf Caroes book The Pathans. Imran Khans personal and intellectual background has a tangible bearing on his pr esent political stance. As a born-again Muslim, he is obsessed with the idea of bringing about a Muslim renaissance; claiming to be an expert witness of the ailm ents of the Western civilization on account of his personal experiences, he regar ds Islam to be the sole panacea for the ills that humanity is currently plagued with. Therefore, in his estimation, Islam poses a challenge to the West and its value system in the same sense as articulated by Samuel Huntington; on the basis of his reading of the Quran and as per its injunctions, Jews and Christians, he opines with confidence, cannot be the friends of Muslims. One should, hence, gu ard against their conspiracies against Muslims and Islam. In the context of Paki stan, it implies a severing of the relationship with the US. This, as argued by him for over a decade now, has to be for one main reason: The war against terror does not belong to Pakistan. It is all about USs illegal occupation of Afghanist an. Pakistan must stay out of it by denying logistic supplies and access to US a nd NATO forces from Pakistani ports, airbases and roads. It is by allowing the U S and NATO to use Pakistan as a conduit and launch drone attacks against terrori st targets in tribal areas, rationalizes Imran Khan, that the militants have tak en up arms against the Pakistani military and civilians and are busy butchering them through suicide bombings. Imran Khans recipe for restoring peace in Pakistan is simple: ban drone attacks and block the supply lines to US and NATO. The mil itancy will peter out on its own. In order to muster public support for this str ategy, he is staging dharnas and addressing public gatherings all over Pakistan. What is common between Shah ji and Imran Khan is the naivety that overshadows th eir respective political visions and cherished goals. Shah ji was imbued to the core in his hatred for the firangi (British) that he could not withstand a Muslim Jinnah steeped in British parliamentary traditions and lifestyle. He found Hindu G andhi and Nehru more amenable to his liking. He believed in Nehru and Gandhis ass urances that Muslims of united India, with a composite nationalist ambience, wou ld live in peace and prosperity. In retrospect, Shorish Kashmiri - the most loya l lieutenant of Shah ji -lamented the hollowness of such a perception. He ascrib ed the failure of Ahrar to the inability of its leaders to wean away from the no stalgic clutches of the Khilafat movement. They failed to realize that Pan-Indian Islamic universalism had lived out its life. The dynamics of communal strife and economic hardships of the Muslims were lost upon the Ahrar. That particular min dset spawned disaster for Ahrar. After the creation of Pakistan - and especially after the suppression of the anti-Ahmadiyya movement in 1953 - the Ahrars cadre was depleted of its verve and gusto. Its workers joined other parties where they carried on with their Ahrari ideology in a dissimulative manner. The politics of Ahrar has been variously interpreted by scholars. For Markus Dae chsel, it is reflective of the general trend in the inter-war period when severa l semi-fascist, cadre-based groups and parties emerged in India with politics of self-expression. He describes this concept in contrast to the politics of interest. A similar mode of distinction is made by David Gilmartin in his assessment of t he politics of 20th century colonial Punjab in terms of aql (rationality) and qa lb (heart). The politics of interest was understood by the colonial authorities as the ration al mode of doing politics whereby the Indian society and its political-actors pla ying upon a medley of regional, linguistic, religious and caste identities - eng

aged each other at an electorally competitive level for acquisition of power and patronage for the purpose of furthering their sectional, personal or community interests. The politics of self-expression (or to put it in simple words, the po litics of heart) defies such attempts at rationalization of society by invoking the will to power. It thrives on rhetoric and emotional invocation of an idealiz ed, glorious past. It refuses to be woven into a simplistic narrative or sets of explanation. It evades rationality for the purpose of defying the supremacy of its logic in determining the modus operandi of real politik. Through the rhetori c of fiery speeches (like Ahrar), parading of khaki-clad cadres (in case of Khak sar) and invoking tropes and symbols of war, heroic warship and martyrdom, the s elf-expressionists defied the logic of politics of interests. This explains why people like Maulana Muhammad Ali Johar engaged in such spectacles as promoting c hild marriage among Muslims as an act based on pure Islamic injunctions in defianc e to British law prohibiting under-age marriages; Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and Ma ulana Abdul Bari Farangi Mahali inspired thousands of Muslim families to migrate to neighbouring Afghanistan as India had become Dar-ul-Harb on account of Briti sh aggression against the Muslim Caliph in Turkey; most importantly, this explai ns why Shah ji was spending time between rail and jail in inspiring Muslims on i ssues ranging from apostasy of Ahmadis to the killing of Rajpal - the publisher of a pamphlet that insulted the Prophet (PBUH). Like Ahrar and Shah ji, Imran Khans politics is the classic example of politics o f heart - if this term can be applied in the context of post-colonial, nay, post 9-11 Pakistan. One can say that now the modes of politics are heuristically lab eled along the binaries of ghairat and realism instead of qalb and aql. The cont ent of these two, however, have changed little. It too thrives on a rhetoric whi ch emotionally invokes an imagined past of Muslim glory. By centralizing ghairat as the linchpin of his political strategy and panacea for taking Pakistan out o f its current moribund situation, Imran Khans explanations cut across the rationalit y of the proponents of realpolitik in Pakistan. It is through rhetoric and the in vocation of ghairat that he seeks to counter liberal fascists intent on enforcing their worldview predicated on notions of realism and pragmatism which proposes c ontinuance of Pakistans alliance with the US in the war against terror and promot ion of a liberal-secular democracy in Pakistan. In many ways, I find Imran Khan to be doing an Ahrar brand of politics. Like Sha h ji, Imran Khan has the charisma and talent of an inspiring speech-maker to imp ress the masses but not to lead them. He is capitalizing on issues which touch a n emotional chord among many Pakistanis. People throng to his dharnas and rallie s to catch a glimpse of his persona and listen to his speech. But as Shah ji use d to say, people would listen to his speech from dusk till dawn and on the polli ng day they would quietly vote for the Muslim League. The same seems to be a fai t accompli in the case of Imran Khan. Unlike Ahrar, he is bereaved of any ideolo gically motivated cadre with unflinching commitment. As one blogger described hi m, Imran Khan can at best be the Prime Minister of the Islamic Republic of Faceb ook. Like Shah ji, Imran Khan has great nuisance value as well. He can create a publi c spectacle of disorder through his following. But Imran Khans politics, rhetoric and charisma - similar to that of Shah ji - does not translate into electoral s upport for acquisition of political power. He can grab votes but not parliamenta ry seats. Still, its potential for inflicting deep societal crisis cannot be rul ed out. This Imran Khan is doing by cultivating doubts in the hearts and minds o f ordinary Pakistanis as well military men about the legitimacy of Pakistans invo lvement in the war against terror. His mode of reasoning is simplistic. He descr ibes Pakistans involvement in the war against terror as an act of baighairati to acquire US aid money and exaggerates or dramatizes the destruction caused by dro ne attacks and operations of Pakistans army. In doing so, Imran Khan only intends to incite peoples emotions without offering a viable alternative for military op erations and economic strategy. This is a classic example of the politics of hea

rt in which there is an emotionally-laden criticism of a certain figure, policy or incident which touches a chord with the larger population without an attempt to offer a constructive line of action or alternative. In the end, this brand of politics does not even yield any significant electoral gains. In case Imran Kha n performs better than expected in electoral polls, it would not be without the role and support of Pakistans security establishment. Already there are reports i n circulation suggesting that Imran Khan is being used to counter the influence of Nawaz Sharif, especially in urban Punjab. The fissures in Pakistani society will be exacerbated by continuation of such ti rades by Imran Khan. In the current state of militant bombings and the trauma it inflicts on ordinary Pakistanis, the effects of such an accentuation speaks for itself. We saw the end product of Ahrar as a legacy of religious intolerance to wards the minorities. The path on which Imran Khan is treading may end up in civ il war and collapse of military disciplinarian ethics. In order to avoid the ret rospective regret of the outcomes of his current politics, Imran Khan better rev isit his rhetoric and emotionalism about the war on terror and the anachronistic trope of ghairat in his understanding of politics.