NEWS OF SUBSTANCE

LALTAIN THABAH DEY
By: NASSER YOUSAF

The lantern is wrecked, it's done for. This is now a common refrain, nay a taunt, among the present-day Pashtuns, especially the younger ones using the social media to vent their spleen on those they love to hate.

But why slog lantern, one not familiar with the political landscape of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa may ask. Lantern is the symbol that the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa based Awami National Party (ANP) has been using in the elections for the last about three decades. Earlier, the said political party was called National Awami Party with an acronym (NAP) that its surviving old followers still prefer using while referring to the grand old party.

NAP contested elections with a symbol representing a mud and thatch built shanty house called 'jhonpri.' It would appear that after having built itself a humble little abode, the party wanted to lit it up with the most basic and indeed primitive lighting system in the shape of a lantern.

Pitiless old Time has since much disheveled and disfigured ANP, a political party once pretty popular in many districts of the erstwhile North West Frontier Province (NWFP). Nevertheless, one identity that ANP has steadfastly held on to is the colour of its flag which happens to be 'red.' Red colour symbolises not only anger but also passion. ANP has over the decades, since it first emerged as an offshoot of the erstwhile Congress Party of India, unfailingly demonstrated that it had plenty of both but it kept its anger suppressed as its founders and followers passionately preached non violence.

While deeply religious in their private lives, ANP's founder Bacha Khan and his scions always prided themselves on their being the unflinching flag bearers of secularism. Not quite unexpectedly, by candidly professing their love for an ideal, Bacha Khan and his supporters attracted many unsavoury epithets from their detractors. But the Red-shirt leaders did not give up even at the cost of losing the sympathies and support of the largely conservative Pashtuns.

ANP finally attained one of its ideals, with the firm support of PPP, when in 2009 NWFP was renamed as Khyber Pakhtunkhwa through a constitutional amendment. But while this happened, the party squandered away its hard earned repute as an incorruptible party. Incidentally, it was also during this period of the party's rule in the province when it had to face the full brunt of the Taliban scourge. Quite a large number of ANP leaders and activists fell victims to the conflict which was considered by many to be an insurgency of an unequaled intensity unleashed by zealots.

It doesn't rain, it pours. ANP's misery is multiplying by the day. After having successfully renamed the province, once considered an insurmountable feat, ANP seems to have lost its footing. The party has faced resounding defeats in the last two general elections in its strongholds at the hands of PTI. The stigma associated with monetary corruption, not having been challenged, has stuck. There isn't even a meek response to volleys of insults thrown at it even by those whose own hands are not very clean.

One may presume the party considers it too demeaning even to respond. It is impossible to conceive that ANP would have brought this ignominy upon itself when Bacha Khan and his illustrious son Wali Khan were at the helm in their respective times. What is even more inconceivable is the possibility of the old patriarchs ever showing ambivalence like their present-day successors did after a young man was lynched to death on the lawns of his university in Mardan.
On that occasion, ANP was seen siding with the clergy, although that gesture too failed to win the party votes.

One recently found Mian Iftikhar, a principled ANP stalwart who lost his only son to militancy, defending himself and his party against vulgar insults hurled at him by young Pashtuns on Twitter.

If only Pashtuns could understand, lantern will never get old. Lantern was the device which Bacha Khan held aloft to guide his clansmen on the path away from obscurantism, dogma, bigotry and philistinism. But the insult 'laltain thabah dey' (lantern is done for) is a metaphor that speak of darkness which sadly enough appears to be what lies in store for all Pashtuns.

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