Leaders of Pakistan's Mutahida Quami Movement (MQM), on their first ever visit to India, on Sunday came up with tales of atrocities and denial of minimum political rights to the smaller nationalities by the Pakistani establishment and called for democratic restructuring of the 'failed' political system there. ''Feudalism and fundamentalism have fashioned in Pakistan a culture which rationalises dictation and defends obedience,'' said S A Tariq Mir, member of the MQM central coordination committee.
He said that the smaller provinces in Pakistan are now faced with influx of Taliban-style fundamentalism besides drugs and small arms proliferation which could have destabilising consequences for the South Asian region. ''India cannot sit idle with an unstable Pakistan in the control of fundamentalists with their fingers on the nuclear button,'' he warned. Mir and two of his party colleagues, Mohammad Anwar, chief organiser of MQM in Britain and Europe, and Dr Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui, deputy convenor, expressed their views at a workshop on Sunday on the 'two-nation theory', organised by Security and Political Risk Analysis (SAPRA), a think tank on security issues.
Mir said that the minor nationalities, including the Mohajirs, needed autonomy which was possible only in a genuine federal set-up and stressed the ethnic movements in various Pakistani provinces were not secessionist. Anwar added, ''The federal government should retain only defence, currency and foreign affairs.'' He reiterated MQM leader Altaf Hussain's views that 'partition of India was the biggest blunder'. 'The leaders of the undivided India succumbed to the idea of partition, driven by emotion carefully injected by the foreign masters,'' Mir said.
Bureau Report