Long live Ali Amin Gandapur

By Justice Markandey Katju–

Justice Markandey Katju

(Justice Markandey Katju is a former Judge, Supreme Court of India, and former Chairman of Press Council of India. The views expressed are his own)

Ali Amin Gandapur is the Chief Minister of the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa ( KP ) in Pakistan, and belongs to former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s party, the PTI.

His recent fiery defiant speech has not only aroused the people of KP but also the whole of Pakistan.

Ali Amin Gandapur is a Pathan. Pathans were originally from Afghanistan, though now they are found in large numbers in Pakistan and India too.

Pathans are brave people, who cannot be hectored or pushed around by anyone. Their land was invaded by Alexander the Great, the Moghul Empire, the British Empire, the Russians, and the Americans, but they never surrendered, and instead made their country a graveyard of invaders.

About Pathans, there is a saying that if you give Pathan respect, he will jump into a well if you tell him to without a second thought. But if you do not give him respect, and try to bully or cow him down, he will not listen to anything you say.

In Rambo III an Afghan tells Rambo a popular saying: “May God deliver us from the venom of the Cobra, teeth of the tiger, and the vengeance of the Afghan. Do you know what that means ?”.

To which Rambo replies,  “That you people don’t take any shit.”

So I often tell my Pathan friends ( and I have many ) “You Pathans are a bit manphira ( crazy ).”

Ali Amin Gandapur also seems a bit manphira. But there is no doubt that he is a brave man who cannot be intimidated by anyone.

His leader Imran Khan, and his PTI party has the support of probably 90% of Pakistanis ( as all opinion polls show ), but by a rigged election in February the Pakistan army, which really rules Pakistan, installed the corrupt PDM in power, with Shahbaz Sharif as Prime Minister. However, despite their best effort they could not prevent the PTI from coming to power in KP.

If the Pakistan Establishment thinks it can lord it over the Pathans and Ali Amin Gandapur, and subject them to their tyranny, they are forgetting their history. They forget what Pathans did to Alexander the Great, the Moghuls, the British, the Russians, and the Americans.

 

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