The rise and political future of the TLP
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The sudden rise of the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) in the wake of the execution of a murder convict in the spring of 2016 surprised the then ruling PML-N government and many observers of religious politics in the country.
In the 1970 election, the first credible general elections of Pakistan, the Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Pakistan (JUP) with its strong roots in Karachi had secured more popular votes and seats in the assemblies than other religious parties. Within a decade however, it lost its momentum due to factionalism, and gradually it lost its influence. Its decline provided an opportunity to another scholar and cleric, Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri, to convert his religious movement Minhaj-ul-Quran into a political party, Pakistan Awami Tehreek in 1989 and became a parliament by getting elected in the 2002 elections. His mobilization of a sectarian base proved to be ineffective in electoral politics because of the political culture of factionalism that has characterized most sectarian political movements.
Though there have been many claimants to harness the number of sectarian social bases, nobody has succeeded so much and in such a short period of time as did the late cleric Khadim Husain Rizvi, the founder of the TLP.
Most of the religious groups in Pakistan’s history have used two issues very frequently to launch agitations and pull big crowds—khatam-e-nabuwat (finality of prophethood) and blasphemy. The latter one has become the distinctive symbol of the TLP’s politics and social mobilization in Pakistan. The kind of passions it arouses among TLP followers has transformed them into an unusual category of religious and political activism; willing to die and kill on the issue of blasphemy.
The political culture of Pakistan doesn’t favor the electoral politics of religious parties.
Rasul Bakhsh Rais
When Mumtaz Qadri was convicted and executed in February 2016, the still obscure cleric Rizvi rose to the national scene. He led hundreds of thousands of people in Rawalpindi to Qadri’s funeral prayers, and revered him as a saint for killing Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer in 2011, for his activism in favour of an imprisoned Christian woman accused of blasphemy.
Urban traders became the largest financiers alongside new political aspirants who had tons of money but no place in mainstream political parties. The flow of funds and a strong backing from the merchant class encouraged Rizvi to launch a ‘long march’ to Islamabad in November 2017.
Rizvi’s successful camping at the Faizabad Interchange for weeks and the inaction of the state was meant to put pressure on the PML-N government by announcing the arrival of a new religious player in the politics of the Punjab with its center in Lahore. Not surprisingly, the TLP fielded 121 candidates for the national and two provincial assemblies in the 2018 elections and emerged as the third largest party in the Punjab in popular vote count, leaving the Pakistan People's Party behind.
The question is, what is next for the TLP after three long marches and forcing two different party governments to negotiate political deals successfully, and whether or not it will mainstream as stipulated in the October 2021 agreement.
Parties rising out of protests and single issues fade off, and it may take that route as well. Secondly, the social structures of Pakistan and the political culture don’t favor the electoral politics of religious parties. Finally, it doesn’t have electable candidates in its fold and the support base is territorially fragmented. At best, it will retain street power, demonstrate big numbers in some urban areas, and function as a spoiler in the hands of invisible forces.
– Rasul Bakhsh Rais is Professor of Political Science in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, LUMS, Lahore. His latest book is “Islam, Ethnicity and Power Politics: Constructing Pakistan’s National Identity” (Oxford University Press, 2017).
Twitter: @RasulRais
