Hisham Inamullah, a PTI MPA, criticised party vice president Fawad Chaudhry on Thursday for making what he claimed to be a “racist comment” that played on preconceived notions about Pakhtuns.
The two were discussing an alleged incident in which former Federal Investigation Agency Director General Bashir Memon was allegedly locked in a bathroom of the Prime Minister House by former principal secretary Azam Khan during a recent appearance on anchorperson Kashif Abbasi’s ARY News programme “Off the Record”
After Chaudhry said, “He took a great risk in going to the bathroom with a Khan (Pakhtun),” Abbasi had to take a break.
Inamullah responded to the joke by declaring that he was “happy to be a Pathan” in a statement posted to his Twitter account.
Inamullah stated that he “strongly rejected” Chaudhry’s implied criticism of the entire Pakhtun community.
He said that if Chaudhry had such negative views about Pakhtuns, why did he join a party whose head and the majority of its members were also Pakhtuns? “This is a disgraceful and disreputable charge,” he said.
“Pakistan is made up of the Pathan, Baloch, Sindhi, and Punjabi peoples. No ethnic group, in our opinion, has an advantage over another because they all played crucial parts in the development of Pakistan’s system and culture.
According to Inamullah, if Chaudhry considered himself to be a national leader and PTI member, he should ask for forgiveness from the Pakhtun community and work to become “actually free” from such thinking. He also added that thoughts like Chaudhry’s led to discord, mistrust, and unrest between ethnicities.
Chaudhry is still holding off on making a statement. The former minister and the PTI have been contacted by Dawn.com for comment.
Adil Shahzeb, the host of Dawn News, also called out a number of PTI ministers and Pakhtun community leaders, stating he anticipated them to vehemently denounce Chaudhry’s discriminatory remarks.
Taimur Saleem Khan Jhagra, the finance minister for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, was one of those named on the tags. He stated: “No question about it, highly denounced.”
He did, though, inquire of Shahzeb whether he, too, decried the administration on a number of other matters.