Ideology not aloo and tamatar: Imran Khan unmoved by humdrum price rise

Imran Khan, the
prime minister of Pakistan, said Sunday that he did not join politics to know
the prices of “aloo and tamatar” but to build the nation. In a
speech that has garnered attention across the Indian subcontinent, the Pakistan
PM spoke of ideology, the foundations of the Islamic nation and attacked the
opposition for bringing up mundane matters such as the price of daily
commodities. “Unless a nation realises the ideology behind the creation of a
homeland, it cannot become a nation but recedes into oblivion,” Khan said.

The Pakistan PM,
once a blue-eyed boy of the cricketing world, said he joined politics 25 years
ago in a bid to make the nation and realise the real ideology of Pakistan as
propounded by Allama Mohammad Iqbal. Iqbal was an Indian politician during the
British Raj and one of the founding fathers of Pakistan. It was his Allahabad
address, delivered in 1930, that articulated what would later become the
two-nation theory, the logic for the partition of India in 1947.

The PM’s remarks about
prices of everyday needs came in after Pakistan’s general inflation, measured
by the Consumer Price Index (CPI), clocked in at a 24-month peak of 13% in
January. This was the highest inflation Pakistan had seen in a year. Khan’s
speech also comes after a united opposition front submitted a no-confidence
motion against him.   

Khan, who’d
studied at Keble College, Oxford back in the day, reasoned why he had come out
strongly against representatives of the European Union. Ambassadors of the EU had
criticised Pakistan for not condemning what the West calls Russia’s invasion of
Ukraine and Moscow calls a “special military operation.”

“When I criticised
the EU ambassadors, all three opposition leaders started blaming me for harsh
statements. I know West well. It welcomes those, who hold their countries’
interests supreme and look(s) down on those, who look for their vested
interests,” Khan said, according to a Dawn report. Pakistan wants to keep
cordial relations with every country but being the prime minister of 220
million people, he cannot compromise on his country’s interests, Khan added.