Volume 7, No. 2, February 2025
Editor: Rashed Rahman
The Pakistani Revolution – VII
The Role of the National Awami Party, the 1965 General Elections and the War with India
W B Bland
The Role of the National Awami Party
The revival of the National Awami Party (NAP) and the release from prison in November 1962 of its leader Maulana Bhashani, provided the military dictatorship with a political arm, the objective function of which was to mobilise ‘left’ support for it. In September 1963 the leader of NAP, Maulana Bhashani, travelled to West Pakistan for a meeting with President Ayub Khan, following which he was appointed to lead a government delegation to China in November. On his return the party gave its support to the regime “with reservations”, on the grounds of its “pro-Chinese” and “anti-imperialist” foreign policy. “President Ayub appointed him (i.e., Bhashani – Ed.) to lead a delegation, and that journey from which he returned this week appears to have changed all his ideas. The achievements of China…had so impressed him that, realising how backward Pakistan was in comparison, he was inclined he said, to spend the rest of his life in prayers. He was calling off the civil disobedience movement” (The Times, London, December, 4,1963). “The role of the National Awami Party leadership seems to fit in more on the Government side than on the opposition side, and yet it happens to be sitting in the opposition in the National Assembly and the provincial legislatures. Maulana Bhashani…visited China with the blessing of the government. On his return, in Chittagong, he said what would become a loyal pro-government spokesman” (Outlook, Karachi, December 28, 1963, P.4).
Trotskyite Tariq Ali is a supporter of Bhashani, of whom he says: “Bhashani was a spokesman for the future, for a Pakistan which was run by the workers and peasants under a socialist system of government” (Tariq Ali: Pakistan: Military Rule or People’s Power? London, 1970, P.199). He gives the following account of Bhashani’s meeting with Chinese leaders Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai: “Soon after Maulana Bhashani was released from prison…he agreed to go as the leader of a government delegation to the October celebrations in Peking. There he had discussions with the Chinese leaders, including Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai. According to the Pakistan Ambassador to China at that time, General Raza, who was present during the Maulana’s discussions with Chou, the latter said in no uncertain terms that the Chinese would welcome a rapprochement between the National Awami Party and the Ayub regime. According to Raza the Maulana agreed…When I was in East Pakistan in June 1969 I asked the Maulana during the course of a tape-recorded conversation: ‘When you went to China, what did Mao discuss with you when you met him?’ The Maulana’s reply was quite unequivocal, and does seem to confirm General Raza’s impression: ‘Mao said to me that at the present time China’s relationship with Pakistan was extremely fragile and that the United States, Russia and India would do their utmost to break this relationship. He said, You are our friends, and if at the present moment you continue your struggle against the Ayub government, it will only strengthen the hand of Russia, America and India. It is against our principles to interfere with your work, but we would advise you to proceed slowly and carefully. Give us a chance to deepen our friendship with your government’” (Tariq Ali: ibid., p. 140-141).
Members of the Communist Party (CP), as has been said, had long made open work within NAP a principle field of their activity and had won influential positions in it. By this time the leadership of the CP had become completely revisionist and the Communists working in the NAP had, in general, no disagreement with the latter party’s policy of support “with reservations” for the military dictatorship. In April 1964 the opposition journal Outlook published an interview with an unnamed Communist (whose reported views coincide with the viewpoint of the leadership of the CP), who declared that he would vote for Ayub at the next election because of the latter’s “development of friendship with China”, and went so far as to say: “Basic democracies could become training schools for soviets” (Dialogue with a Communist, in Outlook, Karachi, April 24, 1964).
Tariq Ali sums up the role of NAP by admitting: “Of course, many pro-Peking members of the NAP could argue that while some of them had suffered imprisonment in the pre-Ayub days, they had for some time been allowed to do political work by the government, and for them that was the acid test. In fact, during the last five years of the Ayub regime (i.e., from 1964 to 1968 – Ed.) they had not engaged in any radical activities. Since they spent 99 percent of their time attacking bourgeois politicians and ignoring Ayub, there was no reason why the regime should arrest them” (Tariq Ali: ibid, p.142).
The 1965 ‘Elections’
In August 1964 the Convention Muslim League (ML) adopted Ayub Khan as its candidate for the 1965 Presidential ‘elections’. In the same month the principal opposition parties were persuaded by Khwaja Nazimuddin, the President of the Council ML, to form a ‘united front’ called the Combined Opposition Parties (COP) to test out the possibilities of Basic Democracy (BD) by contesting the Presidential ‘elections’. The COP was made up of the Council ML, the Awami League (AL), NAP, Jamaat-i-Islami and Nizam-i-Islam. By participating in the COP, the leaders of the AL placed themselves in the contradictory position of, on the one hand, denouncing BD as the completely undemocratic machinery of the military dictatorship and, on the other hand, suggesting, by their participation in this machinery, that it could be used to bring about fundamental constitutional changes. The COP adopted a 9-point programme limited to aspects of the restoration of parliamentary democracy and ignoring questions of foreign policy.
The ‘elections’ for the Electoral College of BDs took place in October-November 1964, and the Presidential election in January 1965. Although nominally a part of the COP, the leaders of NAP took no active part in the election campaign: “Maulana Bhashani, leader of the National Awami Party…did not campaign actively for Miss Jinnah, probably because he did not want to upset Ayub’s foreign policy, which was veering steadily towards increasing friendship with China” (Khalid bin Sayeed: The Political System of Pakistan, Karachi, 1967, cited in Tariq Ali: ibid., p.128). Tariq Ali himself puts this more diplomatically (although the inverted commas are his): “…‘Illness’ prevented him (i.e., Bhashani – Ed.) from campaigning effectively for Miss Jinnah” (Tariq Ali: ibid., p.128).
Ayub was, of course, ‘elected’ President in January 1965. One of the factors that induced many BDs in East Pakistan to vote for Ayub was that the regime had poured money into the rural areas through the Rural Public Works Programme (RPWP). East Pakistan had received Rs 2,000 million in 1963-64 as compared to Rs 100 million for the same programme in West Pakistan. This ‘generosity’ towards East Pakistan in the pre-election year had a purpose, as BDs were the agents for the planning and execution of the RPWP, with plenty of scope for patronage and corruption. In the indirect elections for the National Assembly, held in March 1965, and in those for the Provincial Assemblies, held in May, the Convention ML won large majorities. The COP then disintegrated.
Indo-Pakistani War 1965
The Indian government had for some years taken its stand on the position that Kashmir was an integral part of India and so could not be the subject of negotiation with any other State. In May 1965 Pakistan Foreign Minister (FM) Bhutto signed in London a SEATO communique that gave full support to the US aggression in Vietnam. The Ayub regime judged that this support (which contrasted sharply with the official Indian criticism of the role of US imperialism in Vietnam) would be sufficient to ensure at least a benevolent neutrality on the part of Washington towards Pakistan in the event of war with India. The revisionist leaders of the Soviet Union had long been collaborating with the US imperialists, and in April 1965 President Ayub Khan and FM Bhutto paid an official visit to the USSR, during which agreements were signed on trade, economic cooperation and cultural exchange. Furthermore, the predominantly Muslim population of Indian-occupied Kashmir were clearly hostile to their Indian rulers.
Taking all these points into consideration, the ‘Karachi’ clique judged that there could hardly be a more favourable moment for an attempt to ‘solve the Kashmir question’ in what appeared to be the only possible way in which it could be settled to the advantage of Pakistan – by force. After a ‘trial run’ in the Rann (desert) of Kutch on the West Pakistan border in April, in August 1965 the Special Forces (with officers trained at Fort Bragg, North Carolina) entered the Indian-occupied zone of Kashmir and commenced a guerilla type warfare against the Indian forces. It was then announced in Karachi that a revolution had broken out in Kashmir, and regular Pakistani troops went in “to assist the revolutionary forces”. Heavy fighting then began between Pakistani and Indian troops, and a state of emergency was declared in Pakistan.
The calculations of the ‘Karachi’ clique had however, been seriously at fault. The Kashmiri people showed no more enthusiasm for their Pakistani ‘liberators’ than for their Indian oppressors. The pro-US imperialist revisionist clique in the Soviet Union, headed by Khrushchev, had been overthrown in the coup of October 1964, and the new Brezhnev-Kosygin clique was bent on reorientating Soviet foreign policy in the direction of building up an anti-US imperialist bloc in which, it was planned, India would play an important role. Furthermore, as a result of the activity of the CIA, the US imperialists were already looking forward to the ‘cultural revolution’ of 1966-68 in China. The Indo-Pakistani war of September 1965 thus came at a most inconvenient time for both the US and the Soviets at a time when the process of building up new worldwide military blocs on the part of each of these Powers was just beginning. Thus, the US imperialists cut off ‘aid’ to both India and Pakistan, while they and the Soviets acted together to stop the war. As a result of these actions of these Powers, a cease-fire was imposed, and the leaders of the two countries involved were summoned in January 1966 to a conference at Tashkent, capital of the Soviet republic of Uzbekistan, where Soviet Premier Alexei Nikoyevich Kosygin ‘mediated’ an agreement under which both sides were to withdraw their forces to the lines of August 1965.
The failure of the Ayub regime to ‘settle’ the Kashmir question satisfactorily was attacked by most of the opposition parties (except NAP) as a “sell-out”. On January 22nd, 1966, Miss Jinnah declared: “What the blood of our brave soldiers achieved was thrown away at the conference table.” On February 5-6, 1966, a conference of 700 delegates from the Council ML, AL, Nizam-e-Islam and Jamaat-i-Islami adopted a resolution condemning the Tashkent Agreement.
US-Pakistani relations now returned to ‘normal’. In December 1965 President Ayub Khan visited the US and made due apologies for his naughtiness, and in June 1966 the US imperialists resumed economic ‘aid’ and the sale of arms to Pakistan. In December 1967 US President Lyndon Johnson visited Pakistan for talks with Ayub, followed in January 1968 by President Tito of Yugoslavia. In August 1969 US President Richard Nixon visited Pakistan for talks with Ayub’s successor as President, General Yahya Khan.
(To be continued)