Volume 7, No. 3, March 2025
Editor: Rashed Rahman
In 1968, over 50 years ago at the time of this writing, I enrolled as a B.A. (Honours) student at Punjab University (PU) Lahore. This was the time when the student movement against colonial occupation, racial discrimination, class prejudices and sexual taboos swept the globe. This movement was known as the Hippie movement, the sexual revolution and the anti-Vietnam War movement in the western world; movement against totalitarianism in the eastern bloc, and anti-imperialist struggle in the Third World. Starting from Berkeley, California, it spread to London, Bonn, Prague, Paris, Lahore, Dhaka, Seoul and Ho Chi Minh City. Those were the days of Che Guevara’s cry for a global change, proclaiming that “a spectator is a coward or a traitor”, or Regis Debray’s “Revolution in the Revolution”, calling young revolutionary idealists to take up “the critique of arms rather than the arm of critique” for making social change. There was general disillusionment with a non-violent, democratic path against various forms of social, economic and political injustice. These movements started as an expression of resentment against local conditions but echoed a common concern against a global prevalence of injustice, exploitation and oppression.
In Pakistan, the student movement was part of a mass upsurge against the dictatorial rule of General Ayub Khan. Students, industrial workers, lawyers, journalists, political workers and people from rural areas started an unrelenting series of protests and mass demonstrations, which culminated in the downfall of Ayub Khan’s government. Left wing student organisations played an important role in this struggle. Starting in 1968 this movement went through a period of unprecedented rise, but subsequently witnessed a decline and phased out around 1988, the year when the Cold War was starting to come to an end. While the struggle for socialism has almost been wiped out in Pakistan, the struggle against all forms of injustice under a global economic order still continues. That is why looking back at the ideology and political practice of the Left becomes relevant under current circumstances. I was part of this movement. Starting today I want to share my recollection of these years of turmoil, turbulence and treacherous challenges.
At the outset I want to state three limitations of this narrative. First, prominent left-wing student organisations worked with clandestine communist groups. These groups started working as secret groups after the Communist Party of Pakistan (CPP) was banned in 1954 on charges of allegedly hatching a conspiracy to overthrow the civilian government with the help of military officers. Due to the secret nature of the work, the communist groups working behind the front organisations avoided keeping written records of internal decisions, discussions and deliberations. The account presented here can therefore only be compared with press coverage, publications of these groups and other public documents in order to verify their accuracy. This narrative will thus be my personal account based on my memory of participating in specific events, observations of activities, description of second-hand account of events, as well as my personal interpretations of the things that took place. I have no record at hand to verify certain names, dates and locations. It would be the job of an analyst to verify and analyse the material presented here. Secondly, I am talking about things that happened 30-50 years ago. So there is the possibility of forgetting or mixing up certain facts. Among the readers, whosoever was witness to these events and activities is welcome to correct me, preferably by presenting evidence to support the difference of views. The purpose of this narration is to present as accurately as possible the activities and events that took place during those years to save a substantive body of oral knowledge before it becomes extinct and draw lessons for the current phase of struggle in a much more complex and rapidly changing global arena. Finally, it is a narration of events in hindsight, as I see things now. Things might have seemed different to all of us at that time. It is therefore not the only word or final word on those years. We need more and different narrations, because as Hegel said, “The truth is whole.”
Last but not least, we need to have a fresh look at the hot days of our activism as the global agenda has changed in many ways from the climate of change in post-colonial days to the issue of climate change in these times of a fractured global economic order.
Call for a Revolutionary Student Vanguard
Pakistan’s first military dictator General Ayub Khan planned to celebrate 1968 as marking a decade of development. This was his tenth year in power, marked by rapid industrial development financed by lavish US aid. During these ten years, Pakistan emerged as a shining example of take-off for third world economies, with a high rate of economic growth, urbanisation, export earnings and import substitution. However, this growth was accompanied by rural-urban, regional and class inequalities. The architect of Pakistan’s economic planning, Dr Mahbub ul Haq, was so dismayed with the results of his own strategy of financing growth by creating income inequalities that halfway through this decade of development he exposed the fact that just 22 families had expropriated enormous national wealth into their hands. It was then that revolutionary poet Habib Jalib wrote his famous poem Bees gharane hein abad aur karoron hein nashad (Twenty families are enjoying prosperity and millions are living in misery).
I was then a high school student and personally heard Habib Jalib singing that poem in Qasim Bagh Stadium in Multan during Mohtarma Fatima Jinnah’s election campaign. Mohtarma made a very powerful and defiant speech. For the first time in my life, I heard someone saying before a large gathering: “Ayub Khan, tum ghaddar hai, ghaddar hai” (Ayub Khan, you are a traitor, a traitor). Usurpation of national wealth by these 22 families and a truce with India after the brief but intense 1965 war – negotiated with the mediation of the Soviet Union and perceived by Pakistanis as a ‘humiliating agreement’ – became the rallying cry of the mass movement against his rule in 1968. Mass demonstrations and marches of students, workers, lawyers, journalists, religious leaders and political opposition parties started in the big urban centres of Dhaka, Karachi, Lahore, Multan, Rawalpindi, and then spread to the small towns and rural areas. Protesters were calling for the repeal of the Press Ordinance, the University Ordinance, Basic Democracy, and a host of other repressive laws and discriminatory economic policies. All the political parties, left, right and centre, were united in their struggle to overthrow Ayub Khan’s rule.
These mass demonstrations eventually dislodged Ayub Khan. Students were a very important part of this movement. Many students lost their lives during protest marches, which fuelled anger and a sense of vengeance against the brutality of Ayub’s regime. Soon after the fall of Ayub Khan, the honeymoon period between left and right wing students struggling for democratic rule came to an end. Students played a very important role in the opposition politics because it was very easy to inspire, motivate and mobilise them for mass protests, given the relative inexperience and weak mass following of opposition parties. Democratic opposition included nationalist, socialist and religious parties and their student wings, as well as their allies among writers, journalists, trade unions and the urban and rural poor.
Since the CPP was banned in Pakistan in 1954 after the trial of communist leaders for allegedly hatching a conspiracy to overthrow the government by a military takeover, Pakistani communists carried out their organisational and political work through democratic and nationalist parties, trade unions, writers, journalists, students, lawyers and peasant organisations. These outfits were called the ‘open front’ of the ‘mother party’, and clandestine communist groups were considered the ‘core groups’. These latter groups assumed the role of recruiting party cadres, providing them ideological education, carrying out class analysis, designing political strategy and providing the party line to the open fronts to carry out resistance under changing political circumstances.
During this time of turbulence, I enrolled as a student of B.A. Honours (Economics) at PU. The Honours programme had started one year earlier, and young students enrolled in the programme were actively participating in mass protests. Soon after we joined the classes, the university was closed for an indefinite period due to student demonstrations. When the classes resumed, various left-wing groups started initial contacts to form left-wing student organisations. My major was Economics, but in my Economics, English and Statistics classes, I interacted with students from other departments. In one of these joint classes, I met Shuja ul Haq, and we became very close friends due to our common interest in poetry and literature and an inclination to laugh loudly at the absurdities of life – including our own absurdities. Shuja introduced me to Arif Raja and Manzur Ejaz, and we started talking about revolutionary politics. These initial conversations got a mixed response from different students. Shuja and I initially had pangs of guilt about getting involved because we thought that our parents had sent us to Lahore to study, not to indulge in politics. Finally, our idealism overcame our middle-class guilt, and we decided to become part of the effort.
Professor Aziz ud Din was head of a clandestine communist group in Lahore commanding considerable influence among students, trade unions and intelligentsia. His younger brother Tariq was also an economics major, and we soon became good friends. When I tried to ‘recruit’ him he did not show much interest. He told me that his brother had once asked him, “Do you consider yourself to be one of those who live for themselves, or one of those who lives for others?” His reply was tart and simple; he did not belong to either of those categories. But there were many whose eyes would twinkle upon listening to talk about a utopia where everyone would be equal to everyone else. We soon got a sizeable group interested. We therefore planned to call a meeting to discuss the formation of a revolutionary student organisation. Our thinking was that nationalism would be much closer to the hearts of many students than socialism, and we should therefore strive for connecting to their nationalist aspirations as a strategy for organisation building. That is how the name Nationalist Students Organisation was selected for the new left-wing student platform.
Student Movement in Punjab
The communist movement in West Pakistan had three major setbacks in its early years: migration of the most experienced and active Hindu and Sikh leaders to India after the Partition, reverse migration of a second generation of communist intellectuals and leaders to India due to a crackdown after the Rawalpindi Conspiracy case, and the imposition of a ban on the CPP (1954). Due to the compulsions of clandestine work, low level of experience and limited leadership capability, the communist movement split into small groups. The Sino-Soviet split in the global communist movement, political immaturity and narrow ideological interpretations further enhanced these rivalries. There were fierce ideological divisions prevalent between these groups.
Soon after the overthrow of Ayub Khan, hostilities between Jamaa’t-e-Islami’s student wing Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba (IJT) and left wing student organisations came into the open, and Jamaa’t’s leader Maulana Maudoodi threatened to turn Pakistan into a killing field of communists like Indonesia in 1965. This threat to massacre communists was accompanied by the formation of the Democratic Youth Force (DYF) in Lahore to subdue Jamaa’t’s opponents. In one incident DYF goons attacked socialist workers on charges of burning the Quran at Nila Gumbad. Under these circumstances various left wing groups started forming or activating their student fronts. Left wing political parties or groups in Punjab included pro-Soviet National Awami Party (NAP) Wali Khan group and pro-Chinese NAP Bhashani group, which later split into the Socialist Party (SP) led by C R Aslam and the Mazdoor Kissan Party (MKP) led by Ishaq Mohammad. In Lahore there was a study group called Halqa-e-Mutalia-e-Tareekh (Circle for Studying History), which later on split into Aziz ud Din and Aziz ul Haq-led pro-Chinese communist circles. Professor Mubarak Haider formed a separate Maoist group.
At this time many student groups were already in existence. Amongst these groups was the National Students Federation (NSF) represented in Punjab by Hussam ul Haq, a whole time worker of the pro-Chinese Tufail Abbas group. He was a fiery speaker and a big time networker. Another prominent leader of NSF was Suhail Humayun. The NSF had the advantage of being recognised as the sole representative of left wing student politics, and was led at the national level by iconic student leader Mairaj Mohammad Khan.
The SP had formed the Socialist Students Organisation (SSO) led by Tanveer Ali and Adam Nayyar of Engineering University. The NAP-Wali’s student wing in Punjab was called Punjab Students Union (PUNJSU), which believed in secularism, the rights of nationalities, and a greater share of smaller nationalities in the power structure. They believed in struggling for socialism through peaceful parliamentary politics. It was led by Hafiz Mahmood, Mohammad Ashraf and Zahid Hussain. The MKP had formed Nawa-e-Talaba (Student’s Voice), and at that time perhaps student leader Iftikhar Ahmad (known in close circles as Iftikhar Fitna) was one of its leading lights. Other leaders of Nawa-e-Talaba were Ijaz Saifi and Hamraz Ahsan.
Some of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) followers formed the People’s Students Federation (PSF), but they had little presence in Lahore at that time. Ahmad Zoy was one of Mubarak Haider group’s members who bitterly parted ways with the group due to its naïve views on armed struggle and revolutionary art. Later on, Professor Mubarak Haider continued his student politics through the PSF, which had a sizeable following in Multan. Its leaders included Aziz Niazi, Mehboob Mehdi, Tanvir Ahmad, Mubarak and Nasir Zaidi.
Professor Aziz ud Din’s group, which acquired fame as the Professor’s Group (PG), decided to create its own students’ wing. At this point Aziz ud Din and Aziz ul Haq worked together. The two separated later on due to a difference of opinion on the PPP, army action in Bangladesh, and the nature of revolutionary politics. The PG accused Aziz ul Haq of being a Trotskyite, former member of a Canadian Trotskyite group Chingari (The Spark – exact translation of Iskra) and an adventurist. After parting ways with the Professor’s Group, Aziz ul Haq formed the Young People’s Front (YPF).
At this time there were numerous student leaders and activists who were not committed to any party. They included the likes of Zafaryab Ahmad, Rao Tariq Latif, Shahid Nadeem, Mohammad Sami, Iqbal Butt, Rashid Butt and many others. Some of the progressive students who wanted expression of their revolutionary ideals through literature formed Nai Log (New People). Its founders included Manzur Ijaz, Shahid Nadeem and Faheem Jozi. A couple of years later a centrist nationalist organisation called Students Own Power (SOP) was formed and led by Jameel Umar and patronised by Professor Javed Kamran Bashir, fondly called JKB by his friends and followers.
In the 1960s Lahore used to be the centre of radical student politics in Punjab. PU, with its strength of 7,000 students and numerous affiliated colleges, was the centre of Lahore’s politics. It was expected that the ban imposed on student unions by Ayub Khan would soon be lifted, and the PU Student’s Union election would be the first and most important battlefield for various contenders for student leadership. The PPP’s movement against Ayub Khan had created tens of thousands of young new entrants in politics. These young activists were seen as potential cadre for the communist movement, and all the left wing groups wanted to harvest this new crop of idealists. Aziz ud Din justified the creation of a separate group and a student wing on the grounds that politics based on secularism, the rights of nationalities, and peaceful non-capitalist transition was not in line with Pakistani reality. He disagreed with other Maoist left wing groups on the grounds that they lacked commitment, discipline and ideological clarity; they only paid lip service to the revolution and could raise a storm in a tea cup at best. He did not see much hope in forming an alliance with these groups because he thought that zero plus zero plus zero is equal to zero. He was among the intellectuals who did not oppose the PPP but wanted to use it as a platform for promoting communist ideology and to provide a recruiting ground for a revolutionary cadre. The PG made an informal alliance with the PPP’s left-wing leader Shaikh Rasheed to make inroads into the party.
Formation of a radical student organisation Nationalist Students Organisation (NSO): Lawrence Garden Meeting, November 1969
As there were so many left wing student organisations in Lahore at the end of the anti-Ayub movement, it was very difficult to justify the creation of a new student organisation. It also created confusion among sympathisers of the left in deciding who to support. Professor Aziz ud Din therefore decided that all the existing left wing student activists should be invited to a joint meeting to seek consensus on a joint programme, or to form a joint organisation. If a joint organisation emerged, then the PG could have considerable influence over it; if not, then creation of a separate organisation could be justified. It was a heads you lose, tails I win situation. A meeting for this purpose was convened in November 1969 in Lawrence Gardens, Lahore. Some of those who attended the meeting included Imtiaz Alam, Manzur Ejaz, Zaman Khan, Arif Raja, Shuja ul Haq, Faheem Jozi, Mohammad Ashraf, Zahid Hussain, Ahmad Zoy, Mohammad Sami, Iftikhar Ahmad, Iqbal Butt and myself. A heated debate took place on socialist politics, role of students in revolutionary politics, and the need to form a united student front, but no consensus could be developed on any issue.
A 12-13 point manifesto prepared by the founders of a new outfit was presented for forming a joint organisation. The name proposed for this organisation was Nationalist Students Organisation (NSO). The manifesto called for mobilising students to end feudalism, crony capitalism and imperialist domination in Pakistan, in collaboration with the workers and peasants. It also gave a call to express solidarity with the anti-imperialist freedom movements across the world. Activists of other left wing organisations objected to the use of the word ‘Nationalist’, as well as one clause in the manifesto that called for the struggle to achieve equality and justice in line with Islamic principles of egalitarianism. In a meeting the next day, Imtiaz Alam was elected the first Chief Convener of NSO. Manzur Ejaz was elected as convener of the PU New Campus Unit. It was decided to immediately start membership and a publicity campaign for the organisation.
The Why and How of NSO
One big challenge confronting NSO was to justify its separate existence and show the difference in its style of politics compared to other left wing organisations. NSO used the strategy of sustained personal contacts, study circles, high profile propaganda and a display of power to show its superiority over other organisations. For winning support of neutral left wing students in meetings held with other left organisations, NSO used its lobbying tactics to lethal impact. Professor Aziz believed that decisions were made outside of the meetings, not inside. The art of lobbying was very effectively used to achieve this outcome.
Lobbying meant that before participating in any meeting, an NSO activist should individually meet as many invitees coming to the meeting as possible and win their support for NSO’s stand on the issues to be discussed during the meeting. During the discussion on issues, personal commitments and capacities of activists from other fraternal organisations were also brought under scrutiny to undermine their support. This gave NSO an advantage in creating a supportive atmosphere for its party line and getting decisions made in its favour. Critical comments on leaders and activists of other organisations could range from polemics on their standpoint to character assassination, and had to be handled very carefully to prevent the degeneration of political differences into a personality conflict. Most of the time NSO’s rival student organisations were caught unprepared in the joint meetings, and NSO could easily get decisions made in its favour. This was especially true in the selection of joint left candidates for PU Student’s Union elections. I shall give further details of the NSO’s edge in election politics in my account of the first three elections, when I was closely associated with NSO’s election campaigns.
Political Strategy and Style of Work of NSO
The PG aimed to work for the people’s democratic revolution in Pakistan. Pakistan’s economic system was considered to be semi-feudal and semi-colonial in nature. Under this system a coalition of the compradore bourgeoisie, feudal lords and imperialist interests dominated and exploited industrial workers, peasants, women and the smaller nationalities. Revolution had to be waged by a coalition of workers, peasants and other revolutionary sections of society. The people’s democratic revolution would not lead to a complete abolition of private property as envisaged under a socialist revolution. Instead it would nationalise all foreign and national capital in the industrial, commercial and business sectors, and in agriculture big landholdings would be distributed among sharecroppers on the principle of land to the tiller (jehra wahway ohee khawey). Every citizen would get the right to a job, free education and free access to healthcare facilities. The state would take responsibility for meeting the basic needs of the citizens through central planning. Determination of wages and prices would not be left to the mercy of market forces.
Since all these changes were against the interests of the business and landowning classes, they would not voluntarily relinquish their control of the means of production owned by them. This would require the use of force to capture power and demolish the existing state machinery. This change could take place through revolutionary armed struggle led by the working class and supported by the peasantry. Militarily the struggle had to begin in rural areas first. This was the major lesson learned by the Chinese Communist Party after the massacre of workers by the Kuomintang in Shanghai in 1927.
The principles of armed revolution through guerilla warfare were laid out by Mao Tse Tung in his military works, advocating the setting up of guerilla bases in the rural areas in order to spread thin the state’s power, and then effectively combat and annihilate it. Mao summed up guerilla warfare in four simple maxims: when the enemy attacks we retreat, when the enemy camps we harass him, when the enemy retreats we chase him, when the enemy flees we annihilate him. This was possible because the enemy (a traditional army) was visible, and the guerillas invisible. Due to their political work, they were supported by the people, and provided cover by the people as well. However, it was not as simple as sipping a cup of tea.
The revolutionary struggle of the working class had to be led by a revolutionary Marxist-Leninist-Maoist party, in this case the PG. It had to work at a mass level through its open fronts and raise revolutionary cadres through open front activity. The NSO’s founder Professor Aziz ud Din believed that only five percent of people on the left and right spectrum of politics were committed followers of their political ideologies. The remaining 95 percent kept wavering between these two tendencies. The ultimate success of any ideological politics depended on winning over these uncommitted people to one’s side.
For winning over the support of the 95 percent uncommitted masses, a revolutionary party needed to undertake three main activities: i) discovering, educating and inducting cadres from students, peasants and the working class to form a revolutionary party; ii) carrying out mass propaganda through public gatherings and rallies, agitations and strikes, press coverage and production of revolutionary art and literature, and iii) carrying out armed insurrection against the state at an appropriate moment. All existing mass parties of the left and right were considered bourgeois parties, working for a bourgeois democracy. All clandestine communist groups other than the PG were considered to be paying lip service to revolution or compromising with bourgeois parties in one way or the other.
The PG interacted with existing mass parties, especially the PPP, only to recruit cadres and propagate its ideology and demands among the PPP voters. Within the PPP the PG allied with leaders and workers of the Shaikh Rasheed Group, then known as Baba-e-Socialism (Father of Socialism), within the rank and file of the PPP Punjab. The PG also inducted many of its student activists from the PPP.
An important strategy of the NSO was to use or create important political events to showcase its political dissent and numerical strength, and to thus mobilise support for its cause. The mother party leaders had articulated the correct vision, role and strategy of the student front, the NSO, in detail. This vision and strategy was shared with trustworthy, committed, disciplined and ideologically well-educated members of the NSO. These activists were inducted into a secret core group called the Student’s Bureau. I headed the Student’s Bureau during its first incarnation from 1970 to 1973. Some of the other members were Iftikhar Ahmad, Aurangzeb Syed, Asghar Ali Shirazi, Masood Mirza, Munawwar Hayat, Zahid Islam, Nasim Qaisrani and perhaps Qasim Anwer. Some members stayed for a shorter duration and then lost interest. Imtiaz Alam was the open front leader as first Chief Convener. Members of the Student’s Bureau were advised to keep a low profile, but they carried out major tasks like writing, printing and distributing handbills, pamphlets and posters; wall chalking; recruiting new members; fund raising; mobilising students to join rallies, public meetings and protest marches, and conducting study circles.
Open front leaders and candidates selected for the student union hardly knew about the organisational status of the Student’s Bureau members who worked in a very disciplined way to get their decisions approved in the open organisations’ meetings. It was a very challenging task but was well performed by the Bureau members. This style of work gave the NSO an edge over other organisations of the left due to superb mass mobilisation, propaganda work and show of strength.
The NSO had little following among female students. The most active female member of the NSO was Nayyer Abbbasi from the Journalism Department. The most gifted NSO agitator was Imtiaz Alam, and the most talented debater was Munawwar Hayat. There were many promising intellectuals in support of the NSO, like Ishtiaq Ahmad (currently Pofessor Emeritus in Stockholm), but they were considered merely intellectuals, as they did not participate in the struggle on the ground. Participation in student union elections was the key political activity, but agitation and propaganda was equally important. It was through agitations, strikes and protests that the NSO and other left wing student groups made their mark on the political scene, and inspired others to defy authority.
Professor Aziz ud Din thought that student politics could perform two important functions: spreading revolutionary consciousness and engaging the class enemy in a fight that it would want to avoid. Students could serve the cause of revolution by becoming a continuous source of nuisance for the ruling classes. The NSO was formed to carry out this historic duty. Parallel to the Student’s Bureau, a Peasant Bureau and a Labour Bureau were also created. The Peasant Bureau was headed by Professor Hamid Qizilbash, and the Labour Bureau by Professor Khalid Mahmood. These Bureaus did not interact directly. But the activities of the open front organisations were coordinated through the leaders of these Bureaus.
The NSO’s strategy for student engagement in revolutionary politics consisted of two parallel sets of activities, public outreach and cadre making. Public outreach was carried out through a series of gradual steps consisting of whispering campaigns, poster mounting and wall chalking campaigns, and corner meetings culminating in big meetings and processions. During a whispering campaign, burning current issues were discussed in informal encounters with students in campus corridors, cafeterias, tea houses and classes to arouse their sentiments against acts of injustice and class oppression, and to prick their consciences to act. Based on favourable responses to whispering campaigns, corner meetings were organised at the department level to speak about the issues and mobilise support for bigger gatherings and protest marches. The purpose of a gradual build up was to test the water at every stage and move to the next stage when conditions were ripe, so as to avoid failure and loss of face.
During the process of outreach and propaganda work, ideologically inclined and politically motivated students were discovered and invited to join the NSO as members. Consenting activists were asked to regularly attend study circles and carry out various educational, organisational and propaganda tasks. Activists with a high level of commitment, ideological clarity and discipline were inducted into the core group. Most of the core members were asked to keep a low profile to maintain secrecy, survive during a crackdown, and effectively carry out party work. Ideological education in the study circles covered many topics: dialectical materialism, historical materialism, class analysis of Pakistani society, analysis of various political parties, the October Revolution and the Chinese Revolution, scientific socialism, deviationist tendencies in the global communist movement, as well as imperialism and proletarian internationalism. A set of primary educational booklets were produced in Urdu, and cadre with a high level of interest were asked to study selected works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Mao Tse-Tung, and other contemporary writers. After covering the basic educational materials, study circles focused on analysis of the current political situation and discussed the party line on current issues.
Lobbying, as mentioned earlier, was an extremely important tool in dealing with other leftist groups, controlling the open front leadership, and resolving inner party disputes. The use of lobbying combined with a rigid belief in following the ‘scientific’ political line and treating the followers of the ‘unscientific’ or bourgeois outlook with deep seated ‘class hatred’, merciless opposition and utter contempt led to lethal outcomes in many cases. It created a bigoted, intolerant and narrow mindset that bred snobbery, intolerance of a difference of opinion, contempt for finding a negotiated settlement and led to fragmentation of the PG into splinter groups. It created a highly exaggerated self-image of the party and party workers, and self-glorification of a bigoted cadre. Although the so-called party line was based on ‘democratic centralism’, dehumanisation, demonisation and character assassination of the opposite opinion was a common practice. However, lobbying served as a powerful tool in controlling the open front and marginalising the fellow left wing organisations. This practice was genuinely accepted as a noble political practice, because of the belief that ‘the end justifies the means’. Since all of this intolerance was practiced for the greater common good and freedom of the working class, in the ultimate analysis it was considered a good practice.
Two examples are worth mentioning here. In the 1973 PU Student’s Union election, the NSO formed a joint front with the NSF. The NSF fielded Raja Anwar as their presidential candidate. The Joint Election Committee was headed by me (NSO) and Javed Ali Khan (NSF). The NSO lobbied so successfully that Basit Waheed – an unknown quantity in student politics – was picked up as the presidential candidate and Raja Anwar – the most prominent and firebrand leader of the anti-Ayub student movement – as the vice presidential candidate. Basit Waheed’s political acumen can be gauged from the fact that during one of his election campaign speeches, when one student asked him, “Why do you say, Asia is Red?” he answered: “Because Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba says “Asia is Green.”
Similarly, when my successor as Chief Convener was to be elected, all the NSO conveners and activists from various districts were invited to attend the convention. Some of the delegates from Multan stayed in my room that night. Searching for a blank paper in the drawer of my table, they found a paper with the names of nominees for various positions. A fiercely contested election took place the next day. At this time a split of the Student’s Bureau from the PG had already taken place. The rebel group headed by me nominated Asghar Ali Shirazi as the new Chief Convener. In the morning, all the names mentioned in the rebel group’s list won, and their opponents – as prominent as Zafaryab Ahmad and Qasim Khan – lost the election. The use of lobbying skills taught by Aziz ud Din Ahmad were so effectively used by his protégés against his own political moves, that it can be compared only with the tradition in Multan where the Shagird’s (student’s) Tazia (a replica of the tomb of the Prophet’s grandson Hussain) is always larger than the Ustad’s (teacher’s) Tazia during the Moharram procession.
Lobbying is not an unfair practice in politics, but it was used in a way that weakened the healthy practice of democratic difference of opinion preached by Chairman Mao Tse-Tung in On the correct handling of contradictions among the people, followed as a guiding document by the PG. A literary, subtle, extremely insightful and critical commentary on the NSO’s style of work can be found in Najm Hosian Syed’s play Haar dey phul (flowers of summer). An interesting account of the style of work of the MKP, PPP and other leftist groups, and the mystery of a leading student activist Taqi Nayab’s disappearance during the Ziaul Haq regime is given in Anwer Chaudhry’s Punjabi novelet Sanga. The following three works, Izzat Majid’s poem Sajna Meray Naal Jhoot Bol (My friend speak lies to me), and my poem Dhol Sajan (My love), both published in Rut Lekha, as well as Fauzia Rafique’s interview Professor Jamid, Majmood say Mulaqat (A meeting with Professor Blockhead), published in the monthly Dhanak, are also insightful commentaries on this style of work. The power and beauty of the positive aspect of this style of work was aesthetically described in Professor Khalid Mahmood’s only short story that he wrote in Urdu. It was a great work of fiction. He handed it to me, and Fauzia Rafique borrowed it from me to get it published in Dhanak. It was never published. Perhaps Fauzia lost the script.
Study Circles
During 1969 to 1974, I was associated with the PG, and from 1974 to 1978 with the MKP and briefly with the fictitious Spartacist Tendencies of the Fourth International from January to September 1979. In Marxist tradition every Marxist group or party considered it necessary to educate its cadre in Marxist philosophy, Marxist ideology, Political Economy and the political teachings on the nature of the capitalist system, the nature of revolution, and the revolutionary party to lead that revolution. Some important elements of this education were: i) the Marxist claim to be the only ‘truly scientific’ method to study society; ii) the understanding of human history as a history of class struggle; iii) the understanding of human consciousness as class consciousness; iv) the understanding of class conflict as a conflict for the appropriation of surplus value generated by the working class; v) the understanding of surplus value generated under capitalism as being due to the conversion of human labour into a commodity; vi) the inevitability of violent conflict to overthrow the capitalist class and its allies, and vii) the understanding of Imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism.
For political education, preliminary and higher level study circles were held. In both types of study circles, imported, translated and locally created works were read and discussed. The NSO held study circles for newly inducted members, as well as for industrial workers and peasants in specific areas. I am giving below an account of some of the works that were studied in the groups mentioned above. The purpose of these study groups was not only to raise the political consciousness of the political worker, but to change their world outlook, and also to equip them with thinking tools to analyze and change the social reality around them. It provided leftist political workers with a powerful world view. A whole series of works were produced in this regard, from the most sophisticated to the most popular and mundane. Mao Tse-Tung paid special attention to producing popular works and simple formulae for the easy comprehension of common workers. For example, in one of his writings he said, “If everything else fails, and you cannot decide what is politically correct, do the opposite of what your enemy is doing; that is politically correct.” It is so intriguing to note that for many of the students of ‘Scientific Marxism’, Marxism and Science became new dogmas to be defended against old religious dogmas.
Some of the works studied under various headings in the NSO are given below. There were variations in the order of topics and the specific works read, but a standard ‘course’ was supposed to cover what follows below. There is room for addition, variation and more precision here, but it gives a backdrop to how left wing thinking developed in its formative years. There were very few in my knowledge who had studied most of the original works, especially key works like Capital, The German Ideology, Materialism and Empirio-criticism, etc. Most of the Marxist thinkers were read through second hand popular works. There were very few works produced on the basis of original analysis of local conditions.
Historical Materialism
Beginners:
Samaj ka irtiqa aur Insan bara kaisay bana (Society and Man’s development); Tabqat aur tabqati kashmakash (Classes and class struggle): Communist Manifesto, On the Paris Commune (1871).
Advanced Learners:
Historical Materialism (Maurice Cornforth), Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (Fredrick Engels).
Dialectical Materialism
Beginners:
On Contradiction (Mao Tse-Tung); On the correct handling of contradictions among the people (Mao Tse-Tung); Theses on Feuerbach (Marx).
Advanced Learners:
Dialectical Materialism (Maurice Cornforth).
Communist ideology
Beginners:
Where do Correct Ideas Come From? Serve the People, In Memory of Norman Bethune (story of a Canadian doctor who selflessly served the Red Army during the civil war in China, displaying the spirit of proletarian internationalism); The Foolish Old Man Who Removed the Mountains and Learn From the People (these are among the five most frequently read works of Mao; very simple, lucid and motivational; good teachings on characteristics of a committed party worker, and style of work).
Advanced Learners:
Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (V I Lenin), Peasant Movement in Hunan, Analysis of Classes in Chinese Society (Mao Tse-Tung).
Revisionism and Social Imperialism (Chinese publications, articles in Peking Review).
Recommended reading
Maulana Maududi key Tasawwurat (Maulana Maududi’s Thoughts) (Dada Ferozuddin Mansoor).
Political writings
A few days in Srikakolam.
Party Work
What Is To Be Done? (V I Lenin), Selected Works of Mao, Mao’s military writings.
Party Literature
Dehqan; party pamphlets.
Party literature
Party’s weekly Newsletter; Hasan Nasir Ki Shahadat (Hasan Nasir’s Martyrdom) (Ishaq Mohammad); writings of Feroz Ahmad and Ijaz Ahmad; Works by Amilcar Cabral on discovery of roots, and Samora Machel on the Woman Question.
Recommended literature
Pakistan Forum, Ed. Feroz Ahmad.
Permanent Revolution (Leon Trotsky); Reform or Revolution? (Rosa Luxemburg).
General readings and popular works
These were general works popular among many Marxist groups, not prescribed for any study circle. Al Fatah, Monthly Review, Wretched of the Earth (Franz Fanon); The Prince (Gramsci); Mazi Kay Mazar (Tombs of the Past), Musa say Marx Tak (From Moses to Marx) (Sibt-e-Hasan); Company Kee Hakoomat (The Company’s Government) (Bari Alig); Pakistan Key Ja’ali Hukmaran Tabqay (Pakistan’s False Ruling Classes) (Dr Mubashar Hasan); Punjab Ki Siasi Tehreekain (Punjab’s Political Movements) (Abdullah Malik).
Literary works
Necessity of Art (Ernst Fischer); Illusion and Reality (Christopher Caudwell); Mother (Gorky); fiction works by Chekhov, Dostoyevsky, Lu Hsun, Krishan Chandar, Bedi, Minto, Shaukat Siddiqi, poetry by Faiz, Ahmad Nadeem Qasmi, Habib Jalib, Sahir Ludhianvi, plays by Ishaq Mohammad. Punjabi works by Najm Hosain Syed, Mushtaq Sufi, Manzur Ejaz and others came in vogue much later.
(To be continued)