My life and struggle – VIII

Peasant Warriors

Fayyaz Baqir

In 1975 during one of my visits to Lahore from Dera Ismail Khan (DIK), I was approached by Imtiaz Alam and Professor Zafar Ali Khan to join the Mazdoor Kissan Party (Worker Peasant Party). After leaving the National Students Organisation (NSO), I had decided not to join any political group or party. The time, energy and restrictions imposed by working in a party felt very suffocating to me. We had a long discussion, but the gentlemen asked me to give it a try to see if it suits me. I agreed. I was asked to help the Mazdoor Kissan Party’s (MKP’s) work on two levels: lead the core group behind the student wing of the MKP, Inqilabi Mahaz-e-Talaba (Revolutionary Student Front), and work with the peasants and workers’ groups of local chapters of the MKP in DIK, Bhakkar, Darya Khan and Mianwali.

I was assigned to write the manifesto of Inqilabi Mahaz-e-Talaba (IMT) in Punjabi, participate in party study circles in my area, and attend public events in various areas of Punjab. During the course of the next four years, I participated in public events in local and provincial peasant conferences in Bahawalnagar, Wan Bhacharan and Vehari. I also joined the MKP delegation to Sindh to attend a Sindhi Hari Conference. The IMT manifesto that I wrote was very well received, thoroughly discussed in inner circles, and published. There was a very dynamic and vibrant IMT group in the National College of Arts (NCA) consisting of Taqi Nayab, Shahbaz Khan, Afzal Malik, Tasneem Rizvi, Ghulam Nabi, and many others. The IMT worked both at the cultural and political level among the students. Among our close comrades outside the NCA was Arshad Mir, who was a student at the Oriental College at that time, and was a great poet. I still remember a couplet written by Arshad Mir.

Farishton Ne Jisay Sajda Kiya Tha

Woh Kal Footpath per Murda Para Tha

(The being before whom the angels prostrated, was lying dead on the sidewalk yesterday).

The NCA college hostel was located near the MAO college building, and we used to hang out there at a roadside dhaba (tea shop) for Bun Pluster (bun fried in the egg) lunch or tea. A regular guest at this dhaba used to be Dr Saleem Wahid Saleem. Dr Saleem used to spend his entire day at the dhaba and was offered free tea and meals by the owner with utmost love and affection. Dr Saleem used to keep shouting meaningful and meaningless phrases, some of which cannot be reproduced here. He would very often say pagal awazain (mad voices). People who knew him narrated that he was a gifted poet, and at some point in time was associated with the Communist Party. He was arrested and tortured and lost his senses due to the unbearable torture. The NCA students used to talk to him and at times enjoyed his beautifully articulated obscene remarks about the lust for accumulating wealth and power. We had two hangouts for meeting political activists, poets and artists: the canteen outside the MAO college, and the MKP office in Begumpura near Mozang Road. Our close circle at this time included Khalid Mahmood, Taqi Nayab, Tasneem Rizvi, Shahbaz Khan and Arshad Mir.

Arshad Mir wrote in Punjabi as well, and so did Mian Saleem Jahangir, District President of the MKP, and a renowned lawyer. I still remember his inspirational lines:

Raat Pichley Peher toon langh rai hey

Lali fajar de khanb khilardi pai

Dulle Bhatti de anakh de warsaan noo

Lok lehr bohey wajaan mardi pai

Ghera be nyai de burjiaan noon aj than than utte pey gia hey

Kothi dharkadi pai pair thirkdey pey

Toly zalman di ji hardi pai

(It is the last part of the night; red hues of the morning are spreading their wings; the wave of mass uprising is knocking at the door of the descendants of Dulla Bhatti’s honour; the small towers of injustice have been encircled at every point now; the oppressors’ hearts are trembling, their feet are shaking; their band is losing heart).

The MKP’s style of work, understanding of ground reality and outreach to the people was far superior to the Professor’s Group (PG), although cynics like Allama Siddiq Azhar in MKP used to say, “Major Ishaq is a good man, even though he is not a Marxist.” The MKP published a regular party journal edited by Faisalabad’s Manzoor Niazi. This circular published MKP’s official line on various political issues. MKP’s literature included books like Hasan Nasir Ki Shahadat and Punjabi plays like Musalli and Quqnus (Phoenix) written by Major Ishaq, as well as many other publications on Pakistan’s political dynamics. The MKP also welcomed Feroz Ahmad and Aijaz Ahmad into its ranks for initiating dialogue with its cadre on current issues.

The MKP claimed to have the capacity to wage armed struggle and flexed its armed muscles in Hashtnagar (eight villages) against the local chiefs (Khwaneen). It was a struggle against land owners, not the state. Critics of the MKP blamed it for staging this armed conflict in connivance with the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) government to twist the arm of the National Awami Party (NAP) leadership. The Federal Minister of the PPP government, Mairaj Mohammad Khan, especially came to address a big public rally in the area to support the cause of MKP ‘warriors’. The MKP no doubt weakened the power of the Khans in the Hashtnagar area, claiming that 200 of its workers sacrificed their lives in the fight against the feudal lords. For some of them Faiz Sahib’s line, Hum jo tareek rahon mein marey gai (we who were killed in dark alleys), is absolutely true. One of them was a peasant named Dur Muhammad from Bangla Ichha Rahim Yar Khan (RYK), who was hung upside down on a tree and burnt to death by the ‘noble political and spiritual elite’ of the area. However, this individual heroism did not transform into collective relentless rebellion.

In Punjab the MKP’s big asset was a large group of brilliant, fearless and seasoned workers in the rural areas. However, their work could not consolidate itself into a mass struggle. We need more personal and analytical accounts to understand this failure. The MKP’s workers were down to earth and committed, and I will now describe some of my important encounters with them.

Professor Tirmizi issues arrest orders for the Deputy Commissioner

The MKP had a better understanding of Pakistan’s political and cultural reality. They had a well trained and broad-based cadre among peasants and industrial workers and maintained a high profile in national politics. The MKP also commanded 8,000 guns according to its leaders. Yet it was torn apart by inner conflict characteristic of many left-wing parties in Pakistan. At the grassroots level MKP units were engaged in ideological and political education, trade union activities, peasant rights, education reforms, and in places engaged in armed conflict with the local landowners. MKP workers had a high degree of freedom in deciding local priorities and strategies for political action.

When I joined the MKP I was working as a lecturer at Gomal University,DIK. DIK was across the river from Bhakkar and Darya Khan. It was only a distance of 14 miles but the mighty Indus river is split into two main branches here, and the river bed was spread over 12 miles. In summer one had to ride on a steamer, move to a jeep, followed by a motor launch and finally a wagon ride to reach the other bank of the river. All the passengers and their baggage had to be shifted from one transport vehicle to the other throughout the journey. It could take up to three and a half hours to complete the 14 mile trip. In winter a boat bridge was set up, and the steamer ride was replaced by a slow bus ride on the bridge. This was another reason why my colleague Aurangzeb described Dera as situated “in the fourth world”. Natives of Dera said: “People cry when they come to Dera, and also cry when they leave Dera,” adding, “The first time it is due to the hardship of the journey, and the second time it is due to the loss of the bonds of love made in Dera.” I used to make an almost weekly trip for the party meeting across the river.

MKP’s Bhakkar unit was headed by Ustad Ijaz Khan. He was a very soft, caring, well-read, articulate and knowledgeable political worker. He knew the local tradition very well, and effortlessly communicated with friends over political and ideological issues. We had four core members, including a school teacher, a vaccinator, a trade unionist and Ustad Ijaz. The vaccinator used to collect security money from the local market, but after he met Ijaz Khan he was completely transformed and turned into a gentle and conscious political activist. Ijaz Khan had also created a group of sympathisers among the PPP workers and lecturers in the local Government College. One of these lecturers was a famous revolutionary poet and intellectual, Maqsud-ul-Hasan Tirmizi. Tirmizi was a very defiant and outspoken person. During one of the provincial Assembly elections, when he was given magisterial powers, he ordered the arrest of the local Deputy Commissioner (DC) on charges of abetting rigging. The DC had to go into hiding to avoid arrest and embarrassment. After the elections, the DC resumed his duty, and Professor Tirmizi had to go into hiding to sort out the matter. The MKP did not have a big profile in local politics, but the spirit and commitment of its workers and sympathisers made it a source of inspiration for many young people.

We used to meet alternately in Bhakkar and Darya Khan. Ghulam Abbas Shakir was General Secretary of the Workers’ Union of Darya Khan Sugar Mills. He was a sound intellectual, soft spoken, and could easily mix with the people around him. He came from a very humble background and took pride in the way he dealt with the hardships in life. We, along with Ijaz Khan, used to have very long and lively discussions about the local heritage, culture and politics. Both Ijaz Khan and Shakir had unique insights regarding the local and national political landscape. Shakir later went for higher education to Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow. However, he died young, and it was a great loss for his comrades and local communities. All these friends had a great sense of humour since they could laugh at themselves and felt no inhibition in looking at their own goof-ups and follies. This is what distinguished them from the urban snobbish ‘vanguard’. They kept a low profile but were highly respected by the members of the community.

District President of MKP Malik Dost Mohammed Bhachar lived in Wan Bhacharan, and we occasionally held our district level meeting in his village. District organisation meetings were attended by his brother Sher Mohammad, a school teacher Nawaz, and some of our comrades from Bhakkar and Darya Khan. The IMT was led in Mianwali by a college student, Wali Mohammed. Afzal Bangash, General Secretary of MKP, also came there to address a local peasant rally. He effortlessly communicated with the peasants. During the course of his speech, he narrated the event of some mercenary assassins in Charsadda who broke into a house during broad daylight. They feared that their victim’s cries, if heard by outsiders, could lead to their exposure and arrest. To prevent detection of their crime they would turn on the radio and raise its volume. He compared this to what is happening with the peasants. Feudal lords fear that their hue and cry will get them public sympathy, therefore they turn up the radio of Islam so that the peasants’ voices are drowned out by the high volume of pious sermons. He told them that the MKP wants them to continue to raise their voices, and pay no attention to the sermons given in sympathy of their oppressors.

The MKP workers were doing what Afzal Bangash had mentioned in his speech. During 1975-1978 I got the opportunity to meet MKP’s brilliant activists amongst the peasantry and working class; they included Manzoor Bohr from Dera Ghazi Khan and Sufi Sibghat Ullah, Raman, Abdul Waheed, Abdul Qadir and Rahim Bakhsh Jatoi from RYK. Sufi worked among the peasants, and Waheed and Qadir were trade union leaders in Lever Brothers. RYK gave Akram Dhareeja to the workers’ movement in Karachi, and he was joined by Iqbal Niazi from Mianwali and Shafiq Waziri from Bannu. Rahim Bakhsh Jatoi was a talented journalist and had a very vast social network. Another bright and well-read trade unionist from the Saraiki region was Iqbal Bhidwal. MKP Multan was led by Rao Suleman and Vehari by Mira Ijaz Beg. They were all shining stars of the working class movement, but some ill thought out actions by a circle of young leaders brought an unfortunate end to this work. As a result, the MKP split into the MKP and Lok Party. The Lok Party had many young vocal activists but could not go very far. My political association with both these groups ended by1979. However, I would like to say a few words about Sufi Sibghat Ullah, because his spontaneous remarks on some issues give us brilliant insights into progressive political work and show the mental finesse typical of MKP workers.

The inimitable Sufi Sibghatullah

Sufi Sibghatullah was a Leghari Baloch from RYK. He was in his thirties when I met him. He had a big thick beard, a smiling face and soft eyes. He was very intelligent and sharp in dealing with people around him. I enjoyed his encounter with Imtiaz Alam. Many a time he outsmarted Imtiaz with his razor sharp wit. He dealt with the most mundane matters with the same precision and clarity. One of his most amazing feats was successfully fighting through the blockade of his sub-tribe by an armed Hur contingent sent to his village by Makhdoomzada Hasan Mahmood. He was a member of the MKP and used to attend its extremely lengthy meetings on ideological and political issues. Like all practical field workers, he used to go to sleep during lengthy hair-splitting discussions on ideological issues, which seemed to be of no practical consequence to him. I remember how Tariq Latif used to do the same in Labour Bureau meetings. But Tariq was clever, and whenever anyone would nudge him during the meeting to wake up, he would hear and repeat the last sentence, saying, “I know what you are talking about.”

Sufi was a Baloch from a rural area and could not resist going to sleep at sunset, the time when thick ideological discussions would start warming up. This would upset our party intellectual Imtiaz Alam, who would be elaborating on the class nature of the “comprador, dependent, crony bourgeois class’s historic incompetence in dealing with the compulsion of the imperialist oligarchies and their tentacles in the semi-colonial, semi-feudal soil of Pakistan’s alienated ruling classes’ cultural practices under the contemporary alignment of anti-revolutionary forces from a Leninist perspective in the post-colonial arrangement”. Expression of such ideas – and artificially designed Urdu terminology to convey them – used to be lethal for faint hearted students of ‘Marxism’ like Sufi Sibghatullah. Imtiaz once teased him saying, “Sufi, what a committed comrade you are, you go to sleep during the party meetings.” Sufi’s reply was brilliant. He said, “No that is not the case, I can keep awake till the early hours in the morning provided I am doing something interesting.” Sufi was a TV mechanic by profession and loved to do his work. “What do you mean by interesting?” Imtiaz would ask. “Well, when I am doing some repair work at my shop, and I have to diagnose and solve the problem, I keep awake till two or three in the morning at times.” End of the discussion.

On another occasion, Imtiaz gave him a tape recorder to repair. Sufi repaired the tape recorder and demanded Rs 60 for the repair fee when returning the item. “What do you mean?” asked Imtiaz; “it is the Party’s tape recorder.” “If I receive the fee, that will also be spent on the Party, eh,” said Sufi. Imtiaz was speechless. A ‘collegiate’ intellect should never underestimate the folk intellect. A classic encounter took place during a peasant gathering in RYK. Imtiaz made a very elaborate and motivational speech calling on the peasants to raise arms against the local Waderas (feudal lords). When he finished the speech, a peasant stood up and said, “If you want us to take up arms against the Wadera, then I would be right to demand that you should be standing with us shoulder to shoulder when this battle takes place.” Imtiaz tried hard to explain in ‘collegiate’ logic that it is a class war, your war with the feudal lord, you have to fight it, the party cannot be present everywhere. The peasant was confused that ‘advanced consciousness’ is abandoning the ‘backward consciousness’ even before the battle has started. He did not budge from his position and Imtiaz Alam had a hard time getting his point across. At this time Sufi came to Imtiaz’s rescue. He said, “Imtiaz Sahib, you sit down, let me explain the point to him.” Then he addressed the peasant. “Look, my brother, the Party’s job is like the job of a Qazi who performs the wedding ceremony; we have performed your wedding with the ideology; you are the bridegroom; do you want the Qazi to do the job of the bridegroom also?” demanded Sufi. “No, No,” said the peasant. He found even the thought of this possibility very embarrassing. “Now I understand it. We can do it ourselves.”

Sufi meant what he said, and he proved it in his own case. Makhdoomzada Hasan Mahmood was not only a feudal lord, but a spiritual leader in the area where Sufi lived. His peasants believed that Mahkdoom had the power to listen to things that they said to one another in private. They were so terrified of Makhdoom’s worldly and supernatural powers that they would not even listen to a word against him, not even in the privacy of their own homes. Sufi worked on one person at a time. He would take one person into confidence, use some abusive word against the Makhdoom, and then say to him, “Let us see if he finds it out and something horrible happens to you.” Nothing would happen. That way Sufi won the confidence of quite a few people in his tribe and started defying Makhdoom’s directives on small matters. This way he built the confidence of the people to have a showdown with Makhdoom on bigger issues. A point came when Makhdoom thought it necessary to give a big snub to Sufi. He sought the help of Pir Pagara and asked him to send his armed disciples (known as Hurs) to teach Sufi a lesson. The Hurs came and surrounded his hamlet. Sufi lived in a walled compound, so his movements could not be watched. He loudly started instructing his people to take positions at various points, stock ammunition, and be ready for combat. Then he started asking them to move and change their position. In the meanwhile, he had quietly told them to sneak out of the area through an undisclosed hole in the wall. When everybody had left, Sufi followed them. There was a long pause. No further commands were heard from Sufi. For a long time, the Hurs waited for the combat to begin. When they entered the compound, there were no arms, no ammunition, and no fighters; everyone had relocated to a safe place.

Nokhar Peasant Conference – Never fight a losing war

On the question of armed struggle Prof Khalid once quoted Lenin: “A soldier is a peasant in a uniform.” This axiom turned into strategic thinking in Mao Tse Tung Thought. Peasants were going to be the backbone of armed resistance in semi-feudal societies. The PG also started work among the peasantry to ultimately raise an army of rebels against the class system. With reference to the strategy and tactics of guerilla warfare, Azizudin always mentioned the most fundamental principle of strategy: “Never fight a losing war.” I think it was the first principle of warfare and distilled wisdom of entire human history, narrated by all great military thinkers. However, disastrous events at Nokhar revealed that there was an enormous gap between words and deeds, and there were serious problems of leadership in the peasant work. To this day, I have not come across any serious analysis of this event by the PG, except for a sarcastic remark about a very fine member of the PG, Kamil Khan Mumtaz, on Facebook.

The most important challenge before the PG was the converting of peasants into soldiers. At the time of the Nokhar Conference, the time for armed conflict was far in the future. Here the issue was intelligently handling the police. The PG was in the very early stages of organising the peasants. It was very important to understand the nature of this work. As Major Ishaq Mohammad once said, “Peasants are like a heap of potatoes; you need to put them in a sack to help them assert their weight, which is a party’s job. If a party does not work as a sack, then personalities perform this task.” That is why traditional peasant political consciousness revolves around personalities, focusing on great men, or singing the praises of great leaders, great helmsmen, or the Pride of Asia. It does not take political work very far. The PG’s work was beset with a similar problem; it was more akin to the glorifying of peasant virtues like austerity, hard work and walking long distances, whereas the party’s work should be helping peasants overcome their limitations, and most of all their fear of state power. That is how a peasant becomes a soldier. Glorifying virtues of austerity and physical hardship does not help peasants to challenge tyranny.

The dispersal of the entire peasant gathering in Nokhar on the first light baton charge showed that the participants were not prepared to deal with the lowest level of police action. In Nokhar the numerical and muscular strength of the peasant gathering was far greater than that of the police. They lost because of their lack of preparedness, psychological fear, and lack of leadership. I attended the Kissan Conference held by the Awami Tehrik in Bathoro in January 1976, the MKP Kissan Conference in Vehari, and many other small conferences in rural areas; I never saw anything similar happening anywhere else.

Nokhar is situated in the middle farmer district of Hafizabad. There were no big feudal lords opposing peasant politics. The person having an issue with this Conference was the Governor of Punjab, Mustafa Khar. He did not want any show of force by the PG in this area. He sent instructions to the local administration for a showdown with the Conference organisers. Most of the senior leaders were in attendance. Before the baton charge, the police alerted the organisers that if the Conference was not wound up, they will resort to a baton charge. I clearly remember that when this message was conveyed to the main organiser, he very confidently replied: “If they dare to enter the tent our workers will throw them on the ground and trample them under their feet.” This seemed a very exaggerated statement to me. I was standing next to my cousin Barkat, and he asked me about my assessment. I said, “I suspect that people will disperse, and I don’t see anyone fighting back.” I did not hear any directions to the workers to make preparation for dealing with the baton charge either.

At the Nokhar Conference, leadership was lacking. Leadership helps workers defeat their opponent’s power. This is done by taking advantage of the enemy’s weakness. I had seen Tariq Latif, Sufi Sibghat Ullah, and many students and workers groups fighting and winning much bigger fights against the police in Punjab. I will narrate Sufi’s encounter in a different post. Even women of the soft-mannered Saraiki community in Thal tore to pieces the uniforms of policemen who were raiding their village. While we as Maoists believed that all reactionaries are paper tigers, it is ironic that such a big revolutionary gathering was scared away by a pigmy paper tiger. Nokhar raised serious questions about the PG’s fighting capacity. I attended the Nokhar Conference as an ‘outsider’, but it made me seriously ponder over the relationship between illusion and reality.

It is important to reflect here on the fighting spirit of the PG in urban areas, and its complete absence in its vast rural base. It is important to understand that conducting study circles and taking long walks does not create a solid organisation. It depends on the knack of identifying and cultivating the activists with leadership qualities. The whole organisation is glued by such activists and is inspired by their fighting spirit in charting out its future course of action. It reminds me of a lesson I learned as an 8^th grader in school. I along with two of my classmates participated in wall chalking for Mohtarma Fatima Jinnah in Multan during her election campaign against Ayub Khan. One of our teachers supported Ayub Khan. He was a very independent minded and insightful teacher. It surprised us why he was supporting a dictator. We decided to engage him in a debate during class. He was a nationalist and anti-colonialist. When we asked him why he supported a dictator, he said for one reason only: “Ayub Khan is Mardam Shanas” – meaning he has a knack for knowing the true worth and capabilities of people. “That is what makes him a good leader.” I did not agree with his political stand, but his argument about the true quality of a leader – knowing the worth of people around him – made sense to me. In the PG, Professor Khalid Mahmood was head and shoulders above others in terms of this leadership quality. He could find and cultivate real fighters. That is why his work among students, labourers and the Academic Staff Association (ASA) blazed trails for others. However, this was lacking in the PG’s work in the rural areas.

I remember when Arif Raja left the NSO and joined the Young People’s Front (YPF), Professor Khalid Mahmood always grieved his loss. He remembered him fondly and called him a “gem of a worker”. Another example is his discovery of Mushahid Hussain and his active support of him for contesting the office of General Secretary of the ASA Punjab University. One day during a private meeting the Professor asked me, “Do you know where Mushahid started his political career?” I had a vague memory of seeing him at some events but was not quite sure. Then smilingly, in his true joyful way of sharing secrets, he told me: “Pak-Korea Friendship Society.” It is important to mention here that the Pak-Korea Friendship Society was funded by the North Korean government to publish full page propaganda material of Kim Il Sung in the newspapers and publish his works in Urdu. The president of this society, Rahim, was considered by many as a spook. Najam Sethi harboured similar views about Mushahid, and a few years back in a live TV interview said to him: “People think that you are a child of the establishment.” But credit goes to Professor Khalid that he recognized a fighter and ambitious politician in Mushahid Hussain, and during Zia ul Haq’s tyrannical rule joined hands with him to fight a glorious battle for the freedom of academia. When both Professor Khalid and Mushahid were thrown out of Punjab University, he joined him as a journalist in daily The Muslim. Both of them fought a long battle together, and then parted ways. Professor recognised both Mushahid’s strengths and limitations and made the best of his association with him. He kept his friendship with Mushahid, although he did not attend his wedding ceremony because Ziaul Haq was invited there as a guest. That is what politics is all about.

Professor Khalid Mahmood had excellent organisational and talent detection skills, but he also considered peasant virtues as the true traits of revolutionary leadership. Since he did not live up to this stereotype, he did not consider himself to be the true epitome of a leader and shied away from playing the role of thought leadership in the PG. But in practice, he proved his command over leadership building methods in student, labour, and academic politics.

To be or not to be

We had won so many little battles in DIK, but I had a strong sense of loss in spite of all our gains. I held a strong sense of intellectual void at the theoretical level. Semi-colonial and semi-feudal theories of Pakistani society, and the case of Dependent Capitalism did not make any sense to me. We believed that every society was in perpetual motion, so how could we say that our society had frozen as a hybrid formation. What was the direction of change? And how was our society undermining the development of productive forces? How could we explain rural-urban migration, the creation of jobs in the industrial sector, rising level of income, and the expansion of the middle class as the stagnation of the economy? Similarly, how could the level of indebtedness of an economy be equated with dependence, while the US economy is the most indebted economy in the world? Credit and debt are the lifeblood of capitalism. Considering the state of indebtedness as a state of underdevelopment was a peasant critique of capitalism. It could not be called a progressive critique; Maoist ‘self-reliance’ and autarchy were not progressive solutions either. I could not refute even ordinary students’ arguments against our viewpoint. In the end we resorted to a tactic that was beautifully articulated by my dear friend Munawwar Omar about progressives like us, saying “Baqir, you can defeat their arguments, but not their attitude.” So, we insisted that we were right. At the political level, we talked of armed rebellion which was nowhere near in sight.

I declined an overseas scholarship offer by our VC Nawab Allah Nawaz Khan, picked many fights with the university and city administrations, but I had a feeling that we were moving in circles. There were others like me who were equally naive. I remember a visit to the village of Daraban in the company of my dear friend Riwayat Khan. Riwayat Khan was an Agricultural Assistant, a Maoist and former member of the Pakistan Students Federation. He frequently visited farms as part of his job. In Daraban we ended up at the farm of Ata Ullah Miankhel and found a tenant busy in the fields. Riwayat Khan immediately started a dialogue with Miankhel’s tenant. He asked him if he was treated fairly by his landlord. “No,” said the tenant. “Why don’t you fight against him then?” asked Riwayat. The tenant replied in Saraiki wadhi tey kam kaddhi, meaning ‘everything happens with the bribe’, or to use the cliché, money makes the mare go. “I cannot get justice if I cannot bribe the government,” he continued. “Why don’t you fight against injustice?” inquired Riwayat. “God has created the powerful and the weak; people in power are in power because God so desires,” said the tenant. “So, in the hereafter they also will be the privileged ones,” said Riwayat. “No, not there. God is not unjust. They will be made accountable for their deeds in the hereafter,” said the tenant. “Why don’t you fight then?” Riwayat asked again. “Will you stand shoulder to shoulder with me?” asked the tenant. “No,” said Riwayet. End of dialogue. This dialogue made me realise that we are at a dead end. I needed to find the way out.

I discussed the issue of armed struggle with Shaista Khan. Shaista Khan was a pragmatic idealist. He was of the view that we should join hands with the Luni tribe. It is important to mention here that DIK shares a border with a vast swathe of tribal land inhabited by the most ferocious of fighters, very sharp marksmen, and very proud tribal communities. Guns are part of their culture. Lunis were one of the tribes living in this area; others included Mahsuds, Wazirs, Barkis, Bhitannis and Dawars. The Lunis had started an armed conflict with the local administration, and Shaista Khan thought that if we join them now, we can lay the foundation for a long-term alliance. These people did not share our political and ideological views. They had no political tradition and training. So, it seemed very risky to form any alliance with them. It could turn in any direction in the future. One year later my doubts proved true when we heard about the assassination of Noor Muhammad Tarakai, President of the Khalq Party Afghanistan at the hands of another party leader, Hafizullah Amin, in a party meeting. This news really hurt me. How could a party believing in rational discourse sort out differences in such an irrational and brutal way? Shaista Khan had his own explanation. He said “Comrade, they are Pathan Communists, not UP Communists. This is the way they settle accounts between themselves.” This explanation did not help or heal me. Before this event, I had made up my mind to leave DIK in search of my soul. So, I first went to Bahawalnagar, where three of us – Khalid Mahmood, Tahir Yasub and myself – had gone together in search of utopia soon after leaving Punjab University. After living in the haze for many days over there, I moved to Angoori Bagh flats, Lahore. I was absent without leave from Gomal University, perhaps never to return. I shall pick up the thread from here after a few pages.

Call to Arms

When I left DIK and moved to Lahore by the end of December 1978, I bumped into many people busy in recruiting guerrillas for armed struggle. The first group I encountered in a half-lit room at a friend’s house was Malik Mukhtar Awan accompanied by another Multani, Zaman Jaffari, who hailed from my neighbourhood in Multan. I was not sure about the credentials of Zaman Jaffari. He made a sign of a revolver with his hand, and then pronounced “thish thish”, asking in signs if I wanted to be a guerilla fighter. Mukhtar Awan knew that I had declined one such offer by him and his boss many years ago. When I gave them a blank look, Awan said, “No, no, he is not interested.” Apparently, they were looking for gun fodder for Al Zulfiqar. A few years later a reliable friend of mine from Peshawar came up with a similar proposal, but I told him the politics behind the gun is more important than the gun itself. “Armed struggle,” as Mao Tse Tung said, “is a higher form of politics.” Yet we needed to agree on politics before we could agree on the necessity of pursuing a higher form of this politics.

Sometime later I heard about the Convention of the Lok Party being held under the leadership of Imtiaz Alam. Imtiaz had separated from the Mazdoor Kissan Party with a big faction of young workers and announced his own party, the Lok Party. One of his justifications for separation was that the senior leadership of MKP was dragging its feet on the armed uprising. I did not see it happening through Lok Party’s politics, so I did not attend the Convention. At the time of the Convention, I was visited by Fauzia Rafiq and Shamoon Saleem at Zoya Sajid’s flat at Angoori Bagh. They had both attended the Convention and were very excited about the proceedings. They asked my views about the current political situation, Pakistan’s socio-economic reality and revolutionary discourse in Pakistan. They told me that they had had a similar discussion with Imtiaz, and he happened to share their views.

Shamoon, I think, met Fauzia through the weekly Dhanak. I had known Fauzia since her campus days at the journalism department. She perhaps started her engagement in campus life with Ashraf Raza of the Youth Cultural Organization (YCO), and through the YCO she also got Sarmad Sehbai’s play Hashish staged at the new campus. We had had very limited personal interaction. But it was refreshing to talk to her and Shamoon on their ideological and political views. Fauzia was never a part of the NSO or NSF. She joined the YPF after the murder of Dr Azizul Haq. She had worked with the Women’s Front at Punjab University, and through the Front, she participated with workers unions and student organisations. Then she moved to the UK, where she worked with the Workers Socialist League for a year or so, when a split occurred and a portion of its leadership and cadre went to London’s Spartacist League. Within six months, she returned to Pakistan for personal reasons, also with the assignment to initiate a branch of Spartacists in Pakistan. To her, it was the culmination of a process begun in the early 1970s where she was looking to participate in organised movements to create societal change. Subsequently, she shunned participation in organised movements of all kinds.

We agreed that the Pakistani economy was a capitalist economy, and the working class would play a leading role in bringing about revolutionary changes in our society. Fauzia introduced me to the brilliant writings of Rosa Luxemburg and Leon Trotsky. I read Rosa Luxemburg’s Reform or Revolution? and Trotsky’s Permanent Revolution. I learned for the first time that the October Revolution took place after the Bolsheviks took away power from the Mensheviks, who had been part of the bourgeois democratic February Revolution. I found Trotsky’s work very sophisticated and fascinating. Through Trotsky’s work I learned about Permanent Revolution, Armed Propaganda, General Strike of the working class, and dictatorship of the proletariat as the democracy of the proletariat – a concept far more sophisticated than the Stalinist view of the dictatorship of the proletariat and based on a highly developed vision of a socialist society. Fauzia and Shamoon told me that they had discussed their views in detail with Imtiaz Alam, and he was most likely to join them.

Fauzia told me that if I shared her vision, then we have to work together as part of an organisation. We also agreed that we need to take up arms to fight the battle, but we need, to begin with, to undertake armed propaganda to unnerve the enemy. Both Shamoon and I agreed to be part of the Fourth International’s local cell. While we started talking about our vision, strategy and future course of work, I was approached by a ‘man of letters’ having similar views to form a cell of intellectuals to pursue similar objectives. I was in a fix. I could not be part of two cells simultaneously, nor could I disclose that I was already a member of a similar cell. I had to maintain secrecy. I figured out that there was a very credible and seasoned Trotskyite point man who was guiding both the cells. Of course, my decision was very much based on my assessment of the point man’s standing. Point man was part of the London Group that had joined hands with the Baloch insurgents, and point man had also served a prison term in Hyderabad Jail. Rasul Bakhsh Paleejo had commended his courage by saying that state agencies could not break him. Najam Hussain Syed, at one time, commented about the London Group: “They are like the French Generals in Ranjit Singh’s army.” Perhaps he was right, perhaps he was not. Anyways the credentials of the point man were impeccable. Fauzia did not tell me about the point man, but the man of letters in the next meeting asked me, “Are you a member of another similar cell also?” to which I said, “Yes.” “You should not have consented to join me then,” he said. The discussion was brief, but we agreed to discuss the issue in more detail in the next meeting. In the meantime, the PPP’s Chairman Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was hanged by General Ziaul Haq, and we thought that this was the most appropriate moment to act. The situation of the Maoist groups in Punjab at that time reminded me of Woody Allen’s quip: “I am not afraid of death, but I don’t want to be there when it happens.” So, we decided to proceed independently.

Professor Khalid Mahmood had a different explanation of Punjabi lethargy. According to him, “Lenin once desired to visit Punjab to hold a face to face meeting with Punjabi comrades to figure out what was dragging the comrades behind.” Upon arrival he was taken to the Gujranwala Unit of the Communist Party, where he immediately summoned a meeting. Local comrades told him that he had come a long way, so he should rest a little bit and then the meeting will be convened. Comrade Lenin said, “No, I want the meeting right away.” “Okay sir, at least have a drink before you begin,” said local comrades. “Fine,” said Lenin. He was offered a glass of Lassi, which is a local drink made of yogurt. The drink had a sedative effect and comrade Lenin went to sleep immediately. When he woke up, all the comrades had assembled for the meeting. “No need for a meeting anymore,” said comrade Lenin. “I understand the whole thing now,” and left.

(To be continued)