Nasir Khan, August 5, 2008
All those who oppose imperialistic wars and plunder, subjugation and oppression of weaker nations and peoples, and wide-spread violations of human rights in various parts of the world will be glad to see the publication of the two-volume autobiography of Indo-Pakistani revolutionary Dada Amir Haider Khan. The life and struggles of this eternal revolutionary who stood for advancing the cause of workers and peasants and firmly adhered to the world-outlook of proletarian internationalism is quite amazing. No matter what hardships he came across, he held belief in the eventual emancipation of the toiling masses, not by any outside force or agency but through their own struggles shaped by their political consciousness for a worthy human existence.
Dada Amir Haider Khan was not an idealist; he was a man of action. By his practical example he showed how to work and organise workers locally so that they could stand for and protect their political and economic interests. In his personal life, he always remained a fakir, a ‘homeless wanderer’, as he used to call himself. Neither did he own any valuable possessions. He had donated the share of his inherited land for building a school in his ancestral village, a poor and deprived area of small farmers.
I met Dada half a century ago, in 1957, when I started my college education in Rawalpindi. This early contact with him was to become a lifelong friendship and close comradeship. He was above all a sincere and trustworthy man and a political activist. But he was also a charismatic person; those who met him were drawn towards his magnetic personality.
Dr Hasan N. Gardezi edited and supervised the publication of Dada’s memoirs with great diligence and a sense of duty to preserve the historical role of a truly great and unique revolutionary who emerged from the part of the world now called Pakistan. I offer my thanks to Professor Gardezi for his tireless efforts to publicise the work of Dada, and also thank other friends who have in one way or the other contributed to the task. I believe all the progressive people who have known Dada or those who will come to know about him through the publication of his memoirs will highly appreciate the work of Professor Gardezi. He has preserved the legacy of the great revolutionary for the coming generations of radical and progressive people.
Volume 1 was first published in New Delhi in 1989, prefaced by our esteemed Comrade V.D. Chopra. Now the memoirs in two volumes are available from Karachi.
[ To obtain your copies please contact: Muhammad Kamran, Office Assistant, Pakistan Studies Centre, University of Karachi, Karachi, 75270, E-mail pscuok@yahoo. com
For further information the editor can be reached at: gardezihassan@ hotmail.com ]
Historians and scholars in Marxist tradition may also find the following publications and references to Dada Amir Haider Khan helpful:
- Harry Haywood, Black Bolshevik, Liberator Press, Chicago, Illinois, 1978, pp. 164-5, 509.
- Santimoy Ray, Freedom Movement and Indian Muslims, People’s Publishing House, New Delhi, 1978, p. 82.
- S.S. Mirajkar, ‘Reminiscences’, Marxist Miscellany No. 15, March 1979, New Delhi, pp. 21-22.
- Amir Haider Khan, ‘Reminiscences’, Marxist Miscellany No. 15, March 1979. (This is a memorable article written by Dada Amir Haider Khan on the 50th Anniversary of the Meerut Conspiracy Case.)
- Subodh Roy (ed.), Communism in India, Ganashakti Printers, 1972.
I republish below a remarkable book review by Jamil Omar
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Book Review by Jamil Omar
Chains to Lose
Life and Struggle of a Revolutionary
Memoirs of Dada Amir Haider Khan
Edited by Hassan N. Gardezi,
Publisher: Pakistan Study Centre, University of Karachi
An Indian Che Guevara
The party had also begun extending its activities to Madras. A group of Andhra and Tamil students, amongst them P. Sundarayya were recruited to the CPI by Amir Hyder Khan … (E. M. S. Namboodripad Chief Minister of Kerala, The Communist Party in Kerala – Six Decades of Struggle and Advance.)
Thus, the CPI divided into two separate parties. The group which assembled in Calcutta would later adopt the name ‘Communist Party of India (Marxist)’. The CPI (M) also adopted its own political programme. P. Sundarayya was elected general secretary of the party. (History of the Communist Movement in India)
While he lived, Dada Amir Haider Khan struggled to change the course of history, now in death he would have us change our view of it.
Dada surfed the crest of change all over the globe during the first half of the twentieth century, which makes a simple account of his life read like contemporary world history. The account is so reliable and close to life that that it should prove a major primary source for scholars of history and politics. For political activists who have carried on the tradition bequeathed by Dada, the account is essential reading for a critical understanding of their own past.
His life
So little is known about Amir Haider Khan’s very full life that it seems appropriate to start by presenting a very brief overview:
1900 born in a remote village in Rawalpindi district. Orphaned at an early age, put in a madrassah. Escapes to Calcutta, brushes with the underworld handling Afghan opium.
1914 joins British merchant navy in Bombay. Observes at close hand the dilemma of Muslim soldiers in the British army fighting their Turkish brethren in Iraq.
1918 jumps British ship in New York. Joins American merchant marine. An Irish nationalist, Joseph Mulkane, introduces Dada to anti-British political ideas.
1920 meets Indian Nationalists and Ghadar party members in New York. Starts distributing ‘Ghadar ki Goonj’ to Indians in seaports around the world.
Passes the exam of Assistant Second Marine Engineer.
1922 dismissed from ship after the great post war strike. Works and travels inside the USA. Boiler engineer with the Pennsylvania Railroad. Airplane pilot. Autoworker in Detroit.
Political activist, works with anti-Imperialist League and the Workers (Communist) Party of the USA.
1926 sent by the American party to the Soviet Union to study at the University of the Toilers of the East.
1928 completes the University course in Moscow and arrives in Bombay. Establishes contact with Ghate, Dange Bradley, senior communists in Bombay.
March 1929 escapes arrest in the Meerut Conspiracy case and makes his way to Moscow to inform the Communist International (Comintern) on the situation in India and seek their assistance.
1929 arrives back in Bombay, meets and briefs B. T. Randive.
1930 Dada’s connection in Bombay with the Comintern turns informer. Dada rushes to Moscow to apprise them of the development and devise alternate plans. Attends the International Trade Union (Profintern) Congress as member of the presidium, also attends the 16th Congress of the CPSU.
1931 returns to Bombay. Sent to Madras to avoid arrest as still wanted in the Meerut Conspiracy case. Carries on political work all over South India under the pseudonym of Shankar. Sets up the Young Workers League.
1932 arrested by British for bringing out a pamphlet praising the Bhagat Singh Trio.
1936 transferred from Madras to Muzzafargarh jail, then transferred to Ambala jail.
1938 released. Starts open public political activity in Bombay. The Congress left elects him to the INC Bombay Provincial Committee. Attends the INC Annual General meeting in Ramgarh, Bihar.
1939 rearrested as Second World War breaks out. Interned in Nasik jail where Dada writes the first part of his memoirs.
1942 last of the Communists to be released after People’s War thesis. Trade Union work in Bombay. Attends the Natrakona (Mymansingh) All India Kissan Sabah in 1944.
1946 arrives in Rawalpindi on the eve of Pakistan to look after local party work. Organises a network to hide and safely repatriate Hindu families during the partition riots.
1949 arrested from Party office Rawalpindi under the Communal Act. Released after 15 months. Rearrested after a few months from Rawalpindi Kutchery for organizing the defence of Hassan Nasir and Ali Imam. When Liaqat government launches the Rawalpindi Conspiracy case Dada moved to Lahore fort and imprisoned with Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Fazal Din Qurban, Dada Feroz ud Din Mansur, Kaswar Gardezi, Hyder Bux Jatoi, Sobo Gayan Chandani, Chaudhry Muhammad Afzal, Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi, Zaheer Kashmiri, Hameed Akhtar etc. Released after campaign in Pakistan Times and Imroze, but restricted to his village. Shifted to Rawalpindi when Dada seen influencing the military jawans from his area.
1954 Bogra [Prime Minister] to appease his masters in USA bans the Communist Party of Pakistan on 24 July 1954. Dada arrested later bailed out by Mohammad Ali Kasuri.
1958 Ayub imposes martial law. Dada arrested interned in Rawalpindi jail with Afzal Bangash, Kaka Sanober and other comrades from the Frontier Province.
1970s and 1980s Dada spends his twilight years in Rawalpindi. Donates his land and with his own labour builds a Boys High School in his village, then builds a Girls School together with a science laboratory. Gets them approved and hands them over to the Government.
26 December 1989 Dada passes away.
The striking fact about the above chronology is that Amir Haider like Flash Gordon had an uncanny knack of being at the right place at the right time. But the analogy ends here. Flash is a fictional character representing the Imperial British, Dada was a real life adversary of Imperialism who fought the British with such skill and tenacity that American professors Overstreet and Windmiller were forced to admit that “Amir Haider Khan was the most dangerous individual in British India.” Throughout his life we see Dada, the born rebel, standing up against injustice and fighting to better the human condition. While Britannia ruled the waves, Dada fought for the rights of the Indian seamen working deep below the decks. When the sun did not set on the British Empire, Dada risked his life to distribute banned Ghadar Party literature to Indians all around the globe. As the new world started to prevail, Dada, a naturalized American at the age of twenty, learnt and struggled against the system from within – as an International Workers of the World activist, as a working class family member, as a hobo, as a Klu Klux Klan victim, as an avid reader of Popular Mechanics and Scientific American and builder and flyer of airplanes, as a political activist working closely with the great Agnes Smedley and much more. When the world was shaken by the great socialist revolutions, Dada, now a full member of the Bolshevik party in Moscow, was closely following on detailed maps the march of Chou En Lai forces towards Shanghai. And during the golden hour of the Indian freedom struggle, Dada almost single handedly broke the political isolation imposed upon India by the British. Despite being on the British most wanted list, Dada using different pseudonyms and covers carried on political and organizational work in various parts of India. Work, for which Dada is still loved in Rawalpindi, revered in Bombay and worshipped in South India.
Dada was an international revolutionary – a Che Guevara of another age and on a bigger stage. He met and worked closely with some of the greatest socialist leaders of the twentieth century, which included besides others Thomas Mann (Engles’ student), Rosa Luxemburg (German revolutionary), Clara Zetkin (German women rights activist), Karl Radek (leader of Communist International), Liu Shao Chi (later president of China), Agnes Smedley (American anti-imperialist), Ralph Fox (historian who died resisting Franco’s march to Madrid), Piatniski (secretary to Comintern and Stalin) and nearly all the leaders of the Indian freedom movement. Dada’s steadfast struggle for freedom earned him the respect of Indian nationalists from the Andaman Islands to Peshawar, from gentlemen members of the parliament to Naujawan Bharat Sabah revolutionaries.
His memoirs
Writing with revolutionary responsibility, Dada is careful not to wash any dirty linen in public. Like a true Bolshevik, Dada chooses to maintain public silence on issues where he disagreed with the official Party line. On the face of it this should make Dada’s memoirs politically anodyne. But Dada’s actions were anything but politically neutral and they speak for themselves. ‘Dada’ may be an honorific title in Pakistan but in Bombay it was applied to Amir Haider Khan and others to denigrate them as obstinate seniors, for these ‘foggies’ doggedly waged inner Party struggle against political opportunism. It is also rumoured that Pakistan provided the new generation of comrades in Bombay with an excuse to shunt Dada from Bombay to Rawalpindi. Yet Dada’s memoirs are a testimony that he remained faithful to Party discipline to the very end of his life. Even in his rumblings as an old man he was careful not to insinuate against some of the old comrades or the People’s War thesis or a host of other issues which clearly troubled him. However, a close reading of the memoirs reveals that even Party discipline could not compel Dada to distort or deny facts. For example, Dada, the main representative of the Third International (Comintern) in India, puts it on record that on the China question Trotsky was correct and Stalin wrong; he criticizes M. N. Roy, who has since been rehabilitated, of fiscal irresponsibility and S. A. Dange, who has since been debunked, of weak character. It is perhaps on account of such ‘deviations’ that Dada’s memoirs nearly got suppressed. Once by our own publisher of Baluchistan insurgency fame – although this may well have been the far worse crime of sheer irresponsibility; and once by the CPI press – which on the face of it appears to be a more deliberate act of indexing. But thanks to the untiring zeal of Dr. Hassan Gardezi, the memoirs’ editor, Dada’s invaluable autobiography has finally been preserved for posterity.
The memoirs in themselves are a straight forward narration of events, however, delayed availability of such rare and authentic material is bound to reopen many debates. A critical study of the memoirs would go a long way in helping us better understand and appreciate our past. Even a non-critical reading like the present one, sparked a number of politically relevant questions. I would like to briefly take up a few of these here.
Muslim demagogy and Pakistani Hagiography
Hagiography prefers to ignore rather than explain inconvenient facts. The mainstay of our local brand of hagiography is that Pakistan was created for Islam. However, our hagiographers have never bothered to explain that if so, then how come the Pakistan movement was led by modern secular Muslims and supported by the Communist Party while mullahs of all callings opposed it tooth and nail.
Another enigma for local hagiography is the Khilafat Movement. Khilafat Movement based on pan-Islamic demagogic sentiments was popular among urban Muslims for a brief period towards the end of the First World War. But with its fantastic scheme of Tark-i- Amwaal and Hijrat it violated the interests of propertied Muslim classes. The propertied Muslim classes, for their part, were always more attracted to the option of a separate homeland where they could pursue their economic interests unhindered by the dominant Hindu bourgeoisie. Hence it comes as no surprise that while the Khilafat Movement was befriended by the Congress, it was vehemently decried by Jinnah. Pakistani hagiography has long taxed itself to square the Muslim demagogic Hijrat Movement with its exact opposite, that is, the Pakistan Movement. The hagiographic compromise is to gloss over the unsavoury details of the Khilafat Movement while awarding Bi Amma’s sons the status of national heroes.
Dada’s memoirs clearly reveal the true nature of the Khilafat movement. In Bombay its support lay in the Urdu speaking Muslim mill workers in Madanpura, who were the descendents of ruined hand weavers of Bihar and UP. The Khilafat newspaper openly incited these Muslims to violence when Hindu-Muslim riots broke out in Bombay but with typical demagogic irresponsibility it blamed the Communists. This service must have been well appreciated by Khilafat’s bourgeoisie friends in the Congress, who watched with glee the fall of support for the fledging Red Flag Worker’s Union amongst Muslim workers and were keen to employ them as strikebreakers.
The Khilafat demagogy also ruined the poor Muslim Mopla peasants of Malabar. Muslim Mopala peasant’s under the influence of Khilafat demagogy left their lands and chose to migrate to Afghanistan. Like most muhajirs they were simply herded back by the Afghans. But on returning to Malabar they found their lands occupied by Hindu landlords. What ensued was a full-scale civil war in which thousands died and even more were herded like animals into prisons. Dada through his historic jail struggle succeeded in winning for these poor and illiterate Muslim prisoners decent living conditions.
Hagiography not only glosses over the crimes of yesterday, it makes us perpetrate new ones today. The truth of this aphorism is vividly demonstrated by the fact that while the Khilafat leader Mohammad Ali Johar is remembered through a prestigious Society in Karachi and a modern Town in Lahore, all trace of Dada Amir Haider Khan, the greatest of Indian Muslim freedom fighters, has been conveniently removed from our official history.
The conspiracy of conspiracy cases:
‘Divide and Rule’ may well have been the first rule of British Imperialism, but ‘give the dog a bad name and hang him’ was a close second. The second rule was repeatedly employed by the British against the Communists in the guise of Conspiracy Cases. During the 1920s British attempted to crush the nascent Communist Movement through a spate of Conspiracy Cases such as the First Peshawar Conspiracy Case, Second Peshawar Conspiracy Case, Moscow Conspiracy Case (in all these cases Soviet trained Muslim Communists were the main accused); the Cawnpore Bolshevik Conspiracy Case (local Communists main accused); Lahore Conspiracy Case (Bhagat Singh main accused), the Meerut Conspiracy (Dada Amir Haider one of the main accused).
Fortunately the outcome of the conspiracy of conspiracy cases seems to be determined by the Toynbee ‘Challenge-Response’ rule. Weak movements are destroyed by it while strong movements are strengthened by it. The Meerut Conspiracy case singularly backfired thanks to Dada’s efforts on an International scale, which resulted in Meerut solidarity campaigns all over the world. For its part the Communist Party of Great Britain put up Shaukat Usmani, who was a prisoner in Meerut, as its candidate in the 1931 general election for St. Pancras South East. The candidature of Usmani was aimed by the CPGB to ensure freedom for India, and to highlight the plight of the Meerut prisoners. In this election, the communists polled seventy five thousand votes.
After Independence, this Imperialist conspiracy of conspiracy cases was continued by the government of Pakistan, with Liaqat Ali Khan launching the Rawalpindi Conspiracy Case to counter the growing influence of the Communists.
Remote controlling revolutions
International movements never make successful local revolutions. The business is far to complicated to be successfully managed remotely. In his memoirs Dada, however, is of the view that had the Comintern trained and assisted the Indian communists on the scale it assisted the Chinese, he and his comrades could have built a strong United Front with the Congress and developed the Satyagarha Movement into a genuine revolutionary movement. But the facts as related in his memoirs show that the Comintern was unstinting in its assistance to India, the problem lay in more objective realities.
Perhaps the most valuable lesson hidden in Dada’s memoirs is that revolutions are made locally not remotely. Culled from the memoirs, here are some of the reasons why:
Priorities may change in the remote location. For example, under Lenin Central Asiatic Bureau of Comintern set up in Tashkent a school to train the Khilafat Movement muhajirs drifting in Central Asia into an Indian army of revolutionaries. However, the Indian Military School was closed in April 1921, as a quid pro quo for industrial assistance that Britain promised to Soviet Russia, under Anglo-Russian Trade Pact in March 1921.
Stalin in 1943, to appease Roosevelt and Churchill, dismantled the whole Third International.
Local political complexities cannot be fully determined from a distance nor can foreign representatives be relied upon to come up with correct on spot remedies. Comintern’s role in the Chinese revolution provides many examples of how the best of International intentions can create serious local problems. During the united front period the great debate in the Comintern regarding China was whether to launch the agrarian revolution or not. Trotsky as member of the Comintern Executive Committee proposed the immediate launching of the agrarian revolution in the countryside, however, the majority led by Stalin rejected Trotsky’s thesis on the ground that launching the agrarian revolution at this stage would split the National United Front and would throw the reactionary Kuomintang leaders into the imperialist camp. But when America and Japan got directly involved, split in the United Front became inevitable and saving the lives of the communist cadres became top priority, M. N. Roy, Comintern’s representative in China, bungled the situation by disclosing confidential instructions to the left wing of the Kuomintang, with the result that Kuomintang moved swiftly to liquidate all Communists they could lay their hands upon, more than 5000 were executed in Shanghai alone.
Promotes Embassy Socialism: Reliance on material or intellectual assistance from outside weakens local confidence and resolve. In the long run it promotes a degenerate political culture that serves the interest of the foreign embassies (and donors) and not of the local masses.
Epilogue
Commenting on Dada’s quiet passing away the local press reported that “He lived and died virtually unsung. That did not diminish him. It makes the rest of us look more small.” One hopes that with the publication of Dada’s memoirs he would be better known and the long conspiracy to deny and defame him will come to an end. For this little known Indian Che Guevara is yet to take his rightful place in the pantheon of twentieth century revolutionaries.
See also Uddari Weblog (but here the date of death in 1986 is wrong; Dada died on 26 December 1989. I had asked the Uddari Weblog to make the necessary correction. Instead they deleted my comment!)
Peace and Justice Post 
Hassan Gardezi: Pakistan Today
January 8, 2009Radical political activist Hassan Gardezi
By Nasir Khan, January 8, 2009
Dada Amir Khan (with cap, d. 1989), Dr Ayub Mirza and the Chinese Ambassador to Pakistan (Photo: 1982)
The renowned Pakistani sociologist and radical activist Professor Hassan Gardezi has been a life-long human rights campaigner. Through his books and articles, he has staunchly stood for the rule of law and has shown the importance and relevance of socialist values in shaping an egalitarian society.
He opposed the policies of General Zia-ul-Haq, whose brutal dictatorship in the 1980s was simply a reign of terror in Pakistan. Under Zia’s rule, thousands of ordinary political workers and activists were rounded up and incarcerated with a view to silence any opposition to his tyrannical rule. Many people were flogged by police publicly and this was meant to be a message from the military ruler to all those who dared to oppose him. The general used his army and police to beat and mishandle Pakistanis as Nazi rulers of the Third Reich did with their opponents, or the Zionist rulers of Israel have been doing and are still doing with the captive population of Palestine. Anyhow, in those beak years in Pakistani history, Hassan Gardezi , who was living in Canada, played an important part to combat Zia’s obscurantist policies of so-called Islamisation and the sharia laws, which, by the way, had nothing to do with Islamic faith or its benevolent moral and social laws.
Dr Gardezi had been a close and trustworthy friend of the great Indo-Pakistani revolutionary Dada Amir Haider Khan. The autobiographical manuscripts that Dada had compiled while in jail in the 1930s or his later updated sketches, notes and letters were in a precarious condition. To organise and systematise all such papers was a daunting task for any editor or schoalr. But Gardezi was the right man for the difficult job; he with a single-minded determination organised and re-wrote the entire manuscript and notes to compile the memoirs of Dada. Last year, he finally published the two-volume autobiography of the great revolutionary. I solute Dr Gardezi for his great work.
I have never me Gardezi, who has lived and taught in Canada for many decades whereas I have worked and lived in Europe for almost five decades; however, Dada had kept me informed about his close friend Hassan Gardezi, his scholarly work and his political activities.
I have great admiration for the work and worldview of Comrade Hassan Gardezi and I offer him my best wishes for the period of his active retirement. I hope he will continue to inspire us, the old radical guard as well as the younger generation, in the years to come.
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Pakistan Today: A Travelogue
By Hassan Gardezi
Periods of national unrest have not been uncommon or unfamiliar occurrences in the history of Pakistan. But the political and economic turbulence the country is facing today is bound to come as a shock to any visitor who has been away from the country for even a couple of years. It is as if all the contradictions that were being nurtured within the institutional structure of the state since the creation of the country have suddenly come to a head, threatening to spell the collapse of the entire edifice.
“How does Pakistan look to you today?” was the question most frequently asked, with some variation, everywhere I went this time, whether it was a meeting with old students, colleagues and political comrades in Lahore, a chat at the “tea” before or after a talk I was invited to give somewhere, a social meeting in Islamabad, or a gathering of close relatives in Multan.
Pakistan’s existential situation of course does not look very good today and everyone in the country knows this. The question being asked was perhaps more of an expression of common anxiety about what is happening in the country, a subterfuge rather than a real question.
The problems behind Pakistan’s latest crisis are not really new. But the one that is being
most palpably felt is that of religious extremism accompanied by unprecedented acts of terrorism. Bombs planted or carried on the person of suicidal individuals went off almost every day in some part of the country when I was there, killing and maiming their hapless victims. The biggest carnage took place in the heart of Peshawar on Dec. 5 when a powerful bomb went off in the Qisa Khwani bazaar crowded with Eid shoppers, killing scores of women and children and lighting up a huge fire. It was intended to destroy a shia imambara. These acts of terror are being committed by Islamic extremists, generally known as Pakistani Taliban, who are most active in the seven agencies of the Federally Administered Areas (FATA) and also control a substantial part of the northerly settled districts of NWFP province, renamed Pakhtunkhwa.
The leaders of the Awami National Party (ANP) which heads the provincial government and their relatives are the latest individual targets of terrorist killings (ostensibly for hobnobbing with Afghanistan’s president, Karzai). The national chairman of the party, Isfandyar Wali, survived a murderous attack on October 2, which killed four of his companions. Peshawar, the seat of provincial government, is virtually a war zone. Neither the once formidable Frontier Corps nor the Pakistan army seem to be able to establish the writ of the government over vast northerly tracts of the province. It has also become impossible for the Pakistani truck convoys to carry supplies for the NATO troops in Afghanistan from the Karachi port through the Peshawar terminals.
The operations of Pakistan army in trying to restore governmental control in FATA and adjoining settled districts of Pakhtunkhwa are neither effective nor hold much credibility in the eyes of the people, despite heavy casualties suffered by soldiers in fighting with the Islamic militants. Many questions are being raised regarding the involvement of the armed forces on the northwestern front. Are they serious in eradicating the menace of Islamic terrorists inside Pakistan? Is the army rank and file willing to kill their Muslim brothers while for decades they have been regimented to fight “Hindu India?” What role did the army and its intelligence services play in creating and nurturing the Islamic insurgents or jihadis as a foreign policy tool in the first place? Whose “war on terror” is the Pakistan army fighting any way? Is it serving the imperial interests of the United States on the northwestern front? and so on go the questions.
In October 2008 the newly elected government decided to hold an in-camera session of the national parliament under tight security to get “everyone on board” on the rationale of fighting the menace of “extremism, militancy and terrorism.” After two weeks of deliberations and extensive briefings on the situation provided by the army High Command, the parliament passed a resolution hailed as representing the consensus of its members. Somewhere in this resolution it was written down that the “nation stands united to combat this growing menace” by addressing its “root causes.”
it appeared that addressing the root causes of extremism and terrorism in Pakistan would be a great opportunity for the elected representatives of the people to face the truth and make a beginning to move towards establishing a new political culture of peace and tolerance. But when I reached Pakistan in November, everyone was talking about the menace of terrorism and religious extremism but there was no sign anywhere of addressing its root causes.
I brought this issue to the first of the talks I was invited to give at the Lahore School of Economics. Any honest attempt to trace the roots of religious extremism and associated terrorism would inevitably lead to two interrelated fundamentals of state policy that have been pursued by every Pakistani government, which has ruled the country since independence, I said. One of these fundamentals is the Islamisation of Pakistani state and society while the other is catering to the global strategic interests of the Unites States of America.
Moves to Islamise the state of Pakistan began as the first order of business for the founding fathers of Pakistan (the worthy exception being Muhammad Ali Jinnah) whatever their political motives, and they were certainly not spiritual. Assembled in the first Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, these men came up with a document known as the Objectives Resolution in 1949, which declared that “Sovereignty belongs to Allah alone but He has delegated it to the state of Pakistan . . .” It further proclaimed that “Muslims shall be enabled to order their lives in accordance with the teachings of Islam as set out in the Holy Quran and Sunnah.” With these beginnings, all subsequent rulers of Pakistan made their own contributions to inject Islam into the affairs of the state, thereby empowering a parasitic and rabidly patriarchal class of mullahs. It was however left to General Zia-ul-Haq to effectively demonstrate what it meant for the Muslims of Pakistan to order their lives in accordance with the teachings of Islam after his coup d’etat in1977.
Islamisation of the Pakistani state and political culture was also a useful asset for the United States to exploit in its aim to keep the country tied to its Cold War military alliances against Soviet communism. Ultimately, with Zia the most ardently Islamist dictator in power, the United States was able to mobilize Pakistan army, intelligence services and Islamist parties to launch its proxy war, designed as Jihad, to overthrow the infant Marxist government of Afghanistan backed by the Soviet Union. This was the critical event which, through various political turns and twists unfolded into today’s global terrorism with Pakistan as its epicentre.
Thus it is reasonable to conclude that the mess that Pakistan is currently in is of its own making, with the opportunistic backing of the United States, I said in my submission to the small professorial circle that had gathered to hear me in the brightly lit library of Lahore School of Economics. How to get out of this mess? The only logical course that I could see was the reversal by the state of its Islamisation, and Americanisation policies.
On the sunny morning of November 21, I was sitting among a hall full of students at the campus of the newly established University of Gujarat. I was invited to speak on the current political and economic crisis, but my mind was picturing the young men and women sitting in front of me as little playful toddlers when Gen. Zia had let lose an orgy of public floggings to implement his primitive sharia laws taken from the books of Jamat-e-Islami, his new found political ally. Do these young people remember all that? I was wondering. Was there anything in their history and Pakistan Studies textbooks about a military dictator who had installed himself as the Islamic ruler, Amir–ul–Momineen, of the wretchedly poor people of Pakistan? Do they know who created and fostered the present day Islamic extremists terrorizing the people, killing them in their mosques, imambaras, and bazaars while taking over the northern areas of Pakistan?
Once I got up to speak I pretty much repeated to my young audience what I had said at the Lahore School of Economics about the roots of Islamic extremism and terrorism in today’s Pakistan. Injecting the beliefs and rituals of a particular religion in the affairs of a modern, pluralistic, state is like playing with fire, I said. And the proof is all around us today as the country’s mosques, imambaras, bazaars and hotels burn, set on fire by the bombs and explosives of religious zealots. It is time for the people of Pakistan to make it very clear that most of them are Muslims, they were born Muslims, They have learned their faith from their elders, and neither the state mullah nor any jihadi has the right to tell them how to practice their faith.
But is it realistic to suggest that Pakistan dismantle its Islamisation project and break its ties with the only superpower on earth? Yes it is, if the government is a democracy run by the consent of the majority. The majority of the people of Pakistan have never endorsed Islamic rule as they have rejected the Islamist parties in every election held in Pakistan which has not been rigged. Religious fervour that is observed today in Pakistan is largely confined to the small middle class, always ready to compromise to protect its precarious existence. The people in general are fed up with the mayhem created by the Islamic militants. Several recent public opinion polls have also confirmed that an overwhelming majority of the adult population does not want the United States to interfere in the affairs of Pakistan.
After a brief stay at the beautifully laid out campus of the University of Gujrat, which incidentally is headed by a noteworthy academic and not a retired military heavy-weight, I was driven to Islamabad.
Islamabad, as the capital of Pakistan has many reasons to be visited, but lately I have been going there to spend a few restful days with a friend, sheltered by the Marghala hills, and to browse through the stores selling used and new books in the F/6 and F/7 markets. But it looks like what used to be the most calm and cloistered capital city in the world is now wide open to scarification by a new breed of militant Islamists. Last time I was there a large area of the city was fenced off where once was a mosque called Lal Masjid. This time my friend drove me by an enormous pile of debris which once was the imposing structure of Marriott Hotel surrounded by the shinny cars of its clients. It was indeed a grim reminder of the deadly power wielded by the men of God in today’s Pakistan.
Next I took a bus to Multan and was hardly in that city of the saints for long when the news broke out of November 26 terrorist attacks on Mumbai hotels. The irate Indian prime minister immediately called up his Pakistani counterpart, naming not only the rabidly anti-Indian jihadist outfit, the Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT), as the perpetrator but also accusing Pakistan’s Inter-services Intelligence agency (ISI) as having directed the atrocity. The Pakistani prime minister, a fellow Multani not known for much political astuteness, denied all accusations and even offered to send the director of the ISI to help in finding out the culprits. However, the poor fellow had to retract his offer soon thereafter and went into the denial mode.
Within next few days all signs of official or unofficial contrition vanished from Pakistan’s media coverage, washed away by a tide of national jingoism. Indian admonitions that Pakistan rein in its Islamic militants were met by a chorus of patriotic war cries vouching to defend Pakistan from its perennial enemy, India. If on the one hand spokespersons of the venerable Lawyer’s Movement were issuing patriotic statements, on the other hand there were the villainous terrorists, the likes of Baitullah Mehsud and Mangal Bagh, voicing eagerness to march their lashkers to the Indian border to defend Pakistan. The rest of this drama is still to unfold.
I had yet to go to Karachi to participate in a discussion panel on Dada Amir Haider Khan’s book of memoirs, Chains to Lose, which I was finally able to get published last year. But Karachi was once again in the grip of riots. This time the riots were sparked by MQM’s fears that Pakhtun refugees from Waziristan and the districts of Pakhtunkhwa, displaced by Pakistan army’s anti-terrorist operations and constant missile attacks launched from the US predatory drones, were flocking to Karachi and taking control of local markets.
In any case I was able to make it to the Karachi event, thanks to an interlude of peace in the city in preparation for the Eid holidays. The book discussion was organized by Dr. Jaffer Ahmed, the able and tireless director of Karachi University’s Pakistan Studies Centre, the publisher of the Chains to Lose. Some half a dozen people, journalists, writers, political activists, presented their very well informed and perceptive reviews. Zahida Hina was one of them whose presentation in Urdu caught the general sense of the house. She said:
Dada’s memoir is a great historical document if one seeks to understand a glorious 20th century movement in South Asia for freedom from world colonialism and imperialism.
If our generation has no idea of who Dada Amir Haider Khan is, it cannot be blamed. This generation has never been told anything about our great compatriots. We make giants out of dwarfs and treat our persons of great stature like lowly creatures.
Feeling happy that Dada’s contributions as a committed communist to make Pakistan, South Asia and the world a better place for humanity are becoming known I returned to Lahore on December 6. Next evening there was a sitting with some like-minded comrades arranged by Awaji Jamhoree Forum. It turned out to be a free-wheeling discussion of the present global economic crisis, war on terror and the rise of Islamic terrorism in Pakistan, terrorist attacks on Mumbai hotels, the US elections and the victory of Obama.
Perhaps the most serious concern was the position and the role of the socialist left in all this. I maintained that the greatest asset of the socialist left is its set of values. These values of freedom, peace, opposition to all wars, human rights, respect for nature and all life, economic, racial and gender equality, religious and ethnic tolerance, are together a powerful antidote to the present global crisis. There is every chance for the socialist left to succeed in its own right if it stops wasting its resources to support the lesser evil in political contests. I gave the example of very active and resourceful anti-war and anti-poverty groups in the United States who squandered their assets by supporting Barack Obama as the lesser evil in the contest between the two mainstream bourgeois parties. There is no sushi thing as more or less evil, I said. All war is evil whether it is more or less, all poverty and all inequality is evil whether it is more or less. A similar mistake was made in the last elections in Pakistan when parties calling themselves “communist” rushed to support the PPP.
I better end here. My apologies if I have bored you with my long story. If you do have any questions and comments I will be glad to receive them. I wish you a very happy new year.
Hassan Gardezi
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Tags:autobiography, Awami National Party, Chains to Lose, coup d'etat in 1977, Dada Amir Haider Khan, Dada in the Lahore Fort, dictatorship, Dr. Jaffer Ahmed, General Zia-ul-Haq, Hassan Gardezi, Islamisation, Islamist parties rejected in Pakistan, Karachi, Multan, Pakistan, religious extremism, Zahida Hina
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