The rough road of the Communist Party
This is a sympathetic while at the same time critical account of the Communist Party of Pakistan and left-of-centre politics after the demise of the party.
The most well-researched part of the book deals with the formation and working of the Communist Party of Pakistan (CPP), its principal figures, its web of sympathisers and the party’s line of action. The book also has a chapter on the youthful party leader Hasan Nasir, who worked for the CPP in Karachi and was tortured to death in Lahore Fort in 1960. It also analyses the labour movement in Landhi Korangi, which was ruthlessly crushed under Zulfikar Ali Bhutto
The book provides information on the background of the dreamers who set out to create the CPP. They were driven by an urge to create an egalitarian society free from exploitation of all kinds — economic, gender, or ethnicity. The communist leaders who took up the mission were highly educated. They decided to abandon the comforts of their middle class homes and chose to organise industrial labour, peasantry and students. They also set up some of the first civil society organisations in the country.
Their idealism was all the more remarkable at a time when a race was on in the newly created country to grab evacuee property that included residential houses, shops, hotels and businesses left by the non-Muslims. Some got agricultural land allotted, others ran after appointments, promotions or transfers to lucrative government jobs. The historic opportunities gap created after the Partition had given birth to a race for getting maximum personal benefits.
The Muslim League leaders in the newly created country were engrossed in jockeying for power. To achieve their narrow ends they employed all kinds of means from indulging in factional strife and palace intrigues and exploiting religious issues. Large scale corruption was yet to seep into the political elite but misuse of authority was common.
Those who created the Communist Party of Pakistan in 1948 were on the other hand struggling for a better society.
The book provides information on the background of the dreamers who set out to create the CPP. They were driven by an urge to create an egalitarian society free from exploitation of all kinds — economic, gender, or ethnicity
The Communist Party of India had supported the demand for Pakistan. A number of party members were directed to join the Muslim League. They worked from within the League with Mumtaz Daultana to introduce progressive policies in the Muslim League manifesto. The manifesto promised agricultural reforms and distribution of government lands among the landless peasantry. But the Muslim League being dominated in Punjab by feudal lords, the programme led to an internal struggle putting an end to the reformist moves.
With the division of India, the communist party also decided to set up a separate party for Pakistan in 1949 at its Calcutta Congress. Sajjad Zahir, a well-known writer from UP who was responsible for the party’s literary front, was assigned the task.
The Calcutta Congress was held when countries were getting liberated from the colonial yoke. While Marx had prophesied about the victory of communism in industrially developed societies, the Chinese revolutionaries had assumed power in the world’s most populous country through people’s war. In a dominantly rural India Telangana’s peasants under the local communist party had also taken up arms. Ranadivé the new Secretary General elect thought this was the way to revolution and this was the time to strike. The Calcutta Congress, as Eric Cyprian who was one of the three West Pakistani participants told me, reverberated with the slogans of “Jay ho Telangana”.
The party failed to achieve the goals it had set for itself on account of internal and external problems.
Those deputed by the CPI to set up a communist party in Pakistan were outsiders, mostly from UP, and were unaware of the local conditions. Most of the local cadre who later joined the Central Committee were Punjabis and a much smaller number from Sindh and NWFP. East Bengal, later East Pakistan, remained outside the jurisdiction of the CPP. This took the party’s attention away from the national question that was getting aggravated with the passage of time.
None among the three member politburo was a local person. Those who returned from Calcutta to set up a separate party in Pakistan brought with them what was called the Ranadivé line, which proposed insurgency. This was a wrong start as conditions for a communist revolution were not ripe in the newly created Pakistan, as Asdar has explained. The call for all out struggle led to the arrest of whatever activists were there. Some went underground. This caused demoralisation in the party. Failing to implement the line, the party leadership went to another extreme of attempting a military coup, which led to even more widespread arrests and a ban on the parry. Later in the 60’s the party split into pro-China and pro-Russia factions.
There were external reasons for the failure as well. With Pakistan joining the American camp and McCarthyism dominating US internal policy Pakistan was required to uproot the communist movement through repression. Finance Minister Ghulam Mohammed, who later became Governor General, being an outspoken supporter of free market economy, communists in Pakistan were treated as anti-state elements. In addition to the periodic imprisonment of important members of the CPP Central Committee under the Public Safety Act, communist publications were routinely banned or confiscated. Even literary journals linked to the Progressive writers Association, Sawera, Adab-e-Latif and Nuqush were constantly asked to stop publication for disseminating anti-state or ‘obscene’ literature.
State repression led the top party leaders to work from underground. This cut them off from not only from the masses but also limited their contacts with one another.
The left faces the historic task of changing the current democracy that has metamorphosed the assemblies into billionaires clubs into a real people’s democracy where candidates with lesser resources can also get elected
Despite its other failures, the CPP managed to set up a number civil society organisations like the Civil Liberties Union, Peace Committee, Women’s Democratic Union, Democratic Youth League, All Pakistan Progressive Writers Association, Pakistan Trade Union Federation, Kisan Committee (Punjab), Kisan Jirga (NWFP) and Hari Committee (Sindh).
Asdar Ali has collected a wealth of facts from published books and articles as well as archival material. He succeeded in interviewing some of the individuals connected with the party who were still alive about a decade back. He has thus unravelled a whole web of connections that helped in the formation of the party.
Towards the end of the book, the writer has a word of advice to offer to the Marxist left: “…the current historical moment may call for some introspection and rethinking rather than invoking grand narratives of resistance and working class solidarities… Questions need to be asked to create a politics where the category of difference (ethnic, gender, religious) is retained with a new emphasis on social equality and economic justice, a vision of future where identity based politics is restructured and redefined with a politics of social equality. A politics that is not always, as Jacques Rancière would argue, dependent on an analysis of conflict and friction: rather it is a politics that often concerned with living with disagreements as much as it is about creating consensus.”
There is a need to heed the advice. The left faces the historic task of changing the current democracy that has metamorphosed the assemblies into billionaires clubs into a real people’s democracy where candidates with lesser resources can also get elected. Unless this is done, the country’s real problems that include the end of poverty, the reduction of the gulf between the richest and the poorest and cheap access to justice, education and health will remain unaddressed. The common man in that case will lose interest in democracy.
“Surkh Salam, Communist Politics and Class Activism in Pakistan 1947-1972”
Written by: Kamran Asdar Ali
Published by: Oxford University Press, 2015
Pages: 253; Price: Rs995
