Left wing politics has not had much purchase in Pakistan and has occupied a quite peripheral role especially since the 1970s. This is not to say it has been entirely irrelevant in the history of Pakistan.
In the 1940s the Communists often contradicted themselves on the Pakistan question, but for the 1945 - 1946 elections the Communist Party of India encouraged its members to work closely with the Muslim League. Prominent Muslim communists such as Mian Iftikharuddin and Danial Latifi, amongst others heeded this call. Latifi in fact drafted the Provincial Muslim League manifesto in 1944, which called for state planning, nationalisation of key industries, minimum wage guarantees, the right to strike, debt relief for peasants and ownership of state land by landless peasants with progressive taxation on large holdings. One could argue that the influence of the Communists was important in sensitising the Muslim League to the War time economic dislocations in the Punjab, which undermined the Unionist Party. The League sought support of the peasants by offering solutions to their economic problems. The Communists also organised meetings for the League. In reality, there was of course much tension between the Communists and the Muslim League. But there was a degree of convergence in the rhetoric, with Pakistan being presented as an antidote to the corruption and oppression of everyday life.
Away from the Communists and socialists, even the modernists who would ultimately spearhead the campaign for Pakistan often spoke of social justice as inherent in Islam. Iqbal, the most famous of the Islamic modernists in the twentieth century, stated that “after a long and careful study of Islamic Law I have come to the conclusion that if this system of Law is properly understood and applied, at last the right to subsistence is secured to every body.” He was adamant that “the acceptance of social democracy, in some suitable form and consistent with the legal principles of Islam, is not a revolution but a return to the original purity of Islam.” It is also relevant to point to the Planning Committee which was set up in 1944. In the second meeting, Jinnah, perhaps influenced by Iqbal’s sentiments, addressed the members on 5 November and made a visionary speech:
“in whatever problems you tackle there is one point which I must request you to keep in mind - and it is this.
It is not our purpose to make the rich richer and to accelerate the process of accumulation of wealth in the hands of few individuals. We should aim at levelling up the general standard of living amongst the masses and I hope your committee will pay due attention to this very important question. Our ideal should not be capitalistic but Islamic, and the interests and welfare of the people as a whole should be kept constantly in mind.”
The memorandum on economic development submitted by planning committee to Jinnah in July 1945 was strikingly left wing, proposing a level of taxation from 14% to 17% of national income, which was higher than the Bombay plan (which became a semi-official economic blueprint for the Congress) envisaged. It put the alleviation of poverty as central aim and was critical of large scale capitalist producers. It included a ‘shopping list’ of industries for nationalization and was more radical than Bombay plan with regard to reform to agriculture. In social policy, it called for female education in villages, creation of training centres for women social workers, promotion of technical education, advancement of indigenous medical practitioners, grants-in-aid for housing and planning societies.
However when Pakistan was established, barely any of this was implemented. Refugee settlement overshadowed everything in Pakistan’s early days. There was a lack of personnel who could run state run industries. There was also the need to industrialize quickly as Pakistan lagged far behind India and was in a parlous economic state. The entry of large landlords into the Muslim League also acted as a brake on any aspirations to achieve major reform in agriculture. Mian Iftikharuddin would in fact quit the Muslim League in part because of the opposition he faced from landed interests.
Organised left politics struggled in the early years of Pakistan. The Pakistan state worked closely with Britain and the USA, foreign governments with a particular interest in containing communism. In the countryside class based action was restricted by the patronage networks. Pir-murdee ties, biraderi affiliations and in some places the economic power of the large landlords curtailed opportunities for class alignment. In the urban sphere, less than 1% of the Pakistani population were engaged in wage labour.
Nevertheless, there always existed a platform for the left. The Progressive Bloc deserted the Muslim League shortly after independence, forming parties such as the Azad Pakistan Party (1953), the Pakistan National Party (1956) and the National Awami Party (1957). And eventually a party with significant left-wing rhetoric in its manifesto would succeed, this being of course the PPP, which only 3 years after its founding stormed to victory in West Pakistan. Yet, this would in may ways end up being a false dawn for the left.
In the Punjab within the PPP, the left gathered around Sheikh Muhammad Rashid (who was a member of the AIML in the 1940s). Acutely aware that the PPP could be subverted from within if it opened its doors to notables and professional politicians, they proposed restrictions on entry. The high command (‘central cell’) of the PPP was was more conservative than the Punjab left (important exceptions being Jalaludin Abdur Rahim and Mairaj Muhammad Khan) and were proponents of a more ‘inclusive’ approach to potential entrants. Some of these members argued that the true opponents were the pro-Western class of indigenous capitalists, who helped perpetuate an imperialism that rendered post-colonial states as not truly free and sovereign. In this reading, it was the capitalists, rather than the landed notables that needed to be opposed.
An example of the clash between the two visions of the PPP is provided by the following example. On 29 March 1969, in a meeting of the Punjab-Bahawalpur Council of the PPP, Taj Langah had proposed that those with class interests contrary to the party’s ideology should only be granted membership in exceptional circumstances and even then should not hold party office or be given a PPP ticket for a period off 3 years. The central cell countered that the PPP should be projected as a ‘united front of progressive and nationalist forces’. They were conscious too, that compared with other parties the PPP possessed fewer funds and the entry of notables could boost the coffers. Crucially, the central cell was supported by Bhutto. At the Lahore Inter-Continental Hotel, Bhutto let rip at the left. Langah informed Phillip Jones, author of a fine work on the PPP, that the ’Inter-Continental meeting was a nightmare for us…We were humiliated in the feudal way.’ The Punjab-Bahawalpur Council would never meet again as Bhutto refused to sanction any such meetings in the future.
Bhutto saw himself as a pragmatic politician, a believer in action. Admitting to being frustrated at times by the left wing intellectuals he said to Jones:
“On the exterior they are intellectuals and the do nothing but sit in coffee houses and drink coffee and have long hair. There is no question of their giving deep thought to the facts of power.”
Bhutto, for whom ‘the facts of power’ could never be disregarded, would seek a broad based coalition, openly courting landed interests. Many landed notables joined from Sindh, although in the Punjab, they would generally join after the 1970 elections.
But there was a price to pay with such a strategy. The entry of political careerists blunted the PPP as an instrument for social change and weakened the organisation. 50 years on and there is little doubt that it is the ‘politicals’ and not the ‘ideologicals’ that dictate PPP policy.
The years of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto ultimately represented both the apogee of the left-wing movement and ultimately its end as a force exerting some pressure on Pakistani politics. After the Bhutto years, in keeping with worldwide trends, the economy took the path of deregulation, privatisation and liberalisation. It is also notable, that even amongst the Muslim modernists, many of whom were not socialists, the rhetoric of social justice so frequent in the early years of Pakistan’s existence is now barely ever heard. Within this context the Awami Workers Party, continues to provide a platform for those interested on issues that have historically animated the left, but faces an up-hill struggle in reshaping Pakistani politics.
