Debate on Pakistani Left: pride and prejudices
In response of the Article
Where The Left Goes Wrong. by Ammar Aziz
The article is written in same old
cold war atmosphere and tried to justify old pro Moscow groups & NAP (wali)
positions. I think for analyses we better leave old prejudices first. I tried
to deconstruct ammar’s article and my answers/explanations/quires are either in
foot notes or end notes. For an easy solution, am pasting these notes below
too. Thanks
Aamir riaz
Editor awami jamhori forum
1. Stalin
wrote that booklet in 1912 with the help of Bukaren and was published in
official journal of Bolsheviks; no one including Lenin called it ambiguous. For
reference see
http://dare.uva.nl/document/26103
2. For
this, one should see what Lenin said about national question, how he treated
Jewish question in Tsarist Russia. For references see the end note pasted at
the end of article.
3. There
are two things in this support. One was international while 2nd was
domestic and ideological. There was a shift in USSR stance after Hitler attack
on USSR. Till 23 August 1939, Hitler was not a fascist for USSR when both
signed agreement Molotov–Ribbentrop
Pact which was there till June 1941. Till April 1939, Hitler was not fascist for
Britain but it was Hitler who broke 1935 Anglo-German Naval Agreement.
Before attack on the father land communist called WW11 “A war between Capitalis
countries” yet after June 1941 in general and after Atlantic charter of 14
August 1941 & December 1941 26 countries conference in Washington USSR joined
Allied Powers. After that communists started saying that it is National war or
Our war. At domestic front communists
were now part of British War efforts in India and firstt batch of communists
started getting military trainings at Burma in 1942. A communist wrote about it
in his memoires. In 1943, after Tehran Conference, Russians disband comintern,
communist international and in India Adhekari, a senior member of polit beuro
came with nationalist thesis in support of majority muslim areas right of self
determination. Remember, CPI declared legalize in 1942 after 17 years ban.
4. Not
only Muslim league but also hindu, muslim, sikh communists were part of war
efforts from 1942 onward, some joined army some joined propaganda wings, some
started new magazines. One example is recently published Sajjad Zahier’s
editorials written between 1943 & 46, compiled by Ahmad Saleem published by
Sang e Meal.
5. It
is to be noted that CPI under pressure from British Communist party stopped it
support for Pakistan Scheme till the early 1946 under Royal Indian Navy mutiny. From that movement,
actually CPI changed her policy. it is reported by Communist Bengali leader
Mohit Sain in his famous memoires Travels & the road.
6. The
case was Opposite in India where prop Moscow CPI was part of Indian
establishment while pro Chinese were declared as qadaars by Indian communists
and congress.
7. Not
all pro Chinese in Pakistan had reservations regarding Mujib ur Rehman and
Awami league or supported military action in east Pakistan. One example was
aziz ul haq who was against NAP & pro Russians & pro Indians in
Pakistan. Same with Shafqat tanveer mirza like people who r not in NAP but
against military operation in East Pakistan. Such generalizations are wrong.
Ironically, majority of pro Russian lobby did not oppose crossing of
international border by Indian army before December 16th 1971
8. If
it was rhetoric than what were NAP stands?
9. The
story of democratic victory of awami league should be analyzed by boycott of
December 1970 elections by Mollana Bahshani in East Pakistan.
10. Was
that movement for right of self determination? Was Mujib or awami league
struggling for freedom of Bengali nation? Without west Bengal can we call it
Bengali right of self determination movement?
11. Cold
war between USA & USSR was a planned war , it was not war between systems
but a cold war in favor of supremacy of USA & USSR
12. Writer
thinks that War on Terror is Just war but in reality Like Cold war, Afghan
Jihad, this war on terror is too war of interests.
Ammar article with additional footnotes and end note by aamir riaz
- The political framework of the left wing has
been historically shaped up to dream of and struggle for an “inevitable
revolution”. Their philosophy nourishes an ideological optimism, which is
sometimes contrary to their realistic approach, and challenges the credibility
of their worldview. From the era, when the world beheld the assertion of
‘communism in 20 years’, to the day, when we see the implementation of an
incongruous rhetoric of ‘social-capitalism’, the left has generally been
disappointing.
In our region too, we have seen the leftists
taking various positions, quite contradictory to their perceived narrative.
Take the issue of the Partition, for instance. The Communist Party of India had
supported the demand for a separate religious state just because of Stalin’s ambiguous definition of a ‘nation’.
Theoretically In the growth of the Muslim
League, the CPI did not see the growth of religious-communalism but the rise of
‘anti-imperialist consciousness’ in Muslim masses.
Consequently, many Muslim cadres of the CPI had joined the Muslim League and diverted their
revolutionary energies in propagating the idea of Pakistan, a land they anticipated
to be free from the exploitation of ‘Hindu moneylenders and landlords’. It
didn’t take a lot of time for their futuristic illusion to be shattered.
In the 1960s, when the communists in Pakistan
were divided between pro-Soviet and pro-Chinese fractions, like their
counterparts in the world – they, once again, took strange sides. That was the
time when Pakistan, under Ayub Khan’s dictatorship, had started flirting with
China because of their common enmity with India. Ironically, the Maoist
fraction in Pakistan typically saw India as a formidable foe just because of
Sino-Indian war and Pakistani establishment’s allegiance for the People’s
Republic of China. The establishment’s adherence for China, despite being
notoriously anti-communist, emerged from the Sino-Indian conflict itself. While
being pro-Moscow was considered as unpatriotic in Pakistan, being pro-Beijing wasn’t.
Both fractions decided their moves, what they referred to as ‘tactics’,
according to the international political scenario, most notably the Cold War,
rather than the local situation.
Later, during the Bangladesh Liberation War of
1971, the leftists – outside the radical horizon of the National Awami Party
and the pro-Soviet fraction, started siding with the populist People’s Party;
hence, they couldn’t objectively analyze the oppression of the Bengali masses. Bhutto’s s blend of
radical rhetoric
borrowed from the leftist jargon and the hollow slogans of ‘Islamic Socialism’
attracted several trade unionists – mostly from the Maoist background, leftist
intellectuals and youth to the People’s Party. Thus, a significant fragment of
Pakistani left completely failed to recognize the democratic victory of Awami
League in the 1970 general
elections and the right of self-determination of Bangali masses; this failure led them to
support the bloody civil war, imposed by the establishment of West Pakistan on
East Pakistan. Interestingly, Pakistan gained support from both China and the
US during the war. The Sino-Pakistan courtship was seen by the US with
apprehension, but its strategic concern to counter Soviet influence in South
Asia suggested that the emerging relation between China and Pakistan could be
exploited to achieve that goal.
Even today, a particular brand of Pakistani
leftists – not all of them – is indulged in premature and idealistic analyses
of critical issues such as Islamic radicalization. Our insignificant left is
majorly divided over the issues of religious fundamentalism and the war on
terror. While the viewpoint that
Islamic terrorist forces were originated by the United States as a Cold War
tactic is shared by a majority of leftists, there are still others who have a
soft corner for the former in the ongoing battle against the latter. The
notion that the Taliban are some sort of ‘rural, poor, Pashtun workers, struggling
for the betterment of their material conditions, while battling US imperialism’
is no less than some bizarre political joke from the Cold War era which
glorified the mujahedeen just because they were resisting the Red Army.
It is surprising to see several self-proclaimed
Marxists considering these Islamo-Fascists as some sort of anti-imperialist
radical force of our time. They fail to recognize the difference between
Islamists’ anti-Americanism, a prejudice against a country and its people – in
isolation of its economy – and the leftist theory of anti-imperialism, an
intellectual resistance against the global hegemony of capitalism.
Most of these left intellectuals refer to
themselves as ‘internationalists’ and are based in western countries. Some
veterans, including Tariq Ali, even left the country during the 60s and the 70s
and hardly visit home. Yet, they are seen as experts on Pakistan and their
confused opinion on these matters is appreciated with great respect.
Furthermore, we have several smaller leftist
groups and parties who don’t hesitate even a little bit declaring the religious
militants as self-styled revolutionaries. For instance, an international
Trotskyist tendency in Pakistan has similar views about the Taliban whose
opposition of the US gives them a hope against western imperialism. One
of its activists shared his opinion on this,
“Our educated middle class did not fight ruling class’s oppression
and did not champion the cause of the rural and urban poor. In such a vacuum,
another segment of society mustered the courage to fight back the ruling class
and took up the cause of Pashtun rural poor, under religious symbols and
language, but actually for its material interests and championing due share in
economic and political power for the under-privileged and excluded Pashtun
lower classes.”
Many new leftists even see Malala’s appraisal by
the UN as ‘white-man’s burden’ and ‘capitalist propaganda’. Some of them even
have some preconceived notions about the ‘justice system of the Taliban’. A Pakistani
Marxist - a doctoral candidate in Canada – said, “The Taliban have often
fought against Khans (feudal lords) and have established quick justice systems.
Are those objectively in the interests of subordinated classes? Of course they
are.”
If one starts seeing through their prism, the
situation would seem quite revolutionary in Pakistan: ‘The poor, downtrodden,
workers and peasants, long suffering under neo-colonial and neo-liberal
oppression, have begun getting united. The proletarians and rural peasantry of
FATA and KP have identified the ugly face of US imperialism and are marching
forward to overthrow its tyranny. Our armed comrades in the tribal areas are
aware that the West lives on the sweat and blood of the East. So what if their
language and symbolism is religious, their objectives are very material and
they’re fighting for social equity. The Pakistani bourgeoisie, liberals
and far-leftists support the war on terror because they oppose the people’s
resistance against imperialism. Pakistan is ripe for a people’s revolution.’
This mindset is not very different from the
ludicrous thinking of the Indian Maoists who used to refer to the Pakistani
military dictator Ayub Khan as ‘comrade’ just because of his ‘comradeship’ with
Chairman Mao!
Indeed, it is political idiocy to consider
Taliban as a nationalist-reactionary force waging a war against imperialism.
Both prevailing narratives, that if you oppose either the US or Taliban, you
support the other, are nothing but a logical fallacy. The left needs to oppose
both if they want to change anything at all.
After spending the last seven years in the
left-wing circles as an activist, I believe that only leftists have ever
understood our society fully. And they got it wrong.
End Note
Critical Remarks on the National Question
It is
obvious that the national question has now become prominent among the problems
of Russian public life. The aggressive nationalism of the reactionaries, the
transition of counter-revolutionary bourgeois liberalism to nationalism
(particularly Great-Russian, but also Polish, Jewish, Ukrainian, etc.), and lastly, the increase of
nationalist vacillations among the different “national” (i. e.,
non-Great-Russian) Social-Democrats, who have gone to the length of violating
the Party Programme—all these make it incumbent on us to give more attention to
the national question than we have done so far.
Critical
Remarks on the National Question
“NATIONAL CULTURE”
As the reader will see, the article in Severnaya Pravda, made use of
a particular example, i. e., the problem of the official language, to
illustrate the inconsistency and opportunism of the liberal bourgeoisie, which,
in the national question, extends a hand to the feudalists and the police.
Everybody will understand that, apart from the problem of an official language,
the liberal bourgeoisie behaves just as treacherously, hypocritically and
stupidly (even from the standpoint of the interests of liberalism) in a number
of other related issues.
The conclusion
to be drawn from this? It is that all liberal-bourgeois nationalism sows the
greatest corruption among the workers and does immense harm to the cause of
freedom and the proletarian class struggle. This bourgeois (and
bourgeois-feudalist) tendency is all the more dangerous for its being concealed behind the slogan of “national
culture”. It is under the guise of national culture—Great-Russian, Polish, Jewish, Ukrainian, and so forth—that the Black-Hundreds and the
clericals, and also the bourgeoisie of all nations, are doing their dirty and
reactionary work.
…….The same applies to the most oppressed and persecuted
nation—the Jews. Jewish
national culture is the slogan of the rabbis and the bourgeoisie, the slogan of
our enemies. But there are other elements in Jewish culture and in Jewish
history as a whole. Of the ten and a half million Jews in the world, somewhat
over a half live in Galicia and Russia, backward and semi-barbarous countries,
where the Jews are forcibly kept in the status of a caste
Critical
Remarks on the National Question
THE EQUALITY OF NATIONS AND THE RIGHTS OF
NATIONAL MINORITIES
And yet, if the constitution of the country
contained a fundamental law rendering null and void every measure that
infringed the rights of a minority, any citizen would be able to demand the
rescinding of orders prohibiting, for example, the hiring, at state expense, of
special teachers of Hebrew, Jewish history, and the like, or the provision of
state-owned premises for lectures for Jewish, Armenian, or
Rumanian children, or even
for the one Georgian child. At all events, it is by no means impossible to
meet, on the basis of equality, all the reasonable and just wishes of the
national minorities, and nobody will say that advocacy of equality is harmful.
On the other hand, it would certainly be harmful to advocate division of
schools according to nationality, to advocate, for example, special schools for
Jewish children in St. Petersburg, and it would be utterly impossible to
set up national schools for every national minority, for one, two or
three children.
