Today, when we take a cursory glance at Pakistan’s political firmament, we only see political forces of the right, extreme right and militant right holding sway in Pakistan. There seems to be no alternative of a genuine political party of the left of any significance available to our voters. The PPP was no doubt formed as a leftist socialist party but it soon broke away from its ideological moorings. Small leftist parties do have their presence in three of our smaller provinces but they do not have much traction at the national level. To understand why viable leftist parties could not form and grow in Pakistan, it would be instructive to have a brief historical perspective.
The left always had a marginal presence in Pakistan to begin with. At the time of partition, many Muslim members of the Indian Communist Party decided to reluctantly support the movement for Pakistan: these leftist elements soon broke away from the mainstream and formed the nucleus of the Pakistani left. The left could never get a substantial following in Pakistan but it did succeed in organising industrial and railway workers unions, as well as peasants organisations to protect them from the exploitation of industrialists and landlords.
The Progressive Writers Association was also formed, which was a very effective organisation of left wing intellectuals. Eminent leftist poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Marxist intellectual Sajad Zaheer were some prominent members of this Association. As the left stood for progressive ideas like secularism, rational and scientific thinking and women’s rights, it was opposed by the new republic, which was ostensibly created in the name of Islam. Mr Jinnah, a modern and secular leader, used the religious card as a political ploy. He never had the intention of forming a theocratic Islamic state. His ideal was a modern Muslim nation state but once the religious genie was out of the bottle, it was impossible to put it back. This basis of Pakistan in religious ideology, soon led to some painful paradoxes. The loss of East Pakistan made it amply clear that religion was not enough to hold together a diverse and complex nation state like Pakistan when justice and equity were not provided to all its federating units and the ethnic nationalities that lived there.
The 1970s were perhaps the high point for leftist parties. In the 1970 elections, the PPP, a left-of-centre party with a socialist agenda, took the maximum seats in West Pakistan and, after the separation of East Pakistan, formed the federal government. In then NWFP and Balochistan, the leftist National Awami Party (NAP) formed coalition governments in NWFP and Balochistan. Mr Bhutto, a shrewd politician, in order to make his socialist agenda more acceptable to the masses called it “Islamic socialism”. The parties of the left must be apportioned a great deal of blame for not following democratic policies and undermining each other. Bhutto soon dismissed the leftist government in Balochistan and the one in NWFP resigned in protest. Very soon, under the pressures of practical politics, Mr Bhutto’s socialist agenda and leftist polices became diluted to the extent that the PPP was no longer any different from the other parties. In its subsequent stints in government under Benazir Bhutto and Asif Zardari, the PPP dropped even the pretence of being a leftist party.
General Zia’s more than 10 years of reactionary self-serving ‘Islamic’ policies almost sounded the death knell of the political left in Pakistan. Through constant propaganda and indoctrination carried out at the governmental level, ‘Islamisation’ and the religious radicalisation of society took place. The parties of the left were considered to be secular and irreligious and thus not worthy of public support. Our secular and leftist parties did not make any serious attempt at educating the people about the correct meaning of secularism as an ideology where religion is the private affair of every citizen and has nothing to do with the affairs of the state. The majority of governments in Pakistan — both civilian and military — have been right wing. The parties of the left have thus been provided very little space to grow and develop. Even to this day our government and defence establishment have been more tolerant towards religious extremists, the North Waziristan operation notwithstanding, as compared to liberal and leftist militants and separatists.
Leftist parties, when they did come to power like the PPP in the Centre and ANP in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, their governance left a lot to be desired. The general perception was one of corruption, maladministration and nepotism. The minuscule leftist parties that we have in Pakistan today, it seems, have limited themselves to drawing rooms and intellectual discourse only. On the other hand, Islamist parties and militant groups like Jamaat-e-Islami and Jamatud Dawah have very effective welfare and humanitarian wings. These humanitarian wings of Islamic parities like the Al-Khidmat foundation and Falah-Insaniat avail every opportunity to help people, whether it is in humanitarian disasters or looking after displaced people after military operations. These groups along with relief work also indulge in indoctrination and recruitment, and thus achieve more traction in the population at large.
The disintegration of the Soviet Union and changes in Eastern Europe adversely affected the political left all over the world. These developments were considered to be the failure of the socialist project. The coming to power of rightist, and in some case faith-based, parties in countries like Iran, Afghanistan and Turkey have also provided impetus to our own right-wing parties and have thus further weakened the already feeble leftist parties of Pakistan. For the political left to remain relevant in Pakistan it has to, for the time being, forget about capturing political power, either through revolution or the ballot box, which would be an impossibility in the present scenario of our country. The leftist parties should instead support pro-people policies like secularism, social democracy and modernity in thinking, economic justice, good governance, gender equality and rationality in human affairs. The left can thus become relevant by acting as the moral compass of society. The significance of the politics of the left can never be underestimated, as the left represents change, which should ideally represent progress. At any rate, leftist parties should always be available as a viable alternative to the citizens of Pakistan.
The writer is a freelance columnist