Daily Times

‘Workers’, the Communist Manifesto – the biblical document of the world proletariat – says, ‘have nothing to lose but their chains’. However, it does not tell about those who have nothing to lose but do not move to feel their chains or have resigned to them.

The Indian partition gave birth to a traumatic and divided Punjab previously led and controlled by the feudal lobby of the Unionist party, a bunch of hardcore secularists. Even when the class interests forced the charismatic Sikandar Hayat, the then premier of Punjab, to join ranks with Jinnah, he jealously guarded his secular identity and the identity of his party. The Unionist party supported the League in the center but maintained its polity in Punjab.

The League dented the dominant secular culture of pre-partition Punjab. Khizar Hayat, the successor of Sikandar Hayat, according to Stanley Wolpert complained to the viceroy that the League, denouncing him as a ‘quisling’ and ‘kafir’ was importing clergy from other states allegedly to subvert his government. The civil disobedience launched by the League ended with communal riots, the premier resigned, his cabinet dissolved and governor rule was imposed that continued until the partition of Punjab was materialized.

For a paradigm shift, a single speech on 14th August was not enough. The country won in the name of religion was not going to shed the specter haunting it; those living by the sword have to perish by the sword. The Objective Resolution not only consolidated the power of the clergy but also of the feudals who changed their loyalties from the Unionist Party to the Muslim League. In Punjab, religion became an instrument to halt the land reforms and to topple political rivals to attain the highest pedestal.

The Chief Minister of Punjab Daultana, and the League played the inglorious role in the (anti-Ahmadi) riots of 1953. ‘Daultana played a double game, for which later he was castigated by the judicial court of inquiry’…. ‘The provincial government established a department of Islamiat for the purpose of educating the public in religious education, four of the six ulemas on its board played a prominent part in the agitation, two of whom were later arrested. Out of 18 lecturers, 11 were directly involved’ in the disturbances (KK Aziz). Amid the economic crisis with hundreds of thousands of refugees reeling, Punjab continued to receive religious shock therapies.

Ironically, the feudals found their most allied ally in Dr. Khan whose majority government was the first victim of the Pakistani state. He became the chosen Chief Minister of West Pakistan under the banner of the Republican, a non-existent party. A cursory glance on the social class to which the Chief Ministers of Punjab and Sindh belonged is enough to see the feudalist hold on Pakistani politics. From August 1947 to November 1955, all four from Punjab, and five from Sindh came from the feudal or elite families. The four out of seven premiers were landowners and two out of four Governor-Generals were knights. They were leading a new state, economically the most backward in the Indian subcontinent.

The fall of Bengal changed the economy and the impending secular character of Pakistan. The populist Bhutto retained the feudal structure and helped the gun-holding forces to regain their lost pedestal. The idea of socialism could not get along with a thousand-year war and grazing grass to nuke the enemy. To erase the real problems from the memory of people, both the growling wolf and the smiling fox were presented to them. Borrowing a leaf from Nazis, the Ahmadiyya community, promoted as the ‘other’, was thrown to the wolves. The resurgence of religion killed the socialist specter effectively.

Alienated Punjab is in flux. Its alienation is economic. The class struggle ‘by conjuring up the spirits of the past’ guises itself in religious phrases

Zia depoliticized Pakistan. Punjab, being the largest province that voted for a socialist economy, had to be neutralized. The atrocious coercion, the official patronage of sectarianism, the anti-Soviet jihad numbed the people of Punjab into absolute submission. The massive greenback inflow gave a kick to the ailing economy. The bourgeois and traders found an opportunity to make a quick buck with little checks and balances. The massive and barbaric crackdown on workers broke the back of the labor movement. The massacre of January 1986 in Multan in which police killed 19 striking workers in cold blood was a message of Hitler’s rebirth in Pakistan.

The law of blasphemy regardless of one’s faith became a tool against the non-conformists. It was an imperialist invasion on a community of Muslims, a repeat of the US invasion on the Philippines to convert an already Christian nation into Christianity. The party of Pathankot prospered whose leader declared Jinnah an infidel but sang paeans for Hitler and Mussolini.

The middle class, a rigidified segment of society, found solace in religion. It was natural; the Inquisition in Spain affected the people in the same vein. The lumpen political parties found the moment congenial to turn the state into an intolerant jingoistic country, a laboratory for their brand of Islam. Godly Pakistan became faithless.

It was not about the character-structure of Punjab but the economic factor that influenced the psyche of the biggest province. It supplied the maximum number of soldiers to its British expropriators to win a war – ultimately won by the Red army – for unrestrained accumulation. The return of maimed brought the misery that jolted the rule of the secular Unionist party in Punjab.

Under the auspices of MRD, when the rest of Pakistan was fighting against the oppression of Zia, Punjab slumbered. It was Thanatos, death of the culture that stimulated resistance. The capitalist relations of production had inflicted the alienation upon its people; self-preservation became their destiny. The devastated large reserve army of unemployed lost the sight of reality – irrational became real.

Later under the neoliberal (dis)order, capitalism finding little room for its realization turned back to its old imperialist tactics of economic Lebensraum. The enlightened moderation, in reality, Talibanization, wiped out the last vestiges of resistance from Punjab. The south became the hub of terror.

The accumulation of capital in Punjab continued unhindered. It became the wealthiest province but not without a significant majority living below the poverty line, albeit the multidimensional poverty remained highest in Balochistan (73%) and FATA (71%). The largest contribution of USD 163 billion by Punjab out of a total USD 284 billion GDP of Pakistan and its huge (52.95%) population were the real factors behind the capitalist accumulation.

The tremendous social wealth or population does not translate themselves into prosperity for the people, who in Punjab are fed on religious bigotry, impregnable military might, and fast receding Indian hatred. ‘The greater the social wealth, the functioning capital and energy of its growth, therefore also, the absolute, mass of proletariat and production of the labor, the greater is the industrial reserve army’ (Marx). ‘Misery up to extreme form of famine and pestilence, instead of chocking increases the population’ (S. Laing). Malthus’ theory of depopulation is crap; an increase in the accumulation of wealth is tied to the exponential rise of population.

Alienated Punjab is in flux. Its alienation is economic. The class struggle ‘by conjuring up the spirits of the past’ guises itself in religious phrases. The transition from feudalism to unheroic capitalism was heroic but the increasing contradictions are piling up the social anxiety. Deception and dumbness – the objective spirits of capitalist society – have struck it deep. Is it time Locke to supplant Habakkuk or the ghost of the past will walk again?

The writer, an Australian Pakistani has authored books on socialism and history. He blogs at saulatnagi.wordpress.com and can be reached at saulatnagi@hotmail.com