Meraj Muhammad Khan’s devotion to workers’ welfare eulogised

Karachi

Meraj Muhammad Khan was a socialist to the core. His devotion to the welfare of the workers and peasants and the teeming oppressed segments of society was unquestioned and he devoted his life towards efforts to ameliorate the lot of the workers and usher in progressive thinking in society.

This was the tribute by Khaqan Muhammad Khan, son of the late Meraj Muhammad Khan, at a condolence reference for the departed political leader and advocate of revolution Miaraj Muhammad Khan at the Arts Council on Friday evening.

“He was a socialist to the very end and his personality pivoted around socialism and democracy,” said Khaqan.

He narrated how his father would take gifts for the poor and help them materially.

Azhar Jamil narrated the days of his higher education in the UK in the late 60s and talked of the left movements that were going on around the world mostly as a reaction to the Vietnam War and how the same thing was happening in Pakistan in the form of the anti-Ayub movement.

He said that Meraj worked for a democracy based on the politics of the Left. “On principles, he even broke with Bhutto,” he said. 

Jamil said Meraj was in favour of a broad-based Left party.  

This tribute to Meraj was echoed by Advocate Akhtar Hussain, who said that Miaraj anxiously wanted a socialist revolution. He said that the right of every citizen, rich or poor, to free education and healthcare was what Meraj crusaded for.

In reply to an earlier speech by Hafiz Naeem-ur- Rehman, he emphatically said that the socialists were never even remotely against religion. There was absolutely no conflict, he said and accused the US-led West of spreading this disinformation throughout the cold war in keeping with their agenda of using religion to roll back communism on the global scale.

Dr Jaffer Ahmed, director of Pakistan Studies Centre, University of Karachi, cited the suppression of the Ayub era and paid tributes to Meraj for having taken up the cudgels on behalf of the victimised and the oppressed amid that atmosphere of fear and suppression.

He said that we should most profoundly consider what the students could do to change the system as the establishment was too powerful and either crushed the student movements by force of arms or subsumed them.

Hafiz Naeem-ur-Rehman, Amir, Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), Karachi, recalled the cordial ties Meraj maintained with the JI despite the totally diverse ideological hue.

He said that Meraj had remarked to him that he was getting guidance from the Holy Quran for the fulfillment of his principles of egalitarianism. “How can class struggle succeed in the presence of feudals?” Hafiz Naeem queried.

“Meraj Muhammad Khan was a true leader with unfailing commitment to the cause of the workers and the peasants,” said noted leftist intellectual Dr Aliya Imam.

Meraj , she said, was very committed in his sincerity to the masses and wanted a system where principles were not foisted from above but through economic equality.

“The National Students Federation (NSF) was instrumental in bringing about a progressive socialist thinking for which Meraj and his NSF get the credit,” said Hasil Bizenjo.

“It was Bhutto’s opportunism whereby he realised the value of using the name of Meraj Muhammad Khan and exploited it to further his own political ends; hence, all the troubles he perpetrated on Meraj,” Bizenjo said.

Student leader Naghma Sheikh said that there was dire need to remove the gap between the young generation and the seniors in light of the technological changes and advancements that were taking place. 

The constant factor, she said, was that we had to rise against the forces of exploitation and intolerance.

Senator Taj Hyder said that Meraj’s movement was ideological, all for the betterment of the workers and the peasants.

He called for writing a detailed history of the era of the struggles in which Meraj was in the vanguard, and said that today there was all the more need for it when Western imperialist countries were siphoning away our natural resources and when millions were being smuggled out of the country and loans worth Rs350 billion had been written off, when the rich capitalists were all out to suck the last drop of the workers’ blood, people whom they owed their burgeoning prosperity.

Hisamul Haque, former president of the NSF, Punjab, said that Meraj was not in favour of the “democracy of the feudals”.

Others who spoke were Iqbal Latif of the Arts Council, Omar Farooq, Alamdar Haiderl, Aziz Memon, Manzoor Razi and Muqtada Mansoor.

The last-mentioned lauded the role of Meraj among the workers and his brother, the late Minahj Barna, among journalists. He lamented that today young people were involved in extremism and ethnicity.