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The writer is a poet and author based in Islamabad.

“I went to India, but after my exile I came back. My family’s lands and riches could not keep me there. Neither could the party; my family had spoken to them that I should work there… But that is not where my struggle is. The labourers I have lived with, learnt from and taught socialism to – they are here, in Karachi. Not in India. This is why I came here, so will you. Our graves will be made in this land.”

His wish was granted. General Ayub Khan’s junta made it come true a little early though, in 1960, when he was 32. His grave was made in the heart of this land – in Lahore – after he was tortured to death in the notorious prison of the Lahore Fort. However, after his body – there are conflicting opinions on whether it was his body or not – was exhumed, the Anarkali Police buried him again and the grave is unknown.

The man we are speaking about is Hasan Nasir. The struggle he mentions in the interview from which I quoted above is the struggle for creating a just, egalitarian, humane and classless society. The ‘party’ he mentions in this quote was the then Communist Party of India with which he was active as a young student at the time of the partition of British India and creation of Pakistan, and the labourers he lived and worked with were Pakistani whom he associated with as a leader of the proletariat and an early office bearer of the Communist Party of Pakistan. The party was banned in 1954 and his open front to be was the National Awami Party (NAP) of yesteryears.

The family Hasan Nasir belonged to were aristocrats of Hyderabad (Deccan); his parents Zohra and Alambardar Hussein and maternal uncle Nawab Mohsin-ul-Mulk Syed Mehdi Ali, an associate of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan and one of the co-founders of the All India Muslim League.

If I remember correctly, I first read the above quote many years ago in an Urdu work by Major Mohammed Ishaq, another senior communist leader who is no more among us but was close to Nasir and Faiz Ahmed Faiz. Faiz also wrote a requiem for Nasir, one of the most touching poems written in Urdu, ‘Baarish-e-Sang’. The English translation of the quote from Nasir was found in a book recently which I am about to introduce.

I must confess that the lives, passion, struggle and untimely deaths of two political leaders that Pakistan first produced and then brutally killed continue to haunt me and virtually brings tears to my eyes. One is Hasan Nasir and the other is Benazir Bhutto.

Nasir was the first major political leader and a beacon of hope for both downtrodden workers and idealist intellectuals in Pakistan. He was detained under the Security of Pakistan Act and then killed by excessive torture.

Benazir Bhutto, who was finally assassinated in 2007 after several attempts on her life, continued to suffer from prison terms, exiles, vindictive actions against her and her family and followers by successive governments and perpetual negative propaganda all her life. She lived like a brave woman and died like a brave political leader. I say all this while knowing well that her father, Z A Bhutto, brought no less wrath upon leftists in Pakistan besides squashing a labour movement during his tenure.

Z A Bhutto himself was removed by another military dictator and sent to the gallows. For some of us, his redemption comes with his final struggle before his death. But Benazir Bhutto was a different woman who did not just lead her political party in the most difficult of times but dominated the polity of this country. She stood for the weak, the dispossessed, for women and for the values of democracy.

But coming back to Hasan Nasir, his ideals and his politics, what has rekindled interest in the politics he represented is a new work that has come out by Dr Kamran Asdar Ali, professor of anthropology and director of the South Asia Institute at the University of Texas, Austin. The book is in English with its main title in Urdu – ‘Surkh Salam’, which literally means ‘Red Salute’. OUP Pakistan has published it here while I B Tauris has published it from the UK.

‘Surkh Salam’ is an acknowledgement, appreciation, celebration and analysis of communist and leftist politics and class activism in Pakistan from 1947 to 1972, the first twenty-five years of our history. Dr Ali deserves praise for chronicling and documenting this tale, which was available in fragments but hitherto untold in a systematic fashion with academic rigour. We need another work to bring us to the present day.

We have seen memoirs of some leaders and activists, ranging from Professor Jamal Naqvi to Juma Khan Sufi, but a dispassionate, detailed and exhaustive work on the working class movement was gravely missing. ‘Surkh Salam’ brings forth the movement in its initial phase, when it reached its peak in the 1960s and when it started to dwindle in the organisational sense in the early 1970s. Hence, it adds substantially to the body of knowledge on Pakistan, particularly on political movements in the country.

We have huge gaps in our history. This book is a remarkable beginning of an honest investigation into our otherwise untold or incorrectly told history. It is meticulously researched; and I found the notes and references for each chapter at the end of the book very useful and informative. In fact, they lay out new questions and new avenues for inquiry.

One important contribution this book makes is establishing the role played by leftist writers, artists, ideologues and political workers in shaping the mind of the people, driving the political struggles and influencing the movements for fundamental rights in the country. The book also reminded me of what veteran communist leader Dr Aizaz Nazeer once told me when I was young and posing critical questions to him with a certain smugness that comes with youth and lack of knowledge. He said that he and his comrades may have failed in meeting their political objectives during their lives but their values and their struggles have permanently changed the way many people coming after them will ever view this world.

He was right. As long as the established oppressive social and economic order will remain, the struggle will remain. Those who have come after them may find different ways to counter the narrative of oppression but will never give up. In some form or the other, the voice of the marginalised and disadvantaged will be raised.

But today the real success of any political organisation or pro-people movement will largely depend on learning from the failings of the past. Not being critical of what went wrong, and simply limiting ourselves to eulogising the great sacrifices made by our predecessors in the face of brute force, will not help those who believe in socialist ideals today.

For instance, when reading the book it becomes apparent that the socialist movement ideologically lacked in the building of an organic narrative in terms of a viable, alternative economic theory. The politics of our socialist predecessors grew out of a compassion for the weak and the working class, and rightly so, but fell short of correctly comprehending the interplay of class, ethnicity and the project of Pakistani nationalism.

From the literary community to the legal fraternity to at best some political scientists and historians among the leaders, economic theorists were few and far between. What Marx did and what Marxists were best at was to understand capitalism.

In Pakistan, we had and continue to have a desire to change the socio-economic order without properly and rigorously understanding how our existing society, economy and politics work. An organic narrative based on theoretical foundations with complete understanding of where we are now and where we want to reach is the prerequisite for any success.

The writer is a poet and author based in Islamabad. Email: harris.khalique@gmail.com