In a recent article, Noaman G. Ali attempts to rescue Aisha Tahir and Khurram Ali from the criticism of their earlier intervention, in which they initiated a slanderous campaign against the Marxist-Leninist and Mao Zedong Thought tradition in Pakistan. Following Ali’s article, there is little reason to continue engaging with Aisha and Khurram’s original intervention. His attempt to muddle our argument, however, warrants a response.
This response goes beyond a defence of our earlier arguments. Its purpose is to consolidate our anti-revisionist Marxist-Leninist position and call for principled unity on questions that have remained persistent sources of ideological contestation throughout the history of the Pakistani Left. Among these is the peculiar hostility displayed by sections of the petty-bourgeoise intelligentsia towards the very word “Pakistan” or the use of religious symbolism in revolutionary political practice. This infantile disorder continues to afflict sections of the Left.
Indeed, it is worth recalling how this entire series of debates began: with the Haqooq-e-Khalq Party’s decision to unequivocally support Pakistan against India during last year’s war. That a Marxist party’s defence of its own country against aggression from an expansionist neighbour, governed by a far-right party whose ideological roots can be traced to European fascism, should become the subject of such prolonged controversy reveals much about the political condition of the Pakistani Left—and the extent to which sections of its intelligentsia have become estranged from the sentiments of the people they aspire to organise.
A Response to Teleological Fallacy Methodology
Noaman Ali characterises my interpretation of the political disagreements that contributed to the MKP’s split in 1977–78 as an example of a teleological fallacy, arguing that I have relied on the subsequent political trajectory of Sher Ali Bacha and Imtiaz Alam to explain their earlier positions. However, in making this criticism, he gives the impression that a literal reading of documentary texts is, in itself, a more rigorous methodology for writing history. This is also an academically weak argument.
Historical interpretation cannot be reduced to the wording of documents alone. Documents provide us with a recorded and often filtered version of events, but they do not necessarily reveal the full range of meanings, intentions, and political considerations that shaped their production. The latent meaning of a document must also be examined alongside the interpretations of those who participated in the debates and political processes that produced it.
The subsequent political practice of the actors involved provides another important dimension, allowing us to test and refine hypotheses developed through documentary evidence and the interpretations of contemporary participants. I do not use later political practice as the starting point for interpreting an earlier documented position; rather, it serves as a means of validating and refining an interpretation already developed from the historical evidence.
For example, when I argued that Imtiaz and Sher Ali Bacha were proposing the dissolution of the MKP as a unified political organisation and its reorganisation along ethnic lines, I did not arrive at this conclusion merely by examining their subsequent political practice. Instead, I triangulated three sources of evidence:
- First, I examined the wording and organisational implications of their proposal to understand what they were actually proposing.
- Second, I examined how the proposal was understood and interpreted by those who participated in the relevant debates. This was necessary to understand its political meaning, underlying intentions, and the concerns it generated among party leaders and workers.
- Third, I examined the subsequent political practice of Sher Ali and Imtiaz to test whether their later organisational and political choices were consistent with the interpretation developed through the first two stages.
From a methodological standpoint, this constitutes a triangulation of documentary evidence, participants’ interpretations, and subsequent political practice. Reducing this approach to a teleological fallacy and rejecting it on that basis is therefore an oversimplification on Ali’s part. It confuses the use of subsequent developments as one source of historical validation with the retrospective imposition of a predetermined outcome on the past.
What is particularly interesting, however, is that Noaman Ali himself initially developed an interpretation of their proposal in his article “Done with Decolonization” that was very close to the argument I have made. Subsequently, in the name of self-criticism and correcting his earlier reading of the documents, he revised his interpretation in a way that now appears more accommodating of a particular political position.
I do not wish to speculate about the reasons behind this adjustment. Nevertheless, from an academic standpoint, such a revision requires more than simply declaring an earlier reading mistaken. It requires a clear explanation of what was wrong with the original interpretation, what new evidence or methodological insight warrants the change, and how the revised account better explains the historical record.
The Historical Roots of Nationality-Based Organisational Forms
The roots of nationality-based organisational forms do not lie in a unique proposition advanced by Imtiaz and Sher Ali Bacha. Rather, this approach has a much longer history, extending well beyond Pakistan, where it has frequently been associated with opportunist and revisionist tendencies within the socialist movement.
In Pakistan, these tendencies can be traced back to the country’s formation. The newly established Communist Party of Pakistan (CPP), created by the Communist Party of India (CPI), inherited a particular political understanding: Pakistan was regarded as an unnatural country and, therefore, as a state that needed to be restructured on the basis of the historic nationalities that existed in the region before its creation.
The CPP was banned in 1954 following the Rawalpindi Conspiracy Case[1]. In 1956, its émigré leader returned back to India with the help of the diplomatic intervention of Jawaharlal Nehru, while a few fragmented cells remained in Pakistan[2].
Those who remained and continued the struggle began reorganising themselves in different forms. Various regional groups operated under different umbrella organisations and eventually came together to establish the National Awami Party (NAP), a heterogeneous amalgamation of regional nationalists, provincial autonomists, communists, landless peasants, landlords, and other loosely defined progressive forces, whose divergent ideological positions and often conflicting class interests were brought together under a common political umbrella. Within this fragmented framework, communist sections reorganised themselves into different cells and attempted to build a coherent organisation.
Following the Sino-Soviet split, tensions emerged among the various underground CPP cells and their respective mass fronts. These differences extended beyond the question of the dispute between the USSR and China. They also concerned the nature of the politics being practised at the time. To put it briefly, the central question was what kind of class politics they should pursue: whether to defend the interests of regional elites or organise the oppressed classes suffering under their domination. The debates also reflected deeper disagreements over how the newly formed country, its history, and its political foundations were understood.
As a result of these debates, the NAP first split into two major factions—NAP-Bhashani and NAP-Wali. The NAP-Bhashani group subsequently split further in West Pakistan, resulting in the formation of NAP-Bhashani and the NAP (Mazdoor Kisan) in 1967-68.
After 1968, the section of the CPP aligned with NAP-Wali began developing its organisational structures along ethnic lines through various mass fronts. In student politics, it facilitated the formation of the Baloch Students Organization (BSO)[3] and the Pashtun Students Federation (PSF) in November 1967 and April 1968, respectively.
Later, the Sindh National Students Federation was established in November 1968 to bring together various branches of the National Students Federation (NSF) operating on different campuses across Sindh.[4] Before the NAP split, the NSF had served as a common student front and was dominated by Maoist cadres. In the peasant movement, these groups formed the Balochistan Buzgar Committee and worked with the pre-partition Sindh Hari Committee, led by Hyder Bakhsh Jatoi. The Sindh Hari Committee had also been one of the constituent organisations of the NAP at its formation in 1957.
The ideology and strategy underlying this practice were aimed at harnessing centrifugal nationalist sentiments and organising a struggle for national democracy and provincial autonomy. The term national democracy, however, should not be confused with Mao Zedong’s conception of the New Democratic Revolution, which envisaged a united front of revolutionary classes against their common enemies. In contrast, this particular conception of national democracy reinforced ethnic divisions and placed the struggle under the leadership of the regional bourgeoisie.
When I argue that Imtiaz and Sher Ali were borrowing from the revisionist camp, I am referring to this historical context. Their proposal closely resembled the organisational practices of the revisionist camp, which had been pursued formally since 1967 and informally even earlier. However, from the standpoint of actual political practice, their strategy was even more flawed, resembling demagoguery rather than a serious political proposition.
[1] On 13 July 1954, the Communist Party of Pakistan was banned. Khalid Mehmood explains the situation following the ban in his interview published in Awami Jamhori Forum, Issue No. 33. He recalls that when he went to the party office in Rawalpindi one evening, a shopkeeper told him that everyone had been arrested. He further explained that, after the ban on the party, a liquidationist policy was adopted. In effect, it meant: “Ab sab daro aur bhaag jao” (everyone should be afraid, run away and disappear).
[2] Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, Second Series, Vol. 37, pp. 293-294
[3] Rahim Zafar Baloch Ex General Secretary of BSO interview with Awami Jamhoori Forum
[4] Odho, Imdad Ali. 2010. Jal mashal jal (atam kathā). Karachi: Sujag Publishers.
Ishaq Muhammad and the Organisation of Landless Peasants
Here, Noaman Ali has once again misread my argument. I am not labelling Sher Ali an opportunist for advocating the organisation of landless peasants in Hashtnagar. Rather, I have characterised the political line advanced by Sher Ali and Imtiaz as opportunist because it was accompanied by other tendencies of a similar character. In fact, Noaman Ali has inadvertently strengthened my argument by providing references to other party leaders who were aware of this emerging challenge and had discussed it on various occasions.[1]
These references further substantiate my earlier argument that Ishaq Muhammad was sympathetic to the organisation of landless peasants. His concern, however, was that the process should avoid unnecessary antagonism between different sections of the peasantry and that a consensus should first be developed within the provincial party. Responding to Ejaz Ahmad’s article, Major Ishaq, writing under the pseudonym Mushahid[2], addressed the factionalism that had emerged in the party’s areas of influence in the wake of the Hashtnagar Peasant Movement. He wrote:
“When factionalism begins, opportunists take advantage of it. Thus, in the name of supporting agricultural labourers, certain opportunist elements reject the strategy of People’s Democracy. They develop an aversion to the word kisan (tenant peasant) and, on this pretext, call for breaking up the Mazdoor Kisan Party or, at the very least, changing its name. Instead of considering the landlords their enemy, they regard the rich tenant peasants (muzara‘een) as their enemy[3].
They call the latter’s domination ‘reactionary terror’ (White Terror), while themselves relying on undesirable elements[4] whom they describe as ‘revolutionary terror’ (Red Terror). They want to carry out a revolutionary demolition of the electoral system, calling this an ‘active and militant boycott’[5]; yet, in the very next moment (after six month)[6], they insist on participating in elections, describing this as a tactical matter (citing Lenin’s writings).
The other opportunist faction, meanwhile, sides with the rich peasants and seeks to establish the domination of the prosperous rural and urban classes over the Party. It places emphasis on litigation and public meetings, views ideological debate with suspicion, recoils from the very name of socialism, and sabotages the establishment of a committee system and democratic institutions within the Party. Consequently, the Sarhad Party’s Provincial Council has still not been constituted, nor is any provincial-level body functioning.
The provincial party president and general secretary remain paralysed and inactive. In 1973, an attempt was made to convene the provincial party congress one day before the National Congress, but it failed because the necessary preparations had not been made. Preparations for the second congress have now fallen victim to factionalism within the Party and have, to some extent, themselves contributed to it. For this reason, the National Congress has also remained stalled.”
Noaman himself has presented sufficient evidence that Ishaq Muhammad, the central president of the MKP, was sympathetic to the concerns of the landless peasantry. Indeed, there is little reason to assume that someone like Ishaq would have opposed their organisation. He had examined the social conditions of landless peasants in Punjab and depicted their economic and social oppression in his Punjabi play Musalli, written in 1969–70 and published in 1970–71. The play subsequently became a vehicle for organising the landless peasantry in Punjab.
In Sarhad, Ishaq sought to resolve the contradiction between the rich and landless peasantry in a non-antagonistic manner. Sher Ali, on the other hand, emphasised this contradiction by equating relatively prosperous peasants with the old Khans, effectively treating them as a new class of landlords. This position is reflected in his statement: “Where once there was one Khan, there are now a hundred Khans.”
Bacha’s equation was mistaken on both theoretical and tactical grounds. The importance of distinguishing between different strata of the peasantry, and of adapting revolutionary strategy to the prevailing balance of class forces, was well established in Mao’s approach to agrarian reform.
In 1950, after the Communist Party of China had captured state power, Mao advocated temporarily refraining from action against the rich peasantry in order to isolate the landlords and preserve broader peasant alliances:
“The tactics in question are to leave untouched not only the capitalist rich peasants but also the semi-feudal ones in the agrarian reform scheduled for this winter in southern provinces and some regions in the Northwest and to defer the solution of the problem of the semi-feudal rich peasants for several years…
The reasons for taking this course are: First, the agrarian reform is unprecedented in scale and ultra-Left deviations are likely to occur. If we touch only the landlords and not the rich peasants, we can more effectively isolate the landlords, protect the middle peasants and guard against indiscriminate beating and killing…Second, the agrarian reform in the north was carried out in wartime…but now, with the fighting practically over, the agrarian reform stands out in sharp relief, and the shock to society will be particularly great and the landlords’ outcries particularly shrill.
If we leave the semi-feudal rich peasants untouched for the time being and deal with them a few years later, we will stand on stronger ground, that is to say, politically we will have more initiative. Third, we have formed a united front with the national bourgeoisie politically, economically and organizationally; and since the national bourgeoisie is closely tied up with the land problem, it seems better not to touch the semi-feudal rich peasants.”
These tactical considerations were particularly relevant to the conditions confronting the MKP in Sarhad. The party was not yet consolidated in the area, nor had it developed into a protracted revolutionary base where it could make and implement decisions independently. The state machinery was still present and functioning effectively. Although the MKP was gaining influence through the slogan of “land to the tiller”, it was not yet in a position to redistribute land through its own organisational mechanisms.
Under these circumstances, what the MKP could do was mediate agreements between landless workers and landowners concerning access to land and other resources, better wages, a greater share of crops, and more respectful social treatment of landless workers.
However, I feel that Noaman Ali creates a misleading impression that Sher Ali was the first to identify this contradiction, while the central leadership remained unaware of it. Ishaq Muhammad had been working in the area since 1963, when he became the convenor of the Kisan Committee, a peasant front of the NAP. It is difficult to believe that he would have been unfamiliar with the social and economic conditions of the region. Sher Ali himself acknowledged Ishaq’s contribution in an article published in Circular No. 54: “After Ishaq assumed the charge of Kisan Committee, it drove the new and old peasants’ workers to organise the farmers in the Sarhad.”
Previously, the leadership of the Kisan Committee had largely remained in the hands of rich peasants and was also ideologically influenced by the regional Pashtun Khans within the NAP leadership. It is therefore unreasonable to assume that Ishaq Muhammad was unaware of the question of landless peasants in Hashtnagar or opposed to their organisation.
On one occasion, Ishaq learned that peasant leaders in Hashtnagar had announced a fast to commemorate the martyrdom of peasants on 3 July, but that some rich peasants had prevented landless peasants from observing it. He publicly condemned this practice at a jalsa, warning that its continuation would undermine the struggle against feudalism and the pursuit of collective emancipation.[7]
During his tenure of Kissan Committee[8], Ishaq himself studied and investigated the social fabric of Punjab, recognised the landless peasantry as a distinct social force, and struggled to win its leadership over to the idea of forming a united front with the party. He also struggled within the party to encourage the inclusion of landless peasant leadership in the organization.
It is ironic that those who supported the separate organisation of landless peasants from Punjab in Sarhad Province took offence when Ishaq Muhammad preferred that Agha Khan Sohtra.[9] These petty-bourgeoise intellectuals and urban Maoist leaders, such as Syed Imtiaz Alam Gillani, were offended because landless peasants and organic peasant organisers did not possess a sophisticated vocabulary of Marxism-Leninism. The peasant leaders often began and concluded their speeches with religious symbolism and vocabulary.[10]
[1] I was already familiar with these references, and the relevant materials and readings of party circular were available to me. Readers may reach out with questions.
[2] MKP Party circular Issue No# 87
[3] Understand the quote “Where there is one Khans and now Hundered Khans”
[4] Ideological Alignment with the Pukhtun Zalmay
[5] Referring to Sher Ali and Imtiaz position at the time of before the election of March 1977
[6] Zia ul Haq overthrow the Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto government and imposed martial law and announced the election on October 18, 1977, which then he postponed on 1st October 1977 indefinitely.
[7] Ishaq Speech in Hashtanagar reported in party circular.
[8] Kissan Committee is mass front of NAP and Ishaq assumed the charge in 1963
[9] Agha khan Sohtra is a Dalit leader of the West Punjab and President of Dehati Mazdoor Tanzeem
[10] Interview with Latif Choudhary and Trade Union leader Nazeer Sayisai from Bahawalpur Textile Mill. He is part of the MKP study circle lead by Imtiaz Alam
Dissolving the Party or Putting the Party in Command?
In the subsection titled “Dissolving the Party or Putting the Party in Command”, Ali argues that Imtiaz and Sher Ali Bacha were not proposing the dissolution of the party, but rather seeking to establish proletarian leadership by addressing the organisational difficulties of recruiting illiterate masses directly into the party. However, this conception of party organisation is particularly favourable to petty-bourgeoise pseudo-intellectuals who are uncomfortable working directly among the masses. Such intellectuals tend to establish a quasi-Brahminical position of superiority, from which they can claim the authority to direct the masses on the basis of their supposedly superior understanding of Marxism-Leninism.
Mao Zedong challenged precisely this assumption in his Preface and Postscript to Rural Surveys (1941), declaring that:
“The masses are the real heroes, while we ourselves are often childish and ignorant.”
Furthermore, this proposal appears to involve creating a series of hypothetical letterhead organisations and fronts, many of which did not even exist in practice. We are well acquainted with this tendency within the Left during that period.
The allegation that Ishaq was an obstacle to forming any mass front other than the Pakistan Dehati Mazdoor Tanzeem (PDMT) is also factually incorrect. He was rightly opposed to the creation of letterhead organisations, a practice followed by many left-wing parties at the time and one that persists even today. This practice was common among the revisionist Left, which used such organisations to attend youth festivals funded by the USSR and recruit students by facilitating their admission to Soviet universities and arranging student visas.[1]
Ishaq was rightly concerned about this tendency. He believed that the existing student front, the NSF, was under the influence of anti-revisionist radicals and that the party should strengthen its ties with these groups rather than establish a letterhead student front of its own. At the trade-union level, party workers were already actively involved in the activities of Mazdoor Markaz under various trade-union leaders, including Abdul Rehman in Lahore and others in major industrial cities. The presence of these friendly organisations is evident in the report of the third MKP Punjab Congress at Dewan Sahib, Vehari, Punjab[2].
However, where individuals attempted to establish their own organisations, the party did not discourage such efforts. In his memoir, Fayyaz Baqir[3], recalls writing the pamphlet of the Inqilabi Talaba Mahaz. He also recalls many childish activities of the ring leader Imtiaz, who Ali regarded as a “revolutionary until 1977”, considering him politically naïve in comparison with the traditional peasant leaders of the MKP.
In conclusion, proposing to abandon the MKP name at a time when the party was gaining popularity and influence in everyday politics, particularly in areas where people were rebelling against the old shackles of feudalism, was a deeply flawed political decision.
Consider the example of Balochistan, where Mir Abdul Karim Bizenjo independently established an MKP organisation to seek the party’s support in his struggle against the Shishak tax.[4] The party, however, remained reluctant to support the movement. The revisionist camp treated the MKP’s opposition to sardari taxation as grounds for accusing it of supporting the state machinery against the supposedly progressive sardars.
The movement was subsequently crushed, and its leaders and supporters faced severe repression at the hands of these supposedly “progressive” sardars. Mir Abdul Karim Bizenjo[5], a leader of the pastoral communities, was murdered.
Elections and Tactical Political Judgement
An extended meeting of the Central Organising Committee was convened on 12 February 1977, during which all issues were discussed in detail. The meeting concluded that the party had upheld internal democracy, with every member given the opportunity to participate in the discussions. This was regarded as a demonstration of the party’s unity, mutual trust, political consciousness, and commitment to struggle.
The central body further concluded that, during the election period, the party should use the available political space to organise workers and peasants around their own demands rather than participate in what was essentially a struggle among competing elites. It therefore decided to organise public activities on 27 February, designated as a Day of Struggle.[6]
In the subsection concerning elections in his article, Ali’s discussion demonstrates that the peasants were wiser than the party leadership. They understood the significance of tactical support: by backing the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP)against the Pakistan National Alliance (PNA), they sought to prevent the latter from coming to power. The leadership, however, was reluctant to recognise this reality. Ishaq Muhammad discussed the party’s deliberations on the elections in detail.
He asserted that:
“What confidence can anyone place in the leadership of a party which, in August 1977, could not recognise that elections were not going to take place and was ready to sacrifice nine years of party policy and reputation because of the foolishness and selfishness of a few individuals” (Party Circular #87)
He added:
“One gentleman was particularly agitated about the elections because he had returned after fielding a candidate from a workers’ constituency. The candidate’s election deposit of Rs. 1,500 had been paid by a PNA candidate as a contribution to the election fund, with a promise of further financial assistance. The gentleman thought that this would secure funds for the trade union. The PNA people, meanwhile, believed that workers’ votes would not go to the Pakistan People’s Party. This kind of despicable bargaining is then presented as a matter of principle”.
“My position on elections is the same as that of the party. Elections are not a matter of faith versus disbelief. Whether or not to participate in elections is a tactical question, and a decision should be made after considering the circumstances and the situation. The ruling classes in underdeveloped countries do not allow elections to take place properly; and even when they do take place, they do not respect the results. Pakistan’s experience of past elections teaches us precisely this. Now, elections are being held on the condition that they produce predetermined, favourable results.”
“Electoral politics has its own rules. If we want to practise electoral politics, we will have to bring people with financial resources into the party, adopt the politics of the Chaudhrys, engage in unscrupulous bargaining, and pursue a reformist rather than a revolutionary policy. Since the ruling classes have blocked the path to workers’ and peasants’ power through elections, continuing to knock on this door was an act of extreme foolishness.”
“If there is strong unity within the party, there is no harm in sending second-tier leaders to the assemblies. But without party unity and organisation, these people will slip out of the party’s hands and become absorbed into the ruling class.”
The Organisational Practices of Imtiaz and Sher Ali: Testing My Historical Interpretations
According to Ali’s account, Sher Ali won the internal struggle over the organisation of landless peasants, while he and Afzal Bangash had no disagreement over participation in elections. Furthermore, Ali presents the proposal advanced by Sher Ali and Imtiaz as simply an attempt to unite with ethnic minorities. If this were indeed the case, why were they unable to unite the party in Sarhad Province and lead it at the national level, together with their supporters in other parts of the country?
If, as Ali concludes, Sher Ali and Imtiaz’s proposal was a carefully thought-out plan for reorganising the MKP through the Kisan Union or Kisan Committee, what compelled Sher Ali to adopt the very same party name he had previously considered an obstacle, merely by adding the prefix “Pakhtunkhwa”? Similarly, Imtiaz initially adopted the name MKP Workers Group, creating confusion among peasant workers, before later announcing the formation of the Punjab Lok Party—Lok being a Punjabi word meaning “people”.
There are many living witnesses who participated in its first convention but, upon realising that they had boarded the wrong train, got off at the very next station and returned to their original party. A handful of young middle-class activists, however, were trained and nurtured for the NGO boom of the 1980s and its service to imperialism.
What efforts did these revolutionaries make to implement their supposedly well-thought-out radical plan of building class fronts and an alliance of national minorities under revolutionary proletarian leadership, as proposed by Sher Ali and Imtiaz? Let us examine the subsequent political practice of these two leaders, particularly their efforts to establish parties along ethnic lines, as a means of testing and validating our earlier interpretation.
Trajectory of Bacha
Bacha, who had considered the name Mazdoor Kisan Party an obstacle to recruiting landless peasants, urban labourers, and other classes because he regarded it as too narrowly peasant-oriented, adopted the very same name in his new political venture—just a month after Bangash announced the formation of a separate party. This haste raises questions about how carefully thought out their position was and how closely Imtiaz and Sher Ali had coordinated their efforts. One is left to wonder: what, exactly, had come from this close coordination?
It was an underground party that coordinated various mass fronts through entryism. This had been the organisational practice of the united Communist Party within the NAP and, later, of the pro-Moscow CPP after 1967. Such a strategy may have been understandable when Ayub Khan had suppressed progressive forces and barred routine political activity. However, proposing the same approach at a time when people, particularly those from the downtrodden classes, were becoming increasingly politicised and actively participating in everyday politics was an infantile error.
Bacha retained the name briefly before eventually joining hands with Mehmood Achakzai to form the Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party (PKMAP).
Trajectory of Imtiaz Alam
As discussed in my previous response, Imtiaz and Sher Ali travelled to Afghanistan to seek material assistance but were unsuccessful. As Ali stated, upon their return, “Bacha and Imtiaz began to focus on “left unity” and increased interaction with communists in Afghanistan, which ultimately led to their arrest and imprisonment from 1981–1985/86. During this time, Imtiaz interacted closely with members of the revisionist Communist Party of Pakistan (CPP). Upon his release, Imtiaz turned toward reconstituting the CPP (and forming mass alliances with landed elites), and later the Qaumi Inqilabi Party (QIP).”
Let us examine the QIP’s organisational documents to assess how closely the structure proposed by Imtiaz and its new “comrades” resembled what he and Sher Ali had advocated within the MKP in 1978. This analysis will also provide the necessary context for the following section, where I challenge Ali’s equation of the political practice of MKP-Ishaq with that of Imtiaz, Sher Ali, and various revisionist organisations.
First of all, the central leaders of the QIP ridicule the class struggles of peasants, workers, and intellectuals. The Marxist theory of class struggle is declared obsolete and outdated, while ordinary trade-union activity and organising among workers and peasants are dismissed as a waste of time. Why are these ideas being advanced? The reasons offered are as follows:
- The fundamental driving force of history is not class struggle but nationalism[7].
- The principal contradiction of the present era is no longer the contradiction between capital and labour.
- Classes do not exist in society in clearly defined forms.
- The proletariat is very small in number, while society as a whole is petty-bourgeois. (QIP Congress Document, pp. 76–77.)
- Workers in large-scale industry constitute a labour aristocracy, while there is little scope for intensifying the contradiction between labour and capital in small-scale industry. (Congress Document, pp. 71–72.)[8]
On the basis of these arguments, the “revolutionaries until 1977” arrive at the conclusion that, in the present era, the true service of the working people lies not in the class struggle but in struggling for liberal democracy, regional autonomy, and so forth. There is no need to think about socialism until capitalism has fully matured.
At the theoretical level, particularly in relation to surplus value, the QIP argued that exploitation in small-scale productive industries largely takes the form of non-economic coercion. Yet, only a decade earlier, these very revolutionaries had regarded the coercive relationship between peasant proprietors and agricultural labourers in Hashtnagar and Charsadda as equivalent to the domination exercised by the Khans. They insisted on treating this contradiction as antagonistic, thereby contributing to the deepening of divisions within the party. This supposedly profound theoretical evolution did not take centuries; it took only a few years. Once the party’s disintegration was complete, a new line of propaganda emerged, directly contradicting the position they had upheld in 1977.
In his article, Ali emphasises that, up until 1977, the position of Imtiaz Alam and Sher Ali Bacha was not to liquidate the Mazdoor Kisan Party. Rather, they proposed the formation of a seemingly more revolutionary party in which peasants and agricultural labourers in Hashtnagar and elsewhere, together with the urban working class, would be mobilised through their respective fronts. These forces would then be united with the leadership of national liberation struggles among what Ali regards as anti-revisionist elements among the minority nationalities[9].
However, when the time came to build the party and implement this revolutionary perspective in practice, the approach adopted was to establish a confederal party consisting of five separate manifestos.
Lenin explicitly opposed the division of the working-class movement into separate organisations along national lines. Instead, he advocated a unified, centralised party bringing together workers of all nationalities under a common political programme and organisational leadership. He proposed a party operating through a unitary, centralised structure functioning within a single state framework.
The establishment of a confederal party, in which separate national organisations maintained their own programmes and political strategies, was precisely the kind of organisational division Lenin regarded as a concession to nationalism.
The constitution adopted at the QIP’s April 1989 Congress, and the explanation accompanying it, openly reflected this approach: “Since Pakistan is a multinational country, every national unit would have its own autonomous party, its own manifesto and its own strategy, which could either be compatible with or contradictory to those of the other units.”[10]
Moreover, the role of the central coordinating body would be limited to preparing reports on the organisation’s overall activities and conducting foreign relations. Thus, rather than engaging in the difficult task of fostering unity among the different national groups within the country and developing a common programme of coordinated political action on the basis of shared class interests, an organisational model at odds with the Marxist-Leninist principle of proletarian internationalism was proposed: each national group would be free to conduct its politics as per its own wishes.
Those who attended that later reflect that at the Peshawar/Swat merger convention, the different groups devoted much of their effort to securing control over the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Finance Committee.
The Soviet theory of revolution in stages was interpreted as suggesting that Pakistan faced three fundamental questions: the national question, the democratic question, and the class question.
Each national unit would determine for itself whether to prioritise the national or democratic question in the first stage of its struggle. Only after these questions had been resolved would the class question be addressed. In this way, the QIP’s theoretical position was broadly consistent with its other fundamental ideas, while also reflecting tendencies associated with New Marxism and the class opportunism of today’s AWP-Marxist.
The former Secretary General of the Communist Party of Pakistan, Jamal Naqvi, discussed the activities of the “revolutionaries until 1977”, particularly Imtiaz Alam, in an interview with Ahmad Saleem published in Awami Jamhoori Forum, Issue No. 24. He explained how their frivolous—or, more accurately, suspicious—activities had significantly damaged the party. He observed: “When these people came into the party (CPP) and started propagating their former leaders (Ishaq Muhammad), we did not know for what purpose they had joined. Their activities created chaos within the party.”
He further added that today he “considered Ishaq Muhammad a genuine man despite our disagreements.” The interviewer remarked: “Yes, apart from the disagreements, he is committed to the cause.” Jamal Naqvi then observed that bringing these people into the party was not the right decision.
He also recalled the formation of the QIP and the discussions and debates within the party about its establishment. He said that Mukhtar Bacha had written a document describing the revolutionary situation in the Sarhad. The document argued: “the situation for revolution in Pakistan is not ripe yet, but the situation in Sarhad is fully ripe. Therefore, Afghanistan and the Sarhad Province could become one country.”
The purpose of providing these details is to demonstrate that the positions advanced by the “revolutionaries until 1977” during the MKP’s internal debates were subsequently reflected in their political practice. Ali’s misreading, or his inability to capture the holistic meaning of my argument, therefore represents a significant weakness in his analysis.
He interprets these positions primarily through the literal wording of party circulars, supplemented by recent interviews with Imtiaz Alam and reassessments shaped by the contemporary political interpretations and practices of his associates. Yet the historical evidence, including these testimonies, is sufficient to substantiate my earlier argument and establish a more comprehensive understanding of the debates and the positions involved. This is not a teleological interpretation.
[1] There are different stories about this practice in Pakistani left history that how they sent students belong to Jamat e Islami by taking money on the name of “Party Funds”. Also, some sent and provide recommendation letter for Matric or Intermediate fail student as well.
[2] Congress report in the Party Circular
[3] Fayyaz pointed out that “revolutionary until 1977” revolutionary rhetoric without the organizational capacity. Now if we look at the today’s MLM tendency then it is very much similar using and raising revolutionary rhetoric without any serious organizational capacity. I several time pointed out and resisted when they used such rhetoric for the sake of rhetoric.
[4] Shishak (or Sashak) is a traditional, compulsory agricultural tax paid directly to the tribal chief
[5] See the details in article reproduced by “Awami Morcha” published from Multan
[6] Party Circular MKP Issue No#81
[7] Very much similar to the argument of the Aisha Tahir and Khurram second part published in “The student Herald”
[8] Please see the position in 1978 where insistence on landless labor
[9] I think it’s yet debatable that we shouldn’t legitimize those minority nationalists as genuinely anti-revisionist. In its truest definition, anti-revisionism means revision of Marxism-Leninism, and anyone that prioritizes ethnic nationalism over Marxism, as the seemingly anti-revisionist minority nationalists did, is inherently revisionist. Hence I added “what Ali regards as atni-reivisionist”
[10] Kitabi Sisla “Harwal” Watan Dost Publications.
The Difference Between the Political Trajectories of Revolutionary Until 1977 and the MKP-Ishaq
Ali attempts to whitewash the revisionism of the “revolutionaries until 1977” by equating their political trajectory with that of the MKP under Ishaq Muhammad, which merged with a section of the CPP roughly a decade later. This comparison is fundamentally superficial, and I would challenge it on the following grounds:
1. The political trajectory of the “revolutionaries until 1977”
Imtiaz merged with a section of the revisionist camp and produced the Qaumi Inqilabi Party (QIP) document, which took revisionism to an even more extreme level. I have analysed this document above to demonstrate how the revisionist tendencies that emerged following the Sino-Soviet split in 1967 reached their culmination with the formation of the QIP. The political line they ultimately adopted was diametrically opposed to the position they had advanced in 1977.
2. The political trajectory of the MKP–Ishaq[1]
In contrast, the MKP under Ishaq Muhammad did not follow the same course. From 1978 onwards, it made substantial contributions towards achieving principled left unity, continuing these efforts until 1994, when it merged with a section of the CPP that had distanced itself from the revisionist line of its former General Secretary, Jamal Naqvi, later known as the author of Leaving the Left Behind.
In 1986, the MKP-Ishaq condemned Gorbachev’s policies, whereas the CPP continued to support Glasnost and Perestroika. The MKP argued that these policies would lead to the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union. The eventual dissolution of the Soviet Union had an enormous impact on the Pakistani Left, with numerous opportunist factions abandoning Marxism and the communist movement altogether.
It was a period of ideological wavering, confusion, desertion, and international isolation. At this difficult historical juncture, the MKP-Ishaq remained firmly committed to Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought. It engaged with left-wing groups that continued to uphold scientific socialism, seeking to achieve unity on that basis.
The MKP-Ishaq remained involved in left-wing alliances under the leadership of Comrade Ghulam Nabi Kulo, alongside the Watan Dost Inqilabi Party (Dr Arbab Khuhawar), the Communist Party of Pakistan (Imam Ali Nazish), the NSF (Dr Rasheed Hassan Khan), and several other organisations. Unfortunately, the MKP-Ishaq was unable to achieve organisational unity with Watan Dost and the NSF.
In fact, Watan Dost had initially endorsed the “Lahore Declaration” for a merger with the MKP, but its Central Committee subsequently reversed the decision. Its central leader, Dr Arbab Khuhawar, then wrote a letter of apology to Ghulam Nabi Kulo, reproduced in the accompanying image. Following these developments, the Communist Party of Pakistan and the Mazdoor Kisan Party eventually came together to uphold the banner of communism.
In 1994, both parties engaged in criticism and self-criticism. Comrades from the CPP critically reassessed their earlier failure to recognise the impact of Soviet revisionism and reconsidered their practice of National Democracy. Meanwhile, comrades from the MKP reviewed their position on direct socialism, as articulated in their 1990 document. Both parties agreed upon a political programme of People’s Democracy and came together to form the Communist Mazdoor Kissan Party (CMKP).
It is now for readers to compare the political programmes of the CMKP and the QIP and recognise the fundamental differences between them. I believe that overlooking these differences is a serious error on Ali’s part, leading him to the sweeping conclusion that both followed the same political course. They did not. Their positions were diametrically opposed. One abandoned Leninist organisational principles by adopting a confederal party structure[2], and at the theoretical level, it abandoned the theory of surplus value.
3. Continuity of work among bonded labourers and rural workers
Ali also downplays the continuity of the MKP-Ishaq’s work among bonded labourers and rural workers, while treating its brief engagement in NGO-based initiatives concerning bonded labour as comparable to the civil-society work of Imtiaz Alam, thereby attempting to justify the latter. Here again, there is a distinction that Ali appears unwilling to recognise in his efforts to rehabilitate the present-day politics of his associates.
The MKP-Ishaq had been organising among bonded labourers since the 1970s, before the emergence of the NGO phenomenon. Following the expansion of NGOs in the 1980s, party activists and these organisations supported one another in pursuing a common cause. This struggle also contributed to important achievements, including the enactment of the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, 1992. There is no evidence that the MKP-Ishaq leadership subordinated its political work to NGO-funded projects or derived personal benefits from such arrangements.
Imtiaz, on the other hand, had expressed regret over declining an opportunity to study at the London School of Economics (LSE), where he had secured admission and a scholarship, in favour of revolutionary politics. After leaving the MKP, he pursued some of the opportunities he had previously sacrificed through his association with Western donor-funded organisations, a practice that Ali describes as civil-society activism. Imtiaz now heads an NGO that engages with international donors and their agendas in Pakistan.
By contrast, MKP-Ishaq activists have continued working directly in the field, including in areas where NGOs are also engaged in addressing bonded labour. They do not antagonise these organisations, as they are pursuing a common cause. While this cooperation has produced tangible achievements, it has also come at a cost. One consequence has been the emergence of mistrust between workers who serve voluntarily as full-time activists and those who receive limited financial support through NGO-funded initiatives.
[1] To clarify, there is no “MKP-Ishaq”, I use this term in this context because many critics have come up with the label “MKP-Ishaq”.
[2] The impetus of this idea Imtiaz carried over from its student politics with the Nationalist Students Organization (NSO), a front of Proletariat Group, famously known as Professor Group.
The Question of Bringing Nationalist Formations into the MKP
Ali raises the question of why various anti-revisionist nationalist formations were unable to join the MKP, suggesting that Ishaq’s resistance was responsible. He specifically cites Rasool Bakhsh Palijo’s participation in the Third Punjab Party Congress at Dewan Sahib, near Burewala, Punjab, as an example. This interpretation is entirely mistaken. Palijo had no intention of joining the party, as Ali appears to assume. Rather, he was already part of a loose, consensus-based confederal arrangement associated with a group of Punjab-based professors.[1]
If such organisational arrangements were a condition for joining the party, then this practice certainly warranted serious scrutiny. An underground confederal structure of this kind is hardly a sound basis for building trust among the masses. To effectively counter the propaganda of right-wing ethno-nationalists, it is necessary for a multi-ethnic leadership to unite publicly, challenge divisive propaganda, hate speech, and ethnic chauvinism—whether among majority or minority nationalities.
Apart from this, there are certain areas on which both parties (Paleejo and MKP) need serious discussion rather than pursuing an illusory merger merely to create the feeling of belonging to a bigger party. Before going into the details of that discussion, I would like to clarify this accusation through the testimony of Rasool Bakhsh Palijo himself. Rasul Bakhsh Palijo, recounted an important incident in an essay included in a book published on the life of Ishaq Muhammad after his death[2].
Reflecting on their political collaboration and shared experiences, he wrote that, on one occasion, a delegation of the Awami Tehreek travelled to Haji Sher, a remote town in District Vehari, Punjab, to attend the provincial congress of the Mazdoor Kisan Party. After attending the public session of the conference, our peasant comrades joined the party’s cultural programme in the evening. At that moment, I felt that the peasant leaders of Sindh and Punjab had grown so close to one another that the national contradictions separating them seemed to be dissolving through their mutual interaction.
At the end of the same essay, Palijo brought his recollections to a close with a profound admission:
“I (Palejo) also wanted to make an acknowledgement to you, Ishaq Muhammad, of a truth that has become clear to me. You had written in your newspaper, referring to us by name, that in time we would come to know who our true and steadfast friends were, and who were merely smooth-talking and hypocritical friends. I (Palejo) wanted to tell you that time and circumstances have made us realise exactly what you wanted us to understand. You were right.”
Here, I would also like to draw upon my own experience. After leaving, or being expelled from, the Awami Workers Party, I had the opportunity to spend five years in Sindh. During this period, I completed my PhD in Integrated Water Resources Management at the Water Centre of Mehran University, while also gaining extensive experience conducting fieldwork in remote parts of the province. I spent not merely a few hours, but hundreds of days alongside ordinary peasants in Sindh’s Kachho and Lar regions.
These experiences further strengthened my conviction in Palijo’s observation that the silver-tongued petty-bourgeois elements of both regions bear the greatest responsibility for fostering misunderstandings between the people of Punjab and Sindh, with their counterparts in Karachi and Lahore playing a particularly prominent role.
As Comrade Ho Chi Minh once said:
“To reap return in ten years, plant a tree. To reap a return in 100 years, cultivate the people.”
The Charge of Chauvinism and Balochistan National Liberation
In the subsection titled “On the United Front and Nationalities”, Ali makes two main arguments:
- He acknowledges that accusing Ishaq Muhammad of chauvinism for advocating national unity on the basis of the natural oneness of West Pakistan is an exaggeration.
- He nevertheless attempts to substantiate the charge of chauvinism by invoking Howland’s definition, alleging that Ishaq regarded “a Pakistani (Punjabi) progressive” as superior to the vision of national minorities.
Ali discusses Ishaq’s assessment of the Baloch struggle as “limited to a chaotic struggle over power amongst the ruling classes”, noting that Ishaq did not regard it as a struggle for national liberation. Ali argues that this position, together with Ishaq’s refusal to recognise the right of secession, reflected elements of chauvinism.
Before examining these claims in detail, I would like to cite an observation by former BSO General Secretary Rahim Zafar Baloch, who stated:
“We do not describe the 1973 Balochistan insurgency as a national liberation struggle of the Baloch nation, nor do we consider it a full representation of the Baloch people. It was a tribal movement. This resistance did not begin at the initiative of the NAP. It was limited to a few areas, such as those associated with Ataullah Mengal and Khair Bakhsh Marri.”[3]
Ali further alleges that a “significant” number of elements within the nationalist movement in Balochistan were opposed to the sardari system. He also claims that Sher Muhammad Marri was a “Marxist-Leninist”. However, a professed commitment to Marxism-Leninism is insufficient to establish one’s adherence to it. That must be assessed through the substance of one’s political positions and practice.
Like Sher Muhammad Marri, Nawab Khair Bakhsh Marri—one of Balochistan’s three most powerful feudal-tribal chieftains—also identified as a “Marxist-Leninist”. Yet, in In Afghanistan’s Shadow, Selig Harrison, a longstanding defender of Baloch nationalism with close ties to the U.S. foreign-policy establishment, recounts an interview in which Khair Bakhsh stated:
“Today’s poor man will not follow his landlord to fight for his freedom. You have to convince him that in a new state he will get his economic rights, and that means some adaptation of what Marx and Lenin have taught.”
Harrison also records Khair Bakhsh’s own reservations about Marxism-Leninism:
“What I see in Lenin I miss elsewhere, but it doesn’t mean I feel a blind attachment to the man and his teachings. Marxism-Leninism has helped me to understand politics, though being Marxist-Leninist is not easy and I am not sure that I qualify.”
Sher Muhammad’s close cooperation with Nawab Khair Bakhsh Marri, together with the centrality he accorded to ethnic nationalism, is extensively documented throughout Harrison’s book.
While Ali claims that Sher Muhammad sought to unite Pakistan’s various nationalities in a common struggle, he fails to mention that a central basis of this proposed unity was the demand for regional autonomy. Yet regional autonomy cannot be examined as though Pakistan’s provinces were homogeneous entities, devoid of internal class antagonisms and national minorities of their own.
When we speak of regional autonomy, we must first ask: autonomy for whom, and in whose class interests? In the context of semi-feudal Balochistan, the answer to this question should not be difficult to discern.
Furthermore, with respect to Ali’s claim that substantial sections of the movement opposed the sardari system, we leave it to our readers to identify even a single instance in which these elements engaged in a practical struggle against Balochistan’s sardars specifically on the basis of their position as feudal-tribal chiefs. For these elements to be meaningfully characterised as anti-feudal, the struggle against the sardari system would have to occupy a central place in their political practice, above, not subordinate to, nationalism.
Finally, it is our view that Ishaq’s position on these questions was not unlike that of Mao Zedong. Ishaq maintained that “We possess an ancient cultural heritage. Studying the development of our ancient culture and drawing out its democratic essence is a necessary condition for developing our new national culture and strengthening our autonomy.”
Mao Zedong’s approach to China’s diverse population similarly rested on a dual conception: recognising the distinct identities of minority nationalities (shaoshu minzu) while emphasising their unity within the broader Chinese nation (Zhonghua minzu). Mao himself belonged to the Han ethnic majority, yet consistently advocated unity among China’s nationalities and the consolidation of a common national identity.
If Howland’s definition of chauvinism is applied as Ali suggests, Mao’s advocacy of national unity, despite his membership in the ethnic majority, could likewise be characterised as chauvinist.
[1] Interview with Professor Jamil Umar and Noor Muhammad Choudhary
[2] Book published in 1983 or 1984.
[3] Interview with Awami Jamhoori Party Issue No 25. Rahim Zafar Baloch is known as leader of BSO anti Sardar group.
Conclusion
As stated in the introduction, the purpose of this article extends beyond defending or revisiting the historical positions of different left-wing parties. Our broader objective is to contribute to the debate on the political and ideological foundations of Marxist-Leninist unity in contemporary Pakistan.
An examination of the historical roots and class character of contemporary political positions reveals that many of the contradictions confronting the Pakistani Left are far from being relics of the past. The debates that emerged following the Pakistan–India war once again exposed these fault lines, with familiar arguments resurfacing under new terminology and advanced by different political actors.
Revisiting these historical debates is therefore essential to understanding how past ideological struggles continue to shape the present, critically reassessing their limitations, and strengthening Marxist-Leninist political practice as a foundation for principled collective action.
On this basis, we propose the following Charter of Principles as a foundation for Marxist-Leninist unity in contemporary Pakistani politics.
1. National sovereignty and resistance to imperialism
Marxist-Leninists must uphold the principle of national sovereignty and oppose all forms of external aggression against Pakistan, whether carried out directly by imperialist powers, through their proxies, or by regional expansionist powers. Our opposition to imperialism must remain principled and independent of the political interests of competing regional and global powers.
2. National Liberation and the historical formation of Pakistan
Marxist-Leninists must uphold a historically grounded understanding of national liberation and extend its emancipatory implications to the Pakistani nation. As Stalin explained, a nation is not a fixed or immutable category, but a historically constituted and evolving one. If the multinational character of China did not negate the existence of a Chinese nation, on what Marxist-Leninist theoretical basis should Pakistan’s multinational character negate the existence of a Pakistani nation?
The struggle for national liberation cannot be understood solely through the prism of ethnicity; it must be grounded in Marxist-Leninist theory and its concrete application to historical and material conditions. In Pakistan, this requires confronting the enduring structures of imperialist dependency, economic domination, and political subordination that constrain national sovereignty and the emancipation of our people.
3. Class struggle as the material foundation for unity
Marxist-Leninist unity must be grounded in the independent political organisation and struggles of workers, peasants, and other exploited classes. While tactical alliances are sometimes necessary, the political and organisational independence of the working-class movement must never be subordinated to the interests of exploiting and oppressor classes.
4. Unity of the Pakistani nation and the rights of constituent nationalities
Marxist-Leninists must struggle for the unity of the Pakistani nation on the basis of equality, democratic consent, and recognition of the rights of its constituent nationalities, ethnic communities, and linguistic minorities. National unity cannot be achieved through administrative centralisation alone, nor imposed through the denial of nationality rights. It must rest upon respect for diversity, opposition to economic, ethnic, and linguistic oppression, and the guarantee of equal political, economic, and cultural rights for all nationalities and communities.
5. Engagement with religious sentiments and progressive religious traditions
Marxist-Leninists must challenge the alienation of working people caused by liberal and left-wing tendencies that mock, dismiss, or disregard their religious sentiments. Our political practice must demonstrate respect for the cultural and religious traditions of the masses without compromising our ideological principles. We must reclaim and strengthen the Left’s historical legacy as a pro-people, anti-imperialist, anti-feudal, and anti-tribal-system political tradition. This also requires identifying common ground and building alliances with progressive religious currents wherever they contribute to the struggle against exploitation, oppression, and imperialist domination.
6. Ideological independence and opposition to imperialist influence within the Left
Marxist-Leninists must maintain an independent ideological and political struggle against tendencies within the Left that reproduce the assumptions and political priorities of Western imperialism. This requires critical engagement with those currents of Western Marxism that, as Gabriel Rockhill has argued, contribute to the formation of a “Washington-compatible Left”. Our ideological independence must be grounded in the concrete historical, social, and material conditions of Pakistan, rather than the uncritical adoption of political frameworks and priorities shaped by imperialist forces..