Rasool Bukhsh Palijo proved an unbeatable warrior on every front, undaunted by temporary setbacks, hardships of jail wards, pecuniary loss or social and family pressures
Though lean and simple by his appearance, modest in his habits, he looked like giant of a man in his will, determination, dominance, and political and ideological convictions.
Ambassador M. Alam Brohi
No political party in the country attracted Rasool Bukhsh. He liked a bit National Awami Party as a nationalist and leftist political party. But, he could not feel comfortable among all those Khans, Sardars, and insincere nationalists and Urdu-speaking leftist of the like of Mahmood ul Haq Usmani and Jamal Naqvi being the products of the anti-peoples political system and suffering from anti-Sindhi bias. Consistent with his political beliefs, he co-founded the Awami Tehrik with another political thinker and sage, Fazil Rahu at the far end of the 1960s. Both were of the firm view that the labour class being small in strength, though motivated for political struggle, could only create waves in the muddy waters of status quo but would be unable to bring it down unless supported by the huge peasantry.
The condition of peasants all over the country was more miserable than the industrial labour and factory workers. They lived in perpetual poverty and misery. The Hari Committee of Hyder Bukhsh Jatoi had mobilized the peasantry in Sindh but failed to achieve the desired results. The co-founders of Awami Tehrik had an ideological convergence to concentrate their political struggle on forging an alliance among the underprivileged classes from labour to peasantry to low-income employees and traders in urban and semi urban areas. They had all the clarity of mind and vision about the constituency and multiple dimensions of their movement.
They also believed in an identical political philosophy to keep away from the charade of feudal election-based politics and, instead, go for political education and indoctrination of their followers from all social and economic segments for a long and arduous struggle for social and political change. They wanted to prepare the population at the lowest rung of the societal pyramid which was bearing the oppression of the exploitative system to break the shackles of the social and economic slavery; the obscurant religious and superstitious customs, the outmoded feudal traditions; the primitive and decadent tribal supremacy.
This has been the most daunting task of social reformers and political revolutionaries to prepare the people to rebel against a well-entrenched social and economic system. The people living under a social and political system, no matter howsoever may it be oppressively exploitative, develop awe and fear of it and gradually succumb to the illusory comfort of resignation and sufferance. Being ardent students of history and ideology-driven and mass-based revolutions, they were fully conscious of the daunting nature of their struggle.
In their faith in the peoples’ power, they were probably taking a leaf from the Victor Hugo’s eloquent description of the progressive journey of the French underprivileged in the late eighteenth century from ‘evil to good, from injustice to justice, from falsehood to truth, from night to day, from corruption to life, from bestiality to duty, from hell to heaven, from nothingness to God. They knew the circumstances were ripe for building the base for a mass labor-based movement particularly when, under the reign of an autocrat, the democracy was reduced to a farce, the powerful had become more powerful, the wealthy wealthier, the poor poorer.
The ugly consequences of such anti-peoples rule were painfully harsh. The police stations and law courts auctioned justice to the elite, the poor and the vulnerable lived in abject poverty and misery, the favoritism and cronyism, in their naked form, reigned supreme and meritocracy wailed from its death cell. The ever-present and ever growing grudge and disdain that separates the masses from the elite in an unjust society, was rapidly turning into an ugly phenomenon in the country as reflected in the powerful words of human right activist, writer and contemporary of King Martin Luther, Mrs. Maya Angelou, painting it as the ‘hostility of the powerless against the powerful, poor against the rich, worker against the worked for, the rugged against the well-dressed’.
The Awami Tehrik made gradual and formidably ingress in the rural and semi urban populations creating local and ideologically motivated hardcore of leaders and activists in both male and female genders. Within a decade and half, Awami Tehrik had already strong roots in the rural population. Its senior leader, Fazil Rahu, known for his popularity in the peasants, had incurred the ire of the powerful feudal demigods and spy paymasters, and was assassinated to the chagrin of his colleagues and admirers in January 1987. His assassins probably thought that depriving the Awami Tehrik of the tall leadership of Fazil Rahu, this movement would disintegrate into factions and die a slow death like that of Syed’s Giye Sindh Mahaz.
They had no idea that the vacuum created by the assassination of Fazil Rahu would be filled in by his comrade in arms, Rasool Bukhsh Palijo, taking the Tehrik to new heights of success. Undaunted by the loss of his friend and the spearhead of this ideological caravan, he forged ahead to strengthen the flanks of Awami Tehrik and its organizational structure. The Awami Tehrik could be rivaled in organizational ranks, ideological indoctrination, motivation and skill in political agitation only by the more old and orthodox Jamaat Islami.
Rasool Bukhsh Palijo knew the strength of the female in any mass movement. How a student of the history of revolutions could overlook the role of the female communist activists in disseminating the message of Bolsheviks in the length and breadth of communes and industrial units particularly in delivering the revolutionary literature among farmers and industrial labours. The labour and influence of Maxim Gorky’s ‘Mother’ was not lost on him. He went ahead to organize the female wing of the movement – Sindhiani Tehrik. This was not akin to the traditional women wing of other political parties. He had a different role for the female cadre of the Tehrik.
Armed with the clarity of mind, devotional attachment to the Tehrik’s battle against the decadent tribal custom of stereotyping the women for roles of child bearing, housekeeping, kowtowing the male supremacy, living within four walls of their homes in perpetual economic dependency, the female cadres of the Tehrik shunned this tribal way of living and came out in droves seeking and playing a political role in educating and reawakening the innate but dormant desire of their fellow sisters and daughters for social and economic emancipation by acquiring education and taking up independent employments. Awami Tehrik was the unique party in Pakistan whose processions and public meetings had sizeable participation of its female cadres, mostly belonging to rural regions and lower and middle class from the semi urban centers.
Rasool Bukhsh Palijo was completely different from other traditional political leaders and social reformers whose sole purpose was to acquire power, or earn wealth. He wanted to revolutionize the society and strike at the roots of the tribal and feudal social and political systems. This could be possible only through a politically and socially conscious and motivated cadre within all the segments of the society from labour to peasants, small landholders, artisans, small traders, lower middle class in semi urban centers, male and female and youth. As charity begins from home, he encouraged and indoctrinated his own female relatives – wives, sisters, daughters and cousins – to carry forward the message of the Tehrik. This reflected his sincerity with – and commitment to the emancipation of women and was not lost on the onlookers, magnetically pulling them to the ranks of the Tehrik.
We all witnessed a glimpse of the emancipation of the rural woman from the prevalent decadent social system in the last funeral rites of their mentor when members of the Sindhiani Tehrik came out in droves to shoulder his coffin. They just added a new chapter in the annals of the patriarchal society of Sindh.
This was followed by the ‘Sindhi Student Tehrik or SST’. Organizing the students from both genders in disciplined rural and semi-urban units to engage them in productive social activities and raising their consciousness of the social, economic and political conditions in which they were born, being brought up, and which they were aiming to change. His lectures and columns always aimed at stimulating and refining the thought process of his young disciples, audience and followers opening before them secrets of social and political evolutions. What he emphasized to them was the value of labour and hard work for acquisition of excellence in education, enhancing their competitive capacity and aiming at high intellectual pursuits. He advised them to frequent libraries, buy books and develop the habit of living with books.
He took extraordinary interest in the educational pursuits of the SST members enquiring about their subjects, their study, their examinations and their results. Students with modest achievements in their examinations used to incur his ire and displeasure. Like a harsh and disciplinary military trainer, he used to award them symbolic punishments like staying in a Yoga position for some time. This was to shame them for neglecting their education and the future role they had committed to play in transforming their land from a tribal, retrogressive and regressive system into a modern, liberal and progressive society. His most familiar refrain on such occasions was ‘you should not be like all those ‘Sindhu Deshis and SPSFs’, referring with disdain to Giye Sindh Student Federation and Sindh Peoples Student Federation.
He also formed the ‘Balik Tehrik’ (Teenagers’ Tehrik) to promote their physical health and evolutionary understanding of the social conditions surrounding them. In human evolution, the journey from childhood to the conscious age is very delicate and needs to be carefully superintended. As a social reformer, Mr. Palijo knew that fathers and mothers in the rural regions generally fail to provide guidance and counsel to their children in this delicate phase of life. Balik Tehrik organized games, academic debates, writing competitions and study tours of historic places, scenic spots, and scout camps in Sindh. The parents of the children had full trust in the Balik Tehrik leaders. The purpose of the Balik Tehrik was to stimulate the academic curiosity of teenage boys and girls, giving an impetus to their comprehension and helping them grow into a meaningful conscious age with ease and comfort. (Continues)
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The author is a former member of the Foreign Service of Pakistan and has served as Ambassador for seven years.
