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
Rasool Bakhsh Palijo‘s battles for the defense of Sindh’s national existence, territorial integrity, resources, rights and privileges as the second biggest federal unit of Pakistan constitute an emblazoned chapter of the recent history of the province. He fought these battles with courage and gallantry following the footprints of the legendary Raja Dahir, Dodo, Dollah Darya Khan, Mian Muhammad Shahil aka Shah Baharo, Mir Sher Muhammad Talpur, Hosh Muhammad Sheedi, Pir of Pagara Sibaghatullah Rashdi and Ruplo Kolhi. He challenged the decadent tribalism and landlordism like Syed Inayat Shah and Mai Bakhtawar. He never took off his gloves in his struggle to fight the case of Sindh.
We are proud that the past and recent history of Sindh is embellished by the bravery and sacrifices of the true sons and daughters of Sindh from old warriors to the recent world fame heroes who fought for the preservation of its geographical frontiers, independence, economic and social development in the face of mighty powers and challengers – may they be the Saracens from the Arabian deserts, the Pathan from rugged Afghanistan, the Sultans and Emperors from New Delhi, the British colonizers or may it be its merger in the Bombay Presidency in the colonial era, or in the infamous One-Unit in Pakistan.
At every critical juncture of history, there has never been dearth of warriors in Sindh to leave their home and hearth to answer the call of duty to defend their land. The place of Rasool Bukhsh Palijo among these warriors will be conspicuously prominent. He knew that Sindh of his time needed a united voice, collective efforts and well-organized and well-strategized battles to defeat its enemies who were out to attack the very vitals of its national existence with all those ethnic, social and economic divisions, the loot and plunder perpetrated by political and bureaucratic moguls, like the carnivorous animals, trying to devour the last morsel of flesh from the bones of their nation and shutting their eyes to the thickening dark clouds of misery, poverty, disease and ignorance hovering over the picturesque landscape of this dear land. This kept him restless and in perpetual pain stimulating his spirit of fight.
He agonized and mustered all his intellectual power and political talent to whisper a word of caution and wisdom in the blocked ears of his fellow leaders that predators of modern times, with more swift and strategic minds and smarter than the primitive General Charles Napier, would be quick in exploiting the consequences of their misdemeanors to rob their land of its autonomy and free will if they kept stumbling over small pebbles of their ego and factional interests. He kept highlighting the afflictions undermining Sindh from within that included the suffocating tribalism, the debilitating ethnic and linguistic division, the growing institutional decay, the crumbling educational structure and the endemic corruption that were sealing the fate of the people of this dear land and stunting their advance to progress and modernity.
With hindsight, we find him in the vanguard of all the movements of Sindhi intellectuals and writers, political leaders and activists – may they be inspired and triggered by the suppressive One-Unit scheme, and the merger of Sindh in it, the defense of the rights of Bengalis, the publication of voters’ list in Sindhi, the restoration of Sindhi language to its pre-partition position, the Save Bhutto Committee, the political agitation for restoration of democracy, the PPP-MQM coalition agreement of 1988, the slaughter of Sindhis in Hyderabad by Urban fascists, the violation of the sanctity of Indus River, the night raids on the water rights of Sindh, the building of Kala Bagh Dam. His struggle in all these movements outweighed many big names. He stood upright among stalwarts of the caliber of G.M. Syed, Shaikh Ayaz, Ibrahim Joyo, Fazil Rahoo, Hafeez Qureshi and Masood Noorani. He never took off his gloves and moved from one front to the other like a gallant battler. He suffered the strong arm tactics of the autocratic Ayub and Bhutto regimes and wrath of Zia ul Haq’s Martial Law but never wavered in his struggle.
True to his Marxist and Leninist beliefs, he took up cudgels against the aristocratic rule of Bhutto. He opposed him tooth and nail in his move against the elected and nationalist National Awami Party government in Balochistan and the subsequent military operation against Baloch nationalists. Later, when the National Awami Party was banned and the Baloch and Pakhtun leaders were booked for treason and locked up in Hyderabad Jail, Rasool Bukhsh Palijo volunteered to defend them in the Special Tribunal against the charges of treason. He suffered imprisonment during the Bhutto rule. But raised his voice against the injustice meted out to him by the Martial Law authorities by trying him in a false murder case and executing him in the wee hours of 4th April 1979. He was the moving spirit behind the ‘Save Bhutto Committee’.
His party joined the MRD movement against the Zia regime. The Awami Tehrik leaders and activists trained and ideologically motivated by Rasool Bukhsh Palijo fought heroic battles against the security forces in the length and breadth of Sindh particularly in the small towns like Mehar and Khairpur Nathan Shah to the chagrin of the military junta. Punjabis did not come out in support of the MRD movement in their known tradition of standing on the right side of power. Karachi, given the traditional fifth column role of Urdu speaking intellectuals and leftists, remained indifferent to the sacrifices being given by the rural Sindh for the restoration of democracy.
The MRD movement which began in a modest way from the early 1980s, and picked up momentum in 1983-84, forced the Martial Law authorities to allow Benazir Bhutto to fly abroad for the treatment of her ear infection. Later, the Martial regime felt compelled to hold local body elections and later general elections on non-party basis. Rasool Bukhsh Palijo had a long stint in the Kot Lakhpat Jail for his role in the MRD movement.
As a result of its modest electoral victory in the general elections of 1988, the PPP formed the federal government with the support of the MQM. The two parties signed an agreement which was heavily loaded in favour of the urban fascist party to the explicit detriment of the rights and privileges of Sindh and Sindhis. Later, the agreement was published by the print media. Jami Chandio states that Rasool Bukhsh was sick with a high temperature and staying in Karachi. He sent for him. They went for a small stroll. He asked Jami what was his age. He replied he was only 19 years. ‘Look, Jami, in your age, Napoleon had won many battles; Muhammad Bin Qasim conquered Sindh when he was only 14 years. Then, he returned to the subject he had in his mind. ‘The agreement that the PPP has signed with MQM will ultimately have devastating repercussions on Sindh and Sindhis”. Let us write a clause-wise rebuttal of the agreement exposing the anti-Sindh conspiracy inherent in the agreement’. They set themselves on the task and within a few days, wrote a comprehensive treatise challenging each and every clause of the agreement and exposing its potential harmful repercussions on Sindh and Sindhis.
He did the pioneering work for the United Front against the PPP-MQM coalition and had G.M. Syed as its President. The Front did not take off because of differences with Syed on organizational matters. Syed wanted some Urdu speaking friends in the Steering Committee of the Front. Palijo refused to share the Front’s stage with these anti-Sindh elements. The subsequent circumstances leading to the Pucca Qila incident in Hyderabad and the well-planned massacre of Sindhis in various neighborhoods of the city confirmed the apprehensions of Rasool Bukhsh Palijo.
The issue of Kala Bagh Dam has been on the agenda of the Punjabi establishment since the last days of Bhutto regime. After the execution of Bhutto, the Zia regime raised the bogey of Kala Bagh Dam in 1979-80. Rasool Bukhsh, being a clairvoyant, thoroughly appreciated the depth and intensity of the harmful repercussions of Kala Bagh Dam on the social and economic life, and the ecological environment of Sindh. He mobilized the masses of Sindh and tried to shame the nationalists. He was clearly the main and the only spirit behind the battle against the ghost of Kalabagh Dam.
He also superintended the intellectual front in this battle and set himself to research and collections of facts and figures on the long 150-year night raids on the water rights of Sindh by Punjab. He wrote a comprehensive treatise exposing the Punjab’s audacious treachery of depriving Sindh from the waters of Indus River System from the early 1900s to this day. He gave in detail the nature of water disputes, findings of various water commissions and committees, apportioning of waters among states, provinces and regions in accordance with the universally recognized upper and lower riparian laws and practices followed all over the world.
He spearheaded scores of public meetings, public processions, sits-in and long marches. He prepared the atmosphere in Sindh against the Kala Bagh Dam. He was also instrumental in enlisting the support of the Awami National Party leaders against the Dam. Realizing the intensity of the resistance of Sindhis and Pashtuns to the dam, and having failed to enlist even the support of his hand-picked Governor of KPK, General Fazal-e-Haq, General Zia shelved the scheme for time being.
The bogey was again raised in 1991 by Mian Muhammad Nawaz Sharif, being the blue eyed boy of the establishment at the time. Rasool Bukhsh Palijo sought his spears and swords to fight the night raiders conspiring to violate the sanctity of Sindhu by reviving the stinking cadaver of Kala Bagh Dam. Muhtarma Benazir Bhutto, freshly stung by the establishment in the undemocratic removal of her government, jumped the bandwagon of the anti-Kalabagh agitation and spearheaded a big sit-in on the Sindh-Punjab border. Nevertheless, the anti-Kalabagh momentum built by Rasool Bukhsh Palijo would never die. Sindhis will always seize the occasion to resist this devastating anti-Sindh scheme recalling the heroic fight which Rasool Bukhsh Palijo had fought to defeat its supporters on political, intellectual and technical fronts.
I have thus far appreciated Rasool Bukhsh Palijo as a revolutionary, a Marxist and Moist, a politician, a political scientist, an intellectual, a scholar, a political mentor, a social reformer, a nationalist and a patriotic. He represented more than all these qualifications. Let us look at his person to find what he was not. He was not an intolerant or arrogant scholar, an egoist, an opportunist politician, an insincere political leader, a power seeker, a palace conspirator, a mean and vindictive man, a self-seeker, a saleable commodity, a pseudo revolutionary, a pseudo social reformer, a pessimist, a man of empty words, empty promises and lures, a hypocrite, a liar, a cheater. In short, he did not have the duplicity of person and character. He talked what he had in his mind and breast. Though prone to many human weaknesses, he kept himself under constant self-scrutiny. His writings free from self-laceration testify to the comfort, tranquility and strength, he had from within.
Could any soul crack in the face of any threat, any hardship, and any temptation if he has the Holy Scripture of Quran, the mystical poetic compendiums of Shah Latif, Roomi and Shirazi well ensconced in his breast and he had the history and philosophy of the world on his fingertips? How this heroic man, this legendary son of the soil of Sindh could have wavered in his convictions. His mental horizon had transcended beyond the frontiers of his land and made him an internationalist in his thinking and approach considering the humanity as an indivisible whole, human rights and human freedoms as inviolable norms, and the human right to democracy, rule of law, equality before law, economic equity, social justice as the foremost end of all gospels, political struggle and revolutions.
This heroic sage who appeared on the horizon of Sindh from the small village of Moongur close to Jungshahi of district Thatta in January 1930 regained the embrace of his mother soil in June 2018 leaving behind a blazing trail of brilliant scholarly pursuits, rich political literature, ever inspiring books, a treasure trove of knowledge and research, a multi-faceted tale of political struggle, and above all, a strong corps of trained, disciplined, intellectually curious, ideologically motivated, politically conscious, well read and well-endowed leaders and activists who could be found in both genders and in every field of life who could fight as soldiers for the defense of their land and people on political and intellectual fronts in the footprints of their leader and mentor. They need to be collected on one platform, bound in a dynamic chain of an ideological struggle unleashing their energy and spirit, to carry forward the message of Late Rasool Bukhsh Palijo.
Guns have fallen silent; the noise of soldiers has drowned in the depth of the night; but the war is far from over; many serious battles are yet to be fought. The lull is illusory. Do not let the numbing winds of despair overwhelm you. Look at the young moon as it merrily peeps out from a rebellious piece of cloud hovering over a fresh mound of earth in Jungshahi; watch the restless soul rustling with the waves of Sindhu and beckoning to us to see the beauty of this motherland; feel her miseries, learn from her patience, aim at mountains, keep above pebbles; control our ego and subdue our pride for her sake. This is what this great son of soil did from his conscious age to the final embrace of the mother earth of his small village.
At the instigation of Mir Mazher Talpur, an admirer of Late Rasool Bukhsh Palijo and a long-time colleague, I had the privilege of writing the obituary on the passing away of this great man, which the Awami Tehrik issued as a press release after his funeral. The above paragraphs, coming out of my heart and soul, are just another humble effort to pay my tributes to this legendary son of Sindh. May God bless Sindh and all Sindhis living in it! (Concludes)
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The author is a former member of the Foreign Service of Pakistan and has served as Ambassador for seven years.
