
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
I have not encountered this much difficulty in writing about any person whom I had met twice in my life, about whom I had read to some extent, and about whom I had heard something from his contemporaries. I saw and heard him in Television Talk shows on various subjects. I heard his speeches. I read some of his books and columns. As a critic or debater, he always appeared to be well armed with naked spear of facts and sharp sword of figures, a stunning eloquence in expressing his views, and a daunting aggressiveness, a sharp edged intellect – all out to shred the credibility of his contestants and expose their superficial and scanty knowledge of the theme under discussion.
He exuded confidence, moral and intellectual authority, and scholarly superiority in his arguments aimed at a wider spectrum of audience from scholars to subject experts, educated middle class to the common man. He swung from one argument to the other with clarity of mind. He was not confined in his knowledge to a single subject. He moved like a living library, well-endowed with an array of books on every faculty, every discipline of study. 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.
His lectures were like streams ebbing and flowing with curls and curves, and through ups and downs of history, making and breaking empires, covering rise and eclipse of nations and civilizations, laying bare pearls of facts from odd mélange of fiction, plucking truth from the cobweb of falsehood, exposing the wicked nature of humans, torture of underprivileged by ruthless human evolutionary march, cutting across the upheavals of revolutions, aiming at the oppressive religious beliefs.
He was not a historian but knew history like the palm of his hand; he was not a traditional religious scholar but had labored hard to grasp the spirit of gospels and Holy Scriptures including the Quran. He was a revolutionary and his understanding of Karl Marx, Lenin and Angel is sharply contrasted with the pseudo revolutionaries and communists and dwarfed subject experts. He did not have a doctorate in Philosophy but his grasp of the Greek philosophies and Western political thought outweighed the labour of silver haired professors.
His writings reflected the depth of the Sea, the vastness of the horizon, the majestic flow of a river; the roar of a waterfall devastating intellectually everything and everyone coming in his way. In his time, and among his contemporaries, there was no match to his mighty pen, no match to his hard labour in research and collection of facts and analytical appreciation of circumstances in a given point of time, no answer to his powerful arguments, no resistance to his surgical autopsy of theories, themes and issues that stimulated his intellectual curiosity, irked his scholarly patience, challenged his depth of knowledge and comprehension of historical, political and strategic under currents, currents and cross currents.
Though precise and cogent, his books, essays and columns reveal treasure trove of knowledge, erudition and scholarship permeating the cobweb of hearsay and falsehood and allowing readers to have a glimpse of truth obscured under layers of misrepresentation and misleading statements. Teachers and students of history and social sciences will benefit from his books, essays and columns for years to come.
For years, his friends, followers and contemporaries have been struggling to determine his place as to what he was: an astute politician, a consummate political scientist and theorist, a diehard Marxist, a crusading nationalist, a shrewd strategist and indefatigable agitator, a great social reformer, a versatile scholar and writer, a committed leader and teacher. They find it hard to restrict him to any single status. Then, what was he? Was he giant of a person epitomizing all these multiple qualifications equipping his armoury to fight successful battles at various fronts in defense of his land and people, and his convictions?
He proved an unbeatable warrior on every front, undaunted by temporary setbacks, hardships of jail wards, pecuniary loss or social and family pressures. His crusading spirit never succumbed to fatigue, pessimism and hopelessness or a selfish temptation for wealth, power and fame. He forged ahead with an infectious aura of optimism reflecting the inherent strength of his land and the resilience of his underprivileged people being the epicenter of his undying love and labour.
His achievements as a true Sindhi nationalist, Marxist and leftist, a political strategist and leader, a scholar and writer and a liberal social agitator and reformer not only received public recognition within his home province and country but transcended regional and international borders, too. He stood taller than his contemporaries and rubbed shoulder as a scholar and political writer with his eminent predecessors in his land. He picked up the thread of political writings where Ghulam Mohammad Grami, Hyder Bukhsh Jatoi, Pir Ali Muhammad Rashidi and G.M. Syed had left it. His style, diction and beauty of language prominently distinguished him from these big names of political literature in Sindhi language. His choice or invention of comprehensible phrases of Sindhi language in deciphering the curls and curves of political and ideological themes was unique and formidable and went directly to the heart and mind of his readers. I have not come across the writings of any Sindhi scholar or writer in political literature which could claim such appealing and convincing force as that of his masterpieces.
This was Rasool Bukhsh Palijo, as his friends, colleagues and admirers knew him and presented him with pride and privilege and whose reflection we could see in his writings, in his long struggle spawning over many decades – a unique son of the soil, a moving and motivating spirit, a versatile scholar, a committed political and ideological mentor, a social reformer, a Marxist and Moist, a nationalist crusader, a dauntless battler, a believer in the virtues of labour and struggle, a consummate lawyer, a man of uncompromising convictions and irreproachable character, a man of words and deeds, a spear in the ribs of anti-Sindh forces, a formidable challenge to the tribalism, a phalanx against dogmatism and fragmentation of humanity, and compartmentalization of political consciousness into self-serving national politics and nationalist politics, or federal politics and provincial politics. I feel myself helpless to encapsulate his qualifications and achievements in one article.
I had the privilege of hearing him in the early-1970s in Larkana during the heyday of Z.A. Bhutto. Some senior leaders of his political party, Awami Tehrik, invited him for a brief talk. Most of the questions related to the rule of Bhutto and the role of Pakistan People’s in the political evolution of Sindh. He was ruthlessly objective in his criticism of Bhutto and his promotion of cronyism through dispensation of political and administrative positions to landlords and their sons and nephews. He warned that this political culture that Bhutto was developing, was an aberration of serious nature portending gross and far reaching consequences for Sindh, and would be an albatross around the neck of Sindhis in the coming years.
This mindless dispensation of administrative positions to the sons and brothers of his cronies at the cost of merit would strengthen the hands of landlords and rejuvenate the very self-serving and feudal-constituency based politics which he himself challenged and defeated with the support of general masses. He was of the firm view that Late Bhutto was unwittingly making traditional political demigods more powerful and helping them perpetuate their hold on the masses of Sindh. He called his land reforms and nationalization of industry as cosmetic steps far from bringing any socio-economic change in Sindh and the country. He claimed Bhutto exploited socialism to mobilize the masses to achieve his political ends.
What he prophetically predicted was that the education in Sindh would have a nosedive in Bhutto’s rule. The trend of waywardness in students set in motion by G.M. Syed for the advancement of his harmful nationalist politics would be taken to a devastating height by Bhutto. He rejected Bhutto’s credentials as a true democrat, a true socialist, though he reckoned with his popularity, and his inspiration of the masses. He predicted that Bhutto himself was going to be the architect of his downfall. He depended on the electoral strength of landlords, the Punjabi-Muhajir political manipulators, and the wily establishment. All these foundational bases of his power would drift away under his feet like shifting sands no sooner than he outlived his utility. Though, given the popularity of Late Bhutto at the time, it was not possible for some of his audience to buy his arguments, the subsequent years, however, proved him prophetically true.
In an earlier article captioned as ‘Syed and Bhutto’, he had profusely admired Bhutto for his political acumen, his skillful use of the general masses’ disillusionment and anger against the autocratic rather oligarchic rule of Ayub Khan, to his favour, his labour to mobilize the peoples’ power to overthrow the ossified political system which had almost suffocated and reduced the masses to resignation and sufferance, and the leftist and secularist forces to apathy and inertia. For the revival of politics, as Mao Zedong had put it, we need a battle. Bhutto fought this battle and broke the stagnation in the politics of that era. Some forces of status quo, landlords and tribal chiefs had jumped the fence and joined the PPP ranks with the sole objective of undermining its strength from within. They were getting powerful within the party. Nobody could open a PPP office in their area without an express signal from them.
The rightist and so called nationalist forces represented by the Jamaat Islami, Pakistan Democratic Party, factions of Muslim League, National Awami Party and Giye Sindh Mahaz in West Pakistan, and Awami League in East Pakistan were out with all their armoury to defend the feudal electorate-based political system. Bhutto was the one-man army to battle with the dark forces of the status quo with the help of some young leftists. The rest of the leaders in the party were hungry vultures waiting in wings to take their pound of flesh of political and administrative spoils for the Pakistan People’s Party, though in its infancy, with the general masses rallying round Bhutto as a gallant and brave leader was well set to win the elections in the West Pakistan.
In his ‘Syed and Bhutto’ piece, this political clairvoyant, clearly predicted that if Bhutto shunned the farce feudal election-based politics, and mobilized the underprivileged masses in the length and breadth of the country, he would bring about a revolutionary change burying the prevalent corrupt and anti-peoples political culture forever in the country, and emerge as peoples’ leader of the standing of the known revolutionary leaders of Asia and Latin America. He warned Bhutto of the conspiracy hatched by the USA and major countries inimical to China to enlist the support of the status quo forces in the country to destroy him. Bhutto did not show the patience and stomach for a long and decisive peoples’ struggle to bury the status quo and gradually succumbed to the magnetic pull of power and the fast results of his political strategy of defeating the status quo forces in the feudal election-based battle. The subsequent years proved how grossly mistaken Bhutto was.
Siraj Memon, then an aide to Prime Minister Z.A. Bhutto, writes in his foreword to Rasool Bukhsh Palijo’s Memoirs – A Prisoner of Kot Lakhpat Jail that he, in the thick of the PNA agitation, suggested to Late Bhutto to have a meeting with R.B Palijo to garner support in Sindh. Mr. Palijo consented to meet Late Bhutto, though he had suffered from the latter’s strong arm politics. The proposed one-on-one meeting was arranged in Karachi. Mr. Palijo stayed with Prime Minister Bhutto for over two hours. When the meeting ended and Mr. Palijo left the venue, Siraj was sent for by the Prime Minister. He looked disturbed. He addressed Siraj, saying “I wish I had listened to him earlier, and I hope, it is not already too late to act on what he says”. Apparently, it was too late for Late Bhutto to follow what Rasool Bukhsh Palijo had suggested to him. Nevertheless, Bhutto’s open recognition of Rasool Bukhsh Palijo as a political genius signified the overpowering intellect and political acumen this soldier of Sindh possessed. (Continues)
Read: Rasool Bux Palijo: Sindh’s Soulful Voice
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The author is a former member of the Foreign Service of Pakistan and has served as Ambassador for seven years.