Saeen Rasool Bukhsh Palijo was a multi-dimensional person – a political idealist and indefatigable mentor and leader, an able organizer, a strategist and agitator
Ambassador Muhammad Alam Brohi
Saeen Rasool Bukhsh Palijo was a multi-dimensional person – a political idealist and indefatigable mentor and leader, an able organizer, a strategist and agitator, a visionary reformer and a wise guide, a prolific reader and writer, a scholar of greater caliber. Before going further in my venture, I asked myself the following three questions which will give a fillip to my thought process, and may, probably, give a different facet to my essay.
I) How did he perceive Sindh in the changing regional and global trends?
II) How did he perceive Sindhu for the agrarian Sindh?
III) How did he look at Sindhi-ness?
How did he perceive and idealize Sindh
Like all political activists, revolutionaries and reformers, Rasool Bukhsh Palijo made his land the center of his political struggle as soon as he reached the age of consciousness. He was not alone in the field. Sindh was already bristling with towering political leaders and reformers of the stature and caliber of Hyder Bukhsh Jatoi, G.M. Syed, Z.A. Bhutto, Mumtaz Ali Bhutto, Talpur brothers, Shaikh Ayaz, Fazal Rahu, Mir Ali Bukhsh Talpur. These leaders were working for the welfare of their land and her people in their own way.
The political space available to Late Rasool Bukhsh Palijo was limited. To devise a separate political path in the ubiquitous presence of these leaders was a daunting task. The most interesting aspect of Saeen Rasool Bukhsh’s political life is that he was never impressed by these leaders in the field except for Hyder Bukhsh Jatoi and G.M. Syed and Fazal Rahu. No doubt Hyder Bukhsh Jatoi’s Hari Committee had become the singular champion of the rights of the peasants of Sindh, and he was fighting the case of Sindh on many fronts ably and effectively.
This was what attracted Saeen Palijo to have a brief romance with the Hari Committee and its leader. Similarly, he worked with G.M. Syed for a few months in Bazam-e- Sofia Sindh and never saw eye to eye on his Sindh nationalism veneered by militancy and parochialism. He really developed a good political and ideological equation with the leftist peasant leader, Fazal Rahu and co-founded Awami Tehrik with him. He was inspired by the poetry of Shah Latif, Shah Inayat and Shaikh Ayaz that are immersed in the passionate love of Sindh and her people.
Saeen Rasool Bukhsh Palijo was unique and different from his contemporary political leaders. His love for Sindh was as deep as that of G.M. Syed. The expression and demonstration of this love by both leaders was poles apart. Palijo’s love for his land was all-embracive and wholesome. Whatever he did, whatever he said, whatever he wrote, whatever he argued and demanded for, whatever he strategized and organized all stemmed from – and streamed into – the infinite Sea of the love of Sindh. This love was ensconced in every pore of his body and gushing through his veins. He was inseparable from the soil of this land. He daydreamed for its advancement and prosperity. While talking of Sindh, he used to fall in a reverie laying bare, in ecstasy, his aspirations, dreams and ideals for his land.
The fragrance of the land and her people magnetically pulled him refreshing his love for the regions and towns he wandered in; the paths he treaded on; the canals he dipped in; the trees he climbed on; the streets he loitered in; the people he passed his youthful days with. He always and all the time felt parts of his heart, of his blood, of his soul intermingling with these places that recurred to him like a stimulating spirit. This love was neither besmirched by any greed; any desire for wealth and power nor it was dishonored by any deal or compromise on his principles and ideals. This love was irreproachable and uncompromising beyond any fear or favour.
He knew Sindh, its problems, concerns and potentials like the palm of his hand. He had studied, examined, analyzed issues of his land and formulated his strategies and arguments to present them in a befitting manner to a friend or foe of Sindh. He moved from front to front like a brave and confident General leading from the front armed with his razor sharp intellect and the might of his scholarship to fight the battles of Sindh. He always came out victorious from these battles.
The MRD would not have impacted the dictatorial rule of Zia had Awami Tehrik not lent its helping hand to it.
His contribution to the agitation against One-Unit was not less than any towering leader. The printing of the electoral rolls in Sindh, the rebuttal of the attack of retrogressive and anti-democratic and anti-Sindh forces on the budding liberal Sindhi literature of all genre penning two small but comprehensive books, the successful protests against Kalabagh Dam tracing back the history of the stealth of the irrigation waters of River Indus by Punjab, the forceful exposure of the MQM as a terrorist and fascist political group when the Pakistan People’s Party was embracing it in a coalition government in 1988 were solely the achievements of this servant of Sindh.
The MRD would not have impacted the dictatorial rule of Zia had Awami Tehrik not lent its helping hand to it. These were Awami Tehrik’s worker – men and women – coming out of blue in droves with the national hymns from Shaikh Ayaz’s poetry on their lips and courting arrest which drew the attention of the international media to the small towns of Mehar and Khairpur Nathan Shah. They kept the Intelligence silhouettes on their tenterhooks for many months to guess as to who these activists were and where they had been coming from and what was motivating them to do so. When they fully grasped the situation, they immediately decided to lay hands on the leader, their source of inspiration, their planner and strategist. They arrested Saeen Rasool Bukhsh and incarcerated him in Kot Lakhpat Jail.
While penning my recollections about Saeen Rasool Bukhsh Palijo, an important episode pops out from the layers of my memory. I was doing the senior management course in the National Defence University in 2002-2003. We did some academically interesting and educative exercises during the course. One of them is worth mentioning. It was a panel discussion on the problems of the federating units with the Federation. The panel was chaired by General Moeen Hyder, the former Governor of Sindh. Punjab was represented by the former Speaker of the National Assembly, Fakhar Imam; Sindh by the former Speaker of National Assembly, Illahi Bukhsh Soomro; KPK by Barrister Iftikhar Gilani and Balochistan by the former Minister of Education, Ms. Zubaida Jalal.
Fakhar Imam, a foreign graduate and an experienced parliamentarian was the first to take the podium. His presentation was candid and balanced taking into consideration the power and influence of Punjab in the federal bureaucracy and the armed forces of Pakistan since the independence of the country and the dissatisfaction of the smaller provinces with the amount of autonomy practically allowed to them in various constitutional schemes. He also referred to the grievances of the Bengalis against the policy of parity and the bigger share of the former West Pakistan in the political institutions of the country and the divisible pool of resources. He suggested that maximum provincial autonomy should be given to the federating units to strengthen Pakistan.
Similarly, Iftikhar Gilani being one of the most prominent lawyers of the country lived up to the expectations of our colleagues from KPK. He presented the KPK grievances against the Federation in a convincingly rational and cogent manner picking up relevant political events from the early history of Pakistan.
Ms. Zubaida Jalal, hailing from a traditionally conservative Baloch tribe of Rinds, represented Balochistan well concentrating on the federal control on the funds allocated to the province for social and economic development. She cited multiple examples in which the funds were released by the Federal authority in piece-meal manner and could not be utilized by the province before the end of a financial year. She painted a pathetic picture of the exploitation of the natural resources of the province and the criminal neglect of Baloch land throughout the long years of the independent Pakistan as reflected by the depressing condition of communications, education and healthcare facilities and the non-existence of economic and employment opportunities in the province resulting in a heightened sense of deprivation in the Baloch land.
I was hopeful that Mr. Illahi Bukhsh Soomro, given his political and educational background would highlight the grievances of Sindh in a highly convincing manner. He began his speech without marshaling his thoughts dwelling incoherently on the perceived social and cultural behaviour of Sindhis and their deficiency in initiative, drive and mobility. This cruelly razed my hopes driving me to a disgusting disillusion. The Chairman, General Moeen Hyder reminded him more than once that he was supposed to enlighten the audience about the grievances of his province against the Federation instead of dwelling on the characteristics of Sindhis. Unfortunately, he could not regain the right track to talk about the substantial issues of Sindh with the Federation.
We have a breed of politicians in our land whose career in politics has progressed under the numbing awe and supremacy of the overweening military and civil establishments and who are well adapted to echo the latter’s views when they have an opportunity to do so.. Our honorable guest had failed to realize that this was an academic discussion and there was no need to wear the traditional veil of expediency or to shudder away from highlighting the genuine problems of his province with the Federation. At least, he could have avoided echoing the often-repeated slanderous remarks of the establishment about Sindhis and Baloch that unfailingly stereotypes them as incompetent and unqualified for senior positions in the Federation. By the way, we have an army of such power seeker these days sauntering in Islamabad and the provincial capitals of Sindh, Balochistan and Punjab.
Many years after this episode, I met General Moeen Hyder in a private dinner at the residence of Ambassador Najamuddin Shaikh, and engaged him in a conversation. While talking about many things, we came to recall the above episode. He remembered it very well. He said, notwithstanding his admonitions, Mr. Soomro was shy of talking on the chosen subject. I told him, that the management, instead, should have invited Rasool Bukhsh Palijo for the exercise. He laughed heartily, and then answered in light mood, ‘In that case, it would not have been necessary to invite representatives of all the other provinces. Mr. Palijo would have comprehensively presented their single-handedly’.
Sindh was the center of his focus; the area of his struggle and the mirror of his dreams for revolutionary change in this common place inhabited by human beings.
This is what Saeen Rasool Bukhsh was that friends and foes equally admired him as a scholar and intellectual of high calibre. The establishment knew his calibre; his uncompromising principles; his irreproachable character; his utter disgust for any deal and compromise with the anti-people forces; his hatred for the nexus formed between the civil and military bureaucracy, feudal and dynastic political families, peers and sajadahnashins to capture the state resources and power to the peril of the teeming poor population of the country. He had this hatred for the anti-democratic forces and exploitation of the poor countries by the greedy capitalist world all over the globe. He had a grip over the ebb and flow of the leftist and socialist movements in any corner of the world and used to unravel the cobweb weaved by the exploiting capitalist powers to capture the resources of the third world countries.
Sindh was only the center of his focus; the area of his struggle and the mirror of his dreams for revolutionary change in this common place inhabited by human beings. Humanity was his faith; he saw religions as humane and mutually supportive mass of beliefs and not as classifying and antagonizing dogmas spilling blood of the adherents of each other. He had made a comparative study of the main religions and came to the above belief. He respected all the religions, and one could not discern any derogatory remark about a religion or a religious figure of any faith from his speeches and writings. He was above all the shallow thoughts and poisonous prejudices promoted by the narrow nationalism and dogmatism of pseudo scholars and intellectuals either in their arrogance rather ignorance or at the behest of their masters pulling their strings from power corridors within the country or from far off shores.
I have come across his lament over the loss of human lives devoured by the sectarian bias and hatred in the evolutionary history of nations and religions – may it be the thirty years of religious wars in Europe which destroyed many countries, the historic hostility between Arabs and Persians, the mayhem caused by the Sunni-Shia clashes. He preached all his life against this dogmatism to save Sindh from this menacing threat. He battled against such forces at all fronts – political, cultural, social, and literary. (Continues)
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Alam Brohi Mr. Muhammad Alam Brohi Born (1952) have qualified CSS in 1977 and joined the Foreign Service of Pakistan in March 1979 and served over 30 years; retired in 2013 as Ambassador. He is writer of many books in English and freelance writer and columnist. Live In Karachi. Writer can be reached at brohialam7@gmail.com
