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)

Click here for Part-1, Part-2 

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The author is a former member of the Foreign Service of Pakistan and has served as Ambassador for seven years.

The post A soldier of Sindh and Sindhu-3 first appeared on Sindh Courier.

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)

Click here for Part-1

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The author is a former member of the Foreign Service of Pakistan and has served as Ambassador for seven years.

The post A soldier of Sindh and Sindhu-2 first appeared on Sindh Courier.

• 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.

The post A soldier of Sindh and Sindhu first appeared on Sindh Courier.