IT was in the early days of the Musharraf dictatorship that the now almost mythical Okara tenant farmers movement exploded into the public eye. The military junta was still lapping up the praises of the chattering classes content to support another ‘non-political’ government when the details of the institution’s rapacious land grab subjected it to a first major public relations disaster.

The Okara struggle was a game-changer for many reasons. That the otherwise docile peasantry of Punjab was expressing discontent with its beloved military, let alone confronting it, was of great historical significance. Then there was the fact that the Okara peasants opened the floodgates vis-à-vis public disclosures about what Ayesha Siddiqa would later call ‘Military Inc’. Finally the tenants’ uprising set off a chain reaction that would eventually culminate in the anti-dictatorship movement of 2007.

Most who followed the struggle will recall a relatively happy ending insofar as the military’s underhanded attempts to evict the tenants eventually failed in the face of severe public criticism. In the intervening decade or so the vast majority of the almost 100,000 residents of the Okara military farms have seen their lives transformed, freed from the tyranny of the men in khaki.

Okara military farms are back in the spotlight.

The upturn in their fortunes is noticeable; kutcha homes have been replaced by permanent structures; motorcycles and tractors are visible where bicycles were once the norm; and numerous families have diversified into non-agricultural occupations on account of the increase in income off the land.

Notwithstanding these ‘successes’, the spectre of a renewed assault by our holy guardians has never gone away. There have been numerous skirmishes between the tenants and military farm authorities over the years and a host of false criminal cases have been lodged against the tenants’ main leadership that have facilitated harassment and intimidation of all kinds.

A major confrontation was thus never too far away, and so it happened late last week. Hundreds of uniformed personnel descended upon Chak 15-4/L in a bid to take control over approximately 1,000 acres of land immediately adjacent to Okara Cantt. In the most bloody episode since the movement peaked in 2004, two tenants were killed and many more injured.

Faced with yet another very public fallout, the authorities have refrained from expanding the conflict. But even this relatively contained outbreak of violence confirms that the military has never accepted the claims of the tenants, and that it will, from time to time, continue to assert its own ‘right’ to take control of and appropriate the surplus from agricultural lands that are amongst the most fertile in central Punjab.

More generally, the sudden attack proves again that the military institution’s corporate interests compel it to periodically engage in brazen demonstrations of coercive power. It may or may not decide to again depose an elected government, but it is unlikely to ever tolerate a rollback of its innumerable profit-making ventures, given how central a part of the military lifestyle these have become.

At another level the renewal of hostilities between the self-proclaimed ‘guardian of the state’ and a relatively deprived class in the dominant province confirms that at least some segments of the population in the Punjabi heartland of the Pakistani state are willing to challenge the hegemonic project that has survived for almost seven decades on the back of support from a wide cross-section of Punjabi society.

Having said this, there is nothing like a critical mass of dissent necessary within Punjab for the military-dominated state to be definitively challenged. The non-Punjabi periperhies of the state remain at the very least suspicious — if not in a state of outright rebellion — of what is perceived as a ‘Punjabi’ military intent on maintaining exploitative relations.

A decade ago the Okara tenants effectively provided a window of opportunity for progressives in Punjab to assert that an effective alliance of working people in the dominant region with oppressed nationalities is by no means a pipe dream. Leaders of the Okara movement travelled the country, expressing solidarity with Sindhi fisherfolk, Pakhtun farmers and even Baloch nationalists.

Today Okara military farms are back in the spotlight, even if only briefly. The authoritarian and self-aggrandising military institution that they are resisting is engaging in much more severe violations of basic human freedoms in Waziristan, Balochistan and Sindh. There is now recognition amongst the Okara tenants — and others like them in Punjab who have seen the true face of the military — that theirs is only part of a much larger struggle against military hegemony.

Whether or not all oppressed groups in this country come together to challenge this hegemony will depend on the efforts of progressives across the ethnic divide. In the final analysis, it is only an organised political force of progressives that can foment a new vision for this country.

The writer teaches at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.

Published in Dawn, July 11th, 2014