SERIOUS differences had developed between the then President Ayub Khan and Foreign Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto after the signing of the Tashkent Declaration following the 1965 war between India and Pakistan.
Those differences led to separation of Bhutto from the government and he decided to form his own political party. Since Bhutto’s manifesto was to improve the distressful condition of the downtrodden, he instantly got massive support, especially from the working class, peasants and students.
The first jolt to Ayub Khan’s despotic regime came when students organised a big rally in Lahore in January 1966, agitating against the Tashkent Declaration. Malik Amir Muhammad Khan, the tough governor of West Pakistan, directed the police to deal with students sternly, which opened fire on protesting students.
One of the students was killed outside the MAO College and more than 100 were arrested. Those who were part of the agitation ran away to avoid arrest and the ones residing in the college hostel were arrested.
The Government College had rented some hostel rooms from the MAO College and I was one of such boarders who were arrested for committing no crime.
We spent the next five days in the Borstal Jail in quite abysmal conditions.
Bhutto formed the “Bhutto’s People Party” in November 1967, which soon gained a large following from the poor and middle class people as he was promising to bring socialistic reforms if brought to power.
One of my friends, Suhail Mannan Sheikh, son of a promising industrialist, was a student of the University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore. A founder member of the PPP, Dr Mubashir Hassan, was a professor at UET and was sacked from job by the government due to his affiliation with Bhutto.
Nevertheless, the movement started by them received tremendous support from students of UET. Despite opposition from his father, Suhail became an ardent activist of the PPP and got a large number of party flags printed at his own expense, for the first time in the form of paper bunting.
The flag was similar to Pakistan’s flag but its two colours were red and black with words “Bhutto’s People’s Party” printed on it. A recent book on Bhutto entitled Wiladat se shahadat tak, written by the Chief Executive of Mussawat, Sajjad Bhukhari, also contains this information.
Soon thereafter the name of the party was changed to Pakistan People’s Party and a third colour, ‘green’, was added to the flag. Once again Suhail took the lead in getting the new flag printed on paper and involved me in its distribution all over Lahore, including leading educational institutions.
At that time there was so much scare of the martial law government that no printer was willing to accept Suhail’s order for the printing of PPP flags as the party was considered to be a socialist party.
Ultimately a printer guided us to request Agha Shorish Kashmiri, who himself was a brave journalist and published a bold and popular magazine, Chattan. He not only accepted the printing order but also gave a heavy discount.
Since then the PPP has become a formidable political strength in the country but people tend to forget the events and circumstances which led to the formation of a party having a major role in changing the country’s structure and its destiny.
PARVEZ RAHIM Karachi
