IN 1928, the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini had established a vice-like grip on Italy, a country which only a few years earlier had seemed ripe for a working class revolution. Amongst the most prominent leaders of the Italian left, Antonio Gramsci was convicted of crimes against the state and sent to jail for the rest of his life. At his sentencing, the public prosecutor uttered the words: “For 20 years we must stop this brain from working.”

In the event, the fascists could not stop Gramsci’s brain from working, one that Mussolini had himself remarked was “unquestionably powerful”. Via his sister-in-law, Gramsci smuggled his writings out of jail for years, and the collection of his thoughts compiled as the Prison Notebooks has since become one of the most celebrated political treatises of modern times.

What was it about Gramsci that constituted such a threat to Mussolini and his thugs? Why was it necessary to “stop his brain from working”? Why, indeed, do ruling establishments everywhere go out of their way to not only physically target dissident thinkers but also discredit them?

The answer, quite simply, is that ideas are dangerous.

Progressives face a new wave of state repression.

In this country, like in Mussolini’s Italy, those on the left of the political spectrum have always been subject to political victimisation, whether through direct coercion or through propaganda that depicts them as traitors (and this includes being called enemies of the faith).

The Pakistani state had what was virtually a no-tolerance policy towards the left during the Cold War years, which was regularly justified by the fact that left-wing parties enjoyed the patronage of foreign states. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, and China’s embracing of globalisation, any pretence of Pakistani leftists being supported by external powers was done away with.

The events of 9/11 created new problems for Pakistani officialdom. The erstwhile jihadi darlings of the ‘free world’ had to be reined in, at least enough so as to appease Washington and other Western capitals. Elements of the progressive community, still trying to come to terms with the end of 20th century communism and the structural changes in the global capitalist order, were actually supportive of the Pakistani state’s military-centric ‘solutions’ to what was now the world’s biggest problem, ‘terrorism’.

Indeed, the religious right had branded itself as the principled revolutionary force of the twenty-first era, opposed to imperialism and even, at times, suggesting that it wanted to challenge class domination (although it steered well clear of challenging patriarchy or ethnic-national oppression).

Amidst the confusion, there were still individuals, movements and organisations on the left that tried to make sense of it all; to clarify that the binary of Western imperialism vs Islamism was a false one; to establish that the state had not been democratised in favour of working people, women, ethnic and religious minorities; and to call attention to the manner in which ‘development’ and ‘counterterrorism’ were become catchwords for the new hegemonic ideology of the 21st century.

These ideas do not have great traction across the length and breadth of Pakistani society, largely because those who propagate them are weak, and often spend as much time fighting amongst themselves as with the perpetrators of the hegemonic ideology. Yet the handful of genuine people’s mobilisations to have emerged in Pakistan over the past couple of decades, on issues as diverse as housing for the urban poor, the rights of populations displaced by ‘development’ and war, privatisation of basic services and claims to land, water and other such livelihood sources — all of these have been fuelled by the ideas of this country’s long-suffering left.

Old habits die hard especially for state bureaucracies that are trained to be wary of even basic democratic impulses. So it is that an emaciated community of progressives who are critical of state and corporate power, not because they are enemies of the country, but because they are committed to the cause of its people, face a new wave of state repression.

Dr Riaz Ahmed’s jailing on a ridiculous charge of possessing a weapon was laced with a veiled invocation of much more serious charges that would make it impossible for him to walk the streets without being lynched by mobs. One would like to believe that his release on bail represents a shift in thinking within official circles. Yet the fact that others like Ghulam Dastagir and Baba Jan continue to languish in jails on trumped-up charges, while many others have disappeared without trace, suggests that change is not so easily forthcoming.

The left cannot pose any kind of existential threat to the state of Pakistan, and it is debatable if it ever did. Despite the fact that it is right-wing supremacist movements that are spreading hate and violence everywhere, the left’s ideas continue to be considered dangerous. To whom and why is not hard to understand.

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

Published in Dawn, April 7th, 2017