Juhd-i-Qalam: Haft Roza Al-Fath Karachi Mein Shaa’e Honay Walay Muntakhab Mazaameen Aur Idaariye
By Shaukat Siddiqi
Rab Publishers
ISBN: not mentioned
448pp.

It was not exactly McCarthyism, but it was a kind of the ghost of McCarthyism that had reappeared to haunt Pakistani intellectuals in the 1950s and 1960s. Consequent upon this witch-hunt, unleashed in Pakistan to repress and persecute left-wing politicians, writers and journalists, was the arrest of a large number of Marxist intellectuals. Many lost their jobs and some even their lives.

The campaign was reminiscent of the famous ‘Red Scare’ that had risen from the Russian Revolution and gripped the Western world when the First World War was nearing an end, and then again after the Second World War. Sometimes referred to as ‘Second Red Scare’, this time round it was also called McCarthyism, as the Republican American Senator Joseph McCarthy was behind the campaign that ran between 1950 and 1954.

McCarthyism was fed on the fear that it was not impossible for a popular labour-led uprising to take control of the government in the USA and elsewhere, as communists had presumably infiltrated the US government.

The Communist Party of Pakistan was banned in 1954, mostly for political reasons. The pretext for its persecution was the claim that Pakistani progressive writers and journalists had ‘anti-state’ or ‘anti-Pakistan’ inclinations. With the imposition of martial law in Pakistan in 1958, the same policies were pursued in the following decades too, and reading the articles and editorials that Shaukat Siddiqi (March 20, 1923 — December 18, 2006) penned in the early 1970s may give a chilling feeling of déjà vu for many writers, journalists and political activists in Pakistan today.

A selection of articles and editorials by Shaukat Siddiqi, originally published in the Urdu weekly magazine Al-Fath during the early 1970s, proffer a record of our political history

To commemorate his birth centenary, a selection from Shaukat Siddiqi’s articles and editorials, originally written for Al-Fath, a Karachi-based Urdu weekly, have been published in book form.

The patriotism of progressives has always been questioned in Pakistan. Well, some progressive intellectuals might have had their own perspectives on such issues, but not all of them are created equal. Shaukat Siddiqi was a committed progressive writer and journalist but he was no less a patriotic Pakistani than the rest of us.

Shaukat Siddiqi is known more for his short stories and novels than his writings that he published as a journalist — his novel Khuda Ki Basti ran into some 50 editions and was televised, making it one of Urdu’s most popular novels. But the role Shaukat Siddiqi played as a journalist was as important.

A writer with Leftist leanings as he was, Shaukat Siddiqi’s laser-like focus on raising the issues faced by the downtrodden through his fiction and journalistic writings made him popular among the populace and very unpopular among the powers that had a sway over politics.

Wahab Siddiqi, a senior journalist, who was also a part of the editorial team of Al-Fath, in his foreword to the book has described the background details on how, why and when Al-Fath was launched and why Shaukat Siddiqi wrote what he wrote in his articles and editorials. As put by Wahab Siddiqi, on April 15, 1970, the weirdest of all events took place in Pakistan’s history: from all over Pakistan, all working journalists as well as other workers associated with newspapers and news agencies went on a strike. The Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ) presented their charter of demands before the newspaper owners, demanding an interim relief for newspaper employees according to the Second Wage Board Award. Earlier, the PFUJ had already gone on strike on a few occasions, protesting against the government actions to suppress the civil liberties and freedom of the press.

This strike proved to be unsuccessful, as a specific group of journalists turned up for work on April 24, with the tacit approval of the then martial law administration and newspaper owners, says Wahab Siddiqi. About 200 journalists who persisted with their demands were fired. In such days of gloom, joblessness and suppression, Irshad Rao decided to launch the weekly Al-Fath from Karachi.

Al-Fath’s first issue appeared on May 20, 1970. Shaukat Siddiqi and Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi, another progressive colossus known for his poetry and fiction, were given supervisory and advisory roles. Irshad Rao, Mahmood Shaam, Farooq Piracha and some others were members of the team in different capacities.

Right from the beginning, the martial law authorities and the ministry of information expressed, from time to time, their displeasure over Al-Fath’s stance. Soon Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi excused himself and asked for his name’s removal from the supervisory position. As mentioned in the book, Qasmi was coerced into abandoning the weekly. But Shaukat Siddiqi and others persisted and pursued their editorial policies.

These pieces are, in fact, a record of our political history and proffer some crucial signposts, reminding us of the direction in which we have been moving all along. Most of the pieces, published between 1970 and 1977 and included in the book, are on political issues but some literary issues, too, have been discussed in Shaukat Siddiqi’s peculiar tongue-in-cheek style.

For instance, ‘Adabi Jaal Saazon Ki Dastavez’ [The Document of Literary Fraudsters] is a piece that derides a literary magazine named Dastavez, published back then from Rawalpindi. Referring to a group of writers, Shaukat Siddiqi criticises the magazine because it had ridiculed the Pakistan Writers’ Guild and says that the Guild is meant for supporting writers. Then he points out that, unlike the Thinkers’ Forum, a literary body allegedly formed at the behest of the government, the Guild is a writers’ trade union.

Other national and international issues analysed in these pieces include the ‘Fall’ of Dhaka, killings in Indonesia, the Kashmir issue, the Jamaat-i-Islami and its policies, socialism and the CIA, feudalism, and Z.A. Bhutto’s imminent hanging, to name but a few.

The introductory notes by Shahab Kamran Siddiqi, Mahmood Shaam and Rasheed Butt further elaborate the backdrop against which these pieces were written.

The reviewer has served as Professor of Urdu at the University of Karachi; chief editor, Urdu Dictionary Board and director general, National Language Promotion Department

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, April 13th, 2025