ISLAMABAD, Nov 10: A free and frank discussion was held here on Monday evening on the nationalist movement in Sindh when Abdul Khaliq Junejo, chief of the Jeay Sindh Mahaz (JSM), presented his small book on the subject claiming what his people wanted was freedom and not separation.
The booklet entitled Nationalist Movement of Sindh and the National Question in Pakistan was introduced at a function organised jointly by South Asian Free Media Association (SAFMA), a media organization, in collaboration with the Awami Jamhuri Ittehad – a group of Left wing political activists and parties – and Badalti Duniya, a progressive monthly magazine striving for social change -- at the SAFMA Media Centre.
Eminent intellectuals Dr Mubarak Ali, Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy, Ahmad Salim and Ashfaque Salim Mirza commented on the issue in depth. The author’s own presentation was forthright and forceful.
Mr Junejo said it was wrong and highly unjust to discard the JSM as a party of the jagirdars (feudals). He claimed there was not a single wadera in the party and its entire strength comprised the middle and the lower middle class, and yet it was ironical that the party, which represented the interests of the landed aristocracy and robber barons was being projected as a socialist party of the people and nobody seemed to question that farce.
He said Pakistan was a multinational country and it was wrong to talk about small and big provinces, as nations could not be graded according to size.
He criticised the Objectives Resolution and said that as early as 1952 G.M. Syed had warned that if religion were used as the basis of nationhood it would lead to the emergence of fundamentalist forces. This was happening as he had predicted.
He said the colonial rule depended on armed force and feudal hold.
This was still the situation. Independence was therefore a misnomer. Pakistan was actually a continuation of colonial rule.
Ahmad Salim in his comments said the author had only cursorily discussed the role of the mullah whereas this class was an equal partner in the stranglehold of the feudals and the generals. Similarly, the gender issue was missing.
He also objected to the author’s loose and undefined use of what he referred to as Punjab in his discussion. But he agreed with Junejo that the national issues would remain alive as long as there was feudalism.
In his very convincing analysis of the Sindh issue, Prof (Dr) Pervez Hoodbhoy discussed the future of the country in the context of the emerging world situation.
He said the religious basis as Pakistan’s raison d’etre and a unifying factor had been proven wrong and insistence on this factor would obfuscate our understanding of the real issues. He said it was time we had a new thinking as a new world was emerging.
He recalled that he was pleasantly surprised when he heard from none else but Qazi Hussain Ahmad himself, when the latter was in the US, that the establishment of a pluralist society -- where all groups and all individuals irrespective of who and what they were enjoyed equal rights -- should be the aim of all societies. Unfortunately, Qazi Sahib does not say such things when in Pakistan, he said. What Pakistan needed was just that, Hoodbhoy said, not any ideology.
Eminent historian Dr Mubarak Ali wrapped up the discussion by presenting a brief account of how nations and nationalist thinking evolved in Europe and how it acquired traits of aggressive expansionism that resulted in internecine warfare during the last two centuries.
He said that in Sindh those who considered themselves as an old civilization from the times of Moenjodaro contested the official description of the province as Babul Islam. In this tussle, one could see how religion alone could not keep a country together.
The solution lay in unifying the people through a just and fair order and giving them a sense of belonging. On the other hand he pointed out that continued division of people on nationalist lines would result in the further weakening of the proletariat and the strengthening of the exploitative groups which, as could be seen, had happened and was happening.
Earlier Ayub Malik of Badalti Duniya introduced the author and talked about the lawyers’ movement.