Pakistan National Awami Party: Nature and Direction of Politics
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PAKISTAN NATIONAL AWAMI PARTY: NATURE AND DIRECTION OF POLITICS Submitted by HIMAYATULLAH Supervised by PROF. DR. SAYED WIQAR ALI SHAH DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY QUAID-I-AZAM UNIVERSITY ISLAMABAD 2015 PAKISTAN NATIONAL AWAMI PARTY: NATURE AND DIRECTION OF POLITICS A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN HISTORY Submitted by HIMAYATULLAH DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY QUAID-I-AZAM UNIVERSITY ISLAMABAD 2015 DECLARATION I hereby declare that this dissertation is the result of my individual research, and that it has not been submitted concurrently to any other university for any other degree. Date: ____________ ____________ Himayatullah For my wife Sadaf Ahmad ACKNOWLEDGEMENT This was during my MPhil when I developed an interest in the political struggle of those leaders who were regarded the ‘champions’ of the left politics in Pakistan. It was a difficult task to study and explore the roles, these leaders played in the political development of Pakistan. I always discussed my interest with Professor (Dr.) Sayed Wiqar Ali Shah who at the end endorsed my idea to work on the National Awami Party (NAP) which was the umbrella organization of all the leftist politicians in Pakistan. I was hesitant to undertake the work which I thought was lacking in essential sources/materials. However, the idea was exciting to me for two reasons; firstly, it was my interest in the leftist political leadership and secondly it was to explore the history of the present Awami National Party (ANP) because there is not a single scholarly work available on the ANP. Majority of the people simply linked it with the Khudai Khidmatgar Movement of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (1890-1988). Keeping these points in mind I decided to write a comprehensive proposal on the nature and political direction of the NAP and submitted it to the Department of History, Faculty of Social Sciences Quaid-i-Azam University Islamabad for my doctorate degree. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor Prof. Sayed Wiqar Ali Shah presently Allama Iqbal Professor at the South Asia Institute, University of Heidelberg Germany. The task of producing a comprehensive and scholarly work on the NAP was much difficult without his close cooperation and guidance. The undertaking to write a comprehensive dissertation on the NAP was difficult since there was no scholarly work available specifically on the role played by the party in the political history of Pakistan. There were a few passing references to the political program of the NAP in most of the books that dealt with the post-1947 period of political development of Pakistan. The lack of primary sources in this regard put me in great trouble during initial days of the research. However, it was Prof. Wiqar Shah’s motivation and tenacity that led me to know the fact that literature on this subject was so profuse that I could attempt to produce a voluminous work. I learnt about some libraries and personal collections wherefrom I could get rare documentary records with regard to the nature and political direction of the NAP. This work would not have been possible without the support extended to me by Prof. Razia Sultana, Chairperson Department of History, Quaid-i-Azam University Islamabad. Her cooperation was much helpful during my writing up of the first draft. Prof. Rafique Afzal and Dr. Ilhan Niaz also cooperated with me and gave their valuable inputs. Dr. Sultan-i-Rome, Dr. Ghulam Qasim Marwat and Naveed Iqbal Khan of the Higher Education Department, Khyber- Pakhtunkhwa provided me immense feedback. I am thankful to all my friends and colleagues at the National Institute of Historical and Cultural Research Prof. Eatzaz Ahmad, Mr. Altaf Ullah Qasimi, Dr. Farah Gul Baqai, Dr. Sajid Mahmud Awan, Mr. Atlas Khan, Mr. Noor Jamal and Muhammad Hasan Baloch and Dr. Fazal Rabi of the NUML for their feedbacks and facilitation. In completing this study, I am grateful to my elder brothers, Iftikhar Ahmad Yusufzai, PhD scholar, Department of Political Science, University of Peshawar and Dr. Hidayat Ullah Khan, Assistant Professor in the Institute of Physics and Electronics, University of Peshawar. Their advices and insightful criticism was both constructive and much needed. Iftikhar Ahmad went through the entire draft and improved the thesis at a number of points. Discussion with both of them sharpened the arguments and developed the basic framework of the study. In my endeavor for collecting primary sources Mr. Ahmad Saleem’s support was much helpful. He generously provided me access to his personal collection in Islamabad and Lahore. Therefore, my most heart-felt thanks go to him. I am thankful to Muhammad Saleem, Zahid Imran and Amjad Ghori at the National Institute of Historical and Cultural Research who typed thesis and gave me valuable suggestions. A number of persons who spared their precious time and gave me interviews deserve special thanks. It is difficult to mention the names of all the persons but Shahzad Gul Bach, Aimal Khattak son of Ajmal Khattak, Muhammad Afzal Khan Lala, Faiz Muhammad, Juma Khan Sufi and Hamish Khalil provided me invaluable insight during the course of my study. Finally, my deepest thanks go to my mother, wife Sadaf Ahmad and children Anas Khan Yaqubi and Aafia Khan Yaqubi who have patiently supported me during my study. Himayatullah Yaqubi ABSTARCT This doctoral dissertation is related with the history, formation and political orientation of the Pakistan National Awami Party that espoused a leftist and socialist approach in its policy formulation. The attempt is to study the left political landscape within the framework of the NAP which was established in 1957. It was joined by the leadership of the Khudai Khidmatgar Movement in NWFP, Wror Pakhtun and Ustaman Gul in Balochistan, Sindh Awami Mahaz and Sindh Hari Committee in Sindh, the splinter group of the Awami League under Abdul Hamid Khan Bhashani and Gantantari Dal in the East Pakistan and Azad Pakistan Party in the Punjab. Moreover majority of the communists, who were deprived of their central authority after the banning of the Communist Party of Pakistan (CPP) in 1954, also joined the NAP. At the time of its formation in 1957, the NAP absorbed and unified majority of the communist, leftist and regionalist political groups in Pakistan. Before the formation of the Pakistan Peoples Party in November 1967, it was regarded as the first representative political organization of majority of the progressive and leftist elements in the country. It was also regarded as the first genuine national opposition party because of its strong popular base and challenging role in the East and West Pakistan provincial assemblies. Most of the NAP leadership were the allies of the Indian National Congress and hence opposed the creation of Pakistan during their pre-partition politics. They have also been blamed with extra-territorial loyalties having connections with the Soviet Union, Afghanistan and India. It is an interesting paradox that majority of the NAP leadership was viewed as male-contenders who never reconciled and embraced with the state of Pakistan. However, this characterization has also been interpreted by a number of scholars, an excuse of the establishment to check the party growing influence among the masses and progressive political program. In order to explain the baffle and perplexing relationship between the NAP and the state of Pakistan, no scholarly attempt has been made so far. There are hardly any study available that could encompass all the aspects about the political direction and nature of the program of the NAP. This study aims at to explore and analyze the nature and direction of the NAP’s politics in holistic manner. Major themes such as the formation of the NAP, its role during the 1965 presidential election, the division of the party in 1968, its role in the 1971 crisis, ministry formation in NWFP and Balochistan during the Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto government and ultimately the imposition of ban on the party in 1975 have been discussed in the study to fully grasp its overall performance. In a nutshell the purpose of this research work is to study the political strategies of the NAP leadership, line of thinking and its ideological orientation which had unbounded effects on the political development in Pakistan. CONTENTS Introduction .............................................................................................................................. xvi-xxx Chapter One Leftists Politics in Pakistan: History and Development........................................................... 31-80 Left Politics in the Pre-Partition Sindh................................................................................................32 Emergence of the Khudai Khidmatgar Movement..............................................................................36 Leftists Entry into the All-India Muslim League ................................................................................40 Leftist and the Political Landscape in Balochistan..............................................................................44 Politics of the Communist Party of India ............................................................................................47 Leftists and Party-Politics in the Post-Partition Pakistan ....................................................................51 The Communist Party of Pakistan.......................................................................................................51