On Long Marches and Revolutions

From last few years an epi­dem­ic is erupt­ing in Pak­istan, the epi­dem­ic of ‘long march’ and ‘rev­o­lu­tion’. Most­ly it is the mid­dle class which suf­fers from it. A blaz­ing rhetoric mobi­lizes mass­es with a surg­ing desire for ‘change’ last­ing not more than for a few days. Some ‘sage’ from the back chan­nels always exor­cis­es the curse and the epi­dem­ic is root­ed out in a peace­ful man­ner.

From the long march­es of Nawaz Sharif, Imran Khan and now Tahir Ul Qadri, all stood on the promis­es of rev­o­lu­tion. Media pro­ject­ed them while var­i­ous sec­tions of soci­ety espe­cial­ly the mid­dle class­es looked up to them as their sav­iors. At the end they have only brought dis­il­lu­sion­ment for their sup­port­ers now and then. Promis­es of ‘new world’ and ‘new Pak­istan’ could nev­er come true.

The most recent in the series of such march­es is the one car­ried out by Tahir Ul Qadri , an Islam­ic cler­ic, self pro­claimed ‘Sheikh-ul-Islam’, famous for his fierce ora­to­ry who knows how to mes­mer­ize his audi­ence. He drew par­al­lel of his march with that of Mao Zedong. He also made his fol­low­ers believe that they are fight­ing for the same cause as that of Imam Hus­sain, the great mar­tyr in Islam­ic his­to­ry who stood against tyran­ny. Qadri called the present gov­ern­ment of Pak­istan ‘Yazeed­ies’ while draw­ing analo­gies between Islam­abad and Kar­bala, the lat­ter a hot bar­ren land where Imam Hus­sain was mer­ci­less­ly butchered by the Yazee­di army.

While media gave full cov­er­age to this rev­o­lu­tion­ary march, a lit­tle con­sid­er­a­tion was giv­en to seri­ous­ly decon­struct these faulty notions of ‘rev­o­lu­tion’. To start with, Mao’s Long March would be a good ref­er­ence point, and then a dis­cus­sion on the top­ic of rev­o­lu­tion may fol­low.

The year was 1934, the com­mu­nists were gir­dled by the nation­al­ist forces of 50,000 strong Chi­ang Kai-shek’ troops for more than 2 years. The troops moved step by step with a plan to even­tu­al­ly stran­gu­late the red army of peas­ants and thus the very exis­tence of Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty. Com­mu­nists had lost 50% of the ter­ri­to­ry they had con­trolled in 1933, and 60,000 red army sol­diers were killed. Backed by the Amer­i­can and British impe­ri­al­ists, the nation­al­ists had the clear abil­i­ty to ful­ly destroy the Com­mu­nists. This was the time when Mao Zedong decid­ed to retreat towards safe sanc­tu­ar­ies of Yan’an province to evade com­plete anni­hi­la­tion of Chi­nese Rev­o­lu­tion. Thus on Octo­ber 1934 some 86,000 peo­ple on the Jiangxi-Fujian bor­der broke through the nation­al­ist lines. The car­a­van includ­ed red army sol­diers, women and admin­is­tra­tive staff. The March trav­elled on foot for more than a year cov­er­ing more than 10,000 KMs. It passed through snow cov­ered moun­tains, rivers, marsh­es and all sorts of hos­tile sit­u­a­tions. By the end, only 10,000, out of more than 80,000 who start­ed the March, sur­vived to reach the sanc­tu­ar­ies of Yan’an province. The man lead­ing them Mao Zedong also lost his wife (Yang Kiahu), son (Mao Anhong) and broth­er (Mao Zeten). This is called a ‘long march’.

Sim­i­lar is the con­no­ta­tion of the word ‘husainiy­at’. The way Qadri has used this term is noth­ing short of an insult to the whole lega­cy asso­ci­at­ed with this con­cept. Hus­sai­nis nev­er embrace Yazeed­ies. Imam Hus­sain taught us to strug­gle till the last breath of one’s life. It doesn’t mat­ter even if your broth­er is being lynched in front of you, your 18 years old son tread­ed under the hors­es, your 6 months infant took his last breath in your hand, and then your own body has been cut into pieces. Hus­sai­nis nev­er sur­ren­der their prin­ci­ples.

Rev­o­lu­tion does not mean only chang­ing the faces, it means chal­leng­ing the class rela­tions too. French Rev­o­lu­tion is an exam­ple in which pow­er was trans­ferred from the feu­dal, cler­gy, and nobil­i­ty clique to the new emerg­ing mid­dle class­es. Sim­i­lar­ly in Russ­ian, Chi­nese and Cuban Rev­o­lu­tions pow­er was trans­ferred from the hands of feu­dal and cap­i­tal­ist nobles to the work­ing class­es. The call for rev­o­lu­tion also calls for chal­leng­ing the exist­ing polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic struc­tures. It needs to be seen if any ver­sion of change may qual­i­fy as rev­o­lu­tion with­out con­sid­er­ing preva­lent semi-cap­i­tal­ist, semi-feu­dal, aid-based eco­nom­ic mod­els.

The ques­tion aris­es why every time our mass­es get mes­mer­ized with these mim­ic­ries of ‘rev­o­lu­tion’. In fact a huge vac­u­um and a cor­re­spond­ing demand for change do exist. But these are the right­ist forces like Qadri and oth­ers who hijack these sen­ti­ments and divert them to non-issues. In such con­di­tions, the left and lib­er­al forces need to come out of the dog­mat­ic and sec­tar­i­an ten­den­cies of the past and give an alter­nate. We need to adapt our­selves in accor­dance with the require­ments of our objec­tive con­di­tions and work for a true rev­o­lu­tion­ary vision.

—Writ­ten by Fahad Rizwan

Fahad Rizwan is a social activist, gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the Nation­al Stu­dents Fed­er­a­tion in Rawalpindi/Islamabad dis­trict.

(Pub­lished in The Laal­tain — Issue 7)