Before the world entered — or was made to enter, if you will — the arena of the infamous ‘clash of civilisations’, the preceding five decades from the 1940s to the 1980s were defined by a clash of ideologies. To its undeniable credit, the Cold War was much less deadly than what the so-called civilisations have produced in their ongoing clash.

Played on either side of the Iron Curtain after the Second World War, the Cold War tussle was all-encompassing and had a high-octane intensity that, understandably, is hard to imagine for those who didn’t watch it unfold first-hand. Even for a majority of those who did, today it’s no more than a breeze from the past — a wry, rueful smile at what might have been.

People have generally moved on, but for sure, not all of them. Those stuck in time continue to talk in an idiom that could not withstand the toughest of all challenges: the test of time. It’s like attempting to survive with outdated currency in one’s pocket. Aa’z Azizi’s pen-sketches of 30 individuals who were in the vanguard of the communist movement in Pakistan, titled Rafeeqan-i-Sidq-o-Safa [Comrades Pure and Pious], suggest he remained one such soul till the very end of his mortal existence.

Pen-sketches that provide context to a political debate that stands far from settled

Before taking a broader look at the book’s content, a point of clarification seems to be in the fitness of things. There is hardly anything wrong with dedication and commitment to an ideology — any ideology. There is much wrong with verbosity and rhetoric while dealing with the past instead of making use of the wisdom that is linked with hindsight. Azizi’s narrative on that count suffers seriously.

Page after page, it feels as if the reader is going through literature produced by the one or the other of the innumerable factions of what was once the Communist Party of Pakistan. Every name Azizi mentions, for instance, will be “remembered till eternity,” and every act of all these persons will be “written in golden letters.”

Blinded by ideological zeal and short on literary finesse, Azizi seems to have missed out completely on the existence of something called the dustbin of history which, frankly, accommodates much more than what history does, or has ever shown an interest or inclination to do.

In his preface to the book, known scholar Dr Jaffar Ahmed stresses the need to take a “sustained and objective look at the political history of the country and to compare the contribution of various actors to the state and society” of Pakistan. Fair enough, but the preface carries the headline ‘Aik Qabil-i-Qadr Khidmat’ [A Valuable Service], which the book is surely not because the book does not even come close to being objective.

Let’s pick two instances of the many scattered through the pages. The piece on the peasant leader Comrade Haider Bux Jatoi, though it does not carry the date when it was written, seems to have been penned around 2005. Towards the end, it has this to say: “The situation today is changing at a quick pace. Pathways are themselves defining the destination. People have come out on their own. It is the historical duty of all patriotic, progressive, humanist, justice-loving and intellectual people to guide the masses towards forming a broad-based alliance for democracy and provincial autonomy to bring an end to feudalism and American imperialism.”

Writing in 2010 about Hassan Nasir, the communist student leader tortured and killed in custody during Gen Ayub Khan’s regime, the rhetoric goes one step further and farther from reality and objectivity: “Today, even political parties formed by the feudals are demanding an end to feudalism. The system that has been discarded by the entire humanity is counting its final breaths (at our end) ... The silence of the masses is the lull before the storm. If the popular desire for change is not respected, it will be difficult (for the government) to control the wrath and fury of the destitute, the deprived and the dictated to. Society is pregnant once again. Shortening this painful period is the duty of all the patriots, progressives and humanists [...]”

Away from the rhetoric, it is not hard to pick two basic elements in the discourse: anti-imperialism and pro-democracy. As for the former, the very souls who were shouting at the pitch of their voices against the United States during the Cold War turned to supporting American policies in the name of enlightenment not long after the dismemberment of the erstwhile Soviet Union. And this happened without any change in the attitude of the imperialist. If anything, the lone policeman of the world only resorted to even more severe arm-twisting in the absence of any political rival.

When it comes to democracy, Azizi cannot be faulted as an individual, for the left — as an institution — almost always remained delusional. ‘Revolution’ was a key word in its armoury, ‘democracy’ was the professed target, and Moscow was its Mecca. That there was no democracy in the length and breadth of the USSR was not a conundrum that could attract the attention of the enlightened minds. Azizi sheds no light on the matter. In fact, he adds layers of confusion to it.

One-third of the book is dedicated to Nasir, the near-mythical character who paid for his idealism with his life. It is disturbing to see how Nasir perceived the happenings at the time. In Azizi’s words, Nasir “firmly believed that dictatorship was the biggest hurdle in the way of progress, and it needed to be removed so that the country could move forward.” Did he ever consider that dictatorship precisely was the political dispensation across the Soviet bloc?

Elsewhere, he quotes Nasir as saying that the Pakistani left was “working for the restoration of democracy while the world had moved much beyond that point.” Really? The Bolshevik revolution had taken the Soviet Union from monarchy to dictatorship. There was no democratic interlude to suggest that the Soviets had moved beyond such a thing. They had never been there.

There is one element where Azizi could have really hit the nail on its head, but, unfortunately, he shies away. Talking of Nasir’s arrest, which ultimately ended with his mysterious death, Azizi mentions “a personality that had close links with the American embassy, and who was arrested with some others but was treated with due respect and decorum at the CIA Centre and we all saw it happen ourselves.” To those interested in exploring this person’s identity further, Azizi’s advice is to get in touch with “Raza Kazim, advocate, who is still alive and can guide further.” This surely doesn’t sound like some diehard revolutionary speaking. In fact, it sounds pretty much like a cautious individual.

The reviewer is a member of staff

Rafeeqan-i-Sidq-o-Safa
By Aa’z Azizi
Sanjh, Lahore
ISBN: 978-9695932018
184pp.

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, May 28th, 2017