Funerals are not unusual in Bhoun, the fourth largest village of Chakwal district having a population of 18,822. But on February 22, the villagers witnessed a rather unusual funeral procession being taken out amidst revolutionary slogans and red flags. They were even more surprised to see young women carrying the coffin along with male mourners. This was the extraordinary funeral of Yasrab Tanvir Gondal, 64, better known as Dr Lal Khan, a Marxist political theorist and a political activist.

Khan’s mourners fondly remember him as the red star of Pakistan’s left. He breathed his last on February 21 at a hospital in Lahore. Khan was diagnosed about one and a half year ago with lung cancer. Born in 1956 in Bhoun, Khan was the son of Colonel Sher Zaman who wanted his son to follow in his footsteps.

Hundreds of people, including PPP leader Chaudhry Manzoor Ahmed, MNA Ali Wazir, journalist Imtiaz Alam, Qazi Saeed, singer Jawad Ahmed, and Labour Party Pakistan leader Farooq Tariq attended his funeral. As the coffin was carried away for burial, the streets of Bhoun echoed with revolutionary slogans. After the burial, people joined Jawad Ahmed in singing the revolutionary left-wing anthem ‘The Internationale.’ According to Ahmed, Khan had asked his comrades to sing the anthem at his grave.

Throughout his life, Khan waged a war against capitalism in his own way and dreamt of a socialist revolution which, according to him, was the sole panacea for the sufferings of the proletariat.

Throughout his life Dr Lal Khan played a significant role in keeping alive and promoting leftist politics in Pakistan

Khan started his political activism when he was a student at Nishtar Medical College, Multan. He contested the student union elections in 1978 against the Islami Jamiat-i-Tulaba and won, despite his opponents being supported by the then military regime. When Gen Zia hanged Z.A. Bhutto in 1979, it was Khan and his group who first arranged Bhutto’s funeral on the premises of Nishtar Medical College, thus inviting the wrath of Gen Zia’s dictatorial military regime. Consequently, Khan was jailed for a year and received 15 lashes along with a fine of 20,000 rupees. Later, along with his friends, he was forcibly sent to Rawalpindi Medical College where they all re-launched another campaign against Gen Zia.

In the TV show Meri Jiddojehad, hosted by him on Aaj TV, Khan once said that because of the anti-Zia campaign launched under his leadership, it had become difficult for Zia’s daughter and son to come to the college. After he recited a famous poem ‘Paishaawar Qatilo’ [Professional Killers] by Ahmed Faraz on the occasion of the Z.A. Bhutto’s first death anniversary, and a military court awarded him a death sentence with clear orders of shooting him on sight. This forced him into self-exile and, along with some of his comrades, he took refuge in the Netherlands which had become a home for Pakistani revolutionaries who had fled Gen Zia’s regime.

Torture, tyranny and exile only made him launch a bigger campaign for his socialist ideas. With his comrades Farooq Tariq, Muhammad Amjad, Ayub Goraya and others, Khan launched a bilingual monthly magazine Tabqati Jiddojehad [Class Struggle] which served as a platform for many revolutionary writers. “Gauging the impact of the anti-Zia articles we published, we decided to use pen names instead of our real names as it would have created trouble for our family members in Pakistan,” says Farooq Tariq. “Qaisar Jamal was my pen name while Tanvir Gondal chose Lal Khan as his pen name.”

Tariq motivated Khan to complete his education and obtain a degree from a university in Netherlands. “Every day, we would stage a protest against Gen Zia in front of the Pakistan Embassy in Netherlands but the protest that shook the despotic regime was a brief display of defiance shown during a match between Pakistan and Holland on June 13, 1982,” recalls Tariq, the convener of Lahore Left Front and former general secretary of Awami Workers Party.

Tariq, Khan, Amjad and Goraya had entered the stadium carrying a banner, chanting anti-Zia slogans. Their protest was telecast live at a time when even the mention of Z.A. Bhutto’s name could throw anyone in jail.

“After this protest, the Pakistani government gave false information to the government of Netherlands and our protest was called a terrorist activity,” continues Tariq. “Eighteen of us, including Khan and I, were arrested by the Dutch police but we were released after investigations. We filed a case against the Netherlands Government for arresting us on false charges, which we won and the Dutch Government apologised to us,” he adds.  

When Gen Zia died in 1988, the Pakistani revolutionaries in Netherlands began to return to Pakistan. “When we returned to Pakistan after eight years, I quit my pen name but Lal Khan continued to use his,” says Tariq.  

Khan worked as a doctor in Lahore but soon quit, devoting his life to his revolutionary ideas, inspired by the ideologies of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. He reorganised his comrades and remained the editor of Tabqati Jiddojehad and also of the Asian Marxist Review. He authored over a dozen of books including Pakistan’s Other Story: The 1968-69 Revolution and Kashmir’s Ordeal — A Revolutionary Way Out, as well as Partition — Can it be Undone? He was a regular contributor to the op-ed pages of Daily Times and Urdu daily Dunya.

His passing is a blow to the country’s repressed and fragmented left. Rashed Rehman, the former editor of Daily Times, says that Lal Khan was a true Marxist who devoted his entire life to his ideology. “I first met him in 1979 and our first meeting led to a profound friendship,” he says adding that, when he became the editor of Daily Times, he invited Khan to write a column for the daily. “His death is a huge loss to the already divided and weakened left. It is yet to be seen who will fill the vacuum left by him,” laments Rehman.

Author and columnist Dr Arif Azad termed Khan as one of the rare breed of Marxist scholars and activists who embodied the ideals of resistance and capitalism. “Deeply versed in European Marxism, Dr Lal Khan was committed to the various local struggles for trade union rights and resistance to undemocratic regimes,” says Azad. “He was the first Marxist in the country to introduce Trotskyism in the country. Before him, Pakistan had only cultural Marxists but he established himself as a scientific Marxist who would always come up with authentic statistics to prove his point. Dr Lal was a heroic figure in student opposition to Zia’s regime. The leftist movement is poorer without him. He will be missed here and beyond.”

PPP leader Chaudhary Manzoor Ahmad termed Khan’s commitment to his ideology as unprecedented. “He played a vital role in transforming this society through his writings and activism,” Ahmed says.

Khan would often lament on the plight of PPP and would constantly remind its leadership that it had drifted away from the party’s manifesto which was mainly based on socialism.  

Whether Khan’s dream of a red revolution will materialise or not, his old comrade Tariq firmly believes that capitalism is failing in the world and one day socialism will rule. “We will continue the mission of our comrade Lal Khan,” he vows.

Khan had a vast knowledge of world history and political and social movements. His memory was so sharp that he could quote the PPP manifesto, speeches by Lenin and from the books of Z.A. Bhutto and Leon Trotsky at length from memory.

Three years ago, in Islamabad, Khan appeared optimistic at the launch of the Urdu translation of The History of The Russian Revolution by Trotsky. He called the Urdu translation by comrade Imran Kamyana, a beacon of light.

“I grew up reading Comrade [Lal Khan] and learnt a lot from him,” says Rehana Akhtar, an MPhil student who came from Rawalpindi to attend the funeral along with other women activists. “He was not only a great intellectual but also a great human who would absorb every negative thing courageously. She adds: “We shared a bond with Comrade Lal Khan which was stronger than a blood relation. Just as everyone is certain that the sun will rise in the morning, we believe that the socialist revolution will come one day. The miseries and pains of the working class can only be addressed through a socialist revolution.”

The writer is Dawn correspondent in Chakwal

Published in Dawn, EOS, March 8th, 2020