Communism in Pakistan

When future generations come to revisit the history of Pakistan, some trends will be judged as morally necessary yet politically irrelevant. Communism and the politics of class are sure to fall into this category. Both suffered an early demise after a shortlived campaign to recast Pakistan as an expression of Soviet-inspired ‘national self-determination’ and the latest incarnation of a ‘people's movement’. Within less than a decade of its creation in 1947, Pakistan's communist movement had been reduced to a sideshow and its activists relegated to objects of historical curiosity, whose actions had barely scratched the state or altered the course of its trajectory. The causes of their misfortunes were many. The most obvious stemmed from a lack of coherence, both theoretical and practical, on the question of Pakistan, that left many communists unsure about the new country's ‘progressive’ intent. While this was partially settled by bringing Pakistan in line with Soviet thinking on the justified pursuit of ‘national rights’, the more troubling issue of religion, namely Islam, as a founding principle of ‘nationality’ which underpinned the movement for Pakistan was dismissed as an instance of ‘underdevelopment’ and never resolved. The origins of Pakistan's first generation of communist leaders also added to the weakness of their movement. Muslim communists who had migrated from India after throwing in their lot with Pakistan found that they were ill-prepared to navigate the unfamiliar social terrain of their new homeland, which was already riven by ethnic divisions. Facing an instinctively hostile state apparatus and bereft of the privileges that once flowed from their affluent and aristocratic backgrounds, many struggled to stay afloat. Lacking ideological direction, devoid of local roots and constrained by an inbred elitism, they were no match for the managers of the new state ever ready to invoke the language of Islam to see off secular challenges to their fragile political legitimacy

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