Options left

The following column "Options left" by Harris Khalique , source "The News-Friday, April 09, 2010".

Left, it seems, is regaining consciousness. At the end of the first decade of the 21st century scattered political groups and parties that in the past subscribed to various hues of socialist ideology are making their presence felt by trying to create wider alliances among themselves and aspiring to merge into one big political entity. One has been writing on the subject for some time and just recently, a national newspaper has published a number of articles on the possibilities for and challenges to Left politics in Pakistan. From the recent past, we mustn't forget the untiring efforts of progressive writers and publishers including Late Hasan Abid, Wahid Bashir, Rahat Saeed, Amir Riaz, Muslim Shamim, Tufail Abbas, Zahida Hina, Wajahat Masood, Dr Jafar Ahmed, Ayub Malik, Dr Tauseef Ahmed Khan, Dr Shah Mohammed Marri and some others like them who kept the flame burning during the 1980s and 90s through their magazines and other publications when there was practically nothing happening for the Left in the real political world. Irtiqa Institute of Social Sciences was one of the few institutions which held us all together on a wider scale by organising meaningful and well-represented meetings of enlightened and progressive individuals from across Pakistan and abroad.

When it comes to organising political workers and whatever was left of the left-wing leadership on a mass scale, key members of the Inqilabi Jamhoori Workers Committee, Dr Hassan Nasir, Taj Marri, Mirza Maqsood, Ramzan Memon and Farhat Parveen deserve a lot of praise for triggering the process of creating a new, viable and modern national political party in December 2005. They were joined by the stalwarts of erstwhile Qaumi Mahaz-e-Azadi and the National Workers Party led by veteran politicians Mairaj Mohamed Khan and Abid Hasan Manto, respectively. A simultaneous effort was underway in Peshawar where Pakhtunkhwa Democratic Forum was established by Fazle Raziq, Anwar Durrani and Advocate Shahab Khattak. A little later, Prof Jameel Umar and Shazia Khan embarked on the same journey from Lahore and put in a lot of effort to bring everyone together. The scribe was a part of a group established in 2006 by Ashfaque Saleem Mirza, Rao Tariq Latif, Rana Shafique, Marvi Sirmed and Zeeshan Noel Christopher, which focused more on reaching out to new people besides old comrades.

For more details: http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=233363