Illustration by Jamhoor, created using publicly available images

Today, discussions about historical leftist repression are often globalised: Instagram pages and social media accounts devoted to leftist history increasingly highlight massacres in South America, Southeast Asia, and Europe. Yet the systematic targeting and extrajudicial killings of leftists in Bangladesh remains largely forgotten. Bringing this history to light not only to honours the memory of those who suffered, it helps us understand how these patterns of repression shaped political activism, dissent, and student-led protests in Bangladesh, like the July Uprising, that erupted decades later.

Hope Turns into Despair

After a nine-month liberation war, Bangladesh achieved independence on December 16, 1971. The victory was accompanied by immense popular hope. Many believed that the new state would reject authoritarianism, corruption, and social inequality, and uphold democracy, human rights, and social justice. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, affectionately known as Bangabandhu (Friend of Bengal), was widely seen as a leader capable of implementing this vision.

At the same time, socialists and communists in Bangladesh believed that a truly prosperous and egalitarian state can only be built following the ideals laid down by Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, and Mao Zedong.

Soon the hopes and aspirations of the people were shattered, as the newly founded Bangladesh descended into authoritarianism, corruption, food crisis, unemployment and rising crime rates between 1972-75. Armed dacoits used to plunder villages, extort from people, attack police stations, and even often kidnap women.

Investigative journalist Anthony Mascarenhas in Bangladesh: A Legacy of Blood (1986), described the atmosphere of the period as armed gangs, often wearing military caps and carrying rifles, openly plundering markets and neighbourhoods. Moudud Ahmed, a lawyer and politician, in his book, Bangladesh Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’er Shashonkaal (Bangladesh Era of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman), wrote that criminals masqueraded as freedom fighters and took control of different territories due to weapons left behind during the liberation war.

Implemented as part of Mujib’s own interpretation of socialism, the Bangladesh government nationalised 85 percent of industries and 90 percent of foreign trade. Political scientist Talukder Maniruzzaman argued that Awami League (AL) adminstrators appointed to these nationalised factories, had no knowledge about running a capitalist or socialist system. Instead, they focused on enriching themselves through smuggling machinery and raw materials to India. These administrators, comprised of AL members, became a corrupt, high-income elite class formation.

Soon after independence, on April 4, 1972, the New York Times, broke a story on corruption by the AL. Groups within the party were taking over truckloads of food aid in daylight to sell it later to the highest bidder. Others used their influence to get lucrative government contracts. Another report by New York Times, onOctober 4, 1972, documented how food relief meant for war-affected Bangladesh was being smuggled into India. These practices created a combined economic and food crisis in Bangladesh, as food prices soared.

Was Mujib Socialist or Anti-worker?

Sheikh Mujib preached his own version of socialism—Mujibism. This characterisation of Mujib was rejected by the Bangladeshi left. Badruddin Umar, a Marxist-Leninist theorist and activist, wrote an essay in Shaptahik Shadhika on September 3, 1972, which argued that the AL’s nationalisation programme was not intended to establish socialism, but rather to prevent the working class from achieving genuine political power. The repression and chaos produced by this so-called socialism, he warned, were neither accidental nor surprising.

Leftist politician Haydar Akbar Khan alleged that Sheikh Mujib himself was an ally of American imperialism, rather than an opponent of it. Khan’s book Dui Doshoker Bam Rajniti: Shonkot o Shomossha(Two Decades of Left Politics: Crisis and Problems), criticised Mujib for handing over national oil exploration in Bay of Bengal to American corporations. He alleged that American establishment had bailed Mujib out of prison in Pakistan in exchange for his support for American policies in the region.

With corruption, lawlessness, and a looming food crisis facing newly formed Bangladesh, the Bangladeshi left rejected Mujib’s version of ‘socialism’ and began a campaign for a state based on true socialist ideals.

Forging an alliance between Maoists and Leninists, the three major leftist political parties were led by major figures in the Bangladeshi left. The National Awami Party (NAP) was led by Maulana Bhashani, Sarbohara was led by Siraj Sikder, while Jatiyo Samajtantrik Dal (JSD) was led by Major Abdul Jalil, Serajul Alam Khan, and Colonel Abu Taher. The three parties rapidly gained maximum support in the rural populace and students, who had been disillusioned by the corruption and authoritarianism of Mujib regime.

The Formation of Rakkhi Bahini

Fearing the rise of a leftist opposition, the AL regime began a campaign of state-backed terror to silence them. AL politicians began to advise Mujib to strengthen the police and Ansar forces to counter the lawlessness. Instead, Mujib decided to form an elite paramilitiary force, named Jatiya Rakkhi Bahini (JRBorNational Defense Force), officially tasked with combatting armed gangs and establish law and order.

Rakkhi Bahini, comprised mostly of Mujib Bahini members loyal to Mujib during 1971 Liberation War, was officially founded on February 1, 1972. Rakkhi Bahini members swore direct allegiance to Sheikh Mujib and worked with local AL party units. Thus, they were often synonymously called Mujibists. Provided automatic weapons, steel helmets, jeeps, and trucks, the Rakkhi Bahini managed to establish camps all over the country. The Mujib regime continued to increase budget allocations for Rakkhi Bahini, while reducing funds available for the army and police force.

The Indian government supported the creation of Rakkhi Bahini. Several key figures in Rakkhi Bahini, including Training Director, Lieutenant Anwar-ul Alam, admitted in his book Rakkhi Bahini’r Shotto Mittha (Truth & False of Rakkhi Bahini), that India was eager to assist in forming Rakkhi Bahini, and sent an Indian Army team led by Major Trivedi to Dhaka for training purposes. In another book Rakkhi Bahini’r Ojana Oddhay (The Unknown Chapter of Rakkhi Bahini), Assistant Director, Colonel Sorowar Hossain Molla, admitted that Rakkhi Bahini’s uniforms, weaponry and even boots came from India.

A Massacre of the Left

Maulana Bhashani’s weekly leftist magazine, Shaptahik Haq Katha (Weekly Absolute Truth), published an article on May 26, 1972, titled, ‘Around a million leftists are to be killed,’ on a foreign conspiracy to kill and assassinate leftists in Bangladesh. Political scientist Talukder Maniruzzaman’s book, The Bangladesh Revolution and its Aftermath, notes that leftist parties like JSD took a strong stance against Indian and American influence on Bangladesh, seeing it as imperialism, while simultaneously opposing Mujib regime.

These fears came true as Rakkhi Bahini began to target the Bangladeshi left after June 1972. The anti-India, anti-US, anti-AL position of the Bangladeshi left made them targets of the Rakkhi Bahini. This paramilitary force operating as a killing squad, similar to CIA-funded NATO stay-behind army squads who targeted the left in Western Europe, Greece, and Turkey. Rakkhi Bahini had a similar modus operandi as Gladio—enforced disappearances, illegal detentions, tortures, assassinations, and even massacres. Even some of their tactical playbook, such as Cordon-and-Search operations, was similar.

Indian Major General Sujan Singh Uban, who helped build Rakkhi Bahini, had  commanded a special squad of CIA-trained Tibetan fighters against China in the 1960s. Whether Sujan Singh learnt and taught the Gladio blueprint from CIA to the Rakkhi Bahini remains a subject of debate. But, in practice, Rakkhi Bahini implemented a Gladio-like scorched-earth strategy against the left and other political opponents of Mujib regime.

Investigative journalist Ahmed Musa’s book Itihasher Katghoray Awami League (Awami League In The Witness Box of History) notes that Rakkhi Bahini’s extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances on left activists were so intense, that sometimes the Bangladesh Army and police would arrest leftists and imprison them to save their lives.

One of the first major anti-left extermination campaigns started in Kishoreganj, in the sub-district Bajitpur, where 126 people were killed by Rakkhi Bahini for allegedly supporting left politics. This was part of a brutal camapign. A farmer from Kishoreganj, Abdul Ali, was forced to behead his own son, Rashed’s dead body after the Rakkhi Bahini shot him dead. In Pirojpur, Barishal, Amina, suspected of sheltering leftists, was doused with kerosene, leaving severe burns.

As Bangladesh’s rural population became more sympathetic to the leftist cause, Rakkhi Bahini raids became the norm. In Kishoreganj’s Sararchar area, Rakkhi Bahini set up an illegal detention facility called ‘Tiger Hole’ in their camp, where they used to detain and torture people suspected of being sympathetic to leftist politics. Detention facilities and torture cells like Tiger Hole were established in Rakkhi Bahini camps all over the country. Women and teenagers were not spared from the paramilitary’s brutality. The Rakkhi Bahini also targetted non-leftist opponents of the Mujib’s government.

Looting and Communalism

Rakkhi Bahini and local AL cadres got together to loot and rob people, as well as occupied land, especially when it was owned by Hindus. In an interview, Saiful Islam, a leftist activist from Kishoreganj, noted, “The Mujibists do the looting themselves, and then blame it on leftists.” Aruna Sen, wife of leftist leader Shanti Sen, noted that Rakkhi Bahini cadres in rural areas also spread anti-Hindu sentiments and called them ‘Malauns’ (a derogatory slur against Hindus).

In 1973, a road-rage incident linked to Rakkhi Bahini created national outrage. When, on June 29, 1973,  a passenger bus overtook a Rakkhi Bahini truck, the Rakkhi Bahini followed the bus and opened fire at the Chittagong Eastern Refinery refinery. Four people died and several were injured. Similar incidents of Rakkhi Bahini raiding factories to assault workers were reported.

Ethno-nationalist and Bengali-chauvinist, the Rakkhi Bahini’s reign of terror spread to indigenous tribes and ethnic minorities living in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. In 1972, after Mujib denied constitutional recognition to ethnic minorities, Rakkhi Bahini raided in tribal villages under the pretext of rooting out ‘Pakistani Army collaborators of 1971.’ The raids in the Hill Tracts followed a similar pattern: illegal detentions, torture, massacres, and rapes. Indigenous-owned land was also taken over and handed over to Bengalis. The Rakkhi Bahini’s violence and land occupations created fissures between Bengalis and indigenous Paharis which continue to shape the ongoing conflict.

The Rakkhi Bahini’s action were protected by Mujib and the AL. The Rakkhi Bahini Amendment Act of 1974 stripped courts of the power to hold the force accountable. Moudud Ahmed, lawyer and politician, writes that when 18 year-old Shahjahan disappeared after being detained for allegedly being a JSD activist, the Rakkhi Bahini kept no records of the detention. The absence of systematic record-keeping of its searches, seizures, arrests, or other operations was a pattern which has prevented meaningful judicial investigation into the Rakkhi Bahini’s activities at the time.

Mass Killings

On January 20, 1974, JSD activists broke curfew to hold a protest in Dhaka against the Rakkhi Bahini’s terror, the AL’s corruption, and economic mismanagement of the country. The Rakkhi Bahini brutally broke the protest by beating protestors, including those who took shelter in the Baitul Mukarram Mosque. Political historian Mohiuddin Ahmed, in Jashoder Utthan Poton: Osthir Shomoyer Rajniti (The Rise and Fall of JSD: Politics of The Chaotic Era) writes that at another JSD protest on March 17, in Ramna, Dhaka, Rakkhi Bahini shot dead around 50 people.

Rakkhi Bahini was reported to have opened fire at the public with semi-automatic rifles and machine guns in several parts of the country. In a story published on June 23, 1975, Chicago Daily News reported around 1,500 teenagers were killed by Rakkhi Bahini in Mymensingh district alone in January 1974. Most victims were thought to be part of the Sarbohara party. The publication of the story led to a ban on foreign journalists entering the country, and increased restrictions on local newspapers.

Rakkhi Bahini was also accused of using brutal methods in torture, including boiling water. Investigative journalist Ahmed Musa, wrote, “Some of their medieval-styled brutality even surpassed that of the Pakistan Army.” In his book Dui Doshoker Bam Rajniti: Shonkot o Shomossha (Two Decades of Left Politics: Crisis and Problems, Haydar Akbar Khan’s writes that after a Rakkhi Bahini camp in Kaliganj, Jessore, was dismantled a mass grave was discovered with at least 60 bodies. Estimates of the total number of people massacred by the Rakkhi Bahini between 1972–75 vary: investigative journalists like Masudul Haque and Ahmed Musa suggest roughly 10,000–30,000 were killed, while JSD claims the killings were as high as 60,000.

Siraj Sikder’s Last Stand and Mujib’s Assassination

Besieged by the Rakkhi Bahini’s reign of terror and severe economic mismanagement, Sarbohara leader Siraj Sikder decided to take up arms to overthrow the Mujib’s regime. AL narratives paint Sikder as ‘lal-shontrasi’ (red-terrorist). But no one asks: what made him chose guerilla warfare?

Sikder chose the path of Che Guevera after the 1974 famine caused by corruption and economic mismanagement and the Rakkhi Bahini’s state-backed reign of terror. However, Sikder could not complete his revolution, as he was killed by Rakkhi Bahini in a staged-encounter on January 2, 1975.

The notority of the Rakkhi Bahni amongst the Bangladesh army officers and cadre and the impunity with which Sikder was killed was reported to have inspired ideologically centrists in the Bangladesh army, including Sayed Faruq, Bazlul Huda, Abdur Rashid, and Shariful Haque Dalim to stage a coup against Mujib. The reign of terror of the Rakkhi Bahini ended on August 15, 1975, when the 2nd Field Regiment staged a coup, and dismantled the Rakkhi Bahini camps after assassinating Mujib.  

Many in Bangladesh celebrated the fall of unpopular Mujib’s regime, and the Rakkhi Bahini’s reign of terror came to an end. However, Bangladesh’s political leadership learnt little from how the creation of Rakkhi Bahini sealed the fate of Mujib, and revived the practice of using paramilitary forces, namely the Rapid Action Battalion in 2004, which remains accused of extrajudicial killings of over 1,000 members of the political opposition. The dark chapter of Bangladesh’s history in which there was a state-backed massacre of leftists must be remembered, not just to honor the memories of Bangladesh’s fallen revolutionaries in the global left, but to stop the mistakes of the past from being repeated in the present and future of the country.

Ifaz Ali Khan is a writer, independent researcher, and human rights’ activist, currently pursuing a bachelors degree in Computer Science & Engineering at East Delta University. He also writes for International Policy Digest.

On Wednesday, 11th March, 2026, along with 135 other nations, India co-sponsored a resolution of the United Nations Security Council which condemned Iran for attacking several Gulf countries, while remaining silent about the US-Israeli unprovoked earlier attack on Iran. India's action came on the heels of Prime Minister Modi's visit to Israel where he hugged Netanyahu, condemned Hamas's actions of October 7, and remained silent on Israel's genocide in Gaza. The cosponsoring of the resolution underscored the Hindu supremacist regime's endorsement of Trump and Netanyahu's global agenda. Condemning the Indian government's stand as "gutless," Arundhati Roy avowed: "I stand with Iran. Unequivocally. Any regimes that need changing, including the US, Israel and ours, need to be changed by the people, not by some bloated, lying, cheating, greedy, resource-grabbing, bomb-dropping imperial power and its allies who are trying to bully the whole world into submission." Of course, India's current position on Palestine and now on Iran ties in with the ruling party's Islamophobia, expressed both in its foreign policy and internally for decades. As far back as 2000, India's home minister, LK Advani, had visited Tel Aviv and announced that India and Israel shared "a common perception of terrorism as a menace, even more so when coupled with religious fundamentalism."

Today, I want to reflect on what the attack on Iran might mean for feminists in India, and more generally in South Asia, and on what it might mean for transnational feminist solidarities. As we know, the purported emancipation of women has been a key element in justifications of the Islamophobic US assaults on Afghanistan and Iraq, and of Israel's earlier attack on Iran in 2025 where Netanyahu shamelessly invoked the Iranian women's movement's slogan of "Zan Zindagi Azadi" before dropping bombs on civilians. Shortly after the US bombed a girls' school in Iran, left-wing politician Manuela Bergerot lashed out: "This is how the right defends the rights of Iranian women: by celebrating the murder of 160 girls." And it literally does this. The U.S. conservative commentator Matt Schlapp declared that "it is hypocritical to say that these attacks harmed women and children questioned how one could condemn their deaths when ...the young girls you reference would be...live a life [sic] in a barbaric and unequal society behind a burqa..."

We in South Asia have been familiar with this playbook from the days of the British Raj, when colonial rule was justified by pointing to the "disgusting" sexual habits and culture of the natives. However, these colonial histories should not lead us to inhabit a binary between colonizers and colonized because that oversimplifies what is at stake now and renders invisible women's own demands for freedom and equality. We know this from our own history. Feminist historians of India have written extensively on how elite native men, increasingly disenfranchised and excluded from the public sphere, became more tyrannical at home, asserting the demands of native tradition and values to delegitimize women's demands for equality. From at least the early twentieth century, many women, as individuals and as part of organized groups, refused the choice between imperialist and home-grown patriarchies. 

In postcolonial India, the colonial playbook has been adapted in the service of Hindu majoritarianism, which has whipped up anti-Muslim sentiments by invoking the "plight" of Muslim women as victims of sexist biases within the community, while simultaneously casting Muslim men as rapacious, perpetually engaged in a "love jihad" to prey on Hindu women. The discourse of the Muslim woman as victim goes hand in hand with under-reporting or ignoring the horrific sexual violence that Muslim women were subjected to during the genocide in Gujarat in 2002. The courts have de facto legalized such violence—the men who raped Bilkis Bano were prematurely released in 2022 and welcomed home with sweets and garlands. Islamophobic pronouncements about Muslim polygamy and backwardness are brought up whenever the subject of reform of Muslim personal laws to give women greater equality comes up. This has meant that a Muslim woman was "called upon to make a difficult choice between her claims for gender equality and equal protection of law on the one hand, and her religious beliefs and community affiliations on the other" as feminist lawyer Flavia Agnes once put it. Refusing this choice, Muslim women in India have used even imperfect laws to fight for their rights, while also participating in the wider women's movement in India. 

These earlier histories resonate with the situation that confronts anti-war anti-imperialist feminists, and indeed all anti-imperialists, today. While we condemn the attacks on Iran, we cannot also ignore the real critiques of the Iranian regime mounted by Iranian women. As Shahrzad Mojab, Professor Emerita at the University of Toronto puts it in a powerful recent statement: 

A revolutionary feminist position on Iran must refuse the false and damaging binary that demands choosing between defending the Islamic Republic and endorsing US-imperialist and Zionist intervention. This is a constructed choice designed to collapse political judgment into campism. It converts solidarity into a competition of moral allegiances and leaves ordinary people, workers, women, youth, and minorities to a reality shaped simultaneously by internal repression as well as external militarized destruction.

It is in this context that I interviewed Faranak Miraftab, Professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, who shared Mojab's statement with me. Faranak herself had to flee Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran after her sister was executed along with 50 other women at the age of 27. Faranak herself was 23 at the time. 

Our conversation touched upon issues of feminist anti-imperialism, as well as the need and scope of international feminist solidarities, which I think are useful for us in South Asia as we navigate the complexities of our own political landscapes.

Conversation with Faranak Miraftab

Ania Loomba: Faranak, on March 8, International Women's Day, the US feminists' coalition "Women's March" used the Iranian women's slogan "Women, Life Freedom" in order to critique the Israeli American war on Iran. Its Instagram post said: "Iranian Women have spent decades fighting for their freedom. They don't need Trump's bombs. Women's liberation will not be delivered by bombs. The same man whose DOJ buried a 13-year-old's testimony started a war without a vote, without a plan, and without our consent." The responses to this Instagram post defending the war were largely from Iranian women: "As an Iranian woman I need to disagree with you! We tried and every time, the barbaric regime killed many of us! Sorry but the only solution was the bombs! Thanks for your concern!" Another read: "Do Not dare to use this Name for your own benefits, woman life freedon [sic] Revolution," and yet another, "The irony of a woman life freedom placard with this message." There were many messages like this, what is your reaction?

Faranak Miraftab: First, my opinion on the Zan Zindagi Azadi movement is that it was one of the most progressive events that I have been part of and witnessed in my life. Woman, Life, Freedom was truly a feminist movement, in its approach, in the way it worked, in its slogan, and it was beautiful, beautiful to watch young men joining women and accepting women's leadership on the streets and following them.

When it was happening, I felt I was dreaming all of this. It cannot be possible to see men and women of all ethnicities and different classes supporting protesting women and understanding something that we feminists said for so long - that liberation of men wouldn't happen unless women are also liberated. This was theoretical, but I think 40-something years of vicious oppression in Iran, the key element of which was the control of women's bodies, proved to men that their liberation is through the liberation of women. And it was no longer theoretical; it was on the streets of the country.

The slogan Woman, Life, Freedom itself is progressive because it captures almost all those things that we stand for, right? Gender equity, livelihood, freedom. You know the slogan came from the Kurdish women's movement. And Iranian Kurds borrowed it and then spread it to the rest of the country. When it was happening in 2022, we wanted all the feminists around the world to come out in our support. With the exception of a few global south countries, including neighbouring Turkey, we did not see solidarity marches or statements by feminist movements. And it was our greatest dismay and disappointment. I, being based in the U.S., thought, why don't I see American feminists coming out, supporting this slogan, using it for their own cause? Because, at the same time, women in the U.S. were seeing their own social reproductive rights being eroded; we were all fighting for similar issues. 

I had an Indian friend who came to all our marches for Zan Zindagi Azadi in Champaign-Urbana, and I was so moved; she kept saying that in India, Muslim women were being targeted by the Hindu fundamentalist regime. And so, she was saying, whether it's against Hindu fundamentalism, or it is social reproductive rights in the U.S., or these other rights in Iran, we should all be united. 

I do not see it as appropriation when the slogan is used to carry the same message. What I reject is when "Women Life Freedom" is used by parliamentarians in the European Union for their own cause to bash the Islamic Republic state, which is a vicious, suppressive, oppressive regime. But they are using it, you know, to score their own political points. That is when I reject it. So, it depends on who is using it, and towards what. When other feminist movements use the slogan, we celebrate it, we want it, that is how it should be.

AL: Yes. Radical movements have always borrowed slogans from their comrades in other parts of the world or in other types of movements, for example, the slogan of Indian feminists "Hum Kya Chahte? Azadi!" [What do we want? freedom!"] was inspired by the women's movement in Pakistan. It has been used by dissident movements of different kinds in India, students' movements, in Kashmir, in protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act. Similarly, the Chilean chant, "¡El pueblo unido jamás será vencido!" (The People united shall never be defeated") has been used in radical protests worldwide. 

The March 8th women's march was for reproductive rights, but it was also explicitly against the US-Israeli war on Iran and saying that Iranian women don't need to be saved by Trump and Netanyahu. But in these messages, in their social media responses, we heard an endorsement of the Israeli-US attack by many Iranian women, and we have all seen images of Iranian women in London, Los Angeles and other cities celebrating the attack.

FM: So, Iranian women don't have one singular position. We have various ethnic groups, different class interests, right and left on the political spectrum, and I don't think anybody would be able to say, I am speaking for Iranian women. Nor can I say that. I want to be very clear that I speak from the position of a left anti-imperialist and feminist woman. And I do see that our enemies and our fronts of struggle are multiple. On one side, we are anti-imperialist, and we are against the intervention of the U.S and Israel into our affairs, but on the other hand, and simultaneously, we are also against the Islamic Republic state. 

AL: But Faranak, the Iranian women who objected to US women using the slogan also pointed out that many US feminists have not spoken out against the Iranian regime thus far. One woman wrote, "If you remained dead silent after a massacre of 40,000 ppl just two months ago, and if you have remained silent for women being treated less than second rate citizens by IRI for 50 years, you now have ZERO right to use our name to push your agenda. Stop whitewashing regime’s crimes. Listen to Iranians. Stop patronizing us." Another wrote: "It is funny that when in 2022 I reached out to you about Woman Life Freedom movement and asked for support no one cared to reply."

We also know that many liberal feminists have not come out in support of Gaza. Do you think that this might be a turning point in the United States where a lot of people who haven't previously spoken out might actually be so disgusted with this war that it might push them into taking stances that they were not willing to take earlier? 

FM: People who are now taking a position against the war in Iran but did not utter a word when Iranian state massacred thousands of its own citizens in 48 hours, or remained silent about the ongoing genocide in Gaza, that is not acceptable. Those lives were as precious as the lives of civilians that are being bombed in Iran today. But it doesn't mean that because they were silent then, they must be silent now. It does mean that if your humanity is moved now, if you don't want to see schoolchildren killed and innocent people in their homes being bombed and killed, then you should continue this not only for Iran but also for Gaza and everywhere we see imperial military bullies at work. I support that position.                        

What I do not support is the position that says I am the only one who has the right to speak for Iranian women, and you cannot be in solidarity with me, either because you are not Iranian, or because you were silent in the past. As an anti-imperialist feminist Iranian outside Iran, I very much welcome feminists in India, in the U.S. and everywhere else to lend their voice to us and use this same slogan whose origin is transnational, and further globalize it, but not to prostitute it by selectively choosing moments of solidarity. Because I don't think this struggle will end here.

Yes, so if your consciousness is raised now and you are paying attention, please continue to raise your voice in the future. Rather than silencing them, we should engage with these new voices that are daring to speak in true solidarity, a solidarity which should not exist just in this moment but in the future too.

AL: That's a really important point, because what you're also saying is that our movements must grow, and we cannot push away people who want to come in.

FM: Exactly, otherwise we stay atomized. We must, as left anti-imperialist feminists, use opportunities to grow. We must understand that my struggle and your struggle are connected. If I am fighting about women's issues in Iran, which are really human rights issues, it doesn't mean that I am necessarily lining up with the U.S. or Israel. I think this is the moment in which we can make that position clear, that I am against the Zionists, and the attack on Iran, and I am, at the same time, against the oppression of Iranians by the state. The sad thing is that what happened in Gaza was a playbook for Israel, and they are going to do the same in Iran, using the same language, justifications and brutality. And a truly transnational feminist left perspective can see these similarities.

AL: Can you spell out the playbook a bit more?

FM:  Well, when they hit the first hospital in Gaza, I remember that there was a scramble about who hit it. They said, oh, Hamas hit it, it wasn't us. And then, it was like nothing happened, and they were going out there outright and hitting hospitals and schools. And saying that people in these places are being used like human shields.

And now they are doing exactly the same. They hit the school, and yesterday, a number of medical health centres were hit. I’ve lost track of the exact count, but it's incredibly high. You know, we have been under sanctions, so our medications have been produced locally. They have hit two of the most important pharmaceutical factories in Iran. 

That is the playbook: going after schools and hospitals and not even being worried about covering it up. They haven't said that pharmaceutical companies are housing human shields, but they say that about the hospitals. I was reading somewhere that they say that Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is meeting in the basement of hospitals.

So that's the playbook. And Israel has a real interest in seeing Iran razed to the ground.

AL: Yes absolutely. Faranak, I wonder if you would be willing to share a little bit about your own history and how it informs the stances that you take today. What are your thoughts when you look back to that earlier period? Many of the readers of this interview might be much younger people who don't have an intimate knowledge of what happened in Iran 30 to 40 years ago. 

FM: I came to political consciousness under the monarchy, prior to the establishment of the Islamic Republic. Maybe the younger generation doesn't have that historical memory, but I remember how scared we were of SAVAK, the Shah's intelligence service, which was trained by Israel's Mossad and CIA. Everybody knew that their techniques of torture, their mechanisms of control, and surveillance were taught by Mossad. That was an incredibly scary time for the left, and those opposed to the Shah.

While opposition overall was viciously suppressed under the Shah, he thought that Islam was not as serious a threat as was the left. Hence the organizational network of the religious opposition and the mosques were able to lead the revolution. And shortly after the establishment of the Islamic Republic, the surveillance machinery of SAVAK changed its name to SAVAMA and was used to pursue the opposition including the left. 

My own beloved sister was arrested for her activism with a leftist group and in 3 weeks, without a trial or hearing, was executed, together with 50 other young girls. That was in December 1981. And many of my comrades and friends also experienced similar tragedies.

The left has been paying the price all along. We have been persecuted by the Shah and by the Islamic Republic from the very early days. It is not surprising that followers of the Shah’s son also chant slogans against the left today. If you are supporting Iranians against the Islamic Republic, you should also support them against imperialism, against foreign intervention, against control of our affairs by the US or Israel. From a feminist and left perspective, this ability to fight on two fronts at the same time is very important.

AL: You mentioned, when we last spoke, that the monarchists were against the slogan "Women Life Freedom." And that they were not part of that movement. Despite being very anti-feminist, they claim, like large sections of the Western media, that Iranian women were so "free" under the Shah.

FM: It's very interesting, actually. The whole phenomenon of Reza Pahlavi is very young, it's 2 to 3 years old because during the Woman Life Freedom movement his name was not in the streets. People didn't know that he claims to be an alternative. He rose to fame because of the support of the television stations that are funded by Israel, and because of the social media propping him. Some people will say that the Woman Life Freedom movement didn't succeed because it didn't have a leader, didn't have a recognizable name to rally behind. And they use that very reasoning to argue that we need to follow Reza Pahlavi now.

I see such arguments as indications of extreme hopelessness. In a constant struggle between hope and despair, the tragedy is in the defeat of imagination, in imagining the possibility of an alternative. People don't see how they can get rid of this oppressive regime, which has a monopoly on force. How can we ever confront it on the streets, facing its bullets? So they say, this is not going to work, we need another military intervention to "rescue" us. And again, they don't have the historical and transnational perspective which tells us imperialists have never ever liberated any people. 

The other point you were mentioning, how in the rallies of the monarchists, banners of Woman Life Freedom were banned. The monarchists were bringing them down because they saw them as a competition to their own slogan which is Long Live the King. 

AL: Where were these rallies? Outside Iran, yes?

FM: Yeah, outside Iran, and the Shah's son never came out to say, I do not endorse or approve of the behaviour of my followers. I think it is very sad, because what Woman Life Freedom did in Iran was profound. I mean, maybe it did not change the regime, but it had transformative effects. Culturally, it went into every household, every conversation. From rich to poor, from Kurds and Baloch people to the centre of the country. And it sparked a consciousness and a cultural transformation that is worth decades. It's not a change that resulted in a change of power, but the civil disobedience of women was very important. Practically, they were not wearing their hijab anyway. So, they practiced what they were refusing to do. And this was the case even until last month. 

I think what we are seeing, sadly, is the toxic masculinist patriarchal powers of the U.S. and the Zionists, Pahlavi, and the Islamic Republic. All of them are representatives of the patriarchal, sexist order. They have come together, and they are also fighting against each other. And this is just one incident in history in which we see how patriarchal and anti-patriarchal powers, capitalism and anti-capitalism, imperialism and anti-imperialism are ranged in this fight. And we have to be very clear on which side we are on in each of these fronts. 

AL: Would it be fair to say that the Woman Life Freedom movement prepared the ground for the next wave of protests about economic issues? It was a broadening of the protest because Women Life Freedom was also about sustenance.      

FM: When months ago, with the devaluation of the toman, the bazarees (merchants) closed their shops, many of us were saying that this is the "Life" part of the slogan which is now the focus. The demand was that we cannot live with this kind of economic situation. I was not there, but through social media I was seeing very powerful scenes of civil disobedience. There were scenes of youth sitting in front of the police forces, just sitting, like those scenes from Tiananmen Square. And it was very powerful. 

But the call from outside Iran by the Shah's son was: you have to come out at night and attack and take over the key state institutions and bases. He called for a very different form of confrontation from the feminist strategies which had worked, not in the sense of toppling the regime but in bringing in more people. We still have 20% of Iranian voters supporting the hardliners. We can't kill them all, we can't throw them in the sea. The feminist movement was  practicing civil disobedience. I've been seeing how it works. The movement brings in villagers and people from all over the country. But the protest movement last year quickly changed from horizontal feminist practices of resistance to very masculinist type of strategies. At the same time, Mossad proclaimed that its agents were amongst the protestors, and that definitely made things worse, and offered the state a convenient justification to come in with full force and start shooting at people. Not that they would have resisted shooting anyway. They shot people during Woman Life Freedom. But I'm just pointing out that feminist practices of cultural and horizontal organizing were very hard for the regime to control. When this changed to a more masculinist language, it gave a free ticket to the hardliners to be in power.

AL: What do you know about Trump saying he hopes the Kurdish movement would also mount an offensive against the Iranian regime?

FM: Yes, well Trump was claiming that the Kurdish movement is now going to be working as the U.S.’s ground troops. It seems like that claim has died down. I haven't heard it in the last two or three days. When it first started being mentioned, Komalah, which is the communist party of the Kurdish people, said they are not going to participate in this, that they understand that imperial forces will use their people and land as sacrifice for their imperial ambitions, that what they did in Rojava, the Kurdistan of Syria, they will also do here. So, they distanced themselves from the other six groups that had formed an alliance to potentially enter the war. 

AL: Faranak, what contact do you have with your own friends and family in Iran today? What other news can you get from inside?

FM: I have heard from two cousins. Not directly, but they managed to contact their children who were abroad, and say, “we are alive.” But I haven't been able to connect with my aunt who is in a nursing home or with my extended family. The Iranian students who are here, and who have their parents and siblings back in Iran are very stressed and distressed. 

The pounding continues. The lack of internet has meant that very few images come out. Just as in Israel, in Iran they are not allowed to broadcast their own losses. The state wants to have control over what information is broadcast. But in the few images that have come out, you can see the flattening of neighbourhoods, images that resonate with those from Gaza. Some of the voices that come out are saying they don't want this war.

AL: That would be a very hard position to take today. I remember reading, in an important interview with Neda Naji, a feminist and former political prisoner in Iran. She described the situation after the Israeli attacks on Iran some two years ago, saying that "While the right-wing Iranian opposition, which supported the military attacks, were dancing happily in the safe streets of Europe and America, feminists tried to raise their voices against the war to the best of their ability. This was a very difficult task in a situation where opposition to war among Iranians is not a given and the killing of civilians is considered a natural and inevitable part of war. Even what is happening in Gaza cannot awaken those who have been deluded by the lies of military aggressors and child killers." She rightly pointed out that the result of such imperialist wars is always "the intensification of nationalism and the discourse of defending the homeland." This is what we are seeing today also, yes? 

FM:  Yes, anti-war feminists outside Iran are being very much viciously attacked by the monarchists who are aligned with Israel and Trump. And internally, the killing of Khamenei, who deserved to face justice and be tried by families of its victims, is, instead, being mourned as a martyr. Thanks to the Israel-U.S. military attack, the hardline has the perfect excuse for its repression. This military aggression has strengthened the fundamentalist state and further pushed back the gains by the long struggle of workers, teachers, women and students' movements. 

In recent days, the IRGC appears frequently on the Islamic Republic's TV threatening people very clearly, saying that if now we see anyone protesting in the streets, we will treat them not as protesters, but as enemies. And we won't waste time and resources to arrest them; we will just shoot and execute them. So, people in Iran are experiencing both imperialist and state violence. 

One of my friends said that she received a short note from a family member through a VPN, which is very hard to get and expensive, which said that they feel very lonely. They are being bombed from the sky. And from the state. The state is supposed to be your protector. It is shooting anti-ballistic missiles, which is protecting you against bombs but it's also bombarding you with these threats of violence, and I think that is why they feel very lonely. 

Having said that, I wish to stress that the people of Iran should not be seen as victims. They are fierce and in resistance. Almost five decades of educational manipulation, imprisonment, punishment and various forms of economic, political and existential violence was not able to silence people. The same people who have been rising repeatedly despite threats of state violence, are resisting the imperial military invasion of Israel-US forces. I am however deeply concerned about the cost of this process.

AL: That's why it's even more important that everybody who is outside shows their solidarity.

FM: Yes, and one important support should be for the political prisoners among whom are amazing civil society leaders who can create an alternative to this regime and to the Shah’s son, who is presented as the only alternative to the IRI. That Reza Pahlavi, who has no political career, has done nothing in the last decades, can suddenly be projected as an alternative, is an indication of the political vacuum that the Iranian state is to blame for. Even reformists who were rising through the clergy system, were silenced, arrested, imprisoned or killed. The vacuum that the state produced gave rise to this monstrous Israeli project of restoring the monarchy. 

AL: This is a crucial point that you've made about political prisoners. At the same time, not every opponent of this regime is jailed. So, can you tell us what efforts are being made to lay the ground for such an alternative?

FM: There are calls from inside and outside the country to create a council of transition which would have people from various ethnic groups and political orientations including leftists and feminists involved in the Women Life Freedom movement. On March 14th, they announced their first gathering in Europe. The inclusive Woman, Life, Freedom Network officially emerged from the Women Life Freedom movement. It is one of the most active networks working both inside Iran and abroad to help establish a coordinating and leadership council for the period following the fall of the Islamic Republic. This network has supported various grassroots movements in Iran, including workers’ movements, students' movement, teachers’ protests, and other forms of grassroots movements. There is another group called Progressive Students, consisting of students from different universities across Iran, who also maintain links with broader social movements, including the workers’ movement, retirees’ protests, the student and school student movements, the women’s movement, and the movement against executions. In this sense, their network of connections extends across multiple sectors of Iranian civil and social activism. Since the war began, they have not been able to be as active due to the internet shutdown but based on a few posts on X and Telegram, we know that they remain active on the ground.

As we say in Spanish, la lucha continua. The struggle continues.

Ania Loomba is Catherine Bryson Professor Emerita at the University of Pennsylvania and Global Professorial Fellow at Queen Mary University London. She writes on race and colonialism, feminism, contemporary Indian literature and society, as well as Renaissance literatures and cultures.

Faranak Miraftab is Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign with courtesy appointments at the departments of Gender and Women Studies and Geography. A native of Iran, she has conducted research in Latin America, Africa, and North America.

Illustration by Jamhoor, created using publicly available images

‘Everything implemented on the Hills will be implemented on the plain lands,’ warned Kalpana Chakma, an Indigenous activist allegedly abducted by plainclothes Bangladeshi military officers in 1996 and still missing nearly 30 years later. Her slogan, a reminder that political transformation in Bangladesh cannot be separated from the struggle of the Adibashis in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), reappeared across Dhaka’s walls in the weeks surrounding Sheikh Hasina’s overthrow in August 2024. 

The CHT, comprising three hilly districts in southeastern Bangladesh, has been a long-standing victim of the politics of state-making and state-building in South Asia. Largely inhabited by a collection of 12 minority ethnic groups, the region and its populations have been left outside a national imagination centred around building an exclusively Bengali national identity. 

Collectively known as Adibashi (Indigenous) or Jumma people, these groups made up 90% of the population of the Hill Tracts in the 1950s. However, post-partition development drives, alongside decades of militarisation and settler colonisation under successive Bangladeshi governments led to the forced displacement of Adibashis, resulting in drastic shifts in ethnic and religious composition, and heightened land disputes. In 1956, the Pakistani government constructed the Kaptai Dam on the Karnaphuli River to generate hydroelectric power. The dam permanently displaced nearly 25% of the region’s population, creating what is referred to amongst Adibashis as the Bara Parang or “The Great Exodus”.  Demographic change intensified under Ziaur Rahman’s Bangladesh National Party (BNP) regime - between 1979-1983, government sponsored programs resettled hundreds of thousands of landless Bengalis into the region. By 1991,Adibashis only made up 51% of the population of the Hill Tracts. 

Meanwhile, official rhetoric, believing homogeneity to be the key to nation-building, has denied Adibashi identity outright. Bangladesh’s founding President, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman famously declared that “Everyone in Bangladesh is Bengali”. Having led the struggle for the recognition of Bengali identity and culture, Mujib now refused Adibashi groups a cut of that dream. The struggle for self-determination in Bangladesh became tied specifically to a unified Bengali nation, and schoolbooks made no mention of Adibashi demands for autonomy or self-determination. Nationalism, as it often does, made blind the majority to the violence required to collapse a nation-state into a single ethnicity.

Resistance and Occupation 

Adibashi groups mobilised, and in 1977 Manabendra Narayan Larma, a Chakma politician and Adibashi rights advocate, formed the Parbatya Chattagram Jana Samhati Samiti (PCJSS), a left-wing political party representing various indigenous groups and advocating for regional autonomy for the CHT. Its armed wing, the Shanti Bahini, launched an insurgency against the Bangladeshi government, fighting for regional autonomy and land rights. The state responded with overwhelming force, in a military crackdown marked by widespread human rights violations including extrajudicial killings, torture, sexual violence and forced displacement. What emerged was a protracted armed conflict that lasted nearly three decades, throughout which the Bangladeshi military set up six military garrisons and more than 500 military camps in the CHT. As the landscape of the Hill Tracts became saturated with checkpoints, patrols and surveillance, civilian life unfolded under conditions of constant military control. At the same time, the military settled 400,000 poor, landless Bengalis in the Hill Tracts, granting them land titles and food rations, and positioning them as buffers between the army and Adibashi communities, thereby drawing them into the systematic displacement and dispossession of Adibashi populations.

Following the restoration of parliamentary democracy to Bangladesh in 1991, formal peace negotiations began with the newly elected prime minister Sheikh Hasina of the Awami League. On 2 December 1997, the Shanti Bahini laid down arms and signed the CHT Peace Accord, which promised a route towards self-rule through a system of regional and district councils, and importantly, land redistribution and reparations. 

However, decades on, the 1997 Accord remains largely unimplemented, having done little to restore land to Adibashi communities or dismantle the military’s grip over the region. Critical provisions enabling the genuine devolution of authority have been stalled, and land restitution, the withdrawal of army camps, and control over law enforcement have yet to be fully transferred to the councils. Beyond a handful of publicised actions to dismantle a few temporary military camps, the military’s everyday presence endured, and as Dina Siddiqui argues, in many ways the Accord in fact invisibilised the militarisation of everyday life. 

Indeed, in the post-accord landscape, state power was not withdrawn so much as reconfigured, resurfacing in the form of military-controlled tourism, embedding settler-colonialism into routines of leisure and consumption. The hills and forests of the CHT, marketed for their ‘unique cultural diversity’, filled up with hotels and luxury resorts for Bengali tourists, largely operated by the business arm of the Bangladesh Army. Adibashi cultures became reduced to tokenised symbols and romanticised representations, while the steady influx of Bengali tourists helped to naturalise both military presence and demographic domination. Further, the persistent failure of the 1997 Accord to deliver tangible benefits, such as land restitution and genuine demilitarisation, critically delegitimised the moderate indigenous political leadership, causing the PCJSS to splinter and leading to several violent clashes between rival political factions within the regional autonomy movement in the Hill Tracts.

Graffiti depicting Kalpana Chakma near Dhaka University, January 2025. Image: author

From “Post-Conflict” Bangladesh to the Fall of Hasina

Within this context of ongoing settler-colonialism, political disillusionment and institutional paralysis, a second phase of insurgency began to coalesce, culminating in renewed armed activity in October 2022 led by the Kuki-Chin National Front (KNF). The KNF, which emerged in 2017, is a separatist group that seeks an autonomous region spanning parts of Bandarban and Rangamati for Kuki-Chin peoples, an umbrella term encompassing several smaller Adibashi communities, including the Bawms, an indigenous Christian community in the CHT. Rejecting the authority of the CHT Regional Council and District Councils, the KNF has instead called for the creation of an independent Kuki-Chin Territorial Council (KTC), with control over land administration, tourism, and a separate police force. 

The state’s response to the KNF followed a familiar pattern, and between October 2022 and October 2024, more than 4,000 Bawms were displaced from their ancestral lands amid sweeping security operations carried out in the name of counterinsurgency. Framed as raids against the KNF, these operations disproportionately targeted civilian Bawm populations who were turned from civilians to suspected militants. The Hill Tracts continued to be governed through the logic of occupation, treated not as part of the nation, but as a frontier to be militarised and settled.

As Kalpana Chakma had warned decades earlier, this mode of governance did not remain confined to the Hills, and the techniques honed in the CHT – of surveillance, arbitrary detention, and extrajudicial violence – increasingly travelled to the plainlands.  Under Sheikh Hasina’s government, enforced disappearances became a routine instrument of political control, with human rights groups estimating that at least 1,500 people were disappeared during her rule. Journalists were harassed, surveilled, detained, and physically assaulted. Dissent was criminalized through sweeping digital security laws, critics were jailed without charge or coerced into silence, and the increasing militarization and politicization of the police entrenched a pervasive culture of impunity.

By the summer of 2024, these accumulated abuses reached a breaking point. Public university students in Dhaka took to the streets to protest the regime’s manipulation of a government job quota system to reward political loyalists. What began as a student movement quickly spiralled into a mass uprising, culminating in the collapse of the Awami League government after fifteen years of increasingly autocratic rule. In the months that followed,  Dhaka’s walls began to be filled with murals calling for pluralism and interfaith solidarity as the nation envisioned a new Bangladesh, rooted in ideas of inclusivity and belonging. For Adibashi communities, this graffiti portrayed an apparent  crack in the walls of exclusion, hinting at the possibility of belonging to a country that had long denied them space in its imagination. 

The experience of this sudden political transformation is epitomised by the story of Michael Chakma, a prominent Adibashi activist forcibly disappeared by the state in April 2019. After years of campaigning against military settlement and land seizures in the CHT, Michael had vanished into Bangladesh’s notorious military intelligence prison, Aynaghar, or the “House of Mirrors.” Presumed dead, Michael reappeared on 5 August 2024, just hours after Sheikh Hasina fled the country. “I returned to a Bangladesh full of hope,” Michael told me over the phone. “A new Bangladesh, a new independence, an environment full of hopes and dreams.” Michael’s reappearance symbolised the immediate arrival of political hope and the sudden eruption of post-revolutionary optimism following the fall of a regime that many thought would never end.

This optimism initially seemed to indicate a shift towards pluralism. An image incorporated into a national textbook pictured a new “Bangladesh 2.0”, made up of Muslims, Hindus, Christians, Buddhists, and Adibashis, and for the first time, Adibashi communities were formally invited to participate in Bengali New Year’s celebrations. Conversations about settler-colonialism began to enter mainstream conversations and indigenous communities, including the Bawm people, were brought into public rallies and national platforms. 

Many of the Adibashi activists who played important roles in Hasina’s ouster decided to enter into the fold of representational politics. Alik Mree, a young leader from the Garo community, joined the National Citizen’s Party (NCP), a student-led political party formed in the aftermath of the uprising, becoming its only indigenous representative. Others participated in counterintuitive ways, with Sarba Mitra Chakma winning a seat in the Dhaka University Student Union elections as a candidate from the alliance led by Chaatra Shibir-led student alliance, the student wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami. Amidst criticisms that Shibir’s Islamist ideology was at odds with his identity, Sarba Mitra maintained that participation offered an important institutional platform from which indigenous concerns could still be articulated. 

Yet this move towards inclusion unravelled almost as soon as it appeared. Rather than broadening notions of belonging, mob pressure narrowed it down further. Bengali nationalism reasserted itself with renewed ferocity, now fused with the demand for a singular Muslim Bengali identity. At the same time, resentment toward India, shaped by the Awami League’s perceived proximity to New Delhi, as well as long-standing grievances over border killings, trade imbalances, and water-sharing disputes, fed a widening rhetoric of wounded sovereignty that cast Adibashi political claims as security concerns, and Adibashi activists as potential proxies for Indian influence. Following protests by a student group, who argued the word “Adibashi” threatened national unity, it was removed from the aforementioned textbook. When Adibashi groups in Dhaka protested this removal, they were brutally attacked by right-wing nationalist groups, and several young activists were left injured. “The dream of a new Bangladesh is still a dream”, Michael Chakma reflected.

“Where is Michael Chakma”, Graffiti from 2022, two years before Michael’s re-appearance following Hasina’s overthrow. Source: Radical Graffiti Bangladesh

A Fading Optimism

For many Adibashi activists who had participated in the July Uprising, this backlash crystallised a growing sense of disillusionment. I spoke with Paddmini Chakma, an activist and photographer advocating for demilitarisation in the Hill Tracts, who recalls initially feeling hopeful that “long-suppressed voices were finally beginning to emerge”. However, that hope faded quickly as she came to assess the interim government’s approach to Adibashi rights as largely unchanged and exclusionary. “More broadly, the interim government has continued a pattern of symbolic inclusion without substantive representation”, she continued. One of the earliest indications of this was the appointment of an advisor for the CHT without any meaningful consultation with indigenous peoples or representatives from the region. Paddmini argued the selective visibility of indigenous groups reflected continuity with past governments, as indigenous presence is acknowledged symbolically while structural injustices persist. 

Indeed, while state-sponsored celebrations of Bengali New Year showcased Adibashi communities as emblems of cultural diversity, the state’s old reflexes of repression, far from fading, remain deeply entrenched. In post-Hasina Bangladesh, military operations against the Bawm community, carried out in the name of raids against the Kuki-Chin National Front, continued unabated. A Netra News investigation found that since April 7th 2024, at least 22 civilians have been killed by the military, and nearly 200 Bawm civilians have been caught up in the campaign of state repression as cases filed under Hasina’s government continued seamlessly under the Interim Government. As Paddmini notes, Adibashi peoples were reduced to “cultural showcases rather than political subjects with rights and agency,” even as arbitrary detention, sexual violence, and prolonged imprisonment without trial persisted in the Hill Tracts.

I also spoke with Adit Dewan, a filmmaker and curator who has worked against the censorship of Adibashi communities. Reflecting on the outbreak of mob violence and vigilante justice in the post-uprising period, Adit describes the moment as one of rapid political reversal. “For a moment, I thought Bangladesh would move toward law and justice”, he said, “but this hope disappeared as bad governance and mob violence took lead.” 

Adit highlights how mob violence quickly took a communal turn, as Adibashi groups were branded as “anti-state” by nationalist and pro-settler groups. In September 2024, only a month after Hasina’s ouster, 19 year old Anik Chakma was beaten to death in Rangamati, ironically while attending a protest against communal violence. A year later, in September 2025, Khagrachari, one of the three districts of the Hill Tracts, exploded in protests, strikes and roadblocks following the alleged gangrape of an Adibashi schoolgirl by a Bengali settler. Reactions to the outbreak of protests once again revealed the disproportionate and brutal nature of both state and settler responses. The state deployed several platoons of the Border Guard Bangladesh, and imposed Section 144, restricting public gatherings. 

Adibashi activists call for constitutional recognition and an end to exploitation at Bengali New Year’s celebrations, January 2025. Image: Sayrat Salekin. 

Meanwhile, Bengali settlers launched retaliatory attacks and killed two Adibashi men guarding a temple. Soldiers opened fire on protesters in Guimara, killing at least three people and injuring more than forty. Several homes and shops were also torched. The Home Advisor, Lt Gen Jahangir Alam Chowdhury, alleged that the violence in Khagrachari was being fuelled by a “vested quarter,” provoked by India or “fascist” groups. Such deflections only underline the government’s refusal to confront the anger born of militarisation, dispossession, and impunity in the Hill Tracts. Alik Mree resigned from the NCP in protest against the party’s silence over Khagrachari. 

Ballot Box Politics

Nearly a year and a half after Sheikh Hasina’s fall, on February 12 2026, Bangladesh headed to the polls in its first genuinely competitive elections in seventeen years. Yet this long-awaited return to electoral politics unfolded amid a right-wing resurgence, as the centre-right BNP, in the absence of the Awami League, dominated the elections, competing against a coalition led by the Jamaat-e-Islaami, a right-wing Islamist party. In a surprising move, the NCP joined this Islamist-led coalition, at the cost of 13 of its central leaders, including some of its most well-known women members who were unable to reconcile this partnership with their professed progressive commitments. With a rise in conservative, misogynist and anti-minority rhetoric, excitement about elections was accompanied by a growing anxiety that many social freedoms and protections could now be rolled back. The BNP, led by Tarique Rahman, heir to one of Bangladesh’s two main political dynasties, won a two-thirds majority, while Jamaat achieved its best performance in the country’s history, emerging as the main opposition party. 

Adibashi activists approached the elections with particular caution. Both Adit Dewan and Paddmini Chakma expressed deep scepticism about what electoral change will mean for the Chittagong Hill Tracts. “I am not very hopeful,” Adit said. “Political parties are not talking about implementing the CHT Peace Accord. Instead, they want to ‘reassess’ it, which risks pushing Adibashi peoples out of the governance structure altogether. The parties also said nothing about constitutional recognition for indigenous communities.”

Protestors block a road in Khagrachari, September 2025. Source: The Daily Star

These concerns were compounded by the constitutional referendum scheduled alongside the parliamentary election. The referendum centred on the implementation of the ‘July Charter’, drafted after the 2024 uprising, signed by most of the political parties active at the time, and framed as a blueprint for democratic reform and the prevention of future authoritarianism. Critics, however, warned that the referendum collapsed multiple, complex reforms into a single yes-or-no vote, denying citizens the opportunity to assess each of the 47 constitutional reform proposals on their own merit. The interim government further narrowed space for debate by presenting a “yes” vote as the only legitimate option, implying that dissent amounts to a rejection of reform itself,and worse, an endorsement or alignment with the fallen “fascist” forces.

For Paddmini, the referendum encapsulated a deeper problem. “The 2026 constitutional referendum feels confusing and deliberately vague,” she explained. “It talks about linguistic diversity, but it avoids explicitly recognising Indigenous peoples as Indigenous. Indigenous languages may be mentioned, but political subjectivity, land rights, and historical struggles are completely ignored.” The result, she argued, is not meaningful inclusion but a familiar pattern of containment.“This feels less like justice and more like a strategic move to preserve existing structures of exclusion. It seems to partially recognise Indigenous demands while stripping away their political and social identity.” Because of this, I have very little hope that the upcoming elections will bring real change for Indigenous peoples,” Paddmini told me in the week running up to the vote. 

Ultimately, the July National Charter was approved by 60.26 percent of voters. Yet its endorsement did not translate into immediate constitutional transformation as the newly elected BNP MPs, joined by several independents, refused to take the second oath stipulated in the President’s Order that would have initiated the charter’s implementation, citing its lack of constitutional legitimacy. With more than two-thirds of MPs declining to take the oath, the implementation process has been paused, and it is unclear what will happen next. 

The persistence of violence and exclusion in the CHT reveals the limits of political change in post-July Bangladesh. Regimes may fall, elections may return, and the language of reform may shift, but the deeper architecture of the state remains largely intact. The brief opening created by the July Uprising offered a glimpse of an alternative political imagination, but the rapid contraction of that space, marked by mob violence and right-wing resurgence, shows how fragile that imagination remains. Adibashi visibility has once again been tolerated only insofar as it does not challenge land, power, or sovereignty.

As Bangladesh emerges from a defining electoral moment, the CHT remains a litmus test for the country’s democratic claims. The struggle of Jumma people in the CHT for participation and inclusion is not a peripheral grievance but a mirror held up to the nation itself, reflecting the costs of a nationalism that continues to promote unity through erasure. To stand in solidarity with Adibashi voices is to challenge the homogenising narratives of language, culture, and identity that have defined the Bangladeshi nationalist project for over half a century, and to imagine a different kind of nation: one not built on erasure, but on recognition.

Laleh Bergman Hossain is a Bangladeshi-British writer and researcher interested in identity, politics and visual cultures across South Asia and the Middle East. 

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Israel in February 2026 marks a decisive rupture in India’s foreign policy. India, once one of Palestine’s most vocal supporters, has turned its back on them. The symbolism was unmistakable: New Delhi was no longer trying to balance its support for Palestinian statehood with strategic engagement with Israel. It had chosen a side. 

In recent years, commentators have asked: is India now South Asia’s “Israel”? Or is Kashmir India’s Palestine? Kashmir remains one of the most militarized regions in the world: marked by grave human rights violations and the erosion of democratic autonomy. However, it is worth asking if the popular invocation of the India-Israel and Kashmir-Palestine equivalence offers more to our progressive analysis than it takes away. 

If India=Israel, Pakistan=? 

On April 22, 2025, a brutal attack on Indian tourists in Kashmir left 26 dead, with responsibility claimed by The Resistance Front—an organization India alleges is a front for the Lashkar-e-Taiba. In response, the Indian government launched Operation Sindoor, targeting what it described as terror infrastructure in Murdike and Bahawalpur, deep within Pakistani territory. Pakistan retaliated, and the skirmishes ended only in mid-May. 

In the days that followed, several commentators, echoing a now-familiar refrain, likened India’s actions to those of Israel in Gaza or the West Bank. India, they argued, was fast becoming a Zionist state in South Asia—an occupying force seeking regional hegemony through violence, demographic change, and militarized control.

However, India is not a settler-colonial state by origin, nor is Pakistan a stateless, disenfranchised entity like Palestine. Pakistan is a sovereign state with one of the world’s largest standing armies, a robust intelligence infrastructure, and nuclear weapons. It has initiated wars with India, harbored non-state actors, and shaped insurgencies across the region. The comparison collapses especially when one considers the deterrent structure of nuclear parity. India and Pakistan are not in an occupation-resistance dynamic, but in a mutual deterrence relationship shaped by doctrines of escalation control and war avoidance. 

The logic of India's limited strikes, although disproportionate —be it Balakot in 2019 or Operation Sindoor in 2025—is to signal capability without triggering a full-scale war and driven by posturing for consumption of a domestic audience for electoral gains, not permanent occupation of sovereign territory. 

Framing India as Israel and Pakistan as Palestine ignores the complex regional balance of South Asia, and instead replaces it with an incorrect moral binary. It positions Pakistan as a victim while absolving its colonial violence in Balochistan and Gilgit-Baltistan. It also erases the agency and suffering of Kashmiris, who are neither extensions of Pakistan nor India, but people with their own political aspirations—repeatedly silenced by both India and Pakistan. 

The India-Israel analogy is now commonly invoked in international activist and academic spaces in relation to India’s occupation of Kashmir. Works like Azad Essa’s Hostile Homelands draw on powerful imagery: Kashmir as India’s Palestine, a besieged land stripped of autonomy, flooded with soldiers, and reengineered demographically. While emotionally evocative, this comparison obscures more than it reveals. It collapses two vastly different political histories, legal frameworks, and strategic realities into a moral shorthand that fails both as analysis and critique. 

The India–Israel analogy, particularly in relation to Kashmir, is deeply flawed—not because India is innocent, but because its form of domination structurally differs from that of a settler colonial state. Instead, India's repression of Kashmir must be seen in the context of postcolonial centralization, internal colonialism, and an authoritarian shift that extends across other marginalized regions such as the Northeast and Adivasi heartlands. To truly understand and challenge the violence in Kashmir, we must step beyond simplistic analogies and confront the specificity of India’s own colonial legacies and its present trajectory.

Foundational Disanalogy: Settler Colonialism vs Postcolonial Nationhood

To liken India to Israel is to misunderstand the historical genesis of the Indian state. Israel was founded as a settler-colonial project—a homeland for Jews established through the displacement of Palestinians, justified through the logic of return and maintained through systems of apartheid and occupation. Its very foundation rests on what Patrick Wolfe termed the “logic of elimination:” the removal or erasure of the indigenous population to make way for a settler nation.

India’s state formation was the result of anti-colonial struggle, not settler conquest or displacement of populations. The Indian state was a successor to the British colonial state. The princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, like Hyderabad and Junagadh, acceded to India through a contested and coercive process—not dissimilar to Pakistan’s annexation of Balochistan in 1948. These were integrationist moves, not settler-colonial ventures. They reflected the logic of coercive nation-state consolidation, not demographic engineering.

Even the demand for “Akhand Bharat,” often cited as India’s Zionist parallel, lacks a settler-colonial infrastructure. Unlike Zionism’s materialization in Israeli settlements, Hindutva remains largely ideological and majoritarian, not territorial in the same settler sense—at least until recent policies bordering on demographic transformation.

India’s postcolonial nationalism has been violent and coercive toward its peripheries. However, coercion in the service of integration is not the same as colonization in the service of population replacement. India’s violence in Kashmir must be understood through its own authoritarian and centralizing tendencies—not through borrowed frameworks that obscure more than they illuminate.

How Kashmir Differs from Palestine: The Autonomy Framework Pre-2019—Article 370 & 35A

Unlike occupied Palestinian territories being governed by Israeli military law, Kashmir—at least until 2019—was formally part of the Indian Union, with constitutional protections, civil courts, and state institutions (however compromised). India did not have unilateral, unchallenged domination vis à vis Kashmir. Instead, India’s sovereignty over Kashmir has been contested by Pakistan consistently, to the detriment of the aspirations of the heavily repressed population caught in between. 

Before the revocation of Articles 370 and 35A in August 2019, Jammu and Kashmir occupied a unique constitutional position within the Indian Union. The region enjoyed a special status in India that granted it its own Constitution, a separate flag, and significant autonomy in all matters except foreign affairs, defense, and communications. Article 35A, since 1954, allowed the Kashmiri state to define “permanent residents” and provide them exclusive rights in land ownership, state employment, and welfare.

These provisions functioned, albeit imperfectly, as constitutional safeguards against demographic transformation and cultural assimilation. Far from embodying a settler-colonial logic, Article 35A explicitly protected Kashmir from the influx of non-locals, preventing the kind of demographic reshaping characteristic of settler colonialism.

In contrast, no such legal framework of autonomy exists in the occupied Palestinian territories. Palestinians live under Israeli military law, without citizenship, and with no right to determine the legal conditions of land ownership or political representation. The Indian Constitution, even in its distorted execution, granted Kashmiris a set of legal rights that Palestinians have never possessed under Israeli occupation.

The repeal of Article 370 and 35A in August 2019 marks a dramatic rupture—but until that moment, Kashmir’s relationship with India was at least legally federal, rooted in a constitutional compact. To compare this to Israel’s governance of Gaza or the West Bank is to flatten history and law into metaphor, losing sight of the actual political architecture that existed for seven decades.

Internal Colonialism: Kashmir, the Northeast and Adivasis

While rejecting the India–Israel settler-colonial analogy, it is important not to sanitize the Indian state’s conduct in Kashmir. The story of Kashmir within India is one of progressive erosion of autonomy, political repression, and militarized governance. A similar trajectory is visible in other peripheral regions like the Northeast and Adivasi territories, which can be better understood through the lens of internal colonialism.

Since the 1990s, Kashmir has been one of the most heavily militarized zones in the world. The imposition of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) has granted Indian security forces near-total legal immunity, with widespread allegations of torture, rape, disappearances, and fake encounters. The Kunan Poshpora mass rape case (1991) and the Pathribal fake encounter killings (2000) remain haunting examples of impunity under military rule. Civil society organizations like the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society have documented thousands of enforced disappearances and mass graves, with little to no legal redress.

This pattern is not confined to Kashmir. In the Northeast, similar arrangements under Article 371 allowed for conditional accession, yet were also accompanied by AFSPA and political marginalization. In Nagaland, Manipur, and Assam, dissent has been historically met with counterinsurgency, not dialogue. These are not anomalies—they are signs of a centralizing postcolonial state managing its “frontiers” through coercion, much like its colonial predecessor.

Unlike Israel, India does not legally segregate populations through separate citizenship regimes. But it functionally produces second-class citizenship in regions it deems “sensitive” or “exceptional.” The framework here is not of elimination or ethnic cleansing, but of incorporation without equality—a project of national integration enforced at gunpoint.

In this light, Kashmir’s predicament is not an outlier but a symptom of a deeper crisis in Indian federalism and democracy. To compare it with Palestine is not only analytically imprecise—it risks obscuring the specific forms of repression that define India’s own political geography.

The Post-2019 Shift: Demographic Engineering?

The abrogation of Article 370 and Article 35A in August 2019 marked a paradigmatic shift in India’s approach to Kashmir. With the dismantling of constitutional safeguards, Kashmir was stripped of its statehood, bifurcated into two Union Territories, and placed under direct rule from New Delhi. The government claimed this would usher in development and integration; in reality, it marked the suspension of democratic rights and the reconfiguration of Kashmir’s legal and demographic fabric.

Since 2019, India has granted domicile status to over 85,000 non-resident individuals, including security personnel, bureaucrats, and migrant workers. This change, previously barred under Article 35A, has raised serious concerns about demographic engineering—the slow, bureaucratic transformation of the region’s Muslim-majority character without the need to create settlements or military colonization.

This move echoes settler-colonial strategies. While there are no formal state-sponsored settlements, the infrastructure is being laid for a structural alteration of Kashmir’s identity through legal manipulation, resource reallocation, and engineered migration. The state has moved from internal colonial control to a form of postcolonial demographic reordering, where the territory is rendered governable by diluting the political weight of its native population.

Still, it is important to recognize that this shift is recent and emergent, not foundational. India was not built as a settler-colonial state, and Kashmir was not historically managed as one. What we are witnessing post-2019 is a convergence of methods, not of origins. To claim India has become Israel is to foreclose critical distinctions that help us understand this dangerous new trajectory—one that must be condemned in its own right, not merely because it resembles Zionist practice.

The recent push toward demographic change in Kashmir is not entirely without precedent. As early as 1947–48, during the Poonch massacre, thousands of Muslims were killed or displaced from Jammu, with the complicity of the Dogra regime, the RSS and Indian forces. This reengineered the demography of the Jammu region, transforming it into a Hindu-majority space more loyal to the Indian Union. While this violence predates the current era, it reveals that the logic of demographic disciplining—especially through force—has long existed within India’s nation-building project. What distinguishes the post-2019 moment is the transition from episodic violence to bureaucratized, legal mechanisms—from mass expulsion to state-sanctioned domicile laws and land access for outsiders. It denotes a critical rupture from a flawed, alienating democratic process to outright colonization. 

Yet this demographic logic is not exclusive to India. In Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan abolished the State Subject Rule in the 1970s—akin to India’s removal of Article 35A—and has since facilitated the settlement of Sunni Punjabis and Pashtuns in a historically Shia-majority region. These policies have been accompanied by sectarian violence, including attacks by Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a state-backed Sunni extremist group, on Shia civilians. Land reform bills now permit non-locals to own property, raising legitimate fears of a sectarian settler project aimed at diluting Shia political power. Pakistan thus mirrors the very settler-colonial logics it accuses India of employing—through military presence, demographic manipulation, and religious homogenization.

Both post-colonial states have deployed population engineering, resource control, and military dominance to redraw the ethnic and political landscape of their borderlands. 

“Pakistan’s Kashmir”: Balochistan’s Missing Analogy

If Kashmir is to be framed as “India’s Palestine,” then Balochistan must surely be considered “Pakistan’s Kashmir.”

Balochistan was annexed by Pakistan in 1948, despite the Baloch Khanate’s brief declaration of independence and calls for a referendum. Since then, the province has seen multiple insurgencies, each met with military repression. Thousands of Baloch activists, students, and civilians have been forcibly disappeared, often found tortured or killed. Reports by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and international watchdogs point to mass graves, extra-judicial killings, and systemic silencing of dissent.

The strategies of control in Balochistan mirror those used by India in Kashmir: militarization, enforced disappearances, denial of autonomy, and resource extraction. Baloch nationalists, like Kashmiri separatists, have demanded self-determination; in both cases, the central state has responded with coercion rather than consent, practicing internal domination over their own peripheries. 

To ignore Balochistan while invoking Kashmir is to moralize one state's violence while sanitizing another’s. If the goal is solidarity against oppression, it must be principled and consistent—not contingent on the geopolitical narratives of postcolonial nation-states.

The Forgotten Front: Adivasis, Land, and the Logic of Elimination

While Kashmir commands global attention and is increasingly framed through the Israel–Palestine lens, a more direct and longstanding instance of the logic of elimination exists within India itself—its relationship with Adivasi (indigenous tribal) communities. Spread across central and eastern India, these populations face systemic displacement, militarized violence, and cultural erasure at the hands of the Indian state. Yet, this reality is rarely framed in settler-colonial terms.

The displacement of Adivasis is not metaphorical—it is material, extractive, and violent. Across Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha, and Madhya Pradesh, vast tracts of forest land have been seized for mining, dams, industrial corridors, and so-called development projects. The beneficiaries are not settlers but corporate entities like Adani, Vedanta, and POSCO, backed by state power. The victims are tribal communities who are evicted, incarcerated, or killed, often without compensation or rehabilitation.

When resistance emerges—especially through Maoist-aligned movements—it is met with brutal counterinsurgency campaigns, like Operation Green Hunt, involving fake encounters, mass arrests, and violations of international humanitarian norms. The Forest Rights Act, meant to safeguard tribal land, is routinely bypassed. Indigenous cultures are reduced to tourism, their sacred lands to resource frontiers.

This is, in many ways, a textbook case of internal settler logic—the displacement of indigenous peoples to make way for extractive capitalist expansion. And yet, it is not recognized as such, either within India or globally. Compared to Kashmir, there is little international solidarity movement for Adivasis, drawing analogy to apartheid followed by hashtags or global outcry. It is seen as India’s internal matter, despite being an instance of ongoing, violent dispossession.

This selective application of the settler-colonial lens reveals a troubling truth: the framework is often deployed not where the logic is most visible, but where it is most politically expedient. Kashmir is thus foregrounded, while Adivasi suffering is invisibilized—a blind spot that any serious decolonial critique must urgently confront.

Colonial Continuities and the Settler-Native Binary: A Mamdanian Reconsideration

What binds the cases of Kashmir, the Northeast, Balochistan, Adivasi lands, and Gilgit-Baltistan is not settler colonialism, but the postcolonial state’s continuation of colonial strategies. Both India and Pakistan inherited the legal, institutional, and ideological architecture of the British Raj—one built around centralization, militarized frontier governance, racialized surveillance, and the management of difference through law.

This is especially visible in the legal and administrative regimes these states deploy: AFSPA in Kashmir and the Northeast, the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR) in FATA, and the extensive use of emergency powers and military rule in Balochistan. These are not aberrations. They are mechanisms of a postcolonial state that never decolonized, but instead repurposed colonial technologies of control to govern internal “others.” The Indian and Pakistani states do not seek to eliminate their peripheries, but to discipline, incorporate, and extract from them—whether through resource grabs, land expropriation, or political marginalization.

This argument finds powerful theoretical support in Mahmood Mamdani’s Neither Settler nor Native, where he critiques the settler-colonial framework not for its inaccuracy in specific cases, but for its analytical rigidity. For Mamdani, the core feature of modern state violence is not physical elimination alone, but the institutionalization of permanent political identities—settler and native—as legal constructs. These identities become the basis of governance, exclusion, and domination.

Mamdani urges us to shift focus from moral binaries toward how states manufacture majority-minority distinctions and reproduce political inequality through law and bureaucracy. In this sense, India’s repression in Kashmir, or Pakistan’s actions in Gilgit-Baltistan, are not about displacing people for settlers, but about governing through the logic of difference—where access to rights, land, and representation is contingent upon loyalty, religious identity, or ethnic subordination.

Applying Mamdani’s lens helps clarify why the India–Israel analogy misleads. India's violence in Kashmir is not the result of a Zionist import, but of a postcolonial state logic that mirrors colonial rule in form and substance. The challenge, then, is not simply to name India a settler-colonial state, but to confront how postcolonial sovereignty produces and governs “permanent minorities” within its own borders, often under the guise of national unity or security.

The task ahead is to transcend these state-produced identities, and imagine political communities where neither “settler” nor “native” are categories of governance. As Mamdani argues, liberation requires dismantling the political distinction itself, not reversing who holds power within it.

Conclusion

The analogy between India and Israel, though rhetorically compelling, ultimately falters under critical scrutiny. It obscures the specific historical trajectories and legal architectures that shape the Indian state, reducing Kashmir’s complex and painful realities to a borrowed script. India is not a settler-colonial state by origin, nor is Pakistan a stateless entity like Palestine. Rather, both India and Pakistan are postcolonial nation-states that have inherited—and internalized—the logic of their colonial predecessor.

Their respective strategies in Kashmir, Balochistan, Gilgit-Baltistan, the Northeast, and Adivasi territories reveal a shared repertoire of authoritarian governance: centralization, demographic engineering, military exceptionalism, and the denial of meaningful self-determination. These are not anomalies; they are systemic features of how postcolonial states have managed pluralism and dissent—not by decolonizing their institutions, but by repurposing colonial structures of control.

Rather than relying on externally derived frameworks like settler colonialism, which do not capture the historical and structural specificities of South Asia, we must examine postcolonial nation-states like India and Pakistan as ideological and institutional successors of the colonial state.

Both India and Pakistan have inherited and perpetuated the logic of the colonial state: centralization, militarized frontier governance, legal exceptionalism (e.g. AFSPA, FCR), and the management of difference through coercion. Their projects of nation-building have involved internal colonization of peripheries like Kashmir, Balochistan, the Northeast, and Adivasi regions—not to replace native populations, but to discipline, assimilate, extract from, or sideline them.

While some recent developments in India—such as domicile laws in Kashmir—increasingly resemble settler-colonial methods, the foundational character of the Indian state remains that of a centralized postcolonial successor to empire, not a settler regime. Similarly, Pakistan’s actions in Gilgit-Baltistan and Balochistan exhibit sectarian demographic engineering, but within a postcolonial frame rooted in majoritarian nationalism and territorial consolidation, not settler expansion.

To understand and challenge these forms of state violence, whether in Kashmir, or Gilgit, or Bastar, South Asia needs a framework that emerges from its own history—one that recognizes how postcolonial sovereignty often reproduces colonial modes of domination in the name of unity, development, or national security.

Only by confronting this shared legacy of violence can we begin to imagine alternative futures for the region—ones rooted not in analogy, but in accountability, history, and decolonial possibility.

Anubhav Singh is a scholar of South Asia and a graduate of The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. His work examines caste, nationalism, and the reconfiguration of sovereignty in contemporary India, with particular focus on Hindutva.

On February 12, 2026, Bangladesh held its first general election since overthrowing the authoritarian rule of Sheikh Hasina and the Awami League (AL) –  an election widely believed to be a true democratic election in 17 years. Around 44% of the electorate were young (<37 years old), first-time voters. The centre-right Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and its leader, Tarique Rahman, returning from his AL-imposed exile, gained a majority of parliamentary seats to form the government. Its main opposition was the far-right Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) who built a 11-party alliance with smaller Islamist parties and the National Citizens’ Party (NCP), a party formed to reflect the aspirations of the youth-led mass uprising that overthrew the previous regime. The disposed AL were banned from participating in the elections, leaving a significant portion of the electorate without representation. The election results mark a clear turn in Bangladesh towards right-wing populism – but this is not shocking. A close reading of the post-uprising moment exposes that this paradigm shift has been brewing for a while, especially in the absence of a strong, progressive alternative. 

The Right-ward Turn in Post-uprising Bangladesh

The main contestant against the BNP was the far-right JI, an Islamist party marred by its role as collaborators of the Pakistani state during Bangladesh’s liberation struggle in 1971. JI’s 11-party coalition managed to win 77 out of 300 seats in the election, higher than they have ever achieved in Bangladesh’s history. Of course, one must account for the fact that AL, historically BNP’s primary political opponent, was banned from participating in the elections this time. Yet, winning almost 40% of the popular vote in an election with around 60% voter turnout is a serious feat.

Heading into the election, there was widespread speculation that JI would sweep a landslide victory. JI had been steadily building its organizational strength at the grassroots level, embedding itself in the lives and struggles of working class people. They have developed cadres committed to the party’s ideology who are accountable to a centralized, vertical party structure– much like the traditional Leninist model. Party cadres are rooted in local communities and campuses, and often mobilize to provide mutual aid and support in absence of a welfare state. This has solidified loyalty and support for JI’s vision of a theocratic Bangladesh in previously untapped layers of Bangladeshi society. 

JI also bore the ire of Hasina’s regime; its key members were tried under a special war crimes tribunal in 2013 and given either life sentences or the death penalty. Numerous JI activists have been forcibly disappeared by the state security apparatus under Hasina, with few making it out alive once she was ousted. This systematic targeting generated sympathy towards JI, especially amongst groups that opposed state violence and supported human rights. 

Earlier in 2025, JI’s student wing, Chhatra Shibir, won student union elections across university campuses including both Dhaka University and Jahangirnagar University, two of the most progressive public university campuses in the country and institutions that were central to the July Uprising. In December 2025, the assassination of a prominent political figure related to the uprising, Osman Hadi, revived the zeal and anger of the July Uprising which was promptly capitalized by the Islamist right-wing. Hadi had come up as a charismatic leader from the madrassa system and was actively shaping a post-uprising majoritarian politics of Bengali Muslim nationalism that was initially separate from JI. But the JI-led coalition was able to exercise pro-July, anti-India sentimentality when Hadi was given a state funeral with thousands of well wishers flocking to Dhaka for the event.

Yet, none of this really translated to electoral gains for JI.  

JI’s significant gain in this election, however, is not merely about votes and seats, but about mainstreaming its politics in a country where the party was considered fringe, and at times even banned. Critically, JI’s win has shifted the overton window enough to the right to normalize and even popularize hardlines like Mamunul Haq, the leader of Khelafat Majlis, who gave a fierce challenge to BNP’s Bobby Hajjaj, a heavyweight candidate, in one of Dhaka’s prominent ridings. Haq infamously called for the dissolution of the Women’s Affair Reform Commission, formed under the Interim Government, and is well known for his misogynist and exclusionary comments, while positioning his own ideology as anti-imperialist and anti-establishment. 

JI’s coalition with non-Islamist “centrist” parties such as the NCP, consisting of student leaders from the Uprising, and the Liberal Democratic Party led by former Liberation War veteran Oli Ahmad, provided the cover that was needed to legitimize hardline Islamist ideology in the electoral arena. 

The NCP claimed that their party ideology is “militant centrism” but several of their core leadership including Sarjis Alam, and Akhter Hossen, have leaned towards some kind of Islamist politics. The tensions came to a boil on December 28, 2025, when several female leaders of the NCP defected from the party when it announced its coalition with JI, a party that repeatedly refused to nominate women for any of their seats. NCP campaign front runners such as Tasnim Jara and Tajnuba Jabeen publicly condemned the NCP-JI alliance and noted NCP’s own ideological contradictions inside the party. Despite all of this, NCP’s core leadership continued with the alliance and helped position JI as the pro-July, pro-reform, and anti-India choice.

Many viewed the interim government, led by Dr. Muhammad Yunus and other NGO and civil society figureheads, as sympathetic to the NCP, Islamists, and right-wing mobs. Former student coordinators Nahid Islam and Asif Mahmud Shojib Bhuiyan were both part of the interim government and then later joined the NCP. Hasnat Abdullah and Sarjis Alam regularly mobilized student groups to impose demands on the interim government and were met with minimal resistance. This was most evident when students and touhidi janata (Islamist mob) were given free reign to demolish Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s house in Dhanmondi Road no. 32 that had been previously preserved as a museum.

There was no protection given to religious and ethnic minorities, bauls (folk singers), artists and groups who came under attack numerous times in the aftermath of the uprising. Reports of local NCP activists engaging in extortion and bribery became commonplace. And as frustration grew with the interim government, BNP distanced itself from the reform agenda and skewed ahead as the obvious anti-JI choice in this race. 

BNP, on the other hand, has always maintained its commitment to centre-right politics. The party believes in private enterprise and the free market and during prior rule, engaged in massive corruption that helped embed the party with the industrial ruling class. It is not merely a coincidence that a BNP-majority means that there are more business people in parliament than politicians. 

As such, BNP’s win in this election came as a tactical victory, not a decisive one. Swaths of liberals, seculars, women, religious and ethnic minorities, and even Hefazat voters flocked to the polls to vote against the JI-led Islamic bloc. Despite that, JI successfully increased its parliamentary representation, marking a significant shift in Bangladesh's political centre to the right and codifying the far-right Islamist bloc as the main opposition to BNP’s economic conservatism, in the absence of any left or liberal opposition. 

Caught in the Middle: India, U.S.A., China

India has loomed over Bangladeshi politics often as an interventionist threat and other times as a bogeyman and JI had positioned itself as the only anti-India party. During the Uprising and in its aftermath, the slogan “Delhi na Dhaka? Dhaka Dhaka [Delhi or Dhaka? Dhaka Dhaka]” became popular amongst the youth and Islamists alike. Former coordinators of the student movement and currently members of parliament, Hasnat Abdullah and Nahid Islam, would often lead rallies with this chant. 

AL was also seen as closely linked with India, a legacy Hasina inherited from her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. The fact that Delhi gave refuge to Hasina when she fled the country, only solidified that association. 

JI winning most of their seats across districts lining the West Bengal border only confirms this widespread antagonism against “Indian hegemony”. One can imagine that the local communities in Rangpur and Khulna are most likely to be impacted by India-Bangladesh projects such as Rampal Power Plant and the Teesta water-sharing agreement, as well as bear witness to the regular border killings at the hands of Indian Border Security Forces (BSF). The Modi goverment’s anti-Muslim rehtoric only aggravates majoritarian victimhood in Bangladesh’s majority Muslim proletariat. 

And for whatever reason, this anti-India sentiment is often articulated in Bangladeshi politics through violence towards religious minorities, the Left, secular/atheists, and liberal institutions. Just two months before the election, the office buildings of two of the largest newspaper dailies in the country, The Daily Star and Prothom Alo, as well as music/cultural institution Chhayanaut, were torched by angry mobs claiming these outlets to be “Indian mouthpieces”. On the same day, a Hindu garment worker, Dipu Chandra Das, was lynched for allegedly disrespecting the Quran - an allegation later proved to be false. 

The fact is, while Indian expansionism is a legitimate concern, it is only one of many superpowers trying to exert influence over Bangladesh. Both China and the U.S. have keen interests in Bangladesh. For example, in 2022, direct Indian investment in Bangladesh was only US$15.7 million whereas Chinese investment was US $1.4 billion. China also has invested in the Payra Port and the Banshkhali Coal Power Plant and is the primary weapon supplier for the Bangladesh military. In her final days in power, Sheikh Hasina was struggling to maintain this balancing act between China, India, and the U.S. 

None of this is surprising considering the increased global hostility in this multipolar world and the crumbling of international rules-based order. In fact, it may be these geopolitical anxieties that informed the interim government’s insistence on leasing administration of Chittagong Port, one of the most strategic ports in the Indian Ocean, to foreign operators. The initiative was met by an indefinite strike from port workers who were then harassed, intimidated, and arrested. The leasing process was ultimately put to a pause. 

It is important to note here that just two days before the election, the Yunus-led interim government rushed to finalize a trade deal with the U.S. that aligns Bangladesh squarely under the American sphere of influence. With this trade deal, Bangladesh committed to purchasing military equipment from the U.S. while limiting its purchase from other countries, removing tariffs on 6,000 American products, purchasing energy directly from the U.S. while allowing them full reign to explore and extract critical minerals and energy resources from Bangladesh. In return, Bangladesh receives marginal tariff waiver only on ready-made garment products made from American cotton. This deal could not only restructure Bangladesh's economy in the coming days but also weaken the power of industrial labour with threats of job layoffs. 

Challenges Ahead

The cross-class mobilization during the July Uprising signified a desire to reject the status quo. In the absence of any organized progressive formation prior to the spontaneous uprising, this desire has manifested into a reactionary expression. The power vacuum left by AL was capitalized mostly by the populist-Islamic right-wing on the ideological terrain and the ruling class-backed “deep state” (military, security forces, intelligence and civil bureaucrats) on the political terrain.

With BNP’s win, the managers of the state have changed but the entire state apparatus remains the same. The military, civil bureaucracy, security forces, and the balance of class power remain exactly the same as during the last Awami regime. These actors have been waiting anxiously for the transition to an elected government so that things could return to business as usual. 

The reality of the July Uprising and this election is that ordinary people’s lives have been largely unchanged, if not gotten worse. The Uprising started with a movement for stable government jobs in an increasingly unstable economy – a demand that has been overlooked in the aftermath. Unemployment remains high and affordability is still a major issue in the urban centres. The post-uprising period also saw minimal labour reforms. Mass mobilization for decent wages by tea workers and garment workers remain unaddressed and the appetite for structural reform unmet. 

The July Uprising had brought with it an opening to build a broad working class movement for social change. Left-leaning student groups, teachers, culture workers, and activists were at the forefront of the July movement but in the last 18 months, they have gotten roiled up in the culture wars which pit progressive, humanist values against Islamic, traditional ones, signifying an ideological polarization between the left-secular and the populist-Islamic right wing. This dichotomy is mainly concerned with identity politics and narrows the terrain to engage in class struggle that builds solidarities across these identities. Bangladesh, already functioning under neoliberalism, will now have to navigate the U.S.-imposed economic agenda in a rapidly sharpening imperial order. It is urgent, then, for the left to address these contradictions of the moment we are in. If there is one thing people have now learned from the Uprising, it is that power lies beyond the parliament – on the streets, in workplaces, and in communities.  

Sarah Nafisa Shahid is a Bangladeshi writer and community organizer based in Toronto, Ontario. Her work has been published in The Daily Star, Hyperallergic, Now Magazine and other publications. She is a regular contributor to Spring Magazine and is the co-host of Spring Radio.

In the history of Bangladesh’s political commentators and influencers, Pinaki Bhattacharya is a phenomenon, ranging from being described as an “online human rights and political activist”  to a “self-proclaimed anti-Hindu and anti-India activist,” depending on which media platforms are writing about him and when. Trained as a medical doctor, Pinaki initially became involved in leftist politics; in 2013, he was an organizer of the Shahbag movement, which sought justice for war crimes committed in 1971 by members of Jamaat-e-Islami, the largest Islamist political party in Bangladesh. In 2018, due to the threat of detention by the military intelligence agency during the Awami League regime, Pinaki had to leave Bangladesh and seek political refuge in France. He has continued creating political content from there since then; his YouTube channel currently boasts more than four million subscribers. Ironically, Pinaki now serves as a major spokesperson for the Jamaat–National Citizen Party (NCP) coalition and has actively urged his followers to vote for the coalition in the upcoming 2026 general election in Bangladesh. 

Although many critical scholars and activists in Bangladesh see Pinaki’s rhetoric primarily as propaganda, a large portion of his four million subscribers shape their political thinking and positions based on what Pinaki says. From Boomers to Gen Z, Pinaki has an enormous base that considers him a political guru and repeats his talking points in public political debates and discussions. Through his populist rhetoric, Pinaki has captured the power to shape a country’s political narrative and dictate political actions on the ground from afar, the most salient and terrifying one being the creation of mobs to attack institutions he deems as enemies of the state. Internationally, Pinaki has often been featured as an “exiled blogger” and “human rights activist,” and has been interviewed by international media platforms that have a narrow understanding of Bangladesh's complex local political dynamics.

Pinaki’s rhetoric is a mish-mash of left-wing and right-wing political thought with a veneer of pro-Bangladesh sovereignty. In a country that had ostensibly adopted center-left to center-right politics since liberation, veering into authoritarianism in the last decade, it’s important to examine exactly which strategies Pinaki has so effectively used to shape political thought among the masses. What lies behind the enigma of Pinaki’s populism? In this piece, I will analyze his populist communication strategies using one of his videos, “Voter Agei Khela Shesh: Front Jitbe Kon Plan-e” [The Game is Over before the Vote: Which Plan will Win the Front?].

Populism is a political ideology whose core claim is that an elite establishment is working against the interests of the people. Populism claims to represent the people, positions the people against the elite establishment, and calls on them to fight those in power. Populists can be left-wing or right-wing. For example, in the United States, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Zohran Mamdani all practice left-wing populist politics. Left-wing populists talk about how billion-dollar corporations control working-class communities, exploit them, and accumulate massive profits. 

Right-wing populists, on the other hand, identify as the problem those who are “Others”—immigrants, refugees, and non-white people. Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, India’s Narendra Modi, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, and the United States’ Donald Trump - all practice right-wing populist politics. Narendra Modi repeatedly identifies Muslims as the problem. Trump has effectively declared war on immigrants, refugees, and Muslims. In this way, identifying an “Other” and attacking them as a way of protecting the “self” has been a classic right-wing populist strategy. Right-wing populism often takes an intensely nationalist form. Sometimes, right-wing populists oppose globalization as a means to protect national interests. Leftists, too, are usually major critics of globalization. As a result, the line between left-wing and right-wing populism often blurs for those with a surface-level political understanding. At times, right-wing populists borrow and appropriate elements from leftist arguments, making it sound—at first glance—like leftist politics, while in reality the politics is deeply right-wing. Pinaki is a perfect example of this.

Strategy One: Use of colloquial Bangla, comedy, and sexist slang

In Bangladesh, the tradition of political commentary using regional language and comedy was arguably pioneered by M. R. Akhtar Mukul. The most popular program of the Swadhin Bangla Betar Kendra, the radio channel of the Bangladesh government in exile during the 1971 war of independence, was Chorompotro. From May 25 to December 16, 1971, these 8–10-minute recordings were broadcast regularly. Despite the countless uncertainties and sufferings of the war, people made time to listen to Chorompotro because it made them laugh even in the midst of sorrow, despair, and anxiety, while also informing and motivating them about the liberation war against Pakistan.

The language on Pinaki’s YouTube channel is somewhat similar to non-standard, colloquial Bangla. I would argue that his decision to abandon “standard” Bangla in favor of non-standard Bangla is a highly calculated one. The use of non-standard Bangla signals to followers that Pinaki does not practice elite politics. It builds trust by suggesting that since his language resembles that of ordinary people, his politics must prioritize ordinary people’s interests.

Combined with humor, comedy, and extremely sexist slang, this non-standard language makes Pinaki’s political analysis highly palatable to a massive cis-Bengali-heterosexual-Muslim-male audience. Sexist slang sells. In a society where patriarchal thinking is deeply entrenched, it is hardly surprising that people eagerly consume political discussions infused with patriarchal humor.

Strategy Two: An anti-intellectual stance

Pinaki repeatedly adopts an anti-intellectual position. In the video under discussion, while criticizing the women leaders of NCP who protested NCP’s coalition with Jamaat-e-Islami, Pinaki says, “Some women leaders of NCP have created unnecessary trouble.” According to him, by raising “irrelevant side issues” while working on “national issues,” these women leaders are sabotaging the entire process. Pinaki argues that NCP is now “learning the consequences” of placing “clever, calculative people” in important positions, people who did not go to the streets to fight against the anti-fascist regime. Pinaki’s remark appears to target political leaders like Tasneem Jara, who studied at Viqarunnisa Noon School and Dhaka Medical College, two prestigious academic institutions in Bangladesh, completed a master’s degree at Oxford University, and left a prestigious job in the UK to enter Bangladeshi politics. Pinaki rejects the claim that national politics will collapse without highly educated people. 

Appropriating distinctly leftist vocabulary, Pinaki says politics is not a corporate job, not teaching at a university, not practicing medicine or engineering, and that higher education is not a substitute for political organizing experience. Political legitimacy, according to Pinaki, comes from struggling, sacrificing, and taking risks in solidarity with common people. “You may have ascended to the sky with your knowledge, but your people are on the ground”—this, he argues, is the problem with elite politicians. Politicians must speak the language of the ground. Pinaki criticizes former Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who held degrees from Oxford and Cambridge Universities, for being part of an “elite consensus.” Pinaki also criticizes the interim government led by Professor Yunus, founder of Grameen Bank and Nobel Peace Prize winner, and formerly a college professor. On the surface, Pinaki consistently opposes “elite” and “technocratic” governance.

Pinaki’s critique of elite intellectualism does not necessarily come from a pro-working-class, anti-elite stance. Rather, right-wing populists like Pinaki fear critical thinkers with progressive views who are equipped to dismantle some of his incoherent and inaccurate references and logical fallacies and can oppose his ethno-nationalist, sexist, and xenophobic narratives. For example, Fahmidul Haq, a U.S.-based Bangladeshi researcher, writer, and educator, mentions in his book July Jagoroner Dinlipi (2025) that when he refuted some claims of Pinaki, Pinaki, in response, canceled him publicly in a YouTube video and introduced him to the followers as “Shera Shahbagi” [the best Shahbagi]. The word Shahbagi is a popular Bangla political insult and trolling label widely used in right-wing online and partisan debates to describe overly secular, liberal, and an “urban elite” mindset. Haq further argues that right-wing populist online influencers like Pinaki must pay attention to what increases their followers’ engagement. Therefore, they always try to present what will satisfy and excite their followers, and their analyses usually contain half-truths presented as “evidence.” Haq points out that common followers often lack the knowledge or critical thinking skills to identify the fallacies in the arguments presented. I would argue that tagging highly educated progressives as “elites,” therefore, becomes an effective tactic to cancel them before their critiques of Pinaki gain traction among the public.

Strategy Three: KISS — Keep It Simple and Stupid

Pinaki cites the “KISS – Keep It Simple and Stupid” principle in one of his videos.  Pinaki himself says that people don’t read or analyze anymore; they scan and take shortcuts. I would argue that Pinaki understands very well how to attract an audience with no training in critical thinking and no time or intellectual ability to comprehend deep, complex analysis. His main talking points appear repeatedly as animated text, making him very easy to follow. Unlike unappealing long-form text, the spicy combo of Pinaki’s non-standard Bangla, sexist slang, images, animations, and flashy videos is well-equipped to compete with other floating content of social media and hold the attention of his followers.

Despite his anti-elite and anti-intellectual stance, Pinaki uses a barrage of “references,” ranging from newspaper screenshots to other sources, to reassure followers of his intellectual authority. Since his viewers lack the time or ability to examine various sources and find the “truth,” Pinaki does the “research” for them and delivers a “simple and stupid” truth. However, Pinaki’s content is anything but simple. His content involves careful planning, expert input, a full team to research and execute the plan, and substantial funding. It is implausible that one individual could produce such technologically advanced content at such a high volume, day after day, without sustainable sources of funding.

Strategy Four: Creating an “Other”

A key ingredient of right-wing populism is constructing an “Other” to blame for everything. For example, in the United States, current President Donald Trump has successfully created a large base of support among Americans without a college degree by other-ing immigrants. Scholars have argued that this is not necessarily because of the ignorance of people who haven’t attended college. Rather, people who are not highly educated are statistically more likely to be financially struggling. It is easy to appeal to people who are struggling to make ends meet by saying that they are not getting their fair share, which is being grabbed by an undeserving “Other” (e.g., immigrants or Muslims), and someone will stand up for them.

Currently, Pinaki’s highly effective “Other” is India, and, according to Pinaki, the political party that would stand up for the common people in Bangladesh is the Jamaat-NCP coalition. In a recent video, he identifies Bangladesh’s four main problems: poverty, corruption, unemployment, and the hegemony of India. Poverty, corruption, and unemployment— all make logical sense. But why single out Indian hegemony and avoid any discussions of the Chinese or the American hegemony?

In fact, Pinaki has separate episodes on how to maintain good relations with China and the United States. He even discusses how to maintain diplomatic and economic ties with a belligerent, authoritarian leader like Donald Trump. It seems that he has no problem with U.S. imperialism or China’s neo-imperial expansion in Bangladesh. Bangladesh borrowed $10 billion from China for 14 infrastructure projects under the Hasina government under strict conditions—but Pinaki shows no concern about Bangladesh’s economic dependence on China. 

Pinaki Bhattacharya explains how Bangladesh can win America’s heart

Much of what Pinaki says about Indian hegemony is true, but he never dissects the complex political economy of that hegemony or addresses the complicity of the Bangladesh government and civil and corporate elites across the political spectrum who sustain the hegemony and reap its benefits. For example, Maha Mirza points out that the current interim Bangladesh government, allegedly resisting the Indian hegemony, reduced the subsidy for local yarn production from 5 percent to 1.5 percent. As a result, Bangladeshi yarns became much more expensive than Indian yarns that enjoy up to a 15 percent subsidy from the Indian government, along with state protection, investment, and funds to improve production technologies. During the last fiscal year, imports of Indian yarn into Bangladesh increased by 137 percent, while more than 50 Bangladeshi spinning mills closed, losing out to cheaper Indian yarn. So far, the interim government of Bangladesh has imported USD 2 billion worth of yarn, while local yarn worth USD 120 billion remains unsold in stock. Mirza cites a series of other examples of leaving Bangladeshi industries to the mercy of the free market while importing cheaper Indian products that enjoy high levels of subsidy and protection from the Indian state. Mirza argues that the interim government is destroying the economic backbone of Bangladesh while chanting the “Delhi or Dhaka – Dhaka, Dhaka” slogan only to cater to performative populist politics, one akin to Pinaki’s.

Such nuanced and sophisticated analysis is usually never present in Pinaki’s populist rhetoric. Pinaki’s populism needs an “Other,” and now that “Other” is India. He asks his followers to resist the Indian hegemony by voting for the NCP-Jamaat coalition but never addresses why it is important to build a national capacity and self-reliant foundation to confront the unjust terms, conditions, and arrangements as Bangladesh engages in diplomatic and economic negotiations and exchanges with hegemons like India, China, or the United States.

Strategy Five: Co-opting the language of social justice

Pinaki skillfully appropriates the language of social justice. In the video mentioned above, he explains how “big capital” manipulates the state's regulatory mechanisms, how automation enables large corporations to produce at a mass scale and eventually outcompete and crush small- and medium-sized businesses, and how big capital eliminates jobs rather than creating them. He also calls on his followers to dismantle oligarchy.

Yet he remains silent on Jamaat-e-Islami’s massive oligarchic power. Mir Quasem Ali, a founder of Jamaat and Islami Chhatra Shibir, the student wing of Jamaat, raised huge funds from Saudi Arabia and other places. He was the founding vice chairman of Islami Bank Bangladesh Limited and owned a wide range of corporations across healthcare, transport, banking, telecom, media, and education. He also owned big businesses like the Ibn Sina Trust, Diganta Media, and the Keari Limited. Jamaat leaders established numerous madrassas across Bangladesh, as well as universities like the Manarat International University and the International Islamic University Chittagong. Jamaat is now actively working to restore the economic power that it lost during the Awami regime. Here, Pinaki’s hollow appropriation of leftist social justice rhetoric becomes clear. He talks about breaking up big capital and oligarchy but remains silent about Jamaat’s huge oligarchic power and NCP’s close proximity to the Jamaat-led oligarchy.

Strategy Six: Storytelling

Pinaki is an exceptional storyteller. Using narratives, data, statistics, videos, and so-called “scholarly” sources, he convinces audiences of the credibility of his arguments while skillfully decrying intellectualism as an elite pursuit. He entertains followers by using sexist slurs against his opponents. He uses colloquial Bangla to connect with the masses. Most of his followers are exhausted by day-to-day struggles for survival. They lack the time, energy, or critical-thinking training to verify Pinaki’s “irrefutable” evidence. They hear what Pinaki says—but they lack the bandwidth to identify what he doesn’t say. That is why Pinaki can mobilize outrageous mobs against Indian influence while conveniently ignoring Chinese or U.S. imperialism. His followers learn to hate cultural and economic elites like Prothom Alo, The Daily Star, and Chhayanaut, while remaining indifferent to Jamaat’s oligarchic power.

Pinaki himself talks about narrative resources as a form of state power. What he doesn’t say is that he himself actively constructs a right-wing populist narrative. From abroad, he continues to influence political, economic, and social institutions and processes in Bangladesh. His populism hijacks the language of social justice and inspires people to dream of dismantling the systemic oppression perpetuated by the elites, but he very cleverly conceals from his followers the fact that his populism serves the interests of certain groups, political parties, and big capital.

In Bangladesh, many leftist and progressive populist politicians, academics, and activists have long been engaged in grassroots movements and writing. But the unfortunate truth is that the public does not follow grassroots movements unless the situation becomes extremely dire or directly affects their personal lives and interests. People also lack the patience to read long texts and think them through. The reach of social media among the general population in Bangladesh has now become alarming. Social media has effectively overridden all other sources of information, including the mainstream media, books, newspapers, magazines, and other educational sources. If alternative and genuinely anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, decolonial, and feminist progressive narratives are not created and circulated on social media, the reach of Pinaki and so-called populist “activists” like him will continue to grow.

The general public will entrust these populists, like Pinaki, with the responsibility of knowledge production and unquestioningly accept them as authoritative figures. Exploiting this opportunity, Pinaki and his ilk will continue to popularize their politics of nationalist hatred and violence while consolidating their own interests. Meanwhile, Bangladesh’s working people, women, religiously minoritized communities, Indigenous communities, people of diverse gender identities, and all those in various marginalized and minoritized positions—who are far removed from being part of the big capital as Pinaki insinuates—will continue to suffer from hardships day after day, with no sign of hope.

Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this piece was originally published in Bangla on Bangladesh Feminist Archive. The piece has been updated and translated for Jamhoor by the author.

Nafisa Nipun Tanjeem is an educator, researcher, writer, and organizer. She currently serves as an Associate Professor in the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies at Worcester State University in the United States.

The ongoing debate within Pakistan’s Left reveals how thoroughly its dominant frameworks have hardened into habits of thought incapable of grasping contemporary political reality. The recent interventions by Ammar Ali Jan, Syed Azeem and Muhammad Umar Ali, and Ayyaz Mallick seek strategic clarity in the aftermath of the latest confrontation between India and Pakistan, but each relies on conceptual reflexes inherited from an earlier moment. These reflexes presume that the state remains a coherent vessel of political possibility, that sovereignty can be retrieved through correct geopolitical alignment, and that the masses exist as a latent unity waiting to be summoned. Against this imaginary, it is necessary to describe how the Pakistani state and global capital actually operate through differentiated extraction, coercion and abandonment, how movements emerge from specific sites of exposure and endurance, and why leadership that continually invokes unity cannot meet the conditions it claims to diagnose.

Ammar Ali Jan’s intervention is built on the assumption that the Pakistani state, though compromised, can reorganise society if a sovereign project is articulated with sufficient clarity. His argument turns on the claim that postcolonial states retain a legitimate right to self defence against external aggression and that the Left must acknowledge this right. This framing depends on abstracting Pakistan from the material architecture that constitutes it. Pakistan does not confront imperialism as a unified political subject. It is organised through overlapping networks of militarised development, financial dependency and bureaucratic governance that distribute protection and exposure unevenly. Frantz Fanon’s account of how postcolonial states inherit racialised, gendered and classed hierarchies helps to clarify this structure.Identification systems, welfare schemes, development and security projects, policing and land grabs sort people into those whose lives the state protects and those it treats as expendable.

Uneven Masses

Seen from this perspective, the social terrain that Jan calls “the people” or “the masses” is not a single formation awaiting ideological coherence. It is an uneven field composed of precarious urban workers pushed through unstable labour markets, rural households trapped in debt and dispossession, women whose labour remains elastic and unrecognised, migrants whose remittances uphold the economy while their own lives remain peripheral to state’s concerns, climate displaced families navigating repeated loss, caste marked communities living under permanent suspicion, and queer and trans collectivities who absorb overlapping forms of policing and social violence. These differentiated conditions do not signal ideological confusion. They express the patterned effects of how power distributes vulnerability and privilege.

Work on contemporary imperialism, including Samir Amin’s analysis of unequal exchange and dependent accumulation, helps to clarify this structure. For Amin, global capital subordinates peripheral economies through debt, extraction and political disciplining. Pakistan’s integration into circuits of accumulation follows this logic. Negotiation does not occur from a position of sovereign choice. It takes place from within relations already organised by dependency. Jan’s claim that Pakistan can reclaim sovereignty by pivoting toward Asia rests on ignoring how Chinese investment, debt restructuring and corridor projects reproduce forms of dependency that are imperial in their effects. Credit arrangements, mineral concessions and logistical integration discipline domestic politics through financial imperatives and security commitments. The fact that these processes do not rely on a dense network of bases does not make them neutral.

Jan also misreads contemporary imperial relations when he draws a sharp line between the violent architecture of the United States and the supposedly benign rise of China. Peripheral states do not step outside imperial hierarchies by changing patrons. Debt and resource capture fold them back into the same order through different channels. Financial power can operate without overt military domination and reorganise life through economic capture rather than territorial conquest. Extractive power now often functions through dispersed arrangements that rely on corridors, security enclosures, debt relations and flexible appropriation of territories and bodies. These dynamics are embedded in development schemes, remittance economies, labour mobility regimes and the infrastructures of corridor projects that reconfigure space without formal occupation. Treating China as non-imperial because it does not mirror the base infrastructure of the United States misunderstands how present day imperial relations operate through combinations of financialisation, extraction and mediated governance rather than simple conquest.

Jan frames disagreement as a failure of others to “decide,” accusing them of retreating into “safe scholarship” and avoiding the tragic choices demanded by history. The decision he advances is not grounded in the material conditions under which the state operates. It is grounded in moral affirmation. The question becomes whether Pakistan “retains the right to defend itself,” instead of whether it possesses the material capacity to act independently within a global hierarchy structured by debt, security rents, military patronage, IMF supervision and corridor based integration into Chinese and Gulf capital. In this configuration, sovereignty is invoked as a moral claim rather than examined as a material condition. Dependency is treated as a matter of attitude rather than architecture. This is exactly the trap that Amin describes when nationalist discourse invokes sovereignty as if it were held in reserve, while the actual position of the state in the world economy has already been organised by collective imperial power.

Fanon is instructive here for another reason. When postcolonial elites invoke unity or national destiny, they often mobilise universals to suppress antagonisms rooted in class, gender, caste and racialised exposure. Jan follows this trajectory. He insists that the Left must suspend its analysis of internal repression and national oppression in order to affirm the state’s right to self defence. The distinction between external sovereignty and internal justice is presented as a matter of sequence. One must come before the other. Fanon’s warning was that such sequencing allows the postcolonial bourgeoisie to consolidate its position while postponing the transformation of the conditions that shape everyday life. Jan repeats that operation by asking movements confronting dispossession, disappearances and militarised policing to treat their own struggles as secondary to a national project that has consistently organised itself against them. Shortly after this debate, the aftermath of the India-Pakistan exchange made that sequencing concrete. Appeals to national defence moved alongside the establishment of a new federal court, proposals for a twenty seventh amendment and an intensified clampdown on dissent. The language of sovereignty travelled with institutional changes that extend state power and narrow avenues of contestation. In that context, Jan’s framework does more than misdescribe the terrain. It normalises the expectation that those already living with dispossession and militarised control should set aside their own struggles in order to preserve a state that continues to govern them as expendable.

Maurizio Lazzarato helps to name the language that accompanies this movement. In his account of the impasses of critical thought after the 1970s, he traces how universals such as “the people,” “sovereignty,” “nation,” “unity” and “decision” persist as rhetorical anchors long after the material bases of collective political agency have been eroded by financialisation, debt governance, militarised globalisation and logistical rationalisation. These terms no longer correspond to organised subjects. They operate as stand-     ins for strategies that no longer exist. They appear when the Left cannot account for the mechanisms of domination and instead invokes abstract cohesion. Jan’s repeated appeals to “the people,” “the nation,” “sovereignty” and a “national popular project” are not grounded in institutional capacity or social formation. They cover the gap between the world he describes and the world he wants to summon. 

Universal language smooths over differentiation and presents unity as a starting point rather than a problem. The more differentiated the social terrain becomes, the more Jan leans on universal terms. The more diminished the state’s capacity, the more he insists on its necessity. Amin’s account of how nationalist discourse slides from opposition into the management of dependency sits in the background here, marking the point where invocations of sovereignty no longer confront the global order but help to administer it.

Pakistan’s governance architecture, including documentation regimes, counterterror finance, securitised development and colonial policing, organises distinctions along lines of region, sect, ethnicity, class and race. When Jan asserts that Pakistan’s right to self defence must be affirmed, he speaks in the register of universality while leaving these internal divisions intact. The state does not defend an undifferentiated “people.” It defends an order built on hierarchical distributions of security and exposure. 

Jan’s reading of Mao reinforces these problems. He presents Mao’s temporary collaboration with the Kuomintang as a precedent for supporting Pakistan’s military under conditions of external threat. The analogy extracts the tactic and leaves behind the strategy. Mao’s alliances were subordinated to mass mobilisation, land reform, armed organisation and the construction of counter power. They presumed a capacity to analyse the coordination of imperial forces and to intervene at points of rupture. Jan keeps the image of alliance and abandons the work that made it meaningful. Mao becomes a justification for trusting a military that remains central to Pakistan’s rentier order, rather than a figure for building antagonistic capacity against it.

Azeem and Umar Ali appear, at first, to stand at the opposite pole. They reject what they see as HKP’s capitulation to national defence and call for “revolutionary militant people’s struggles” against Western, Indian and Chinese imperialism. Their identification of Hindutva fascism, intensified repression in Kashmir and expanding resource grabs is important. Their wider history of Left alignments across South Asia traces real debates. But their diagnosis repeats the same abstraction. Imperialism is condensed into a single axis along which all actors can be placed. Differentiated movements across Pakistan are treated as distractions from a unified people’s war that exists only on paper. Their proposal does not confront the constraints imposed by debt, border regimes, logistical corridors and security infrastructures. It imagines a subject capable of fighting multiple fronts without considering how that subject is fragmented by the very conditions they name.

Their reliance on older Leninist and Maoist categories assumes a mass subject capable of consolidation through a vanguard party, even though the unified industrial proletariat that underwrote those strategies no longer exists. The landscape is fractured by financialisation, caste and gendered violence, ecological precarity, migration and militarised borders. Invoking a people’s war across this terrain does not answer the question of organisation. It relocates it into a horizon that cannot be reached. The party form becomes a shell that claims authority without demonstrating capacity.

Ayyaz Mallick seeks to escape these closures through a call for a pluri-national consciousness. He criticises metropolitan sections of the Lahore Left for collapsing into nationalist sentiment and for drawing simplistic analogies between Pakistan and Palestine. He points to the fusion of external dependency with internal regimes of national oppression. His critique of convivial nationalist rhetoric and of the Lahore based convergence around war patriotism is necessary. His proposal still returns to the expectation that unity can be reconstructed at the level of a national popular project. Contradictions that have material origins are redirected into a question of a proper ideological frame. The assumption that consciousness at the scale of the nation can be recalibrated to hold together divergent experiences of dispossession reduces the problem to one of naming rather than organisation.

In this situation, the language used against social movements does a particular job. When Jan sneers at “social movementism,” or Azeem and Ali reduce decades of struggle to MRD/NGO pipelines, they are not really describing movements. They are defending the right of parties to remain central even when they are peripheral. They are protecting their own position as interpreters of a landscape they do not organise. The more a social movement demonstrates the capacity to think, act and endure without party leadership, the more vicious the labels become. Calling movements “messianic,” “sectarian,” “liberal,” “NGO,” “safe” does not further analysis. It polices the boundary of who is allowed to speak as the Left.

A Left Removed

Leadership in the Left has withdrawn from the terrains where people confront extraction, abandonment and coercion. C. L. R. James described how leadership often substitutes proclamation for movement, confusing analysis with organisation and commentary with presence. This distance was exposed during the recent India–Pakistan exchange. While commentators debated principles in Lahore and Karachi, residents of Rawalakot and surrounding areas endured nightly shelling, blackouts and the disruption of daily life. Conversations with activists from Azad Kashmir revealed how artillery fire reorganised everyday routines in ways absent from metropolitan Left discourse. Leadership continues to speak from afar, avoiding the difficult, necessary work of building infrastructures of protection, mutual aid and organisation in the places where people live under fire.

Across Pakistan, people craft forms of coordination where the state withdraws or intensifies coercion. Neighbourhood protection networks, feminist, queer and trans collectivities, women’s groups, student solidarities, anti displacement committees, informal care infrastructures, debt sharing practices and climate relief efforts arise from necessity, not from ideological permission. These formations are prefigurative in the sense that Benjamin Raekstad and others describe. They emerge from improvisational practices through which people survive in hostile conditions and experiment with forms of collective life that do not wait for sanction from centralised organisations. They materialise in the ways displaced families share risk, in solidarities forged at sites of extraction, in relationships of care that move across caste and class divisions during crisis, and in refusal practices that interrupt the smooth reproduction of domination. They inhabit contradiction rather than resolve it and show that political invention arises from shared exposure rather than from the command of leadership.

This is the terrain of destituent politics that Mario Tronti and others have analysed. Destitution does not mean simple destruction of institutions. It names the process by which people withdraw adherence from forms that no longer hold political possibility and build relations elsewhere. In Pakistan, this appears when movements bypass party structures to organise legal defence, mutual aid, strike funds and protest camps, when they refuse to recognise courts, commissions or negotiations that function only to delay and deflect, and when they create their own protocols for protection and accountability. The party form is not abolished by decree. It is left behind in practice.

The crisis of Pakistan’s Left does not begin with theoretical confusion. It begins with the distance between where people build political capacity and where leadership situates itself. Movements confronting land extraction, debt, disappearances, policing, ecological destruction, queer and trans precarity and gendered violence already produce analyses that exceed metropolitan commentary. They do not need to be folded into pre-existing lines. They need organisations willing to stand inside them. A Left committed to transformation would start from this recognition, stop demanding that movements subordinate themselves to national projects that cannot hold them, and join the plebeian terrain where people are already organising against dispossession and repression, allowing those struggles to reorder what leadership imagines politics to be.

The Pakistani state organises life through extraction, coercion and abandonment. Movements organise life through care, refusal and invention. A Left serious about transformation would begin from this distinction. It would step into the exposures where struggle unfolds, confront its own distance from the terrain and abandon exhausted organisational forms. Pakistan is already undergoing this reconfiguration. The question is whether those who speak in the name of the Left are prepared to catch up.

Sher Ali Khan is a researcher, journalist, and organizer whose work examines how crisis, capital, and state power shape differentiated life in Pakistan and the broader Global South. He is also the creator and host of the Organic Filaments Network, a platform for rigorous political and theoretical conversations with scholars, organizers, and movements.

Over half a century after the 1971 war, the internment of Bengalis in Pakistan remains a missing chapter in the history of South Asia. 

After Pakistan’s surrender in Dhaka in December 1971, the world’s gaze fixed on the carnage of the nine-month war and the fate of 93,000 Pakistani soldiers held as prisoners of war (POWs) in India. But invisible to the world, another story was unfolding a thousand miles away from Dhaka inside West Pakistan.

Cast as ‘traitors’

Pakistan had begun to intern Bengali citizens living in West Pakistan as leverage for the release of its POWs. 

Pakistan’s intelligence services started loyalty screenings that singled out ‘Bengalis’ as a threat to national security. Bureaucrats, professionals, and servicemen were dismissed from jobs, forced onto leave, as well as publicly branded ‘disloyal.’ 

Thousands of Bengalis — military officers, civil servants, teachers, doctors — were rounded up, stripped of their rights, and confined in internment camps. These were not enemy combatants. These were citizens who were, overnight, declared ‘traitors.’ 

The Urdu press fed the frenzy, portraying Bengali leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman as an ‘Indian stooge’. On 12 July 1971, the editor of the Nawa-i-Waqt branded Mujib a ‘traitor’ – who plotted with India to break up Pakistan. Cartoons of Mujib emerged in multiple forms, where Mujib is portrayed as a leashed lion, an ‘agent of India’, in line with other depictions as a ‘stooge of Indira Gandhi’, and ‘enemy’ of Pakistan.

By mid-1971, the anti-Bengali campaign in West Pakistan became systematic. Bengali families were barred from leaving the country. Passports were confiscated and bank accounts were frozen. Thousands of Bengalis were loaded onto buses and trains, with windows covered to avoid a public spectacle.

A Network of Camps

An estimated 80,000 Bengalis were detained across West Pakistan. The internment camps were a mix of forts, factories, schools, and military barracks.

Shagai Fort, a crumbling colonial outpost near the Afghan border, was one of the more notorious camps, where thousands of Bengalis were detained. In Spring 1971, a group of Bengali soldiers who had served in the Pakistan army was interned in the camp. New batches of internees kept arriving till 1973, which made it the biggest internee camp. 

Conditions in the camp deteriorated with each new round of internments. Food and space was shared between more people. 

The camp was divided into three parts: a camp which housed civilians, a camp which housed non-combatant military-civil servicepersons, and a camp for serving military personnel. Notable internees included Tabarak Hussain, the former director-general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Major Taher Quddus, who was serving as defence attaché in New Delhi in April 1971. 

Survivors recall “twenty men in a room, no beds, no medicine,” as outbreaks of fever and chickenpox swept through the camp. Overcrowding, abysmal sanitary conditions and the dearth of clean clothing contributed to outbreaks of infectious diseases. At least three internees died of chickenpox. 

Colonial Fort to Internment Camp: 

In Balochistan, the colonial-era Sandeman Fort was converted into an internment camp which housed nearly 10,000 Bengali internees. Crammed into unfinished buildings, internees were forced to construct the buildings themselves. Families were squeezed into single rooms, separated only by torn blankets. 

Like Shagai Fort, internees were divided by rank, which determined their access to basic needs. While officers received a limited amount of medical care, lower-ranking soldiers and civilians received none. Sepoy Slahadat-Ulla, who received an artificial leg to treat him during his internment, notes that the Pakistani army charged him Rs. 400 for the operation. 

Detainees lived under the constant threat of violence. Punishments for trying to escape included beatings. Those who got caught were moved to other camps, including Jamrud Fort and Khajuri Fort in Balochistan and Lyallpur Jail in Punjab. They were put in solitary confinement. 

Those who could not endure the conditions of the camp were classified as ‘pagals’ (mad). Ironically, it is these ‘pagal’ soldiers that were repatriated to Bangladesh first in 1973 as a ‘message of goodwill’ from Pakistan. 

Other internees attempted to build a community behind the barbed wire of the camps. At Sandeman, parents got together to set up makeshift classrooms for children to ensure they do not miss school. 

Bargaining Chips

The omission of the story of interned Bengalis from the 1971 war asks questions about which histories are written and which histories are forgotten in South Asia.

More than 50 years later, official histories ignore the internment of Bengalis in Pakistan. School textbooks make no mention of it. Public commemorations ignore it. Even in Bangladesh, narrations of the liberation struggle have forgotten the Bengalis interned in West Pakistan. 

Survivors describe this silence as a second imprisonment. 

The detainees were not just prisoners. For Pakistan, they were bargaining chips, which were used as leverage to secure the return of Pakistani POWs in India, avoid war crimes trials, and delay the recognition of Bangladesh. 

The Bengali internment camps in West Pakistan remind us how states weaponise bureaucracy and identity. They reveal the ease with which citizenship in South Asia can be revoked, rights stripped, and entire communities erased. For those who endured captivity, remembering is not simply about revisiting the past — it is about warning that citizenship is always under question when belonging is defined by ethnicity and politics. 

The internment of Bengalis is an emblematic instance of bureaucratic repression within a postcolony with parallels with  the internment of ‘enemy aliens’ in the United States and the United Kingdom during the World Wars. However, the legacies of 1971’s internment of Bengalis in West Pakistan are neither limited to this ethnic group nor restricted to that time. Instead, resonances of internment can be seen in how the contemporary Pakistani state continues to label different social groups as ‘enemies of the state.’

It is not the membership of political community that grants citizenship and inalienable human rights, but the notions of belonging. The Bengali internment confirms that they did not ‘belong to the nation,’ even though they were still citizens of the nation-state of Pakistan. 

Forgotten ‘Repatriates’

In August 1973, India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh signed a tripartite agreement which allowed Pakistan’s Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to secure the release of thousands of prisoners of war. 

Bangladesh accepted the return of interned Bengalis, who would now become its citizens. By mid-1974, nearly 120,000 Bengalis had been repatriated from Pakistan, including those held in jails and mental institutions. 

However, interned Bengalis faced a different reality upon their return. Yet homecoming brought stigma, not celebration. Many were branded collaborators, denied promotions, or dismissed from service. Some carried a cruel label: ‘bastard repatriates.’

Among them was Shafiul Azam, former chief secretary of East Pakistan, who had spent years in internment camps. Despite his seniority, Azam was ostracized after being accused of being “anti-Bangladesh” for allegedly appearing in a Pakistani propaganda film. Observers say Sheikh Mujibur Rahman himself held a negative opinion of Azam, at one point refusing to hear someone speak his name.

Tabarak Hussain, a senior diplomat, was trapped in Pakistan with his family during the war and interned until 1974. Upon his return to Bangladesh, he was demoted. A British envoy lamented the fall of “an able and honourable public servant … reduced to the status of a political pawn.”

Political tides shifted in Bangladesh for some former detainees. After Mujib’s assassination in 1975, many repatriated officers got important positions. Tabarak Hussain was made Bangladesh’s foreign secretary during the General Ziaur Rahman dictatorship.

The divide between repatriates and freedom fighters went beyond rank or pay. It was rooted in questions of loyalty and sacrifice. 

The psychological scars of internment in Pakistan and suspicions about their loyalties in Bangladesh remain alive. Many survivors conceal their internment and repatriation stories fearing government scrutiny. The children of internees continue to grow up under the same shadow. Academic Amena Mohsin, herself aged 14 when she was interned, notes that when she began researching the topic, many survivors asked her not to publish their stories due to the stigma. 

The position of Bengali repatriates in South Asia can be described by Haitian anthropologist Michel-Rolph Trouillot phrase: “silences within silences.” 

Their story opens up important questions: will Pakistan and Bangladesh ever acknowledge their internments in its official history? Will Pakistan learn from the systemic internment of its own citizens in 1971-1974? Will the voices of the interned Bengalis be heard?

Ilyas Chattha is a Professor of History at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS). He is the author of Citizens to Traitors: Bengali Internment in Pakistan, 1971–1974 (Cambridge, 2025); The Punjab Borderland (Cambridge, 2022), Partition and Locality (Oxford, 2012)

Everyone – except for its perpetrators and benefactors, of course – acted shocked and surprised to have witnessed the destruction of Babri Masjid on December 6th, 1992. It was as if the violent, bloodthirsty mob, had come from nowhere, acted without directions, and demolished a monumental mosque without a plan or infrastructure. We were told there was no lead-up to the murder of Babri. It only had an aftermath – one we must reconcile with and be ready for more, at Kashi and Mathura. With the courts acquitting all 32 accused of the destruction, the mob has also now vanished. To borrow a Bollywood title, no one demolished Babri.

However, the destruction of the 16th century mosque was, obviously, not without a plan. Courageous truth tellers like AG Noorani have provided enough investigative and educational material detailing the preparations undertaken. We have evidence of rehearsals before the event, and confessions in its aftermath. Some were immediate, in the many pictures taken by photographers Praveen Jain and Raghu Rai, and some retrospective. The latest comes from former Chief Justice of India, DY Chandrachud (who wrote the land off to the Hindus in 2019) that he considers the construction of the mosque itself, under the Mughal ruler Babar in 1527, as “the fundamental act of desecration.” For the much-admired judge, the modern-era myth of a Ram temple preceding the mosque stands as legal truth, while the material presence of the medieval mosque symbolises invasive sacrilege.

But I want to draw the reader’s attention to something institutional, something seemingly banal, something that in the noise of Hindu nationalism has escaped our cognition. The former prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi is credited (or blamed, depending on your political inclinations) for opening the doors of Babri Masjid in 1986 and rekindling the desires of its destruction. In her book ‘How Prime Ministers Decide,’ Neerja Choudhury writes that this was his bid for a few last gasps before the setting of his own political sun. Hindus were angry at Rajiv Gandhi’s handling of the Shah Bano case and he responded by opening the locks of Babri Masjid. But lurking in the legalese surrounding Babri and its aftermath, is a term, a juridical category called ‘disputed sites’, which in fact sowed the seeds of Babri’s destruction nearly four decades before Rajiv Gandhi’s desperate act.

The Babri Playbook 

In 2024, Vishnu Shanker – a lawyer infamous for replaying the Babri playbook at Gyanvapi Mosque in Varanasi and Shahi Eidgah in Mathura – filed yet another plea in a court in Sambhal, Uttar Pradesh. His target was the Shahi Jama Masjid in the north Indian town, a mosque hitherto known only to locals or Mughal history enthusiasts. He claimed, following the cliché, that this 16th century mosque was also built over an ancient temple, one dedicated to Lord Kalki.

The courts responded as if following a well-known script, and ordered the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) to survey the mosque, in flagrant violation of the Places of Worship Act 1991. The Act prohibits the conversion of any place of worship and mandates that the religious character of each place must be maintained as it was on August 15, 1947. It aims to preserve communal harmony by freezing the status of religious sites, including temples, mosques, churches, and gurdwaras, and by ending all pending legal disputes over their conversion. The local Muslim community opposed the survey. Their protests were met with violence and five people were killed. Several others, all Muslims, were later arrested under draconian terrorism-related laws.

The case went on and was challenged in the Allahabad High Court – the state’s highest court. In March 2025, the court classified the mosque as ‘disputed site,’ and ordered a sign marking it as such to be pasted on the mosque compound’s wall. Four months later, on July 3rd, a plea filed in Chandausi Court in Uttar Pradesh asked for a ban on namaaz being offered in the Sambhal mosque. It argued that a disputed structure cannot be considered a mosque and hence cannot be used to offer namaz or any other Islamic practice.

The category of disputed site or structure is a hauntingly familiar one in India’s history of violence on Muslims. It demands a critical examination of this seemingly banal jurisprudence. The rhetoric surrounding Babri Masjid, too, claimed that Muslims should not pray there because Islam does not allow namaz at a disputed site. What was missed was the question: Who declared it a disputed site, and why should we accept it as such?

Arbitrary Law, Hindutva Power

What makes a site disputed is unclear and the process by which a mosque is declared ‘disputed’ is legally baseless. It has arbitrariness built into it and arbitrary law, as Edmund Burke reminds us, is no law at all.

In a rather easy exposé of the Babri playbook and as something of an admission of guilt, those demanding that the Sambhal mosque be declared disputed used Babri to legitimise their claims. They argued that this change of status is “…a legal process”. There is, however, no provision in Indian law that allows a property to be declared disputed merely on a claim without documentary evidence like land deeds or proofs of inheritance or purchase.

In the case of Babri too, there was no documentary evidence, and therefore, no legal process, doctrine or precedence that justified its declaration as disputed in 1949. The Babri Masjid case was a title suit; the Muslim plaintiffs had documentary evidence dating back to the mosque’s construction, while the Hindu plaintiffs had no such documents, only myths. Myths of a temple at the site of Ram’s birth, with ASI’s BB Lal, a long time Sangh affiliate, standing in as expert archaeologist, and a supposed miracle. On December 23rd, 1949, Babri was declared disputed after some Hindu priests allegedly placed idols in the mosque and claimed their  appearance as miraculous. It was this mischief, and not a law, documentary claim, or established jurisprudential tradition that led to the mosque being declared disputed. An act that would otherwise count as public threat, desecration and crime under India’s penal code, became the grounds for recasting Babri Masjid as disputed property.

The legal sanction of disputed-ness that follows the precedence of Babri is not only deeply flawed but also dangerous. It admits that the power of Hindutva means it needs nothing to validate its claims – it is its own claimant, judge, and jury. When the courts saw that the ‘miraculous appearance’ of idols can threaten peace and instigate violence, they quickly declared the mosque disputed, possibly to pacify the raging emotions that those who placed the idols in the mosque had themselves created. This rationale legitimizes manipulation of the legal system using threat of public violence – something no scholar of law anywhere in the world would condone. Babri was declared disputed not because there was some legally maintainable property dispute, but because not doing so would have invited large scale violence. There was a threat of the skies falling, and therefore, justice was denied.

Criminal Mosques 

The term ‘disputed site’ enables violence. It is therefore nefarious to present this term as banal legal procedure (as Vishnu Shanker recently did), or an artefact of legalese, harmless nomenclature or judicial tradition. It is crucial to recognise how the term enables religious dispossession and the criminalization of Muslim spaces.

For a mosque to become disputed, it is first stripped of its religious status as a mosque, at least in part, and then constructed as a site of securitization, as a threat to peace and order. The mosque becomes a site of suspicion, where conspiracies, not prayer, are performed, and where theft and violence, and not heavenly redemption and peace, are sought. All sections of modern society – the police, courts, citizenry and media – look at mosques as security threats in general. The term disputed sites offers legal validation to this gaze.

Similar to Babri and Sambhal, Gyanvapi Masjid has been cordoned off, though namaaz is still being held in a highly securitised and tense environment. Any photography around the mosque is prohibited unless ordered by the court. The Sambhal mosque’s management has lost autonomy over its functioning and was forced to seek the court’s permission to decorate it for Eid. The mere act of decorating – an expression of joy and celebration – came to be seen as suspicious, and potentially malicious. They were also denied permission to whitewash the mosque for Eid, with the courts asking the ASI to do it instead. The ASI obliged, lest Muslims do something to invalidate the department’s eventual legitimization of a Hindu past buried under the mosque.

Crucially, however in both Babri and Sambhal, Hindu claimants appealed that under their constitutional right to the freedom of religious practice, they must be allowed to perform puja on the mosque site. Some kept idols inside Babri Masjid to do so and finally achieved a large temple there. In other cases, such as at Gyanvapi, the courts have designated spaces within the mosque property for Hindu rituals. The appeal of Hindus to the freedom of religious practice became the pathway to stop Muslims from practicing theirs. While Hindus invoked their constitutional rights, those of Muslims were undermined.

Muslim Life as Crime

The apparent neutrality of the term ‘disputed sites’ obfuscates reality and projects a lie. It gives the false impression that conflict over religious sites is commonplace and equally prevalent in India’s various religious communities. That every religious community is fighting every other community over religious sites. In reality, these attacks are launched exclusively by the coalition of Hindutva and only on Muslims. Attacks on architectural heritage are unilaterally committed by Hindutva and the dispossession and criminalization that follows is exclusively that of Muslims.

It is the desire of Hindutva to dig under Islamic architecture until a shard can be found to construct a history and project a violent future. No temple has been dug under by the ASI to “ascertain” – as our former Chief Justice suggested – its “true religious character.” Even though many Hindu temples were built atop Buddhist and Jain shrines, as documented by historian DN Jha in ‘Against the Grain: Notes on Identity, Intolerance and History,’ and admitted by Swami Vivekananda himself. Following other fascist regimes in the history of the modern world, Hindutva uses archaeology as a vehicle of destruction, dispossession, and criminalization of the nation-state’s other – the Muslims. Just like the terms ‘communal violence’ or ‘riots,’ hide the reality of unilateral violence on Muslims and assign equal damage and power to ‘both sides,’ the term ‘disputed site’ presents a dangerously false picture.

The destruction of Islamic heritage (both architectural and cultural) in India is located within the wider criminalization of Muslims. This year’s Eid was the most explicitly criminalized in our times. The state warned Muslims that praying on the road would result in their passports and driving licenses being revoked, even though religious and wedding processions are routinely assigned space on roads in India, and large gatherings such as Eid prayers often spill into the streets given space constraints in mosques. While such orders criminalize Muslim prayer, other rife conspiracy theories such as “Love Jihad” criminalize love between Muslims and Hindus, “Land Jihad” criminalizes Muslim housing, “Vote Jihad” criminalizes Muslim franchise, and Spit Jihad criminalizes Muslim business.

The criminalization of Muslims is not a by‑product of Hindu nationalism but its organizing principle. It is the animating fantasy of the Sangh Parivar that the country can be made whole only when a fifth of its population is rendered perpetually provisional, a suspect community on probation in a homeland that claims to pre‑date their very existence. The RSS ideal, dressed up as “cultural nationalism,” is in fact a textbook case of ethno-supremacy by instalments. It insists that India is not merely a state but a civilizational organism whose true self is Hindu, into which Muslims may be tolerated only as penitent guests. Their historical presence – as merchants and monarchs – is recast as occupation; their monuments – mosques, mausoleums, and markets – as scars; their political claims – equal franchise, right to the city, and natural justice – as insolence; and their social life – to love, to eat, and to pray – as conspiracy. Once this metaphysics is granted, every Muslim demand for equality appears as a kind of lèse‑majesté against the majority faith, a standing insult that must be policed.

The genius of the RSS‑BJP project is to fuse private vandalism and intimidation with public law. Vigilante mobs, piously devoted to bovine welfare, perform the rough work of killing, while the state murmurs about “law and order” and then remembers, conveniently, to charge the victims. The grammar of Muslim criminalization is routinised to such a degree that in a self-proclaimed secular democracy, discrimination in citizenship can be justified as an act of historical correction or, more ironically, of amnesty. Architecture suffers a similar fate. Courts, for their part, learn to speak a new dialect in which the demolition of a mosque can be solemnly rewarded with a temple, vandalism is celebrated as redemption, and segregation of neighbourhoods by law  articulated as maintaining peace. A secular constitution is thus hollowed out from within, not torn up but quietly re‑annotated in saffron ink.

Hindu supremacist politics in contemporary India has not merely vilified Muslims; it has reconfigured them as a problem to be managed, spatially and legally, within the imagined Hindu nation. This is not only a matter of speech acts and laws, but of how neighbourhoods are (re)mapped, how streets are patrolled, how ruins and new monuments are made to speak. The criminalization of Muslims unfolds, in other words, as a project of remaking the city and the polity at the same time.

Islamic architecture shares a dialectic relationship with the Muslim citizen. The space and its inhabitants, are both made into a threat. The use of spurious legal tools like ‘disputed sites’ constitutes the mechanics of this dialectic of criminalisation. To term a mosque disputed and brand it on its walls is a blatant act of criminalization that opens the path towards destruction and dispossession. In the process, it builds the image of the Muslim in India – an image rendered suspect through, and in, space and form. The arrest of the mosque committee in Sambhal is thus the expected outcome of the grammar of criminalisation. 

Scrutinising the Banal

It is tragic that our appeals against Hindutva aggression on mosques are still stuck in the trap of evidence. There is enough archaeological literature to show that firstly, the Indo-Gangetic plains have created layers upon layers of multi-cultural archaeological evidence over time that cannot be classified as Hindu or Muslim. Secondly, that fragments found underground can be interpreted by organizations such as the ASI to meet statist ends. We have, as collective opposition, failed to understand the attack on Islamic architecture within the larger paradigm of Muslim criminalization in India.

A new direction of thinking would demand a closer scrutiny of the banal – of legal processes that displace and attack architecture years before its actual vandalism. The dialectic between the Muslim body and Muslim space, and their relationship with law and its banalities, needs closer scrutiny. We need rigorous critique of architectural historiography as well as the contemporary meanings of monuments and ruins. An investigation into legal categories like ‘disputed sites’ is a beginning in this direction.

The legal scholar Robert Cover famously wrote, “Legal interpretation takes place in a field of pain and death.” Learning from Babri and Sambhal, where malicious agendas are disguised as procedure, where nefarious acts are validated as miracles, and where violence holds the course of justice hostage, we might add to Cover’s warning and say that jurisprudence, terminology, and legal semantics also play out in the field of pain and death. Unlike a poem or a novel that can be variously interpreted, there are greater stakes when laws are read, written or used arbitrarily – or worse, through an overtly supremacist lens. Instead of legitimising the term ‘disputed site,’ and enabling its use to displace and demolish mosques, there is only one action that courts in India must follow – reject such claims with heavy penalties.

To remind ourselves of Hannah Arendt, it is here, in the banality of the state’s actions and legal semantics, in actions and things that become everyday legal procedures and language, that we find the most horrifying technologies of violence.

Fahad Zuberi is a doctoral scholar in Architectural History, Theory and Criticism at MIT. His research is located at the intersection of architecture and violence.

Jamhoor has published two articles that explicitly attack the position and politics of the Haqooq-e-Khalq Party (HKP), particularly our stance during the recent Indo-Pak war. While both articles took an unnecessarily hostile and polemical tone to mischaracterize HKP’s position, they nonetheless provide an opportunity for dialogue on the ideological and political divergences within Pakistan’s Left. I engage in this debate in the spirit of propelling the discussion forward on how to reconstruct a Left capable of meeting the challenges of the contemporary moment.

In this article, I make three broad interventions. First, I respond to Ayyaz Malick’s criticism of our positions, exposing the ahistorical and, ultimately, apolitical character of his argument. Second, I engage with Syed Azeem and Umar Ali’s polemic, demonstrating how it represents a messianic form of politics that takes flight from any concrete reality (or even possibility), an analytical framework that can only end in disappointment and dissolution. Both perspectives, I argue, only worsen the paralysis and disorientation of the Left at a moment when the decaying imperialist system is preparing for wars of annihilation in the global South and social movements struggle to forge popular unity. Finally, I argue that the way forward for the Left in Pakistan is to simultaneously address the concerns of sovereignty, imperialist intervention and internal repression, with all the contradictions that such a task entails.

Contradictions Abound

Mallick’s article levels a number of allegations against HKP without either justifying his claims or addressing the key issues at stake. The title of his essay, “Anti-Imperialism and Geopolitical Binaries,” encapsulates his central charge: that we “reduce everything happening” to geopolitical rivalries between the US and China. Yet, he offers no proof for this sweeping claim. This lack of evidence for what is presumably his primary argument stems from the simple fact that HKP’s position on the Indo-Pak war was not based on the US-China rivalry. Instead, it was a response to the very real threat posed to the region by Indian belligerence and grounded in Pakistan’s right to self-defense. His mischaracterization then enables a series of further accusations, including calling our multi-ethnic leadership “Lahori Left,” “jingoistic” and “chauvinist”, and participates in the long tradition of sectarianism that has crippled the Left in Pakistan.

Let us briefly recount the core of his analysis. He claims that a “sub-imperialist power” (India), endowed with both the ambition and the capability (hence, sub-imperialist) to establish regional hegemony and guided by an ideology (Hindutva) he deems worse than Zionism, launched an attack on a neighbouring country (Pakistan)—a state whose political economy is shaped by opportunistic rent-seeking and which has a sordid record of internal repression, primarily in its peripheries. Note that he describes Hindutva as an ideology worse than Zionism, a force that has not only perpetrated genocide in Gaza, but has also participated in the destruction of several countries across the Middle East. As with most wars of aggression since the onset of the unipolar order, we are faced here—in the case of both Zionism and Hindutva—with hegemonic powers seeking to establish hegemony over countries ruled by repressive governments. This is hardly an ideal configuration, but historical contradictions seldom appear in neat moral binaries. Actual history unfolds through such contradictions—constantly in motion, colliding and recombining—producing unexpected situations that demand difficult, and at times tragic, political choices.  

Any serious political commentator can decipher that the primary question raised by this collision of contradictions is whether the weaker country, despite its neo-colonial structure, retains the right to defend itself. No answer to such a question would be ideal. Does the Iranian government, with its long record of repression against Leftists, women and minorities, have a right to defend itself when attacked ferociously by a genocidal Zionist entity, backed by the US? Did this right not also extend to Libya, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan and other states that were far from ideal? What should be the stance of the Left when a (sub-)imperialist power unleashes its violence to turn these civilizations into vast wastelands?

One can immediately identify the difficult nature of these questions, and why they have long divided the Left, as the challenge of sustaining external sovereignty collides with ongoing struggles for internal justice. But this is precisely the contradictory terrain upon which history unfolds, the ground from which events erupt that demand decisions from political actors. The perplexing element of Mallick’s writing, however, is that he simply evades the key question confronted by the Left in the aftermath of Indian aggression. By his own account, an Israel-backed sub-imperialist power (worse than Zionism) attacked Pakistan in pursuit of regional hegemony. Yet, astonishingly, this historical conflagration does not, for him, merit a concrete political stance beyond polite calls for “peace and self-determination,” abstractions that no one can dispute in principle (HKP both called for peace and welcomed the ceasefire). He unfortunately retreats into the comfort of “safe scholarship,” avoiding the inconvenient necessity of decision when confronted with an actual historical situation.

The Haqooq-e-Khalq Party did not evade this question. On each of these occasions, our party has upheld the right of countries to defend their sovereignty against foreign aggression. While we called for peace throughout the conflict with India and welcomed the ceasefire, we were pleased when Pakistan was able to curb the attack (with Chinese support) by a government led by genocidal maniacs whose spokespersons were calling for turning Pakistan into Gaza. India’s use of Israeli-made drones deep into Pakistani territory left little doubt about its intent. Similarly, we were not ashamed to cheer when Iranian missiles hit targets in Israeli territories, which provided a brief moment of joy to Palestinians enduring genocide as the world shamefully watched. Intellectuals should not pretend that they were the only ones calling for peace while others were excited about the prospect of war between the two nuclear-armed rivals. The bitter truth is that, faced with a belligerent, fascistic, and expansionist neighbour intent on aggression—and with no peace movement in India to challenge its belligerence—the restoration of military equilibrium by the Pakistan Air Force was the only means of securing even a tenuous peace in the region.

It is difficult to see what conclusion other than upholding Pakistan’s right to self-defense could follow from Mallick’s own analysis of the balance of forces involved. Yet, he substitutes the urgency of decision with oscillation between pedantic analysis of Pakistan’s political economy as an opportunistic rentier state and impassioned rhetoric about the corrosive impacts of military intervention in the political sphere, particularly in the peripheries. His underlying suggestion seems to be that by recognizing the right to self-defense, the Left relinquishes its own right to criticize the state. Yet, he provides no justification for this claim, relying instead on sweeping statements—such as accusing HKP of “war patriotism” that supposedly takes “no consideration” for the concerns of those in the periphery.

This is an extraordinary accusation, which Mallick does not even attempt to justify beyond rhetorical hyperbole. By what principle of politics, let alone of dialectical thought, does upholding a country’s right to self-defense automatically mean forfeiting any “consideration” of the state’s excesses? Did the Soviet Union’s alliance with Britain and the US (two regressive imperialist powers) in the fight against Nazi annihilation mean that it thereby forever lost the right to fight imperialism? Did Mao’s decision to join forces with the Kuomintang government to defend China’s sovereignty against Japanese invasion permanently disqualify him from attacking the militarism, warlordism, and feudalism exemplified by that same Kuomintang? Or, to take another example, did extending support to the French partisans defending their territorial sovereignty against Nazi forces amount to endorsing French colonialism then ravaging Africa and East Asia

Indeed, in each case, the fulfillment of the immediate objectives of wartime alliances at the end of the Second World War gave rise to the re-emergence of older conflicts: the onset of the Cold War, the acceleration of the Chinese civil war between the Kuomintang and the Communists, and the intensification of anti-colonial revolts against British, French, and Portuguese colonial rule. If such tactical alliances, which included the sharing of military and intelligence resources, did not foreclose the possibility of future conflicts, why would HKP’s public statements on a 3-day conflict prevent us from critiquing and resisting militarized forms of capitalism in Pakistan?

In fact, HKP members proudly remain among the most prominent Left critics of the current hybrid regime, from opposing the Pakistani state’s suicidal policies in Afghanistan to providing legal aid to persecuted PTI political workers; from exposing exploitative mineral deals with the US to organizing with Sindhi and Punjabi farmers against the establishment-backed resource grabs in the name of corporate farming. Recently, we organized protests against Pakistani state repression in Kashmir as part of our firm commitment to the Kashmiri people’s right to self-determination. Our criticisms of the Pakistani military do not make us Indian agents, just as upholding Pakistan’s right to self-defense does not make us its allies. It merely means that, rather than remaining captive to fixed analytical categories, we are responding to contradictions as they collide and transform in an actual historical situation. Those who find this delicate dialectic too exhausting—and who desire an absolute Manichean division between good and evil—will never develop a strategic orientation adequate to a terrain riven by multiple contradictions. Or to quote Lenin, “whoever wishes to see a pure social revolution will never live to see it.

Messianic Expectations

Before commenting on the substance of Azeem and Ali’s argument, it is again important to underline the unfortunately hostile and accusatory tone of the article. For example, they present HKP’s participation in elections as evidence that the party has “sidelin[ed] ongoing people’s struggles” in order to “enter mainstream national politics in Pakistan as a ‘big-tent’ progressive and social democratic party.” Proof of this supposed shift? None whatsoever. A quick glance at our social media platforms is enough to show the kinds of activities we have been engaged in over the past year. In any case, no Left group in Pakistan (including HKP) can credibly claim to have become the vector of people’s struggles in the country, let alone to have developed hegemony in society. Thus, we must be guided by humility and camaraderie as we rebuild a Left decimated by state repression and debilitating sectarian attitudes.

Let us then focus on two key differences with our comrades that are crucial to the reconstruction of the Left. The first concerns their dismissal of the Left’s central role in Pakistan’s mass struggles for democracy as “tailism,” “NGOism” or “liberalism”. In particular, they single out the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy (MRD), a popular front against the counter-revolutionary, US-backed dictatorship of General Zia-ul-Haq, as emblematic of this supposedly compromised politics. Consider how they suggest that the “traditional Left’s” incorrect positions led it to “eventually merging with the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy (MRD) in the 1980s and arriving at their final ideological destination of NGOs and human rights by the 1990s and 2000s.”

Again, we are not provided any reason to believe why participating in a mass alliance for democracy against a brutal military dictatorship somehow necessitated NGOs as the “final destination” of the Left. This logical leap appears even more suspect when one considers the rich history of sacrifice, including imprisonment and martyrdom, made by Left activists throughout the 1980s. Yet this dismissal offers a window into our divergence on the question of democratic rights, which seems to underlie the thinking of the two LUMS professors.

The history of democratic struggles has never rested on the generosity of feudal or bourgeois classes or their imperialist backers. Even in Europe, the expansion of mass democracy—including the extension of suffrage to workers, women, and minorities—was won through militant organizing from below, and was often met with severe state repression. Lenin was keenly aware of this when he criticized the British Left for its disinterest in electoral politics, regarding such abstention as a form of escapism from the terrain of actually existing struggles. The question of democratic rights is even more contentious in the postcolony, where the ruling classes’ preferred mode of governance is to suspend juridical rights, a condition re-inforced by countless CIA-backed military coups against democratically elected governments across the global South.

The situation in Pakistan is no different, as Washington identified the military as its preferred strategic partner in the region in the 1950s, setting in motion the decimation of left-wing and progressive organizations in the first decade of the nascent state. This explains why the first wave of mass struggles against the authoritarian Ayub regime was led by Left-wing student groups and trade unions. Pakistan’s current Constitution emerged from these struggles for dignity and equality, combined with the courage of Bangladeshis in resisting the genocidal violence unleashed by the state. This fragile achievement was reversed by the US-backed Zia dictatorship, which made the formation of the MRD a historical necessity in the renewed fight against authoritarianism.

For us, the MRD’s ability to unite trade unions, oppressed nationalities, and the women’s movement in a federal struggle for social justice represents an ideal formation—one that came closest to building an alternative, popular hegemony in Pakistan. The courageous women’s movement, represented by the Sindhiyani Tehreek in Sindh and the Women’s Action Forum in Punjab, fought against the dictatorship’s regressive laws despite a monstrous crackdown and the relentless demonization of women activists. It is both disrespectful and counterproductive to view these struggles, which claimed over a thousand lives in Sindh alone, as a sideshow to some imagined “authentic” Leftist struggle happening elsewhere. In truth, they constitute an essential part of the very tradition that has made the survival of Left forces possible today.

To reject these battles, arising from the everyday experiences of the oppressed, as mere “tailism” or “social movementism” is not only to betray our own history but also to refuse engagement with the burning questions of the present, as the hybrid regime dismantles the hard-won juridical and political rights of our people. Without participating in these concrete struggles for dignity, we exit the terrain of history, reduced instead to moral posturing in anticipation of an absolutely pure socialist politics that will never arrive.

The second disagreement concerns geopolitics, where the authors characterize India as a Brahmanical-fascist state and China as a social-imperialist and expansionist one. To make the latter claim, they point to sharpening contradictions in the peripheries around the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) investments, and to the Chinese state’s reluctance to support revolutionary movements in South Asia. China’s internal dynamics, including its adherence to socialism, require a separate debate altogether. Yet, it is pertinent to note here that the US containment policy against China does not stem from concerns for democracy or human rights. As Jason Hickel has recently demonstrated, US antagonism stems from China’s success in improving life standards (wages have risen eightfold since 2005), ending its subordination as a peripheral source of cheap labour and raw materials, while simultaneously achieving technological parity with the West. Overcoming these two structural pillars of imperialism, wage differentials and technological inferiority, represents an unprecedented achievement for a country of the global South. The clumsily executed trade tariffs, the escalating tech wars, and the dangerous military encirclement of China are thus counter-revolutionary measures geared precisely at reversing the remarkable gains made by the Chinese people under the leadership of the Communist Party.

Yet, it is bewildering to witness Azeem and Ali equate China and the US as imperialists. Imperialism is not merely a set of exploitative contracts between governments; it is an entire architecture of military, economic and cultural domination designed to annihilate the sovereignty of the colonized to facilitate capital accumulation in the metropole. No understanding of imperialism is possible without considering the destructive military conquests of Africa, Asia and the Americas, the opium wars, the slave trade, and the decimation of societies that refused to surrender. In the contemporary moment, imperialism cannot be conceived in a political register without considering the centrality of NATO (and its 800 military bases), the CIA, the IMF and the World Bank—key elements of a distinct architecture geared towards breaking the will of the people, whether through structural adjustments, regime change, sanctions or outright war. We must be particularly sensitive to this destructive core of imperialism at a moment when the US-Zionist alliance has destroyed several states across the Middle East for refusing  to yield to Western diktats, with the people of Gaza paying the heaviest price in a televised genocide.

The Chinese state neither has the military architecture (with only a single overseas base) to obliterate other states, nor has it used its considerable economic influence to impose regime change, structural adjustments or economic sanctions. Erasing these basic material and historical facts evacuates politics from analytical categories, reducing concepts such as imperialism to mere descriptions of asymmetry in inter-state relations. The consequence of this erasure is strategic disorientation, as exhibited in the article. For example, the authors make a grand proposal that the Pakistani Left should “align with the masses of Pakistan in waging a genuine anti-imperialist struggle against Western imperialism, Indian aggression, and Chinese expansionism and social imperialism.” To make things clear, they reject calls for an “abstract peace” in favour of “revolutionary militant people’s struggles,” a euphemism for the People’s War strategy of Maoist groups in India which they cite approvingly.

This is an apocalyptic vision for the Pakistani Left. Rather than prioritizing the expansion of democratic rights, the reconfiguration of the internal political economy to defeat parasitic ruling classes, the renegotiation of CPEC projects to center working-class and local concerns, or the strategic use of the economic shift towards Asia to advance the prosperity for our people, the authors propose waging simultaneous war on Indian, Chinese, and Western imperialism (why not add Iran and Russia?). Since we know that wars are not fought on sentiment alone, one may ask the innocent question: who would fund the weapons, technology, training and logistics that the proposed “people’s militias” would require to fight this epic war? More pertinently, how would this region-wide conflagration avoid falling into the strategic calculus of the Pentagon, which seeks to intervene in and exploit such regional cleavages to turn the global South into a theater of permanent devastation? We are offered no answers.

The strategy then seems to reject “piecemeal” politics of “social movementism” in favour of “deep organizing” that will prepare for a final battle that takes on the combined military might of India, Pakistan and China to bring salvation for the oppressed. There is little consideration of the logistics of this strategy, nor is any evidence presented to indicate that such a war is supported by any significant section of the “people’s movements” currently underway in Pakistan. Thus, this proposal is merely an escape from the material realities that constrain the terrain of Left politics in Pakistan, a classic case of messianic expectation replacing strategic analysis.

A New Strategic Orientation: What Are We fighting For?

In the realm of politics, strategic thinking cannot limit itself to fighting the status quo. Instead of merely focusing on what we are fighting against, we must also clarify what it is that we are fighting for. It requires a sober analysis of the global, national, and regional situation that both constrains and opens opportunities for the reconstruction of the Left. Perhaps a historical situation, analogous to our contemporary moment, can aid in illuminating the path forward.

In 1927, Chiang Kai-shek, the young general leading the Kuomintang nationalists, was at the pinnacle of his fame and power. After years of war and political turmoil since the collapse of the Qing dynasty, he managed to unite the country as a modern Republic. His forces were supplied weapons by both the US and the Soviet Union, ideological rivals who sought to enhance their influence in Asia. In the midst of the dizzying shifts and chaos in the global order during the inter-war period, China appeared as an unexpected candidate for regional stability and progress.

Yet, this apparent stability proved to be the calm before the storm. Chiang refused to undertake the internal reforms necessary to modernize the economy, dismantle the parasitic classes (feudals and warlords) that monopolized the country’s resources, institutionalize democratic reforms, or address the sharpening ethnic divides across China. To make matters worse, he unleashed a brutal crackdown on all forces advocating social reform, beginning with the mass murder of Chinese Communists in Shanghai in 1927 and culminating in the brutal campaign of suppression during the heroic Long March.

Eventually, the decadent order sapped the vitality out of the national project, forcing Chiang’s forces to face humiliating defeats at the hands of the invading Japanese forces. Mao joined forces with the Kuomintang to face the “principal contradiction” represented by the Japanese imperial forces in the mid-1930s, but he was clear that the nationalists were hopelessly inadequate to shoulder the burden of defending China’s sovereignty. A national sovereign project could only be sustained if it was premised upon the popular classes and sought to radically transform China’s internal political economy, a task bequeathed to the Chinese Communist Party.

It is this dialectical method that utilizes the gap between the opportunities opened by history and their betrayal by the ruling classes that propels revolutionary movements forward. Consider contemporary Pakistan, which has now established a security umbrella that is unprecedented in the Muslim World and being simultaneously courted by the West, China and the Middle East. It could provide the conditions of possibility for a sovereign project that positions Pakistan as a gateway for different civilizations, becoming an engine for economic activity and bringing desperately needed peace and prosperity to the people of the region. Yet, much like Chiang’s Republic, the hybrid regime in Pakistan (and the parasitic classes it represents) is singularly incapable of undertaking reforms that can usher in the new era.

The obscenely luxurious lifestyles of the elites are sustained by Pakistan’s rentier political economy, fueled by debt and dollar wars that eschew any serious economic reforms. The country has historically rented its geostrategic location to the US in order to receive cheap dollars that are washed away in speculative projects (such as real estate) or whisked away in secret foreign assets. This myopic strategic thinking has resulted in ongoing deindustrialization, necessitating new loans to pay the older ones, placing the country’s financial policies under the tutelage of viceroys from the IMF, who impose conditions that further strangle the economy. Yet, while this vicious cycle of war, debt and structural adjustment allows bonanzas for the elites, it results in death, destruction and immiseration for the people of Pakistan.

The simultaneous rise in inflation and unemployment has pushed poverty levels to almost 40 percent, with 25 million children out of school (10 million of them in Punjab alone). The peripheries suffer not only the wrath of economic deprivation, but also destabilization from the fallout of misguided security policies, which have destroyed lives and livelihoods, while placing these regions under a permanent state of emergency. Moreover, the lack of industrial planning is being compensated for through the plunder of natural resources, as exhibited by the Pakistan Green Initiative that aims to sell Sindh’s water, Punjab’s lands, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s and Balochistan’s minerals, and Gilgit-Baltistan’s tourism industry to the highest international bidder. For local populations, this translates into perpetual displacement and exploitation, with the military’s relentless might unleashed against those daring to resist the expropriation of their lands and resources.

No stable form of hegemony, let alone an independent foreign policy, can be built upon an unproductive, loan-dependent rentier system. The Pakistani state’s vacillation between the US and China, the prime minister’s nauseating sycophancy towards Trump over Gaza, the constant tensions with Afghanistan, and the botching of CPEC all reveal the incoherence of a decaying order. It is thus crucial to avoid confusing the country’s right to self-defense against foreign aggressors with an acceptance of state excesses on the domestic front. In fact, with the specter of war and destruction looming as the US attempts to use Pakistan in its China containment policy, the need for intensifying internal struggles and building a country-wide mass front is more urgent than ever before.

Yet, the key question is what could be the basis for this alliance? I have already indicated that the old alliance between the Left and ethnonationalists is now hopelessly inadequate for this task. As Umair Javed has recently shown, the 18th Amendment has precipitated the integration of political elites from the peripheries into provincial structures of power and patronage, creating concentrated loci of power and resources at the provincial level, a departure from the 1960s struggle against the One-Unit system that neatly pitted each provincial leadership against the center. Moreover, the demographic shifts, particularly the displacement and centrality of Pashtun migrant labour in Punjab, Sindh and Balochistan, and the destruction of economic infrastructure in South Punjab after repeated floods, are increasingly pitting oppressed groups against one another rather than against the state. The ethnic tensions in Sindh, the brutal murder of Punjabi, Seraiki and Pashtun workers in Balochistan, the disputes over the census in both provinces, and the PML-N’s conscious attempts to stoke Punjabi majoritarianism are reflections of ethnic fault lines turning into open conflict, weakening the possibility of popular democratic struggle against the establishment and economic elites.

The divergence is acute on the global front as well. For example, various liberal and ethnonationalist groups welcomed US presence in Pakistan and Afghanistan, supported US drone strikes, and lobbied Washington for sanctions on Pakistan. More recently, a militant group announced support for Indian strikes on Pakistan and sought Modi’s help in dismembering the country, while other sections of the same group have been accused of seeking support from Israel. Even if one momentarily brackets the (gigantic) moral dilemmas that arise out of these alignments, it is a nonviable policy even at a strategic level. The US neither has the will nor the capacity to provide long-term support to its “allies” in different parts of the world. Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen, all victims of US military bombardment, were reduced to wastelands as part of the US crusade for “democracy” and “human rights,” demonstrating how its ability to destroy far exceeds its capacity to rebuild. Moreover, the US embrace of the Pakistan military—Trump declared Asim Munir his “favourite Field Marshal”—is further proof that a reliance on external forces for liberation is a colossal mistake.

Are we then permanently condemned to our own silos, oscillating between militarized violence, imperialist aggression, religious bigotry and outbursts of ethnic hatred? Fortunately, significant historical trends point toward a different path. The economic and social interdependence of the country’s different regions reveals shared interests and common aspirations for democratization, prosperity, and social justice. The very material subsistence of working masses across Pakistan depends upon the equitable distribution of land, agricultural output, water, revenue, and other natural and economic resources. Politically, Punjab and Sindh long served as bastions of support for the PPP’s left-wing populism, with hardly any Punjabi leader matching the popularity attained by Sindh’s Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. In recent years, Imran Khan’s vocal opposition to drone strikes and incessant military operations has turned him into an unbeatable force across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, far outpacing traditional nationalist forces, while also enjoying considerable support in other provinces. Still more recently, the Baloch Yakjehti Committee’s struggle received overwhelming support from different sections across Punjab, with even mainstream political figures joining its cause. As ever, the people remain ahead of the intellectuals, who continue to be imprisoned within their analytical categories.

The material basis for these emerging solidarities is the pervasive economic crisis and political crackdown across the country, exemplified by the blatant theft of the people’s mandate in Punjab in the 2024 elections and the continued incarceration of PTI’s leadership. One need not agree with the political orientation of the PTI to decipher that it points to a real possibility of a country-wide political formation, a task the Left has practically surrendered to the Right.

It is time to reclaim a universalist project that mobilizes the shared aspirations of the vast majority of our people. This task entails rebuilding a popular front that simultaneously fights for the sovereignty of the country, the democratization of its politics, and the economic prosperity of its people. The defense of sovereignty implies a resolute anti-imperialist line that not only resists economic and military imperialist intervention against Pakistan, but also pushes Pakistan towards regional cooperation with its neighbors. Similarly, the struggle for democracy, including the fight against the military’s stranglehold over the electoral process, media, judiciary, security policy and parliament, is a central feature of the dialectics of liberation in Pakistan. This battle also includes an end to inter-provincial disparities, genuine local democracy, as well as advancing the rights of women and minorities in the face of reactionary assaults.

The vision for a shared prosperity necessitates wresting power from the parasitic classes addicted to wars and the IMF, increasing our surplus capacity through robust industrial planning and investment in sustainable human development, and transforming the country into a gateway to a prosperous Asia. To address historical faultlines, the concerns of smaller provinces must be centered in any development policy, including the recognition of the rights of each province over its natural resources. Indeed, socialism is incomplete if it is not geared towards addressing historical grievances and economic unevenness produced by militarized forms of capitalism.

Finally, this project will require a renewed engagement with existing categories to reinscribe them with new meanings. Terms such as Pakistan, Islam or democracy cannot be left vacant for the elites or the Right to use as emotive vehicles for reactionary agendas. There is no reason for us to accept that those ruling elites who sold the country’s future repeatedly to the highest bidder have any right to distribute certificates of loyalty to political dissidents. On the other hand, it was precisely the Left that insisted on Pakistani sovereignty whenever the state moved into the US security and financial ambit, leading to the famous National Student Federation slogan Kaun Bachaye ga Pakistan? Tulba Mazdoor aur Kissan! (Who will save Pakistan? Students, workers and peasants!). Similarly, Islam carries an ideological density within the region’s psyche that cannot be wished away. Recent scholarship by Layli Uddin and Asmer Safi reminds us of the vast intellectual and political work in the sub-continent that developed an affinity between Islam and socialism, and that can still aid us in illuminating the path forward.

These terms are not fixed categories but sites of struggle upon which a new national popular project can be created. We must not disarm ourselves in the ideological battle by rejecting these terms in favour of a pristine politics outside all existing nomenclature. Instead, our method must be dialectical, one that utilizes contradictions immanent to these categories in order to transform their inner content. More concretely, one can imagine new ways of being Pakistani and being Muslim that are not beholden to the suffocating definitions of the state or the bigotry of the reactionary Right, just like one can imagine resisting the military establishment without positing the collapse of the country into competing exclusionary ethno-nationalist statelets as the only viable destination for progressive politics. Such a project would have the potential to unite the largest possible coalition of people within Pakistan and present a credible alternative to the crumbling status quo.

Eventually, however, the steel of unity is forged in the fire of ongoing battles for dignity. From protecting the ecologies of Sindh and Gilgit-Baltistan to defending the devastated rural world of Punjab, from challenging enforced disappearances in Balochistan to resisting military excesses in the former FATA, and from organizing workers, women and students to defending Kashmir’s right to self-determination, each battle is an iteration of the heroic attempt to reclaim our common humanity. The forbidden encounters and unexpected solidarities that emerge within these movements point the way forward.

The task for a political organization is to weave together these different threads into a common political project that seeks to overthrow the existing state of affairs. It is a herculean task indeed, but we always knew that revolution was no dinner party.

Ammar Ali Jan is a historian and general secretary of the Haqooq-e-Khalq Party in Pakistan. He is a cabinet member of the Progressive International.

Following the Pahalgam attacks in Indian-Occupied Jammu and Kashmir on April 22, 2025, Indian strikes on several sites in Pakistan and Pakistan's subsequent response ignited an intense debate within the Pakistani Left. Various groups attempted to analyze and respond to the underlying issues of the conflict, exposing historical contradictions that have been overlooked in Left analysis and practice due to the "issue-based" turn in Pakistani Left politics and a narrow focus on inter-elite contradictions locally and inter-imperialist geopolitics globally.

To analyze these responses, we employ three terms to broadly describe tendencies within the Pakistani Left (though we acknowledge that differences exist within these tendencies as well). The term orthodox Marxist refers to the historically pro-Soviet Left, which, following the Sino-Soviet split in the 1960s, adhered to official Soviet Marxism characterized by mechanical dialectics and economic and technological reductionism. When combined with Western Enlightenment narratives from the political writings and historiography influenced by the Progressive Writers Association (PWA), this tendency veers toward liberalism, with its politics primarily focused on opposing religious politics and promoting secular liberal democracy.

Due to internal errors, the Cold War, and the suppression of communist politics, many Left groups that initially supported the pro-China line during the Sino-Soviet split in the 1960s and claimed adherence to Mao Zedong Thought also failed to develop an indigenous anti-revisionist line and advance in revolutionary practice. These groups, which eventually relegated their politics to electoral strategies and consciousness-raising efforts, are also weak theoretically, relying on pro-Soviet historiography and politics, and have failed to produce new or original analyses, especially in light of China's rise. The term traditional Left is used to collectively describe both these historically pro-China groups and the orthodox Marxist Left groups. While essential differences in theory and practice exist between Trotskyite and traditional Left groups, their positions regarding the India-Pakistan conflict are similar and are therefore addressed together in this article.

Finally, the term new Left refers to new groups and academic activists in the Pakistani Left who are influenced by various Western Marxist theories and emerging social movements, and are attempting to steer the theory and practice of the traditional Left.

We contrast the positions of these tendencies with the historical and evolving stance of the revolutionary Maoists in Pakistan, which includes groups such as the Pakistan Mazdoor Kisan Party (PMKP) that are working to develop a coherent Marxist-Leninist-Maoist line based on a concrete analysis of Pakistan, recognizing national liberation struggles and advocating for a worker-peasant and subaltern led new democratic revolutionary program. This categorization of Left groups, due to the article's scope, does not encompass various local and nationalist factions, national liberation movements, and worker, peasant, student, and women's groups that continue to evolve around diverse ideological tendencies.

After the Pahalgam attack, while the Pakistani Left was unanimously calling for peace, two war-mongering responses from the electoral Indian Left stirred controversy. These responses came from statements issued by the Communist Party of India (CPI) and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M)). Both parties propagated narratives consistent with the Indian government, blaming Pakistan for harboring terrorism and supporting direct strikes into Pakistani territory. They argued that the Indian response, termed "Operation Sindoor," was launched against terror strongholds in Pakistan and had been precisely carried out in a non-escalatory manner. CPI(M) even asserted that India had no choice but to maintain pressure on Pakistan.

While most Pakistani Left groups opposed these statements, they posed a significant challenge for orthodox Marxist groups in Pakistan that have historically tailed the CPI and CPI(M). For these groups, Pakistan has historically been viewed, unlike “secular” and “democratic” Nehruvian India, as a terrorist-supporting aggressor, with religious fundamentalism backed by the Pakistani military as the principal contradiction facing its masses. Given this historical perspective, the uncomfortable position of this segment of the Pakistani Left during the current conflict was apparent, with one such group even distancing itself from CPI(M)’s statement. Other traditional Left groups appeared uncertain about their stance, and their statements provided superficial analyses of the situation, advocating for unprincipled pacifism and failing to grapple with the ideological and political dimensions of the crisis.

On the other hand, responses and analyses from two new Left groups helped exposed some of the current situation's problems and the fault lines in the theory and practice of the traditional Left. First, the Haqooq-e-Khalq Party (HKP) condemned India's aggression and called for immediate peace. HKP argued that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was exploiting the Pahalgam event to further his agenda and to distract from his failures in Kashmir. Subsequent statements from HKP's General Secretary clarified that they viewed India’s recent aggression as a manifestation of Western imperialism using India as a proxy against China in a new "Cold War." This position was deeply uncomfortable for the orthodox Marxist Left, which responded by accusing the HKP of capitulating to the Pakistani military's narrative and issued harsh criticisms of its analysis.

Setting aside the theoretical limitations of the traditional Left in Pakistan, an engaging response to HKP’s analysis came from another new Left group inspired by Western Marxism and Gramscian thought. This response, from Ayyaz Mallick, a member of the new Left faction of the Awami Workers Party (AWP), defined India as a "sub-imperialist" power and a "regional hegemon," describing Hindutva as one of the most dangerous forms of fascism in the world. However, his primary concern focused on the war hysteria and patriotic chauvinism invoked by statements and analyses from the HKP. According to Mallick, based on the history of the Cold War and the "War on Terror," Pakistan had also been contending to become a sub-imperialist power. As a result, he contended that the HKP based its position and analyses on "geopolitics" rather than providing a concrete analysis of the situation. Mallick's position, which reflects the sentiments of the new Left faction of the AWP, simplifies the response to the situation to a call for a "popular program of national consciousness" aimed at creating a new "popular subject." This response exemplifies the Gramscian perspective held by many Western Marxism-inspired scholars in Pakistan, who are sometimes distant from the concrete politics of Third World countries.

However, the overall debate raises several important issues that delve into the painful memories of the Pakistani Left, which this article seeks to address. First, the article examines the historical reasons behind the traditional Left's pacifist stance towards India, the influence of the Indian Left and Indian nationalism on the traditional Left's view of the Indian state, the process of post-colonial state formation, and the deep divide between the Pro-Soviet and Pro-China factions of the communist movement on this issue. Following this analysis, it seeks to understand the emerging positions of the new Left and interrogates why a fissure exists in the new Left's understanding of the India-Pakistan conflict. This discussion allows us to identify the theoretical and practical limitations on both sides of the debate, stemming from an insufficient understanding of revolutionary politics and the theoretical ruptures within the Pakistani Left. Lastly, considering this historical context, the article highlights the emerging global, regional, and local politics in South Asia and encourages a revolutionary understanding of people's resistance and people's war in Pakistan and South Asia.

The Influence of the Indian Left and Indian Nationalism on the Pakistani Left

The roots of the debate regarding the Pakistani Left’s perspective on Indian and Pakistani state formation extend at least as far back as the 1920s. Among current contingents of the Left, the orthodox Marxist Left has never accepted Pakistan as a natural "nation" or country. This position originated with the pre-partition undivided Communist Party of India (CPI),which since the 1920s viewed the Congress as struggling for independence from British colonialism, representing the Indian "national bourgeoisie" and "a progressive force trying to keep India united." In contrast, the All-India Muslim League was considered by the CPI to be a regressive force attempting to divide India along communal lines. It is important to note, however, that many groups in the revolutionary movement at the time, such as the Ghadar Party and the Kirti Kisan Party, held distinct positions and indigenous understandings of Indian politics, which the revolutionary Maoists later further developed in light of these and other indigenous struggles.

When the Congress refused to support the CPI's position in 1942 of allying with the British government against German fascism, following the Soviet Union's line, the CPI, disappointed with the Congress, began supporting the demand for Pakistan, accepting India as comprising several nations. Utilizing Stalin's 1913 work on Marxism and the National Question, the CPI's Adhikari report for the first time posited the idea of India as consisting of various cultures and languages rather than as a cultural whole. This understanding supported the demand for Pakistan, a viewpoint also reflected in the writings of prominent communists at the time, such as Sajjad Zaheer and N. K. Krishnan.

This position persisted until 1946, when the CPI again opposed the demand for Pakistan, and following the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, declared Pakistan an unnatural country and its creation as reactionary. At the CPI's 1948 congress in Calcutta, Bhowani Sen presented the "Report on Pakistan," where the prevailing opinion was that the Indian union was progressive and that the creation of Pakistan constituted a regressive step. According to some Pakistani Left scholars, both the CPI and the Congress criticized Muslim elite politicians as the real culprits behind the partition of India. It is also noteworthy that the CPI's anti-Pakistan stance was supported by the Soviet Union, which viewed the creation of Pakistan as an attempt to establish a buffer state for Western imperialism's Cold War needs, with its analysis failing to consider the legitimate aspirations of the Muslims of the subcontinent, particularly those in Punjab and Bengal.

The newly formed Communist Party of Pakistan (CPP) tailed the CPI’s position and, following the Pakistani state's 1953 ban on the CPP, merged all centrifugal ethno-nationalist forces into the National Awami Party (NAP), a "big tent"progressive party formed in 1957 that directed all its energies against the military establishment. The CPP and ethno-nationalist elites within the NAP also tailed the CPI's line in India of a "National Democratic Revolution" as their political program, eventually merging with the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy (MRD) in the 1980s and arriving at their final ideological destination of NGOs and human rights by the 1990s and 2000s.

To us, it is impossible to deny that the nation-building projects of both India and Pakistan, like many newly independent Third World countries, were characterized by internal colonization and the forcible merging of cultures, ethnicities, and even historic nations into a single nation-state. However, the CPP and NAP position faced challenges in the mid-1960s when the 1965 India-Pakistan war, the 1966 Tashkent declaration, the Sino-Soviet split, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China, and the failure of the Pakistani nation-building project led to the emergence of Maoist groups in Pakistan, who viewed themselves as successors to the indigenous struggles of the masses in the subcontinent. They analyzed Pakistan's independence differently than the CPI, CPI(M), and the elite contingent of the CPP.

The Maoist Left: Lost at the Crossroads of China-Pakistan Relations

Maoist groups in Pakistan emerged from the pro-China faction within the CPP, operating under the larger NAP umbrella during the Sino-Soviet split in the 1960s. The perspective they developed sought to uncover the material roots of the partition of India and Pakistan and the evolving politics of the Pakistani "masses" within the context of the underlying class and caste contradictions faced by the majority of Muslim masses in Punjab, East Bengal, and Sindh. These groups primarily comprised small peasants, tenants, landless individuals, and scheduled caste members who faced exploitation from British colonialism as well as from land-owning and money-lending Hindu upper castes, who were a minority in these regions.

Some theorists also went as far as identifying differences between the civilizations that developed around the Indus River and those around the Ganges River, suggesting they formed two distinct cultural and economic histories such that the entire subcontinent could not be lumped together as a single "Indian Nation." For many in this movement, including Ishaque Muhammad, one of the founders of the PMKP—the largest Maoist party in Pakistan that led the armed resistance of peasants in Hashtnagar during the late 1960s and early 1970s—this alternative perspective provided an opportunity to establish a class and caste basis for a unified mass struggle at both national and regional levels, advocating for a People’s Democratic Revolution, led by a worker-peasant alliance, as opposed to the traditional Left’s idea of a National Democratic Revolution. Similarly, this emerging Maoist viewpoint framed the independence of Kashmir and Bangladesh as issues of national liberation and people's resistance, critiquing the involvement of both the Indian and Pakistani states as detrimental to their liberation movements.

While these Maoist groups rightly identified Indian expansionism, the internal colonization by the Indian and Pakistani states, and the semi-colonial, semi-feudal, and comprador nature of the Pakistani state necessitating a militant agrarian revolution capturing power from the rural and national peripheries towards the centre, some were unable to voice loud opposition to the Pakistani state's actions against oppressed nations, especially in what was then East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). This hesitance was influenced by Chinese support for Pakistan; however, notable exceptions existed, such as a faction of the former Professor’s Group and the majority faction of the PMKP. Over time, due to internal rifts within the Maoist movement, ideological errors, and exceptional external circumstances, the Maoist movement in Pakistan weakened. As the Left's energies during General Zia’s Martial Law were diverted into the Pakistan People's Party-led MRD—except for the PMKP, which largely refused to join the alliance, aside from a small splinter group—the traditional Left in Pakistan narrowed its analysis to focus on the need for liberal democracy and secular politics.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, much of the traditional Left sought refuge in the burgeoning NGOs and human rights discourse of the 1990s. Their psychological response to the Left's defeat by religious politics and the military was so deep that many in the traditional Left went on to provide intellectual justifications for the US attack on Afghanistan and the war on terror following 9/11. This support extended to tacit backing for military dictator General Pervez Musharraf, who was portrayed as a bulwark against religious fundamentalism and terrorism—an issue many traditional Left intellectuals deemed the primary contradiction facing the emancipation of the Pakistani people. This moment also marked the first significant exposure of the Pro-Soviet Left's historical and ideological fault lines, which had become the mainstream perspective in the Pakistani Left after the weakening of the Maoist movement.

The Quest for Working Class Politics by the New Left

Beginning in the 2000s and continuing into the 2010s, new Western-educated academic activists returned to Pakistan, intervening in the theory and practice of the traditional Left. Theoretically, they brought interventions from Western intellectuals such as Antonio Gramsci, David Harvey and Noam Chomsky, and in practice, they brought identity-based social movement-ism into traditional Left parties, merging with existing NGO-tic inclinations within them. Many of these activists also drew inspiration from rising nationalist movements like the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM) and other ethno-nationalist struggles, albeit in a somewhat incoherent manner.

In this context, new Left groups adopted the politics of social movements and piecemeal struggles, manifesting in urban demonstrations, student marches, and sporadic interventions in working-class uprisings, often lacking deep organization among the masses. In practice, this resulted in piecemeal mobilizations around existing movements instead of attempts to organize an ideologically coherent political party or working class organizations aimed at seizing political and social power. For instance, groups like the HKP began organizing in working-class neighbourhoods in Lahore but ultimately diverted their momentum and resources toward a failed electoral bid. Following the HKP’s initial political engagement with ethno-nationalist movements, it now appears to embrace mainstream electoral politics, essentially sidelining ongoing people's struggles in favour of "mega politics." On international issues, the HKP's analysis has shifted toward debates on geopolitics and international relations, as noted by Mallick. Similarly, the AWP’s new Left faction started working in the slums (katchi abadis) of Islamabad but lost its momentum amid failed election bids. Although some individuals in this faction have seriously engaged with the toiling classes, including in the struggle of farmers at Okara military farms, their efforts have been diluted by the fragmented nature of social movement-ism and the influence of powerful, resourceful foreign-funded NGOs, which have undermined these movements' militant spirit.

Given the decline of these new Left projects into social movement-ism and NGO work, and the fact that the ongoing nationalist and other people's struggles they sympathize with are rooted in independent constituencies where the new Left holds no real stake, the primary focus of such new Left groups has become one of consciousness-raising—aiming to instil revolutionary consciousness in those they implicitly assume to be doped and docile people on the ground.

The historical and ideological depth of analyses within these new Left groups is largely limited to existing historical accounts from the orthodox Marxist Left or nationalists, which see the military establishment and the religious fundamentalism it backs as the central contradiction facing the Pakistani masses. Aside from the foreign Marxist ideological frameworks, both new Left groups face a central dilemma: a lack of ideological understanding of the history of the traditional Left and a failure to recognize the divergent theoretical positions rooted in the struggles of the revolutionary movement.

Under the influence of the orthodox Marxist Left, Left historiography in Pakistan has been shaped by academics implicitly adopting a pro-Soviet perspective, drawing from the old histories written by members of the CPP and PWA, which, as mentioned above, were significantly influenced by the Indian Left and Congress-led Indian nationalism. Unfamiliar with the historical ideological divisions and the varied practices within the traditional Left, and not rooted in the indigenous struggles of the masses in Pakistan, the new Left groups and their associated academics have joined this historiographical project, introducing new theoretical insights from the Western academy while applying them to the traditional Left's "common sense" understanding of Pakistan's history and its revolutionary movements. Consequently, academics from these new Left groups often find themselves adopting inconsistent political positions, even as they raise important questions regarding theory and practice in the context of emerging regional and global politics.

Another problem with the existing project of Left historiography is its conscious or unconscious failure to mention, document, and analyze indigenous militant movements among the peasantry, workers, and marginalized castes across Pakistan, which corresponded with the revolutionary Maoist movement in the country. For example, an important voice missing in recent analyses by the Pakistani Left on the India-Pakistan conflict has been that of the people's resistance in Kashmir. The Kashmir issue is not merely a dispute between India, Pakistan, and China; it cannot be understood solely in terms of one country acting as an aggressor against another and terrorism as the core of the problem, as historically viewed by the CPI, CPI(M), and their proxy parties in Pakistan and related historiography, all of which has deliberately neglected to robustly support the right to self-determination for Kashmiris and the militant methods employed by their national liberation movement.

We believe that the starting point of the issue was a legitimate people's rebellion against the Dogra rulers of Kashmir. Despite attempts by parts of the Left to organize people's militias in resistance to Dogra rule and the Indian effort to annex Kashmir, both the Pakistani and Indian state interventions acted to crush the people's movement. For many in the communist movement at the time, the actions of the Pakistani and Indian states in Kashmir and the CPI and CPP's lack of support for the people's rebellion mirrored the historic betrayal by the CPI of the people's resistance in Telangana, which was brutally suppressed by the Indian state with the acquiescence of CPI leadership.

In a similar vein, both the Pakistani and Indian mainstream Left historiography surrounding the independence of Bangladesh, compiled by pro-Soviet historians, is predominantly viewed through the lens of atrocities committed by the Pakistani military and India's intervention to assist Bangladesh's independence. In comparison, an alternate history shows significant roots of people's war against imperialism and the Indian, Pakistani, and Bengali ruling classes. That India, Pakistan and Bangladesh's first government all acted to brutally suppress this movement remains a dark and unresolved chapter in the memories of the Bangladeshi, Indian, and Pakistani Lefts.

Fortunately, recent attempts in Pakistani Left history have sought to highlight the distinct theory and practice of the Pakistani Left associated with Maoist thinking, inspired by the Hashtnagar and Naxalbari movements in Pakistan and India. While this marks just the beginning of academic work revisiting the revolutionary movement and grappling with its many internal and external contradictions, it is clear that the first stage of Left historiography in Pakistan, based purely on archives, is over.

The new phase of Left historiography in Pakistan will require a re-reading of the archives and a deep understanding of ideological divisions and historical legacies. Above all, both traditional Left and new Left academics must seriously engage with "people's histories" from within the movements they led to address the current challenges of revolutionary theory. A lack of familiarity with these divergent ideological currents, histories, and their concrete material causes will continue to hinder the Left's ability to appreciate and engage with current revolutionary struggles amid changing local, regional, and global politics.

Emerging Global, Regional, and Local Politics and Peoples’ Resistance in South Asia

The next question for us is to determine how changes in local, regional, and global politics, alongside the historical and ideological memory of the Pakistani Left, hinder the embrace of these changes, particularly regarding the India-Pakistan conflict, engagement with genuine revolutionary struggles in South Asia, and the development of a new revolutionary strategy in the region.

Pakistan has become increasingly dependent on the United States, IMF, World Bank, China, and Arab monarchies, making it vulnerable to external pressures. Nonetheless, this does not alter the perspective on the authoritarian nature of the Pakistani state, which remains a semi-colonial, semi-feudal, and comprador state. Its ruling class continues to be subservient to imperialism, while the military serves as the internal bastion of power for its hegemonic agenda, historically aligned with US imperialism but gradually drifting towards China. Its socio-economic structure continues to rest upon the foundations of feudalism, and its bourgeoisie continues to be a comprador class, together resulting in a structure of bureaucratic capitalism. However, we must also seriously consider three emerging changes in the region and adapt our strategies and tactics accordingly, with a deep understanding of the development of Left theory and practice.

The first change in regional politics is the rise of China as a social-imperialist and expansionist power. Strangely, this aspect is largely absent from analyses of the recent India-Pakistan conflict, except in noting the assistance and use of Chinese technology, which allowed Pakistan to respond effectively to the Indian attack. Unfortunately, the traditional Left in Pakistan, particularly the old proponents of Mao Zedong Thought, remain adamant about not revising their views on China. Even the orthodox Marxist Left, which has been focused on global power politics since Soviet times, is eager to support China. Among the new Left groups, the HKP has adopted popular anti-India and pro-China positions in what it terms the "new Cold War," partly due to its ambitions to enter mainstream national politics in Pakistan as a "big-tent"progressive and social democratic party. In contrast, the new Left faction of AWP appears more skeptical of China, likely due to its connections with nationalist movements in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan, and elsewhere, but it has failed to provide a solid analysis of the nature of the Chinese state or its contradictory relationship with revolutionary movements in the region.

First, using the term “new Cold War” to describe the current China-US inter-imperialist rivalry is misleading because the Cold War historically involved two ideological blocs and systems at a specific juncture. While we can question whether China is a socialist or a social-imperialist/expansionist-capitalist country, the negative role of China in the Nepali revolutionary movement and its lack of support for other revolutionary movements in the region is a documented reality.

It is also important to note that nationalist movements in Pakistan oppose the exploitation of their resources by China and view the policies of the Pakistani state as an extension of this exploitation. Recently, as the Baloch struggle for national liberation has intensified, adopting more militant methods and facing challenging circumstances, traditional Left groups have begun to turn their backs on and refute the inclusion of the national question in Marxism. Even new Left groups have issued "nationally palatable" positions, while Mao Zedong Thought groups have gone so far as to align with the Pakistani state narrative, remaining entirely uncritical of the long history of subjugation, ethnic cleansing, and mass atrocities currently being perpetrated by the Pakistani state in Balochistan. Although the slowdown of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor in recent years has shifted the conversation to the background, the contradiction between the Pakistani masses and China's domestic and regional ambitions is becoming sharper.

Secondly, the most challenging position for the Left in Pakistan and nationalists is to change their views towards India. The rise of India as a Brahmanical Hindutva fascist state, bullying other countries in South Asia and using its military might internally against Kashmiris, Adivasis, Dalits, Muslims, farmers, and other marginalized communities poses a danger not only to regional peace and security but also to all revolutionary movements in the region. The Indian state is not only engaging in external aggression and pursuing a heavy-handed foreign policy towards Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and others, but also conducting an internal colonization project on behalf of Western and domestic big bourgeoisie and mining interests. It is violently and brutally attempting to crush all resistance to resource exploitation, deforestation, and the oppression of indigenous Adivasi communities. This has also led to mass repression against the ongoing People's War in India, led by the CPI (Maoist), which, unlike Maoist factions within the Pakistani Left, has continued the legacy of Naxalbari and sustained its struggle across several regions in India. Currently, the Indian state has launched the violent and illegal Operation Kagar and is implementing a brutal onslaught of draconian laws, arrests, and other unlawful means to repress the CPI (Maoist) and others fighting for the liberation of Dalits, Adivasis, and the Indian masses.

Lastly, India has developed a lethal nexus in a third significant change in the region: the role of Israel as a sub-imperialist power in the Gulf. Here again, the instinctive reactions of the traditional Left and the new Left against any movement using the name of Islam, whether it be Hamas or organizations in Kashmir, significantly hinder the development of revolutionary theory and practice. Therefore, while condemning the brutal atrocities of the Pakistani state, the Pakistani Left should seriously reconsider and reanalyze its approach towards India, Israel, and Chinese expansionism and social-imperialist ambitions in the region. To do this, it must carefully examine the uneven development of each contradiction and the complexities within the web of other contradictions.

Peoples’ Resistance and Peoples’ War in South Asia

While keeping an eye on inter-elite contradictions, the primary focus of Left analysis should be the contradiction of the masses of South Asia with imperialism, feudalism, and comprador capitalism—specifically concerning peoples' resistance and war in the region. The Left must side with peoples' struggles in their contradiction against imperialism and their oppressive ruling classes, acknowledging that these contradictions exist at different levels of development, are complex, and are marked by over-determinations in political outcomes. Given Pakistan’s semi-colonial and semi-feudal character, and the complexity of emerging contradictions amid rising Indian and Chinese expansionism in the region, a Left practice reduced either to social movements and identity-based organizing without deep integration with the masses, or to “big-tent politics,” limited to a consciousness-raising Gramscian “war of position,” are two sides of the same coin. This practice strategically avoids the question of developing a revolutionary party capable of organizing militant institutions of the working-class to seize and exercise political power instead of relying on electoralism to achieve influence, if any, within the existing system.

Similarly, despite the historical and psychological hang-ups of the Pakistani Left regarding religious extremism, we cannot reject people's movements based on the genuine contradictions faced by the masses using religious idioms. Even when the Left supports such struggles, it should avoid falling into logical fallacies. For instance, supporting the national liberation struggle of Kashmir should not automatically mean supporting the Pakistani state, nor should siding with the Baloch national liberation struggle be construed as siding with India simply because India is accused of supporting the Baloch insurgency.

One thing is certain: our ruling classes, in an increasingly non-hegemonic world marked by rising inter-imperialist rivalries, are incapable of defending their people. Instead, they are entering into a contradictory unity to secure their share of the exploitation of their populations, much like the ruling classes of India or China. Therefore, while the contradictions between imperialist powers, as manifested in the India-Pakistan war, are important, they cannot be analyzed without concrete organizing on the ground and engagement with all waves of people's resistance.

Thus, the Pakistani Left's response should not be to side with the semi-colonial, semi-feudal, and comprador Pakistani state, even if it is the target of another country's regional aggression. Such a response would continue to serve imperial interests within the ongoing inter-imperialist rivalry, especially in the absence of a genuine change in the Pakistani state’s class composition. Instead, our response should be to align with the masses of Pakistan in waging a genuine anti-imperialist struggle against Western imperialism, Indian aggression, and Chinese expansionism and social imperialism. We should not hesitate to stand against the expansionist designs of the Brahmanical Hindutva fascist Indian state, regardless of whether it irritates the traditional Left, new Left groups, or their liberal constituencies. Similarly, our opposition to Indian aggression should not be limited to the BJP-Modi government but should extend to the Brahmanical Hindutva fascist nature of the Indian state, which has been supported by the so-called "secular and liberal" Congress party and its electoral Left allies. This would require us to stand in genuine solidarity with the militant struggles of Adivasis, Dalits, and Kashmiris within India, as well as the regional victims of its expansionism, including the Nepalese, Bengali, and Sri Lankan peoples, against the Brahmanical Hindutva fascist state, its imperialist backers, and the ruling classes throughout the region.

As such, calls for an abstract and unprincipled peace are also not a proper response to the current crisis. We should support the ongoing and emerging revolutionary militant people's movements in the region against militarization and imperialist designs and advocate for the unity of all revolutionary forces towards genuine people's resistance led by revolutionary worker-peasant forces against imperialism, feudalism, comprador capitalism, reactionary forces, revisionism, and all forms of exploitation. Only through the development of these movements and the building of principled revolutionary alliances can we envision a truly emancipatory future for our region.

Muhammad Umar Ali is a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Shaikh Ahmad Hassan School of Law (SAHSOL), Lahore University of Management Sciences.

 Syed Azeem is an Associate Professor at the Shaikh Ahmad Hassan School of Law (SAHSOL), Lahore University of Management Sciences.

Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt from Nijjor Manush’s recent book “Inquilab Zindabad? A socialist analysis of Bangladesh after the uprisings.” The book can be purchased directly from Nijjor Manush. The text has been lightly edited.

The National Citizen Party (NCP), or Jatiya Nagorik Party in Bangla, launched on 28th February 2025. It is the most significant of the new political parties emerging on the scene in Bangladesh post-uprisings. NCP emerged jointly out of the Students Against Discrimination (SAD) platform, which had served as the most prominent organ of the student-led movement, and its civic counterpart the JNC (Jatiya Nagorik Committee) drawing from a larger section of the Bangladeshi citizenry.

The NCP is headed by SAD leader and former Interim Government (IG) adviser Nahid Islam, who was among the most visible faces of the student movement in 2024, alongside other central figures in SAD and JNC. Many individuals who developed a profile during the uprising have secured commanding positions in the NCP, including Hasnat Abdullah, Sarjis Alam and Abdul Hannan Masud - though some, such as prominent uprising spokesperson Umama Fatema, decided against joining the party. Two of the SAD leaders currently serving as advisers in the IG, Mahfuj Alam and Asif Mahmud, have yet to state their intentions on whether or not to join the NCP in future though rumours swirl about their expected involvement. 

Ideologically, the party’s leadership bodies comprise figures associated with student formations from the Right, centre as well as some from the Left. Seemingly attempting to sidestep the inevitable political contradictions of such a formation, however, the party has continually described itself as a big-tent, centrist and “post-ideological” party, which is ‘neither right-wing nor left-wing,’ nor ‘dominated by any specific individual, group, class, region, or ideology’ and ‘neither secular nor theocratic’. Rather, the NCP’s politics can be described as militant centrism: invoking the aesthetic of revolution with the programme of liberal, democratic capitalism. It is characterised by liberal ideas of civic politics centred on anti-corruption and anti-discrimination and hazily-defined notions of equality, while positioning itself as a pro-sovereignty party vis-a-vis Bangladesh’s neighbours, stating that there is “no room for pro-India or pro-Pakistan politics” in the country.

This big tent approach, however, has not stopped the party facing splits: mere days before the party was officially launched, an influential faction of the JNC comprising members associated with Chhatra Shibir, Jamaat-e Islami’s student wing, broke away from the NCP initiative, later founding the United People’s Bangladesh platform to act as a ‘pressure group’. The Gono Odhikar Parishad (GOP), a centrist party which emerged out of an earlier wave of the quota reform movement, was also involved in the core SAD-JNC faction of the NCP. However, the relationship between GOP leadership and the NCP quickly frayed, with the GOP-affiliated joint chief coordinator resigning from the NCP days after the party’s launch.

There are also indications that the present party leadership of the NCP is prepared to make strategic alliances with sections of the Bangladeshi Right to advance their political objectives. While the NCP has not declared any electoral alliance, it has increasingly found itself in opposition to the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) - the expected heir to government after elections. Meanwhile,  its calls for abolishing the post-Liberation War constitution and settlement have alienated Left parties too. However, those same demands, as well as its preoccupation with securing a government ban on the Awami League, has seen it fall increasingly within the orbit of Islamist parties: groups like Jamaat-e-Islami and Hefazat-e-Islam have provided vocal and physical support for its public campaigns, while NCP chief coordinator Nasiruddin Patwary has spoken of the NCP’s intention to ‘unite pro-Islam and pro-Bangladesh parties’ into an alliance, centred at this point on a defence of the IG.

The party has also proved its willingness to indulge in social conservatism in its own right. Days after the party’s initial committee was announced, an LGBTQ activist was unceremoniously dropped from the list in response to public backlash from some Muslim groups. Central party figures also voiced their opposition, with chief organisers Hasnat Abdullah and Sarjis Alam declaring that ‘nothing against religious values will ever have a place in our politics’; elsewhere, Alam has referred to LGBTQ identities as a “cancer”.

It is not clear at this stage what electoral prospects the party faces. One significant opinion poll placed them at just 5% of declared votes, though this poll took place days before the party was officially launched, and is likely to change over the coming months. A later poll of Bangladeshi youth saw them expecting the party to achieve around 16% of votes. The party leadership is also reportedly looking towards electoral seats in Dhaka as the most viable constituencies for them to contest, owing to the more transient and fluid nature of the electorate in the capital, and the relative weakness of entrenched party strongholds there.  

Why Did the NCP Form?

With the formation of the Muhammad Yunus-led Interim Government at their behest, the SAD had been afforded an influential role in the administration, with 2 (later 3) SAD leaders serving as advisers in the IG. The significant leverage of the SAD and its advisers in decisions made by the IG quickly fostered resentment among other student groups and political parties, unhappy with the clientelist relationship between the IG and SAD.

By the close of 2024, relations between SAD and other student groupings and formations had deteriorated seriously. The Jatiotabadi Chhatra Dal (JCD), the BNP’s student wing, had begun to organise separately from the SAD while the Democratic Students’ Alliance - an alliance of numerous socialist and Marxist student groups - had also boycotted initiatives spearheaded by SAD and condemned the platform as undemocratic. Revolutionary Student Unity, a member of the Democratic Students’ Alliance, went as far as to call for the dissolution of the SAD as early as September 2024, arguing that it had become a vehicle for corruption and criminality under the auspices of the IG.

However, matters truly came to a head once the SAD’s post-uprising demands upon the IG grew more iconoclastic and ultimately proved divisive. In particular, moves such as the call to abolish the post-Liberation War 1972 constitution, the demand to dismiss the country’s President, thereby risking a constitutional crisis, and finally the aborted move by SAD to unilaterally issue a ‘July Declaration’ on behalf of the mass movement on 31st December 2024 stoked controversy.

The backlash sparked by these moves from various political parties forced the IG to shift towards a more deliberative model of reform, whereby cross-party consensus took precedence over street demands from SAD-JNC and their allies. Therefore while initially dismissing the idea of forming themselves into a political party, in December 2024 the SAD and JNC announced their intention to create a party in the new year.

Since forming, the NCP has essentially played the role of a critical friend to the IG, while facing accusations of being a ‘King’s Party’. It simultaneously criticises and demonstrates against the government for its slow pace in securing reforms, while mobilising in defence of the IG when, for example, Muhammad Yunus confided in NCP leaders that he was considering his resignation in May.

With the NCP’s rise, SAD has descended into a string of scandals and accusations of extortion, factionalism, and moves to subordinate it to the NCP. In June 2025, Umama Fatema dramatically quit the platform, revealing that she had suffered personal attacks and smears from within SAD, and alleging that she had witnessed how ‘opportunists had eaten [SAD] away from the inside like termites’, and that ‘The future of [SAD] is now dark’.

Pitfalls of a “Non-Ideological” Political Party

NCP appears to be banking on the memory of July, especially among students and youth, in order to claim authority as custodians of the uprisings. Their assumption is this will in turn carry them forward as a viable political and electoral project. Meanwhile the suspension of political contradictions through their big-tent, cross-class and non-ideological approach to politics is intended to maintain the ‘unity’ of July to create a new political settlement in Bangladeshi society beyond the existing binaries established since 1971. 

However, it is not clear that either of these assumptions or claims still hold.

Firstly, the NCP are presently having to confront the fact that the students and youth that they consciously champion do not constitute a stable polity, much less a constituency. Many of those that they marched alongside in July 2024 will have had their own political or partisan inclinations or affiliations that they have since returned to. This, coupled with the fragmentation of students themselves into various formations, is complicating the NCP’s claim to singularly represent the legacy of the uprising.

Meanwhile, their attempt to extend the legacy of July to claim as the basis of their own legitimacy has pitted the NCP against many well-established parties. This includes parties of the Left, who resist their iconoclastic approach to post-1971 history. As such, the NCP leadership have been seen forging some deeply unscrupulous alliances, by leaning on the Islamist Right as a mobilisational force - thereby helping create an enabling environment for the Right. 

While eschewing ideology, the NCP have constructed a politics of what they term ‘anti-fascism.’ By NCP definitions, ‘fascism’ is located in the Awami League as a party, as well as the practices of ‘Mujibism’ that they introduced which have shaped the country since the establishment of its constitution in 1972. With this ‘anti-fascism’ emerging as their guiding political principle, alongside their call for a ‘second republic’ as a political reset for the country, their intention is to grant the 2024 uprising parity with 1971 in Bangladeshi history. 

This emphasis on ‘anti-fascism’, as well as their big-tent approach, has enabled NCP leaders to rationalise their proximity with groups of the hard-Right in Bangladesh as part of effectively a popular front strategy to cleanse Awami League influence from the country. This has extended from joint mobilisations against the Awami League to the NCP’s effort to build a centrist-Islamist bloc of parties to support the Yunus administration in the face of criticism. In turn, preliminary reports are also circulating that the Islamist parties within this bloc may be considering drawing the NCP into their own electoral alliance or understanding, too. However, it remains unclear whether the NCP will be receptive to this, at this stage.

This all came to a head in May 2025 with the NCP’s ultimately successful campaign of direct action to obtain a government ban on the Awami League. This ban was secured through direct collaboration with the likes of Jamaat-e-Islami and Hefazat-e-Islam, who comprised a large segment of the mobilisation force at their mass demonstrations.  Pointedly, this action saw groups - supposedly Shibir - disrupt the singing of the Bangladeshi national anthem, with videos widely circulating of participants chanting “No place for Awami League in Ghulam Azam’s Bangladesh” - referring to the Jamaat leader who collaborated with the West Pakistan army during 1971. In response to the subsequent backlash against the NCP, the party issued a face-saving exercise on their part claiming that ‘recognising and honouring the pivotal moments in Bangladesh’s historical struggle in 1947, 1971, and 2024 is a “prerequisite for participating in politics.”’ Despite this, the NCP’s strategic alliance with Islamist parties, Jamaat included, has continued to solidify.

On the other hand, if the aforementioned major opinion poll can be taken as authoritative then the concerns of the Bangladeshi public at large appear to be primarily concerned with pressing, day-to-day material issues like managing price hikes and increasing employment, as well as the pervasive sense of deteriorating public safety, rather than the questions of the constitution and the notion of a ‘second republic’ that the NCP have made defining features of their agenda. As such the party has to grapple with demands which it has neither has a track record of addressing, nor any clear political framework through which to generate meaningful solutions.

While the NCP’s stated concern with wealth inequality and ending economic discrimination could potentially bend towards some form of social democratic policies, it could just as easily become a matter reconciled through mainstream neoliberal orthodoxy, or the supposedly compassionate capitalism promoted by Muhammad Yunus. The character of the NCP’s economic programme can be found in their ‘Vision 2035’ programme launched at the Bangladesh Investment Summit in April 2025. In this document they pledged to turn Bangladesh into an ‘investment paradise’ for foreign capital, promised to always ‘ensure a business-friendly environment’ and evinced a hope for high-tech digital advances to modernise business and combat inefficiency and corruption - while offering nothing to differentiate itself from the neoliberal platitudes of their political competitors, much less any structural critique of Bangladesh’s place in the global economy. This was the overarching economic thrust of their manifesto outlined in August 2025 also. Meanwhile they, along with the IG, have sought to remove ‘Socialism’ as a pillar from the constitution, associating this as an artifact of ‘Mujibism’.

NCP’s emphasis on ‘political inclusivity’ and technocratic middle-ground politics may work for a single-issue campaign, a protest movement or an NGO. However it does not inspire confidence as the sustainable basis for a political party, outside of potentially attracting some of Bangladesh’s politically disengaged youth. Instead, its anti-ideological politics can shade into indecisiveness and, ultimately, into a lack of political conviction. The problems facing Bangladesh cannot be resolved by another actor entering its already crowded array of centrist parties.

Moreover this attempt at evading ideological contestation enables the party’s political positions to become overdetermined by its loudest voices - an issue has already provoked discontent within the NCP. Chief organisers Sarjis Alam and Hasnat Abdullah’s public personas have often been seen as abrasive, arrogant and attention-seeking, while these figures have also been visibly courting the Muslim Right by fraternising with Jamaat-Shibir and Hefazat. Their actions have triggered public disagreements with other party figures as well as leading to internal criticism, and a commitment by the party to improve internal accountability processes to prevent a drift towards personality-driven politics. 

However, as the de facto leaders of the party they continue to command an inordinate degree of control over the party in its nascent form and are best placed to convert visibility into votes during the election. If elected, figures such as Alam and Abdullah may well have the leverage to project their own politics as the path to which the party should bend.

Is the NCP the True Heir of July?

While the new party was quickly subject to splits and breakways, the direct lineage of the NCP to the SAD-JNC platforms nonetheless makes it the most readily identifiable representative of the uprisings at this time. Any attempt by the party to present itself as holding a monopoly on the political aspirations of the uprisings, however, is a far more contentious matter. 

Yet in this respect, it is telling that neither the NCP nor any of its rival post-uprising formations consciously speak of themselves in terms of a clearly defined political ideology. United People’s Bangladesh, comprising the JNC’s former Shibir faction, describe themselves as a ‘pressure group’ to ‘uphold the spirit and demands of July.’ A further platform consisting of Dhaka University students/alumni, Inquilab Mancha (Revolutionary Platform), characterises itself as a ‘non-political cultural organisation’, albeit with a seeming tilt towards the BNP while being more vocally critical of NCP for allegedly ‘co-opting July’ and ‘destroying unity.’

Therefore, the character of the post-July political formations, including the NCP and its rivals, speaks to the deeper contradictions of the movement that toppled Hasina: which while certainly being righteous, was ideologically undernourished. This lack of political definition within the movement and its leadership has in subsequent months created space either for the growth of Right-wing forces to reassert themselves, or seen the more high-minded ideals of the uprising moment retreat from the public consciousness towards more prosaic concerns of survival in Bangladesh.

The initial demand for quota reforms and ‘meritocracy’ in the civil service too were worthy and valid. However, on their face, they spoke to a petit bourgeois aspirational politics - albeit being a demand which resonated widely in light of the employment crisis facing Bangladeshi youth. The student-led movement that coalesced around the demand itself was therefore mixed in class composition, and its ultimate success on August 5th was made possible by it linking up with the Bangladeshi labouring classes to generate a truly mass movement. But while it is clear that the working class was present as a force in July, it is much less clear whether the aspirations of the working class are reflected in the NCP’s programme and orientation beyond rhetorical gestures.

While there is certain to be political contestation within the NCP and between its various factions, it remains to be seen whether any measure of ideological clarity will emerge from the party, what orientation that will take - or whether it will become ossified into the trappings of bourgeois electoralism, and continue its early tilt towards courting conservatism.

Nijjor Manush is a socialist organisation for Bengalis in Britain, founded in 2018. Its book Inquilab Zindabad? A socialist analysis of Bangladesh after the uprisings was produced alongside the Nijjor Manush Bangladesh Solidarity Group, set up following the 2024 uprisings. Follow them on Instagram: @nijjormanush.

On November 21, 2024, a Turi tribe convoy under security forces protection was ambushed in Baggan area in Lower Kurram killing more than forty people. Since then, the Tal-Parachinar Road which connects the district with the rest of Pakistan has been blocked for the Turi tribe. This attack continued the episodic violent conflicts over the land that have resurfaced after the former Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) merger with the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) in 2018.

The Pakistan government introduced political, economic and governance reforms in the Newly Merged Districts (NMDs) with the promise to integrate the region in governance, development and, most importantly, the promise of peace. The merger process was followed by the rehabilitation of 1.6 million Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), who had been displaced by military operations against Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan since 2005.

The return of IDPs opened up already existing inter and intra tribal disputes over the communal land throughout the merged districts. These land disputes have turned violent in the Kurram district, having claimed hundreds of lives since 2019.

Imperialism and land disputes in Kurram

Political commentators, journalists, bureaucrats and scholars claim the violence has roots in sectarian identities, the presence of militant groups and the Kurram district’s relevance in Pakistan’s “strategic depth” policies vis a vis Afghanistan. Instead, the roots of the ongoing violence can be traced to a factor that has been missing in popular debate: land.  

Soon after the 1892 declaration of Kurram as an agency, the colonial state attempted to forcibly tie local tribes to specific regions through a summary land settlement, mapping and cadastres in 1894. This summary land settlement was followed by two land settlements in 1905 and 1945, which categorised tribes as landlords and vassals.  While periodic clashes over meadows and stealing cattle remained a constant feature of the Kurram’s history, these incidents never escalated into district-wide conflicts before the colonial land settlement.

Imperial wars have had long-lasting socio-political and economic effects on the district. The Kurram district has been consistently impacted by war, which traces itself to the three British-Afghan wars between 1838 and 1919. In 1979, sixty years of relative peace were broken by the first Afghan War. The US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 has meant that peace has never been restored in the district.

Before British control over the region, Afghan kings relied on the region and its tribal armies for expansive and defensive wars. High taxes were imposed on the tribes of Kurram when they would rebel. In this period, the Afghan state began to strategically manipulate local tribal rivalries over meadows and forests, a state-society dynamic which has continued till today.

British colonial administrators, aware of the challenges of extracting revenue, created a regime of cheap governance over the region through indirect rule via the Frontier Crime Regulation (FCR) in 1901. The Pakistani state sustained colonial structures of governing the region by treating the region as strategic depth against Afghanistan’s provocation of a greater Pashtunistan, curtailing Russia’s socialist threat and the unresolved Taliban question that emerged out of these dynamics. Imperial overtures also brought war economy dynamics, including weapons and drug trade into these districts. Combined with the post-merger governance reforms, which brought weak policing and strict military control over the district administration, these dynamics played a major role in the intensification of the prevailing land disputes.

This article focuses on two major conflicts since the 2018 merger: the Marghai Cheena refugee camp dispute and the Giddo forest dispute. These two disputes show how ‘war making and state making’ have gone together in Kurram, where the state has moved between strategically using its writ to establish Mujahideen camps, and withdrawing its writ to let non-state actors discipline local populations for broader geostrategic goals.

Both disputes have long histories tracing back to the 1960s. These two disputes can be better understood in their particular geopolitical contexts. The Pewar-Giddo dispute was exacerbated by the Pakistani state establishment of the Mujahideen camps near the disputed forests. Similarly, the Pakistani state’s pro-Haqqani Taliban policy put the Turi tribe under siege by Taliban for four years from 2007-2011, when the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) chief Hakim Ullah Mehsud allocated disputed land in Marghai Cheena to the Chamkani tribe.

Land relations and demography of Kurram

Kurram is the scenic valley of the River Kurram at the foot of the Spinghar mountain range.  The population is concentrated on fertile land on the banks of the river. In the North, Kurram directly connects to Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province.

According to the 2017 census, Kurram has 619,553 population, which includes several tribes, including Turi, Bangash, Chamkani, and Mangal. Out of the tribes, the Turi tribe and half of the Bangash tribe are followers of Shia Islam. The remaining tribes are Sunni Deobandis, with   government reports indicating 58% of Kurram’s population is Sunni and 42% is Shia.

The Shia tribes of Turi and Bangash are in the majority in Upper Kurram. Some Sunni tribes reside in the hills. In the Lower Kurram, the Sunni tribes Bangash and Orakzai are the majority but most land has historically been controlled by the Turi tribe. Central Kurram is entirely Sunni, where the land is mostly hilly and not suitable for farming.

Ongoing land disputes in Kurram are often among tribes which live in the same village mauza or close to each other. Rival tribes continue to contest each others’ right to land through protests and sit ins, even before violence breaks out.

The Marghai Cheena refugee camp dispute

On July 18, 2020, a clash broke out between Balishkhel and Marghai Cheena. The Ghundi tribe accused the Chamkani tribe of illegally building houses on communal land. Fighting continued for two days and claimed 10 lives from both sides.

Fearing that the land dispute between the two rival tribes from rival Sunni and Shia tribes would escalate into a district-wide sectarian conflict, respected political and social leaders from all tribes and sects asked the state to intervene. These clashes presented an opportunity for the Pakistan state to show that the merging of the districts meant that it could meaningfully resolve complex land disputes.

The Balishkhel village acts as the border between the Shia tribal majority in upper Kurram and the Sunni majority Lower and Central Kurram. The disputed Marghai Cheena communal land is located on the periphery of Sadda Bazaar, the second biggest town in Kurram, an important trade hub and de facto headquarters of Sunni tribes.

The Marghai Cheena dispute began in the 1980s. After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan,  almost two million Afghan refugees arrived in Pakistan. Kurram hosted 34 Afghan refugee camps. Marghai Cheena was one of these refugee camps constructed on communal land outside Sadda Bazaar, jointly claimed by Shia Turis and the Sunni Masuzai tribe. Most Afghan refugee camps were constructed on communal lands, which was a recipe for land disputes in the future.

Afghan refugees were initially welcomed by local tribesmen. Refugee camps created new job opportunities and led to small towns becoming small cities. However, the presence of Afghan refugees also transformed the local Shia Turi tribe into a minority.

In 2005, when Pakistan’s military dictator General Pervez Musharraf ordered the repatriation of Afghan refugees to Afghanistan, the Marghai Cheena Afghan refugee camp was suddenly left empty. Seeing an opportunity to move out of the hills, the Chamkani tribe from Central Kurram began to occupy these empty houses.

In 2006, this led to a clash between the Sunni Masuzai and Chamkani tribes, after the Masuzai of Sadda Bazaar asked the Chamkani to vacate the houses. This was the same year that the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and Afghan Taliban began to make inroads in the district Kurram.

Initially, the Afghan Taliban and TTP restricted themselves to cross-border attacks on Afghan and NATO forces. However, when the Turi tribe barred them from using their routes for cross-border interventions, the TTP began target killing Shia Turis and began to mobilise the Sunni tribes against the Turi tribes blockade of the Taliban.

The dynamics of tribal conflict changed after well-known TTP commander Hakeem Ullah Mehsud was nominated the head of its Kurram chapter. In April 2007, sectarian clashes broke out in Parachinar city over allegedly blasphemous slogans raised by Sunnis in a Milad procession. The clashes spread throughout the district. The TTP played a key role in organising local Sunni tribes against the Shia Turi tribe villages and blocked the Tal-Parachinar Road for the Turi tribe for four years.

In these four years, the Pakistan government had no writ in the district. The Shia villages governed themselves under the leadership of the Anjuman-e-Hussainia (Hussainia Association) while Sunni villages remained under TTP rule. Hakeem Ullah Mehsud directly intervened and resolved the dispute over the Marghai Cheena refugee camp between the Masuzai and Chamkani tribes. The former refugee camp is now known as Mehsudabad, named after the TTP commander for his role in resolving the dispute between two Sunni tribes.

The Chamkani tribe continued to build houses in this disputed land. When peace was restored in 2011 after the Murree agreement between Sunni and Shia tribes, the Marghai Cheena camp had mushroomed into a sizeable housing community.

In 2013, the Marghai Cheena dispute took a new turn when the Turi tribe from the Balishkel village organised sit-ins and protests against the Chamkani tribe’s ‘land grab.’ They demanded the demolition of ‘illegal encroachments’ on communal land. The district government accused the Balishkhel village of threatening the fragile peace.

Multiple jirgas held to resolve the land dispute failed. One political agent imposed section 144 to bar construction and demolished some houses but new construction continued. This led to another outbreak of violence between the Ghundi and Chamkani tribes.

The three tribes at the centre of the land dispute make claims based on different facets: land revenue records, protection tax collection, and customary law. The Ghundi tribe claims land ownership based on land revenue records. Masuzai tribe elders, in online videos, reject the claims, and instead argue that the Balishkhel village used to pay qalang (protection tax) to the Masuzai tribe during the colonial era. They argue that the Balishkhel villagers are tenants without ownership of communal land. The Chamkani tribe, which belongs to the mountain region where no land settlement was carried out, relies on customary law, and reject the colonial land settlement to advance its claim to the Marghai Cheena refugee camp land.

With the dispute in deadlock, whenever clashes begin in Kurram, the Balishkhel, Sadda Bazaar and Khar Kalay frontier sees a breakout of violence. Kurram’s Shia population sees the Marghai Cheena dispute as the continuation of Sunnis encroachment over their lands, which is pushing Shias tribe into the Upper Kurram.

Shia anxieties trace themselves to the Cold War period, when a series of sectarian clashes took place between 1981 and 1986 over the construction of an Imambargah and Muhram procession in Sadda Bazaar, between the Shia Bangash tribe and three Sunni tribes supported by Afghan refugees. These clashes led to the displacement of the Shia Bangash tribe from Sadda Bazaar.

The failure of the Pakistan government to resettle the Shia Bangash in their homes in Sadda Bazaar continues to create the impression that might is right, and violence is the only way to solve land disputes in the Kurram district.

Giddo forest dispute: Communal rights or ownership?

On October 23, 2021, fighting broke out between Alizai clan of Turi tribe village Pewar and Mangal tribe of Giddo villages over the ownership of Giddo forest land. Clashes continued for two days and claimed 16 lives from both sides.

Pewar is small village, inhabited by Chardai section of Shia Turi tribe, located on the northern end of the Kurram Valley bordering Afghanistan. Its location, next to Pewar Kotal pass which has historically used by merchants and invaders from Central Asia, makes it an important location. Chardai section of the Turis consists of the Duparzai, Ghund Khel and Alizai subtribes. It is surrounded by many picturesque small Sunni Mangal tribe hamlets of Teri Mangal, Haqdara, Sursung, and Gobazana.

The two villages are located at the foot of Spinghar range. Both villages are located at high altitude and experience harsh long winters. In early October, people from these villages start preparing for the harsh winter. Every year, people from both Giddo and Pewar villages fetch wood used as fuel and tree branches as feed for livestock.

Both villages used to collectively protect the forests. According to Pewar village elder, Haji Asghar, “Both villages allowed residents to only fetch wood for one month in Rabi season (April- May) and a one month in Kharif season (October- November). In winters, villagers were allowed to cut tree branches for livestock twice a week.”

The October 2021 fighting broke out when the Shia Alizai tribe claimed that the Mangal tribe unilaterally denied them access to firewood from the Giddo Forest. Both sides began to share online videos advocating their claims and began to organise protests. Mangal sit-ins in lower Kurram were attended by other Sunni tribes in solidarity, and also managed mobilise Sunni tribes from Upper Kurram. The Tal-Parachinar Road was under blockade once again for the Shia population of Upper Kurram.

Kurram’s Shia tribes began a counter sit-in on the Pewar Road, which blocked road access for the Sunni Mangal tribes in Upper Kurram. The Alizai clan of the Pewar village asked the district administration to intervene, arguing that the Mangal tribe had converted a village land dispute into a district-wide sectarian conflict.

The district government responded by arresting tribal elders from both sides, and formed a land commission to resolve all land disputes in the district. The commission’s report has yet to be made public.

The Mangal tribe argues that all the Giddo mauza (estate) belongs to their tribe. Communal rights to access to the Giddo forest are claimed to be trespass and illegal wood gathering. The Alizai clan claims ‘real ownership’ of the Giddo estate, arguing that Mangal elders led to Afghanistan after they were unable to pay the land revenue during British rule. The Alizai tribe accepts Mangal ownership of land in the Giddo village, but argues that they do not have ownership rights in the forest. The Alizai tribe claims the Mangal tribe maintained access to the forest by sharing their agricultural produce with the Pewar village.

The Giddo forest dispute is amongst several disputes over forest access between the Alizai and the Mangal tribes, which includes the Gurutan, Tyaro, and Gobazana forests. In December 2001, a serious dispute led to the loss of several Mangal villages and the Turi tribes being vacated from Gobazana village. Safe travel on Pewar Road and access to water and forests was only restored after a formal agreement.

Clashes have continued to break out over forest multiple times in the post-1947 period, including 1961 and 1982. The Cold War increased the significance of Pewar and surrounding Mangal villages. The thick forests and high-altitude mountains provided a sanctuary to the Mujahideens fighting in the Afghan war. The government of Pakistan requested the Turi tribe to allow the Afghan refugees and Afghan Mujahideen camp in the mountains of Pewar, for which it paid Pak Rs15,000 per month.

Most Afghan refugees in Kurram shared tribal affinities in Kurram, which allowed the Sunni tribes to become more assertive. Additionally, the association with different factions of the Mujahideens in Afghanistan, brought new weapons and fortified their fellow tribesmen position against the Turi tribe.

In 1986, the Turi tribe blocked routes for Gulbadeen Hikmatyar’s Mujahideen near Pewar because they perceived it will weaken their position in the Kurram valley. These clashes spread throughout the Kurram valley. The Mujahideens, in alliance with local Sunni tribes, attacked Turi villages and torched several villages in Upper and Lower Kurram, which have still not been rehabilitated.

Academics, like Farhat Taj, in the book “The Real Pashtun Question” argue that the 1986 violence was part of General Zia Ul Haq’s containment strategy for Kurram Shias. In the context of the anti-Zakat Shia mobilization in Pakistan and the Islamic revolution in Iran, Zia ul Haq was already annoyed by countrywide Shia mobilisations against the Zakat. Further, he feared growing Shia influence in the country, which was being spearheaded by the Tehreek Nifaz Fiqah Jafaria (TNJF) led by the young cleric Allama Arif Hussain Al-Hussaini, hailing from the Pewar village. 

In the past, tribal elders would intervene via jirgas organised by political agents. However, after the FATA merger, the local police office and district administration have proven ineffective due to direct military involvement. Jirgas are now directly organized by military officers, but there is no enforcement of their decisions, which has led to the Pakistan army losing the perception of impartial arbitrator.

Land is the cause, land is the solution

Conflicts in Kurram, which take a sectarian turn, have their basis in ongoing disputes over land, water or forest access. Land moving between commodity and strategic terrain are key reasons why these conflicts are not solved.

The colonial land revenue settlement fortified tribal cleavages by creating political-economic hierarchies, which divides tribal access into ownership and access rights. The long history of imperial intervention in Afghanistan have played a key role in amplifying existing conflicts, which includes refugee and displaced population settlement, the creation of a war economy in the region, and policies of strategic depth, which allowed Sunni militant groups to entrench themselves in the social and economic life of Kurram. These dynamics have long-lasting effects on local tribes’ access to the meadows, forests, and cross-border business.

The post-merger transfer of power to police and district administration has failed due to continued military interference. The Pakistani military regularly participates in the ongoing land dispute jirgas with no knowledge of the local land disputes. At the time, the TTP’s regaining a foothold in the newly merged districts suggests that a resolution to the violence in Kurram is still far away.

Sibth ul Hassan Turi belongs to Kurram district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and is currently a doctoral student at the Center for Conflict Studies at the University of Marburg, Germany.

In Arugam Bay, a striking transformation has occurred. This Sri Lankan coastal town, once adorned with Hebrew welcome signs, has become a notable centre of Palestine solidarity since Israel’s war on Gaza beginning October 7, 2023—a conflict that has claimed over 50,000 Palestinian lives, and continues to date despite failed ceasefires and repeated calls for peace. Pro-Palestine stickers mark signboards, local activists coordinate Gaza education campaigns, distribute boycott lists targeting Israel-linked enterprises, and challenge Israeli businesses operating without proper permits. In October 2023, the Mass Movement for Social Justice alongside the Tamil National Green Organisation organised a protest in Jaffna calling for an end to the genocide in Gaza, with demonstrators holding signs declaring “It was Mullivaikkal then, now it is Palestine!” A few months later—in February 2024—dozens of Muslims gathered in the Eastern province of Kalmunai calling for a “Free Palestine!” But it is Colombo that has emerged as the movement’s vibrant hub. Since October 2023, a series of protests have unfolded in the capital, with English-language social media campaigns coordinating demonstrations and fundraisers, including the most recent on April 23, 2025, organised by the People’s Movements Against the Genocide in Palestine.

However, as I witness this surge of important solidarity—especially Colombo’s rallies to social media campaigns expressing outrage at the ongoing genocide in Gaza—I confront a dissonance central to Sri Lanka’s post-war reality: How can a country practicing its own form of settler colonialism—a system which perpetuates the destruction and elimination of indigenous peoples—passionately condemn similar practices elsewhere? The tactics are structurally identical: land seizure, demographic engineering, militarised control, and cultural erasure—the very practices denounced in Palestine—are actively deployed against Tamil communities in Sri Lanka’s North and East. This contradiction reveals a disturbing pattern of selective enforcement showing who may express solidarity and whose suffering merits acknowledgment. What follows is not a critique meant to diminish Palestine solidarity—especially as Gaza's devastation continues—but an examination of contradictions that, if confronted, could strengthen such movements.

Beyond domestic inconsistencies lies an official policy paradox. Sri Lanka projects a forceful diplomatic stance on Palestine—chairing the UN Special Committee on Israeli Practices, supporting UN resolutions for a two-state solution, and signing the joint letter defending the UN Secretary-General against Israel’s persona non grata declaration in October 2024. Yet since 2023, the government has sent migrant workers to Israel to replace banned Palestinian agricultural workers. This willingness to maintain economic ties while condemning Israeli actions mirrors Sri Lanka’s approach to internal colonisation—championing reconciliation internationally while systematically orchestrating demographic changes through state-sponsored resettlement schemes. This duplicity was exposed when a senior government official overseeing the country’s oldest development project, a key instrument in demographic engineering, stated: “Presidents come and go, but whatever happens, our work goes on.” These words reveal that the machinery of internal colonisation operates with remarkable continuity beneath changing administrations, immune to electoral shifts or international scrutiny, entrenched in a permanent bureaucracy outlasting each government. 

The Invisible Occupation: Inside Sri Lanka’s Settler Colonial Project 

To understand this contradiction’s magnitude, we must excavate Sri Lanka’s settler colonial project—a sophisticated system operating through mechanisms condemned in international discourse about Palestine. This internal colonisation proceeds under the guise of development and security, masking ethno-nationalist aims beneath technocratic language and obscuring true intentions. 

Sri Lanka’s post-colonial trajectory exemplifies Frantz Fanon’s (1963) diagnosis in The Wretched of the Earth: “The national bourgeoisie steps into the shoes of the former European settlement,” where “its mission has nothing to do with transforming the nation; it consists, prosaically, of being the transmission line between the nation and a capitalism, rampant though camouflaged, which today puts on the masque of neo-colonialism”. Within years of gaining independence from Britain in 1948, the state initiated an internal colonisation project—marginalising Tamils through disenfranchisement, pogroms, and state-sponsored settlement programmes—replicating colonial divide-and-rule tactics while cloaking them in sovereignty and national reunification language.  

Post-war Sri Lanka intensified these strategies, empowering its military which remains one of the world’s largest and best funded. Under President Mahinda Rajapaksa (2005-2015), the military became active development partners, primarily resettling landless Sinhalese in the north and east. Under his brother, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa (2019-2022), the military’s mandate expanded to urban development, water management, land reclamation, and construction. During COVID-19, the military established quarantine centers, ran vaccination sites, and implemented contact tracing—further normalising military involvement in civilian life. 

Central to this military-backed resettlement is the Mahaweli Development Programme (MDP). Launched in the 1960s, the MDP is Sri Lanka’s oldest development project, first conceived by Prime Minister D.S. Senanayake as agriculture minister during British rule (1815-1948) and consolidated by his son Dudley as Prime Minister. Covering almost 40 percent of the country and planned over 30 years, it was “presented as the driving force behind the island’s economy, the nerve-centre of village life, the life-blood of its peasantry without which life would wither” (The Times of Ceylon, March 20, 1970). Notably, these plans were influenced by Land Commissioner C.L. Wickremesinghe (grandfather of former President Ranil Wickremesinghe (2022-2024)), following his visit to Jewish settlements in Palestine. Like Israel’s settlement expansion presenting itself as development rather than colonisation as proposed by the head of the World Zionist Organisation’s Settlement Division, Matityahu Drobles, in his “Master Plan for the Development of Settlements in Judea and Samaria, 1979-1983,” the MDP cloaked ethno-nationalist aims beneath benevolent progress rhetoric. Despite being declared a “failure” by the World Bank after six loans, the project continues unabated. 

The parallel between the MDP, and Israeli settlements such as Ma’ale Adumin or Ariel, reveals how settler colonial projects globally employ similar justifications—framing territorial appropriation as natural expansion, demographic engineering as addressing housing shortages, and militarisation as necessary security. In Sri Lanka, the MDP serves as a sophisticated mechanism for demographic engineering and territorial control aimed at permanently altering the north and east’s ethnic composition. A senior military official I interviewed stated explicitly: “The military-Mahaweli partnership is necessary for this. And we [the military] have the people and power to make it happen”—a candid admission revealing how development initiatives function as colonisation vehicles, with state institutions implementing demographic change under progress guises. 

This military-development partnership manifests vividly in Sri Lanka’s north and east, specifically in Weli Oya—originally Manal Aru until renamed in 1988—where I witnessed firsthand the sophisticated mechanisms of this militarisation-development nexus. Buddhist temples and paddy fields create a pastoral tableau embodying the romanticised “real” Sri Lanka—an idealised Sinhala-Buddhist agricultural community. This bucolic facade masks a calculated political project paralleling practices condemned in the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, where settlements similarly present themselves as organic extensions of nationhood rather than territorial control instruments. Entering this village required passing a large military camp with soldiers checking identification—a continuing everyday occurrence. Military personnel operate checkpoints and run farms, restaurants, and businesses throughout the region. “We do not even realise they are army,” my tuk-tuk driver Weerakoon remarked, revealing how deeply militarisation has been naturalised, no longer perceived as extraordinary but as ordinary life. 

What casual observers see as “development” is, upon closer examination, a sophisticated colonisation framework. Since 2013, military personnel have clandestinely transported landless Sinhalese—mainly from Hambantota province (the former ruling Rajapaksa family’s stronghold)—into Tamil-majority areas. One senior military official candidly told me: “We give these people transport, material to build a house, and make sure they do not leave,” confirming direct permission from former Presidents Mahinda and Gotabaya Rajapaksa as part of a long-term plan “to make the Sinhala man the most present in all parts of the country.” 

Recent evidence confirms this pattern’s persistence. In April 2025, the Tamil National People’s Front denounced the Lower Malwathu Oya Project as “Sinhala colonization in disguise.” This initiative will transplant thousands of Sinhalese settlers into traditionally Tamil regions. This mirrors earlier patterns in Mullaitivu, where Tamil activists in 2023 condemned the Department of Mahaweli Development Programme’s expansion of the ‘L Zone’ (where Weli Oya is located) that would appropriate an additional 4,186 acres of Tamil lands for Sinhalese settlers—revealing how, nearly a decade after my initial fieldwork, the development apparatus continues functioning as the principal vehicle for demographic engineering, demonstrating settler colonial logic’s durability even as its mechanisms evolve with changing political circumstances. 

The Choreography of Colonisation 

While projects like the MDP, or the Lower Malwathu Oya, represent the visible face of Sri Lanka’s settler colonial enterprise, the underlying mechanics—the how rather than merely the what—reveal a far more sophisticated system. My extended fieldwork in Weli Oya, perhaps one of the most contested and emblematic sites of state-sponsored resettlement, uncovered a systematic process unfolding not as random opportunism but as a deliberate sequence. This settler colonial project advances through four distinct yet interconnected stages—a carefully orchestrated choreography mirroring colonisation efforts globally while adapting to Sri Lanka’s particular historical context. 

First comes normalisation. Military checkpoints, soldiers in villages, and army involvement in daily civilian activities gradually make militarisation seem natural rather than extraordinary. Between January 2018 and December 2019, 353 instances of military presence and involvement in schools were recorded (mainly from the North and East). In April 2025, the Tamil Guardian reported that the Sri Lankan military has intensified its presence in Tamil schools under the innocuously named “Clean Sri Lanka Program”—military personnel regularly entering schools to conduct programmes ostensibly focused on cleanliness and environmental awareness. These activities, “make military ideology more acceptable and palatable,” thereby contributing to a pervasive militarisation that establishes and cements conditions for demographic change.  

The second stage positions the military as benevolent protectors and providers. They transport settlers to new homes, distribute food and building materials, and offer emotional support when newcomers face hardship. “Without this, we all might have actually left,” one settler named Vijay told me, crediting military officers for convincing him to stay when considering returning to his hometown of Hambantota. This welfare function transforms the colonisation project into a humanitarian initiative, casting the military not as occupiers but as caregivers essential to community survival. 

The third stage blurs boundaries between military and civilian life. In 2016, I discovered a newly constructed housing scheme called Ranavisipura (“army village”) with fifty homes allocated to military families. This cantonment strategically placed military families among civilian settlers, creating the impression that soldiers are “just like everyone else”—neighbours rather than occupiers. This militarisation of civilian life continues unabated, with military personnel in Jaffna and Kilinochchi districts operating businesses ranging from farms to restaurants to whale-watching tours. This integration further normalises military presence and creates dependencies deeply entrenched in community structures. 

The final stage sanctifies these activities through religious ceremonies and nationalist mythology. This religious framing transforms development into a sacred duty, positioning colonisation as historical destiny’s fulfilment rather than a contemporary political project. At the Buddhist stupa of Ruwanweli Maha Seya in Anuradhapura, I witnessed a ceremony where military officials were compared to mythological “giants” who helped ancient Sinhalese kings defeat invaders. The monk leading the sermon proclaimed that through the military’s work in the north and east, “the country can be the proud Sinhala-Buddhist nation it was long ago and always should be.”  

These religious justifications for military expansion are not merely ceremonial but translate directly into territorial claims as systematic dispossession practices continue to evolve across Sri Lanka's north and east. In March 2025, Buddhist monks, accompanied by military escorts, seized 3,820 acres of lands by declaring it to be “pooja lands” (sacred lands). Families who had farmed these lands for generations suddenly found themselves dispossessed through religious claims backed by military power. A few weeks later, land belonging to the people of Thaiyiddy, Jaffna, was forcibly acquired to build a Buddhist temple—mirroring how religious narratives justify settlement expansion in contested territories around Jerusalem. 

These four stages—normalisation, benevolent protection, civil-military integration, and religious sanctification—operate not merely as sequential phases but as mutually reinforcing mechanisms constituting a comprehensive territorial control system. The parallels between Sri Lanka’s colonisation of the North and East, and Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories, extend beyond rhetoric into concrete dispossession practices reconfiguring geographical and demographic realities. Yet these incidents generate minimal domestic outrage compared to passionate responses to distant conflicts—a disparity revealing how solidarity itself has become selective, contingent on political convenience rather than consistent principles, pointing to fundamental questions about how solidarity movements operate in a world of competing narratives and selective attention. 

The Hierarchy of Grief and the Politics of Selective Solidarity 

The contradiction between Sri Lanka’s official government declarations of Palestinian solidarity at international forums, and its internal colonisation practices, reveals a profound dissonance in how suffering is acknowledged and which injustices merit public outrage. In February 2025, Tamil families demanding truth and justice for missing relatives—the Families of the Disappeared—reached 3,000 days of protest in Vavuniya, maintaining their vigil for over eight years. Despite years of peaceful demonstration, the state has provided no meaningful answers. Their persistence stands in stark contrast to attention given to distant conflicts, highlighting the hierarchy of grief rendering some suffering visible and other suffering invisible within the same national discourse. 

This selective solidarity creates a “hierarchy of grief” —where certain deaths and suffering are publicly mourned while others are ignored or erased from collective consciousness. The state actively suppresses Tamil remembrance through war memorial destruction and criminalisation of commemorative events like Maaveerar Naal. This erasure parallels Israel’s attempts to suppress Palestinian memory through village demolition, blocking Nakba commemorations, and rewriting historical narratives. The irony is striking—the same memory suppression mechanisms condemned in the Palestinian context are deployed against Tamil communities with minimal domestic protest.

This selective recognition operates not only through state policy but also through who is permitted to express solidarity and whose voices are heard. For the Sinhalese-Buddhist majority, solidarity with Palestinians requires little personal sacrifice, making it politically expedient. This stance allows them to position themselves against Western imperialism and colonialism while avoiding any reckoning with the Sinhalese-Buddhist state's own role as colonisers within their borders.  Condemning Israeli actions serves as a convenient distraction from examining similar practices at home—reflecting a politics of convenience rather than principle. This selective moral outrage exemplifies a broader global pattern where indignation is curated according to geopolitical interests. The colonised recognise it for what it is: settler colonialism.  

These contradictions mirror a global phenomenon most evident in Western liberal democracies, where establishment positions frequently diverge from grassroots sentiment. While student movements and progressive activists across American, British, Canadian, and European campuses rallied for Palestinian rights—often facing severe consequences, as evidenced by the wave of international student visa cancellations and disciplinary actions against hundreds of protesters in the United States—their liberal establishments, from mainstream media conglomerates to political leadership, have maintained largely unwavering support for Israel, creating a striking disconnect between grassroots activism and institutional positions. This split reveals how institutional power shapes which causes receive legitimacy. Unlike Sri Lanka, where state rhetoric superficially aligns with popular sentiment on Palestine while contradicting it in practice, Western establishments often explicitly oppose Palestine solidarity movements while claiming to uphold universal human rights principles. Both contexts demonstrate how solidarity is either politically embraced when politically expedient or contested when challenging existing power structures or demanding internal reflection. 

This selective recognition of suffering demands a more principled approach to solidarity transcending political convenience and nationalist frameworks. As Audre Lorde writes in Sister Outsider (1984), “There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.”  Her argument suggests true liberation requires recognising oppressions’ interconnected nature worldwide, and her solidarity vision demands transcending nationalist frameworks arbitrarily determining whose suffering merits acknowledgment. This approach describes Sri Lanka’s fundamental contradiction—a formerly colonised country perfecting oppression techniques against its Tamil population, while Palestine protests often fail to acknowledge the parallels with what is happening within. 

Beyond Performative Activism: Towards Authentic Solidarity 

The struggles of Palestinians and Tamils share profound interconnections, linked through global systems that enable their oppression.  

While it is important to heed cautions against hasty analogies when comparing the oppression of Palestinians and their resistance to the state’s repression of Tamils and the rise of Tamil militancy in Sri Lanka, we must recognise that both populations confront settler-colonial projects characterised by militarised development, demographic engineering, and cultural erasure. In both contexts, ancestral lands undergo transformation through systematic state policies that alter demographics under the guise of security and progress. Acknowledging these parallels allows us to move beyond selective outrage toward a more consistent ethical position that challenges colonisation in all its manifestations. And, if decolonisation is to have any substantive meaning, it cannot be applied selectively. Sri Lankans opposing settler colonialism must also confront their state’s actions in Tamil regions. Otherwise, their Palestine advocacy becomes not a principled stand but a convenient gesture—allowing them to be choice defenders of justice while disregarding comparable suffering in their midst. 

Sri Lanka’s stance is hardly exceptional in the global landscape of selective solidarity. From India—where despite some leaders' support for Palestine, the government, media, and majority remain largely pro-Israel—while simultaneously militarising Kashmir, to Pakistan's pro-Palestine diplomacy alongside its operations in Balochistan, to Turkey's condemnation of Israeli settlements while displacing Kurdish communities—a pattern emerges of states, and its people, weaponizing distant solidarity while replicating the same oppressive structures at home. What distinguishes these contradictions is not their fundamental nature but their visibility within international discourse. These states employ anti-colonial rhetoric in global forums while implementing colonial logics domestically, rebranding identical practices as “development,” “security,” or “territorial integrity” when conducted within their own borders. This semantic transformation allows formerly colonised nations to participate in solidarity movements without confronting their own role as colonisers —a contradiction revealing how settler colonial techniques have become standardised statecraft. 

These contradictions demand our attention not to diminish solidarity with Palestinians—which remains more vital than ever—but to strengthen it through critical self-reflection. By acknowledging the structural similarities between seemingly disparate struggles, we can construct movements against settler colonialism that transcend geographic boundaries and challenge the hierarchies of grief that determine whose suffering merits acknowledgment. After all, as Moshtari Hilal and Sinthujan Varatharajah say, “It should be possible for us to shift away from a romanticised view of solidarities in order to have these uncomfortable conversations—conversations that acknowledge the pain of the many who are forgotten or considered irrelevant in this world.” And such “uncomfortable conversations” must commence with recognising the parallels between condemned actions abroad and sanctioned policies at home—understanding that decolonisation cannot be outsourced or performed selectively. Authentic solidarity demands recognising interconnected struggles to challenge injustice regardless of its proximity or political cost. This means standing against settler colonialism whether in Gaza, the West Bank, or the militarised villages of post-war Sri Lanka with equal conviction. Only through such moral consistency can solidarity movements transcend performative gestures to create genuine change. This change must be built on ethical clarity, not political expediency, and must foster a decolonial practice that begins locally and extends globally—one that refuses to replicate the very hierarchies of visibility and erasure that colonial systems depend upon. 

Thiruni Kelegama (Oxford School of Global and Area Studies, University of Oxford, UK) examines how development projects reshape power, space, and identity in Sri Lanka. Her forthcoming book, Central Margins: Sri Lanka's Violent Frontier (Cambridge University Press 2026), analyses how postcolonial states pair narratives of benevolent development with territorial control.

In the 1970s, Ahmed Kurd and Asad Mengal were abducted from Karachi. Asad was the son of then-chief minister of Balochistan, Sardar Attaullah Mengal. At the time, their disappearance was not widely understood as a form of collective punishment. But the repeated nature of such cases has revealed a consistent pattern. Asad was targeted to pressure his father; he remains missing to this day. Even his brother, Sardar Akhtar Mengal—an influential tribal leader and later chief minister—was unable to trace Asad’s whereabouts or recover his body. What hope then remains for ordinary Baloch people? 

What hope for Bashir and Arman whose mothers marched to Islamabad in the recent Long March, only to receive their mutilated bodies—victims of an alleged ‘encounter’ with security forces?

Or for Miandad, a 30-year-old, shot dead by Pakistan’s coast guards for holding a toy pistol? 

Or for Israr Rashid, a teenage nurse, killed merely for passing by a military checkpoint, on suspicion of being involved in an attack. 

Or for Allah Dad, a young intellectual, targeted for the potential threat his intellect posed—much like other great minds before him, like Saba Dashtyari and Zahid Askani? And what about Karim, a teenage poet, gunned down for reciting resistance poetry? The names are countless, the stories unending.

Among the many lives shaped by this brutal reality is that of Zareef, a former footballer from a sparsely populated village on the periphery of the world map—Dazin, in district Tump, just 85 kilometers from Turbat city. 

Forty-six-year-old Zareef, son of Homar, lived a simple life devoted to football and gardening in his orchard. A celebrated local player, he had won several medals and continued playing for the Tump team even after marriage. His home was filled with football stories. Though he had retired from playing a few years ago, his passion never faded—until the night of December 26, 2024. Zareef and his daughter Mahjan had no reason to believe they would be punished for a crime they didn’t commit. That night, Zareef’s right to life was taken forever. Mahjan lost her father. Shakila lost her husband. All under collective punishment.

A Daughter’s Last Glimpse of Her Father

It was 10 o’clock, on one of the coldest nights of the year. On December 26, 2024, Zareef’s wife Shakila, a forty-year-old health worker, heard a thunderous noise at the gate of her home. Zareef had complained of a headache earlier and taken some tablets; he was fast asleep. The noise stirred both Shakila and their seventeen-year-old daughter, Mahjan, from their rooms. As they stepped outside, they spotted a drone camera hovering over their compound. Their eyes remained fixed on it until the sudden crack of gunfire shattered the night, jolting Zareef awake.

Mahjan ran to her father, urging him not to come outside—the security forces were here. But Zareef was already awake and had stepped out of the room. As they watched, the FC stormed in, rifles raised, torches cutting through the darkness. Shakila and Mahjan retreated to their room, standing tense by the door. Zareef, believing it to be another routine raid, remained standing in the compound, watching in silence. 

The Major of Tump Camp entered the veranda and struck Shakila’s shoulder with the butt of his rifle, hitting her with force. She collapsed to the ground, letting out a slow, pained cry in Balochi, "Allah Rahm – God have mercy." The Major sneered, "Our forces have been attacked, and you people are responsible.” Previously, whenever the FC stormed their home, they would ask about Zareef. Sometimes they took him for questioning, only to release him later the same day. But this time, they didn’t ask. Perhaps they had already seen him standing across the compound.

They ordered Mahjan and her mother to go inside their rooms. As they complied, the forces returned and demanded, "Get out!" And then smashed their PTCL internet connection. There are no internet services in Tump, except fibre-optic internet supplied by PTCL (the national telecommunications service).

With only two rooms in the house, they separated Shakila and Mahjan in each, before locking them from the outside.

Shakila’s uncle, Liaquat, who has a drug addiction, rushed into their compund upon hearing gunfire. Seeing his condition, the forces spared him, but he, too, had once been forcibly disappeared for three months. They went straight to Zareef.

They switched off their torches. Mahjan watched from her window as the soldiers surrounded her father. ‘I pounded on the door—no one came. I knocked harder on the window, my fists aching against the cold iron, and saw my father. He turned his gaze toward me but said nothing. Silent, he went with  them. Later I was embarrassed by my desperate knocking. My father would definitely ask me about it, later. She thought. He would surely say, ‘You shouldn’t have knocked so hard. It must have hurt you.’

When the forces left, Liaquat came and unlocked their doors. 

Mahjan is Zareef’s only daughter. Her two brothers, Homar and Adnan, were away at a wedding. When they returned, they were met with crushing news—their father had been forcibly disappeared.

They couldn’t inform anyone that night—phone networks had been shut, and their internet disconnected. They waited until morning when the network finally returned to inform their relatives.

The next day, December 27, around noon, the forces returned along with the major. They asked about Zareef’s youngest child, Homar. Homar was Zareef’s father’s name, and when he passed away, Zareef named his son after him. But in the house, everyone simply called him "Baba." He was a twelve-year-old boy.

At that moment, Baba was at a relative’s house.

"Call him or else, I will sit here until he comes. If we see Baba, we will shoot him in front of your eyes,” the Major warned.

Shakila looked at him and said, "You already have his father. Isn’t that enough? They didn’t respond; instead, they just turned and left. 

Brute Force, Brutal Torture

That same evening, around 4 PM, a loud knock echoed at Shakila’s gate. They immediately thought it was the FC, returning for Baba. A cousin went to open the gate.

But it was a neighbour, crying. "Where is Shakila?" she asked urgently.

She sobbed, "Zareef has been dumped near our wall."

Zareef’s younger sister, who was nearby, ran over, barefoot. The neighbour clung to Shakila, but unsure if her husband had been released alive, unconscious, or worse, Shakila felt her body weaken. The neighbour’s cries made the truth sink in—before she could react, she lost consciousness.

Mahjan thought her father was just unconscious from being tortured. Panicking, she rushed towards the neighbour’s house—barefoot, without her chadar on her head.

Her brother, Adnan, saw her and grabbed her arm. “Are you in your senses?” He scolded.

Just then, Adnan’s phone rang. It was a phone call from the neighbourhood. The same chilling words echoed through the line: "Your father has been dumped."

Adnan’s grip on Mahjan tightened. He pulled her into a firm embrace. "Wait here," he said. "I will bring Abba."

"What happened, Adnan? Tell me! Abba is alright, right?" Mahjan pleaded, her voice trembling.

Adnan didn’t answer. His hold on her lingered for a moment before he let go. "I will bring him," he repeated and hurried out.

Gulshan, Zareef’s sister, was already there when she saw him, her brother, lying in the compound of their neighbour’s house, near their orchard. . His body was positioned in a way that made it clear he had been thrown there.

She rushed to him. His mouth was slightly open, his tongue hanging out. A cold dread gripped her as she knelt beside him, cradling his head in her lap. Then she saw it—a stone lodged inside his mouth.

Her hands trembled as she pulled it out. His tongue felt stiff, unnatural. She tried to push it back, as if that could bring him back. Sand clung to his lips, his face. She wiped it away with her sleeve. "I didn’t want people to see my brother this way," she later said.

His palms—both of them—were filled with thorns. His nose was bent at an odd angle, broken. Gulshan gently pressed it back into place, trying to restore some dignity to his face before others arrived.

His clothes weren’t bloodied, but his body told another story. His chest and back bore the deep, unmistakable imprints of an iron press. His shoulders were bruised, marked with the force of rifle butts, or maybe sticks. When they received his body, it wasn’t swollen. But the wounds were there.

Both of his kidney areas had drill marks—deep, cruel holes bored into him. They had been hastily plastered over. His tongue—cut. A scissor had severed it. His feet were covered in marks from sticks. Both his legs were fractured.

There were injection marks on both his shoulders. A doctor in Tump later confirmed it—those injections were poisonous. They had killed him.

Dumped in Silence

It was Friday afternoon. The neighbours had finished their prayers, had lunch, and were resting indoors.

Their rooms were at a significant distance from their orchard but in the same compound. 

One of them, who had eaten lunch late, stepped out to wash his hands. That’s when he saw Zareef’s body lying there.

They hadn’t heard the sound of any veicle—only silence. But on their compound, there were boot prints, marking a path.

"They must have carried his body in silence… and then thrown him here."

There was a section in their wall that was slightly lower than the rest.

"Maybe they jumped over it… maybe that’s how they brought his body in."

The family transported Zareef’s corpse to the Rural Health Clinic (RHC) in Tump, where they learned that Zareef had been killed by poisoning. Seeking justice, they went to the Tump police station to file an FIR (First Information Report), but the SHO (Station House Officer) refused to register their complaint.

A Daughter's Revolt

Mahjan stood frozen in the compound, numb, as people poured in. They had brought her father’s lifeless body.

Her mother, her brothers, her aunts and uncles – all were inconsolable, crying, collapsing, then regaining consciousness, only to break again. People around them tried to hold them up, tried consoling them, but their grief was too heavy to be carried.

Nearby, two women whispered about the torture Zareef had endured. Mahjan's uncle had told her otherwise—that her father had died of a cardiac arrest, hoping to shield her from the horror of his mutilated body. But she had heard the women.

"No," she murmured, her voice trembling. “They were saying something else..."

A sudden, desperate urgency overtook her. She turned towards her father’s body. Her uncle and aunt tried holding her back. But Mahjan screamed.

"I want to see his body! His wounds! I want to keep them in my heart. I don’t want his wounds to be forgotten. Let me remember them. Let me have hate for those who caused them.” She pushed past everyone. The moment her eyes fell on her father—his battered, lifeless form—her breath caught in her throat.

A terrible scream tore from her chest. And then—darkness.

Mahjan collapsed.

When Mahjan regained consciousness, a crushing realization settled over her.

"I realized then—their tyranny was real, standing right in front of me."

Her voice trembled as she spoke. "I had seen their war crimes before—when they dragged my father like an animal before my eyes. But because he always returned, I learned to adjust, to endure. I had seen their oppression when they raided our home, when they pointed their guns at us, when they tore through our lives over and over again. But this time…" her voice broke, "...this time, they did the last thing they could. They killed my father like this."

And that was the moment Mahjan made her decision.

"They committed one tyranny by killing my father in this brutal way. It would be a second tyranny if we buried him in silence."

She turned to her family. "I am taking my father to Turbat—for protest."

"You are not in your senses!" her uncle, Zareef’s brother,scolded.

Mahjan's voice did not waver. "I cannot commit a second tyranny against my father."

"We won’t come," her uncle warned.

"Then I will take him alone," Mahjan declared. "But I will not bury him in silence."

His uncle looked at her and said, "You are crying—how will you protest for him?"

Mahjan wiped her tears, straightened her posture, and replied, "I won’t cry."

A Body Held Hostage

The whole family agreed to protest. Their neighbuurs stood by them. After Maghrib prayers, they took the body and with four vehicles, set off for Turbat.

But at Hasia Abad in Tump, an FC checkpoint, they were stopped. The entire road was completely sealed, both at exit and entry points. The FC soldiers told them, "We have orders to stop you”. An hour later, the Major arrived with other officers in eight FC vehicles.

He summoned Mahjan’s uncle and told him, "We did not kill Zareef."

Mahjan’s uncle stared at him and said, "If you didn’t kill him, then tell me—who took him? You came with your forces and abducted him."

The Major’s tone turned sharp. "Send these women back home," he warned. “Or we will beat them.” The Assistant Commissioner (AC) of District Tump, who was present, interrupted, "You should not threaten to beat women.” 

Two of Zareef’s cousins had already been forcibly disappeared. An officer addressed Mahjan’s uncle, "If you don’t turn back, we won’t release them."

Mahjan’s uncle didn’t flinch. “That’s up to you,” he said. "No one is more precious than my brother."

On the cold, dark road at Hasia Abad, their protest continued.

At 3 AM on December 28, Adnan approached Mahjan. His voice was hesitant, almost pleading. "Abba’s body... it’s changing shape. It’s swollen now."

Mahjan didn’t lift her gaze. "Doesn’t matter," she said.

Half an hour later, her uncle came. His voice was tight with urgency. "Mahjan, ‘zahre aap’ is coming from his mouth... now his nose is bleeding."

Mahjan still sat beside the vehicle, where her father’s lifeless body lay.

By 5 AM, Adnan returned, desperation in his eyes. "Please don’t be insistent. The body... it’s changing more. Have mercy on father."

Mahjan’s grip on the edge of the vehicle tightened. "I am having mercy on him," she said, her voice unshaken. "That’s why I’m sitting here. I cannot pick up another body. Tomorrow, they will give me your body, and after that, Baba’s body. I don’t want to just collect the bodies of my beloved. I will continue the protest."

The night stretched into morning, then noon, but the FC blockade remained, sealing off the road.

Buried After 20 Hours—But Not in Silence

Zareef’s body lay on the asphalt of Hasia Abad. At 3 PM, Mahjan went to check on her father’s body. 

"I saw my father… his body was swollen beyond recognition. If we continued sitting here, it would burst right before my eyes. That moment, I decided—we must bury him. His body had turned purple. Perhaps it was the poisonous injections."

For twenty hours, the family protested at Hasia Abad check post. Twenty hours of grief, rage, and resistance.

Then, only with the assurance by Zareef’s family that Mahjan would carry the protest forward, they moved back to Dazin, to bury Zareef.

At 7 PM, after Maghrib prayers, they laid him to rest in his hometown.

"I kept my father’s body for so long, even when I knew it was changing... Because those were my last moments with him. I knew I wouldn’t have him again."

She held on, even when his body swelled, even when his color changed.

"As long as I could sit with him, even if he was lifeless, I did."

"They should have given me hope, like Sammi Deen."

"I would have searched for him, from roads to camps."

But they didn’t.

"They crushed my hopes within a day."

He was buried around 7:30 PM, but Mahjan did not stay home to mourn in silence. That very night, she traveled to Turbat, determined to demand justice for her father’s killing. At Fida Chowk, she sat in protest for ten days —her grief turning into resistance. 

The Turbat sit-in continued for 10 days and official negotiations were held with representatives of the state including Assistant commissioner of Turbat and the deputy superintendent of police (DSP), while the District Policy Offer (DPO) remained in his car. It was agreed that Mahjan’s case would be filed in court, offering a semblance of legal recourse. 

Mahjan’s demands were clear: an FIR against the Mand Brigadier and the Tump Major, whom she accused of her father’s murder. This demand was never accepted. She also demanded the release of three other forcibly disappeared family members. Only two have since been released – Rasool Jan remains missing, now for two years, even though Mahjan was assured he would be freed within 24 hours of ending her sit-in. 

Her final demand was that security forces and intelligence agencies stop harassing her family. While they no longer raid their home, their presence remains—vehicles appear outside their gate, lingering before driving away.

Can a System That Kills Ever Give Justice?

On February 10, 2025, Mahjan was scheduled to appear before the court, where an investigative team had been assigned to her case. Despite her repeated attempts to reach out, she received no response from them. It wasn’t until February 16—after persistent calls—that the investigative team finally visited her home and the neighbour’s house where her father’s body had been found. 

SHO Khatir, the head of the team, conducted a brief survey, but after that, Mahjan was never summoned to court again. When she inquired about the case, a lawyer informed her that it had been quietly dropped. The investigative team concluded that the FC bore no responsibility for her father’s killing. 

"A system that has already failed Mahjan by killing her father—how would it ever give her justice?" her mother, Shakila, said.

Neighbours and relatives who stood beside Mahjan during her ten-day sit-in at Fida Chowk are now facing quiet retaliation. Their tokens for border trade—their only source of income—have been seized by the administration. The border-trade token system, introduced by military institutions in 2021, was meant to regulate and control trade between Pakistan and Iran, though historically, this trade has existed informally. Under this system, traders receive only one token per month. 

Zareef’s brother, Mohammad Assa, who protested alongside Mahjan, is a government employee working as a clerk at the AC office in Tump. His salary has been withheld. And Mahjan’s legal case, the fight she waged in court for justice, has been dismissed. Adnan had come to Pakistan for his wedding—everything was planned. The date was set for January 1st, 2025 and the family had been preparing for the celebration. Instead of celebrating, they were forced into mourning. The wedding was called off and Adnan returned to Dubai, where he works as a labourer. 

Now, in their house, only Mahjan and her mother, Shakila, remain—without a father, without a brother, without the presence of any man. Twelve-year-old Homar had to quit school. Shakila, fearing for his safety, sent him to live with her sister in the Gulf. The young child will now grow up without a father and a mother. 

The Global Playbook of Collective Punishment

In Balochistan, entire communities face punitive actions for the alleged offences of a few—through military raids, communication blackouts, property destruction, and torture.

Zareef’s case is one of collective punishment, not just because those who supported Mahjan are now facing economic repercussions, but because it traces back to a pattern of persecution the family has endured since 2019—or perhaps even earlier. The years of harassment, repeated raids, abductions, and now Zareef’s brutal killing are not isolated incidents; they are part of a sustained campaign of repression against the family. 

Collective punishment is the imposition of sanctions on an entire group or community for actions allegedly committed by some of its members. It targets individuals who bear no responsibility. Often, those punished have no direct ties to the perpetrator beyond shared geography and lack control over their actions. Collective punishment is prohibited under international law in both international and non-international armed conflicts, specifically by Common Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention and Article 4 of Additional Protocol II.

The use of collective punishment against populations has been a mainstay of counter-insurgency doctrine across the world. Historically, it has enabled state reprisal against families, communities and entire populations in a drive to ‘win’ a conflict, military or otherwise, at all costs. 

Balochistan has long been gripped by a nationalist insurgency against the Pakistani state, rooted in its forceful annexation in 1948. Since then, repeated uprisings have demanded autonomy or independence. Fearing a resurgence and the idea of a unified Balochistan, the state has tightened its grip through heavy militarisation. This has led to widespread human rights abuses—where even suspected links to insurgents can result in arbitrary arrests, torture, enforced disappearances, and extrajudicial killings as part of a brutal counterinsurgency campaign.

Violence as Governance

Dr Mahvish Ahmad, Assistant Professor of Human Rights and Politics at the London School of Economics (LSE)  explains  how the state’s monopoly over violence is used to legitimize practices of collective punishment.

"States are classically defined as the only entity that can legally use violence.” She says. “Often, in Pakistan but really everywhere in the world, this idea that the violence of military and police is legitimate is used repeatedly to mask s [non-state groups]ed violence against groups. They [non-state groups] get labelled as terrorists, traitors, muggers, criminals, or something else, andcet, in turn, makes it look like the state’s violence is legitimate.”

In Balochistan, collective punishment has been an extension of British colonial policy, continued by the Pakistani state almost since its inception. The practice was honed as part of Cold War-era ‘counter-insurgency’ campaigns and into the present, especially after 9/11.

From 1973 to 1977, the Balochistan People’s Liberation Front (BPLF), formerly known as Parari, launched an insurgency against Pakistan’s central government after the dismissal of Balochistan’s elected government. The military’s subsequent crackdown on Baloch political leaders and activists led to widespread targeting of entire communities, many of whom were not involved in the insurgency.

This insurgency and the state’s violent response laid the groundwork for widespread collective punishment in Balochistan. Initially a Cold War-era counter-insurgency tactic, it has since become a tool of state control, punishing entire communities for the actions of a few. This ongoing strategy, justified under national security, continues to fuel the suffering and repression of the Baloch people.

As Ahmad describes, “Practices of collective punishment were enshrined in colonial law, famously the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR) and the Murderous Outrages Act, both of which were enacted in Balochistan. The policy of assuming everyone was guilty and should be punished if just one member of the community committed a perceived wrongdoing was legalized under these legislations. Guilt, of course, was not established in courts of law, just assumed by political agents (appointed for indirect rule).”

The British Raj pursued indirect rule in large parts of Balochistan, paying salaries to select sardars, motabirs, and mirs to ensure minimal colonial investment but maximum indirect control. This policy continued under post-colonial Pakistan until the formal abolition of the sardari system in the 1970s. “Yet, though the policy was legally ended, it continued in practice, as we see when certain members of the provincial assembly, or ministers, and even caretaker prime ministers are selected with the full backing of military interests,” says Ahmad. “Collective punishment becomes the primary way that the colonial state—past and present—associates itself with Balochistan."

Before Zareef’s brutal murder, the family’s harassment by security forces was routine. Every two days, they would raid the house—searching, interrogating, and then leaving, only to return again. During the Baloch Raji Muchi (National Gathering), called by the Baloch Yakjehti Committee, the FC, along with a colonel and Major from Tump camp, entered their home. They ordered Shakila to go door to door in Tump and tell people not to join the gathering. She refused, saying “You can stop me from going, but I cannot make others stay.”

Tump’s Major would invade their space without hesitation. He would sit on their bed, toss his number carelessly around the room, even in the kitchen. The colonel would stand outside while he roamed freely inside. Whenever a neighbour or relative disappeared, Major would offer the same deal: Take my number. Share the details. Maybe your people will be released.

Mahjan still remembers the day she came out of the bathroom to find two FC personnel and Major himself sitting on her bed. She screamed and ran out of the room. 

Shakila recalls the days when disappearances were common in her neighbourhood—so frequent that fear became a way of life. Her eldest son (name withheld for privacy concerns) was just fifteen years old at the time, a footballer like his father. One day, after returning from a match, he found himself caught in the middle of a military operation. She doesn’t remember the exact year, but she remembers his fear.

He ran. The forces chased him. Being a footballer, he was fast. He jumped over a wall, but as he landed, his head struck a wooden plank. He lost consciousness. When he woke up, he was in their custody.

“They beat him,” Shakila says. “They told him he had made their ten soldiers run.”

Three days later, they released him. But something in him had changed. “I don’t know if that was what made him leave,” she says. “I don’t know what happened. But some time later, he was gone.” (He had joined the Baloch insurgency.)

It was 2019. She remembers that year clearly—not just because her son never returned, but because security forces raided their house when the family was in Karachi. Everything was looted. Her gold ring was gone. The TV was smashed. “We had nothing left,” she says. “Whatever wasn’t stolen was broken.”

A week before Zareef’s murder, the forces came to their house. This time, they asked for Baba’s mobile phone. The child, too young to understand the weight of their presence, handed it over but didn’t let go without a question.

“If you’re taking it, you won’t return it,” he said. “So, I will come with you. Once you check it, give it back to me.”

But they only took the mobile and left.

According to Abdullah Abbas, Executive Director of the Human Rights Council of Balochistan (HRCB), Zareef’s killing is not an isolated tragedy but a symptom of a broader, entrenched system of state violence. “This particular form of collective punishment has continued for nearly two decades,” Abbas said, tracing its roots to the post-2000 crackdown on political activists carried out under the pretext of national security.

That period gave rise to what would later become known as the “kill and dump” policy—a strategy of enforced disappearances followed by the mutilated bodies of abductees ‘dumped’ in desolate landscapes. “Once someone was abducted and killed, their families—especially sons and brothers—came under surveillance,” he explained. For many, there were only two choices: flee the country or head for the mountains to join armed groups. “Most didn’t have the means to escape. So the mountains became the last refuge.”

Abbas outlined a chilling pattern: if the state couldn’t capture an activist or insurgent, it would go after their families. “Raids would begin with looting. Women’s clothing, jewelry, rations—nothing was spared. Homes were burnt to the ground.” The next phase was more targeted: “Relatives were abducted, tortured, and pressured to convince their wanted family members to surrender. Eventually, people began to anticipate what came next. Picking up arms became, for many, the only way to survive.”

Perhaps the most insidious aspect of this strategy was the forced recruitment of informants. “A relative would be picked up, tortured for weeks, and then released on the condition that they work for the military. Even then, the harassment never stopped. Some joined militant groups not because of ideology, but because they had no other choice.”

“Collective punishment is not just policy,” explains Abbas. “It’s a system. In Balochistan, in most cases, those targeted often had no political history. Their only crime was a blood relation.”

Hazaran Rahim Dad is a Balochistan-based journalist and researcher, with a background in English literature. Her work focuses on the lived experiences of the Baloch people and their socio-political struggles in Pakistan.

We, the undersigned, urgently draw global attention to the escalating violence by the Government of India and its security forces against the Indigenous Adivasi communities in the Bastar Division of the state of Chhattisgarh, in central India.

Since January 2024, the systematic and severe repression of the Adivasi communities has been escalated, with over 180 extrajudicial killings [estimated number at the time of writing; at time of going to press on 8 May 2025, the estimated number is over 450]; numerous arbitrary arrests, and reports of torture and sexual violence. This escalation underscores the complete negation of universally recognized human rights by the Government of India, in a resource-rich region that has come to be characterized by a longstanding cycle of forced displacement, dispossession, and wrongful and illegal appropriation of Adivasi land and extensive militarization.

The Adivasis of Bastar are the custodians of its biodiverse forests and rely on this ecosystem for their subsistence and livelihoods. Their traditional knowledge and cultural heritage have maintained the delicate balance of the region’s ecology. Despite the Constitution recognizing and protecting the rights of the Adivasi community over their land and resources under the Fifth Schedule, and those granted under the Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act (PESA), and the Forest Rights Act (FRA), the Government of India has steadily allowed extractive industries to encroach on Adivasi lands. Profit-driven mining enterprises under public-private partnerships and the garb of development has met with stiff local resistance from the Adivasi people.

In response, the Government of India has systematically deployed large numbers of armed forces in the region for over two decades. In 2005, a state-sponsored militia, Salwa Judum, composed of Adivasi youth was launched that targeted Adivasi villages under the guise of combating Naxalite (Maoist) insurgency Employing “strategic hamletting” tactics, Salwa Judum reportedly burned and emptied 644 villages, displacing approximately 350,000 villagers. Civil society reports detail brutal reprisals, including extrajudicial killings, sexual violence, forced relocation to camps and mass scale internal displacement. In 2011, in an interim order, the Supreme Court outlawed the use of Adivasi youth as Special Police Officers (SPOs) in counterinsurgency operations, condemning the state’s tactic of pitting Adivasi against Adivasi. However, despite this ruling, the state is currently deploying the District Reserve Guards (DRG), a force composed of surrendered Naxalites and local youth, as the primary instrument in counterinsurgency operations.

Officially justified as a “counterinsurgency” measure, the heavy military presence directly facilitates mining activities by public-private corporations on Adivasi lands, using violence as a means to remove resisting communities. The violence against Adivasis in Bastar aligns with a broader authoritarian agenda under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's administration, supported by the Hindu supremacist ideology of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), targeting India's religious and social minorities, and prioritizing corporate enrichment and crony capitalism. In 2022–23, mineral revenue from Chhattisgarh increased, to reach INR 12,941 crores [USD 153 million], with nearly half generated from Bastar’s Dantewada district. During the same time, the civilian-to-security personnel ratio in the region has also increased, to approximately 9:1 in some areas, making Bastar one of the world's most militarized regions. This is manifested by the proliferation of military camps in the region, with camps every 3–4 kilometres in some areas. A recent report notes that “[t]he proliferation of camps has been accompanied by mass arrests, including of many elected representatives, and members of the Moolvasi Bachao Manch. Framing people under Maoist charges is an easy way to silence their legitimate constitutional demands. Based on official figures, 6,804 arrests have been made in Bastar region from 2011 to 2022” [see also below regarding the Moolvasi Bachao Manch].

As the Government of India hides behind the facade of “counterinsurgency” operations, the armed police forces of India act with impunity to intimidate, harass and torture the Adivasi people as well as committing extrajudicial killings and sexual violence. The use of severe, systematic and widespread violence as a means to remove resisting communities from mining areas includes using of state-of-the-art weaponry by the forces, such as drones which are being used reportedly for surveilling the people’s everyday lives and bombing with drone-launched mortar bombs.

The escalation in violence that the region is currently witnessing as well as the massive deforestation and increase in mining activities, is endangering the survival of the Adivasi peoples, and portends severe ecological impacts with implications for India and the global community.

These military operations of the security forces have reportedly led to the deaths of over 180 Adivasis in 2024 alone, with authorities claiming that these are “Naxalites” killed in encounters. However, local Adivasi communities vehemently dispute these claims, alleging that many of these purported encounters were, in fact, staged executions, with victims being unarmed, and picked up from their homes or fields. Moreover, in cases where confrontations with Naxalites have occurred, the police are accused of executing those apprehended instead of following due process. Many were said to carry “bounties on their heads” that are distributed among the units carrying out the operations, which has created further incentive for unlawful executions. All of these violate international humanitarian and human rights law applicable in conflict areas, and Constitutional and legal provisions of India itself.

Another particularly concerning development is Chhattisgarh state’s planned acquisition of 54,543 hectares of the Abujhmad forest in Bastar for an Indian Army training range. This will displace nearly 10,000 Adivasis from 52 villages. The destruction of this unique forest ecosystem will also have cascading effects on biodiversity, water cycles, and climate resilience. Villagers fear that the occupation of these indigenous lands will extend beyond training purposes, potentially involving the Indian Army in military operations against its own citizens. It is in these forests that many of the recent killings have occurred including on 4 October 2024, when 35 people were reported killed.

We also highlight the targeting of youth Adivasi human rights defenders (HRDs) at the forefront of movements in the region to safeguard their lands from forcible land acquisition for military, mining, and other industrial ‘developmental’ projects. The peaceful movements with ongoing sit-in protests at multiple sites across Bastar include the Moolvasi Bachao Manch (Save the Indigenous Peoples’ Movement; MBM) and Maad Bachao Andolan [Save Mount Maad Movement]. On 8 November 2024, eight members of MBM were illegally detained along with about 50 villagers, of which seven MBM members and about 18 villagers remain detained, and on 30 October the Chhattisgarh Government issued a notification in which MBM has been deemed an “unlawful” organisation for a period of one year, highlighting the ongoing crackdown on indigenous activists in Bastar. Previously, Maad Bachao Manch president Lakhma Koram, Adivasi Adhikar Bachao Manch leader Vijendra Korram and MBM co-founder Suneeta Pottam were arrested in false cases. The arrest of Sarju Tekam, convenor of the Bastar Coordination Committee of Mass Movements (Bastar Jan Sangharsh Samanvay Samiti) and the Vice-President of Sarva Adivasi Samaj, a collective of all Adivasi organizations in Chhattisgarh, under anti-terror laws, also exemplifies the intensified suppression of dissent.

The heavy militarization of Bastar also has direct and indirect environmental impacts. Security forces, operating in ecologically sensitive areas, establishing camps, constructing multi-lane highways and using explosives are destroying natural habitats and impacting wildlife. The drone surveillance and mortar bombings inflict additional ecological stress, including forest fires and soil degradation. Such activities not only endanger local species but also undermine the regenerative capacity of these ecosystems.

A Call for Urgent International Intervention

What is unfolding in Bastar is not merely a territorial conflict or insurgency—it is a struggle for survival, dignity, and the recognition of Indigenous rights in the face of state violence and corporate greed.

We do not use these words lightly. The situation in Bastar demands immediate and decisive action. People across the world must act now to end the cycle of repression and to ensure that the voices of Adivasi communities are heard and respected. Silence in the face of the Government of India's atrocities would make the world complicit in the erasure of indigenous communities in this region.

We, therefore, call on people all over the world to demand:

• Immediate Cessation of State Violence: Demand an immediate end to all forms of state violence against the Adivasi communities in Bastar, including extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests, and torture. The ongoing violence, carried out under the pretext of counterinsurgency, must cease immediately, and those responsible for human rights violations must be held accountable.

• Demilitarization of Bastar: Call for the urgent demilitarization of Bastar and the dismantling of military camps in the region. The extensive militarization, which has transformed Bastar into one of the world’s most militarized zones, must be reversed. The Government of India must prioritize peaceful dialogue and political engagement with Adivasi communities over military and security measures. The Adivasis’ legitimate demands for autonomy, land rights, and self-determination must be addressed through political solutions, not violence.

• Compliance with Supreme Court Orders: Demand that the Government of India fully complies with the 2011 Supreme Court order prohibiting the recruitment of Adivasi youth for military operations. This practice violates both domestic and international law.

• Respect for Constitutional and Legal Protections: Demand full enforcement of constitutional and legal protections for Adivasi communities, including the Forest Rights Act (FRA), Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act (PESA), and the Fifth Schedule, to protect Adivasi land from state and corporate encroachment.

• End to Land Grabbing and Adherence to the Principle of Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC): The Government of India must halt all plans to acquire Indigenous lands for military, mining, or industrial purposes without the Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) of affected Adivasi communities. Any land use must be contingent on Adivasi consent, free from coercion. This includes the planned acquisition of 54,543 hectares of the Abujhmad forest for an Indian Army training range.

• Protection of Human Rights Defenders and Activists: Demand the protection of Adivasi human rights defenders from threats, arrests, and harassment. End the unlawful detention of activists, including members of Moolvasi Bachao Manch and Maad Bachao Manch, and stop the repression of Indigenous movements.

• Accountability for Violations of Human Rights and International Law: Hold the Government of India accountable for violations of international law and human rights in Bastar, including the use of drone surveillance, mortar bombings, and military operations that cause ecological harm and loss of life. Those responsible must face justice.

By endorsing these demands at this urgent hour, people across the world can play a pivotal role in holding the Indian government accountable for its actions and fostering a resolution that upholds the dignity and sovereignty of indigenous peoples. We call on governments, international human rights organizations, and the global public to stand in solidarity with the Adivasi communities in Bastar in their struggle for justice, dignity, and the preservation of their land and culture.

Updates to statement: January to April 2025

January 2025 Update

Since we opened our statement to signatories in November 2024, the number of people killed in Bastar increased exponentially and as of 10 January 2025, over 280 people had been killed as per news reports.

February 2025 Update

The killings and other violations continue in Bastar. Also, on 27 February 2025, the 23-year-old Moolvasi Bachao Manch Bastar Division President Raghu Midiyami, was arrested on fabricated charges of 'anti-national' activities by the elite National Investigation Agency under the anti-terror Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. We condemn this arrest of an exemplary youth Adivasi human rights defender who has been demanding the state to implement the legal and constitutional rights of the Adivasi communities in Bastar.

April 2025 Update

24 April: Intensification of military operations in the Adivasi regions of central India

According to media and ground reports, security operations of an unprecedented scale are currently ongoing across these regions. In the Karregutta hills and adjacent areas alone, more than 20,000 security personnel have reportedly been deployed to encircle approximately 1,000 members of the Communist Party of India (Maoist), a political organisation primarily composed of Adivasis. Heavy and consistent firing is being reported, including bombing.

This militarised offensive is being conducted despite multiple public statements by the CPI (Maoist) offering a one-month ceasefire and readiness for unconditional peace talks, contingent solely on the government's suspension of military operations. In fact, they have already declared a unilateral ceasefire, instructing their cadres not to initiate any attacks unless provoked or fired upon.

Rather than seizing this opportunity for dialogue, the Indian state has responded by intensifying its assault. Whether or not one agrees with the political programme of the CPI (Maoist), its members are Indian citizens—many of them Indigenous people asserting their constitutional right to defend their lands, forests, and autonomy. A democratic state cannot claim legitimacy while unleashing violent repression against a political formation that has explicitly sought negotiation.

An urgent appeal has been sent to President Droupadi Murmu by hundreds of Indian civil society organisations and individuals, clearly stating that a unilateral ceasefire by the government is not a matter of political charity, but a constitutional obligation rooted in India's foundational values.

On the killings

The killings in Bastar have intensified further, with a disturbing surge in extrajudicial executions carried out under the guise of 'encounters', driven by a state-sanctioned reward system. After each killing, the state issues press releases claiming the deceased was a Maoist with a reward on their head—yet these bounties are almost always declared posthumously, and no public list of wanted individuals has ever been released. In this perverse economy of death, posthumously declared cash rewards are used to retroactively legitimise executions, then disbursed among security personnel upon the production of a body. Death becomes the evidence, the justification, and the reward. This has commodified killing and institutionalised impunity on an industrial scale.

Around 400 people have been killed since November 2024, with at least 165 in the first four months of 2025. One estimate suggests that up to one-third of those killed since January 2024 may have been unarmed civilians. Even where Maoist party members were killed, eyewitness accounts indicate that these too were custodial executions — not battlefield fatalities. The majority of those affiliated with the Maoist party who have been killed are themselves Adivasis, including a significant number of Indigenous women fighters.

Bastar is no longer just a site of conflict — it is being transformed into a killing field. What we are witnessing is not counterinsurgency but a slow-motion genocide, enabled by militarised governance, judicial silence, and global indifference. If this machinery of violence is not dismantled, the very survival of Indigenous communities in Bastar stands at grave risk.

On Raghu Midiyami

Since Raghu Midiyami’s arrest on 27 February 2025, it has come to light that he was seriously injured in a road accident shortly before his detention. Despite suffering from visible injuries to his hands, legs, and neck, he was arrested and remanded to custody without any medical attention. Since then, his condition has reportedly deteriorated further, yet he continues to be denied adequate medical care. Instead of ensuring treatment, the NIA obtained seven days of custodial interrogation and transported him to Raipur — over 280 kilometres from the Jagdalpur prison where he was originally lodged. The denial of urgent medical care while under custodial interrogation amounts to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment — and forms part of a broader pattern of state reprisal against Indigenous rights defenders in Bastar.

Signatories

Organizations

1. International Solidarity with Academic Freedom in India (InSAF India) (worldwide)

2. India Justice Project, Germany

3. Foundation the London Story, Netherlands

4. London Mining Network, UK

5. Indian Alliance Paris

6. Abe Hayeem, Chair of Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine

7. South Asian Diaspora Action Collective (SADAC)

8. Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM-ASIA)

9. Continental Network of Indigenous Women of the Americas/ECMIA

10. International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA), Copenhagen

11. International Land Coalition, Asia

12. Land Forum India (International Land Coalition)

13. International Indigenous Peoples Movement for Self-Determination and Liberation

14. Other indias, Amsterdam

15. Ekō (International)

16. India Labour Solidarity (UK)

17. Money Rebellion UK

18. Transform South Asia

19. SOAS Bla(c)k Panthers

20. Money Rebellion London

21. Solifonds, Switzerland

22. Coal Action Network, UK

23. Ecoforensic CIC

24. Rational Medicine Network

25. South Asia Solidarity Group

26. Hindus for Human Rights, International

27. Stoke Palestine Solidarity Campaign (UK)

28. India Civil Watch International

29. Corner House

30. POSSIBLE FUTURES, Phillipines/Brazil

31. Earth Thrive, UK/Serbia

32. Yes to Life, No to Mining, Global (64 orgs)

33. CATAPA vzw

34. Revolutionary Writers Association

35. Stop Operation Kagaar Committee, United States

36. Anti-imperialist front, UK

37. Land Skills Hub, UK

38. Food Not Cops Brum, Birmingham, UK

39. The RYSE (Radical Youth Space for Educations), UK

40. International League of Peoples' Struggle UK

41. Leeds Students Against Apartheid Coalition, UK

42. Red Guards - Sheffield, UK

43. Global Majority Copwatch, UK

44. Revolutionary Students' Front, West Bengal, India

45. Queers For Palestine Birmingham, UK

46. Alleanza friulana Domini collettivi, Ravascletto - Friuli – Italia

47. End Fossil Occupy, Utrecht

48. Utrecht University Encampment

49. Justice For All Canada

50. Campaign to Defend Nature and People

51. Comité Ambiental en Defensa de la Vida

52. Kalikasan People's Network for the Environment

53. International League of Peoples' Struggle - Commission on Environment and Climate Justice

54. Peoples Rising for Climate Justice

55. cBalance

56. Roots for Equity

57. Rede Cosmopolíticas

58. Center for Environmental Concerns – Philippines
    Asia Pacific Network of Environmental Defenders
    
    
    

Individuals

1. Chihiro Geuzebroek, Pax peace prize winner 2022 and cofounder Aralez Foundation

2. Gail Orduna, Global Coordinator of People's Coalition on Food Sovereignty

3. Maddy Ryle, TerraJusta

4. Lotika Singha, InSAF India

5. Partho Sarothi Ray

6. Sruti Bala, University of Amsterdam

7. Mary Mathai

8. Ritumbhra Manuvie, University of Groningen

9. Henna Amin

10. Shishu Ranjan

11. Anisha Pucadyil, London

12. Sacha Ismail, Worker in UK fire service, activist in trade unions FBU and UNISON

13. Minesh Parekh, Councillor for Crookes and Crosspool, Sheffield City Council, UK

14. Prabir KC

15. Rafela Fitzhugh, Fossil Free Science Museum, UK

16. Sarah Kinlen

17. Mike Rowley

18. Gopa Roy

19. Sofia Karim, Turbine Bagh, London

20. Malcolm Hunter, Labour Party, UNISON and Friends of the Earth

21. Abha Sur

22. Sana Rizvi

23. Alba Fieira Vilariño

24. Roshan Lal, India Labour Solidarity UK

25. Thomas Niblett

26. Chris Flanagan, UNISON South Staffordshire & Shropshire Healthcare Branch

27. Yvonne Zimmermann, Solifonds

28. Jake Simms, London Mining Network

29. Surinder Guru

30. Emma Scholin Tipping

31. Charlotte Tipping

32. Dr Andy Higginbottom

33. Ronak M Soni

34. Prof. Felix Padel

35. Subjr Sinha, London

36. Alessandra Mezzadri, SOAS

37. Madhusudhan Raman, University of Delhi

38. Gayatri Chakrvorty Spivak, Columbia University

39. Saad Quasem, SOAS University of London

40. Dr Vanja Hamzić, SOAS, University of London

41. Jens Lerche, SOAS, University of London

42. Vinita Damodaran, University of Sussex

43. Madhuvadhani M

44. Emily Cox, University of Oxford

45. Dillon Maxwell, UCU

46. Aksha Fernandez

47. Prof Louiza Odysseos

48. Prof Lyla Mehta, Institute of Development Studies, UK (personal endorsement only not institutional)

49. Peter Murrsy

50. Raymond Ruhaak

51. Richard Widdess

52. Rhiannon Lockley, UCU Equality Chair (Personal Capacity)

53. Ain Contractor, IHE Delft Institute for Water Education

54. Gilbert Achcar, SOAS, University of London

55. Jacob Norris, University of Sussex, UK

56. David Ludden, New York University

57. Dr. Mihika Chatterjee, Bath, UK

58. Usha Iyer, Stanford University

59. Manjeet Ramgotra, SOAS University of London

60. Egbert Wever, Extinction Rebellion Landbouw the Netherlands

61. John van Soest, Netherlands

62. Daniela Garcia-Caro, Agroecologie Netwerk

63. Karuna DW, Bangalore

64. Rita Manchanda, Delhi

65. Helen de Bruijn        

66. Swetha Dandapani

67. Roshmi Goswami, South Asians For Human Rights

68. bas eeckels, Amsterdam

69. Maithri, the Netherlands

70. Pallavi Banerjee, Canada

71. Irene Shankar, Professor of Sociology

72. Gabor Papp

73. Saswati Ghosh, Kolkata

74. Rohan D'Souza, Kyoto University

75. Simon Senn

76. Suzanne Senn

77. Jo Goutrié, the Netherlands

78. E. Smeets

79. Adwait Gaikwad, University of Witwatersrand

80. Karan Singha

81. Suchetana Ghosh, Kolkata

82. Professor David Treece, King's College London

83. Ruben Reus

84. Prakriti, Feminist researcher

85. Prajval Shastri

86. Dr Philipp Zehmisch, South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University

87. Thabo Huntgeburth, SOAS, London

88. Marco Bassi, University of Palermo

89. Biraj Mehta

90. Randall Sequeira, Odisha

91. Tatiana Lukman

92. Katy Coxall

93. Matti Baten

94. Rob Lennon

95. Marloes van Overbeeke, Driebergen Netherlands

96. Eathaar E

97. Sonja Bleeker

98. Spies

99. Sabine Feuillet, France

100. Mead Christine, Marseille

101. Akudo McGee

102. Julia Sallabank

103. Esther Kuiler

104. Yassica Hadytia, National Student Front (FMN) Yogyakarta, Indonesia

105. Dayton Andrews, Committee to Stop Operation Kagaar, USA

106. Arya Baburaj, Researcher

107. Salisha Chandra

108. Lucian Stephenson

109. Louisa dix

110. Amanda Waters

111. Colin Walker

112. Sharanya Nayak

113. Otto, Red Guard, UK

114. Nikita Naidu, Climate Action Specialist

115. Deepak Kumar, Campaign Against State Repression

116. Pradyumna Behera, IIT Bombay

117. Kristina Babiera, PCFS Global Secretariat - Philippines

118. Asir Newaz Khan

119. Gaurav Bansal

120. Juana Vera Delgado, Water Justice and Gender

121. Dr Christopher Ugwu, Enugu, Nigeria

122. Sylva van Rosse

123. Marcus Colchester

124. Michel Pimbert

125. Salam Rajesh, IUCN CEESP

126. Mahatsangy Toavina RAZOLALAINA

127. Deepti Mary Minj

128. Haritha

129. Tameem Hasan

130. Vyshali S

131. Prashant Rahi, The Polis Project

132. AS Vasantha Kumari

133. vs krishna, Human Rights Forum

134. K. Sudha, Human Rights Forum, Vishakapatnam

135. Pragati Parihar

136. Prasad Chacko, Social Worker

137. Elisabeth Reis

138. Surya Teja Gavva, Rutgers University, Lenapehoking

139. Ramu

140. Laila Kadiwal

141. Lisa McLaughlin

142. Cadmus Atake-Enade

143. Anne Ellison-Webb

144. Carol Scheller

145. Maya Seshagiri

146. Shruti

147. Abhayraj Naik

148. Vidushi Kaushik

149. Rajesh Ramakrishnan

International Solidarity for Academic Freedom in India (InSAF India) is a collective of diasporic Indians across the globe. It advocates for collective academic freedoms and building global solidarities with Indian and international peoples’ movements for radical social, economic and ecological justice.

The university is like a mini-corporate-government, where there has been a huge amount of training in how not to deal with relevant issues. But a good education should make manifest the organic, living links between abstract principles and individual and group behavior. So when you talk of democracy, you practice it. When you talk of freedom, you live it. Because the function of good intellectual work is to apprehend reality, in order to change it.

– Eqbal Ahmad, “Revolution in the Third World”

In an interview with David Barsamian, the renowned leftist broadcaster of Alternative Radio, Eqbal reflected on the years that would come to define him, from his early life through to the 1960s. Growing up in Bihar during the tumultuous Partition of India and Pakistan, Eqbal witnessed firsthand what he described as “the ease with which perfectly good humanity can descend into barbarism,” a decline profoundly driven by ideological forces. The experience would later inform his critical views on nationalism.

In the late 1950s, Eqbal journeyed to the United States for his academic pursuits, undertaking a Masters in American Studies at Occidental College before pursuing a doctorate in Political Science at Princeton University, where he wrote a dissertation on Tunisian labor movements. His fieldwork took him to North Africa, where he became captivated by the Algerian revolution, an experience further enriched by his meeting with Frantz Fanon. Both left lasting impressions on him.

Notably, what stands out in Eqbal’s discussion with Barsamian is his thoughts on intellectuals. Eqbal cites two pivotal realizations that cemented his staunch anti-imperialism. The first was the impact of Cold War anticommunism on American intellectual and moral life. Though Eqbal held great respect for his professors at Princeton, he was struck by how many served as consultants for the CIA, the Department of Defense, or the State Department. He remarked:

There was no discredit or stigma attached to the idea of intellectuals becoming functionaries. There was no inhibition about organic or any kind of deep linkages between power and knowledge. In a sense, I had never seen that before. Nationalist politics in India, which I had experienced in India and Pakistan, was one of opposition to the colonial state. And the post-colonial politics that I witnessed in Pakistan included such things as a major figure like Faiz Ahmed Faiz going to prison. To me, the relationship between intellectuals and power, between knowledge and power, was by definition adversarial. I found this to be completely merged and integrated in the U.S.

While he observed this integration of knowledge and power within the American academy, Eqbal found the adversarial spirit he valued within the civil rights and burgeoning antiwar movement. He came to appreciate and admire these movements for what he described as “the goodness that dissent had introduced into American social and cultural life.” They provided powerful examples of how collective action could challenge American power and counter the conformity he found in academia. He became more convinced of the essential role of intellectuals as challengers to power, rather than mere functionaries within it.

In 1967, Noam Chomsky encapsulated this political ethos in the New York Review of Books with his article “The Responsibility of Intellectuals.” Quite amusingly, I learned that this piece was first delivered as a public talk to the Harvard Hillel Society and later published in their student journal, Mosaic. Reflecting on the article at a 2017 conference to celebrate it, Chomsky remarked, “This was pre-1967, and things were different.” Notwithstanding its original intended audience, the article would go on to become a foundational critique of the Cold War’s influence on American cultural and intellectual life.

During a period of escalating US militarism in Vietnam, Chomsky sought to challenge and reorient intellectuals who had been complicit in supporting imperialism. In this charged climate, Chomsky urged intellectuals to take a stand against the war and the misinformation propagated by the state and media. He criticized those who passively accepted, rationalized, or actively supported US military actions through their silence or complicity. By emphasizing three key responsibilities of intellectuals — speaking truth and exposing lies, providing historical context, and unveiling the role of ideology — Chomsky challenged the limits Cold War consensus imposed on public debate.

Eqbal stood alongside Chomsky, publicly challenging the exceptional nature of US imperial power. In his renowned 1965 essay “Revolutionary Warfare: How to Tell When the Rebels Have Won,” published in The Nation magazine, Eqbal embodied the intellectual responsibilities Chomsky later articulated, as he sought to dispel misconceptions about revolutionary warfare and correct American views on the Vietnam War. The essay aimed to challenge Washington’s conspiratorial belief that the Vietnamese insurgency thrived mainly due to external agitators, active sanctuaries, political irreverence, and the use of terrorism.

Eqbal, a dedicated student of revolutionary warfare and a witness to the Algerian revolution, offered insightful interpretations of global revolutionary movements. He highlighted Mao’s success in China and the setbacks experienced by the US in Cuba, Korea, and Laos to argue that America’s strategy had been largely defensive, focusing on containing the spread of revolutionary movements. However, he cautioned that “wrong premises do not usually produce right policies,” warning that failing to grasp the political factors driving popular support in Vietnam could lead to ongoing failure and increased loss of life. Eqbal pointed out that the Vietnamese insurgency aimed not just to outfight the enemy but also to out-administer them, emphasizing the significance of understanding the political elements that facilitated mass mobilization and contributed to their success.          

Eqbal alerted the American public to the destruction being wrought in Vietnam in their name, arguing further that Americans could find genuine solidarity with the Vietnamese people, who were fighting for freedom much like they were. Indeed, drawing parallels with the French defeat in Indochina a decade earlier, Eqbal emphasized that the ongoing insurgency against the United States symbolized the Vietnamese people’s continued struggle for liberation. At a time when the war was not yet prominent in American public, Eqbal also issued a stark warning: without the fear of sanctions, a foreign power in counter-guerrilla struggles may resort to genocide as a final move for “victory.”

Later, he would argue that:

It is the intellectual’s responsibility to affirm what is good and just and to resist what is bad and unjust. We have often done the reverse, but I am defining responsibility in that simple sense... The argument envisions a permanent symbiosis of opposites, of choices, between affirmation and resistance, distance and immersion in intellectual life. When intellectuals lose sight of these choices, of this symbiosis, intellect begins to stagnate. Creativity suffers, and people lose hope and faith in the future.

Eqbal, however, was never stagnant in his pursuit of justice. Throughout his 40 years in the United States, he maintained a critical distance from state power and ideologies, consistently upholding his commitments and analyses and extending his focus well beyond Vietnam.

Following the Six-Day War in June 1967, Eqbal became deeply involved with the Arab American movement, especially with the rise of the Arab American University Graduates group (or the AAUG). This organization was founded by prominent Arab American intellectuals like Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, Elaine Hagopian, Naseer Aruri, Abdeen Jabara, and Edward Said, amongst others. Their primary objectives were to advocate for the Arab cause to the American public and to strengthen connections between Arab Americans in the diaspora and Arabs in the region.

It was during this period that Eqbal first met Edward Said. In a letter to producers of BBC Music and Arts, Eqbal recalled the moment he first learned about Said, after reading “Portrait of an Arab,” an article Said published in the US-based journal The Arab World. Eqbal wrote, “At a time when Israel was routinely referred to as the ‘Zionist entity,’ Said described the Palestinian Arab as a shadow of the Jew — tormented, persecuted, and devalued.” Said’s article would lay the groundwork for his magnum opus, Orientalism, but well-before its publication Eqbal was so moved by Said’s writing that he asked his close friend Ibrahim Abu-Lughod to introduce them. That was 1968.

A friendship spanning over 30 years blossomed from this encounter. However, it was not just their shared intellectual interests that defined their relationship. As Eqbal described, it was the fact that they were both exiles: “We shared the exiles’ experience in several ways, particularly in how it induces a certain relationship of alienation and intimacy with one’s chosen environment, and constant secret negotiations between one’s colonial past and contemporary metropolitan life.” Theirs was a relationship forged out of colonial dispossession and displacement, shaping their anti-imperialist outlook amid the turbulent backdrop of the Vietnam War and the continued Israeli settler colonization of Palestine.

The 1967 War had a profound impact on Said, shaping him both politically and intellectually. While his scholarship has been extensively analyzed, less attention has been paid to his comrade, guru, and true friend, Eqbal Ahmad, to whom Said dedicated his book Culture and Imperialism. In Said’s words:

Eqbal embodied not just the politics of empire but that whole fabric of experience expressed in human life itself, rather than in economic rules and reductive formulas. What Eqbal understood about the experience of empire was the domination of empire in all its forms, but also the creativity, originality, and vision created in resistance to it.

Eqbal’s ability to articulate his anti-imperialist views was vividly demonstrated on the eve of the 1970s when he addressed the AAUG audience in place of the renowned British Pakistani intellectual, Tariq Ali. Ali was unable to attend due to a visa denial by the US State Department after the burning of an American flag at an anti-war demonstration in London. In his absence, Eqbal delivered poignant statements that encapsulated both his political thinking and the creativity, originality, and vision that Said would come to admire. His remarks resonated strongly with the audience as they critiqued US military aggression in Vietnam and condemned US support for Zionism. “The reason [Tariq] Ali is not here,” he said, “is because they claimed he burnt the American flag. This is a damn lie; he did not burn the flag, he cremated it.” Eqbal’s use of the word “cremated” distilled that desire for the death of imperialism. He urged the audience to look beyond narrow nationalist perspectives and adopt a more critical view of US global power, arguing that “American imperialism is not born from Zionism” but rather “Zionism is the product of Western racism, colonialism, and imperialism — forces which are now represented by the United States of America.” For Eqbal, Vietnam and Palestine exemplified the farce behind the American ideals of freedom and democracy, ideals symbolized by the American flag. Naming its burning a cremation was a powerful rejection of a symbol increasingly seen as representing oppression rather than liberation. His speech and subsequent involvement would add to the Third World revolutionary fervor among the AAUG and its members.

Historians Pamela Pennock and Suraya Khan have analyzed how the AAUG strategically integrated Palestine into the broader Third World context, enabling Arab Americans to address the Palestinian issue within the larger framework of decolonization around the globe. The approach not only garnered widespread support from the anti-imperialist Left but was further bolstered by the involvement of prominent Third World figures like Eqbal and even Stokely Carmichael.

Throughout the 1970s, Eqbal’s anticolonial and antiwar politics would deeply shape his engagement with the AAUG, on Palestine, and other related movements. Despite his involvement in the Harrisburg court case in 1971, where he and six others were charged with conspiring to kidnap Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and destroy government property, Eqbal continued to write and engage in interviews. Although the trial ended in a hung jury, the AAUG, guided by leaders like Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, came to his defense and organized a campaign to support his legal fund.

During this period, Eqbal, along with his colleagues Aijaz Ahmad and Feroz Ahmad, and his brother Saghir Ahmad (before Saghir’s unexpected passing), became involved with Pakistan Forum, a leftist journal. The journal sought to push Pakistanis, both domestically and abroad, further to the left following the overthrow of military dictator Ayub Khan by a popular movement of students and workers.

Amid rising counterinsurgency efforts in the 1970s, Eqbal authored several essays and interviews for the journal that highlighted his global political thought, providing a framework for considering the relations across interconnected geographies of empire. In “Israel and USA: Towards a New Pact,” published at the beginning of 1971 before war would erupt in South Asia and before the conspiracy charges, Eqbal examined the deepening alliance between Israel and the United States. He argued that the White House was positioning Israel as a military force in the Mediterranean intended to counter Soviet influence over Arab states, particularly in light of Western Europe’s waning power in the region, as well as to oppose the growing Palestinian liberation movements following the 1967 war. However, he would suggest that the “speed and extent of the failure” of this alliance would depend highly on the revolutionary movements in the region.

According to Eqbal, the success of any revolutionary movement was highly contingent on enhancing the unpopularity and internal contradictions of the existing coercive regime and “as the Vietnamese have amply demonstrated, the most successful revolutionary guerrillas do not readily cut the roads. They get into the bus.” In other words, the most effective guerrilla does not directly destroy infrastructure but integrates into everyday life and activities, blending in with the civilian population — a tactic that allows them to build their movement and gain popular support. By “getting into the bus,” guerrillas become embedded within the societal fabric, making them more elusive and capable of striking quickly when necessary – a strategy political theorist Geo Maher might describe as an anticolonial eruption.

In 1971, Eqbal was interviewed by Al-Hurriya, a newspaper associated with the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, an interview that would also appear in an issue of Pakistan Forum. While many of the articles in the 1971 publication of Pakistan Forum would address South Asian national liberation struggles in Kashmir and Bangladesh, the inclusion of Eqbal’s interview about Palestine could perhaps be seen as out of place. However, in a 1972 editorial, Eqbal clarified that the journal, while dedicated to being an “independent, critical, and combative” platform against the reinforcement of military and bureaucratic power in Pakistan, also sought to challenge global imperial power. Addressing a predominantly global Pakistani audience, his writings and interviews, along with his solidarity with national liberation and self-determination movements in Palestine, Bangladesh, Kashmir, and Vietnam, were grounded in the principle that these struggles were interconnected. He aimed to highlight how the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean regions were increasingly becoming a “junior partner in the US-controlled, anti-Arab, anti-Communist, pro-Israeli constellation of imperial power.” He argued that hope for revolutionary change did not rest with the postcolonial state, which he viewed as increasingly militarized and authoritarian. Instead, he placed his faith in an intelligentsia not on the state’s payroll and capable of offering sharp analyses and charting a way forward, alongside the common people. He believed that the radical political culture fostered by revolutionary social movements would be unstoppable if we all just got on that bus together.

In the same interview, Eqbal discussed the challenging questions and attitudes surrounding the legitimacy of using terror in revolutionary movements. He noted that “terrorism,” “political assassination,” and “armed struggle” must be understood in their historical and political contexts. He emphasized, as he consistently did throughout his life, that the primary goal for any revolutionary movement is to delegitimize and morally isolate the existing regime — an important and exceptionally difficult political task. While Eqbal did not romanticize revolutionary violence, he acknowledged its importance in movement-building and its potential to ensure the survival of militants, provided it is executed strategically and justly, rather than indiscriminately. When carried out with strategy, revolutionary violence and sabotage, he believed, can “free the people from the constraints of coercive authority.”

The ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza has sparked renewed debates and divisions on the left over the role of armed struggle. The prospects for building a robust and unified global anti-imperialist movement seem to be further constrained by the rise of the counterterrorist state during the long war on terror. Increasingly, movements — particularly those led by Palestinians and Muslims — have become entangled in the narratives and practices of counterterrorism, which unjustly depict all resistance to colonialism, occupation, apartheid, and genocide as inherently illegitimate and undignified.

When the Western left and intelligentsia dismiss the anticolonial aims of Palestinian liberation movements, they not only undermine Palestinians’ struggle for self-determination but also reinforce the legitimacy of the counterterrorist state. By (sometimes unwittingly) adopting the state’s counterterrorism logic, the left faces a growing challenge: how can it oppose the resurgence of global authoritarian nationalisms while continuing to dismiss those at the forefront of resistance against colonialism, occupation, apartheid, and genocide? As the “war on terror” increasingly morphs into a “war on the left,” with the counterterrorist state expanding its reach to target more and more movements, it is crucial for the Western left to align with those on the frontlines. By doing so, we can forge new solidarities among Palestinians, Arabs, South Asians, African Americans, and Muslims — moving beyond the secular-liberal-Orientalist framework that continues to cast  these groups through an imperial lens of suspicion.

Eqbal would have pushed us to rethink our entrenched political frameworks, urging us to recognize as ethical that which builds a resilient anti-imperialist network. He would have inspired us to think critically and take bold risks. As Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha recently articulated during his visit to Harvard University, echoing what Eqbal might have said, Palestinians need us not simply to wake up, but to rise and confront the monsters of our time. Now, as the ground shifts beneath us and a new world stands on the brink of erupting, this call to act resonates louder than ever.

Soham Patel is an interdisciplinary scholar and educator focused on radical migrant histories, particularly within the South Asian diaspora. He holds a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Minnesota and is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in Global American Studies at Harvard University's Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History. 

“If for the freedom of this country anybody in Kerala had been able to put up a bold fight against the British empire, if anybody in Kerala can claim to be brave and determined, it is these brave and poor Muslim peasants, who facing guns and cannons, defied the white soldiery and even their mechanized divisions as if they didn’t care a straw for them and carried on a brave struggle for freedom” - A.K. Gopalan, Indian communist revolutionary, 25th August 1945 

In August 1947, while the newly born Republic of India celebrated its hard-won independence from British colonial rule, the fervent communist leader A. K. Gopalan, destined to become the country’s first opposition leader, remained imprisoned in the southern region. His crime? Delivering a fiery speech on August 25, 1946, in Perinthalmanna, then part of the Malabar district in the Madras presidency, the southernmost administrative province of British India. The speech boldly asserted the anti-colonial and anti-feudal roots of the 1921 Malabar Rebellion, one of the bloodiest uprisings against British rule in India, led by Mappila Muslim peasantry across the southern Malabar district. Gopalan’s view reflected the cumulative thinking of the communists in the region, while colonial and most nationalist accounts viewed the Rebellion as a communal and "religious uprising". 

The skewed colonial and the nationalist projection of the rebellion as a religious uprising once entertained by the likes of the Indian National Congress and its leaders like Mohandas K. Gandhi, continues to resonate today via Hindu far-right organizations like the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). The ideological fountainhead of India’s current ruling party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), RSS and its affiliates demonize Mappila rebellion as an early manifestation of the Taliban mindset in India. In 2021, the Narendra Modi regime removed 387 martyrs of the rebellion from the ‘Dictionary of Martyrs of India’s Freedom Struggle,’ published by the Ministry of Culture and the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR), recasting the anti-colonial uprising as a “religious conversion” movement. 

This article examines the communist perspective on Malabar Rebellion that offered a class analysis to understand its underlying causes, implications and the politics of violence in decolonial movements. This history of sustained communist efforts not only rescues the legacy and memories of the rebellion from its tarnished image as a communally motivated uprising, but also repositions the use of violence as acts of decolonial resistance, a position once decried by nationalists like Gandhi. Such ideological re-positionings of the yesteryear helps those combating the far-right’s attempts today to bring back the initial communal interpretation of the rebellion for political gains.

Behind the Rebellion 

When the British established the Malabar district in 1792, following the collapse of Tipu Sultan's Mysorean regime, they introduced colonial private property and taxation laws that entrenched local landlords (Janmis) as the absolute landowners. Previously, in Malabar's agrarian economy, landlords were co-proprietors with Kanakarans (middle-caste land supervisors) and Verumpattakarans (lower-caste/Muslim cultivators), who had customary rights to one-third of the agricultural produce but no right to evict tenants. Tipu Sultan's reforms had established direct land settlements with tenants, reducing the power of Naduvazhis (supralocal chiefs) and local Nair chieftains. However, under British rule, the Mappilas, lower-caste Muslims in southern Malabar who had previously experienced some relief from the aristocracy's oppressive social relations, found their situation reversed.

Notably, the colonial property laws shifted the revenue burden onto peasants, leading to arbitrary rent hikes and frequent evictions. New taxes, flawed revenue surveys, and land over-assessment sparked widespread, sometimes violent, protests. Heavy tolls on traders in interior Malabar worsened conditions for traders and middlemen. This fuelled growing resentment against the British and upper caste Hindu landlords. Consequently, land issues, including forced evictions of tenants by Janmis with colonial support, prompted responses from the local Muslim clergy. Traditional intellectuals such as the Musliar, Qazis, and Ulama helped foster an anti-colonial temperament in the region, with teachings from figures such as Veliyamkod Umar Qazi and Sayyid Alavi Thangal.

The growing Mappila peasant discontent in the southern Malabar hinterlands, such as Eranad and Valluvanad, began to solidify through the growing tenancy movement of the late 19th century. They organized local anti-landlord protests, using tactics such as non-cooperation and social boycotts against upper-caste Hindu landlords. Historian K. N. Panikkar observed that the passionate speeches of local Mappilas, rooted in their experiences of misery under the feudal order, had a greater impact at protest meetings than those of urban intellectuals. Furthermore, local tenancy associations helped build solidarity among peasants against the Janmi landlords. However, Mappila insurgent actions before the 1921 movement were localized, limited and discontinuous, with only 351 rebels involved in 32 incidents between 1836 and 1919. Many of these uprisings involved small groups of Mappila peasants attacking Hindu landlords, British officials, and even fellow Mappilas who collaborated with the colonial regime and local feudal authorities.

Immediate Trigger for the Malabar Rebellion? 

In the early 20th century, the anti-colonial nationalist movement gained significant support among the Mappila tenant cultivators and small farmers. This surge in support was largely driven by Gandhi's efforts to link the Congress-led anti-colonial Non-Cooperation movement with the Khilafat movement within British India that aimed to restore the Ottoman Caliph to his previous position as the figurehead of the global Muslim community following the breakup of the Ottoman empire by Britain and its allies after the First World War. In southern Malabar, combined with tenancy issues (e.g., high rents and the constant eviction of tenants by Janmis with state support), an unparalleled unity of Hindus and Muslims drove the joint Non-Cooperation-Khilafat momentum. 

The struggling Mappila peasantry engineered a strategic alliance with anti-colonial and anti-landlord political platforms (e.g. Kudiyaan Sangham’s and Indian National Congress) from 1916 onwards. Notably, Khilafat conferences urged those over 21 years of age to join the Indian National Congress and fight for Swarajya (self-rule) and the restoration of the Ottoman Khilafat. At Congress party conferences in South Malabar, such as the Manjeri Conference on April 28 and 29, 1920, resolutions were passed with similar demands. The joint banners of the Non-Cooperation, Khilafat, and Tenancy movements in South Malabar angered the colonial state and upper-caste Hindu landlords, leading to punitive actions against the peasantry and agricultural workers. 

On August 1, 1921, Vadakkan Veetil Mammad, the chief accountant of Chinnanunni of the Nilambur Kovilakam (royal household), was dismissed after becoming secretary of the local Khilafat Committee. Mammad's demand for his rightful dues led to a lawsuit. Further police intervention in favour of Nilambur Kovilakam, alleging Mammad for stealing a gun, escalated tensions. Many believed that this was a conspiracy attempt to tame Mammad and weaken the Khilafat movement. 

Mammad's incident acted as a trigger point, leading to an urgent meeting on August 21 in the small town of Pandikkad. There, local leadership, mainly popular Muslim clergy of the region, took charge of active mobilization against the feudal-colonial nexus. For instance, Chembrasseri Thangal and Variyam Kunnath Kunjahmmad Haji were tasked with coordinating efforts in the southern sub-district unit or taluk of Eranad in the Malabar district, while Ali Musliar was assigned specifically to the town of Tirurangadi in Eranad, and Seethikoya Thangal took responsibility for the Valluvanad taluk. This rallying of leadership set the stage for the widespread rebellion that followed.

On August 26, 1921, the Mappilas fiercely fought the British in the Battle of Pookkottur after influential landlords urged the district administration to deploy the army. The battle resulted in the death of over 300 Mappilas and several British soldiers, including Commander Lancaster. 

As the British feared the rebellion gaining momentum, they deployed militarized police forces. Special units raided mosques and homes in Tirurangadi searching for the popular cleric Ali Musliar. Rumors of an attack on the revered Mamburam mosque, housing the shrine of Sayyid Alavi Thangal, ignited massive protests. This led to confrontations with the military, resulting in massive casualties. Rebels cut postal and telegraph lines, damaged railway tracks, set fire to court records, and looted treasuries. The British forces’ withdrawal from some areas fuelled the belief that their rule was collapsing - a sentiment that spread rapidly among the rural poor.

This Malabar Rebellion also led to the formation of the short-lived sovereign state "Malayala Rajyam (kingdom)" under Variamkunnath Kunhammad Haji, who mobilized thousands of warriors and established an alternative administrative system, including separate currency, passport and taxation system, effectively choking the British colonial regime and upper caste Hindu landlordism for months. This indicated the heights of decolonial aspirations bursting in the region.  

It took the British nearly six months to reassert control over the region. Confronted with the Mappilas' relentless resolve, the British established the Malabar Special Police to quell the uprising. Their iron-fisted counter-insurgency campaign was devastating, resulting in the deaths of 2,339 rebels, wounding over 1,500, and capturing and torturing nearly 6,000.

Demonizing the Oppressed

Colonial states often used targeted criminalization to suppress dissent, employing derogatory stereotypes to demonize entire communities. Terms like "effeminate Bengali," "martial races," "untrustworthy Arabs," and "barbaric" were used to label groups and communities based on perceived characteristics. In British Malabar, for example, reports from the 1792-1793 Joint Commission identify Mappilas as a criminalized community. Mappila peasant unrest was criminalized under laws like the Mappila Outrageous Acts of 1854, framing their resistance as religious fanaticism. These targeted criminalization efforts provided the pretext for the colonial state to vilify the 1921 rebellion and discredit its participants.

The communitarian dynamics of class distribution in the region played a crucial role in misrepresenting the Mappila rebellion. The colonial administration had long sought to delegitimize resistance from the Mappila verumpattakkudiyan community of landless agricultural labourers by labelling them as religious ‘fanatics’. Such stereotypes portrayed Mappilas in southern Malabar as inherently violent, irrational, and bigoted, and these narratives were used to frame and quell the 1921 rebellion as a sectarian and partisan uprising.

Initially, the Indian National Congress supported the Khilafat movement, successfully encouraging the Mappila community to join the Congress. This alliance gained significant traction in the late 1910s. However, once the agitations turned violent, Congress withdrew its support and condemned the rebellion. At the Ahmedabad session of its working committee in September 1921, Congress expressed regret over the violence, echoing the colonial narratives and reinforcing the movement's vilification. M. K. Gandhi criticized the Malabar rebellion for its use of violence, a stance that many local Congress leaders saw as a betrayal. After the brutal British suppression of the Malabar rebellion and the revocation of the Non-Cooperation Movement in 1922, the Congress Party's political struggles in Malabar fell into dormancy for a prolonged period.

Furthermore, even radical thinker and political figure Dr. B. R. Ambedkar criticized the Malabar rebellion, accusing the agitators of disturbing Hindu-Muslim relations—a stance that echoed colonial narratives. Such strong criticism, fixated on the violence rather than the rebellion's substantive anti-colonial objectives, overshadowed and misrecognized its true nature in public discourse for a long time.

Locating the Class Character of the Peasant Rebellion 

Unlike Ambedkar, Gandhi and Congress, The Communist Party of India (CPI) lauded the Malabar rebellion, noting in their 1921 document The Present Events in India: 

“Like the rising of the Kisan Sabhas in the north, the Moplah [Mappila] rising in the southern coast of Malabar in August-September of this year, is also a protest of underpaid and overworked agricultural labourers and poor peasants against the oppression of landlords.”

CPI criticized Congress for its inaction in supporting the Mappilas—primarily poor farmers and laborers—during their struggle against British colonial forces. They questioned the political substance of Congress’s steadfast preaching of non-violence, arguing that it functioned to pacify resistance even amid brutal oppression and massacres, ultimately reinforcing the interests of the colonial regime.

E. M. S. Namboodirippad, a key leader of the Indian Communist movement and Chief Minister of Kerala in independent India, was born and raised in the region profoundly affected by the 1921 rebellion. He viewed this uprising as one of the most significant anti-colonial movements in the subcontinent since the 1857 Sepoy Mutiny. Drawing parallels with the Easter Rebellion in Ireland, Namboodiripad likened the Malabar Tenancy Acts—enacted to address the unrest of 1921—to the 1916 Anglo-Irish Treaty, which sought to resolve the tensions of the Irish revolt. 

Namboodirippad also explicitly criticized Congress politics and its leadership for their misrecognition of the 1921 rebellion. He contended that bourgeois leaders of the national movement had sought to "teach the art of non-violent surrender" rather than learning from the peasants' revolutionary resistance. He argued that the violence in Malabar was no greater than that in Balliya, Bagalpur, and Satara during 1942–43. While Congress and figures like Jawaharlal Nehru celebrated the revolutionaries of these later movements, they condemned the 1921 Malabar rebellion. EMS even viewed the 1921 revolutionaries as "braver" than those involved in the Quit India movement of 1942.

A.K. Gopalan, a leading Communist Party figure, reflected on the program Congress had during the 1920s as a catalyst for mass mobilization and praised the Khilafat movement of 1921 for its nationwide impact. He found the Mappila Rebellion particularly stirring, despite its lack of coherent leadership and strategy, noting that the rebellion's acts—looting government treasuries, attacking police stations, and occupying a local court to declare Swaraj—demonstrated anti-colonial valour. Gopalan highlighted rebel leader Variyam Kunnath Kunjahammad Haji's role in steering the movement towards an anti-feudal stance, particularly his instructions that peasants seize rice from landlord fields and redistribute the proceeds in cash.

For Gopalan, the class consciousness of the Mappila peasants emerged from the century-long anti-feudal movement. He criticized the erection of memorial statues to colonial officers, funded by feudal lords, and instead called for the commemoration of the rebel martyrs who laid down their lives in their fight for land and peasants. Gopalan delivered his renowned speech at the 1946 annual commemoration of the Malabar Rebellion organized by the Communist Party in Perinthalmanna. This was one of the first public acknowledgments of the rebellion's historical significance, held in the very region where the uprising occurred.

In 1946, on the 25th anniversary of the Malabar Rebellion, the Communist newspaper Deshabhimani published an article titled “The Call and the Warning” This article was a verbatim reproduction of a resolution passed by joint Communist party committees of Travancore, Kochi, and Malabar. It declared that the 1921 Mappila rebellion, centered in Tirurangadi and surrounding areas, was an unprecedented anti-imperialist struggle.

Similarly, M.N. Roy, a founder of CPI, also emphasized the economic roots of the rebellion in his influential work India in Transition. He argued that the uprising was a response to the oppressive alliance between landlords and the colonial government. Furthermore, since the peasants faced severe exploitation by moneylenders and landlords, who were predominantly from the Hindu community, the resistance movement initially involved looting their homes.

Archival records indicate that in 1921, Abaninath Mukherjee, another founding member of CPI, wrote to Lenin about the Malabar rebellion, framing it as part of a broader anti-colonial peasant struggle in India. Lenin forwarded Mukherjee's letter to Bukharin on November 14, 1921, with a note urging greater attention to Indian revolutionary movements. Mukherjee criticized colonial narratives that depicted the rebellion as merely fanatic, arguing that such portrayals were deliberate attempts to sow communal discord and divide anti-colonial forces. He emphasized the rebellion's class nature and countered claims of religious bigotry by highlighting the death of Khan Bahadur K. V. Chekkutty, a local Muslim police inspector killed by the Mappila rebels. 

Furthermore, at the Fourth World Congress of the Comintern on November 5, 1922, the agrarian question was identified as critical for regions such as India, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Persia. This Fourth Congress emphasized that feudal oppression was a major barrier to peasant emancipation and cited the Mappila rebellion as a key example where the struggle against feudal exploitation and dues reflected broader movements for national liberation against imperialist and feudal systems.

The Communist Approach to Violence in Decolonial Movements

The Communist Party of India (CPI) emerged from the Congress Socialist Party in British Malabar after an October 1939 secret conference, where leaders resolved to transform their organisation into a CPI unit. By the early 1940s, the CPI publicly announced its existence and actively worked to spotlight and legitimize decolonial movements in the region, particularly the 1921 rebellion. Communist literature, both spoken and written, reignited discussions about the nature of rebellion, and re-signified associated peasantry-led violence in the movement as a retaliative outburst of an oppressed peasantry.

The CPI viewed the Malabar rebellion as primarily a peasant uprising rooted in class struggle. Their analysis explored how class dynamics intersected with other social identities, such as religion and caste, in shaping the rebellion. Despite its violent methods, they staunchly defended the rebellion's anti-colonial essence, opposing the mainstream view that non-violence was the sole legitimate means to combat colonial and feudal exploitation. Thus, the Communists challenged the political forces that swiftly condemned the rebellion’s use of violence in a moralistic and ahistorical manner. They also historicised colonial narratives that branded Mappila peasants as habitual criminals with an inherent propensity for violence, interpreting this as an effort to delegitimize their class-based demands.

The Communist approach to the violent tactics used by the rebelling peasants in 1921 was far from isolated. In the following decades, major anti-feudal and anti-colonial struggles—such as those in Punnapra and Vayalar in Travancore, as well as Kayyur and Karivellur in northern Malabar—saw the Communists both advocating for and participating in violent means of protest. In this epoch of anti-feudal violence, Namboodiripad argued that violence and non-violence should not be viewed in isolation. He famously asserted:  

“When there is social violence, it is bound to be reflected in violence all around…Increase in the consciousness of the people can also lead to increase in violence. There has for long been violence of the rich against the poor; now the poor are resisting. This is taken as a sign of greater violence.” 

The Communist Party viewed the British colonial regime and feudal landlordism as inflicting greater violence on the populace in the region. They did not see these systems as advancing the interests of workers and peasants; therefore, the use of violence against them was seen to serve the democratization of society. As in the case of the Malabar Rebellion, the central question for the communists was: How can one preach non-violence to those who have always been the object of social violence?

In this context, the often-under-highlighted communist positioning of the Malabar rebellion, both in its foregrounding of the anti-feudal and anti-colonial causative factors that led to the rebellion as well as in its ideological defence of the methods of resistance engaged in by the rebels, must garner greater significance. Such forms of historical consciousness alone can combat far-right Hindutva forces in India who continue to downplay the rebellion’s significance and resort to colonial and nationalist misrepresentations to portray Muslims as historical antagonists to a constructed Hindu unity.

Munavir Ali A. P. is a PhD scholar at the Department of History, University of Calicut, Kerala, India. He is also the convener of the All-Kerala Research Scholars Association at his university campus.

The trial of the Bradford 12 in 1981 set a precedent for the right of immigrant and oppressed communities to defend themselves in the United Kingdom. In the 1970s and 1980s, white supremacist, fascist gangs and political parties terrorised immigrant communities across Britain. Gangs were beating and stabbing people, petrol-bombing and vandalising homes, while simultaneously, political movements of the far right, such as the National Front, the British National Party, and extreme paramilitary organisations like Column 88, were mobilising swathes of the population. Racist gangs murdered Gurdip Singh Chaggar in Southall, West London, in 1976 and Altab Ali in Whitechapel, East London, in 1978. Such murders were the most violent of the systematic attacks on racialized people happening across Britain by racists on the streets, in the police, and within state institutions.

By 1981, there was an intensification of racist violence, but it was met with organised resistance and community self-defence. On January 13, 1981, young Black people in New Cross, London, were massacred when the home they were in was firebombed. Six months later, on July 2, 1981, a firebomb was thrown into a home in Walthamstow, killing Parveen Khan and her three children. These incidents of violence led to community-organised protests across the country against racist policing and state violence.At the same time, the National Front – a fascist, white supremacist British political party – threatened to march into Manningham, Bradford, home to a significant South Asian population working in the mills. The police confirmed the rumours but failed to take measures to stop them or protect the communities under attack. Instead, they told Asians to stay inside that day. Not content with allowing the National Front to freely terrorise Bradford, the United Black Youth League, a militant offshoot of the Asian Youth Movement, ramped up their community protection in the event of violent attacks. On July 11, 1981, twelve young South Asians were arrested and detained for preparing petrol bombs they never used.

The trial of the Bradford 12, as they came to be known, began the following year and encapsulated the political environment of Britain at the time. The defence emphasised the extent of racist violence faced by racialized communities across Britain, whereas the prosecution’s arguments revealed that the police were required to be discriminatory to perform their duties, exposing the structural racism within law enforcement. Hundreds rallied outside the court in support of the twelve. In a momentous judgment, the Bradford 12 were acquitted on the grounds that their actions constituted self-defence in the face of a violent threat. In the face of colonial brutality in the metropole, self-defence becomes a revolutionary act. The Bradford 12’s struggle was intrinsically connected with, and inspired by, national liberation movements resisting imperialism and colonialism. “Self-defence is no offence” became the slogan of the Bradford 12 campaign.

Forty-three years later, the slogan and principles outlined by the Bradford 12 case were taken up by groups defending their communities from the racist pogroms that took place earlier this year. Between July 30 and August 5, 2024, racist and fascist riots erupted across the United Kingdom. These were initially sparked by a stabbing in Southport, which the far right falsely claimed on social media had been committed by a Muslim asylum seeker and, in some cases, a Palestinian refugee. But the fire had been fueled by the general election only a few weeks earlier, where both major political parties campaigned on an anti-immigration platform of “stop the boats” and increasing aid and arms support to Israel. Much like in 1979, when Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Party co-opted the politics and rhetoric of the National Front, anti-immigrant and Islamophobic rhetoric became the linchpin of the 2024 general election. In this context, it is unsurprising that people across Britain are turning to the lessons of the United Black Youth League, the Asian Youth Movement, and the Bradford 12 to confront the urgent need for community self-defence. This urgency is keenly felt in the face of fascist violence, attacks on movements in solidarity with Palestine, and the normalization of violent Islamophobia, all while the British government continues to fund genocide and imperialism.

In an interview with Tariq Mehmood—a founding member of the United Black Youth League and the Asian Youth Movement, and one of the Bradford 12—we discuss the forms of colonial violence he faced growing up in Britain, his connection to anti-colonial struggles as a young activist, and the current moment of anti-imperialist organizing.

Nuvpreet Kalra (NK): How did the Asian Youth Movement consciously connect anti-imperialist and anti-colonial struggles at the time?

Tariq Mehmood (TM): The struggle against racism acted as a key that unlocked our understanding of imperialism and colonialism. This started with the simple idea that you had to live. We faced everyday violence from an early age, in schools and playgrounds. In the 1970s, across the length and breadth of the country, people were being stabbed, and petrol bombs were being thrown into their houses. Simultaneously, there were political movements of the far right, like the National Front and the British National Party, as well as far more extreme paramilitary organisations like Column 88, alongside popular waves of “Paki-bashing” by particularly nasty brands of skinheads.

So, the Asian Youth Movement was formed out of an intense racist backlash, but it wasn't simply against street racism. Our whole experience sharply contradicted what we had been told about England as an amazing paradise where the streets would be paved with gold. My grandfather and uncles worked in mills. My grandfather developed health problems due to exposure to asbestos, and my uncles were overworked. Nobody told the mill workers about the health risks of working with asbestos. So, while some were overworked like machines, others were falling ill, and children were resisting violence in schools. This opened our eyes, very painfully, to the reality that something was fundamentally wrong.

Secondary school was far more violent. I remember a child being thrown under a bus once. By then, we had begun to understand that our issues had something to do with history: it was because the British, as colonisers, had ruled us, and that's why we were here. But we also understood that there was no other option but to organise against the violence we faced. The school was so violent that we would leave half an hour before the white children. We even went to other schools to protect immigrant children, and this is how we began to form an embryonic organisational structure. We understood the power of being organised and started organising strikes and holding meetings as we grew older. Even in our youth, we no longer wanted the crumbs. We came to the streets of Britain, where the streets are paved with gold, and we were not going to be satisfied with the crumbs. In fact, we didn’t even want the biscuits; we wanted the bakery. We recognised that our poverty was born out of colonial plunder. Therefore, nobody was doing us a favour by allowing us into this country. Britain re-plundered us through migration. The struggle against racism, borne out of an anti-colonial understanding, acted as a key that unlocked the relationship to anti-imperialism.

We had two forms of problems: one was street racism, which was relatively easy to fight against once we were organised. The other was the institutional racism of the police, the education system, the immigration system, and so on. Our anti-racism could not simply be about the far right – it didn’t make sense. We had to confront the creator of the far right, and the creator of the far right is not the street but the state, along with the pro-imperial organisations and ideologies that propped this system up. We understood that we came here for a particular reason: to rebuild the industries. We came from places that had been plundered, yet we were then labelled as “Pakis” and “wogs.” In order to maintain even our cultural identity, we needed to understand historical connections. Organised anti-imperialism, for us, became an inseparable process from anti-racism because racism had unlocked the key – a key that explained to us many other contradictions.

We saw that the strands of the monster attacking us weren’t simply the little white boy who came out at night to do “paki-bashing.” Who put the poison in his head? Where did it come from? Why were they doing this? How do we resist them? We found the answers in the thousands of different threads behind the attacks by the white boy in our streets – the police brutality, the immigration services, and, of course, living in the ghettos where we lived, in the factories and mills where we worked. The resistance to racism could not be piecemeal; people had to understand the historical basis for the material conditions of our lives, which were so bad at that time.

We began our slogan, “self-defense is no offense,” which came from a Punjabi saying: “Police di na itebaar karo, apni rakhi aap karo” (Don’t rely on the police, defend yourselves). This was shouted at a demonstration in Punjab, and it has stayed with me through the decades. But the struggle for self-defense is also the defense of our human and natural resources. Colonialism wants to steal them – to defend them is also an act of rebellion. So the anti-colonial struggle and the self-defense struggle are actually one and the same, because self-defense is not simply the macho man standing up with big biceps. Self-defense is about social organization for youth, for the fundamental right to exist, firstly, and then for a life of dignity.

NK: What was the main reason why people were joining the movement? Was it purely in reaction to violence and wanting collective self-defense, or was it an understanding and recognition of wanting to tear down the institution that is committing violence against them?

TM: A lot of it had to do with the idea that you can actually avoid a fight simply by organizing. This was a pre-mobile phone era, so we had telephone trees, for example, in Bradford, where, if you were attacked, you would phone one person who would then immediately come to defend you. But before he or she did, they informed the next, who informed the next, and very quickly, we could mobilize 20-30 people. That was a way people got involved. When people were murdered, it provoked mass resistance in the streets, and this mass resistance called for organization. It really is the violence from the state that creates the conditions on which you react. We would receive political education from our elders about the struggles in India, Africa, and particularly Palestine. So people were very much aware of the horrors around the world, and our situation was just one of the horrors.

NK: In terms of armed self-defense in the Global North, the Black Panthers were in struggle at the same time as you. Then, you have the Soviet Union and massive national liberation movements, who are taking up armed struggle against colonialism and imperialism. Do you think without that global context, the United Black Youth League would have taken the militant approach that it did? Would you have had the same language to talk about things? 

TM: Without what was going on around the world, we wouldn't have been organizing the way we did. Especially the influence of the Panthers, specifically Malcolm X and his words “by any means necessary.” These were the posters on our wall. The other one was Leila Khaled’s poster. We were very, very supportive of the anti-colonial struggle in Ireland, so much so that Bobby Sands actually wrote a poem from prison to one of the campaigns that we did – in support of Anwar Ditta, a South Asian woman whose children the Home Office did not believe were hers and forbade them from coming to Britain until protests successfully overturned their decision. In a sense, we were adamant as well that we are people who have rights as human beings – they’re not negotiable.

You've got to understand that when you’re being stabbed, it's quite natural to say: I'm going to defend myself with a knife. We were also well aware of the burning of our houses – the New Cross Massacre of 1981 was very much a living memory for us. At the time, we understood that the burning down of pubs in Southall by fascists was not something isolated. Up and down the country, not only did people sometimes keep water behind the door in case fascists poured petrol in, but they also blocked up their letterboxes. So the question of arming was thought of as a natural right. The right to life is not negotiable – we will do whatever is necessary to live. And if the attacker is coming armed, then what other choice have we got but to defend ourselves in the manner required?

We weren't trying to be romantic revolutionaries. We were really only trying to live. It wasn’t just the influence of anti-racist, anti-imperial, and anti-colonial movements on us. We were there to support the rights of the people of Ireland, Palestine, South Africa, Namibia, and others against colonialism by whatever tools were at their disposal. It’s not that we were sitting in some isolated place. We would talk to the Palestinians, we would talk to the Irish. They came to our demonstrations, they came to our meetings. We would talk to the Namibians, the South Africans, and people from Latin America and the Iranian students campaigning against the Shah. We had solidarity with those engaged in armed struggle, and we didn’t think there was anything wrong with it. Those who are oppressed and colonized have the right to choose how they fight. If they want to fight without the use of political violence, that’s their internal position, not for us to judge while living in an imperialist country that is making the bombs being dropped on them. If they choose to fight the colonial and imperial powers through armed resistance, that is equally up to them.

NK: You said that when you came to England, you were racialized in a way you hadn’t been before. Since then, discourses of race have changed in many ways. For example, people no longer use political blackness. What do you make of how racism and people’s understanding of race have changed?

TM: To understand what political blackness is, you have to understand what produced it. The answer is white supremacy. The resistance to white supremacy is hundreds of years old. So, in one sense, what we understood as Black was also what we understood as white. Neither of them really exist. There is no biologically Black person, and there is no biologically white person. In one sense, they are different shades of pink, and we're a different shade of brown. But ours wasn't an issue of shades — ours was the issue that a lot of us had common problems. The commonality of resistance to white supremacy is what drew us together as Blacks.

Black unity worries the establishment more than the Muslim unity of today. Black unity worried them because when we marched together, we were an empire marching together. When we simply said “I'm Pakistani” / “I’m Muslim” / “I’m this,” we were nothing. So, the unity that was born was also because of the ideological lessons from Malcolm X. He would say that what's important is for us to unite on the commonality of oppression, not on its divisions. Now, the state wouldn't let that be. Our organization was called the United Black Youth League, but the founders were all Asians. We saw no contradiction because you don't have to have one identity. Here I am Kashmiri, but in my ancestry, I am Pakistani; according to where I was born, I am British. God help me if they want to make me English – that’s where I'll give up. Absolutely not – I'll never do that.

So, the idea of Black unity for us was a necessity of the time. The idea of so-called brownness is a funding issue – it’s money, it’s an identity. Once you accept "brown," then what happens to white? The cause is still there; white supremacy doesn't say, "I am now a lesser shade of white, I’m more pink." Now, why doesn’t one do it and the other does? As long as white supremacy is there, it doesn't matter what you call the others.

Black unity was born out of the factories, the mills, the streets – not academic papers. Academic papers, if anything, would always end up dividing us because these are people who need to build their careers and come up with new angles. We weren’t like that. So, the factories taught us, the streets taught us, the international struggles taught us. But the monster hasn’t gone away; the white racism hasn’t gone away. It’s brought another, very virulent, nasty racism into the streets of Britain, which we see in the question of Palestine and Islamophobia. Like the Black resistance of earlier times, where everyone became Black, not just Africans, everyone is a Muslim today. We’re all in the same boat because the knife that comes for the Muslim will not be able to distinguish between the Sikh, the Hindu, the Christian, the Buddhist, or anyone else. It will strike us all. So, in a sense, on the one hand, we’re all Muslim. On the other hand, we’re not. That’s the contradiction. But the idea of "brown" ignores the history before it. Had we ignored it, we wouldn’t be united; we’d have possibly languished in jails. The issue today is far worse than in our time because the systemic violence is so deeply ingrained that you have people in the media and intellectuals going on about anti-Semitism, yet Islamophobia is raging. The levels of violence are absolutely beyond belief, especially for hijab-wearing women.

We have a new, nasty racism feeding into every aspect of life, but the old one hasn’t gone away. White racism now has a new peg: Islamophobia. Now they can go back to their crusades and give it a religious name if they want. They can do all these things, and it’s that which is slaughtering the Palestinians today. We can see very clearly that this racist West is not the same West that we came to, when it still had some degree of life left in it. This is now a dying West promoting a mass ideological weapon. And what can they unite against? They can unite against Russia, they can unite against China, but internally, what do they do? The fifth column they paint is us. So, the situation of race is difficult now, but it means that we have to see it outside the South Asian context. If you are attacked as a woman, you have a right to defend yourself as a woman and demand support from those who are against the attack. That applies if you’re attacked as a Black man or a Black woman – you have a right to organise as Black defence. When it comes to Muslims, do they have that right or not?

NK: Recently, the mainstream media has been interested in the Bradford 12 and Asian Youth Movements: Channel 4, the BBC, and others. Is this because it’s now acceptable to look at this as a historic movement since enough time has passed? How are they framing this history today?

TM: They're taking out our politics of anti-imperialism from media representation. You won’t find it in the BBC, and that’s why I very, very rarely give interviews to the BBC. They will not mention our Irish position or our Palestinian position. We did not create the Bradford 12—the moment created us, and the moment was anti-imperialist. Without that, we are nothing. It’s also my worry that they’ll depict us simply as angry young men. We were indeed angry, but the anger had a political and intellectual side to it. Of course, we were working-class people, so we didn’t write the books. I think I wrote my first one in prison. I’m working on a film about the Bradford 12 that will be out next year. It’ll be our version of our story, not the mainstream media versions of our story. The old problem is that if the lion doesn’t tell its story, it becomes the story of the hunter. This is not the story of the hunter.

Tariq Mehmood is an award-winning author, filmmaker, academic, and community organiser. His works include Hand on the Sun, You’re Not Proper, and You’re Not Here. His new release, The Second Coming, is a novel set in war-torn Britain where far-right militias rise to power. It is published by Daraja Press and available to purchase here. His forthcoming film on the Bradford 12 is out next year.

Nuvpreet Kalra is an organizer and designer based in England. She is currently the Digital Content Producer and Bases Off Cyprus campaigner at CODEPINK and works with Campaign Against Arms Trade.

The scale and audacity of al-Aqsa Flood, the Palestinian resistance factions’ attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, has once again brought considerable attention to questions of national liberation and armed struggle that, 50 years prior, defined global anti-colonial rebellion and socialist revolution. In the 1960s and 70s, when radicals around the world were splitting on how best to effect revolutionary transformations, they tended to be united on one point: that in situations of direct colonialism, armed struggle was not only justifiable but a political imperative. By 1973, the Mazdoor Kisan Party (MKP), the largest communist-oriented political organization in Pakistan’s history—best known for leading arguably the country’s largest, most effective, and armed peasant struggles—was at the centre of a perhaps thornier set of questions concerning indirect (semi- or neo-)colonialism in Pakistan: Was formally freeing a people from their colonial occupiers enough to achieve genuine national liberation from imperialist domination? If not, if the bourgeoisies and landed elites found new ways to ensure the subordination of working people, then what means were appropriate and necessary to combat these formally independent ruling classes?

The MKP had emerged in 1968 out of debates on such questions between the so-called “pro-Soviet” and “pro-China” factions of the international communist movement. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union argued that there could be a peaceful and parliamentary path to socialism in both the imperialist, advanced capitalist countries, and the underdeveloped nations formally liberated from colonialism. There were “national” bourgeoisies committed to anti-monopoly and anti-imperialism, and working people ought to join with them to achieve meaningful democratic development. In contrast, the communists who founded the MKP drew on their own experiences of politics and state repression to side largely with the Communist Party of China in arguing that the meaningful pursuit of emancipation from imperialism and class domination would inescapably involve dealing with the violence of the ruling classes.

By 1973, after five years of intervening in peasant struggles that ranged from civil disobedience to armed resistance, two global events further enabled the MKP to refine its responses to the debates concerning national liberation and violence: On September 11, 1973, a US-backed military coup in Chile had violently overthrown the elected socialist presidency of Dr. Salvador Allende. Soon thereafter, the advances of Arab armies against the Israeli military that began in a surprise attack on October 6, 1973 appeared to stall in diplomacy rather than pressing the advantage for total liberation of occupied Arab lands. For the MKP, comparing across Pakistan, Palestine, Chile, and elsewhere, revealed not only the contours of the US-led imperialist world order, but also the contours of what it would take to meaningfully transform it. The first lesson concerned the class nature of national liberation struggles, where, following Mao Zedong, the MKP argued that working classes needed to organize their own independent political organizations rather than leaving national liberation in the hands of the bourgeoisie. The second lesson concerned the question of armed struggle, and needing to view it expansively in terms of the coercive basis of a working people’s state rather than simply in terms of self-defence, or worse, not thinking about an independent armed force of working classes at all.

A Thoroughly Violent Condition

The communists who founded the MKP in 1968 had already been enmeshed with the immense violence that birthed Pakistan over 1947 and 1948, and became even more intimately familiar with state repression after independence. In 1951, leading communists accused of plotting a coup with army officers, including the Punjabi army Major Ishaq Muhammad, were imprisoned, and the Communist Party was banned in 1954, with many more communists like the charismatic Afzal Bangash of the North-West Frontier Province arrested. After he was released, Bangash became Frontier general-secretary of the National Awami Party in 1957, in which many communists regrouped. But upon a military coup he and Major Ishaq amongst others were re-arrested. One of Pakistan’s most vibrant communists, Hassan Nasir of Karachi in Sindh, was imprisoned in 1960 in the Lahore Fort and tortured to death. After Pakistan lost another war over Kashmir to India in 1965, the National Awami Party ruptured in 1968. Bangash and Ishaq led revolutionary communists to form the MKP, but Bangash and many others were arrested again in 1971 after Bangladesh’s War of Liberation broke out. The leaders of the MKP were no strangers to the violence of the state.

The many thousands of workers and peasants who participated in the MKP were also quite familiar with violence, in its many forms. While urban workers faced the repression of police forces acting to protect the interests of industrial capitalists, including dying at their hands, in rural areas “feudal” landed elites held the means of violence in their own hands. The larger landholders, who might own hundreds or thousands of acres, were local despots who ruled over their clients: not only extracting rent, unpaid labour, all kinds of taxes, and controlling market access, but also dictating who their tenants would vote for and what kind of politics they could openly engage with. Landlords also held court (jirgas) over tenant/labourer disputes, and could impose fines and punishments and even kill those who got out of line—landlords had their own armed retainers. In central Punjab villages, relatively smaller landowners as a collective could wield this kind of power over landless labouring castes. Upon pain of losing their homes, livelihoods, and sometimes their lives, peasants and rural labourers across the country were ruled over by landowners large and small.

The localized rule of landowners, which was inherited from British colonialism and still persists in many parts of Pakistan, was for the MKP evidence of the country’s “semi-colonial, semi-feudal” nature. Semi-feudal because the formal power of the state was enmeshed with the informal power of landowners: the police, the bureaucracy, and politicians at all levels (most landed elites themselves) left local rule up to them. If things got out of hand, the formal power of the state would step in to repress uprisings or to mediate conflict in ways that ultimately backed the landowners, although this was to be subverted in some areas due to the peasant struggles the MKP led in the 1970s. Semi-colonial because, if things got out of hand for Pakistan’s predominantly landed ruling classes, it was now US imperialism that, particularly through regional military ties, was guarantor of the country’s underdevelopment in place of the British. Violence was inherent in Pakistan’s semi-colonial, semi-feudal condition.

Comparative Politics of the Oppressed

The MKP consciously saw itself as part of a global struggle for national liberation and revolutionary socialism. Rooted in Marxism-Leninism inspired by Mao Zedong thought, party members understood that, although the specific contexts of these varied struggles were unique and required particular knowledges, comparison across the world often yielded valuable insights about what worked and what didn’t for achieving liberation and revolution—that is, to generate revolutionary theory. By comparing violence in Pakistan, Palestine, and Chile, the MKP considered the politics of engaging with anti-imperialist or formally independent bourgeoisies in different forms of struggle against global subordination.

Analyzing the Arab-Israeli wars for the MKP’s internal bulletin, the Circular in 1974, the literary theorist Aijaz Ahmad argued that when “class power is in the hands of the bourgeois and feudal forces” they take advantage of the “courage, sacrifices, and victories of the masses” for narrow ends rather than for broader emancipatory ends. Having overcome Israeli defences on the Suez Canal in October 1973, Egyptian soldiers smashed racist notions that Arabs were too stupid to fight effectively and cleverly. But Egyptian president Anwar Saadat refused to press their advance, abandoning the Syrian-Iraqi front in the north, because his strategic intentions were limited to reviving negotiations with Israel and recovering control of the Suez and Sinai peninsula lost in the 1967 war. Rather than trusting in the strength of Arab people, Saadat encouraged them to trust in the Gulf’s oil sheikhdoms and the great powers of the US and Soviet Union, while encouraging divisions in the Palestinian movement. Presciently, Ahmad argued that the petty bourgeois leadership represented by Saadat was beholden to a national and bureaucratic bourgeoisie, which wanted its land back from Israel, but mainly so that it could get back to inviting Western and Gulf capital to facilitate even greater exploitation of the Arab working masses.

Similarly, while Ahmad credited Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat for recognizing that the other Arab leaders would not take the initiative on Palestinian liberation, and thus building a popular Palestinian nationalist movement, he criticized the head of the Fatah faction for not connecting it to the revolutionary struggles of Arab working people. Arafat, moreover, focused on the technical aspects of armed struggle at the expense of political organizing amongst Palestinians, including being more concerned with Jordan and Lebanon than Gaza and the West Bank. Writing from Beirut, Ahmad likely saw how the Palestinian Liberation Organization could at once inspire a revolutionary spirit among locals while being a politically disengaged disappointment. Again, presciently, Ahmad argued that the Palestinian national movement under Arafat’s Fatah was beholden to the suppliers of arms and money, the bourgeois and monarchical Arab leaders, and relied more on getting photo opps at international talks than the political resistance of the Palestinian people. For Ahmad, and the MKP more generally, the task of national liberation was too important to be left in the hands of representatives of such shortsighted bourgeoisies.

If Palestine demonstrated the folly of focusing too sharply on armed resistance at the expense of a revolutionary political orientation, Chile demonstrated the inverse problem. The Marxist president Salvador Allende had argued that, in a form different from that of Pakistan’s, Chile was subjected to a kind of “colonization or dependency.” US firms exercised considerable control over its economy, including in exploiting its strategic copper reserves, and therefore on its prospects for popular development. However, Allende was committed to using the institutions of liberal, constitutional democracy to effect a peaceful transition to socialism. Indeed, Chilean socialists and communists had been able to push for many progressive laws in the 1960s, including a land reform that began to break the back of landed elites. The MKP Circular’s take implied that if there was ever a test case for a peaceful and parliamentary path to socialism, it would have been Chile, where political murders were rare prior to 1970 and electoral democracy had prevailed since 1925, unlike many other Latin American states. 

Allende’s program of nationalizing key industries to socialize the economy and raise the living standards of workers and peasants was, nevertheless, unpalatable to the wealthy and much of the middle-class. The ruling classes, local and foreign capitalists alike, did not allow their own “rules of the game” of constitutional liberal democracy to function if that meant losing their property and the power that came with it. The bourgeoisie and the US economically destabilized Chile and made it ungovernable through a capital and transport strike, but Allende’s popularity kept increasing. Hence, dominant classes resorted to a coup and imposition of open military dictatorship.

But it was, according to the MKP, Allende’s mistake for believing that he could transform the political economy of the country so fundamentally by remaining within the ambit of the constitutional order. There was a difference between formal and substantive power. Though Allende was formally in power, most state institutions, and particularly the armed forces and civil defence forces, remained firmly under the control of the bourgeoisie. The problem, the MKP argued, was that the masses, who supported Allende, were not independently armed and organized. A popular or people’s army was necessary not only to counter and overwhelm the 23,000 personnel of the armed forces but also to guarantee the continued operation of nationalized industries and new institutions of popular rule from counter-revolution. Here, we can see the MKP approaching the question of violence as not merely resistance or self-defence, but in terms of a productive force that undergirds a new political order.

In Five Years of Struggle, the report that party president Major Ishaq presented to the MKP’s first congress in March 1973, months before the coup in Chile, he laid out the case more generally by drawing on the experiences of Germany, Spain, and Greece. Comparing Pakistan’s lack of democratic tradition to India’s, Ishaq argued that so long as the representative institutions of the modern state were dominated by ruling class interests, things operated smoothly; but if ever working class interests were to dominate in representative institutions, these would be dissolved, and the ruling classes would go to direct dictatorship. That is, regardless of the government of the day, and regardless of the regime type (dictatorship or democracy), the state, in its coercive dimension as a special organized and armed force, was subordinate to the ruling class. He predicted the 1975 Emergency in India: “When they see the revolutionary pressure increasing beyond a limit, then India’s ruling class will also fold up the parliament and take up rifles and guns.”

The MKP therefore argued that ruling classes would never accept their own defeat peacefully, nor were their institutions designed to facilitate such processes. In order for a government premised on working class interests to operate, it would require a force that could overpower the organized/armed force of the ruling classes. That is, working classes would require a coercive apparatus independent of the control of the ruling classes—rooted in a people’s army. There was more, of course, than just force involved. The Circular editorial on Chile referred to all three of Mao’s “magic weapons”—“The revolutionary party, the people’s army, and the united front”—which speak also to questions of political alliances and cultural politics. However, the MKP succeeded only partially in pursuing a model of revolution based on its comparative analysis, before internal and external contradictions pulled it apart.

The Challenges of Actual Politics

The MKP’s leadership of the peasant movement in the Frontier province led to accusations, particularly amongst a more urban left oriented to the Soviet Union or even to China's collaboration with the Pakistani state, of “adventurism”—privileging militancy at the expense of political organizing. But this view severely misread the situation in the Frontier and elsewhere. For the MKP, it wasn’t the point to simply and directly confront the violence of the powerful with counter-violence of the weak. Rather, it understood that political consciousness was tied to struggle, and that struggle would have to adapt even as it contended with the traditions and perspectives of the oppressed.

Indeed, the MKP typically began its mobilizations through peaceful civil disobedience tactics, of which there was a long history in the Frontier, to politicize working people. For example, in response to mass evictions and increases in rent in the late 1960s, the MKP organized tenants and labourers in and around the Hashtnagar region to observe a strike on April 19, 1970. This led to even more peasants joining the movement, often beyond the control or supervision of MKP cadres. If evictions did occur, they encouraged tenants and labourers to gather in large numbers to deter landlords, their armed men, and the police forces. If violence broke out, then the MKP absolutely believed in and actively prepared for self-defence. As it happened, the conflict soon took on larger proportions, say of a low-intensity conflict, but the speed and strength of the movement’s spread far exceeded the MKP’s wildest imagination. In south Punjab, though, the violence did not reach this kind of organized level, and largely remained at the level of mass civil disobedience. Ideologically, the MKP conceived of this entire class struggle in terms of war: “In our view the jagirdar (landlord), regardless of whatever area he is from, is deserving of hatred. And we will continue the war against him.” But this was not gunning for a quick and decisive confrontation with the state. Rather than washing their hands of popular momentum, the MKP sought to develop the party through involvement in popular struggle—what many more urbane leftists saw as adventurism.

Once the struggle became violent, the MKP tried to take practices of conflict common amongst Pakhtuns and provide more advanced military training for peasants, thus organizing a relatively more regular armed force. “Laṣhkari” conflict was common in the “tribal areas”—lashkar literally means army, but here it referred to a large group of men somewhat spontaneously facing off another group of men—the call to battle would be given through drums and residents of surrounding areas would join in. The numbers could range from hundreds to thousands, and this sight in itself, if it got off the ground, could help alleviate fears of those looking to participate in the laṣhkar—and strike fear into the opposing side. But a better organized force could easily surround laṣhkars and this could have adverse consequences for the peasant struggle, which the MKP took into account to try and improve the armament, tactics, and organization of the peasants’ militias. For example, during the July 3, 1971 battle of Nasafai, a village very close to the crossroads town of Mandani, the MKP laṣhkar entered into a direct conflict with police and paramilitaries, leading to at least 11 tenants dying and inviting considerable state repression.

After that, the MKP sought to systematically arm tenants and spread some basic political tactics. Many tenants and labourers could not afford arms and guns, and would approach battles with sticks (lāṭhīs) dyed red. MKP leaders like Afzal Bangash, according to police reports, “urged the workers to avoid wasteful expenditure on marriages and charities and instead purchase arms.” They also encouraged tenants to avoid confronting the police, but instead to melt away when evictions were enforced and to later re-occupy the land once police had left. In the village of Ghalla Dher in Mardan district, for example, the Nawabzada of Toru hired a police platoon from November 1971 to April 1972 to enforce his possession of the village. But the erstwhile tenants took back the land as soon as the police left, forcing the new tenants to leave at gunpoint. (The Nawabzada asked the police for a refund.)

The overall effect of the combination of laṣhkari battles and spontaneous outbreaks, as well as more systematically planned laṣhkars, and the advanced training and organizational techniques of the MKP’s paramilitary wing, was that landlords in many parts of Hashtnagar, Malakand and Mardan found it very difficult to enforce their possession of land. In northern Hashtnagar, especially, khans and their agents found it almost impossible to even enter the area, period—tenants would start firing on almost any car because it almost certainly belonged to a khan. In other words, khanism in northern Hashtnagar had collapsed. This shift in the balance of class power outside of the state apparatus was a crucial enabling condition for de facto land and tenancy reforms, and the formation of institutions of peasant-based authority, that accompanied the armed struggle. That’s not to say there were not other fronts of struggle, including legal struggles with an ambiguous track record, but that armed struggle was the lever that enabled tenants to realize developmental improvements in their lives and end a decrepit feudal structure.

But what the MKP could not do was to transform these political economic victories into resilient “magic weapons.” For one, much of the of the peasant struggle was outside of its organizational control, for it had very few cadre at the onset of the struggle in 1970, and faced the same challenges that Chinese communists faced in their areas of strength: trying to popularize socialist ideals while contending with the existing traditions and views of peasants, which could often be patriarchal and status-oriented in their own way. MKP leaders were caught up in the operations of the peasant struggle and mass political activities, and were unable to devote sufficient attention to building the kind of disciplined, revolutionary party of cadres they had envisioned. This is not to say this kind of party-building did not advance, but evidently not sufficiently enough.

The militant rural united front between landless workers and peasants began to break down, in favour of a rural order in which richer peasants now had a somewhat more significant political and economic power. Peasants had multiple political interests, and many who had joined with the MKP to protect their possession of lands quietly retreated from active struggle once they got land. Rather than asserting greater autonomy from the Pakistani state, or engaging in revolutionary self-governance independent of the traditional jirga system, the elders and emerging elite amongst peasants sought greater accommodation with the state. Meanwhile, plenty of ideologically and militarily motivated MKP cadres existed, but they did not form the nucleus of a people’s army. That is something that, for example, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan and its precursors and Baloch nationalist insurgents have been able to do on some scale, much later starting from the late 1990s, and in the case of TTP did so in areas that adjoined or overlapped the MKP’s historic areas of influence. The MKP’s leaders instead flirted with other models of armed activity, but these amounted to little in practicality.

Overall, many of the MKP’s members became frustrated that despite having a significant national profile, the MKP did not have significant national political influence. Thus, a series of debates over the political direction of the MKP split the party apart by 1977, just as a military regime came to power. In the late 1960s, the MKP had taken a strong stance against participating in elections, focusing instead on channeling the upsurge of workers, students, and peasants toward revolution. But its model of revolution envisioned a relatively rapid upsurge, and did not fully anticipate the slowdown of both worker and peasant militancy—often a response to repression from the Pakistan People’s Party government—by 1972/1973. Some of the MKP’s leaders, particularly Sher Ali Bacha and Imtiaz Alam, thus encouraged participation in elections as a focal point for political education and, following Lenin, to have MKP members of parliament operating as tribunes of the people. For Major Ishaq and Bangash, however, electoral orientation would distort the revolutionary nature of the movement, aside from possibly succumbing to the same kinds of errors in the long run that Allende’s did. Bangash later acceded to participating in elections after 1977, when peasants in the Frontier bucked the MKP’s encouragement to boycott and voted in large numbers for the Pakistan People’s Party, which, ironically, was repressing MKP leaders and blamed by the party for facilitating their assassinations. The new military regime that overthrew PPP-leader Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (and eventually killed him in 1979) was promising elections, but Major Ishaq warned that this was a chimera. This debate contributed to the MKP falling apart in four directions, just when its unity and revolutionary commitment was necessary over a decade of martial law. What is important to note here, however, is that the debate over participating in elections was not a debate over abandoning the principle of armed struggle.

Of Genocide and Barbarism

The experience of the MKP in the 1970s tells us that the debate about whether a people should or could use armed struggle in their pursuit of national liberation was not a moralistic one, but political, about how and under what conditions it was the right strategy. What were the class forces involved in any kind of conflict? Which class’s leadership prevailed in the national liberation struggle, and how did that shape its aims and strategies? What was the appropriate balance between technical aspects of military struggle and the politics of popular organization and mobilization? (Theorizing the latter was the signal contribution of Mao and the Chinese Communist Party.) In a country like Pakistan or Chile, was independence from formal metropolitan dominion enough to achieve genuine national liberation? If countries of the Third World remained semi-colonial, neo-colonial, dependent, then what strategic orientation was necessary to combat the ruling classes who sacrificed the development of their peoples at the altar of an imperialist political economy of venality?

If we trace a line today, from the blocking of popular movements to transform the constitution inherited from the military dictatorship in Chile, to the genocide of Palestinians and the Lebanese, to the crushing austerity imposed on the people of Pakistan, or Kenya, or Zambia, or Sri Lanka, we can better understand the contours of contemporary imperialism. Its violence takes many forms. Indeed, it can barely hide its fondness for Nazism. As Colombian president Gustavo Petro put it, “The unleash[ing] of genocide and barbarism on the Palestinian people is what awaits the exodus of the peoples of the South unleashed by the climate crisis.” Revisiting the debates of the 1970s, and how radicals studied and learned from each other’s struggles, can help us better consider not only how to resist imperialism, but how to establish new political orders where the working people of the neo-colonized nations are agents of their own destinies. We may well want to avoid violence, but we should be prepared for the violence that imperialism is all too happy to visit upon us.

Noaman G. Ali is Lecturer in International Development at the University of Bath (UK). He has also written for the Boston Review, Discourse, Tanqeed, and BASICS Community News Service. He also hosted the Introduction to Political Economy podcast. He tweets at @noamangali.