The strength of the street meets the strength of the state: The 1972 labor struggle in Karachi

International Journal of Middle East Studies

Volumn 37, Issue 1, 2005, Pages 83-107

  Ali, Kamran Asdar ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ETHNICITY; LABOR POLICY; POLITICAL HISTORY; POPULATION GROWTH;

ASIA; EASTERN HEMISPHERE; EURASIA; KARACHI; PAKISTAN; SIND; SOUTH ASIA; WORLD;

EID: 19044372363     PISSN: 00207438     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0020743805050063     Document Type: Review

References (113)

1. The salient feature of the policy included participation of labor representatives in management; more democratic grievance procedures; access to labor courts by either party; increases in profitsharing; non-payment of medical dues by workers with increased employers' contribution; and workmen compensation in case of death or injury.
2. Zulfikir Ali Bhutto, "Address to the Nation," 10 February 1972. 1972.
3. See Dawn (English daily), 11 February 1972.
4. During the late 1960s, students and workers led movements in many parts of the world: the anti-war movement in the United States; student protests in France; Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia; and the Naxalite movement in India, to name a few. All had particular histories and need to be understood within their own context.
5. For example, see, among others, A.A. K. Niazi, The Betrayal of East Pakistan (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1998).
6. Shahid Amin, Event, Metaphor, Memory: Chauri Chaura 1922-1992 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 3.
7. The Chauri Chaura incident took place in February 1922. The major incident was the burning of a police station by a politicized and angry mob.
8. For example, major activist-leaders of the trade-union movement and members of various communist groups, such as Nayab Naqvi, Nazish and Zaki Hasan, among scores of others, have passed away in the past four years.
9. This argument was constantly repeated to me by left-wing intellectuals I interviewed.
10. Ranajit Guha, "Discipline and Mobilize," in Subaltern Studies VII , ed. Partha Chaterjee and Gyanendra Pandey (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1993).
11. See Arif Hasan, Understanding Karachi (Karachi: City Press, 1999).
12. See idem, "The Growth of a Metropolis," in Karachi: A Megacity of Our Times, ed. Hamida Khuro and Anwer Mooraj (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1997), 171-96.
13. Akmal Hussein, "The Karachi Riots of 1986: Crisis of State and Civil Society in Pakistan," in Mirrors of Violence., ed. Veena Das (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990), 185-93.
14. Fareeda Shaheed, "The Pathan-Mohajir Conflicts, 1985-86: A National Perspective," in Das, Mirrors of Violence, 194-214.
15. Oskar Verkaaik, A People of Migrants, Ethnicity, State and Religion in Karachi, Comparative Asian Studies 15 (Amsterdam: Free University Press, 1994).
16. See Alessandro Portelli, The Death of Luigi Trastulli (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992), 2.
17. See Z. A. Shaheed, "Role of the Government in the Development of the Labour Movement," in Pakistan: The Roots of Dictatorship, ed. H. Gardezi and J. Rashid (London: Zed Press, 1983), 270-90.
18. See Gustav F. Papaneck, Pakistan's Development (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967).
19. See Hamza Alavi, "Class and State," in Gardezi and Rashid, Pakistan , 291-310.
20. Rashid Amjad, "Industrial Concentration and Economic Power," in ibid., 228-69.
21. See Fasihuddin Salar, "The Working Class Movement in Pakistan," unpublished ms (Karachi: Piler Library, 1986).
22. I b i d.
23. "ILO Report on the Pakistan Survey, 1953," unpublished ins., International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) Archives, box 3696.
24. See Shaheed, "Role of the Government," 273.
25. One of the major accomplishments of the Pakistani state was to encourage the formation of the All Pakistan Confederation of Labour (APCOL) in the early 1950s as a counterweight to the communist-supported labor federations, especially the Pakistan Trade Union Federation. APCOL was affiliated with the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, the major anti-communist international confederation of labor, which had headquarters in Belgium. See Anthony Carew, "Conflict Within the ICFTU: Anti-Communism and Anti-Colonialism in the 1950s," International Review of Social History 41 (1996): 147-81;
26. Idem, "The American Labor Movement in Fizzland: The Free Trade Union Committee and the CIA," Labor History 39, 1 (1998): 25-42.
27. See Tariq Ali, Can Pakistan Survive? (London: Penguin Books, 1983), 69.
28. Usman Baluch, president of the MMF in 1972 and one of the major leaders of the labor movement, interview with the author, Karachi, summer 1998.
29. See Ishrat Husain, Pakistan: The Economy of an Elitist State (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1999).
30. See Alavi, "Class and State."
31. By the end of the 1960s, experts argued, the wealth in Pakistan was concentrated with twenty-two families who controlled 87 percent of the banking and insurance firms and 66 percent of the industrial wealth of the country: see Amjad, "Industrial Concentration"; and Shahid Javed Burki, Pakistan under Bhutto (London: Macmillan, 1988). An interesting analysis of this period is also given in Tariq Ali, Pakistan Military Rule or People's Power (New York: William Morrow, 1970).
32. Mohammed Ahmed, "The New Labour Policy," Dawn (Karachi, English-language daily), 13 December, 1970.
33. Dawn, 16 January 1972;
34. Shaheed, "Role of the Government," 280
35. Maulana Bhashani was a leader of one section of the National Awami Party that was pro-China in orientation.
36. Makranis (lit., belonging to the Makran coast of Baluchistan) are ethnically Baluch yet are descendants of the Indian Ocean slave trade from Africa. They, along with other Baluch workers, have been apart of Karachi's fishing and seafaring industry since the 19th century. The Karachi Baluch were somewhat politically distinct from the nationalist Baluch of the Kalat state and other districts of Baluchistan proper.
37. This domination was also evident within the Communist Party of Pakistan. Since the party's inception during the Calcutta congress of the Communist Party of India in 1948, its leadership positions-in the early years, at least-were primarily held by Mohajirs.
38. After the surrender of the Pakistani army to the Indian forces in the eastern sector (Bangladesh) on 16 December 1971, cease-fire negotiations intensified, and the military regime was eventually removed through an internal coup. Bhutto was named president in late December 1971.
39. See Dawn for the month of January 1972; see esp. the news item on the interview given by Mairaj Mohammad Khan, president's adviser for public affairs in Karachi (1 January 1972). Also, this analysis is based on my interviews with Usman Baluch (Karachi, summer 1998) and Nabi Ahmed (Karachi, summer 1998), who was the general-secretary of the Pakistan Workers' Federation in 1972. Both were prominent leaders in the labor movement.
40. At times, this led to the forcible confining of factory managers to their offices until they agreed to the union's demands: see news report in Business Recorder (Karachi, English-language, daily), 7 April 1972.
41. See Dawn, 29 March 1972.
42. One of the first actions by the Bhutto government was the nationalization of thirty-two industries and forty insurance companies and banks: see Shahid Javed Burki, Pakistan under Bhutto (London: Macmillan, 1988).
43. The "foreign hand" in most cases referred to groups that were ostensibly working for either India's or the Soviet Union's interests. My intention here is not to prove or disprove whether such assertions had any merit. Rather, I seek to present the rhetoric used by Bhutto's government.
44. Dawn, 7 January 1972, 19 May 1972.
45. The minister of labor in the Punjab government, Mian Afzal Wattoo, while addressing the Lahore Chamber of Commerce, asked the business leaders and industrialists to prepare lists of undesirable elements in their respective concerns and deliver the lists to him: see Business Recorder, 17 May 1972.
46. One of the most prominent among them was Mairaj Mohammad Khan, a Karachi-based leftist student leader and a member of one of the pro-China communist groups. Since the late 1960s, this group had agreed to work with the PPP and had allowed some of its most prominent young members, such as Mairaj Mohammad Khan, to join it. In the initial phase of the Bhutto regime, Khan became minister of state for public affairs. Khan had not participated in the elections, as the Communist Party (pro-China) had decided not to let its members participate in the general elections of December 1970.
47. See new items in Dawn, 4 April 1972, 31 May 1972.
48. See editorials in Leader (Karachi, English-language evening daily)
49. Morning News (Karachi, English-language daily), 2 February 1972;
50. and Business Recorder, 25 February 1972.
51. Baluch interview.
52. The Pakistani labor movement consisted (and stillconsists) of various labor federations that are a collection of unions from different factories and work sites. Different federations have historically retained influence in particular sectors of the economy-for example, among workers in the petroleum industry, or port workers, or the textile industry. But this pattern was not generalized. See Rifaat Hussein, Pakistan Trade Union Tehreek ka Ijmali Jaiza (in Urdu) (Karachi: Pakistan Institute of Labour, Education and Research, 1995). The federations that formed the Sind Workers' Convention were the Sind Federation of Trade Unions, Pakistan Workers' Federation, Muttahida Mazdoor Federation, Pakistan Trade Union Federation, Mazdoor Rabita Council, and Pakistan Textile Labour Unions Federation.
53. The following analysis of the police shootings of 7 and 8 June 1972 are based on interviews with workers and trade-union leaders who participated in the events. It also draws on the press reports in Karachi newspapers during this period.
54. The workers' participation fund was the workers' share in profit in a given industry. It was raised from 2.5 percent to 4 percent in the new labor laws announced by Bhutto in February 1972.
55. Some workers with whom I spoke remembered two people dying from bullet wounds outside and two inside the mill compound. One worker attested that, when the laborers returned to work after the two weeks of strike, there was still dried blood in the factory area, and the workers created a makeshift grave for their comrades at this site.
56. One of the laborers whose body was in police custody was named Raza Khan; Mohammad Shoaib's body was taken away by the workers: see Dawn , 8 June 1972.
57. Some of the dead were Mohammad Nazeer, Rahimzada, Mian Usman Shah, Rahsid and Khasta Rehman. All were workers in various textile mills in the SITE area. Stray bullets (Dawn, 9 June 1972) also killed an infant, Amirzada, and his mother. It is interesting to note that the only woman who was killed in this shooting is nameless in the multiple newspaper reports that I have read and the interviews that I conducted. She is referred to only as the mother of an infant child. How women get erased from histories of struggle and from national histories and how their representation is relegated to the domestic domain, is an important feature of my ongoing research and future work: see Joan Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), for a critical review of the issue.
58. Huriyyet (Urdu daily), 10 June 1972.
59. These eyewitness accounts are based on interviews conducted in summer 2003.
60. Editorial, Dawn, 10 June 1972.
61. News report, Huriyyet, 10 June 1972; my translation.
62. New report, Sun (Karachi, English-language daily), 12 June 1972.
63. A West Pakistan Joint Labour Council had already been working at the national level since 1969. Its representatives were the West Pakistan Federation of Trade Unions, West Pakistan Federation of Labour, Pakistan National Federation of Trade Unions, Pakistan Mazdoor Federation, and West Pakistan Workers Federation (press release, West Pakistan Joint Labor Council, ISSH, ICFTU files on Pakistan). The action committee comprised some of the same actors but also included some new, more radicalized groups, such as the MMF.
64. Again, there was intense demand from the workers who insisted that shop-floor laborers be included in the action committee. This was a clear sign of mistrust of their own leadership in this process.
65. Kanwar Idrees, then the deputy commissioner of Karachi (the most important civil administrative officer in the district) went on to have a very productive career in Pakistan's elite civil service.
66. Dawn, 16 June 1972.
67. This summary is based on interviews with Usman Baluch and Nabi Ahmed, Karachi, summer 1998.
68. The Communist Party of Pakistan was officially banned after 1954. It suffered its first setback in 1952 when it was accused of supporting a coup attempt being organized by some in the military: Hasan Zaheer, The Times and Trial of The Rawalpindi Conspiracy 1951 (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1998). The underground party survived as functioning body until the early 1960s, when it split due to ideological reasons into pro-Moscow and pro-China factions. By the late 1960s, these formations-especially the pro-China groups-had further divided into smaller groups.
69. These processes remain an immensely complicated topic in the history of the Pakistani left. It should also be mentioned that, in some circles, the Karachi labor struggle was being conceived as a competition between two PPP ministers: Mairaj Mohammad Khan and Abdul Hafeez Pirzada, the PPP federal minister who had won his parliamentary seat from Karachi, for the control of labor. Mairaj supposedly favored Usman Baluch, the MMF leader, and Pirzada favored Tufail Abbas, general-secretary of the pro-China communist group and a veteran trade-union leader in the airline industry. See American Embassy in Islamabad, "Pakistan Internal Political Situation," confidential airgram, 13 October 1972, National Archives Pol-13 Pak, box 2525. If this is accurate, then it would interestingly show the cleavage within the pro-China communist group, as Khan would not be supporting the general-secretary of his own underground communist group. Speaking to me in summer 2003, Khan vehemently denied this analysis and formulation.
70. Nishtar Park in Central Karachi. It is historically famous for political rallies.
71. Dawn, 18 June 1972.
72. Mairaj Mohammad Khan, interview with the author, in Karachi, summer 2003. In the interview, Khan did not dispute the thrust of the statement, but he argued that it had been misreported.
73. Ibid. See also Khan's statement in Dawn, 8 June 1972.
74. Disaffected members of the National Awami Party formed the Mazdoor Kisaan Party in 1968. It was the first socialist/communist party in Pakistan that took the issue of working among the peasantry seriously and was successful in launching a peasant movement in NWFP in 1970. See also Dawn, 10 June 1972.
75. The National Awami Party had two factions: one was pro-Soviet Union, and one was pro-China. These connections were made on the basis of the links these parties had with the banned underground communist parties that themselves were identified as either in the Soviet camp or with the Maoists. See also news report, Dawn, 10 June 1972.
76. In 1955, the Pakistani state was organized into two provinces-West Pakistan and East Pakistan (One Unit)-with total disregard for the various ethnic, cultural, and linguistic histories and experiences of its people. The military government of General Yahya Khan (1968-71) finally dissolved the One Unit in 1970, creating the five provinces of Sind, Baluchistan, Punjab, NWFP, and Bengal, before the general elections in December.
77. Urdu's state-sponsored domination of high literary forms and the media has come at the expense of systematically excluding other Pakistani languages and their cultural production from national life. For an analysis of this period, see Feroz Ahmed, Ethnicity and Politics in Pakistan (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1998), 115.
78. It is also important to state that, in newspaper interviews given in 1972, these very same leaders stress class solidarity and how for the first time the workers had organized on the basis of their class affiliation without recourse to any other category of recognition: see Sun (Karachi, daily), 2 September 1972.
79. Dawn, 10 June 1972. Numerous other news reports in the English and Urdu press during the period of the strike attest to this position.
80. I base the following paragraphs on NAP-PPP relations on interviews with political activists and on the work of Iqbal Leghari. See lqbal Legbari, "The Socialist Movement in Pakistan: An Historical Survey, 1940-1974" (Ph.D. diss., Laval University, Montreal, Canada, 1979).
81. This was denied by Usman Baluch, the president of the MMF, who said in a statement that the NAP accused the MMF of siding with the PPP while the PPP linked the MMF to NAP. He stressed that the MMF was not connected to any political party: see Dawn, 12 June 1972.
82. Editorial, Huriyyet, 17 June 1972.
83. Also known as Badshah Khan or Bacha Khan (in Pushto).
84. In this context, it is important to note that the NAP (pro-Soviet) under Wali Khan's leadership was itself going through an internal debate on the vital issue of provincial autonomy. Some within the party advocated a more forceful confrontation with the Bhutto government on the national question and a push for the liberation of the NWFP (Sarhad) and Baluchistan following the recent example of Bangladesh. Others, such as the Baluch leader and governor of Baluchistan, Ghaus Bux Bizenjo, were more cautious and argued that the constitutional accord accepted by all political parties in early 1972 had settled the provincial-autonomy issue, and hence the party should oppose or support Bhutto on the merit of the issue: see American Embassy in Islamabad, "Baluchistan Governor Comments on Recent Political Development," confidential airgram, 29 September 1972, National Archives Pol 13-Pak, box 2525. See also Leghari, "Socialist Movement."
85. This argument is best represented in an op-ed piece by Mohammad Hanif, the federal minister for labor: See Morning News, 1 May 1972.
86. Baluch interview.
87. This theme was echoed in most newspaper editorials and in interviews with various trade-union leaders who were active at the time.
88. Hamza Alavi, "Review of Labour Legislation and Trade Unions in India and Pakistan by Ali Amjad," unpublished ms. (personal e-mail communication to author, 2002).
89. Dipesh Chakrabarty, Rethinking Working Class History: Bengal, 1890-1940 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989), 154.
90. I b i d.
91. I base this analysis on several interviews with the trade-union leaders who were active in 1972 and with some underground communist activists of the time. I agreed not use their names for sensitive political reasons.
92. See Chakrabarty, Rethinking Working Class History, 21.
93. This paragraph is based on interviews with workers, trade-union leaders, and reporting in Dawn, 18 June 1972, and Huriyyet, 19 June 1972.
94. This is not uncommon in South Asian politics: see Guha, "Discipline," on how Hindu caste notions of purity were used as a form of social coercion during the Swadeshi movement in the early 20th century.
95. See Mukulika Banerjee, The Pathan, Unarmed (London: Oxford University Press, 2000).
96. See Guha, "Discipline."
97. See Banerjee, Pathan, chap. 3.
98. Pakistan Machine Tool Factory.
99. Aziz-ul-Hasan, union representative and activist during the Landhi struggle, and Zahid Hussein (journalist), student and left-wing activist during the 1972 movement, interviews with the author, Karachi, summer 1998. The narrative in this section is based on a reconstruction of events from these interviews and newspaper reports.
100. Khan (interview) told me that he had met with the workers within the occupied mills and informed them that, although the industrialists were agreeable to a compromise, the provincial government-especially the chief minister-was interested in teaching the workers a lesson. Aziz-ul-Hasan, one of the leaders of the occupation, had already mentioned this to me in an earlier interview (summer 1998).
101. In interviews, some cadres who were politically active in 1972 told me that leaders of the underground communist group were fascinated with the ultra-left Naxalite movement in India.
102. Interview with workers active during 1972 within the LOC (summer 2003). I agreed not to use their names for sensitive political reasons.
103. See Jacques Ranciere, "The Myth of the Artisan: Critical Reflections on a Category of Social History," International Labor and Working Class History 24 (1983): 1-16.
104. See Daily News (English-language), 14 November 1973, for the full text of the resignation letter.
105. See Shaheed, "Role of the Government";
106. and idem "The Organization and Leadership of Industrial Labour in Karachi (Pakistan)" (Ph.D. diss., Department of Politics, University of Leeds, 1977):
107. Ali, Can Pakistan Survive?
108. Chakrabarty, Rethinking Working Class History.
109. I b i d.
110. Gyanendra Pandey, Remembering Partition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 4-5.
111. Guha, "Discipline."
112. The tract "One Step Forward; Two Steps Backward" is by Lenin. Mohammad Khan, textile worker in 1972, interview with the author, Karachi (summer 2003).
113. The tract "One Step Forward; Two Steps Backward" is by Lenin. Mohammad Khan, textile worker in 1972, interview with the author, Karachi (summer 2003).