Living Through a Revolution

Nineteen seventy eight proved to be a turning point in my life, but as compared to the changes occurring in Iran, the country where I had been studying for three years for an engineering degree, the drastic change in my life were insignificant, in view of the far reaching impact, the chain of events, starting that year, had on the political scenario of Iran, effecting the lives of millions of Iranians.

One week after Nowrouz, the Iranian New Year, I suffered a freak stroke at twenty one, while playing with my fellow Pakistani students. I was evacuated to Pakistan by my father, since the stroke left me paralyzed on the left side. The sudden break in my studies left me extremely worried, but as things turned out, a break would have occurred any way, since within a couple months my fellow students joined me because their classes were discontinued, due to commencement of hostilities between Iran and Iraq, across Shat-al-Arab, and Abadan, where we were studying, being in the direct line of fire, my friends had no choice but to evacuate.

The fact that Iraq had dared to start hostilities on the Shat-al-Arab, after years of accepting the domination of Iran in this area, spoke volumes of the changing political equation in the gulf, in which Iran under the Shah was experiencing an erosion of its strength in the region, in spite of its military clout and armament, with which consecutive U.S. governments had beefed up the Iranian war machine. Imperial Iran was just crumbling under dead weight of a despotic regime, which had lost all moral right to rule the country. The west could not remain impervious, and Iranian government had started losing all its friends. France had merely provided the catalyst for the downfall of the Shah, by giving political asylum to Ayatollah Khomeini, and by nineteen seventy-eight, that country had become the hub of activities of the nascent Iranian revolutionary government in exile, a platform on which opposition leaders of different political shades of opinion, but having a loosely defined common Islamic agenda, united under the leadership of Ayatollah Khomeini, provided spiritual guidance in form of audio cassettes reaching all corners of Iran .

One day we were having our lunch at the campus cafeteria, when the public address system, which usually played pop songs by Ghoughosh and Sattar, was suddenly interrupted by a frail sermonizing voice. Our working knowledge of Bazaari Farsi, was not sufficient to understand the religious and political language of the speech, but later on our Iranian friends told us in whispers, that it was Ayatullah Khomeini addressing his supporters. I think that if I claim that fortuitously I had not only been a first hand witness of a genuine revolution, but had also to some extent interacted with it at a very personal level, I would not be wrong. It was an opportunity of a lifetime, and I drank in every moment of that experience. The speech on the public address system was a precursor to the events that were to unfold when we went back to our classes in September, 1978.

In the next few months Iranians fell victim to a violence on a scale that very few societies anywhere in the world had seen in recent history , and we were caught in its midst. It was amazing how a whole nation as one decided that they wanted to get rid of a corrupt and violent regime. It started with a civil disobedience movement, in which the government machinery came to halt because all employees of the government, and all its ancillary services like the telecommunication, airlines, etc. decided not to cooperate with the regime, and went on strike. Employees of the National Iranian Oil Refinery in Abadan were forcibly taken to their jobs so that the refinery could be operated to produce oil products necessary to keep the government machinery going. For some time the regime tried to keep up the pretence of running a civil government, with a string of prime ministers taking office. However, soon all niceties were gone and the regime started unleashing a reign of unprecedented terror.

Since the running day to day operations of our campus was brought to a halt, we faced a lot of hardships, and our primary preoccupation those days was to keep ourselves fed because the cafeteria had closed down, and I lost a lot of weight. During this period some of my friends were very innovative in creating new dishes, and resourceful at obtaining supplies, for which we had to go to the city centre, sometimes getting caught in the demonstrations and the army quelling the riots, with help of gun totting armoured cars. We tried to keep away from demonstrations but I had some narrow escapes. Soon the unpopular regime was toppled, and the new Islamic government started to consolidate its power. The newly established government went straight at winning the hearts of the people with a mass communication exercise of an unprecedented scale, providing me with a lesson on how revolutions are consolidated; unfortunately I was unable to benefit much, since later on when I tried to implement the theory in my personal life, things backfired, everything went wrong, and I am still suffering from the after-effects.

Huge amount of literature, introducing the ideological basis of revolution, through the speeches, pamphlets, and books of the thinkers who provided the intellectual fuel to the revolution, since the Iranian revolution, was a genuine revolution, culminating as a result of many parallel intellectual movements, were made available in Farsi and English. I read all I could lay my hands on. It was surprising to find out that Allama Iqbal, who has always been recognized as the national poet of Pakistan, was being treated as the poet of the revolution, in the same league as Ayatollah Khomeini, declared as the leader of the revolution, and Ali Shariati, labelled the teacher of the revolution, but who later on was to lose favour with the Islamic regime. It seems that the Iranians ,who fondly called Allama Iqbal, “Eqbal Lahori”, had drawn a lot of inspiration from Iqbal’s Farsi poetry, largely unread in Pakistan.

Five years later in Manchester, I sat patiently listening to a friend of mine, who did not see eye to eye with Iqbal, whom he condemned him as a reactionary, who was not a poet at all. I suppose we should leave it to the Iranians to judge for themselves; since I am not sure if Eqbal Lahori is still in favour in the Iranian power circles. One wonders if he is still considered a revolutionary poet or condemned as a reactionary gadfly.

The different ways in which the Iranian revolution affected me and my friends was interesting to observe, and later helped me understand how the different ethnic and religious groups in Pakistan reacted to the Iranian revolution when the shockwaves of the revolution started reaching Pakistan.

Amongst us there was only one friend with Shiite faith, and he was excited about the revolution, and identified easily with the aspirations of Iranians, but he never seemed overly enthusiastic, perhaps the shias in Pakistan practiced a different toothless brand of shiaism at that time. One friend was diehard sunni, and he ridiculed the way the the Iranians said their prayers without being very particularly careful about the abulations, and also highlighted the differences between the way the Iranians said their prayers and the way they are said in Pakistan by a vast majority of the people. His comments also brought out the age old prejudices of the Sunnis towards the Shias, and later on when the Shias in Pakistan influenced by the revolution in Iran, tried to assert themselves, the reactionary backlash once again made me realize how deep are the divisions. One day a shia schoolmate of mine, who was then studying in Shiraz , and was visiting us, started a discussion with the friend who was very opinionated against shias, and my school mate left the others spellbound with his learned discourse, starting from the rivalry between the Ummayads, and the Quraish, even before the revelation of Islam, and how this rivalry created the divide between Shias and Sunnis. It was a learning experience, one that gave me an insight into the deep divisions that lies between the sunni and shia sects. That gentleman is now heading a department at the Quaid-e-Azam University. Someday I plan to ask him to write on the chowk so that more people could benefit from his incisive analysis of the sunni-shia divisions.
A regime could have all the resources it needs to defend its realm, however if it loses its moral right to rule, it is doomed to extinction.

How I finished my studies, in the midst of the upheavals, came back to work, overcoming the obstacles posed by my disability, obtained my Ph.D. from U.K., came back again to fight the social stigmas attached with being physically handicapped in a society which still finds it difficult to adjust with such people, is another story, about which a lot remains to be written. However, I continue finding kind and appreciative people, who think that life should give an opportunity to the handicapped and the special people so as to become useful contributing members of the society, able to live with dignity, something which few people are able to live with.

I think that once we start giving opportunity to all people to live with dignity, most social problems we are facing may disappear by themselves. Experiencing those couple of rough years made me tough enough to face the difficulties of life later on, but being in the middle of the changing currents, a lasting impression I gathered was that, governments, and for that matter, nations, cannot win lasting friendship of the west, just by pandering to the short term imperatives their foreign policy. A country must be in harmony with the undercurrents of thought, which shape both the domestic and foreign policies of these countries, in order to win their everlasting trust and friendship, and still live with them with differences. The other truth that was driven home to me was that a regime could have all the resources it needs to defend its realm, however if it loses its moral right to rule, it is doomed to extinction.