A Friend of Feudalism

I know that many of you here like Manto are reading challenged, they think reading is about copy pasting and personal attacks of the Ad Hominem kind, so for their benefit let me help you with the quote from ZAB that I reproduced below.

The guy is staring death in the face in his miserable cell and he writes the part reproduced below about the common man, the proletariat, the worker. Now what kind of trickery is he after invoking the common man when the class he derails in the same quote, the one that will not accept any equitable solution till it is overthorwn completely, has just put him in the gallows to get rid of him? Please explain this to me Bulleya and Manto. You cannot because you know the man tried, tried and failed while becomming the most popular leader in Pakistan's history among the common man not because of the family he belonged to or the brand of clothing he wore, but because he invoked principles of socialism, something that the people of Pakistan and all poor and toiling masses of the third world demand and desire. That is what true democracy is about not the BS of the MAJ. End of story. Not interested in any more discussions about ZAB, the guy is dead, and gone, he left a great mark on Pakistan and great hope for the world's poor in their struggle against the elite, for which Allah will surely reward him regardless of what the sobs say.

Masadi sahib,

May I know what exactly ZA Bhoot acheived in his tenure in power apart from declaring Ahmedis as non-Muslims? He sc***** up the economy thru his nationalisation programme and all that while his so-called land reforms remained on paper. His slogan of Roti Kapda and Makaan was just like him, plain sham.

Regards

Regards

masadi #78: "I challenge you to show me one inconsistency unlike you who was rallying behind Musharraf and the Afghan invasion and now does a turnaround..."

you need to calm down a bit, and look at what you are stating......i have already showed on so many items on which you are inconsistent......for starters, i never supported the afghan invasion.....in fact, i wrote an article against it on this site......this is the first point on which you are inconsistent.....like this, you are inconsistent on many points......

- you are pushing the rights of the common man, yet you associate yourself with an individual, who discarded the wishes of the common man of more than 50% of the country......this is an inconsistency...

- the most elitist figures in the world, historically, are landowners.....it is only when the power of the landowner was broken, all over the world, that the common man gained some ground....bhutto was an out and out feudal, who represented the feudal class, through and through, and his family still represents them......it doesn't matter what he said......you need to look at who he was and what he represented......this is an inconsistency......

- another form of elitism, is family dominance of institutions, politics, etc........surely, you cannot deny that bhutto's politics are dominated by his family......can you name any other political party in pakistan, which has only had one family running it......i challenge you to name one that has had a change of leadership and it never moved outside one family.....and that too a feudal family...all other parties have had, at least, some movement outside families........this is the height of elitism.......and another inconsistency

- bhutto did not introduce socialism.....he introduced crony socialism......which destroyed the common man as it made him poorer......did the banks become more accessible to the common man because they were nationalised.....did the education system become better for the common man, because it went through crony nationalism........so on and so forth......the common man was lucky that the middle east opened up during that time, other wise he would have starved.....

did bhutto get rid of the feudalistic structure of his party.....how many common men, have reached the top of his party......bhuttos (zulfiqar, nusrat, mumtaz, benazir, murtaza), khar, jatoi, gilani, makhdoom fahim, faisal hayat, abida hussain, etc. look like common men/women to you....even the urban class includes people like aitezaz ashan etc..certainly not common men.......most of all, did bhutto even get rid of the feudalistic structure of his own family.....

so you support a feudal man, born with a silver spoon in his mouth, who studied in a country you despise, who ran a family-owned party, with its own security force, whose party's top hierarchy were (and still are) all elitists, who sidelined the views of over 50% of the common men of a country, resulting in a break-up of a country, and who ran a govt. which reduced opportunities for common man.......apparently, you support him because he made exciting speeches about roti, kapra aur makaan......

.....your criteria is rhetoric and not facts......

amazing!! there is nothing wrong with supporting bhutto......but, then you lose the right to the sociological views, you keep presenting.......in fact, the views you are presenting are the ones bhutto presented.....unfortunately, it was only a presentation......his actions were contradictory to his views.......

masadi #: "but because he invoked principles of socialism, something that the people of Pakistan and all poor and toiling masses of the third world demand and desire. "

yes, he did state them and then fully violated them......could he not of implemented land reforms, at least, in his own family lands......could he not have removed his own family from the hierarchy of his party....could he not have built a party around the common man and not around the feudal elites......ppp is, still, the last bastion of the feudal politic in pakistan.....it is the only mainstream political party in pakistan, headed by a feudal......

could he, not have agreed to form the oppossition in a govt. and allowed mujeeb to run the country, based on the wishes of the common man of pakistan.........

landowners and political parties headed by landowners will never have the common man's agenda as a priority.......they may talk about it to get the common man's votes, but the moment they implement it, they will lose their landholdings and importance......

As the English phrase goes, 'Handsome is what handsome does," and what ZAB did to Pakistan was not handsome at all. In my opinion, his greatest sin was making Zia his chief of army staff, because Bhutto, with his "GREAT" intellect, thought Zia to be least threatening of all the generals. He just thought about saving his own ass and did not care about either merit or seniority of other generals. We all know how it ended. Bhutto, in some ways, is responsible for all the fiasco Zia created. No other person in the 60 years history of Pakistan can be attributed to muck up the society for such a long time, we are still reaping the 'benefits' of Zia's legacy which ranges from communal and secterial violence to klashinikov culture to drugs to human traffic and what not. So in a way, it was Bhutto who introduced this deadliest of all viruses to Pakistani establishment.
We are honoured to have had such a great 'people's' leader

So according to Masadi a leader like Bhutto who does not respect a simple law like traffic lights is perfectly alright. Let us forget that he has failed to answer why people like Wali Khan and Maududi supported Fatima Jinnah... if it was a simple case of monarchial succession.

As for who caused what deaths... it is very hard to actually blame the one person who went around protecting people in Karachi and Hyderabad for the communal violence in 1947... it goes without saying that the death toll at partition was much lower than the death toll in 1971. And it might just be that Zulfikar Ali Bhutto planned and executed the whole thing.

Let us read what HP wrote:

The army too felt that the time has come to get rid of East Pakistan as Mujib's six points would have destroyed the army rule in Pakistan for good. Bhutto did support the army and I think it was Bhutto who actually planned how the whole thing would work. Gen. yahya spend days in Larkana in early 1971 consulting with Bhutto over these issues and when they came out of those meetings, east Pakistan's fate was sealed.


Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's rule was reactionary and he laid the foundation for what Zia ul Haq did later on. In many ways these two men weakened Pakistan more than anyone else.

#85 Tazeen regarding the appointment of Zia those are chances that a weak political institution head has to take when the military has a long tradition of interference in political affairs. No matter who was chosen the results would have been much the same the real players in the power state wanted a change and they wanted to make an example of someone who was getting too independant and big for his boots..

#86 Manto; The greatest facilitator of the feudals and the colonials was MAJ who using the excuse of Muslims of India, using them as scapegoats and killing over a million of them, worked to protect the landed aristocracy of West Pakistan from the rural uprisings in India that were capitalized by Gandhi. ZAB was the one that challenged those feudal elite for the first time ever representing the rural masses.

The greatest facilitator of the feudals and the colonials was MAJ who using the excuse of Muslims of India, using them as scapegoats and killing over a million of them, worked to protect the landed aristocracy of West Pakistan from the rural uprisings in India that were capitalized by Gandhi. ZAB was the one that challenged those feudal elite for the first time ever representing the rural masses.


GOLDEN WORDS EVER WRITTEN ON CHOWK.

Bulleya writes "you need to calm down a bit, and look at what you are stating......i have already showed on so many items on which you are inconsistent......for starters, i never supported the afghan invasion.....in fact, i wrote an article against it on this site"

You haven't shown a single inconsistency. If you can show that ZAB wanted PPP to be a family affair that he took action to ensure it would be a family affair then you might have a point about inconsistency and I will duly condemn the man for doing so but what you are showing is what happened to the party AFTER ZAB, for which he certainly cannot be held responsible Now when I have said that I have nothing to do with the PPP or who is ruling it or who the leadership is I am concerned with the anamoly of ZAB in these discussion you say it is "inconsistency" that is BS. Further regarding the Afghan invasion post 9/11 you were rejoicing over the prospects that presented for Pakistan, many have caught you with your pants down in this case and in the case of supporting Musharraf, maybe your friend Arjun can repost what you wrote in you usual clueless manner.

Then he writes "could he, not have agreed to form the oppossition in a govt. and allowed mujeeb to run the country, based on the wishes of the common man of pakistan.........

landowners and political parties headed by landowners will never have the common man's agenda as a priority......."

I have already made over a dozen posts on that and why it was not tenable and even pasted ZABs own explanation for it. Things are that black and white as you would like them to be, just repeating your question again and again proves NOTHING. Try to understand the answer and refute it rather than repost it as a similar question.

Then he writes "- another form of elitism, is family dominance of institutions, politics, etc........surely, you cannot deny that bhutto's politics are dominated by his family......"

I deny it completely, there was nothing in ZAB's politics that was about his family, in order to use his name to coopt the socialist agenda his family name and members have been are are being used, that is not his fault, I have already stated this multiple times yet once again you merely restate your original question as if you have proved something. NOT SO.

Then he writes "- bhutto did not introduce socialism.....he introduced crony socialism......which destroyed the common man as it made him poorer"

BS, nationalism might make the GNP pie smaller but it surely increases the share of it going to the common man, similar nonsense has been spewed by the bourgeoisie that ran away from Cuba. What has all the privitization and dirty money flowing in done for Pakistan? It takes time to build a base, nationalization of industry and land reforms are steps number ONE and he undertook them both, making it LAW of the LAND, that itself regardless of how much success he had in implementation says a lot about why I support him in these efforts. Finally he had to do a lot of balancing as he himself claims and blames himself for seeking that but did he really have much choice? The way he was killed proves that he didn't. Finally what he did with his own wealth and family and so on are downright Ad Hominem argument with which I am not concerned, and reflect the "mullah intellect" of how they judge the expediency of a ruler.

Then he ends with ".....your criteria is rhetoric and not facts......"

BS again, not empty rhetoric but rhetoric that makes the public come out and become conscious, that was what I support, the public was woken up, supported him based on greater feelings of worth they developed for themselves, saw themselves not as peons of the West or the feudals but people in their own right. Is that too hard for you to understand in your wheelings and dealings and how to make a quick buck? You have not produced a single fact except repeat your nonsense allegations about the PPP party structure being a family affair when the ZAB had nothing to do with that...

In #89 read "Things are that black and white as you would like them to be, just repeating your question again and again proves NOTHING"

as "Things aren't that black and white as you would like them to be, just repeating your question again and again proves NOTHING"

#89 Posted by masadi on September 6, 2007 5:56:30 am


for starters, i never supported the afghan invasion.



masadi dude...capt clueless was practically wearing a cheerleaders uniform(albeit with a paki flag on it) and waving his pom-poms cheering the invasion of afghanistan...check out aleph null's post on the rawalpindi thread..he re-posted capt clueless' post from that time...

that was the time after 9/11 when he thought pakiland would have a seat at the dinner table with uncle sam instead of being treated like a female of the canine species and left in the yard..the neighbor's yard...

now while i think you're full of it, you've had consistent beliefs and have stuck by them..however wrong said beliefs might have been IMO...capt clueless is a BS artist with a difference..he spins a yarn and he's the only one who falls for it...

#86 Posted by MantoLives on September 6, 2007 4:29:56 am


it goes without saying that the death toll at partition was much lower than the death toll in 1971.


but according to you, the paki army only whacked a dozen or so people in 71..and most of them were indian agents anyway...

Masadi:

Do not listen to Manto, Bulleya, HP and all these folks.

You are a phenomenal character. Anyone who can compare himself to Noam Chomsky and Ann Coulter in the same post has to be one of a kind. This has never been done before.

Re: # 29
Jayp, I wondered for the longest time, if the TNT is at heart hatred and concluded not. The TNT was fear, fear of losing a certain way of life, fear of the 'other' who seemed to be siding with the British rather than not. Unfortunately, that fear was not addressed by the politicians of the time and a meaningful solution was not presented--tehre are many reasons, british parliamentary democracy relies on nations and homogienity, with roots in autocracy. In that context, the TNT made sense. However, later on, the influence of Wahabism, and the desire for purity has led to great tragedy. The only way out of the minimimalist/pure Islam was hypocricy--say one thing, do another. That is how Saudi Arabia manages its many contradictions, through lies. Pakistani society is complex, it does not lend itself to easy comparisons, or easy solutions. For a few decades the lies that governed life allowed people to embrace modernity and at the same time oppress the masses. An elite emerged that prescribed Islam for the masses and America for themselves.

I'd like to say that Pakistanis by and large do not hate India, China or any nation. If anything they want the same status and progress as these nations, however their prescription is a pure Islam that further tightens the noose around their neck. You'd say, well why don't they change that?

It is easier said than done, it took many many decades for the wahabi ideology to reach critical mass, it will take a lot of time for enlightened Islam as well. In the meanwhile, Muslims live with a lot of conflict and grief, trying to deal with all this.

saima, coming to terms with TNT was the biggest struggle for me too. Personally I simply gave up and accepted it as a fact of life. Like water fiding its own level, irrespective of people's preferences.

There seem to be too many issues mixed up in TNT - fear, hatred, supremacist ideology, dogma, pride, idealism, utopianism, ignorance, selfishness, greed, envy, jealousy, ambition, progressivism, self-sufficiency, whatever you want to include in order to exclude.

I think there were lots of people with lots of different interpretations (as happens invariably in any interpretationist situation). So it may not be very useful to wonder what this or that person thought. These ideas spread rapdily through huge populations, and those populations acted - each individual for a different reason (interpretation, perhaps), but ultimately toward the same practical goal.

I don't think that thinking will or can ever go away. It is too deep rooted because it is NOT one thing or two things. You can pull out one root, but a hundred other roots remain. That is also the reason why it first spread like wildfire. It had too many hooks.

So, IMHO, the only way forward is to accept it, and try to make a better world assuming that it will always be there underground a lot more than above ground, and while one of its hooks may be cut off, a hundred others will remain, ready to welcome the masses.

Re: # 89

"If you can show that ZAB wanted PPP to be a family affair that he took action to ensure it would be a family affair then you might have a point about inconsistency and I will duly condemn the man for doing so "

ZAB did try to make PPP his personal affair. Raja Anwer, who is a well known columnist claims that ZAB asked him personally to take BB under his wings and train for the post of Minister of Youth Affiars. Raja Anwar was a political activist and student leader from Gujjar Khan, who arose to become ZAB's adviser on student and labour affairs from 1974 to 1977. During Zia era he was exiled when terrorists of Pak People's Party hijacked a pakistani plane and demanded the release of PPP political prisoners. Raja is a die hard PPP worker to this date.

ZAB himself, in one of his books (probably If I Am Assassinated) described BB as the tru heiress of his political legacy rather than his sons or any other political worker.

During last days of his rule when he was negotiating the re-election with opposition, BB was present in most of the meetings. This fact is also documented by die hards like author Saleem Ahmad and Raja Anwer.