Student politics in Pakistan: A celebration, lament and history
By Nadeem F. Paracha
Part-1: First steps
In 1947 the only established student organization in the newly created country of Pakistan was the Muslim Students Federation (MSF), the student wing of the ruling Muslim League.
MSF had been formed to assist the Muslim League in recruiting students and young Muslims of undivided India and help it achieve its goal of attaining a separate country for the Muslims of the region.
However by 1950 the situation in MSF started to reflect the fragmentary nature of its mother party that had otherwise remained intact as a powerful political entity until 1948.
Muslim League began to disintegrate soon after coming to power as Pakistans first ruling party.
It broke into various self-serving groups, mostly due to intra-party tussles over the distribution of government ministries. As a consequence, MSF too split into different expedient factions.
The many infrastructural and logistical problems the newly formed country faced at its troublesome inception, were also reflected in the state and nature of the universities and colleges that Pakistan inherited.
Consequently, with the gradual disintegration of MSF as a platform of the students to voice their new-found academic and political concerns, a brand new student organization started to take shape.
In 1950, a group of students at the Dow Medical College in Karachi met and formed the Democratic Students Federation (DSF).
The group was spearheaded by Mohammad Sarwar, Mir Rehman, Ali Hashmi, Asif Jaffery, Asif Hameedi, Yousuf Ali and Haroon Ahmed. Though led by a mixture of Marxist and progressive students, initially DSF did not have a written or formal platform or agenda. It only aimed at addressing the educational and academic problems of students and fill the vacuum created by MSFs factionalization.
A hectic recruitment drive followed the formation of DSF and as it gained recognition and support in almost all colleges in Karachi, by 1951 it was able to establish a prominent presence in colleges in Lahore and Rawalpindi in the province of Punjab as well.
Apart from pushing the government of the day to be more sympathetic and responsive towards the many academic issues facing the students, DSF also started to exhibit support for various progressive causes through demonstrations and rallies.
By 1952 DSF had evolved into a dedicated left-wing student organization and in the event of MSFs flagging status, it also managed to win the bulk of student union elections.
DSFs growing electoral and ideological influence soon saw it taking bolder steps in its attempt to move the government towards addressing the educational concerns of the students.
In 1953 DSF in Karachis Dow Medical College drew up a Charter of Demands that included issues like tuition fees, library facilities, better classrooms and to build a proper university.
A Demands Day was announced on which DSF activists moved out in a procession to meet the then education minister, Fazlur Rehman.
The administration blocked the protest and resorted to baton-charge and tear gas.
The students responded by announcing the observance of a Protest Day and held a large rally in the Saddar area in Karachi.
The police tear-gassed the protesting students and then opened fired when the students refused to disperse.
More than six students were killed and several were injured and arrested. Enraged students torched a government vehicle which turned out to belong to the interior minister.
The situation had spun out of control and finally Prime Minister Khawaja Nazimuddin sent feelers out to contact the DSF leadership.
He invited a delegation to meet him. It was a cordial meeting and firm promises were made.
Although Nazimuddin was soon replaced by Mohammad Ali Bogra, the negotiations continued. Mr. Bogra, fresh from the USA, showed the students a plan of a university to be built in Karachi. The new campus of University of Karachi was then identified and construction ordered.
It was a victory for DSF, though achieved at the expense of the death of six DSF members.
By now DSF had also started to exhibit its displeasure over Pakistans growing role in supporting the West against the Soviet Union, and demanded that the government take a more independent stance in its foreign policy.
It is thus not surprising that in the following year (1954), when the government of Pakistan banned the Communist Party of Pakistan (CPP), it also imposed a ban on DSF, accusing it of being the CPPs front organization and student wing.
The CPP had already been implicated in 1951 for supporting and facilitating Major General Akbar Khans failed coup attempt against the government of Liquat Ali Khan; and though DSF was openly left-leaning and had supporters in the CPP, it was never the student-wing of the party.
After the ban many DSF members tried to maintain the organization secretly, but the mass arrests that followed the governments ban, made it impossible for these students to continue operating under the DSF banner.
To counter the governments bid to completely root out student politics from the colleges and universities, some DSF leaders who had escaped arrest called a convention of student parties from both left and right sides of the ideological divide.
DSF, in spite of being banned, was still the countrys largest left-wing student organization and the most influential as well.
It was also being supported by independent leftist students, whereas the rightist side at the convention was mostly represented by small conservative student groups and the remnant factions of the MSF.
Left-wing student groups from the former East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) also participated in the convention.
The convention took place in Karachis Katrak Hall and was well attended, even though the administration had sent thugs to subvert the proceedings.
The police soon followed. A battle of fists, stones and sticks between the students on one side and the gangsters and the police on the other ensued.
The police were taken aback by the students stronger response, not knowing that due to incidents that had seen DSF members being shot by the cops, DSF had established a Red Guards unit made up of sympathetic young muscle men and leftist student militants to keep the thugs and cops from sabotaging the convention.
In spite of the violence, the gathered students were successful in forming the All Pakistan Students Organization (APSO), an alliance whose top slots were shared between both leftist as well as rightist student leaders.
APSO was conceived as a pressure group to make the government address the students demands. But its existence was short-lived and itt too was banned.
The banning followed another round of arrests and harassment, as the government now tried to counter the prevailing leftist sentiment on the campuses by patronizing a small pro-government student organization called the National Students
Federation (NSF).
The organizations leaders were a mixture of former MSF members and independent conservative students.
By 1955 however, concern about NSFs ideological orientation rose among the many bureaucrats who had been instrumental in helping the government uproot DSF.
Unknown to them was the fact that some junior DSF members and independent leftist students in Lahore and Karachi had started to join NSF as a way to change its ideological make-up.
It is not known if this was a planned attempt, but in 1956 when NSF held a large rally in Karachi in support of progressive Egyptian leader, Gamal Abul Nasser during the Suez Canal crises, it was apparent that NSF had changed its stripes when the gathered students started chanting anti-British and anti-Israel slogans at the rally to condemn the attack on Egypt soil by these countries.
NSF had slipped into a role that it would hold for the rest of its existence.
Compared to DSF, NSF started developing a wider platform on which students from all shades of progressive politics (Marxists, Socialists, Liberals, Social Democrats, etc.), started to gather.
Some of the first starlets of the new NSF were Hussain Naqi, Syed Akhtar Ehtisham, Abid Manto and Sher Afzal Malik.
By 1957 NSF had started to sweep student union elections in Karachi, Lahore and Rawalpindi, quickly reclaiming the electoral and influential ground that DSF had lost due to its banning.
The organization also began generating its own firebrands, of whom Meiraj Muhammad Khan and Fatayab Ali Khan became prominent speakers and organizers.
By 1958 NSF had consolidated itself as a widespread student force and the countrys leading student party when Field Marshal Ayub Khan imposed the countrys first Martial Law.
Student politics and unions along with political parties were banned and a fresh crackdown on student radicals launched.
The Martial Law was imposed on the pretext of political chaos triggered by years of Machiavellian power games between the politicians and bureaucrats, and the rising level of crime and corruption in the society.
Part-2: Rude awakenings
In a quirky twist, just as the majority of the country had actually celebrated the initial arrival of Ayub Khans Martial Law, so did almost all student groups.
Just as most people were now exhausted with the unsettling power plays of politicians and the rising corruption witnessed in the 1950s a time when the students were constantly harassed and subjugated most of them felt a sense of relief with the rude removal of the many (similar looking) civilian governments of the preceding decade.
By now NSF had dramatically ascended to become Pakistans leading progressive student party.
But unlike DSF, which in the advancing years had gotten more and more associated with the pro-Soviet CPP, NSF remained largely independent and held a wider ideological base encompassing leaders and members from communist, socialist and left-liberal backgrounds.
In 1960 the Martial Law regime partially lifted the ban on student unions allowing the revival of student union elections after a brief hiatus.
However, the dictatorship continued with the policy of neutralizing radical leftist elements and was particularly interested in
apprehending the charismatic Hasan Nasir. A DSF supporter in the 1950s and General Secretary of the outlawed Communist Party of Pakistan (CPP), Hasan Nasir was finally arrested by the Punjab police in 1960, allegedly tortured and then killed. He was thirty-two.
Though incensed and enraged by Nasirs arrest and killing, NSF retained its winning streak that it had struck in the late 1950s, even though at the start of the new decade the student-wing of the politico-religious party, the Jamat-i-Islami (JI), had started to emerge from the sidelines of student politics and materialize as an affective right-wing force on the campuses.
Called the Islami Jamiat Taleba (IJT), it had been around for more than a decade but was almost completely overshadowed by DSF and NSF.
IJTs leadership had to convince JIs leading figurehead and conservative Islamic Scholar, Abul Ala Maududi, to let it carve out a bigger stake for itself in student politics, whereas Maududi had wanted his partys student-wing to play a more theological role.
IJT started taking part in student union elections in the late 1950s, and by 1962 it had developed into becoming NSFs strongest and most organized opposition thus far.
However, it was still unable to topple NSFs electoral supremacy.
IJT was also one of the initial student organizations directly associated with a mainstream political party even though MSF had been the first, it was almost non-existent by 1962.
NSF on the other hand remained largely independent but its growth and influence had gotten it in touch with powerful labor and journalist unions of Karachi whose leaders started to influence the intra-party affairs of the student organization.
So far NSFs overall leadership was made up of pro-Soviet Marxists, but at the onset of the 1962 Sino-Soviet split, a strong pro-China faction too appeared from within the party.
It started to use (and vice versa) influential labor and journalist unions to replace NSFs main leadership which it accused of becoming too pro-Moscow.
A power tussle ensued between the leadership of the two factions allowing the IJT to start making deeper inroads into campus politics.
Meanwhile, the same year (1962), when the Muslim League, (renamed as Pakistan Muslim League), broke into factions again, the larger faction calling itself the Convention Muslim League (PML-Convention), decided to join and support the Ayub Khan dictatorship.
Joining the government brought in enough influence and funds for the party to reform its withering student wing, the MSF.
Battered in the 1950s, MSF returned to student politics and made some impact in the Punjab, but it was no match to NSF in influence and electoral strength. In fact, in many colleges, it was also defeated in student union elections by the IJT.
However, despite the losses it kept up a prominent presence in many colleges.
By 1965 the pro-Soviet vs. pro-China tussle in the NSF had brought the party on the brink of experiencing its first major split.
The pro-China faction, led by the likes of Meraj Muhammad Khan, Zain Lodhi and Rashid Ali Khan, had succeeded in pushing back the partys pro-Soviet lobby, forcing NSFs long-time figurehead, Sher Afzal, to finally bow out.
NSF had also developed strong links with the left-wing National Awami Party (NAP), especially with the partys Maoist faction (the Bhashani Group).
In an ironic move both NAP and NSF ended up deciding to quietly support Ayub Khans candidacy in the controversial 1965 Presidential Elections due to his Foreign Minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhuttos close contacts with Mao Tse Tungs China.
Ayubs opponent in the election was Fatima Jinnah, the sister of the founding father of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah.
She was supported by the anti-Ayub Muslim League faction, the Council Muslim League, the right-wing Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), and the Wali Khan faction of NAP.
Ayub managed to win the elections, an event that made the JI become even more reactionary in its opposition against Ayubs secular rule.
Paralleling the start of the celebrated students movement in the United States and the West that began taking shape in 1964-65, the spark in Pakistan in this respect was set alight by the aftermath of the countrys 1965 war with India.
The official media had thumped in a skewed perception of the war, proclaiming that the countrys armed forces had dealt India a hard, decisive blow.
But when the Soviet Union brokered a peace treaty between the two countries, the opposition parties claimed that Pakistan had lost on the negotiation table what its forces had won in the field.
At once there were demonstrations against the treaty by NSF, IJT and even MSF. These groups of student activists would go down in history as the Tashkent generation.
These were young, educated Pakistanis who were infuriated by a treaty between Pakistan and India brokered by the Soviet Union in the city of Tashkent.
Ayub Khans young Foreign Minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, too had opposed the treaty and was thus eased out from the government.
He soon found himself rising as a hero of sorts by the (West)-Pakistanis, gathering a fiery reputation as the man who wanted to fight on against the Indians and who had stood up to his former boss, Ayub Khan.
An extremely shrewd, intelligent and highly educated man, Bhutto nonetheless came from a powerful feudal family of the Sindh province.
But in the event of the radicalization of the Tashkent generation and the rousing reception that he received from a majority of West Pakistanis in 1967, saw Bhutto gallivanting towards leftist intellectual circles.
Unable to reconcile to the position that he was offered by NAP, Bhutto, with the help of senior Marxist ideologues like J A. Rahim, Shaikh Rashid and Dr. Mubashir Hassan, and a group of intellectuals led by Hanif Ramey who had been formulating the idea of fusing Islam and Socialism (calling it Islamic Socialism) decided to form a new party.
Projecting himself as the man who was concerned about the plight of the common man, especially in the event of the economic disparities brought on by Ayubs unflinching capitalism and cronyism, Bhutto became a darling of the NSF.
Whats more, after 1965, the pro-government MSF too broke ranks from its mother party and started supporting Bhutto.
Many MSF leaders joined NSF and helped form brand new leftist student groups, especially in the Punjab.
NSF was the strongest in Karachi and had solid support in colleges in the Punjab as well. But by 1967 it had splintered into various factions, mainly due to petty ideological issues.
NSF-Meraj was the most radical Maoist group, followed by NSF-Rasheed and a few other pro-Soviet factions. But each one of these groups decided to support Bhutto.
In the Punjab though, NSF remained untainted by factionalism and was in fact bolstered (especially in colleges of Rawalpindi and Faisalabad), when many MSF members joined it.
In the colleges of Lahore too NSF was strong and was able to soundly defeat its opponents in student unions elections, but due to a provincial ban on student unions at the Punjab University, NSF had faltered, giving way to a strong presence of the IJT.
However, soon after the formation of Bhuttos Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), and the rousing support it gained from both NSF and MSF, leftists at the Punjab University formed the National Students Organization (NSO) to campaign for the restoration of student unions at the university.
The NSO became a force in Lahore during the peak of the students movement against the Ayub Khan dictatorship in 1968.
In the rest of the province, the movement was led by NSF and MSF, while in Karachi it was dominated by NSF-Meraj and NSF-Rasheed.
Already the leading student organization, it was not surprising that NSF hit a peak in student union elections between 1965 and 1968.
Whats more, NSF-Meraj and NSO (led by Imtiaz Alam), became de-fecto student-wings of the nascent PPP.
IJT, though anti-Ayub, showed little interest in the students movement, instead focusing on curtailing the bludgeoning leftist support and presence in the countrys universities and colleges.
After Ayubs downfall in 1969 (he resigned), and the imposition of Pakistans second Martial Law (by General Yahya Khan), IJT started to echo its mother partys post-Ayub mantra projecting Bhuttos PPP and its socialist agenda worse than Ayub and a grave danger to Pakistans Islamic polity.
NSF reached the panicle of its strength and influence in 1969. Some of its members, most notably Meraj Muhammad Khan and Raja Anwar, managed to become card-carrying members of the PPP, and some of NSFs prominent factions also became directly involved in the fast developing Labour movement, especially in Karachi.
Ironically, in the Eastern Wing of the country (East Pakistan), where leftist students had been part of NSF till the early 1960s, now came under the banner of the student organizations supporting Bengali nationalist leader, Shaikh Mujeeb-ur-Rhemans Awami League.
NSF did have a presence at colleges and universities of East Pakistan, but since NSF had become Maoist, pro-Bhutto and anti-India, it clashed with ALs student-wing, that was overwhelmingly pro-Soviet and somewhat vague in its stance towards India.
Part-3: The Golden Age
It will be misleading to suggest (as some historians do), that the golden era of student politics in Pakistan arrived in the late 1960s during the movement against the Ayub Khan dictatorship.
It is true that just like the student movements across the world, the Pakistani student movement of the era too became a celebrated event. No doubt in Pakistan this was the movement that generated the concept and matter of what became to be known as student power in the 1960s.
But it is the 1970s that one can now truly call the golden era of student politics in Pakistan.
The decade witnessed perhaps one of the most democratic periods in the history of student politics in the country.
It was a period in which the government actually promoted and patronized student politics in universities and colleges, and signed a dedicated Ordinance -the 1974 Student Union Ordinance that encouraged democratic student political activity on campuses.
All factions of NSF celebrated the sweeping victory of the PPP (in West Pakistan) in the 1970 general elections.
They saw Bhuttos and the PPPs victory as the climaxing of their struggle against dictatorship (Ayub Khan, Yayah Khan), and the arrival of socialism in Pakistan.
However, there was a mixed reaction among the NSF factions regarding the landslide win of Mujib-ur-Rhemans Awami League in East Pakistan.
The bulk of NSF factions were against the Awami Leagues ethnic orientation. The Awami Leagues left-wing was close to leftist circles affiliated with pro-India entities, whereas most NSF factions had by now become staunchly anti-India and pro-China.
Shortly before the elections, NSF was also instrumental in tackling Bhuttos detractors in IJT, whom the Jamaat-e-Islami had let lose to attack PPP rallies and churn out anti-Bhutto propaganda, claiming that Bhutto was a non-believer and if his party wins, his socialist regime will destroy Islam.
A number of clashes took place between NSF and IJT over such issues before the 1970 general elections, and when the Jamaat and IJT increased their attacks and slandering campaigns, the PPP formed its own Peoples Guards.
This unit was created by plucking street fighters from various NSF factions. These brigades of young men armed with clubs and knives started to accompany Bhutto and various other PPP leaders during the election campaign and worked as tough bulwarks against riotous Jamaat and IJT instigators.
The most violent clashes between the two groups took place in the streets and colleges of Lahore in 1969 and early 1970.
The 1970s were also the period that finally saw the IJT rise as a powerful electoral force.
With the continuing factionalization of NSF, that by 1971 had more than four factions (NSF-Meraj, NSF-Kazmi, NSF-Rasheed & NSF-Bari), IJT managed to sweep student union elections at the University of Karachi in 1969, 1970 and 1971.
In the Punjab, though NSF retained its electoral strength in the colleges, and the NSO fought hard to share important union posts with the IJT at the Punjab University, IJT had succeeded in converting itself into a well-oiled electoral machine.
As both NSF and NSO got busy fighting their own little intra-party battles, IJT took over NSFs traditional practice of aggressive indoctrination of the new entrants to college and university life.
IJT began holding study circles in which it offered help and books to the new students and then slip in lectures and writings by JI chief and Islamic scholar, Abul Ala Maududi, to the students.
Most of the men and women who became part of these study circles were students arriving from the countrys conservative rural areas and who had found NSFs aggressive Maoist/Marxist posturing alienating.
An increase in numbers of young people moving to the cities from rural towns for higher education in this period also helped bolster IJTs vote bank.
However, the rising tension between NSF and IJT subsided for a while in early 1972. Both the parties were united in lamenting the Pakistan Armys defeat at the hands of their Indian counterparts and the subsequent dismemberment of the country when former East Pakistan nationalists (backed by India), broke away to create Bangladesh after a vicious civil war against the West Pakistan Army.
IJT members were also instrumental in providing young men for the Armys violent anti-Awami League campaigns (the Badar & Shams Brigades), created to help the Army to harass and weed out Bengali nationalists.
Nevertheless, NSF was upbeat when in 1972 the Zulfikar Ali Bhutto government began implementing its reformist and socialist policies.
NSF once again swept the 1972 student union elections in almost all major colleges in Karachi. But this time the NSF factions had to ally themselves with left-wing nationalist student groups such as the Balochistan Students Organization (BSO), and the newly formed Punjabi Students Association (PSA).
However, once again making the most of the factionalization in NSF, the IJT won the student union elections at the Punjab University and University of Karachi, but unions at major colleges in Rawalpindi remained in the hands of NSF factions.
1972 was also the year when the Pakistan Peoples Partys student wing, the Peoples Students Federation (PSF), started to make its way into mainstream campus politics.
It was made up of leftist students who had refused to be a part of any of the four NSF factions. The PSFs formation was also seen as a way for the PPP government to lessen its dependence on NSF whose leaders along with PPPs radical wing had been pressurizing Bhutto to hasten the implementation of his socialist policies.
Eventually, by late 1973, accusing the PPPs radical wing leaders of hotheadedness and impracticality, Bhutto responded by initiating a purge against the wings leadership.
The biggest casualties of the purge were PPPs most senior ideologue, J A. Rahim, and the partys youngest minister, Meraj Muhammad Khan, who had also confronted Bhutto in his handling of the crises erupting from the emboldened labor movement in Karachi.
All NSF factions condemned the purge and finally withdrew their support for the PPP government.
The continuing factionalization of the student left and the fall-out of the purge dealt NSF its most serious electoral blow thus far.
It once again lost to the IJT at the University of Karachi and the Punjab University, and struggled to maintain its hold even in colleges in which it had been winning student union elections for more than a decade.
Even NSO at the Punjab University crumbled.
The vacuum was filled by the coming together of independent leftist and liberal students, some of whom joined the PSF while others got together to form the Liberal Students Organization (LSO).
By 1974, LSO saw itself at the head of an anti-IJT alliance (Progressive Students Alliance), that also included NSF factions and PSF, both at the University of Karachi and the Punjab University even though the alliances in the Punjab and Karachi were only loosely related.
Whats more, the Sindh National Students Federation (SNSF) in the interior of the Sindh province was now up against the newly formed student wing of the separatist and anti-PPP Sindhi leader, G M. Syeds Jeeay Sindh Movement, the Jeeay Sindh Students Federation (JSSF).
The year also saw Balochistan Students Organization (BSO) plunging itself against Z A. Bhutto when his governments strong-arm tactics against Baloch nationalist parties in the Balochistan Assembly triggered the beginning of the third Balochistan Insurgency in the remote mountains of the arid province.
A number of BSO members joined the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), a militant Marxist-Nationalist guerilla group fighting for an independent Balochistan, even though it insisted it was only fighting for the Baloch peoples democratic rights.
Bhuttos growing tendency towards authoritarianism had not only disheartened the left-leaning student groups, but also gave momentum to the Islamists and conservatives who had otherwise been wiped out in the 1970 general elections.
It is also true that the progressive vote on various campuses had started to spilt between the four NSF factions and other progressive groups such as PSF, LSO, BSO and PSA. So it was natural for the progressives to start forming joint electoral alliances which, such as Lahore and Karachis Progressive Students Alliance, was usually led by LSO.
The alliance, though formed in early 1974, managed to break IJTs winning streak at the University of Karachi in the 1975 student union elections.
Alliances between NSF factions and PSF in Karachis colleges during the same year produced the best results for the progressives ever since 1972.
In the Punjab, though IJT managed to retain its electoral strength at the years union elections at the Punjab University, progressive alliances in colleges in Rawalpindi and Faisalabad struck back, voting out the IJT from prime student union seats.
Contribution to IJTs defeat that year was also made by another right-wing student group, the Anjuman-e-Taliba-Islam (ATI), the student wing of the Jamiat Ulema Pakistan (JUP).
Unlike the JI and IJT, JUP was manned and supported by Muslims from the Berelvi school of thought, that, though conservative, were less puritanical.
By the mid-1970s, the number of colleges and universities holding student union elections grew two-fold, with Progressive Students Alliance and IJT dominating in colleges and universities in the main urban areas of the country, while IJT, ATI and PSF prevailing in the semi-urban areas.
The situation at Rawalpindis Gordon Collage that had been a bastion of DSF, NSF and progressive student alliances ever since the 1950s, took a twist when during the 1976 student union elections here, the IJT for the first time managed to capture the most seats in the colleges union.
The IJT in Rawalpindi at this time was being led by Shaikh Rashid Ahmed, a fiery anti-PPP student leader who many years later would go on to become a minister in the two Nawaz Sharif governments in the 1990s, and during the Pervez Musharraf dictatorship.
1977 was also the year of general elections, the first after the historic 1970 elections.
Though aggressively and passionately supported by progressive and left-wing student groups (especially NSF), before and during the 1970 elections, this time none of the NSF factions were ready to support the PPP.
They had been angry with Bhutto ever since he purged hard-line leftists from his party in 1973, and then send in the Army to act against Baloch nationalists.
They also accused Bhutto of rolling back the PPPs original socialist manifesto and alienating the leftists by inducting prominent feudal lords and capitalists in his post-74 cabinet, and then caving in to the pressure of the Islamist parties by officially proclaiming the controversial Islamic Ahmadiyya sect as non-Muslims in 1974.
The only progressive student group willing to support the PPP was, of course, the partys own student wing, the PSF.
PSF had established itself well in universities and colleges across Pakistan. And even though it was able to win student union elections single handedly in interior Sindh and in some colleges of Rawalpindi, it had to get into alliances with other progressive/socialist student groups in Karachi and Lahore.
Two of its frontline leaders of the 1970s were Jehangir Badar and future Pakistani national hokey team captain, Qasim Zia. Both would go on to become ministers in PPP governments of the 1990s and 2000s.
The aftermath of the 1977 general elections was tumultuous. The nine-party opposition grouping, the Pakistan National Alliance (PNA), that was led by the Jamaat-e-Islami, accused the Bhutto regime of rigging the polls.
To counter the PPPs proclamations of Islamic Socialism, the PNA had run in the elections on the platform of Nizam-e-Mustapha (Prophets law/Islamic Shariah).
Right away the PNA began a movement of mass protests against the PPP government. Many of these protests turned violent in Karachi and Lahore, enough for Bhutto to send in the Army and impose a curfew in the disturbed areas.
Aggressive anti-PPP demonstrations were organized by IJT at University of Karachi before it was shut down, while the movement in the Punjab was given great impetus by IJT activists at the Punjab University and Gordon College.
Using the disturbances as a pretext, Bhuttos handpicked head of the Army, General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq an admirer of Abul Ala Maududi - imposed the countrys third Martial Law (5 July, 1977).
When Zia brought in members of the Jamat-e-Islami to form his first cabinet (to help him Islamize Pakistan), IJTs notorious Thunder Sqauds that were formed in the 1960s at the universities of Karachi and Lahore to challenge leftist student activists, went on a rampage, harassing and physically manhandling their opponents.
In response to the new challenges faced by the progressive students, in 1978, NSF, PSF, LSO and DSF formed the Punjab Progressive Students Alliance (PPSA) at the Punjab University, Gordon College, Rawalpindi and the newly built Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad.
Gaining sympathy due to Zias harsh crackdown on PSF and NSF members and the rising cases of violence and harassment by the IJT, the PPSA routed IJT in the 1978 student union elections in Rawalpindi, Islamabad and in many colleges of Lahore. This was the IJTs biggest defeat in Punjab ever since it started to dominate student politics in the province in 1972.
DSF that had almost vanished under the shadow of the NSF, started to reemerge in 1977 when some Marxist students got BSO, Pukhtun leftists and Jam Saqis SNSF together to reform the veteran student party.
in 1978, Altaf Hussain, a University of Karachi student, formed the All Pakistan Mohajir Students Organization (APMSO). The partys early membership included a small group of former-IJT members who were then joined by a few progressive members loitering from the break up of two NSF factions in 1977.
The APMSO claimed to hold progressive views and wanted to work for the Urdu speaking students (Mohajirs), whom it claimed were bitten by Bhuttos quota system and Punjabs political and economic hegemony.
Despite the rising violence (usually involving PSF, APMSO and NSF workers against IJTs Thunder Squad), the University of Karachi did manage to hold its 1979 elections.
The elections saw the Progressive Students Alliance that had somewhat survived Zias persecution, defeat IJT on a number of union posts, but the unions biggest slot was won by IJTs top man at the varsity, Hussain Haqqani.
It was Hussain Haqqani (who many years later would join PML (N) and then the PPP), who introduced the usage of latest weaponry at the University of Karachi. Even though he never carried a weapon himself, he moved with a well armed group of Thunder Squad members led by the infamous, Rana Javed.
When Zia hanged Bhutto for ordering a political murder during his Prime Ministership, PPP claimed that Zia through a Kangaroo court had commited a judicial murder.
In response, the reactionary dictatorship increased the harassment and punishments against members of progressive student groups, especially PSF.
With the help of arrests, jailing and torture, coupled with the violent pressure added by IJT, the dictatorship finally managed to dismember the Progressive Alliance at the University of Karachi.
However, in the Punjab, the Punjab Progressive Students Alliance (PPSA), went on to once again defeat IJT at the Quied-e-Azam University in the 1979 student union elections, and then win back Gordon College for the progressives which they had lost to IJT in the 1976 elections.
Thus ended one of the most fruitful decades of student unionism in Pakistan, in which, at least between 1970 and 1977, regular student union elections had managed to help students democratically address and settle their ideological and administrational matters.
The incidents of violence in educational institutions too in these seven years usually did not involve the use of firearms, and deaths were actually lesser in number compared to what the students had faced in 1954 and 1968 due to police violence.
However, events between 1977 and 1979, in which sophisticated firearms made their presence on university campuses and the ideological battles between the leftists and rightists started getting more brutal than ever, a precedence was set for a future that would see the countrys student politics struggling with its most difficult period thus far.
By Nadeem F. Paracha
Part-1: First steps
In 1947 the only established student organization in the newly created country of Pakistan was the Muslim Students Federation (MSF), the student wing of the ruling Muslim League.
MSF had been formed to assist the Muslim League in recruiting students and young Muslims of undivided India and help it achieve its goal of attaining a separate country for the Muslims of the region.
However by 1950 the situation in MSF started to reflect the fragmentary nature of its mother party that had otherwise remained intact as a powerful political entity until 1948.
Muslim League began to disintegrate soon after coming to power as Pakistans first ruling party.
It broke into various self-serving groups, mostly due to intra-party tussles over the distribution of government ministries. As a consequence, MSF too split into different expedient factions.
The many infrastructural and logistical problems the newly formed country faced at its troublesome inception, were also reflected in the state and nature of the universities and colleges that Pakistan inherited.
Consequently, with the gradual disintegration of MSF as a platform of the students to voice their new-found academic and political concerns, a brand new student organization started to take shape.
In 1950, a group of students at the Dow Medical College in Karachi met and formed the Democratic Students Federation (DSF).
The group was spearheaded by Mohammad Sarwar, Mir Rehman, Ali Hashmi, Asif Jaffery, Asif Hameedi, Yousuf Ali and Haroon Ahmed. Though led by a mixture of Marxist and progressive students, initially DSF did not have a written or formal platform or agenda. It only aimed at addressing the educational and academic problems of students and fill the vacuum created by MSFs factionalization.
A hectic recruitment drive followed the formation of DSF and as it gained recognition and support in almost all colleges in Karachi, by 1951 it was able to establish a prominent presence in colleges in Lahore and Rawalpindi in the province of Punjab as well.
Apart from pushing the government of the day to be more sympathetic and responsive towards the many academic issues facing the students, DSF also started to exhibit support for various progressive causes through demonstrations and rallies.
By 1952 DSF had evolved into a dedicated left-wing student organization and in the event of MSFs flagging status, it also managed to win the bulk of student union elections.
DSFs growing electoral and ideological influence soon saw it taking bolder steps in its attempt to move the government towards addressing the educational concerns of the students.
In 1953 DSF in Karachis Dow Medical College drew up a Charter of Demands that included issues like tuition fees, library facilities, better classrooms and to build a proper university.
A Demands Day was announced on which DSF activists moved out in a procession to meet the then education minister, Fazlur Rehman.
The administration blocked the protest and resorted to baton-charge and tear gas.
The students responded by announcing the observance of a Protest Day and held a large rally in the Saddar area in Karachi.
The police tear-gassed the protesting students and then opened fired when the students refused to disperse.
More than six students were killed and several were injured and arrested. Enraged students torched a government vehicle which turned out to belong to the interior minister.
The situation had spun out of control and finally Prime Minister Khawaja Nazimuddin sent feelers out to contact the DSF leadership.
He invited a delegation to meet him. It was a cordial meeting and firm promises were made.
Although Nazimuddin was soon replaced by Mohammad Ali Bogra, the negotiations continued. Mr. Bogra, fresh from the USA, showed the students a plan of a university to be built in Karachi. The new campus of University of Karachi was then identified and construction ordered.
It was a victory for DSF, though achieved at the expense of the death of six DSF members.
By now DSF had also started to exhibit its displeasure over Pakistans growing role in supporting the West against the Soviet Union, and demanded that the government take a more independent stance in its foreign policy.
It is thus not surprising that in the following year (1954), when the government of Pakistan banned the Communist Party of Pakistan (CPP), it also imposed a ban on DSF, accusing it of being the CPPs front organization and student wing.
The CPP had already been implicated in 1951 for supporting and facilitating Major General Akbar Khans failed coup attempt against the government of Liquat Ali Khan; and though DSF was openly left-leaning and had supporters in the CPP, it was never the student-wing of the party.
After the ban many DSF members tried to maintain the organization secretly, but the mass arrests that followed the governments ban, made it impossible for these students to continue operating under the DSF banner.
To counter the governments bid to completely root out student politics from the colleges and universities, some DSF leaders who had escaped arrest called a convention of student parties from both left and right sides of the ideological divide.
DSF, in spite of being banned, was still the countrys largest left-wing student organization and the most influential as well.
It was also being supported by independent leftist students, whereas the rightist side at the convention was mostly represented by small conservative student groups and the remnant factions of the MSF.
Left-wing student groups from the former East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) also participated in the convention.
The convention took place in Karachis Katrak Hall and was well attended, even though the administration had sent thugs to subvert the proceedings.
The police soon followed. A battle of fists, stones and sticks between the students on one side and the gangsters and the police on the other ensued.
The police were taken aback by the students stronger response, not knowing that due to incidents that had seen DSF members being shot by the cops, DSF had established a Red Guards unit made up of sympathetic young muscle men and leftist student militants to keep the thugs and cops from sabotaging the convention.
In spite of the violence, the gathered students were successful in forming the All Pakistan Students Organization (APSO), an alliance whose top slots were shared between both leftist as well as rightist student leaders.
APSO was conceived as a pressure group to make the government address the students demands. But its existence was short-lived and itt too was banned.
The banning followed another round of arrests and harassment, as the government now tried to counter the prevailing leftist sentiment on the campuses by patronizing a small pro-government student organization called the National Students
Federation (NSF).
The organizations leaders were a mixture of former MSF members and independent conservative students.
By 1955 however, concern about NSFs ideological orientation rose among the many bureaucrats who had been instrumental in helping the government uproot DSF.
Unknown to them was the fact that some junior DSF members and independent leftist students in Lahore and Karachi had started to join NSF as a way to change its ideological make-up.
It is not known if this was a planned attempt, but in 1956 when NSF held a large rally in Karachi in support of progressive Egyptian leader, Gamal Abul Nasser during the Suez Canal crises, it was apparent that NSF had changed its stripes when the gathered students started chanting anti-British and anti-Israel slogans at the rally to condemn the attack on Egypt soil by these countries.
NSF had slipped into a role that it would hold for the rest of its existence.
Compared to DSF, NSF started developing a wider platform on which students from all shades of progressive politics (Marxists, Socialists, Liberals, Social Democrats, etc.), started to gather.
Some of the first starlets of the new NSF were Hussain Naqi, Syed Akhtar Ehtisham, Abid Manto and Sher Afzal Malik.
By 1957 NSF had started to sweep student union elections in Karachi, Lahore and Rawalpindi, quickly reclaiming the electoral and influential ground that DSF had lost due to its banning.
The organization also began generating its own firebrands, of whom Meiraj Muhammad Khan and Fatayab Ali Khan became prominent speakers and organizers.
By 1958 NSF had consolidated itself as a widespread student force and the countrys leading student party when Field Marshal Ayub Khan imposed the countrys first Martial Law.
Student politics and unions along with political parties were banned and a fresh crackdown on student radicals launched.
The Martial Law was imposed on the pretext of political chaos triggered by years of Machiavellian power games between the politicians and bureaucrats, and the rising level of crime and corruption in the society.
Part-2: Rude awakenings
In a quirky twist, just as the majority of the country had actually celebrated the initial arrival of Ayub Khans Martial Law, so did almost all student groups.
Just as most people were now exhausted with the unsettling power plays of politicians and the rising corruption witnessed in the 1950s a time when the students were constantly harassed and subjugated most of them felt a sense of relief with the rude removal of the many (similar looking) civilian governments of the preceding decade.
By now NSF had dramatically ascended to become Pakistans leading progressive student party.
But unlike DSF, which in the advancing years had gotten more and more associated with the pro-Soviet CPP, NSF remained largely independent and held a wider ideological base encompassing leaders and members from communist, socialist and left-liberal backgrounds.
In 1960 the Martial Law regime partially lifted the ban on student unions allowing the revival of student union elections after a brief hiatus.
However, the dictatorship continued with the policy of neutralizing radical leftist elements and was particularly interested in
apprehending the charismatic Hasan Nasir. A DSF supporter in the 1950s and General Secretary of the outlawed Communist Party of Pakistan (CPP), Hasan Nasir was finally arrested by the Punjab police in 1960, allegedly tortured and then killed. He was thirty-two.
Though incensed and enraged by Nasirs arrest and killing, NSF retained its winning streak that it had struck in the late 1950s, even though at the start of the new decade the student-wing of the politico-religious party, the Jamat-i-Islami (JI), had started to emerge from the sidelines of student politics and materialize as an affective right-wing force on the campuses.
Called the Islami Jamiat Taleba (IJT), it had been around for more than a decade but was almost completely overshadowed by DSF and NSF.
IJTs leadership had to convince JIs leading figurehead and conservative Islamic Scholar, Abul Ala Maududi, to let it carve out a bigger stake for itself in student politics, whereas Maududi had wanted his partys student-wing to play a more theological role.
IJT started taking part in student union elections in the late 1950s, and by 1962 it had developed into becoming NSFs strongest and most organized opposition thus far.
However, it was still unable to topple NSFs electoral supremacy.
IJT was also one of the initial student organizations directly associated with a mainstream political party even though MSF had been the first, it was almost non-existent by 1962.
NSF on the other hand remained largely independent but its growth and influence had gotten it in touch with powerful labor and journalist unions of Karachi whose leaders started to influence the intra-party affairs of the student organization.
So far NSFs overall leadership was made up of pro-Soviet Marxists, but at the onset of the 1962 Sino-Soviet split, a strong pro-China faction too appeared from within the party.
It started to use (and vice versa) influential labor and journalist unions to replace NSFs main leadership which it accused of becoming too pro-Moscow.
A power tussle ensued between the leadership of the two factions allowing the IJT to start making deeper inroads into campus politics.
Meanwhile, the same year (1962), when the Muslim League, (renamed as Pakistan Muslim League), broke into factions again, the larger faction calling itself the Convention Muslim League (PML-Convention), decided to join and support the Ayub Khan dictatorship.
Joining the government brought in enough influence and funds for the party to reform its withering student wing, the MSF.
Battered in the 1950s, MSF returned to student politics and made some impact in the Punjab, but it was no match to NSF in influence and electoral strength. In fact, in many colleges, it was also defeated in student union elections by the IJT.
However, despite the losses it kept up a prominent presence in many colleges.
By 1965 the pro-Soviet vs. pro-China tussle in the NSF had brought the party on the brink of experiencing its first major split.
The pro-China faction, led by the likes of Meraj Muhammad Khan, Zain Lodhi and Rashid Ali Khan, had succeeded in pushing back the partys pro-Soviet lobby, forcing NSFs long-time figurehead, Sher Afzal, to finally bow out.
NSF had also developed strong links with the left-wing National Awami Party (NAP), especially with the partys Maoist faction (the Bhashani Group).
In an ironic move both NAP and NSF ended up deciding to quietly support Ayub Khans candidacy in the controversial 1965 Presidential Elections due to his Foreign Minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhuttos close contacts with Mao Tse Tungs China.
Ayubs opponent in the election was Fatima Jinnah, the sister of the founding father of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah.
She was supported by the anti-Ayub Muslim League faction, the Council Muslim League, the right-wing Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), and the Wali Khan faction of NAP.
Ayub managed to win the elections, an event that made the JI become even more reactionary in its opposition against Ayubs secular rule.
Paralleling the start of the celebrated students movement in the United States and the West that began taking shape in 1964-65, the spark in Pakistan in this respect was set alight by the aftermath of the countrys 1965 war with India.
The official media had thumped in a skewed perception of the war, proclaiming that the countrys armed forces had dealt India a hard, decisive blow.
But when the Soviet Union brokered a peace treaty between the two countries, the opposition parties claimed that Pakistan had lost on the negotiation table what its forces had won in the field.
At once there were demonstrations against the treaty by NSF, IJT and even MSF. These groups of student activists would go down in history as the Tashkent generation.
These were young, educated Pakistanis who were infuriated by a treaty between Pakistan and India brokered by the Soviet Union in the city of Tashkent.
Ayub Khans young Foreign Minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, too had opposed the treaty and was thus eased out from the government.
He soon found himself rising as a hero of sorts by the (West)-Pakistanis, gathering a fiery reputation as the man who wanted to fight on against the Indians and who had stood up to his former boss, Ayub Khan.
An extremely shrewd, intelligent and highly educated man, Bhutto nonetheless came from a powerful feudal family of the Sindh province.
But in the event of the radicalization of the Tashkent generation and the rousing reception that he received from a majority of West Pakistanis in 1967, saw Bhutto gallivanting towards leftist intellectual circles.
Unable to reconcile to the position that he was offered by NAP, Bhutto, with the help of senior Marxist ideologues like J A. Rahim, Shaikh Rashid and Dr. Mubashir Hassan, and a group of intellectuals led by Hanif Ramey who had been formulating the idea of fusing Islam and Socialism (calling it Islamic Socialism) decided to form a new party.
Projecting himself as the man who was concerned about the plight of the common man, especially in the event of the economic disparities brought on by Ayubs unflinching capitalism and cronyism, Bhutto became a darling of the NSF.
Whats more, after 1965, the pro-government MSF too broke ranks from its mother party and started supporting Bhutto.
Many MSF leaders joined NSF and helped form brand new leftist student groups, especially in the Punjab.
NSF was the strongest in Karachi and had solid support in colleges in the Punjab as well. But by 1967 it had splintered into various factions, mainly due to petty ideological issues.
NSF-Meraj was the most radical Maoist group, followed by NSF-Rasheed and a few other pro-Soviet factions. But each one of these groups decided to support Bhutto.
In the Punjab though, NSF remained untainted by factionalism and was in fact bolstered (especially in colleges of Rawalpindi and Faisalabad), when many MSF members joined it.
In the colleges of Lahore too NSF was strong and was able to soundly defeat its opponents in student unions elections, but due to a provincial ban on student unions at the Punjab University, NSF had faltered, giving way to a strong presence of the IJT.
However, soon after the formation of Bhuttos Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), and the rousing support it gained from both NSF and MSF, leftists at the Punjab University formed the National Students Organization (NSO) to campaign for the restoration of student unions at the university.
The NSO became a force in Lahore during the peak of the students movement against the Ayub Khan dictatorship in 1968.
In the rest of the province, the movement was led by NSF and MSF, while in Karachi it was dominated by NSF-Meraj and NSF-Rasheed.
Already the leading student organization, it was not surprising that NSF hit a peak in student union elections between 1965 and 1968.
Whats more, NSF-Meraj and NSO (led by Imtiaz Alam), became de-fecto student-wings of the nascent PPP.
IJT, though anti-Ayub, showed little interest in the students movement, instead focusing on curtailing the bludgeoning leftist support and presence in the countrys universities and colleges.
After Ayubs downfall in 1969 (he resigned), and the imposition of Pakistans second Martial Law (by General Yahya Khan), IJT started to echo its mother partys post-Ayub mantra projecting Bhuttos PPP and its socialist agenda worse than Ayub and a grave danger to Pakistans Islamic polity.
NSF reached the panicle of its strength and influence in 1969. Some of its members, most notably Meraj Muhammad Khan and Raja Anwar, managed to become card-carrying members of the PPP, and some of NSFs prominent factions also became directly involved in the fast developing Labour movement, especially in Karachi.
Ironically, in the Eastern Wing of the country (East Pakistan), where leftist students had been part of NSF till the early 1960s, now came under the banner of the student organizations supporting Bengali nationalist leader, Shaikh Mujeeb-ur-Rhemans Awami League.
NSF did have a presence at colleges and universities of East Pakistan, but since NSF had become Maoist, pro-Bhutto and anti-India, it clashed with ALs student-wing, that was overwhelmingly pro-Soviet and somewhat vague in its stance towards India.
Part-3: The Golden Age
It will be misleading to suggest (as some historians do), that the golden era of student politics in Pakistan arrived in the late 1960s during the movement against the Ayub Khan dictatorship.
It is true that just like the student movements across the world, the Pakistani student movement of the era too became a celebrated event. No doubt in Pakistan this was the movement that generated the concept and matter of what became to be known as student power in the 1960s.
But it is the 1970s that one can now truly call the golden era of student politics in Pakistan.
The decade witnessed perhaps one of the most democratic periods in the history of student politics in the country.
It was a period in which the government actually promoted and patronized student politics in universities and colleges, and signed a dedicated Ordinance -the 1974 Student Union Ordinance that encouraged democratic student political activity on campuses.
All factions of NSF celebrated the sweeping victory of the PPP (in West Pakistan) in the 1970 general elections.
They saw Bhuttos and the PPPs victory as the climaxing of their struggle against dictatorship (Ayub Khan, Yayah Khan), and the arrival of socialism in Pakistan.
However, there was a mixed reaction among the NSF factions regarding the landslide win of Mujib-ur-Rhemans Awami League in East Pakistan.
The bulk of NSF factions were against the Awami Leagues ethnic orientation. The Awami Leagues left-wing was close to leftist circles affiliated with pro-India entities, whereas most NSF factions had by now become staunchly anti-India and pro-China.
Shortly before the elections, NSF was also instrumental in tackling Bhuttos detractors in IJT, whom the Jamaat-e-Islami had let lose to attack PPP rallies and churn out anti-Bhutto propaganda, claiming that Bhutto was a non-believer and if his party wins, his socialist regime will destroy Islam.
A number of clashes took place between NSF and IJT over such issues before the 1970 general elections, and when the Jamaat and IJT increased their attacks and slandering campaigns, the PPP formed its own Peoples Guards.
This unit was created by plucking street fighters from various NSF factions. These brigades of young men armed with clubs and knives started to accompany Bhutto and various other PPP leaders during the election campaign and worked as tough bulwarks against riotous Jamaat and IJT instigators.
The most violent clashes between the two groups took place in the streets and colleges of Lahore in 1969 and early 1970.
The 1970s were also the period that finally saw the IJT rise as a powerful electoral force.
With the continuing factionalization of NSF, that by 1971 had more than four factions (NSF-Meraj, NSF-Kazmi, NSF-Rasheed & NSF-Bari), IJT managed to sweep student union elections at the University of Karachi in 1969, 1970 and 1971.
In the Punjab, though NSF retained its electoral strength in the colleges, and the NSO fought hard to share important union posts with the IJT at the Punjab University, IJT had succeeded in converting itself into a well-oiled electoral machine.
As both NSF and NSO got busy fighting their own little intra-party battles, IJT took over NSFs traditional practice of aggressive indoctrination of the new entrants to college and university life.
IJT began holding study circles in which it offered help and books to the new students and then slip in lectures and writings by JI chief and Islamic scholar, Abul Ala Maududi, to the students.
Most of the men and women who became part of these study circles were students arriving from the countrys conservative rural areas and who had found NSFs aggressive Maoist/Marxist posturing alienating.
An increase in numbers of young people moving to the cities from rural towns for higher education in this period also helped bolster IJTs vote bank.
However, the rising tension between NSF and IJT subsided for a while in early 1972. Both the parties were united in lamenting the Pakistan Armys defeat at the hands of their Indian counterparts and the subsequent dismemberment of the country when former East Pakistan nationalists (backed by India), broke away to create Bangladesh after a vicious civil war against the West Pakistan Army.
IJT members were also instrumental in providing young men for the Armys violent anti-Awami League campaigns (the Badar & Shams Brigades), created to help the Army to harass and weed out Bengali nationalists.
Nevertheless, NSF was upbeat when in 1972 the Zulfikar Ali Bhutto government began implementing its reformist and socialist policies.
NSF once again swept the 1972 student union elections in almost all major colleges in Karachi. But this time the NSF factions had to ally themselves with left-wing nationalist student groups such as the Balochistan Students Organization (BSO), and the newly formed Punjabi Students Association (PSA).
However, once again making the most of the factionalization in NSF, the IJT won the student union elections at the Punjab University and University of Karachi, but unions at major colleges in Rawalpindi remained in the hands of NSF factions.
1972 was also the year when the Pakistan Peoples Partys student wing, the Peoples Students Federation (PSF), started to make its way into mainstream campus politics.
It was made up of leftist students who had refused to be a part of any of the four NSF factions. The PSFs formation was also seen as a way for the PPP government to lessen its dependence on NSF whose leaders along with PPPs radical wing had been pressurizing Bhutto to hasten the implementation of his socialist policies.
Eventually, by late 1973, accusing the PPPs radical wing leaders of hotheadedness and impracticality, Bhutto responded by initiating a purge against the wings leadership.
The biggest casualties of the purge were PPPs most senior ideologue, J A. Rahim, and the partys youngest minister, Meraj Muhammad Khan, who had also confronted Bhutto in his handling of the crises erupting from the emboldened labor movement in Karachi.
All NSF factions condemned the purge and finally withdrew their support for the PPP government.
The continuing factionalization of the student left and the fall-out of the purge dealt NSF its most serious electoral blow thus far.
It once again lost to the IJT at the University of Karachi and the Punjab University, and struggled to maintain its hold even in colleges in which it had been winning student union elections for more than a decade.
Even NSO at the Punjab University crumbled.
The vacuum was filled by the coming together of independent leftist and liberal students, some of whom joined the PSF while others got together to form the Liberal Students Organization (LSO).
By 1974, LSO saw itself at the head of an anti-IJT alliance (Progressive Students Alliance), that also included NSF factions and PSF, both at the University of Karachi and the Punjab University even though the alliances in the Punjab and Karachi were only loosely related.
Whats more, the Sindh National Students Federation (SNSF) in the interior of the Sindh province was now up against the newly formed student wing of the separatist and anti-PPP Sindhi leader, G M. Syeds Jeeay Sindh Movement, the Jeeay Sindh Students Federation (JSSF).
The year also saw Balochistan Students Organization (BSO) plunging itself against Z A. Bhutto when his governments strong-arm tactics against Baloch nationalist parties in the Balochistan Assembly triggered the beginning of the third Balochistan Insurgency in the remote mountains of the arid province.
A number of BSO members joined the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), a militant Marxist-Nationalist guerilla group fighting for an independent Balochistan, even though it insisted it was only fighting for the Baloch peoples democratic rights.
Bhuttos growing tendency towards authoritarianism had not only disheartened the left-leaning student groups, but also gave momentum to the Islamists and conservatives who had otherwise been wiped out in the 1970 general elections.
It is also true that the progressive vote on various campuses had started to spilt between the four NSF factions and other progressive groups such as PSF, LSO, BSO and PSA. So it was natural for the progressives to start forming joint electoral alliances which, such as Lahore and Karachis Progressive Students Alliance, was usually led by LSO.
The alliance, though formed in early 1974, managed to break IJTs winning streak at the University of Karachi in the 1975 student union elections.
Alliances between NSF factions and PSF in Karachis colleges during the same year produced the best results for the progressives ever since 1972.
In the Punjab, though IJT managed to retain its electoral strength at the years union elections at the Punjab University, progressive alliances in colleges in Rawalpindi and Faisalabad struck back, voting out the IJT from prime student union seats.
Contribution to IJTs defeat that year was also made by another right-wing student group, the Anjuman-e-Taliba-Islam (ATI), the student wing of the Jamiat Ulema Pakistan (JUP).
Unlike the JI and IJT, JUP was manned and supported by Muslims from the Berelvi school of thought, that, though conservative, were less puritanical.
By the mid-1970s, the number of colleges and universities holding student union elections grew two-fold, with Progressive Students Alliance and IJT dominating in colleges and universities in the main urban areas of the country, while IJT, ATI and PSF prevailing in the semi-urban areas.
The situation at Rawalpindis Gordon Collage that had been a bastion of DSF, NSF and progressive student alliances ever since the 1950s, took a twist when during the 1976 student union elections here, the IJT for the first time managed to capture the most seats in the colleges union.
The IJT in Rawalpindi at this time was being led by Shaikh Rashid Ahmed, a fiery anti-PPP student leader who many years later would go on to become a minister in the two Nawaz Sharif governments in the 1990s, and during the Pervez Musharraf dictatorship.
1977 was also the year of general elections, the first after the historic 1970 elections.
Though aggressively and passionately supported by progressive and left-wing student groups (especially NSF), before and during the 1970 elections, this time none of the NSF factions were ready to support the PPP.
They had been angry with Bhutto ever since he purged hard-line leftists from his party in 1973, and then send in the Army to act against Baloch nationalists.
They also accused Bhutto of rolling back the PPPs original socialist manifesto and alienating the leftists by inducting prominent feudal lords and capitalists in his post-74 cabinet, and then caving in to the pressure of the Islamist parties by officially proclaiming the controversial Islamic Ahmadiyya sect as non-Muslims in 1974.
The only progressive student group willing to support the PPP was, of course, the partys own student wing, the PSF.
PSF had established itself well in universities and colleges across Pakistan. And even though it was able to win student union elections single handedly in interior Sindh and in some colleges of Rawalpindi, it had to get into alliances with other progressive/socialist student groups in Karachi and Lahore.
Two of its frontline leaders of the 1970s were Jehangir Badar and future Pakistani national hokey team captain, Qasim Zia. Both would go on to become ministers in PPP governments of the 1990s and 2000s.
The aftermath of the 1977 general elections was tumultuous. The nine-party opposition grouping, the Pakistan National Alliance (PNA), that was led by the Jamaat-e-Islami, accused the Bhutto regime of rigging the polls.
To counter the PPPs proclamations of Islamic Socialism, the PNA had run in the elections on the platform of Nizam-e-Mustapha (Prophets law/Islamic Shariah).
Right away the PNA began a movement of mass protests against the PPP government. Many of these protests turned violent in Karachi and Lahore, enough for Bhutto to send in the Army and impose a curfew in the disturbed areas.
Aggressive anti-PPP demonstrations were organized by IJT at University of Karachi before it was shut down, while the movement in the Punjab was given great impetus by IJT activists at the Punjab University and Gordon College.
Using the disturbances as a pretext, Bhuttos handpicked head of the Army, General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq an admirer of Abul Ala Maududi - imposed the countrys third Martial Law (5 July, 1977).
When Zia brought in members of the Jamat-e-Islami to form his first cabinet (to help him Islamize Pakistan), IJTs notorious Thunder Sqauds that were formed in the 1960s at the universities of Karachi and Lahore to challenge leftist student activists, went on a rampage, harassing and physically manhandling their opponents.
In response to the new challenges faced by the progressive students, in 1978, NSF, PSF, LSO and DSF formed the Punjab Progressive Students Alliance (PPSA) at the Punjab University, Gordon College, Rawalpindi and the newly built Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad.
Gaining sympathy due to Zias harsh crackdown on PSF and NSF members and the rising cases of violence and harassment by the IJT, the PPSA routed IJT in the 1978 student union elections in Rawalpindi, Islamabad and in many colleges of Lahore. This was the IJTs biggest defeat in Punjab ever since it started to dominate student politics in the province in 1972.
DSF that had almost vanished under the shadow of the NSF, started to reemerge in 1977 when some Marxist students got BSO, Pukhtun leftists and Jam Saqis SNSF together to reform the veteran student party.
in 1978, Altaf Hussain, a University of Karachi student, formed the All Pakistan Mohajir Students Organization (APMSO). The partys early membership included a small group of former-IJT members who were then joined by a few progressive members loitering from the break up of two NSF factions in 1977.
The APMSO claimed to hold progressive views and wanted to work for the Urdu speaking students (Mohajirs), whom it claimed were bitten by Bhuttos quota system and Punjabs political and economic hegemony.
Despite the rising violence (usually involving PSF, APMSO and NSF workers against IJTs Thunder Squad), the University of Karachi did manage to hold its 1979 elections.
The elections saw the Progressive Students Alliance that had somewhat survived Zias persecution, defeat IJT on a number of union posts, but the unions biggest slot was won by IJTs top man at the varsity, Hussain Haqqani.
It was Hussain Haqqani (who many years later would join PML (N) and then the PPP), who introduced the usage of latest weaponry at the University of Karachi. Even though he never carried a weapon himself, he moved with a well armed group of Thunder Squad members led by the infamous, Rana Javed.
When Zia hanged Bhutto for ordering a political murder during his Prime Ministership, PPP claimed that Zia through a Kangaroo court had commited a judicial murder.
In response, the reactionary dictatorship increased the harassment and punishments against members of progressive student groups, especially PSF.
With the help of arrests, jailing and torture, coupled with the violent pressure added by IJT, the dictatorship finally managed to dismember the Progressive Alliance at the University of Karachi.
However, in the Punjab, the Punjab Progressive Students Alliance (PPSA), went on to once again defeat IJT at the Quied-e-Azam University in the 1979 student union elections, and then win back Gordon College for the progressives which they had lost to IJT in the 1976 elections.
Thus ended one of the most fruitful decades of student unionism in Pakistan, in which, at least between 1970 and 1977, regular student union elections had managed to help students democratically address and settle their ideological and administrational matters.
The incidents of violence in educational institutions too in these seven years usually did not involve the use of firearms, and deaths were actually lesser in number compared to what the students had faced in 1954 and 1968 due to police violence.
However, events between 1977 and 1979, in which sophisticated firearms made their presence on university campuses and the ideological battles between the leftists and rightists started getting more brutal than ever, a precedence was set for a future that would see the countrys student politics struggling with its most difficult period thus far.
