Thread by @AsadRahim

Cover of the weekly Nusrat from 12 January 1969, featuring Malik Meraj Khalid.

This is from the late Marghoob Raza's wonderful collection of left-leaning magazines from the late '60s and '70s, preserved by the generous Mansoor Raza.

This edition brings to mind a few thoughts.

The debate being had right now is whether or not ethno-separatist terrorists – the ones that spend most of their time shooting up buses and killing schoolteachers – deserve the same space as genuine, disenfranchised leftists. It also shows how debased that debate has become.

Not that the left ever had it easy in this part of the world. The religious right was its natural enemy; the cartel class knocked it dead; and military rule was, by nature, reactionary. The eyeball-melting brutality of the Soviets next door didn't much add to the romance.

More recently, liberalism – not quite what we call the left – came to mean whatever 'opposed' the forces above. It now wrongly covers feudal families, baby dynasts, ethnic parties, and semi-deranged forums like SAATH (South Asians Against Themselves and for Hindutva).

An honourable mention is also due to this country's slack-jawed, harassment-enabling socialite class, which dips in and out. As the late Asma Jahangir put it, ‘These days in Pakistan, staying up all night, drinking alcohol and sleeping during the day, is considered liberalism.'

In another era, gents like Malik Meraj Khalid sahib fought for a liberalism that wasn't perfect, but it was honest and egalitarian.

He was born to poor farmers in a small village. Unlike many of our latter-day saints inclined to Congress, he supported the Pakistan Movement.

The idea that a man from such modest beginnings could have a say in this country's destiny is almost unheard of now. Though he won Ayub's rigged '65 polls as an independent, he joined and left the ruling League to answer 'the call of his conscience', signing up with the new PPP.

In 1970, one of the only times an election was fought on the basis of a party's ideas, Meraj Khalid won a record-smashing 89,660 votes from NW-62 Lahore, in a turnout that was over 75%.

He did it without a famous name, large landholdings, dummy votes, or Mehran Bank slush funds.

For such a fair election, the man that was actually elected PM was denied office.

MMK became CM Punjab in '72. Per Dr. Mubasher, "he tried his best to persuade Bhutto to hold the local bodies’ elections in Punjab but Bhutto did not agree to it." newslinemagazine.com/magazine/24954…

His other dream, land reform, was closer to his heart. Unlike the PPP's other urban intellectuals, Meraj had been a direct witness to poverty and landlessness. Per all accounts, ZAB wanted to 'punish the capitalists' first. The reforms were botched, and then outlawed by the SC.

The capitalists were indeed punished: nationalisation took on the shape of a bizarre, ad hoc revenge. In the nationalisation committee's first meeting, Dr. Mubasher singled out a steel plant with a 'record of being unfair to labour' called Ittefaq. sanipanhwar.com/The%20Mirage%2… (pg 27)

Meanwhile, a historic shot at land reform was thrown away (also see @umergilani_lums's brilliant piece on the SC judgment lumsjournal.blogspot.com/2008/11/land-r…).

Meraj Khalid was turfed out by Ghulam Mustafa Khar as CM, just as the PPP began to look a lot more like Mustafa than it did Meraj.

A self-made socialist intellectual was replaced by a feudal lord that would go on to be in the wrong place at the wrong time for the rest of the PPP's days in office.

MMK went back to his lifelong cause of literacy and poverty alleviation in his old Burki constituency.

Barely Speaker for some months when martial law came, MMK stayed put in Pakistan during the Gen Zia regime and stuck to the PPP (while Mr. Khar fled to London and began engaging in wacky plots with Indira Gandhi). He was reelected Speaker under Benazir in 1988.

He finally quit after differences with BB and Zardari. As caretaker PM in '96, he was slammed by the PPP for pushing for accountability and levelling 'fake' corruption charges. Fake or not, a US Senate subcommittee turned Zardari into a real-life case study for money laundering.

Doubtless, it's an imperfect example: Asad Durrani would claim to Benazir that he had deliberately excluded MMK's name from his Mehran Bank statement in 1994 (though this 'revelation' came at a time when Meraj-Benazir tensions were at their highest).

From modest beginnings, he passed away in modest circumstances – a distinction in itself for our elected reps.

Point being: if the aspirations of left-wing action do resemble something, it might be the decent, frustrated, honourable life of Malik Meraj Khalid.

Finally, Mansoor Raza sahib's wonderful story of his father's collection can be found here, published by the good people at Samaa. samaa.tv/culture/2020/0… It's very much how I found about it. Many thanks to @Mahim_Maher