Learning from history in an age of bombs

Title of documentary ‘Aur NikleiN Ge Ushhaq ke Qafley’ (Design by K.B. Abro)

NOTE: Much of the research for this article was done for a documentary on the 1953 student movement directed by Sharjil Baloch, that I produced, for the event we held at the Arts Council Karachi on Jan 9, 2010, ‘Looking back to look forward’. The 30-min documentary title ‘Aur NikleiN Ge Usshaq ke Qafley’ (And there shall be more caravans of passion) derives from a poem by Faiz. This article was published in the website Pkonweb on Jan 8, 2010 (a revised and updated version of an earlier piece in the ‘The News on Sunday’, Dec 27 2009. A shorter version was published by the academic journal iWrite in its Jan-Feb 2010 issue).

Looking back to look forward

Commemorating Pakistan’s first nation-wide student movement that embodied student unity, cutting across political, class and ethnic divisions for a common cause: students’ rights …

Ghazi Salahuddin: The High School Students’ Association and my rite of passage

Essay written for the booklet published to commemorate the 1953 movement, Jan, 2010

THE HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS’ FEDERATION

My rite of passage

Ghazi Salahuddin

1953, and I have often thought about it, was the year that changed my life. It was my rite of passage. I say this not with any specific reference to its New Year stirrings. But my rather peripheral and juvenile involvement with the students’ movement had a lot to do with the transformation that I feel I had then experienced.

Old memories, we know, are not always reliable. We also change them in the process of our selective recollections. That is what makes the past another country in which they do things differently. We are talking about times that have slid to the very edge of living memory. Indeed, this article is written for an occasion that is meant to be a tribute to a man who passed away in the summer of 2009. The rest of us who were participants or observers of the students’ movement of 1953 – and I was among the youngest members of that caravan – are, in a sense, waiting for our departures. Fifty-seven years, after all, is a very long time.

Event Book, Jan 9, 2010

“Students Movement leaders remembered: Revival of student activism termed must for reshaping society” – PPI report

Rahat Kazmi listens to Alia Amirali's fiery speech. Photo by Sakhawat Ali

PPI report by Azhar Khan

KARACHI, Jan 10 (PPI): In order to bringing positive, deep and lasting sociopolitical changes in Pakistani society it is necessary that students should play their due role and mount pressure on the policymakers through their activism to focus on the burning problems faced by our society and its people. For this purpose it is a must that student unions should be strengthened and their elections held on urgent basis.

This was said by speakers of a moot here on Saturday evening at Arts Council of Pakistan, Karachi to pay rich tributes to the martyrs of “Students Movement 1953″.

This historic student movement was launched by Dr. Mohammad Sarwar, which played an important role in strengthening the leftist student movement in Pakistan.

Hundreds of students and civil society members attended the moot and paid rich tributes to the martyrs of “Students Movement 1953”. They also paid rich tribute to Dr. Mohammad Sarwar, who they said was the core catalyst for the formation of Students Unions for the first time in Pakistan.

Photos: ‘Looking back to look forward’

‘Looking back to look forward: celebrating the 1953 student movement

Click the image above to access photos from the events of Jan 9 & 10, held in Karachi to commemorate the 1953 student movement and its activists.

‘Looking back to look forward’ – amazing turnout, thanks everyone

Rahat Kazmi introducing speakers - photo by Aliya Nisar

What an amazing response to ‘Looking Back to Look Forward – Celebrating the 1953 Student Movement’. (‘…we look back not to revel in nostalgia, WE LOOK BACK TO LOOK FORWARD,’ said veteran journalist Eric Rahim in an email while we were conceptualising the event).

We didn’t think we’d be able to fill the 1000-seater hall. Everyone said “be happy if 500 people turn up”. The hall was FULL, thanks to the energy and enthusiasm of the volunteers and participants – students and youngsters from Sindh Awami Sangat (huge team of volunteers and a crowded bus-load of participants), Szabist University, Ziauddin Medical College, PECHS Girls’ School (thanks to Seema Malik, 150 students who formed the heart of the audience and kept up the tempo with their youthful energy), and other groups.

Fehmida Riaz recites 'Palwasha muskura' - photo by Aliya Nisar

View of the audience with PECHS Girls School students - photo Aliya Nisar

“It’s not just the event, it’s the timing of the event that’s important,” said Hiba Ali Raza, one of the student volunteers. “At a time when things look so bleak, and people are so depressed, this was very significant”.

Many had come expecting the usual 200-300 crowd of old lefties with a sprinkling of the young ones. Instead, we had a hall full of young people, boys and girls, students and young professionals who listened attentively to the speakers –

Zehra Nigah’s poem for the Jan 1953 martyrs

Jin ke piyar luT gaye - poem by Zehra Nigah for the Jan 1953 martyrs

She wrote these lines down when we went to interview her for our documentary on the 1953 student movement – she mentioned having written it as a high school student, and said it was quite long but was all she remembered.

Transliteration:
Aaj unn toofaN badoshoN ka kinara kaun hai
Jin ke piyare mar chukey unn ka piyara kaun hai
Jin pe raateiN chaa gaiyeeN unn ka sitara kaun hai
Jin ki dunya luT gayi unn ka sahara kaun hai
DhoonDneiN ko apni manzil iss khash-o-khashak meiN
Kitne Ghunche mil gaye haiN gulistaN ki Khak meiN

Security of employment and students – M. Abdul Fazl

STUDENTS’ HERALD Fortnightly Journal of the Students

Vol 1 No 9 April  3, 1953

SECURITY OF EMPLOYMENT: A VITAL NECESSITY FOR STUDENTS

By M. Abul Fazl

Many months ago, the students of Karachi signed an appeal for vindicating such demands as the reduction in fees, free medical aid and security of employment. At that time the Islami Jamiat-i-Tulaba seeing itself going in to the background brought out a counter-appeal demanding Islamic education and the basic necessities of life according to Islam. These mullas could have done their work on their own without entering into any controversy with other organizations, but no, they did precisely the wrong thing. Instead of propagating their demands, they unnecessarily launched a campaign against the demand of “security of employment”. When asked as to why in the name of goodness were they opposed to security of employment, their surprising answer was that it was anti-Islamic. This attempt at diverting the attention of students from their basic demands was, however, swept aside by the great January movement of the students of Karachi which awakened from slumber the youth of the entire nation and won the sympathy and support of all the people of Pakistan.

‘Student Movement in Pakistan: A glorious past’, by Shahid Husain

Students' procession on 'Elphi' - photo by Sartaj Alam, 'Students' Herald'

Article written for PKonweb, uploaded on Dec 8, 2009 as  EDITOR’S CHOICE: ‘Student Movement in Pakistan: A glorious past, by Shahid Husain

Pakistan student movement in evolution

By Shahid Husain

Pakistan’s student movement that produced luminaries such as Dr. Mohammad Sarwar, Dr. Syed Haroon Ahmed, Dr. Adib-ul-Hasan Rizvi, Dr. Jaffar Naqvi, Mohammad Kazim, Abid Hasan Minto,  Sher Afzal Malik, Husain Naqi, Johar Husain, Fatehyab Ali Khan and Meiraj Mohammad Khan,  to name a few, has a glorious history. In its long journey it faced extreme hardship and can be characterized by at least two milestones: January 7, 1953 movement that enabled the students of Karachi to have a University and better educational facilities, and led to the 1968-69 student movement that forced military dictator Gen. Ayub Khan to announce he would not take part in next elections.

The role of the High School Students Federation

Page from Students' Herald, Feb 6, 1953

Article from STUDENTS’ HERALD, Vol 1, No 6, Feb 6, 1953

School Students’ Glorious Contribution to Common Struggle

By Saghir Ahmed,

General Secretary, High School Students’ Federation

The students of high schools had played a prominent part in the common struggle for better conditions of life and study which culminated in a mighty and victorious demonstration of student unity and determination. In fact their leaders and their sole representative organisation, the High School Students Federation, together with the Democratic Students’ Federation and the Inter-Collegiate Body, had jointly chalked out the pro­gramme for the struggle and made valuable con­tribution in the deliberations of the Action Committee.

Apart from the common demands of the student community on the whole, which had been presented by the Action Committee to the Education Ministry, which include provision of better accommodation for schools, reduction in fees, building of more hostels and colleges, playgrounds, free medical aid, etc., there are certain demands peculiar to the high schools which also have been presented to the Education Ministry and more recently to the Directorate of Education in the form of a me­morandum detailed below.