The Rebel Road…

The birth centenary of Bhagat Singh, legendary freedom fighter against the British colonial rule in undivided India, was celebrated on September 28th. Born in Khatkar Kalan village in the Lyallpur district, Bhagat Singh maintained revolutionary ideals even as a child. He carried around a banner denouncing the British Raj – an activity for which he was admonished and, later, beaten several times by colonial soldiers. It was the Jalianwala Bagh massacre of 1919, in which the British Indian Army, under the orders of Brigadier Dyer, opened fire on unarmed civilians and an estimated 379 men, women and children lost their lives, which really set his soul on fire and led him down the road to open rebellion. Bhagat Singh’s most inspiring feat was not that he was an active freedom activist even in adolescence; it was not that he conducted a 63-day hunger strike for the equal treatment of British and Indian prisoners or that he and his comrades swallowed red chillies just so that their throats were too swollen for any attempted force-feeding; it was that Bhagat Singh had done all this and secured his legacy – all by the age of 23.

His disillusionment with the mainstream parties resulted in Bhagat’s study of other – more potent – alternatives to fight the British Raj. It was this study that led him to Marxism-Leninism and, subsequently, to founding the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA) – an organisation that continues to inspire the leftist youth in the Subcontinent even today. The HSRA was known for its militant opposition to the British Raj and staunch opposition to Mahatma Gandhi’s theory of non-violence. Bhagat Singh strongly argued that the tyranny of the mighty cannot be destroyed without resorting to violent means. However, he took great pains to avoid inflicting any harm on civilians. Lala Lajpat Rai, a Hindu nationalist and freedom fighter, was severely injured by a baton-charge ordered by Superintendent J. A. Scott against peaceful protestors in Lahore. Lala Lajpat Rai died a week later from his wounds and this further angered the members of the HSRA, especially Bhagat Singh, who were present at the protest. It was due to this incident that the HRSA planned to kill Scott but, unintentionally, killed Assistant Superintendent J. P. Saunders instead. The most audacious venture, taken on by HRSA, was one in which Bhagat Singh and his comrade Batukeshwar Dutt threw bombs into an unoccupied section of the Punjab Assembly. Bhagat Singh’s famous quote associated with this act was: “It takes a loud noise to get the deaf to hear.”

Bhagat Singh lived in a time in which the Congress, along with many other political parties, was bending to colonial pressure. Even the Communist Party of India presented itself as little more than the left-wing of the Congress. It was in this age of compliance that an intense need for people like Bhagat Singh was felt. Regardless of whether one agrees with his methods or not, it must be acknowledged that Bhagat Singh was a force to be reckoned with – a force that affected many lives, stood up for the weak and defenceless and, in doing so, shaped many events that led to undivided India’s freedom. Although Bhagat Singh’s practice was mired in its over-dependence on small-group militancy and its reluctance to rely on mass support, it can nevertheless teach us many lessons, the most important of which is that Bhagat Singh’s path is still the road to take.

The last two decades have seen a dramatic rise in the US-led ‘pre-emptive’ strikes against enemy nations. The disdain with which the White House treats certain countries and the manner in which it marginalises and threatens them on a global scale is evident today, however, this was not the case when the USSR existed. One must, in all honesty, accept that the political scenario that pervades today is vastly different from one that was present only three or four decades ago. It is my opinion that the objectives of liberation must include that the world has indeed failed to be decolonised, rather has moved into a new era of oppression: neo-colonialism. We are living in a world where the world order has changed in the last years and this change is linked directly to the disintegration of the USSR. Furthermore, most of the nationalist liberation/decolonisation movements (that have been inappropriately and criminally dubbed ‘terrorist’ movements by the world’s only super power, i.e. the US) operating in the world today have suffered greatly from the transition to a unipolar world order.

“They [the socialist bloc] undertook to consult together on all international questions involving their common interests, and to set up a unified military command, with its headquarters in Moscow. Two formal alliances – NATO and the Warsaw Pact – now confronted one another in Europe” (Bell, 122).

With the creation of the USSR and the subsequent rise of the communist parties within the world at large, and in Central and Eastern Europe in particular, the world entered a new era in the early 20th century. With the creation of the NATO alliance in 1949 it became necessary to take steps by the socialist republics to consolidate their power. For this reason the Warsaw Pact was drafted and implemented in 1955. The member countries that later comprised part of the larger Socialist Bloc were:

1) The Soviet Union,

2) Albania,

3) Bulgaria,

4) Czechoslovakia,

5) East Germany,

6) Hungary,

7) Poland, and

Romania.

These countries were later reinforced with the inclusion of other important nations such as China, Cuba, Vietnam, Afghanistan, etc. It is an unfortunate fact, however, that due to many reasons the USSR started to decline.

Many critics have ostensibly alleged that the USSR broke down as a result of a breakdown in communist ideology. I shall use this opportunity to refute this argument. The USSR, by any stretch of the imagination, was not a communist country, it was a socialist country where the Communist Party was in power. There is a difference. Indeed there has never been any country on the face of the earth that has experienced communism. Socialism, as explained by Lenin in his book, State and Revolution, defines a transitional stage from capitalism to communism. While it must be admitted that the Communist Party was in power in the USSR at the time of its disintegration, it must also be explained that the quality of the leadership in power at the time was extremely different (utterly opposite) to that at the time of the great success of the Soviet Union. Events after the 20th congress and the revisionist policies of Brezhnev, Khrushchev, Gorbachev and Yeltsin explain sufficiently. An account of how these individuals wanted to be called communists during their reign in spite of their revisionist policies is testament to their hypocrisy.

“Gorbachev cranked out a slew of slogans, including glasnost, perestroika and ‘new thinking’ in an effort to rescues socialism in the Soviet Union. Despite these shocking similarities of his policies to Khrushchev’s revisionism (Gorbachev was actually more revisionist than Khrushchev), Gorbachev was adamant in declaring himself to be a true Communist” (Shih & Shi, 89).

Comparing this to the later interview, titled ‘My Ambition was to liquidate Communism’ published in the Dialog newspaper in the Czech Republic, given by Gorbachev after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, in which in his own words he admits that his “ambition was to liquidate communism”, which clearly shows that Gorbachev (and by implication all revisionists before him) was working within the USSR to deter it from its original Marxist-Leninist path. How can one then, in all honesty, deny their role in the disintegration of this superpower?

The world, as it existed in the Cold War era, had attained a begrudging stability due to the existence of two opposing monoliths, i.e. the US and the USSR (and therefore NATO and Warsaw Pact countries). Thus it is not without basis to say that both sides had to consider a far greater set of implications for pursuing their interests than is the case now. Let us consider two cases that occurred during the Cold War era and hold special significance: 1) the Cuban Missile crisis, and 2) the Afghan crisis.

In the Cuban Missile crisis, according to the Library of Congress documents titled: Cold War: Cuban Missile Crisis, the US did not send its forces directly into Cuba to initiate violent retaliation to the Soviet Union’s Missile installations. This was due to the fact that the US was fully aware of the military might it would unleash upon itself and its allies should it pursue a foreign policy based on the disregard for Cuba’s sovereignty. In the Afghan crisis, the US chose to wage an indirect war against the Soviet Union, by training and arming local militias against soviet forces, rather than risk open conflict. This too can be attributed to the aforementioned rationale.

The transformation of the third world into the neo-colonial appendage of the US could only be intensified if the strongest anti-neo-liberal force was dismembered. Let us look at the case of the World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) structural adjustment programmes as they have been propagated after the Cold War. One would find that there is a great increase in the sheer number of cases of structural adjustment within the third world and as a consequence there has been a drastic rise in inequality within the same.

Let us now compare this to the recent foreign policy of the US which, openly and without consideration to the UN’s own resolutions, targets all sovereign states that constitute a potential threat to itself or its allies, especially Israel. One can clearly see that if the USSR was still present then at least the absurd ‘David and Goliath’ situation, as it exists within Iraq at this time, would not be so. Needless to say, the world as a whole and its constituting countries, particularly the third world, has lost a great equalising force with the dismembering of the USSR.

Name of the Act: The Constitution (First Amendment) Act, 1974
Date of enactment: May 8, 1974
Articles amended: 1, 8, 17, 61, 101, 127, 193, 199, 200, 209, 212, 259, 260,
272, and amendment of First Schedule
Nature of amendment: Most important amendments were to Article 1 where clause (2) was deleted from the constitution. This clause referred to the representation of East Pakistan in the Federation of Pakistan. Since Bangladesh had been recognized by Pakistan this amendment became necessary.

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Name of the Act: The Constitution (Second Amendment) Act, 1974
Date of enactment: September 21, 1974
Articles amended: 106 and 260
A new clause was added after clause (2) in Article 260.
Nature of amendments: Amendment dealt with the definition of Muslim and Non-Muslim for legal purposes.

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Name of the Act: The Constitution (Third Amendment) Act, 1975 [XXII of 1975]
Date of enactment: February 18, 1975
Articles amended: 10 and 232
- clauses (4), (5) and (7) of Article 10
amended.
- paragraph (b) of clause (7) in Article 232
Nature of amendments: – Amendment constituted to curtail the rights of Detainees in cases of preventative custody and increased the powers of the detaining authorities.
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Name of the Act: The Constitution (Fourth Amendment) Act, 1975
Date of enactment: November 25, 1975
Articles amended: 8, 17, 19, 51, 54, 106, 199, 271, 272, 273, First schedule and Fourth Schedule
Nature of amendments: Amendment to ensure limiting the powers of High Courts in interfering with cases related to preventative detainment.
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Name of the Act: The Constitution (Fifth Amendment) Act, 1976 [ LXII of 1976 ]
Date of enactment: September 15, 1976
Articles amended: 101, 160, 175, 179, 180, 187, 192, 195, 196, 199, 200, 204,
206, 212, 260, 280 and First Schedule.
Nature of amendments: Major amendment related to the status of the Governors, The Chief Justice and the discretionary powers of the High Courts and Supreme Courts.
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Name of the Act: The Constitution (Sixth Amendment) Act, 1976 [ LXXXIV of 1976 ]
Date of enactment: January 4, 1977
Articles Amended: 179, 195, 246, 260
Nature of amendments: Amendment to extend the stay of the Chief Justices of Supreme Courts and High Courts beyond their retirement limit in case their tenure had not been completed by that time.
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Name of the Act: The Constitution (Seventh Amendment) Act, 1977 [ XXIII of 1977 ]
Date of enactment: May 16, 1977
Articles amended: 101, 245
New Article inserted: 96 A [ceased to remain in force after September 30, 1977]
Nature of amendments: Amendment for the institution of a referendum in order to seek public confidence in the Prime Minister.
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Name of the Act: The Constitution (Eight Amendment) Act, 1985 [ XVIII of 1985 ]
Date of enactment: November 11, 1985
Articles amended: 48, 51, 56, 58, 59, 60, 75, 91, 101, 105, 106, 112, 116, 130,
144, 152 A, 270 A and addition of new Schedule, the Sixth Schedule.
Nature of amendments: Amendment to increase the overall powers of the President
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Name of the Act: The Constitution (Tenth Amendment) Act, 1987 [ I of 1987 ]
Date of enactment: March 29, 1987
Articles amended: 54 and 61
Nature of amendments: Under amendment of Article 54 and 61 working days in a
year of National Assembly and the Senate were
curtailed form 160 to 130.
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Name of the Act: The Constitution (Twelfth Amendment) Act, 1991 [ XIV of 1991 ]
Date of enactment: July 28, 1991
New Article inserted: 212 B
Provisions amended: Fifth Schedule.
Nature of amendments: Amendment to constitute special courts for heinous crimes as well as increase the pay of Court Judges.
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Name of the Act: The Constitution (Thirteenth Amendment) Act, 1997 [I of 1997]
Date of enactment: April 3, 1997
Article amended: 58, 101, 112, 243
Nature of amendments: Amendment to withdraw powers of the President and Governors to dissolve National and Parliamentary assemblies.
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Name of the Act: The Constitution (Fourteenth Amendment) Act, 1997
[XXIV of 1997]
Date of enactment: July 3, 1997
New Article inserted: 63A
Nature of amendments: Insertion of Article 63A to provide disqualification of a member of Parliamentary party on the ground of defection.

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Name of the Act: The Constitution (Fifteenth Amendment) Act, 1998
Date of enactment: August 28, 1998
New Article Inserted: 2B
Nature of Amendment: In view of the fact that the Objectives Resolution is now substantive part of the Constitution. it is necessary that Quran and Sunnah are declared to be the supreme law of Pakistan, and the Government is empowered to take necessary steps to enforce Shariah.
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Name of the Act: The Constitution (Sixteenth Amendment) Act, 1999
Date of enactment: August 5, 1999
New Article Inserted: 27
Nature of Amendment: Quota system was extended for another 40 years, i.e until 2013, in order to safeguard minorities and civil rights.
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Name of the Act: The Constitution (Seventeenth Amendment) Act, 2002
Date of enactment: August 21, 2002
New Article Inserted: 41, 58, 112, 152A, 179, 195, 243, 268 and 270AA
Nature of Amendment Amendments made to the constitution for the perpetuation of Rule by Gen. Musharraf. These amendments were augmented by the inclusion of the Legal Framework Order (LFO) into the constitution.