Hunger Is A Political Game

This book, originally published in Sindhi from Bombay in 1972 by Akhtar Baloch (Qaidyani ji Diary or Diary of a Prisoner) rel­ates to a forgotten period of the apogee of Sindhi nationalism, later crushed by Pakistan’s military dic­­tatorship and fundamentalism. Akh­­tar, then only 18, was arrested in 1969 for going on a hunger strike to protest against president Yahya Khan’s crackdown on Sindhi students who only demanded electoral rolls in Sindhi. She thus became the youngest female political prisoner in Pakistan. The present generation of Pakistani youth who idolise Nobel winner Malala Yousafzai might not have heard of Bal­och’s sacrifices. The English edition under review opens with a quotation from Rabindranath Tagore: “Let us not pray to be sheltered from dangers, but to be fearless when facing them”.

Resistance against invaders had alw­ays been part of Sindhi folklore from the 16th Century: how Sufi saint Makhdoom Bila­wal was ground to death in the 15th cent­ury in a seed grinder for resisting the Tur­­kish Arghun invaders; or how, in 1943, Hemu Kalyani, a freedom fighter, was hanged to death by the British. Thus, Sindh nationalism is older than the quest for Pakistan. In fact, it was a catalyst for creating Pakistan. A separate Sindh was hived off the Bombay province by the 1935 Act. In 1939, Sindh ‘premier’ Allah Baksh defied the British by renouncing British titles. The governor asked him to resign, but he would not. In the resultant confusion, Sir Ghulam Hussain Hidaya­tullah became the assembly leader, joined the Muslim League and made the legislature pass a resolution opting for Pakistan.

But Sindhi nationalists were deeply hurt by the Murshidabad-born president Iskander Mirza, who defaced their identity with his ‘One Unit Scheme’ (1955) by merging Sindh, Balochistan, Bahawalpur, Punjab and NWFP into one unit to counterbalance the Bengali numerical domination in East Pakistan. This set off a long chain of Sindhi struggle to preserve their culture, language and identity. Between 1967 and 1969 police and Jamiat-e-Islami activists attacked agitating students. Yahya continued the repression from March 1969, although he dissolved the ‘One Unit’ in 1970.

Prison Narratives deals with a short per­iod between November 19, 1969, when Akhtar goes on a hunger strike and December 18, 1970, when she was rele­a­sed. Her decision to agitate came in October 1969, when Akhtar’s mother Zar­ina Baloch and her second husband Rasool Bux Palijo—both Sindhi nationalists—were admitted in hospital. Akh­tar was looking after them. The air out­side was resonating with students’ slogans. Suddenly, Aktar asks: “Can I sit on a hunger strike?” Her mother says, “Why not?” She leaves the hospital, goes to the deputy commissioner’s residence and launches her strike.

Some Pakistani writers have compared Baloch’s prison dairies with Nelson Man­dela’s Conversations with Myself. However, this book contains no great philosophy but only observations of an 18-year-old on the threshold of becoming a social act­ivist. Asad Palejo, who translated the book into English says: “The plight of women in Sindh and rural Pakistan frozen in time, a grim reminder of the manner in which women, children and minorities are treated by a misogynist, patriarchal society”. She describes it by introducing several characters like Hal­eema (16), who poisoned her husband (80) when she was forced to marry him. Or the little Chhalarro, who is forced to be in prison with his mother, who is sentenced for theft.

The most tragic is Akhtar’s description of an inmate, ‘Masi Guru’—a Sikh lady who had converted to Islam and married a Muslim man who was the superintendent of the very same Hyderabad Central Jail. “As the wife of the jail superintendent, Masi Guru became the de facto sup­ervisor”. However, things drastically changed when she went to India. It app­ears she reconverted to Sikhism, which made her husband angry. In prison, she became mentally disturbed and often asked about her husband and children, who would never visit her.

A 1970 incident reverberates with the present mood of our Indian ‘nationalist’ TV anchors or trolls who brand any honest criticism as ‘anti-national’. Major Sher Afzal, who presided over the military court, asks Akhtar before sente­n­cing her to a year’s imprisonment: “Hun­­­­ger strikes belong to non-Muslims like Gandhi. Why did you commit this sin?” When she is adamant, he asks her what lessons she would teach the new generation. “I would teach them to loathe the oppressor and love the suppressed,” she replies. His final remarks before sentencing: “You seem to be an enemy of Pakistan”.

(The writer’s latest book is Keeping India Safe: The Dilemma of Internal Security)