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Saturday, February 13, 2010

Ajmal Khattak: The revolutionary dervish

Ajmal Khattak: The revolutionary dervish

Dr. Mohammad Taqi


He was a true polymath – a poet, journalist, broadcaster, linguist, scholar and a politician. However despite all his patrician qualities this Renaissance man was a plebeian at heart.

Despite his capability to – and opportunities available to him for – upward social mobility, Ajmal Khattak chose to live and die in his dignified poverty. In a polity where comprador bourgeoisie, feudals and their quislings were rising to power, Ajmal stood head and shoulders above that upstart crowd, relying solely on his intellectual and political acumen. He was a giant in a political landscape dotted with pygmies.

For the Pashtuns he was the voice of their voiceless angst, expression in the muted humiliation and their freedom cry for the subjugated human dignity. Ajmal Khattak was a man of letters who, in the tradition of the warrior-poet Khushal Khan Khattak, also unfurled the standard of struggle for Pashtun unity.

Whereas Bacha Khan and his colleagues like the late Hussain Bakhsh Kausar conceived the idea of modern Pashtun unity, it was Ajmal Khattak who eventually provided the ideological backbone of this thesis.

In his book on Bacha Khan, late Farigh Bokhari had noted that by Pashtunistan, Ghaffar Khan merely meant a renamed province within Pakistan. Narrating to this scribe the discussions leading to the Bannu Declaration on Pashtunistan, Hussain Bakhsh Kausar corroborated Bokhari’s assertion. Kausar had added though, that for many, including him, the idea was much more than renaming a province – it was a thesis proposing the reunification of the Pashtun irredentas.

Ajmal Khattak provided the modern theoretical basis for the idea of the Greater Pashtunistan. Well-versed in the Marxist-Leninist theory - prevalent and ascendant at the time- Ajmal Khattak deployed it to strengthen the case for the right of self-determination for the Pashtuns.

In this, Ajmal Khattak put Afghanistan on notice as well. In 1969 the Afghan government had published a Pashtunistan postage stamp on which Pashtunistan included only the areas of FATA, the NWFP and Balochistan. As a claimant to the mantle of Mirwais Hotaki, Aimal Khan and Ahmad Shah Durrani, Ajmal Khattak was not pleased with this not-so-subtle gimmick of the Afghan state excluding the Pashtun territories under their control from Pashtunistan.

On the Pakistani side, Ajmal Khattak and the Pashtun nationalists were up not only against the establishment but also large sections of the Pakistani Left, who considered secession a dirty word. According to the socialists of West Pakistan it was sufficient to believe the unverified cliché that “scientific socialism would automatically solve all problems, including the national question”.

In this context Ajmal Khattak relied heavily on Lenin’s writings, such as: “The right of nations to self-determination implies exclusively the right to independence in the political sense, the right to free political separation from the oppressor nation. Specifically, this demand for political democracy implies complete freedom to agitate for secession and for a referendum on secession by the seceding nation ….”

Though a fixture in the Kabul political circles of the 1970s and 80s, self-exiled Ajmal Khattak never toed anyone’s ideological line – not even Moscow’s. At the height of their intervention in Afghanistan, the Soviets solicited input from the Pakistani leftists. Out of the two opposing proposals submitted by the pro-PDPA politicians of Pakistan, the Soviets adopted the one calling for restraint as against the one proposing broadening the scope of their operations to drain the guerilla swamp in Pakistan.

Upon his return from exile in 1989, this scribe put this question to Ajmal Khattak during a discussion in Peshawar and asked him if he and Wali Khan were the ones who opposed the Soviet intervention in our side of the Durand Line. He deflected the question.

Incidentally, after the discussion he and this scribe were supposed to travel in the same vehicle driven by the son of the host, a mutual friend. This scribe had already taken seat in the rear, when Ajmal sahib entered and sat on the front seat. Not realising that the scribe was in the car, he leaned over to the host’s son and asked if the youth who asked about opposing the Soviets belonged to a certain political group (which he did name). I whispered in his ear that indeed I was and that my father (Malik Rahat Ali) was proud of having remained his sub-editor during their days at the dailies Shahbaz and Anjam and then deputising for him as the news editor when he and Qalandar Momand were jailed. He asked me to step out of the car and hugged me. But he still didn’t answer the question.

Many years later he confided to a vice-president of his National Awami Party Pakistan (NAPP) that indeed he had written a strong critique of any proposed Soviet intervention into Pakistan. He was being treated at a Moscow hospital when a senior Soviet official came to see him and chided him about his opposition to spilling-over of hostilities into Pakistan. He stood his ground. Ajmal Khattak stood his ground based on his reading of Lenin who concluded at the end of the aforementioned quote that: “… this demand (secession), therefore, is not the equivalent of a demand for separation, fragmentation and the formation of small states. It implies only a consistent expression of struggle against all national oppression.”

He, therefore, was neither a secessionist nor was contradicting himself. To him the right of self-determination was an evolutionary stage, not just of politics or modern statehood, but of humanism.

Indeed, Ajmal Khattak’s poetry is humanism personified and transcends time and frontiers. Sa’adi Shirazi wrote that stones have been chained while dogs are let loose (sung-ha ra bastand o sugaan ra kushadand) and Faiz’s adaption of the same is well-known. However, Ajmal Khattak’s rendition of this thought in his poem - cherta che baran da Khudai da qahar waraidalay de (where it has been raining the wrath of God, is indeed my home, it is your home), makes the contrasts and ironies of our society clearer than ever to the common reader and the activist alike.

Like many leaders of his time, Ajmal Khattak was deeply influenced by Abul Kalam Azad and almost took Azad’s persona – in journalism, literary pursuits, politics, and indeed looks.

Arguably, Bacha Khan was the most influential person in Ajmal Khattak’s life. While he could not be cowed down easily, the son of Hikmat Khan Khattak, at times would succumb to Ghaffar Khan, the son of Behram Khan. Fond of psychoanalysis, including his own, Ajmal Khattak has mentioned this “weakness” of his in verse as well as personal conversations. He would allude to Bacha Khan as genius.

What is clear though is that the literary genius in Ajmal Khattak brought the Pashto poetry in sync with the modern times. He not only experimented with and improved on the prevalent forms as ghazal (sonnet) and ruba’ee (quatrain) but introduced the progressive political thought in his nazm, with a vigour and craft that puts him on par with Pablo Neruda, Sahir Ludhianvi and Faiz Ahmad Faiz.

Though cognizant of his political and literary stature, Ajmal Khattak remained down to earth till his death. At a friend’s house during hot summer days, he would sleep without air-conditioning or even a fan. This was at a time when the ruling General of the era would have gladly given him anything he asked for. But contentment was the wealth that Ajmal Khattak had amassed over the years and he would not squander that for something petty, for he was the revolutionary dervish.

Author teaches and practises Medicine at the University of Florida, USA and can be reached at

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