One hundred hours of solitude: A Pakistani peacenik recounts the India-Pakistan war

Every Tuesday, I deliver three lectures. I am teaching an additional module this semester to earn some extra money. Hence, it was already an extra-busy Tuesday on May 6, on top of which was the daily grind of posting articles on  Jeddojehad (Struggle), which I edit. 

On arriving home that Tuesday, I dozed off on my sofa about 9pm, making sure to put my phone on silent. The next morning, I found a deluge of WhatsApp messages on my phone asking: “Are you safe?” 

People were expecting India to attack, but not to attack Lahore. Since 1971, the pattern had always been to lock horns in my unfortunate ancestral land, Jammu and Kashmir (J&K). I looked up BBC Urdu, which confirmed Lahore was under attack. 

Ironically, the first voice message I heard was from my nephew, an undergrad student at Islamabad’s Quaid-e-Azam University: “Uncle, India has attacked Lahore. All okay with you?” I quipped: “I have embraced martyrdom. Greetings from al-Jannah. Don’t trust the mullahs … al-Jannah is not as nice as they say it is”. 

I smiled thinking my reply might tickle his confessional sensibilities, not realising this would be my last hearty smile for three days. As a peacenik, my hundred hours of solitude had begun. 

Fundamentalisms

Having answered messages and emails from friends and relatives about my wellbeing, I began scrolling through social media. Pakistani social media users were spewing venom against India. Indians were paying back in kind. 

I do not have a television at home to deliberately avoid Pakistani news channels. Their coverage of the war convinced me to stick to my stance until these channels are banned. Facebook clips of Indian news channels convinced me that the Hindu-Taliban ruling India had also denuded its media of any decency. 

My thoughts turned to the late Marxist-feminist poet, Fahmida Riaz (1946-2018). When living under Pakistan’s General Zia-ul-Haq dictatorship became impossible, Riaz went into exile in New Delhi in the 1980s. 

At the time, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was gaining ground as a Hindu fundamentalist (Hindutva) project. But the Indian National Congress (INC) — reduced by then to dynastic politics centred on the Nehru-Gandhis clans — was already playing the soft-Hindutva card. 

I had the privilege of meeting and listening to Indian Marxist academic Aijaz Ahmad, as part of my PhD fieldwork in New Delhi. During a seminar at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), he stated, to the amusement of the students who had packed the auditorium: “The BJP is programmatically Hindu fundamentalist, the Congress is pragmatically Hindu fundamentalist.”

Disillusioned by the INC’s fake secularism and concerned over growing Hindutva, Riaz penned an immortal poem, which peaceniks on the Pakistani side send to Indian counterparts every time the BJP inflicts a new brutality on the religious minorities there. An excerpt reads:

So it turned out you are just like us!
Where were you hiding all this time, buddy?
That stupidity, that ignorance
we wallowed in for a century —
look, it arrived at your shores too!....

Yep. We’ve been there for a while now.
Once you are there,
once you’re in the same hell-hole,
keep in touch and tell us how it goes!

WhatsApp was not banned. I was able to speak to my friend Sushovan Dhar in Calcutta. He reported that war hysteria had taken grip across all of India. We agreed to jointly write an essay for Jacobin, but concluded the war would not last long. 

Comrade! You too?

I knew that as long as the war dragged on, peaceniks would remain highly isolated, marginalised, trolled, estranged. What I did not expect was that the left would contribute to this solitude.

I was expecting a vague position from the Communist Party of India (CPI) and the Communist Party of India–Marxist (CPI-M). Given that the CPI and CPI-M have been largely reduced to electoral politics and lacking in any militancy, I understood that the two would not be willing to take a stance that could hand Hindutva a whip with which to lash the left in the lead up to the elections. I was proven miserably wrong: the mainstream Indian left was far from vague — it unabashedly supported India’s war on Pakistan, on the boringly familiar pretext of waging a “war on terror”. 

But it was not the mainstream Indian left that made me feel personally betrayed; I was ready for their position. It was the fact that some Pakistani groups also started beating the war drums. There were a flurry of statements by noted “burger leftists” — a popular satirical term that makes reference to the burger-eating (affluent) classes — busy outdoing the mainstream warmongers cluttering the television screens. 

In disgust, on May 8, the third day of war, I posted a statement on Facebook, “Border Skirmishes Expose the ‘Revolutionaries’.” I wrote (originally in Urdu):

Wars — even when they happen to be as prolonged and destructive as the world wars — come to an end. As a socialist, one sticks by the internationalist viewpoint of [Vladimir] Lenin, Rosa [Luxemburg], [Karl] Leibknecht, and [Leon] Trotsky. It is indeed imperative. 

It is possible that one may be bombed to death during a war. However, the stance you take chases you even in death. India-Pakistan, most likely, will not go beyond border skirmishes. 

Pity! Only a few missiles were exchanged and certain “revolutionaries” have already exposed the Second International [pro-war stance] deeply embedded in them.  

I stopped wasting time on social media and instead read Maxim Gorky’s biography. I had not been able to finish this masterpiece for ages. Half-read, it lay on my bedside table. I also dug out some peace poetry. 

Déjà vu! I had already written a piece on the subject of war 15 years ago, “Hawks and Poets”, which I translated to Urdu for Jeddojehad and published on LINKS International Journal of Socialist Renewal. Written in 2010 after the Mumbai terror attack, it detailed the war-like situation that emerged between India and Pakistan. Back then, the left had behaved decently on both sides. 

True, the Pakistani left is very small; it is a marginal force in politics. It is also equally true that the Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign (PTUDC) took a principled position during the recent four-day war. But it was some of the left stalwarts, capable of writing in English and disseminating their works via international networks built up as a result of their urban middle-class backgrounds littered with degrees from metropolitan universities, who came to represent the position of the Pakistani left. 

More visible than the PTUDC and the countless individuals who are members of no group, these stalwarts appeared everywhere in the global left-wing media. Internationally, the “burger left” took a careful position. Domestically however, especially in their Urdu-language posts, they lent full ideological support to the Pakistani state’s jingoism. The examples are too numerous to document. 

Left-wing myopia

While better-informed Indian comrades and peaceniks are suitably placed to analyse the Indian left’s role during this recent India-Pakistan war, I will outline the position of these revolutionaries on this side of the border. Their support for Pakistan was basically justified on the following counts. 

One, India is the aggressor. Ironically, the same revolutionaries lent full support to Russian President Vladimir Putin, when Russia invaded Ukraine. Two, fascist India is collaborating with Zionist Israel. Proof? The fact that India fired Israeli drones at Pakistan. 

Ridiculously, an imperial twist was given to the position of these revolutionaries. India was portrayed as a US ally, while Pakistan a regional David patronised by a benign global Goliath, China. That China has $24 billion in trade with Israel or aids Israel in building settlements did not bother these revolutionaries. 

Most problematically, every crime of the Pakistani regime was whitewashed. Yes, it is true that India resorted to aggression instead of diplomacy. Notably, the left in India is divided over whether to characterise the BJP as “fascist”. But even if the BJP is fascist, the job of the Pakistani left is to hold their state accountable, before pointing fingers at New Delhi. 

Here, the establishment was giving jihadi outfits a pat on the back, at least those in Pakistan-administered Jammu Kashmir (PaJK). Moreover, an impetuous Indian response objectively helps Pakistan’s internally besieged hybrid regime; this is clearly evident in how the military has regained its lost popularity.

Jihad re-activated

Living in London as an exile after the publication of her book, Military Inc, Ayesha Siddiqua is a noted expert on Pakistan’s military. In an article for the Indian website, The Print (not-accessible in Pakistan without VPN), she noted in February: 

One knowledgeable source in Islamabad said that Rawalpindi is getting ready to restart militancy — at a comparatively lower but noticeable scale — after winters to force India to negotiate on Balochistan. 

Pakistan is facing an armed separatist movement in Balochistan, geographically the largest of the four provinces and bordering both Iran and Afghanistan. China has built a huge port in Gwadar, a seaside town in Balochistan, making the province an important link in China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). 

Pakistan has repeatedly accused India of arming and training the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), a militant outfit responsible for several guerrilla attacks on security installations and Chinese workers in Balochistan. Claiming that Pakistan’s present army chief, General Asim Munir, was reversing the policy of appeasing India pursued by his predecessor, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, Siddiqua noted: 

It’s not just that Munir is more traditionally hawkish toward India, he needs to build his image of being steadfast and become more likable among his soldiers and officers, who are distracted due to the Imran Khan factor. While Munir has the entire country, its judiciary, civil bureaucracy, the media, and the political system firmly under his thumb, none of this has brought him the popularity that he imagined was possible.

In the absence of any empirical evidence, it is hard to state with any certainty whether Pakistan sponsored the Pahalgam terrorist attack. Likewise, one can not substantiate or verify Siddiqua’s claims. However, a resumption of jihadist propaganda, with clear state-patronage, in PaJK has been ominously visible since 2024. 

Jihadist outfits and fundamentalist groups were initially deployed to counter the mass movement against hyper-inflationary utility bills that convulsed PaJK in 2023-24. This anti-neoliberal intifada successfully forced the state to cut electricity prices. 

After initial agitation against the secular nationalists and Marxists leading the movement, jihadist outfits remained in the public sphere. Their public presence from autumn 2024 onwards was noticeable, especially after a relative dormancy of roughly six years. Their gun-toting militants held public rallies, despite a ban on brandishing weapons. 

Earlier this year, PaJK Prime Minister Anwar ul Haq twice suggested the resumption of jihad: in an interview with a second-rate TV channel; and in the company of Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Munir, when they gathered in the PaJK capital of Muzaffarabad to observe “Kashmir Solidarity Day”.

The day is observed under Islamabad’s tutelage every year on February 5. It is usually centred in Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, with the aim of catching the eye of foreign embassies. This year, a grand show was staged in Muzaffarabad instead. Anwar’s plea for jihad was not replayed on mainstream Pakistani channels. 

An equally hush-hush affair was the “Kashmir Solidarity and Hamas Operation Al Aqsa Flood” conference, also held on February 5 in the scenic PaJK town of Rawalakot. Organised under the auspices of the previously unknown Rawalakot Civil Society, the event hosted a Hamas delegate. Notably, Rawalakot is a hub for radical politics; Marxists and secular nationalists dominate the streets and student politics there. 

Talha Saif, the younger brother of Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) founder Masood Azhar, was drafted to mobilise support for the conference. One of the targets hit by Indian missiles on May 6 was a JeM premise in Bahawalpur, which killed ten members of Azhar’s family and four JeM fighters. Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT, renamed Jamaat-ud-Dawa) and Sipah-e-Sahaba commanders also publicly rallied support for the Rawalakot conference, held at Sabir Shaheed Stadium.

As if to top it all off, General Munir recalled the idiomatic “Two-Nation Theory” in his address to a convention of Pakistani expatriates in Islamabad on April 16. The theory is based on the implicit notion that Hindus and Muslims are eternal foes. It was deployed by the Pakistani ruling classes to justify the creation of Pakistan in 1947. His speech, undoubtedly venomous and highly problematic, drew the ire of Indian media hawks. 

In short, ominous signs of escalation were appearing, even if inadvertently. Unfortunately, facts in this post-truth period hardly matter, even for some revolutionaries.  

War hysteria temporarily ends alienation

On the second day of the war, May 7, I spoke to a worker I have known for a few years. He often complains about his economic problems when I go to his workplace. He is a paragon of piety and faith. 

Like everyone else, he started talking about the India-Pakistan war and said a few jingoistic things. I countered his arguments. The next moment, he was criticising the “leadership” that had brought this war on the people of Pakistan. He knew the post-war period would aggravate the economic situation. 

After leaving his workplace and pondering what had occurred, I wrote on Facebook (slightly edited):

While it is an old wisdom that jingoistic nationalism takes hold of people at the start of war, this wisdom is only descriptive. Nationalism at this stage helps workers and disempowered people overcome their alienation and estrangement caused by capitalism. Capitalism atomises them, especially in a country such as Pakistan, where unionisation is non-existent. 

Workers both create and fear capitalist bosses, simultaneously; these bosses appear like compatriots at the start of war and, for a while, all of them — workers and bosses, military generals and soldiers — apparently become one united whole. 

That this is an illusion is perhaps known to the workers and soldiers. However, the pent-up anger against their own bosses is vented against the “enemy”. A sort of catharsis which further soothes the feelings of suspended alienation/estrangement.

Neverending war

On the morning of May 9, I heard a thud. It came from a distance away, but close enough for my windows to shake. A missile? A drone? I shuddered. Another to follow? I froze for a while, physically and mentally. 

I decided to go to my office, even though the university had gone online. “Come-what-may,” I thought and started brewing my coffee. Fatalism is the last escape in such situations. 

Walking to my office, I thought of Gaza and felt embarrassed over all the “are you safe?” messages, my own numbness caused merely by a thud. The next day, after the announcement of a ceasefire, I asked my students their thoughts during these one hundred hours of madness. I wanted to know if my teachings had any effect. They all said they too were thinking of Gaza. For a second time, an inexplicable numbness paralysed me.    

The war is apparently over for now, but it has not stopped for peaceniks. Next month, Pakistan will raise its military budget by 13%. Debt servicing — Pakistan remains on the brink of bankruptcy — and military spending already consumes the lion’s share of the budget. 

News channels and social media users are busy glorifying victory over India. Meanwhile, my Jeddojehad colleague, Harris Qadeer, based in Rawalakot, is facing police harassment. Twice detained by police during the four long days of war, he was quickly released both times when local civil society and journalists intervened. His arrest was in violation of the law — laws which themselves are unjust. 

Harris is a voice of peace and socialism, and one of the finest journalists we have in PaJk. He was instrumental in the anti-neoliberal mass movement that convulsed PaJK last year. He is well known as a journalist and an activist. 

The daily he founded, Jadaliya (Dialectics), was shut down by the state a few years ago. During his arrest and harassment — and with memories of Jadaliya still very fresh in our minds — we wondered about the future of Jeddojehad. 

India-Pakistan wars do not last long. The two states, however, have never ended their wars on their respective citizens. The future of Jeddojehad will not be defined by an inevitable India-Pakistan war that will visit us again in a few years’ time. The fate of Jeddojehad, which both Harris and I are devoted to, will be decided by the never-ending war on free speech in Pakistan. 

We hope Jeddojehad survives. We also believe Jeddojehad will be revived by the next generation of peaceniks, even if we fail this time. Jeddojehad must go on!