We never met. But his beloved daughter Bakhtawar gave me the book written on him by Ahmad Saleem and Nuzhat Abbas when we met at the Ayaz Melo in Hyderabad on 25 December last year. She had written the beautiful line, full of rustic sincerity “For comrade Raza Naeem, with affection!” on it.
We had never met.
It is not that there were no opportunities to meet or it had not been possible to meet. In short we didn’t meet – this word ‘in short’ is one of the most meaningful words of our dictionary.
The clear majority of the political contemporaries of Jam Saqi – who was born on 31 October 1944, 80 years ago today in a tiny village Janjhi in Chhachhro tehsil of Tharparkar – carries a common past of opposition to General Zia-ul-Haq’s martial law. The platforms may have been different. There may have a difference in selecting aspects of the opposition to the conservative Zia. The modus operandi in that struggle may have been different. But people of that generation of today who have remained in politics, among the things upon which they will remain proud, the opposition against General Zia appears to be the most pure and elevated. The arrival of that catastrophe granted the blessings of protest, resistance and revolution to a whole generation.
Therefore in the struggle against Zia’s conservative martial law people were martyred, went to jail, were whipped, suffered going underground and endured exiles as well. These eleven years were a completely tumultuous life of mankind. In the tumult of that noble life, among the countless names of both ‘illustrious’ and ‘unknown’ soldiers, one name belonged to Jam Saqi as well. But we never managed to meet each other.
Zia's jail was a prison of solitude. The Machh and Royal Fort jails were prisons of torture and abuses. But for a political prisoner like Jam Saqi, any jail is very much an honourable jail
And Jam Saqi had been caught. People are merciless; they make such criticisms that the heart is pained. Jam was a brave, true and simple revolutionary, period. What the people outside lost, gained or learned from his arrest is a totally separate chapter.
In the life of a revolutionary, especially during martial law, the boundaries of bravery and ecstasy often come together. The romance of revolution very much has the powerful capability to fly and carry one towards the sky. Showing steadfastness in jail was very much the important thing, in which Jam came up to expectation. As for those countless songs, anthems, songs and slogans like ‘your friend, my friend’ – they were merely additional things for him. However the more Jam attained a legendary figure, exactly that many beautiful words and slogans to fly his legend higher were found.
Zia-ul-Haq was deranged for a reason: the power of fundamentalism had filled every cell of him with death. He was the master of the strongest army in the Third World, and all the money from the Middle East was also in his hands, and he was such a big enemy of the communists. Just imagine that Jam was standing in front of that great dinosaur – and ‘all of that.’ Salute to such strong legs.
Yes, he was lucky in that he was saved from sharing the fate of Nazeer Abbasi, who was tortured to death by the military.
Jam Saqi was from the village of Janjhi in Tharparkar. His father Muhammad Sachal was a primary schoolteacher. He passed his Matriculation exam from Chhachhro in 1962, got his education from Sachal Sarmast Arts College Hyderabad and then did his Masters from Sindh University Jamshoro.
This Thari became political. On 3 November 1968, he founded the Sindh National Students Federation and was himself elected as the President of this revolutionary student organisation. He had also gone to jail during the periods of Yahya Khan and Ayub Khan. In these same ‘jail release’ periods, he got married to Sukhan, a girl of his village, and with whom he had two children: a son Sajjad Zaheer and a daughter Bakhtawar.
In 1971, when the military operation was begun in East Pakistan, he organised rallies against it.
Like a good man Jam totally rejected the national chauvinism imposed by the ruling classes of the Indian and Pakistani states.
A case of treason was brought against him for the first time during the martial law of Yahya Khan. He could not be arrested. This case was heard in his absence.
But Zia-ul-Haq? He was a raging monster. He sowed the seeds of bloodshed of such length and width that a whole continent was nearly destroyed. Jam Saqi was sentenced to nine years in prison with hard labour. He was also made a target of torture and to such an extent that afterwards he could not recover from disabilities his entire life.
In 1987 he was released from jail. The Ziaist jail was a prison of solitude. The Machh and Royal Fort jails were prisons of torture and abuses. But for a political prisoner, jail is very much an honourable jail. It is said that when Sukhan was informed that Jam was in solitude and under torture she could not bear it and jumped in the village well to die.
(If you ever wish to make fun of socialism, just stop and imagine those who were slain in the dark paths. Your pure conscience will silence you in their respect).
During the case in the military court, despite all the oppression and pressure, he gave rebellious and brave statements which were published in the form of two books (Tarikh Monkhe na Visareendi (History Will Never Forget Me) and Zameer Ka Qaidi (Prisoner of Conscience).
He was released. Even then we could not meet.
Then the Soviet Union exploded at the hands of its abundant blessings, so its painful growls tore apart the ears of the hearts of comrades. How big a punishment is the breaking of hope!
Who is more acquainted with the irritation of despair than the political worker of the Third World? A thick black cloud conceals the heart.
Organised people had become the beads of a broken necklace in no time. Storms had kept these pieces of cotton like a football from right to left and left to right. Some country broke, some country’s head was hanged, some party changed its symbol and slogans and some person sold away his faith. About Jam someone said he has become a preacher, someone told the story of his keeping a long beard with a flourish. But under the sway of selfishness, it went heedless.
When a big change takes place, then the parties and groups working underground are the most badly-affected.
Jam’s underground organisation was as good as dissolved. One of its leaders became so repentant of revolution and socialism that he promptly wrote down a book in opposition. The rest was broken up into pieces.
Every bourgeois party needs a resolution-writer. And who proved to be a bigger resolution-writer in our region than the communists? Someone became a secretary of the MQM, someone fell here, another fell there. Then news came about Jam Saqi that he went into the PPP. Nobody took notice; and it ought not to have been noticed as well. Some people do so much good in one jolt that they cannot be accused by any trivial clause of the law. Criticism is very much heartless, but it is perhaps also a vocation of not doing anything.
Jam died on 5 March 2018 after living 73 years filled with personal hardships.
We never met.
But I write under this essay on him what he himself used to say: “Struggle is always permanent.”