The repressive regime

A group of exiles from Zia's Pakistan, living in Europe, published an Urdu magazine entitled Azadi from Amsterdam. In 1986, Azadi published a special number in which they assessed nine years of General Zia's rule. The editorial outlines the main objectives of martial law:

1. 1. To crush the movement of progressive people especially the left-wing leadership.

2. 2. To reduce the importance of democratic and popular political parties in national politics.

3. 3. To patronize right-wing political parties and student organizations to fill the political vacuum among the masses and to use them against left-wing and popular forces.

4. 4. To promote Islamic ideology and an Islamic system to obtain the above-mentioned objectives, further providing justification prolonging martial law.Footnote ¹⁵

Though many commentators would agree that these were the objectives of the Zia regime, the editors of Azadi pay specific attention to state intrusion into cultural and literary organizations, as well as intervention in student politics.Footnote ¹⁶ It is these aspects of civil society that were seen to be behind the power base of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), which was coordinating the main opposition to Zia. The small groups of left-wing parties were closely monitored and their ideological differences exploited (pro-Soviet versus pro-Mao) to prevent collective action against martial law. According to Sheikh: ‘It was the Left that suffered most during this military regime, led by General Zia Ul Haq.’Footnote ¹⁷ This focus on the left was less to do with their numerical power, but as an assertion of the ideological outlook of the regime, in which Islam was wielded with cynical force against the ‘anti-Allah Marxists’.Footnote ¹⁸

The excesses in the field of human rights, directly organized by the Zia state, have been well documented.Footnote ¹⁹ Arbitrary detention, torture, and summative justice were all aspects of the repressive apparatus that came to be used as routine for the maintenance of power. It is perhaps giving too much credence to General Zia to make him solely responsible for Islamization in Pakistan; rather, he strengthened the architecture that had been slowly developing from the time of partition.Footnote ²⁰ But what is perhaps never considered is the way in which his reforms actually strengthened the hold of summative justice, rather than the rule of sharia (Islamic law) over liberal law. The so-called Hadood ordinances, often cited as the most Islamic elements of Zia's reforms, did not strengthen the sharia courts or the ulema (religious scholars), but rather enlarged the scope of extra-judicial or patriarchal and prejudicial justice, without recourse to any form of deliberation. This created a situation in Pakistan where customary law was reinforced, in that those given or who take power in given situations can determine outcomes. Rather than creating a situation of sharia, which actually had a place since medieval times in commercial disputation, Zia's reforms created conditions of ‘mob rule’. Summative justice at the local level reflected the lack of rule of law as a principle by which to challenge the military-feudal at the top of the hierarchy.

The goal of enacting Islamic order was also the justification for suppressing dissent and discouraging demands for democracy. In fact, it is the repression of society that is most important to acknowledge and to explore, rather than raising the status of Zia's ‘Islamization’ programme into an inevitable teleology in relation to twentieth-century Muslim intellectual reformists.Footnote ²¹ These perspectives on the impact of Islam, whilst intellectually sophisticated, lack any material analysis and propose a level of consistency not present in Zia's political contortions. The multiple twists and turns that the Zia regime engaged in and the contrary nature of the general's own policy statements indicate an obsession with power and its maintenance, rather than the implementation of a coherent philosophy. There is unfortunately a lack of detailed research on particular policy domains and thus overly general claims are made about Zia's influence. This discourse on Islamization is driven by the questions raised in a post-911 comparison with 1980s Afghanistan. However, this is not necessarily the status of Pakistan in Zia's time. Indeed, part of the later resistance to Zia also came from his close allies, the Jamaat-i-Islami, who fell out with the regime due to the holding of elections in 1985.Footnote ²² If the Islamization project had been successful in the first seven years of Zia's rule, the pressure to democratize and essentially undo the power given to the ulema would have been more difficult. Yet Zia was able to quickly dismiss the religious parties, as he fundamentally relied on the feudal elite and its industrial wing.Footnote ²³ For them, the difference between authoritarianism and democracy was only a matter of calculations of continuing control and profit. In contrast to the implementation of the Islamization project, Zia was more successful in the breaking of popular and student movements on the left and opposition forces in general.

Repression and resistance

If any one event comes to symbolize the attack on civil society that the Zia regime unleashed, it is the flogging of three journalists—Nasir Zaidi, Iqbal Ahmed Jaafri, and Khawer Naim—in 1978, after having been sentenced by a military court in Lahore.Footnote ²⁴ This was a clear message to the journalist fraternity that criticism of the new regime would not be tolerated. Some newspapers retaliated by publishing blank pages in their newspapers representing that which had been repressed by the censor.Footnote ²⁵ The resistance to the military regime began almost immediately at the local level but did not take the shape of major protest until 1979–80 with Shia agitation against the Zakat and Usher ordinances. These regulations made it incumbent upon every Muslim Pakistani to give their religious donations to the state rather than to individuals or religious institutions. A large militant protest against the legislation in Islamabad in July 1980 led to a modification of the ordnances, but also demonstrated the flexibility of the regime when faced with protest.Footnote ²⁶ Nadeem Paracha astutely notes that it was the tinkering with the traditional religious structures in Sindh and Punjab that led to large-scale protests against General Zia in the early 1980s.Footnote ²⁷ For our purposes, this actually indicates how divisions were exacerbated and then exploited by Zia. As part of the religious establishment sided with the regime, other parts mobilized against it and this is also a similar pattern for the formal political parties. Even though the initial suppression of the regime had meant the PPP was put in disarray, by 1981, they had regrouped and were the backbone of the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy (MRD)—a multi-group organization with a single point agenda, neatly summed in its title. This was also the year that saw the birth of the Women's Action Forum, which was in response to the increasing use of summative punishments against women in cases of personal law.Footnote ²⁸ From 1980 onwards, Amnesty International levelled charges of torture, imprisonment, and human rights abuse against the Pakistani state. It is the cases of summative justice that are most pertinent; for example, a woman, Lal Mai, was lashed in front of a crowd and 5,000 men in Liaqatpur, having been accused of adultery.Footnote ²⁹ Women and minorities thus became the main targets for an Islamically justified but, in practice, traditional use of coercive power. The social cleavages along the lines of gender, ethnicity, biraderi, and religion became instruments by which Zia maintained power, funded by the United States of America through the Afghanistan conflict and with the support of the feudal and business elite.

There is no doubt that the MRD was led by the PPP and that it found its rural base in Sindh, and this plays a large part in the disquiet felt amongst activists about the role of Punjab in the agitation. In the summer of 1983, after months of successful agitation, Zia combined repression with political acumen. As Kennedy notes, though with a focus on Sindh: ‘Most of the thousands arrested as a consequence of the MRD disturbances were members of the PPP (72%), the Sindh Awami Tehrik (13%), and the Jiye Sindh Mahaz (10%)’.Footnote ³⁰ This does not account for activists from the left who were also arrested, such as from the Qaumi Mahaz-e-Azadi (a left-wing political party led by Miraj Mohammed Khan, ex-minister and leader of National Students Federation (NSF) during his student life), the Mazdoor Kissan Party, and various left-wing student organizations including the People (PSF, Peoples Party students wing) Students Federation, the National Students Organisation, and the NSF. This focus on Sindh needs to be tempered by the extent to which Zia was able to use the elite and ultra-nationalist forces, once martial law was lifted in 1985. For example, it was a Sindhi who was chosen to be the first prime minister and many Sindhis were co-opted into the parliament. Even radical Sindhi nationalist G. M. Syed supported Zia, in the naïve hope that his policies would break up Pakistan!Footnote ³¹ It is the lack of a similar uprising in Punjab that is often the reason for considering the opposition there to be quiescent to the Zia regime. Analytically, it is more appropriate to consider that the Punjabi landed and business elite were incorporated before those in Sindh, and the resistance in Sindh was quelled through ethnic co-option and division. The rise of the MQM is the case in point, as it involved the creation of a new ethnicity out of a disparate group of migrants from all parts of British India to Karachi. It was sponsored by Zia and emerged as a potent political force in the 1980s as a way of controlling Sindhi nationalism.Footnote ³²

The 1985 parliament is also an example of ethnic compromise at the expense of the ulema (who were opposed to the formation of a parliament) and a renewal of military power, as Ayesha Siddiqa pithily states: ‘The coercive capacity of the military worked very well on these parliamentarians, who had major personal stakes which they could not afford to compromise for the sake of democracy.’Footnote ³³ Landed and business classes were able to seamlessly transfer between military rule and democracy. The prime minister of Pakistan at the time of writing this article (2015), Nawaz Sharif, came into politics in 1985 under Zia's patronage.Footnote ³⁴ There is much credence to the view that Zia tinkered with the social order rather than creating wholesale Islamization,Footnote ³⁵ but this implies a relatively benign account of what was a harsh and cruel regime. Rather, it make sense to consider Zia's rule as a series of measures that were designed to maintain power internally and in relation to American interest. The issue of women is an apt point. The Hadood ordinance as they relate to women's bodies are misogynistic and reflect one of the central pillars of Zia's Islamization programme. However, as Talbot notes, Zia also created a National Council on Population planning, had a female Cabinet secretary, as well as a women's division, and reserved seats for women in provincial and assembly elections. To deal with traditional female constriction, in terms of inheritance, shaming, and marriage to the Quran, a Crimes Ordinance was passed.Footnote ³⁶ These article exercises did not result in any change in women's lives; rather, the Hadood ordinances, as has been well documented, continue to result in repression. However, the reforms did appear to an American audience as illustrating their influence over Pakistan in relationship to issues such as ‘women's rights’.Footnote ³⁷ These manoeuvres illustrate that Zia's main concern was the maintenance of power so compromises in policy formulation were necessary and inevitable in achieving this goal.

Dissent and dissonance

Literature in general, and poetry particularly, with its ability to convey multiple meanings, became a vehicle for expression of dissent against the Zia regime. As repression grew more pernicious, thus the voices of poets became more important. Faiz Ahmad Faiz, perhaps the poet laureate of the progressive movement in post-colonial South Asia, went into exile to Beirut. Habib Jalib's staunch anti-Zia poetry landed him in jail for long periods during military rule. Ironically, although both were from Punjab, neither wrote extensively in Punjabi. The rationale for this was two-fold. First, the national language of Pakistan being Urdu, it was considered the most widely available common language with which to address an audience. Second, a particular perspective deriving from a specific legacy of the Indian communist party was the need to speak and educate in the most advanced language of the time. In that sense, Urdu was (and still remains in West Pakistan) more technically developed and the preferred language of the middle class. However, as we have argued elsewhere, this approach to language ignores the essential class dimension linked to those who speak and promote Urdu and on the left comes out of an elitist socialist vision.Footnote ³⁸ Thus, while Jalib and Faiz are extremely important in the struggle against Zia, it is appropriate to recognize all the languages of the poets who resisted the authoritarian regime.

In the context of the ethnic strife that General Zia exploited, it is not surprising that progressive writers such as Ahmad Salim neglected the resistance literature in Punjabi that emerged in the Zia period.Footnote ³⁹ Whilst acknowledging that Sindhi provided a vehicle against political suppression in the context of the MRD,Footnote ⁴⁰ Salim lyrically states: ‘Punjabi literature, during previous periods of Martial Law does not give any news about these incidents or their outcomes in the social and political decline of the country. Collectively the waters of literature were calm, it is a great surprise that not even a pebble disturbed this situation.’Footnote ⁴¹ In some senses, these words echo the sentiments of well-known writer Fehmida Riaz, who, in her pioneering book Pakistan: Literature and Society, published in 1986, articulates the need for a focus on regional languages, but indicates that Punjabi has not been able to articulate resistance against Zia.Footnote ⁴² Fehmida Riaz herself, as editor of the Urdu magazine Awaaz, went into exile in the mid-1980s after being charged with sedition, only returning to Pakistan in 1988 after Zia's death. Whilst wanting to articulate a coalition of regional languages, Riaz is actually mostly interested in Sindhi in relation to Punjabi, with one articulating resistance and the other oppression. This simple dichotomy is only punctuated by the need for a renewal of an Urdu literature of resistance, which will come from the partition migrants (mohajirs).Footnote ⁴³ Though this was a relatively naïve outlook with respect to the politics that are subsequently developed by the MQM, it reflects the ways in which the writing on resistance literature also falls into the traps of ethnic strife. Though Salim and Riaz are offering a progressive perspective that takes as its starting point resistance to the repressive regime, they inadvertently promote precisely the type of ethnic conflict that Zia's policies were generating. Our intention is not to question the fact that the Punjabi literary elite, writing in Urdu, did not acquiesce to martial law and that this is a reflection of its class position, as primarily urban and upper-middle-class. Our contention is that resistance against General Zia was not to be found in these formal literary circles, as it was this particular urban class that was most susceptible to being incorporated into the authoritarian regime, regardless of sectarian or ethnic boundaries. Where this approach by the state was not as successful was in the control of those who were not subject to state patronage and those who actively resisted. Ahmad Salim also acknowledges that this is the case when it comes to poetry, citing writers such as Mushtaq Soofi, Nasreen Anjum Bhatti, and Sara Shagufta. Even when it comes to prose, he mentions Fakhar Zaman's novel Bandhiwaan and Afzal Ahsan Randhawa's novel Suraj Grehan, published in 1985.Footnote ⁴⁴ Salim's overall negative assessment may be due to the relatively minor impact of these writers and their publications, but perhaps also due to his focus on the major cities of Lahore and Faislabad, whereas our research indicates that, in the smaller cities and towns of Punjab, a different story of literary resistance emerges.Footnote ⁴⁵ Sahiwal and Pakpattan, during the Zia period, offer a vibrant culture of resistance poetry, closely related to anti-martial-law activism. Crucially, the class of these activists and their engagement in Punjabi moves our attention away from those who were compromised and incorporated into the martial-law regime.

Activist poiesis

Our argument that the Zia regime was most interested in targeting those activists who were least invested in the political structure, regardless of ethnicity, is well illustrated when considering writers and poets. Zahoor Hussain Zahoor was a well-known supporter of the PPP who would recite at rallies and gatherings; indeed, it is his poem that titles and opens this article. In 1979, he was arrested and tried by a military court on the charge of reciting a Punjabi poem, ‘Balle Balle’ (‘Yippee, Yippee’), in a public gathering in Okara. He was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment. At the same rally, Rao Sikander, a PPP leader, and retired General Tika Khan, a critic of the regime, also spoke. Rao Sikander was also jailed, but only for four days, and this discrepancy went on to be incorporated into one of Zahoor's poems (see In Prison). This is not to deny that the leadership of the PPP was not subject to repression under Zia's rule, but that this was mitigated by their elite status, whereas this was not the case for these activist-poets. Indeed, it is responding to the repressive conditions of the time that motivates and generates the poetry that we are interested in. It is the silencing of these oppositional voices both through the courts and through control of publishing that is most noticeable in the Punjab context. Punjabi activist Iqbal Qaiser was jailed in 1983 pending investigation on the charge of anti-national sentiment, the evidence for which was reciting a poem he had penned about Bhagat Singh. Even when not jailed, writers such as Abid Ameeq could not find publishers for their poems; indeed, his collected poems, Mochi Gate, from the period remained unpublished.Footnote ⁴⁶ Even the poems from the time of the 1857 rebellion that took place at Gogera and was documented by A. D. Ijaz was banned from publication during Zia's period. It is clear that the space for public debate and gatherings, of which mushaira (poetry recitals) were a popular aspect, became a target for state agencies. The general suppression of the Zia period is found in specific form in relation to poets and writers. The rationale for this is neatly summarized by Dr Mubarak Ali: ‘They realised that they would lose the struggle against the state and its institutions, but in spite of this fact, the movements of resistance continued to oppose suppression and to sustain the hopes of the people that change was possible. In this way, their defeat was their victory’Footnote ⁴⁷—a point also made in poetic form by Zahoor in the poem that opens this article.

There is no doubt that General Zia's policies of ethnic, ‘divide and rule’ meant that the Punjabi literary class had greater access to the resources of the military state, but availability does not prove culpability. Perhaps Ustad Daman's case illustrates this point well. In his biography, as told by Tanveer Zahoor, Ustad Daman was invited to the wedding of Choudhry Zahoor Elahi's son.Footnote ⁴⁸ Elahi, himself was a leading member of the Punjabi feudal class and, as such, had also invited General Zia to the wedding. Ustad Daman and Zia were kept apart, as, by this time, Daman's anti-martial-law poem was very popular:

According to Tanveer Zahoor, General Zia knew about the poem and, when he found out that Ustad Daman was at the wedding, he told Zahoor Elahi that he wished to meet the poet. During that meeting, General Zia requested Ustad Daman to recite the poem about his rule; Daman flatly refused, with the excuse that a wedding ceremony was not an appropriate place for such poetry and that he would be happy to recite it at a public rally. More significantly, Daman has also said to have retorted: ‘General Sahib, I'm not a radio that you can just push a button and listen to, just like one minute you push and listen to Radio Lahore or you push another button and listen to Radio Jalandhar.’Footnote ⁵⁰ This defiance in the face of intimate power is also found in the account of Daman's last week of life. The governor of Punjab of that time, General Ghulam Jilani Khan, visited Daman in Services Hospital in Lahore and inquired about this health. He refused to talk to the governor and rejected offers of special treatment or to take the money that the governor offered him. Daman's own stature as a poet and humbleness in living meant that he was able to resist incorporation.

Punjabi literary activists in this era were particularly targeted for being anti-national, due to the association of the language with Sikhs and therefore India.Footnote ⁵¹ Najam Hussain Syed—probably the most prolific and certainly the most respected modern Punjabi literary figure—was removed from his position as head of the Punjabi Department at Punjab University. As Rahman describes: ‘Najam's secular and leftist reputation made the department suspect in the eyes of his ideological opponents.’Footnote ⁵² In his place, a new breed of right-wing Punjabi college teachers, often members of the Jamat-i-Islami, came to occupy positions as lecturers. This further emphasized the close connection between Zia and the Punjabi urban middle class. As part of the strategy of sponsoring sectarian division and due to the control of the Jamaat at Punjab University, the 1980s witnessed a purge of leftist professors. Indeed, the Oriental College in Lahore, where Punjabi is still taught, was dominated by right-wing forces. Their main attempt was to place the language into the service of the divisions being fostered by General Zia. Research into the multiplicity of spoken Punjabi and an ideology that it was not capable of being used as the language of governance and trade worked well to place it as a relic of a past time. Tied into the reform of religious institutions, language reform meant an assertion of Urdu, as part of a regulation of popular practices. As a process, Zia's reforms have had a huge impact on contemporary West Punjab, where the urban middle class (now a sizeable portion of the country) have abandoned Punjabi, Siraiki, and Putohari in favour of Urdu.

Those based in Lahore had access to various groups of people who could support him and literary figures such as Najam Syed came from a class background that afforded some protection. In contrast, in the rural towns of Sahiwal and Pakpattan, the impact of Zia's repression, whilst targeted at civil society and educational institutions, had greater effect. For example, the vibrant political atmosphere centred on Government College Sahiwal in the early to mid-1970s was in for a rude shock with the introduction of martial law. This took a number of forms. First, the college was closed for the best part of a year while the military established itself. Alongside this, venues such as Café De Rose, where students, intellectuals, and professors would gather for more informal and political/literary discussions, closed as the bans on public gatherings took force. Indeed, it was these spaces that also became the hunting ground for state agencies looking to clamp down on left-wing and anti-martial-law activists. Students were arrested and professors posted to remote areas as a way of disrupting political activism. We offer two case studies to illustrate this general scenario—one of a student (Qaswar Butt) and the other of two professors at the college (Ghulam Rasool Azad and Abid Ameeq) to illustrate the various contours of state suppression.

Qaswar Butt was the general secretary of the Government College Sahiwal's student union, on the platform of the NSF—a body that was locally promoting Punjabi—and, at the national level, a left-wing challenger to the Jamiaat. Qaswar Butt was also a well-known Punjabi poet, having won the college award for best poet in 1976.Footnote ⁵³ He had barely turned 15 years old when he was arrested by the military regime and was imprisoned in Sahiwal Central Jail. This was only the first time of many that he would spend time in jail due to his political activities and ideological commitments. As a political prisoner, he was able to keep his comrades and friends aware of the conditions in the jail. Indeed, the local media were able to follow the activities of political prisoners. To curb this communication, Qaswar was sent to Jhelum Jail, which was at that time an eight-hour journey from Sahiwal, to ensure he was kept away from his fellow comrades. An example of his poetry is given here:

As freedom of expression was subject to state suppression, some writers did not speak openly against military rule. In response to the banning of direct criticism, many writers turned to symbolism as a way of expressing their discontent with the regime. Qaswar's poetry is an example of this turn in Punjabi poetry. During this period, symbolic poetry and prose became popular among the writers as well as among readers. The method, as stated by writer and activist Amin Mughul, was:

It is the combination of activist and writer that is an essential part of the politics of this era. Amin Mughal was arrested multiple times, as a political activist of the Awami National Party, ultimately leaving for exile to London in 1984. On 5 March 1978, the editor of the Daily Musawat, a paper associated with the PPP, SGM Badur Uddin, and the paper's printer and renowned poet, Zaheer Kashmiri, were given jail sentences of a year.Footnote ⁵⁶ Any publication or writer associated with progressive politics was subject to incarceration and military judgment.

To some extent, whether the form was symbolic or one of direct confrontation, it led to targeting by agencies of the state. An example of a more direct critique of the regime can be found in the writings of the previously mentioned Zahoor Hussain Zahoor from Pakpattan. In the jail cell, he found inspiration and penned this poem:

Zahoor was a poet in the vein of Ustad Daman, relishing the stage at political rallies with simple messages of resistance and hope. Here the style of Zahoor was not in the vein of Faiz Ahmed Faiz, where radical thought and progressive ideas were one level of interpretation.Footnote ⁵⁹ Rather, there is a direct confrontation with what the poet views as social hypocrisy. This is more akin to the style of Bulleh Shah, the eighteenth-century poet, who brings together contradictions and then negates them.Footnote ⁶⁰ Indeed, it is these medieval poets such as Shah Hussain and Bulleh Shah who become the motifs behind which political poetry was hidden. Even though activists were in and out of jail, Qaswar Butt and his comrades founded the Sahiwal Academy in the mid-1980s to carry out cultural activities as a way of voicing their criticism. The annual Shah Hussain Mela was one of the main functions organized by the Academy. In 1985, eight years after martial law, the usual chant in honour of the poet saint Shah Hussain, Madho Laal, Madho Laal, was modified to Poore ho ge atth saal, Madho Laal, Madho Laal (Eight Years Have Passed, Madho Laal, Madho Laal), which refers to the broken promises of a return to democracy that marked Zia's rule.Footnote ⁶¹

Resistance poetry in Southern Punjab and specifically in Sahiwal draws upon a historicity in which the present is collapsible into any particular moment from the past.Footnote ⁶² From medieval poets previously cited to couplets or dohlas performed as part of the oral tradition that retells the heroic tale of Ahmad Khan Kharral in his battle against the British in 1857, the contemporary poet draws on a wide range of sources.Footnote ⁶³ Recited at political gatherings, religious fairs, and weddings, the oral tradition offers a literary sensibility closely related to the rhythms and tempo of rural life. In that sense, the writings of the poets that we reproduce here are only a snapshot of the extent and multiplicity of the individual poem, given its multiple forms in multiple performances and further only a fraction of that produced, as much of it remains ephemeral. Furthermore, when it comes to political poetry, those poets who were jailed or silenced by the regime were not written or recorded. The traditional bards—mirasis, ras-dharis, dom, and others—consistently provide social commentary that is of the moment. It is in the everyday spaces of public gatherings, such as weddings and fairs, that the political critique of the marginal is most voiced. As Pamment notes with respect to the practices of the bhand (performing duo), during the 2008 anti-military movement: ‘[the bhand] while increasingly banished from the realms of the political glitterati, continues to provide a model to those who know they must speak back from a position of weakness, offering a marginalized and yet alternative voice of political critique.’Footnote ⁶⁴ These are not necessarily in the form of a direct criticism as the multiplicity of jokes about Zia bear witness to.Footnote ⁶⁵ Perhaps more significantly, it is not possible to find an archive of this cultural output, as the ubiquity of recording technology was not present. The poetry in this article therefore reflects those who were in some established positions, in colleges, or with access to printing facilities. In some senses, there are the organic intellectuals who, in their closeness to the poetic tradition, suppression at the hand of the state, and political awareness, were able to reflect the broader conditions of the people.

Once the Zia regime had banned student unions in 1984, the next level of resistance to be tackled was that of the teachers. Rather than sacking teachers, which would have meant confrontation with the unions, two strategies were adopted. The first was the takeover of teachers’ associations by the Jamaat-i-Islami—a right-wing religious party supporting the regime. The second strategy was to post ‘troublesome’ teachers to remote areas. Professor Ghulam Rasool Azad, one of the key protagonists of anti-martial-law activism at Sahiwal College, was the main target of the state agencies. He was posted to district Attock—a distance of 500 kilometres—but, even there, he maintained his role as an activist. A couplet from his poetry sums up his approach to politics:

Another Professor of Sahiwal College, but this time of English, who suffered from maltreatment was Abid Ameeq. Writing in his native Saraiki, Ameeq's writings against General Zia were written in a direct and confrontational manner, as Mahmood Awan comments: ‘Ameeq has artistically used literary directness and conversational style to shape his thoughts and construct his poems. It is resisto-political poetry of its own kind, so different from his other contemporaries.’Footnote ⁶⁶ Ameeq was arrested, while at home, and the events of the police climbing into his sleeping household scared his wife and young family. Indeed, in his poem The Fearful Night (a Story of 1979), he relates the night's events and the long-term psychological impact they had. After serving time in Sahiwal Jail, he was transferred from Sahiwal College to Narah Kanjorh—a 22-hour journey from his home, with no direct train, bus, or road connection. As he relates: ‘The single building college lacked basic amenities and there were more snakes than students in the grounds.’Footnote ⁶⁷ Ameeq is, in many ways, an unsung poet of the 1980s and here we offer a selection of some short poems that relate to the politics of the era:

Though ignored by the literary elite, the poetry of the teachers and activists lived on in the politics and the minds of the activists who were inspired by words that matched the material hardships they were facing at the hands of the military regime. The poet we wish to conclude our article with was greatly influenced by the Punjabi movement in Sahiwal, reading his first poem in 1976 at Government College. Coming from a peasant background, Talib Jatoi went on to publish three books of poems and still has a following in the region. Though not jailed himself, he would smuggle the poetry of Zahoor Hussain Zahoor and Qaswar Butt out of Sahiwal Jail and, when Ghulam Rasool Azad and Abid Ameeq were forced to leave Sahiwal due to state orders, Jatoi penned the following poem: