Dacca: The emergence of an estimated 50,000 red-capped
peasants and workers from remote East Pakistan villages
and industrial areas, first on the streets of Dacca and
then at a massive rally, suggests a new trend in
Pakistan's left-oriented political movement spearheaded
by controversial octogenarian Moulana Hamid Khan
Bhashani's pro Peking NAP (National Awami Party).

The rally rounds off a series of vast meetings in
peasant-based centres of the province over the past year
and probably will be the last before Pakistan's December
general election. It also marked the beginning on an
organised scale of Bhashani's anti-landlord movement. It
seems it will follow the pattern of India's land-grab
movement which also has become the vogue in West
Pakistan since early this year.

The October 2 Dacca rally seems to have given the pro-
Peking NAP leaders the confidence to launch such a
serious campaign: despite uncertainties in the faction-
ridden NAP itself, some degree of political opposition
and poor weather, the rally was an impressive success.
Inner conflicts between different NAP groups came to the
fore in the course of it, with rank and file militants
raising anti-election and revolutionary slogans such as
"Long live the proletariat; We demand food before votes;
Peasants and Workers take up arms and free East Bengal".
The Moulana was nonetheless able to keep the feuding
factions together - though for how long and how
effectively is debatable.

The crowd, comprising mostly poor landless peasants,
shelterless refugees and workers, came braving veiled
threats that they would be fired on by police if they
wore red caps in Dacca and that the Moulana would plunge
them into disaster. They came with food - those who had
it - and accompanied by the women in their families.
They came not because they understood the implications
of the rally or NAP's politics, but because they knew
that someone was going to speak for them. Whether
because of the nature of the rally or because of the
foul weather, the usual groups of curious bystanders
were thin.

Bhashani for the first time categorically expressed his
party's willingness to participate in the December
elections "as a part of the struggle for the realisation
of the people's demands" and warned that the elected
government would not be allowed to back down on its
election pledges.

He also took full advantage of the situation to lash out
against the US government and appealed to the people to
"vow in the name of Allah to kick imperialism from
Pakistan's sacred soil". This echoed his statement of
September 15 on American aid to "Israeli aggressors",
and plots to bring about an Indo-Pakistan federation --
at which time he had threatened widespread action
against US citizens, goods and property in Pakistan.

The rally was followed by the NAP's central working
committee meeting which adopted an elaborate programme
for the nature and timing of the landgrab movement. The
timing appears to be a deliberate attempt to coincide
with the first session of the new national assembly
which will be elected on December 5. Meanwhile, the
committee's decision is being kept secret. So, but with
less success, are further factional worries.

One of the three major groups of NAP -- all of whom
surprisingly claim to be Maoist Naxalites -- led by
veteran communists like Toaha-Abdul Huq who are working
underground, has pulled out recently. This group,
believing in armed revolution, thinks it useless to
maintain different mass fronts. While the party has not
yet recovered from this breakaway, the other two groups
appear to have decided to remain under Moulana
Bhashani's leadership and continue their struggle to
convert it into their own line of thinking.

But Bhashani, an avowed Moslem believing in "Islamic
Socialism", does not oppose Marxism and wants to convert
his party into a mass united front of the country's
progressive forces.

Its leadership seems to have regained confidence after
the rally and if the factions can sink their differenccs
it will prove that the NAP is still a force to be
reckoned with -- perhaps second only to Sheikh Mujibur
Rahman's Awami League in East Pakistan although still
well behind in terms of mass support.

Bhashani's skill in keeping it together is vital to the
success of the anti-landlord movement, particularly as
the landlords in East Pakistan as a class are well
organised. Threatened with such a situation, the
landlords would not sit idle.

On several occasions large scale political clashes were
only narrowly avoided in West Pakistan and one militant
conservative organisation in the eastern wing harbours
the pious hope of teaching a lesson to its adversaries.
It seems that if the NAP goes ahead with its plans, the
country may well be in for one of its most turbulent
moments.