Obituary: Hasil Bizenjo — the social democrat par excellence

He fought for too long against his cancer without losing his unflinching faith in life and a system that he detested and continued to fight tooth and nail to his last breath.

This was a most resilient and committed comrade Senator Hasil Bizenjo. With his death the revolutionary generation of the 60s and 70s is now on its way out from the stage of history. It was quite amazing to see him put up a brave face in the public, despite suffering from a fatal ailment. He fought and continued to fight against his own cancer and that inflicts our body politic. Only his closest comrade Ayub knew how difficult it was to meet the expenses of trying various expensive vaccines he could not afford.

Hasil Bizenjo was the younger son of the late Mir Ghaus Bakhsh Bizenjo, who was perhaps the only statesmanlike politician in the history of Pakistan. The elder Bizenjo had an extraordinary sense of politics and played a great role in the making of 1973 Constitution.

Following in his illustrious father’s footstep, Hasil started his political career as a student activist from the platform of Democratic Students Federation (DSF).

He fought against the dictatorships of General Ayub Khan, General Zia and General Musharraf. He always remained committed to democracy, federalism, constitutional rule and people’s rights. Being a Baloch politician, he stood for the national, economic and political rights of the Baloch people.

But he never deviated from the social democratic path of the emancipation of all people. Unlike narrow nationalists, he followed a constitutional and democratic route to achieve the rights of not only Baloch people but also all the peoples of Pakistan.

Senator Hasil was a great supporter of peace in South Asia and opposed terrorism, religious extremism, parochialism and jingoism. Like Mr Jinnah and Mir Ghaus Bizenjo, he wanted equal rights for the minorities. He stood with working class movements and was a champion of democratic socialism.

At the peak of his political career, he was nominated by the whole opposition to contest the election for the Chairmanship of the Senate since the opposition parties were in a comfortable majority in the upper house. It was a great day of shame that after showing its majority in the beginning of the session, the opposition ranks broke with the opposition’s mandate and a most principled candidate was defeated. That was a sad reflection on the character of our parliamentarians and their leaders. But the speech that Hasil delivered on his defeat will go down in our parliamentary history as a beacon of light.

In his last days he was quite keen to bring together all the left-oriented democrats and persuaded me to write a broad-based progressive platform for a broader struggle of the oppressed people’s of Pakistan. In his untimely death, he leaves behind a rich legacy of progressive politics and we are proud of him.