G.M SAYED
       BY: M.IBRAHIM JOYO

Among Opposition leaders in Pakistan, Mr. G. M. Sayed has remained the longest period under detention after independence 14 years and two months, (Total about 30 years in all his life Jail) to be exact. He has passed almost every second day of his life Pakistan in jail or under house arrest. Why is it so? Is this man that much dangerous? Dangerous to the country and the people (or, for that matter, the people), of Pakistan? What does he want? What are his beliefs? What does he say? G. M. Sayed is also the one political leader in our midst, who has written the largest number of books, - unfortunately mostly in his mother language, Sindhi. He has produced some 45 books to –date-on more than one subject, ranging from mostly politics to pure literature. His thoughts and sentiments are, therefore no secret, and he himself never concealed them anytime and anywhere-in jail or outside, before courts of law or in public meetings, hostile or friendly. Sayed Sahib has had differences with the leaders and rulers of Pakistan and their religion-political ideologies-almost from the start. His disagreements with them have never been personal, contentious or superciliary. They have always been on principles, dignified and most deeply felt. Firstly, Sayed Sahib does not subscribe to the view that Muslims (or for that matter, Indo-Pak Muslims, or even Pak-Muslim), are a nation-in the sense in which the term “nation” is universally used in the present times. According to him, Pakistani people, or peoples, irrespective of their religious persuasions, are or can become a nation. In this he relies for support, among other considerations, on the historic declaration made by Quaid-e-Azam, the Founder of Pakistan, in his inaugural address to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan on 11th August 1947, to the effect that Muslim, in time, will cease to be Muslims in Pakistan, and Hindus will cease to be Hindus-not from religious view point but politically, etc., etc., thereby affirming most positively the great truth of modern times that Nation hood or “nationality” was a territorial concept, and not an ideological one, and that with the birth of Pakistan, a nation was born, which could and must wily-nilly call itself Pakistani nation, and should exert itself to live and behave as a nation. Secondly Sayed Sahib has never agreed with the ruling circles in Pakistan in their totalitarian methods to achieve integration of the peoples in Pakistan to form nation since through these methods, quite opposite results ensure, and such peoples and such a country, instead of uniting, split up and disintegrate. On his part he always stood most zealously for securing spontaneous and willing consent of different peoples in Pakistan to come nearer each other and live together in freely agreed arrangement of mutual acceptance and justice and thus build them into an irrevocable nation in due course. Thirdly, Sayed Sahib has always stood very strongly against priest-hood, among Muslims Islam has forbidden pries-hood totally. Muslim priest-hood like any other priest hood, Stands most doggedly in thee path of enlightenment and material progress of people in Pakistan. Where as almost all priest –hood in the world by now has either disappeared or has been forced to confine itself within its limits of religious position, Muslim priest-hook in Pakistan has, therefore, to be curbed and forced to five and function within limits, in order that the country is saved from the ravages of its cantankerous, obscurantism and frustrating harangues, which for want of any better and more useful activity, it inflicts on our credulous and ignorant masses –always and every where. Fourthly, Sayed Sahib Stand against Class rules in Pakistan which by its very nature, and in the modern social situation, has to be suppressive, exploitative and totalitarian, and therefore, the surest perpetuator of disunity, poverty and social back-wardens among the people ad a whole, positively speaking. Sayed Sahib, in this regard, stands wholly committed to secularism, Democracy and Socialism, which happen to be them very conditions of modern existence, particularly in the developing countries of the world today.