Hassan Nasir

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Hassan Nasir was a Pakistani proletariat leader and Secretary General of the banned Communist Party of Pakistan (CPP). Hasan Nasir belonged to Hyderabad (Deccan) and had fought, along with Makhdoom Mohiuddin and others, in the Telangana armed struggle. After the Partition of British India, he migrated to Pakistan and soon became, to the new ruling classes of the country, one of the most feared communists in Pakistan. He was arrested in 1960, put in a cell in the Fort and brutally tortured till he died.

He was died while under interrogation in Lahore Fort, a detention centre used by the English during British Raj in India. After his murder his mangled body was hastily buried by the police. The reports of torture were frightening and succeeded in halting the protests for several months. There was such a furore over his martyrdom that the President Ayub government had to exhume his body to try to prove the prosecution point that he had committed suicide and was not killed. The reason was that the government did not want to let remain anything reminding the people of Hasan Nasir. Today, there remains nothing of that cell, where he was killed, except a wall containing a small window. Since Hassan Nasir was a left-wing student leader he remains a youth hero in Pakistan to this day.

After Nasir’s death, his old mother, who had come from India for the burial, had made a speech at the graveside. ‘He died for a good cause,’ she had said as the tears poured down her face, ‘but I know I have many more sons who will carry on the fight for which Hassan Nasir gave up his life.’

Hassan Nasir was not just a leader but was also a revolutionary poet. His poetry, and all other records belonging to him, had been wasted by the Pakistani agencies. Today, very few of his verses survive.