Pakistan Socialist Party
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Pakistan Socialist Party
|
|
|---|---|
| Leader | Mohammed Yusuf Khan, Mobarak Sagher |
| Founded | January 29, 1948 |
| Dissolved | 1958 |
| Headquarters | 2, Terrace de Temple, Ramchander Temple Road, Karachi |
| Newspaper | Socialist Weekly |
| Youth wing | Pakistan Socialist Party Youth |
| Membership (1956) | 1,250–3,000 |
| Ideology |
Secularism Socialism |
| Political position | Left-wing |
| International affiliation | Asian Socialist Conference |
| Colors | red |
The Pakistan Socialist Party was a political party in Pakistan. It was formed out of the branches of the Indian Socialist Party in the areas ceded to the new state of Pakistan. The PSP failed to make any political breakthrough in Pakistani politics. Being a secular socialist party, which had strongly opposed the creation of the state Pakistan, the PSP found itself politically isolated and with little mass appeal. The party was labelled as traitors and kafirs by its opponents. The PSP found it difficult to compete with the Islamic socialism that Liaquat Ali Khan professed to in 1949.
As of 1956, the party claimed that have 3,000 members. A more realistic account, however, would lie somewhere around 1,250. PSP was a member of the Asian Socialist Conference. The PSP youth wing was called 'Pakistan Socialist Party Youth', which was recognised by the International Union of Socialist Youth as a 'co-operating organisation'.
Initially the Indian Socialist Party, which was fiercely opposed to the independence of Pakistan in 1947, wanted to retain its organization in the areas that were to become parts of Pakistan. A Socialist Party convention in Ludhiana held in July 1947 decided that an autonomous party organization would be formed in Pakistan. Prem Bhasin, a Rawalpindi Hindu member of the party National Executive, was designated to organize the party structure in Pakistan. Mobarak Sagher, another National Executive member who was imprisoned at the time, was designated to organize the party in the North-West.
After the independence of Pakistan in 1947, and the communal violence it brought along, was a fact the idea of a united Indo-Pakistani party was abandoned. The majority of party members in West Pakistan, including Prem Bhasin, fled to India. The Socialist Party had few Muslim members before independence, and when many Hindu cadres left Pakistan it effectively drained the party of much of its organizational capacity.
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