It is with great sadness that we have heard about the death of Tanvir Gondal, who wrote under the name of Lal Khan. He was the author of dozens of books and documents on topics ranging from the Marxist philosophy of Dialectical Materialism, to analysis and commentary on the politics of the Indian sub-continent. Tanvir was the founder and political editor of the Pakistan socialist newspaper The Struggle and its sister publication the Asian Marxist Review and we have carried many of his articles on our website.
We offer our sincere condolences to his friends, comrades and family in Pakistan, in the certain knowledge that he has left such a rich legacy of writing that his political work will continue after him. We are publishing here two personal commentaries from comrades who knew him well, the first from Andreas Bȕlow, of the Danish socialist newspaper and website Socialisten and the second from Greg Oxley, editor of the French Marxist newspaper La Riposte
Andreas Bȕlow writes:
It is with deep sadness that we have received the news of Tanvir Gondal’s (also known by the cover name Lal Khan) death. Tanvir was a close friend of the Socialist Association and was one of Pakistan’s most important exponents of Marxism, author of a number of books on Asia and the man who had educated several generations of revolutionaries.
I first met Tanvir in 2003 at a Marxist summer meeting in Barcelona, Spain. Back then, I was only eighteen years old, but our friendship was to last until his untimely death, today, February 21, 2020.
Tanvir was born in Bhaun, Pakistan in 1956. It was a few years after the bloody crackdown on Pakistan and India, a subject he discusses several times in his writing. As a nineteen year old, Tanvir began studying medicine at Nishtar Medical College in Multan. It was here that he began to become active in student politics and in 1978 he became chairman of the student council as a counter candidate to the reactionary fundamentalists.
Arrested under general Zia-al-Huq
For the same reason, the following year he was arrested by Zia-ul-Haq’s military dictatorship. After his release, he was forced to move to another college in Rawalpindi, but due to his continued student activism, he was wanted and his execution ordered. He managed to escape to Amsterdam in the Netherlands in May 1980. Here he completed his studies as a doctor. But as he once explained to me, he “simply gave up all human wounds and devoted himself to the whole wounds of society”.
In Amsterdam, Tanvir came into contact with South African Marxist,Ted Grant (who lived in London). Ted was at that time the leader of the British Militant tendency, which had gained considerable support for Marxist ideas in the Labour Party in Britain. Tanvir organized an exile group from Amsterdam under the name The Struggle and he remained in exile until 1988.
Tanvir returned to Pakistan and began to build a Marxist current. Instead of proclaiming a new party, he chose to focus on long-term work in the PPP, the Pakistan Peoples’ Party, which was founded in 1967 but gained mass support as a result of the 1968 revolution and was linked to the tradition of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (Pakistan’s left-wing populist prime minister overthrown by a state coup in 1977 and later executed). It did not mean that he and his comrades gave political concessions to left-wing populism, but it did mean that they understood that the Pakistani masses are orientating themselves around that party, not least as a partial bulwark against fundamentalism.
Crucial role in challenging fundamentalists
Their perspective was confirmed as millions walked the streets in protest of the December 2007 killing of Bhutto’s daughter, Benazir.
From a very small exile group in the 1980s, The Struggle grew to have around 2,000 members in Pakistan in the mid-2000s, publishing newspapers in a wide variety of languages, including an English-language magazine (Asian Marxist Review) that was printed in India .
Tanvir wrote several books, both about the 1968 revolution, about the partition between Pakistan and India, and about Afghanistan. In Kashmir, his organization managed to bring students together for battle across the dividing line between Pakistani and Indian-controlled regions. In areas where the fundamentalists are strong, such as in Waziristan, his organization has played a crucial role in challenging them, which resulted in the election of Marxist Ali Wazir to the national parliament, despite massive electoral fraud.
Unified workers’ marches every May Day
The amazing thing about this organization – and of Tanvir’s work in general – was that it developed in a country with extremely harsh conditions, with 55 million people living below the poverty line, with the Taliban and fundamentalists having close ties to the state machinery and regularly terrorizing the civilian population. This is a country that is further divided with many national minorities, each with their own language, yet the comrades around The Struggle are able on every May Day, to organised workers demonstrations, including workers of all nationalities and languages, in unified marches in dozens of towns and cities across Pakistan.
Personally, I met Tanvir a number of times, because he kept traveling and never had a narrow national perspective. In 2010, he went to Venezuela, where I was then living, and for just over two weeks I was one of his hosts. We went around and visited the occupied factories which were under workers’ control and participated in demonstrations in the streets of Caracas.
One of the things that struck me most about his visit was how well he understood the political situation in Venezuela, even though he did not speak a word of Spanish. But as he said to me, “all the underdeveloped countries looked a little like each other” and he pointed out some similarities between Pakistan and Venezuela towards me. For Tanvir, it was capitalism that kept these countries in a state of technological backwardness – and the only way out was a permanent revolution in which the resolution of the national-democratic tasks had to go together with the resolution of the socialist tasks.
In June 2017, Tanvir visited Denmark to meet with our comrades around, Socialisten.
Wide knowledge of many international issues
We also held a public meeting in Copenhagen, where there was good discussion and questions from the attendees. Although the title of the meeting was “the fight against fundamentalism“, the debate also revolved around Lebanon, Palestine and Afghanistan and Tanvir’s wide knowledge was revealed in this discussion. Later Tanvir also visited the Unity List’s International Committee and informed them of the situation in Pakistan.
But already, even at that time, Tanvir was sick. Slowly but surely, cancer began to spread in his body. Chemotherapy could not curb the disease. Although he was increasingly weakened, he did not give up political activity and was a regular attendee at meetings and was in daily contact with his comrades. Comrade Tanvir, rest in peace. We promise to continue the fight against injustice, hunger, and misery – the fight against capitalism and for socialism.
Copenhagen, 21 February 2020
Greg Oxley writes:
Today, February 21st 2020, my friend and comrade, the Pakistani revolutionary Lal Khan, passed away after struggling for many months with a dreadful illness. Lal Khan – known to me since the days of our youth as Tanvir Gondal – was an outstanding Marxist theoretician. I met him for the first time back in 1980, when I visited a group of revolutionary co-thinkers in Holland, where he lived as a political exile. He organised a group of militants around a revolutionary journal, The Struggle. As soon as Tanvir was able to return to Pakistan, which was not until the 1980s, he began the arduous task of building the forces of Marxism in Pakistan. Along with Ted Grant (1913-2006), I know of no greater contributor to the theoretical and practical basis of the present-day struggle for the emancipation of the working class.
A powerful, inspiring and articulate orator
Tanvir was no armchair theoretician. In his youth, he had known imprisonment and torture, at the time of the dictatorship of Zia-ul-Haq. In later years, the acuity of his political thought and analysis was rooted in his experience as an active participant in the class struggle. He was both a powerful, inspiring and articulate orator.
In spite of extremely difficult and dangerous circumstances, starting with nothing but ideas and an unshakeable devotion to the revolutionary cause, he and the comrades he would win to his cause succeeded in building a very impressive organisation of revolutionary militants, supported by tens of thousands of workers and youth throughout the country. In 2013, I was able to go to Pakistan and see something of these splendid achievements.
Oppression of national minorities
The objective circumstances faced by Tanvir in Pakistan left no room for theoretical complacency. In his writings, he courageously tackled the issues raised by imperialist domination, the oppression of national minorities, tribalism, and the sheer complexity of a society in which the productive technique and social classes associated with modern capitalism exist in the midst of the most horrific social, economic and cultural backwardness. Throughout his life, Tanvir strove to develop a revolutionary socialist and implacably internationalist policy, capable of uniting all the working people of Pakistan, whatever their language, nationality or religion, in a common struggle against capitalist exploitation, against poverty and against oppression in all its forms. This work must be — and will be — continued after his death. His ideas and his contribution to Marxist theory deserve to be more widely known among politically active workers in Europe and internationally.
An unforgettable friend and comrades
As a man, Tanvir cut a handsome and gentlemanly figure. He was warm, soft-spoken and sensitive in manner. He loved music, literature and poetry. To me, he was and will always be an unforgettable friend and comrade. I extend my heartfelt sympathy to his wife, Sadaf, to his son Sher Zaman, and daughter Sehar, and to all his family. Although the death of Lal Khan is a great loss to all his comrades, the struggle to which his life was devoted will live on.
February 24, 2020
