Pakistan Socialist Party

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'.Braunthal, Julius (ed). ''Yearbook of the International Socialist Labour Movement''. Vol. II. London: Lincolns-Prager International Yearbook Pub. Co, 1960. p. 45

Background

Initially the Indian Socialist Party, which was fiercely opposed to the Partition of India, wanted to retain its organisation 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 organisation would be formed in Pakistan. Prem Bhasin, a Rawalpindi Hindu member of the party National Executive, was designated to organise the party structure in Pakistan. Mobarak Sagher, another National Executive member who was imprisoned at the time, was designated to organise the party in the North-West.

Once Partition, 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 Partition, and when many Hindu cadres left Pakistan it effectively drained the party of much of its organizational capacity.

Sagher was released from jail in September 1947, and was sent to Lahore. In November 1947 he convened a conference in Rawalpindi, which attracted around fifty participants. The conference decided to break the links to the Indian Socialist Party and that socialists in Pakistan would work to form an independent party of their own. The conference resolved that the goal of the party was to transform Pakistan into a democratic and socialist republic. On the question of Kashmir, the conference called for a referendum to decide the future of the area. Furthermore, the Rawalpindi meeting stated that the Pakistani socialists would advocate Kashmiri integration with Pakistan ahead of such a plebiscite. The declaration on Kashmir illustrated the definitive break with the Indian Socialist Party, and the issue would remain a bone of contention between the Indian and Pakistani socialists.

The Rawalpindi meeting appointed a board which would oversee the preparations for the foundation of the new political party. Mohamed Yusuf Khan was the convener of the board. Other board members were Mobarak Sagher, Munshi Ahmad Din, Siddique Lodhi and Amir Qalam Khan. In December 1947 the board held a meeting in Lahore, at which it was decided to convene a founding conference of the party on 29–31 January 1948, in Karachi. Moreover, the board decided to publish ''Socialist Weekly'' (a continuation of ''Sindhi Socialist Weekly'') as the party organ. The Urdu

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