Πακιστάν 1950s 1960s 70s

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Students sympathetic to the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and the left-wing National Students Federation (NSF) clash with the police and pro-government students in Karachi (1969). The student and labour movement between 1967 and 1968 had already toppled the dictatorship of Ayub Khan.




East Pakistani women march with guns on the streets of Dhaka in a show of defiance against the West Pakistan military establishment.




Pakistani men take an adventurous ride on an Afghan taxi (1972). Every day thousands of Pakistanis crossed into Afghanistan for trade on such taxis. Many would also visit Kabul to watch latest Indian films in Kabul cinemas then return to Pakistan in the evening.




A group of hippies (British, French and American) wait for a bus in Lahore (1972). Pakistan was an important destination on what was called the ‘Hippie Trail.’
The trail was used by thousands of young European and American backpackers between the late 1960s and 1979. It was an overland route that began in Turkey, ran through Iran, curved into Afghanistan and Pakistan and then from India ended in Nepal.
A huge tourist industry sprang up in these countries to accommodate the backpackers. In Pakistan, the travelers entered Peshawar (from Jalalabad in Afghanistan). From Peshawar they went to Lahore. Some took a bus into India while others visited Karachi and Swat before returning to Lahore and crossed into India.
The trail closed after the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran; the beginning of civil war in Afghanistan; and due to the reactionary nature of the Zia-ul-Haq dictatorship that came to power in Pakistan in 1977.

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Militant Bengali nationalists (Mukti Bhaini) aim at West Pakistan troops during the 1971 Civil War between West Pakistani military and East Pakistan nationalists. The Bengali nationalists picked up arms against the Pakistan military after accusing it of committing large scale massacres against Bengalis. Backed by India, the rebels defeated the West Pakistan military and East Pakistan became Bangladesh.





Wife of the Shah of Iran arrives at the Quetta Airport (1973). She was greeted by the then Balochistan governor, Mir Ghaos Baksh Beznjo, who belonged to the left-wing National Awami Party (NAP) that headed the government in Balochistan (after the 1970 election).
Ironically, Bezenjo and the NAP government in the province were dismissed by the Z A. Bhutto regime when the Shah of Iran warned Pakistan that NAP was instigating Baloch nationalist rebellion in the Iranian part of Balochistan.




A group of American tourists on a ‘crabbing trip’ in Karachi. ‘Crabbing’ (catching crabs) was a thriving tourist activity in Karachi where tourists would rent boats from the coastal Kimari area of the city and ‘go crabbing.’ The boats mostly belonged to men belonging to the ‘Afro-Pakistani’ community in Karachi and some of them had small barbecue kitchens and bars fitted in the boats. The boats are still there, but not the tourists.



A 21-year-old Benazir Bhutto sitting on the porch of her father Z A. Bhutto’s house in Karachi (1974). Benazir would go on to lead her father’s Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) after he was hanged to death by General Ziaul Haq in April 1979.
In 1990s she was twice elected as Pakistan’s prime minister before tragically losing her life at the hands of Islamic militants in December 2007.

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Famous Pakistani model, Rakhshanda Khattak. She was one of Pakistan’s leading fashion models in the 1970s before quitting and leaving the country in 1979. She died in the United States in 2011.



The charismatic Jacqueline Kennedy, wife of the popular US President, J. F. Kennedy, visited Pakistan in 1962. Here she is seen riding in an open-top limo with the then ruler of Pakistan, Ayub Khan, in the Saddar area of Karachi jam-packed by young men and women who had gathered on both sides of the road to greet her.




Students belonging to the left-wing National Students Federation campaign during a student union elections at the Karachi University in 1969



A college student poses in front of a street in Quetta in 1972.
Today, Quetta is plagued by brutal violence involving Sunni sectarian outfits, Baloch nationalist groups and the Pakistan military.





A European tourist with two students of the Peshawar University in an old street of Peshawar (1974).




Pakistan Peoples Party supporters mourn and pray just outside the grounds (in Rawalpindi) where PPP Chairman and former Prime Minister, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, was hanged by the Ziaul Haq dictatorship in April 1979. This picture was taken in October 1979.

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Famous Pakistani intellectual, novelist and playwright, Ashfaq Ahmad saying a prayer at the grave of British Romantic poet, Percy Shelly, in 1955.
Ahmad started out as a progressive thinker and writer with a growing interest in Sufism. In the late 1960s he went on to endorse and support Z A. Bhutto’s 'Islamic Socialism’.





Poster of Pakistan’s 'first Socialist film', Jago Hoa Sawera.

The film was released in 1959 and was scripted by famous leftist intellectual and poet, Faiz Ahmed Faiz.

The story revolved around the daily struggles of a poverty-stricken family of a fisherman. The film is sometimes also believed to be the region’s first ‘art film’.

Though critically acclaimed, the film was a box-office flop. However, it did win a gold medal at the 1959 Moscow Film Festival.





A group of fighter pilots of the Pakistan Air Force posing just hours before the start of the 1965 Pakistan-India war.

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A telling image from Pakistan’s first horror and ‘X-Rated’ film, Zinda Lash (The Living Corpse) - a modern (and voluptuous) retelling of the story of vampires and Dracula in a Pakistani setting.

Released in 1967 the film became an instant box-office hit and was then repeatedly shown on the state-owned Pakistan Television (PTV) during its late Saturday night film slot.




1966 photo of the beautiful Punjab University in Lahore. Notice the double-decker bus. Such buses were quite common in Lahore till the late 1960s.




British journalist, Tom Waghorn, seen here typing a report while sitting on the slopes of Torkhum near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in 1968.
Today this area is only ventured by violent Islamist militants and the Pakistan military. Even the local Pakistani Pashtuns fear to tread here, let alone Westerners.




Bengali militant nationalists publicly executing suspected pro-West Pakistan Bengali collaborators after East Pakistan managed to separate and create the independent Bengali majority state of Bangladesh in January 1972.



Female student supporters of the left-wing National Students Federation (NSF), seen here during the 1972 student union elections at the Karachi University.

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The left-wing National Students Federation (NSF) holding a corner meeting at the Karachi University just before the 1973 student union elections. Behind the speaker is graffiti quoting Chinese communist leader, Mao Tse Tung.




European 'Earthwalkers' in Islamabad, 1973. They had arrived in the
Pakistan capital to raise awareness about environmental issues.




A montage of headlines screaming about the expulsion of the Pakistani Ahmadis from the fold of Islam.
Also seen is the copy of the constitutional deliberations and clauses finalised by the country’s National Assembly in 1974 that turned the Ahmadis into a minority faith separate from Islam in Pakistan.
The move was initiated by anti-Ahmadi agitation by Islamic parties who then pressurised the Z A. Bhutto regime to declare Ahmadis as non-Muslim.

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Hippie tourists enjoying themselves at a hut at one of Karachi’s many beaches in 1973.
Karachi beaches were a favourite haunt of wandering hippies arriving in droves from western countries in the 1970s.



European hippies relaxing outside a cheap food joint on Burns Road in Karachi.
The second image shows two more inside the room of a cheap hotel in Saddar, Karachi. Both pictures were taken in 1972.





A 1973 press ad of the United Bank of Pakistan (UBL). It was one of the largest private banks in the country but was nationalised by the Z A. Bhutto regime in 1972 that won the 1970 election (in West Pakistan) on a socialist manifesto.
Which is why modern socialist and pro-working-class imagery is used in this particular ad.




A group of friends pose outside their class at the Karachi University in 1973.



Libyan leader Colonel Qadhafi waving to an enthusiastic crowd during the 1974 Islamic Summit in Lahore.
It was this speech given on the grounds of Lahore Stadium after which the stadium’s name was changed to Gaddafi Stadium.

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A 1973 photo of fiery poetess and writer, Fahmida Riaz, lighting a cigarette during a poetry recital in Lahore.

After the 1977 military take-over, Riaz was harassed by the Ziaul Haq dictatorship.

She finally escaped to India with her husband and stayed there in exile till Zia’s demise in 1988.




American tourists enjoying a ride on a tonga in Rawalpindi in 1975.




A 1974 press ad of Red & White cigarettes.
In the 1970s Pakistani cigarette brands had started to target middle-class women smokers, a practice that was discontinued (on the instructions of the government) by the government after 1976.
Cigarette advertising was totally banned from TV, radio and the print media in Pakistan in the early 2000s.





A 1975 photo of a hash (cannabis) shop in Kohat. Various such shops sprang up to mostly cater to the rising number of Western hippie tourists who would travel by road from Turkey through Iran and then enter Pakistan from Afghanistan.
The government tolerated such shops as long as they were not offering harder drugs like heroin on the menu.
In fact heroin was a rarity in Pakistan till 1980 when Pakistan’s involvement in the anti-Soviet insurgency in Afghanistan triggered the arrival of a flood of guns and heroin into Pakistan from Afghanistan.
In 1979 there was only one reported case of heroin addiction in the country. By 1985 Pakistan became the country with the second largest number of heroin addicts.







Pakistani boxer Jan Muhammad Baloch, seen here with former Governor of Punjab, Mustafa Khar (left) in 1975.




Nasir Zaidi, the first journalist to be mercilessly flogged in public by the Ziaul Haq dictatorship in 1978.
General Zia had toppled the democratically-elected regime of Z A. Bhutto in July 1977, promising a new order based on ‘Islamic laws.’
Between 1978 and 1982, dozens of journalists and political activists were flogged for opposing the dictatorship.






The February 1978 cover of The Herald. The issue contained a detailed report and feature on various draconian laws imposed by the Zia dictatorship in the name of Islam.
Though imposed to ‘Islamise the society,’ they ended up creating deadly fissures between various Muslim sects in the country.
Also, if one compares the crime data and that of alcohol and drug addiction of the 1947-77 period with that of the 1978-2005 period, crime rose three-fold and there was almost a ten-fold increase in drug addiction.
Incidents of rape, terrorism and corruption too rose dramatically.
Such were the ‘laws’ and doings of the dictatorship that Pakistan is still struggling to recover from the madness that they unleashed.

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A 1980 photograph of various Afghan Islamist groups in Peshawar that began gathering in Pakistan after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December 1979.