Elections for Student’s Union were an integral part of Dow Medical College, Karachi upto the mid 1980s when they were banned.
The following are some photos and account of the Elections for the the year 1964, a year before the War with India and
the country under Marshall Law presided over by Field Marshall Mohammed Ayub Khan. Professor Abdul Wahid was
the Principal.
The account is based on an interview with Dr. Jasheem Pasha, a retired psychiatrist living in Houston and a graduate
of the year 1965. He contested for President of the Union with a ticket from the National Student’s Federation (NSF)
a left leaning students Party in Dow. Against him was the Young Medicos Organization (YMO) a Centrist to right
Party. The photos in this post and a slide presentation are all courtesy of Dr. Jasheem Pasha.
Dr. Pasha was also the General Secretary of NSF and in 1964 arranged a hunger strike in Dow to secure rights
of admission for students from the under-served areas.
Per Dr. Pasha, YMO did not agree with the timing of the elections and went to court to get a “stay order”. This
was duly granted by the Judge. NSF protested and held a rally outside the court house. The order was promptly
reversed and the elections were allowed to proceed. Dr. Jasheem Pasha won as President of DMCSU!
When we entered school in 1970, (5 years later) the political atmosphere around DMCSU was thriving and NSF and YMO
were going strong. More girls joined YMO than NSF and potential romeos followed! 🙂
Other parties had come into the scene notably Jamiat-e-Tulaba-Islam, a rightest party. Other regional parties
had formed showing that provincialism and regionalism was creeping into the politics; these included
Karachi Medicos Organizations (KMO), Sindhis Medicos Organization (SMO), Baluch Students Organization,
and so forth. In our time, in the first year MBBS, NSF won the elections (Aftab Ahmed, President and
late Mohammed Nazeer as GS); When we left in 1976, Jamiat was in power with our classfellow Syed Hamid
Zaki as President and Shaukat Malik as GS. Little did we know that 5 years later elections would be banned
and move into the larger macrocosm of the Country where the same fight between right and left would continue
and still does.
Amin H. Karim MD
Dow 1977
