• He wished the rule of law, the dignity of the citizen, the sense of public office as a sacred trust, merit and integrity to form the foundations of the state.
• His address to the Constituent Assembly on 11 August 1947 remains the clearest window into his conception of citizenship. Equal citizenship, religious freedom and the protection of the rights of every citizen showed that he sought a system in which every individual would enjoy honour, safety and equality; where diverse identities could flourish beneath a shared national identity; where the state would be the guardian of rights and the law would hold one standard for all. It is at this point that the anniversary of the Quaid ceases to be mere historical remembrance and becomes a mirror of national self-examination.
• The Pakistan of the future will not be built by speeches. It will rise in classrooms and laboratories, in fields and factories, in courts and hospitals, and in the quiet rooms of ordinary homes.

By Muhammad Mohsin Iqbal

Some deaths merely close the chapter of a life. Others transform an entire existence into an everlasting trust. The passing of Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah on 11 September 1948 belonged to that rarer, more solemn kind. On that day Pakistan did not simply lose its first Governor-General; it lost the man of iron whose vision, resolve and political wisdom had turned an impossible dream into living reality. Yet the Quaid’s departure was not the end of his mission—it was its solemn transfer into the keeping of generations yet unborn.

In every human heart lives the dream of a home. A home is never merely bricks and stone; it is the fortress of identity, the sanctuary of love, the dwelling of honour and the quiet promise of a better tomorrow. A father spends his strength raising that home, forgoes comforts, and longs to leave behind a shelter where his children and their children may live in peace and dignity. He may never see every room completed, yet he leaves the foundations firm, the walls standing, and the design clear.

Pakistan, too, is such a home. Quaid-e-Azam was its architect; we are its heirs. He did not inherit a ready-made country—he created it. Rather than take charge of an existing state, he first fought for its very right to exist, midwifed its birth, and, even as his own health failed, guided it through the fragile first days of life.

The Pakistan that emerged on 14 August 1947 was not born into the lap of ease. It rose from the furnace of history and claimed its place upon the map of the world. Its birth was bound to one of the greatest human migrations ever known. Millions left ancestral homes, fields, livelihoods and memories, crossing new frontiers in search of dignity, safety and identity. Families were torn apart, lives were sacrificed, and a sea of sorrow flowed beneath the celebrations of freedom. The newborn state possessed neither the full administrative machinery, the economic strength, nor the institutional depth it needed to survive. Resources were scarce, industry incomplete, and the resettlement of countless refugees demanded urgent care.

It was upon this newborn Pakistan that Quaid-e-Azam accepted the responsibility of Governor-General. The architect had scarcely laid the foundation when the entire unfinished structure was placed in his charge. Born in Karachi on 25 December 1876, Muhammad Ali Jinnah rose as a lawyer and statesman whose character was a rare alloy of intellect, discipline, principle and quiet self-assurance. He could have lived a life of comfort; history chose him for the harder road. He entered politics convinced that constitutional struggle, the supremacy of law and the power of reasoned argument could secure justice. His opposition to the Rowlatt Act revealed the steel of his principles. He was a politician of argument, not of slogans; of sober judgment rather than emotion, of organization rather than chaos, of enduring principle rather than fleeting popularity. When communal tensions rose and constitutional safeguards grew uncertain, he reached the grave conclusion that the political rights and distinct identity of the Muslims required a separate political arrangement.

Allama Iqbal gave intellectual voice to the political consciousness of the Muslims; Jinnah gave that dream a practical political map. To turn an idea into a state demands a leader who remains steadfast when compromise seems easier, who keeps discipline amid the storm of passion, and who continues the journey even when success seems distant. Quaid-e-Azam possessed this quality in the highest degree. He could stand alone, yet he never stood apart from his people. He negotiated without surrendering principle. He could show flexibility in method, but never in purpose.

The Lahore Resolution of 23 March 1940 marked the decisive milestone. The Muslim League had become a formidable political force, and the demand for a separate homeland had grown into an organized movement. Through negotiation, resistance and pressure, the resolve held firm. The title “Quaid-e-Azam” was no mere honour—it was a certificate earned through struggle.

After freedom came the most astonishing chapter of all. The leader who had spent decades in the fight for independence now had to prove that the infant state could live. He understood that political freedom without national strength and defence remains fragile. The division of military assets, the Kashmir dispute, economic strain and uncertain relations with neighbours confronted him. He faced these realities without illusion. He desired peace, but not through weakness; friendship, but never at the price of sovereignty. The essence of his thought may be gathered in these words: “Peace depends upon strength, yet strength must remain bound by principle.”

His vision of Pakistan was never confined to defence alone. He knew that the true security of a nation resides in its institutions, its economy, its education, its social harmony and its national character. He wished the rule of law, the dignity of the citizen, the sense of public office as a sacred trust, merit and integrity to form the foundations of the state. His address to the Constituent Assembly on 11 August 1947 remains the clearest window into his conception of citizenship. Equal citizenship, religious freedom and the protection of the rights of every citizen showed that he sought a system in which every individual would enjoy honour, safety and equality; where diverse identities could flourish beneath a shared national identity; where the state would be the guardian of rights and the law would hold one standard for all. It is at this point that the anniversary of the Quaid ceases to be mere historical remembrance and becomes a mirror of national self-examination.

We must ask ourselves: Have we built the house according to the plan he dreamed? Have we made faith, unity and discipline the living breath of our national life, or confined them to speeches? Have we honoured constitutional institutions? Is honesty still a mark of honour? Can the poorest citizen stand before the law with the same confidence as the powerful? Have we invested sufficiently in education, science and industry to achieve economic self-reliance? Have political, linguistic and sectarian differences weakened our common identity?

These questions are bitter, yet necessary. A nation that cannot examine itself cannot reform itself. Pakistan has endured instability, crises, wars, terrorism and natural disasters—yet it has lived. The Pakistani people have found courage in every trial. Therefore the story of Pakistan is not merely a catalogue of failures; it is an unfinished dream. Between failure and incompleteness lies a world of difference. An incomplete house can still be finished; weak institutions can be strengthened; an economy can recover; a divided society can return to unity.

For this, hope alone is not enough—character is required. Today’s youth can play the most vital part in this building. They did not witness the birth of Pakistan, yet they have inherited the land for which an earlier generation sacrificed everything. Their responsibility is extraordinary. Patriotism is not a slogan; it is a way of life. Honest study, hard work, respect for the law, payment of taxes, protection of national property, refusal of corruption, respect for the rights of others and preference for the national interest—these, too, are patriotism.

The Pakistan of the future will not be built by speeches. It will rise in classrooms and laboratories, in fields and factories, in courts and hospitals, and in the quiet rooms of ordinary homes. It will be shaped by the young entrepreneur, the scientist, the teacher, the honest civil servant, the legislator who places the nation first, and the ordinary citizen who simply does his duty. Nations become great in no other way.

The greatest mausoleum of Quaid-e-Azam is not a building of marble; it is Pakistan itself. Every honest brick strengthens it; every sacrifice protects it; every discovery carries it forward. Every act of corruption opens a crack; every prejudice weakens a wall. This house is now ours. The anniversary is not only a day of mourning; it is a day of reckoning. We must not merely remember the Quaid—we must keep his principles alive. Let there be difference without enmity; strong institutions without confrontation; defence without aggression; progress without the sacrifice of justice; faith without intolerance; democracy without chaos; and a patriotism in which Pakistan stands higher than any personal interest.

In his final days his health declined, yet the pace of his work did not. He knew the foundations had been laid and that the generations to come must complete the building. He left not merely instructions, but the example of his own life. One man, by faith, intellect, discipline and character, can turn the course of history. Nations do not live by the lives of their leaders alone, but by the principles upon which those leaders stood.

Pakistan still stands. It needs a new generation worthy of the Quaid’s dream. The heirs must now become the guardians. The cracks must be filled without weakening the foundations; opportunities widened without erasing identity; institutions modernized without forgetting principle; the economy strengthened without leaving the vulnerable behind. The defence of sovereignty and the pursuit of honourable peace must continue. No difficulty can be greater than the spirit that brought Pakistan into being.

If Quaid-e-Azam were among us today, would he recognize the Pakistan we have built? If the answer is not wholly in our favour, there is no need for despair—only for a fresh beginning. The house still stands, the foundations remain, the design is before us, and the future rests in our hands. Quaid-e-Azam gave existence to Pakistan with a dream larger than his own life. The greatness of a nation is not decided by the circumstances of its birth, but by the character of the generations that follow.

May God grant Pakistan peace, stability, unity and prosperity, and may He grant us the vision, courage, integrity and character to prove ourselves worthy trustees of the Quaid’s sacrifices and of his magnificent dream.

Read: Truths, Not Myths, About Pakistan’s Founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah

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Muhammad Mohsin Iqbal, Director General Research, National Assembly Secretariat, Parliament House, Islamabad

The post Architect of an Unfinished Dream first appeared on Sindh Courier.

By Noor Muhammed Marri, Advocate | Islamabad

An analytical, historical, and subjective examination of the narratives surrounding the creation of Pakistan reveals a fundamental tension: the divergence between romanticized state mythology and the cold realities of realpolitik, geopolitics, and constitutional mechanics. Post-colonial states almost universally construct neat, linear founding myths. In Pakistan, the standard script emphasizes the transcendent leadership of Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the spiritual vision of Allama Iqbal, the legal cornerstone of the 1940 Lahore Resolution, and the collective sacrifices of the Muslim masses. However, a rigorous historical interrogation reveals a far more complex, structural reality. Pakistan was not born merely of a single resolution, a mystical vision, or a uniform popular movement. It was forged in the crucible of a chaotic convergence: imperial exhaustion following World War II, structural constitutional frameworks inherited from the British Raj, and shifting regional alignments across heterogeneous provinces.

The contemporary narrative that “provinces made Pakistan”—or conversely, that a unified Muslim nation effortlessly swept through the provinces—oversimplifies the messy political topography of the 1940s. The Muslim-majority regions that eventually constituted Pakistan possessed radically different political dynamics. Bengal and Sindh were indeed the primary engines of early Muslim League support. Sindh was the first provincial assembly to pass a resolution in favor of Pakistan in 1943, while Bengal provided the bulk of the electoral weight for the All-India Muslim League in the 1946 elections. Yet, much of this support was driven by localized socio-economic grievances—such as peasant movements against landed elites—rather than a centralized ideological blueprint.

In contrast, as late as the mid-1940s, Punjab was dominated by the Unionist Party, a secular, cross-communal coalition of Muslim, Hindu, and Sikh landowners who prioritized agrarian interests over religious nationalism. It was only on the eve of Partition, as imperial departure became imminent, that the Muslim League successfully brokered alliances with Punjabi landlords and pirs to shift the political tide. Meanwhile, the North-West Frontier Province was governed by the Khudai Khidmatgars aligned with the Congress, and Balochistan comprised chief commissioner’s provinces, tribal agencies, and princely states like Kalat, where integration was governed by executive accession and tribal councils rather than mass democratic mobilization.

Similarly, the 1940 Lahore Resolution is frequently cited as the immutable foundation of the state. Functionally and historically, however, it was a strategic political instrument rather than a precise constitutional draft. Speaking of “Independent States” in the North-Western and Eastern zones, it was framed with deliberate ambiguity to maximize bargaining power against both the British Crown and the Indian National Congress. From a strict constitutional standpoint, the resolution held no formal legal validity within British imperial jurisprudence. The British Raj operated on parliamentary statutes, orders-in-council, and viceregal decrees. The resolution functioned as an effective moral leverage point and bargaining chip, but power in 1940 remained squarely within the institutional frameworks dictated by Whitehall.

While ideological discourse dominated public platforms, the actual scaffolding of the post-colonial state was drawn directly from British legislation, most notably the Government of India Act 1935. This statute established provincial autonomy, defined federal-provincial power distributions, and institutionalized administrative centralism. When Partition occurred in 1947, neither India nor Pakistan possessed a freshly minted constitution. Both entities adopted the modified 1935 Act as their provisional framework. The institutional DNA of Pakistan—its bureaucratic-military structure, viceregal executive power, and federal-provincial friction—was directly inherited from this colonial statute. Far from being an immediate ideological creation, the daily operations of the early Pakistani state were anchored in British administrative traditions.

Crucially, the departure of the British was less a sudden surrender to local moral arguments or democratic agitation and more a consequence of overwhelming external pressures, primarily the catastrophic fallout of World War II. By 1945, Britain was economically bankrupt, its global empire was financially unsustainable, its domestic electorate was weary of imperial commitments, and its military was stretched past its breaking point. As H.V. Hodson meticulously documents in The Great Divide, the British exit was defined by an overwhelming urgency to divest from an unmanageable imperial commitment rather than a measured, benevolent transfer of power. The geopolitical landscape had shifted permanently, leaving Britain dependent on American financial assistance and unable to project power as before. Furthermore, the British could no longer guarantee the absolute loyalty of the Indian Armed Forces, a vulnerability starkly demonstrated by the 1946 Royal Indian Navy mutiny and unrest within army units. The British Empire’s exit was consequently an act of rapid, calculated liquidation.

In this rushed imperial liquidation, local leadership was routinely sidelined on crucial logistical decisions. Stanley Wolpert, in Shameful Flight, lays bare the disastrous haste with which Lord Mountbatten accelerated the timeline of withdrawal, compressing what should have been years of careful constitutional transition into a chaotic scramble of mere weeks. The demarcation of boundaries in Punjab and Bengal was entrusted to Sir Cyril Radcliffe, a British lawyer who had never set foot in India prior to his appointment. Native political leadership—including Jinnah, Gandhi, and Nehru—were not members of the boundary commission itself; they were forced to accept the determinations of an imperial arbiter. This reckless timeline triggered catastrophic Partition violence and mass migration. Furthermore, the division of military equipment, financial reserves, and civil infrastructure was heavily mediated by British authorities like Field Marshal Auchinleck, leaving the newborn state structurally disadvantaged at its inception.

This geopolitical context highlights a stark contrast between South Asia’s transition and nations that achieved statehood through total revolutionary defeat of imperial powers. When Vietnam vanquished French colonial rule at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 and later repelled the United States, or when Algeria fought France, Mozambique and Angola fought Portugal, and Indonesia fought the Dutch, statehood was declared unilaterally by insurgent forces. They smashed the colonial legal framework entirely, stepping onto the world stage as fully sovereign republics forged through military victory. In contrast, the Indian subcontinent underwent a negotiated, constitutional transfer of power driven by Britain’s post-war exhaustion.

Because the struggle led by the All-India Muslim League and the Congress operated through legal negotiations and parliamentary frameworks, the exit mechanism was governed entirely by British legislative statutes. This produced Dominion status under the Indian Independence Act 1947 rather than an immediate declaration of sovereign republic status. Dominion status reflected the legal reality of a transitional, inherited arrangement. Under this status, King George VI remained the technical Head of State until 1956, and early state operations relied entirely on British constitutional precedents and Governor-General executive powers. Dominion status was accepted as a pragmatic bridge: it provided legal continuity using the 1935 Act, allowed for the gradual division of the military under British officers, ensured immediate international legal standing within the Commonwealth, and secured a rapid British exit. India shed Dominion status in 1950, whereas Pakistan remained a Dominion until passing its first constitution in 1956.

To analyze this period objectively, historiography must move past absolute hagiography and absolute dismissal. Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s brilliance lay in his constitutional intellect and strategic agility, transforming a fragmented Muslim League into a formidable political force that utilized the 1935 Act’s structures and the 1940 Resolution’s bargaining leverage to force a tripartite negotiation. Gandhi and Nehru, representing the centralizing vision of the Congress, made Partition inevitable through their refusal to accept a weak federal center like the one proposed in the 1946 Cabinet Mission Plan. Allama Iqbal provided the philosophical framework for reimagining Muslim identity, though translating concepts into a state required pragmatic political maneuvering. Ultimately, Pakistan emerged not from a single domestic narrative, but from a dialectic between popular mobilization, regional diversity, elite negotiation, and, above all, the overwhelming geopolitical imperatives of a post-WWII British imperial collapse.

Read: Understanding Armed Struggle in Balochistan

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Noor Muhammad, Advocate and Mediator, Islamabad

The post Imperial Exhaustion, Hasty Departure first appeared on Sindh Courier.

By Noor Muhammad Marri, Advocate | Islamabad

The story of Pakistan’s creation is often narrated as a straightforward struggle of a united Muslim community under a visionary leadership. Yet when we examine the historical landscape more critically, the movement appears far more complex, shaped less by internal political preparations and more by the shifting global realities that weakened the British Empire. A reassessment of the Pakistan Movement demands that we step beyond the official narrative and observe how imperial strategies, communal anxieties, constitutional maneuvers, and global war pressures combined to create a situation in which the partition of India became a convenient outcome for the departing colonial power.

The Lahore Resolution of 1940 is frequently celebrated as the foundational charter of Pakistan. However, it was not passed by any elected Constituent Assembly nor by a democratically mandated body representing the will of all Indian Muslims. The resolution was adopted by a political gathering convened under the umbrella of the All-India Muslim League—a party whose organizational depth and electoral legitimacy at the time were limited and uneven. The historical truth remains that the vast majority of Indian Muslims were neither consulted nor directly involved in the constitutional idea advanced in 1940. Nevertheless, the British administration provided ample space, and at times subtle encouragement, for such political formulations to circulate. Their aim was not the empowerment of Indian Muslims but the preservation of imperial leverage through deepening communal divisions.

Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s famous Fourteen Points, the Round Table Conferences, and subsequent negotiations are often presented as decisive milestones toward Pakistan’s creation. Yet these political exercises largely unfolded within frameworks controlled by the British Raj. They did not resolve the constitutional questions between Hindus and Muslims, nor did they deliver any substantive institutional autonomy. Rather, they highlighted how colonial governance thrived on managing differences instead of resolving them. Jinnah’s growing mistrust of Congress, Congress’s suspicion of the League, and the British tradition of “divide and balance” created a triangular dynamic in which constitutional clarity became impossible. Each failure strengthened the British argument that Indian political communities were fundamentally incompatible—an argument that would later justify the need for partition.

The critical factor that truly destabilized British control over India did not come from these political debates. It came from beyond the borders of the subcontinent: the outbreak of the Second World War. The war drained British economic resources, shook the legitimacy of imperial claims, and weakened the administrative machinery that once held the Indian subcontinent tightly. The Japanese advance in Southeast Asia, the fall of Singapore and Burma, the mounting costs of sustaining the war front, and the rise of anti-colonial sentiment across the world pushed Britain into an unavoidable retreat. Without the Second World War, there would have been no urgent British withdrawal. In such a scenario, constitutional bargaining might have continued for decades, and the idea of Pakistan—at least in the form it eventually emerged—might not have materialized at all.

Seen through this lens, the familiar political steps—the Round Table Conferences, the 1940 Resolution, and Jinnah’s constitutional advocacy—appear less like independent driving forces and more like bargaining tools in an imperial theatre where the final decision rested with London. Once the British recognized that India could no longer be governed without massive military expenditure and political repression, they began preparing exit strategies that would transfer responsibility while protecting long-term strategic interests. Partition became an efficient solution: it allowed Britain to disengage quickly, preserve influence over both successor states, and prevent the rise of a unified subcontinental power that could challenge Western geopolitical priorities in the emerging Cold War landscape.

Thus the Pakistan Movement, when re-examined critically, appears as a convergence of two parallel processes: the internal story of communal fear and political negotiation, and the external story of British strategic decline. The Muslim League capitalized on political opportunities created by this decline, while Congress failed to build a truly inclusive constitutional offer that could convince Muslim minorities of their security in a future united India. The British, for their part, found in these divisions a convenient justification to divide India before departing.

This reassessment does not seek to deny the aspirations of ordinary Muslims who later embraced the idea of Pakistan. Nations are not made by cold calculations alone; they are animated by hope, emotion, and collective yearning for dignity. Millions of Muslims believed that Pakistan would provide them security, equality, and space for cultural self-expression. But a historically honest evaluation requires that we also acknowledge how the path to Pakistan was shaped by forces beyond community desire—forces rooted in imperial policy and global wartime transformations.

Pakistan’s emergence, therefore, was not the inevitable outcome of a coherent political movement. It was the product of an extraordinary geopolitical moment. Had the British Empire remained strong, colonial administrators would have continued managing Hindu–Muslim differences as they had done for more than a century. They would not have abruptly handed over power in 1947. They withdrew because they were compelled by global circumstances, not because the constitutional demands within India left them no choice.

A critical reassessment also requires us to question how post-1947 narratives simplified the past. The richness of political debate, the diversity of Muslim opinion, the differing regional visions of autonomy, and the imperial motivations behind partition were gradually overshadowed by a single, linear official story. This narrative served the needs of state-building but not the requirements of historical truth. To understand the challenges Pakistan faces today—constitutional fragility, center–province tensions, identity debates—we must revisit the ambiguities at the moment of its creation. A nation born from hurried negotiations and imperial withdrawal naturally inherited unresolved questions.

Yet the Pakistan Movement remains a powerful chapter in South Asian history. It reflects both the political ingenuity of its leaders and the vulnerability of marginalized communities in a colonial structure designed to divide. It is neither a pure liberation struggle nor a simple imperial construction; it is a hybrid outcome of ambition, fear, manipulation, and circumstance.

If we are to move toward a more grounded understanding of our origins, we must embrace this complexity rather than avoid it. Only by doing so can we reclaim the past from myth and strengthen our ability to imagine a more just and inclusive future.

Read: 1940 Resolution: Ambiguity & Power Politics

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Noor Muhammad Marri is Advocate & Mediator, based in Islamabad

The post Pakistan Movement: A Critical Reassessment first appeared on Sindh Courier.

Osman Sher

August 15, 2023, is the day of the 76th anniversary of the division of India into two dominions. In this regard I have an urge to analyze a quote of Stanley Wolpert, in Chapter 2 of Zulfi Bhutto of Pakistan: “If Nehru had realized how precarious the health of his arch adversary was, he might well have waited, instead of agreeing to Lord Mountbatten’s proposed partition plan”.

On February, 20, 1947, Prime Minister Clement Atlee announced His Majesty’s Government’s intention to quit India and to transfer its power ‘to responsible Indian hands’ by June 1948.  Lord Wavell was recalled and in his place Lord Mountbatten was appointed Viceroy on March 24, 1947. He was given plenipotentiary powers. There had been no precedent for any Viceroy to have this power. The letter of March 1947 of the Prime Minister to the new Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, sets out the terms and dates of the transfer of power, as well as the date when he had to report back on the non-prospect of a settlement (H. V. Hudson, The Great Divide, Appendix I).It says:

“It is the definite objective of His Majesty’s Government to obtain a unitary Government for British India and the Indian States, if possible, within the British Commonwealth, through the medium of a Constituent Assembly, set up and run in accordance with the Cabinet Mission’s plan, and you should do your utmost in your power to persuade all Parties to work together to this end, and advise His Majesty’s Government, in the light of developments, as to the steps that will have to be taken.

“If by 1st October you consider that there is no prospect of reaching a settlement on the basis of a unitary Government for British India, either with or without the cooperation of the Indian States, you should report to His Majesty’s Government on the steps which you consider should be taken for the handing over of power on the due date.

“The date fixed for the transfer of power is a flexible one to within one month; but you should aim at 1st June, 1948, as the effective date for the transfer of power.”

Mountbatten returned from England on June 2, 1947. On June 3, he announced the scheme of India’s division from All India Radio. His broadcast was followed by those of Nehru and Jinnah accepting the Partition Plan.

Within a few days of his assuming office, Mountbatten came to the conclusion that Jinnah would not accept anything less than Pakistan. He then proceeded to evolve his own plan of partition of India. After seeking the final approval of the British Government of the partition plan, Mountbatten returned from England on June 2, 1947. The next day on June 3, he announced the scheme of India’s division from All India Radio. His broadcast was followed by those of Nehru and Jinnah accepting the Partition Plan.

Also read: Why was British India Partitioned in 1947? Considering the role of Muhammad Ali Jinnah

Here, all of a sudden, Prime Minister Atlee’s directive with all its emphasis on the deadline of transfer of power by June 1948, with the flexibility of only a month, had lost its importance. In short, the story of the break-up of a country as great as India, which had thousands of years of its own governance and  was an epitome of culture and civilization, was a matter of only two months of assuming the Viceroyalty by Mountbatten.

Read more: The Hidden Story of Partition and its Legacies

Mohammad Ali Jinnah was so down with his health that he died in September 1948, a year after the Partition. Can one believe that the head of the Congress party could not be aware of the precarious health condition of the arch rival Jinnah? Suppose he was not, but the Viceroy, with all the intelligence resources at his command, could not remain so ill-informed. In fact, he knew well that Jinnah was about to die without whom the demand for the division of the country would fizzle out. Hence, the helter skelter Partition.

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Osman Sher is a renowned Indian writer – The article was shared by Syed Ehtisham, also from India, through email in a Google Group on August 17, 2023

The post 76th ANNIVERSARY OF PARTITION first appeared on Sindh Courier.

MANI SHANKAR AIYAR

In the Introduction to her brilliant book, Hurt Sentiments, Professor Neeti Nair of the University of Virginia recalls that at the instance of Mahatma Gandhi, the All-India Congress Committee passed a resolution in December 1947 affirming that independent India would be “a secular state where all citizens enjoy full rights and are equally entitled to the protection of the State, irrespective of the religion to which they belong”. Straightforward and simple, it was based on two fundamental principles: equality of rights for majority or minority; and “protection of the state” to all communities, but especially to the more vulnerable minorities.

But once it came to debating the place of the minorities in the Constituent Assembly, it became clear that there was no consensus on what special steps, if any, needed to be taken to afford the minority’s adequate representation to secure their due place in running the affairs of the Indian state. Back in March 1947, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar had argued in his publication States and Minorities, that: “Indian Nationalism has developed a new doctrine called the Divine Right of the Majority to rule the minorities according to the wishes of the majority. Any claim for sharing power by the minority is called communalism while the monopolizing of the whole power by the majority is called Nationalism.” Hence, he held, it was necessary to ensure “effective representation” through “weightage”.

Encouraged perhaps by this robust defense of the right of minorities to share power, their representatives in the Constituent Assembly—particularly Z.H. Lari of the United Provinces; Kazi Syed Karimuddin of the Central Provinces; Syed Hasan Imam of Bihar; and Chaudhry Khaliquzzaman (until he moved to Pakistan)—put forward a number of suggestions on how to ensure such adequate representation through “separate electorates”; “proportional representation by a single transferable vote”; “cumulative voting”; “proportional voting with multi-member constituencies and plural voting”; “multiple constituencies with cumulative voting”. There was, however, little traction for these proposals in the House. So, as the author shows, when the issue was remitted to the Minorities Sub-committee that convened in Simla on May 11, 1949, no minutes were kept (or, at any rate, revealed) and it was announced that proposals for “reserved seats for the minorities” had been dropped.

Reporting this to the Constituent Assembly a fortnight later, Sardar Patel affirmed that there was “nothing better for the minorities than to trust the good sense and sense of fair play of the majority and to place confidence in them”.

And what of Nehru? Nehru had lauded “the glory of India” as combining “infinite variety” with “unity in that variety” and sought reliance on that, instead of “creating barriers” that “permanently isolate” the minorities while “giving full opportunity to every minority.” He and Patel added, as an earnest of their intention, that “special efforts” would be made “to put up good Muslim candidates … We should try to give them representation in accordance with their numbers”. They urged the minorities, says the author, to “trust us and see what happens”.

Dr. Ambedkar, after arguing on the floor of the House that “it is wrong for the majority to deny the existence of minorities. It is equally wrong for the minorities to perpetuate themselves,” held out against “separate electorates” but favored “reservations”.

Mahatma Gandhi had been assassinated; so, he was not there to remind the Constitution-makers that: “Minorities have rights for which they must fight unto death. They must not adopt an attitude of giving up rights or (be) made to purchase the good will of the majority.”

In consequence, Nair notes, the Muslim members “were unanimous, with varying emphases, in affirming their faith in the goodwill of the majority community”.

Under-represented minorities

The eventual outcome of reposing their “trust” in the majority is that at the end of the day, Muslims have never had anything like representation in the legislatures in proportion to their share of the population and the share has now, alas, sunk in the Lok Sabha to an abysmal 4 per cent, under a third of their ratio to India’s population. The Sikhs have fared marginally better largely because Punjab has been reconstituted and Sikhs are the dominant political force there. And if the Christians have done somewhat better than the Muslims, it is largely owing to their geographic concentration in parts of Kerala, some central Indian tribal communities, and the north-eastern hill States. Yet, the hard and sad fact is that the minorities are hopelessly under-represented in our electoral system.

In the services too, as well as in corporate ownership and governance, non-governmental organizations, academia, or journalism, Muslim representation has been far below their share of the population. Perhaps the one exception is top places in Bollywood and the arts generally. Some (but not all of this) is deliberate; principally the cause, except in legislatures, is that in education and general living standards, the Muslims have tended to fare worse than even the Scheduled Castes, as the Justice Sachar report of 2006 revealed. This, in turn, is explained by the leadership of the Muslim community, particularly in northern and western India, having decamped to Pakistan, leaving behind to India’s tender mercies the Pasmanda Muslims, that is, the economically, educationally, and culturally deprived elements of the Muslim community.

While the minorities were being urged to “trust” the “good sense and good will” of the majority, the argument over what is the definition of “secularism” and how it is to be implemented continued to be played out inside but mainly outside the Constituent Assembly. It was mainly outside because the Hindu Right was virtually unrepresented in the House, with the notable exception of Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Minister for Industry. He was constrained by being a member of the Cabinet.

So K.R. Malkani, displaced from Sindh where the Hindu population of Karachi shrank from 51 per cent on the eve of Independence to 2 per cent by the first Pakistani census in 1951, took up cudgels against any “appeasement” of the Muslim minority. He thundered in the Organiser, which he edited, with reference to the Bharatiya Jana Sangh which was then in the offing: “The new party must adopt Hindu ideals and Hindu festivals, Hindu shrines and Hindu sacred cities, Hindu philosophy and Hindu culture, Hindu ceremonies and Hindu pujas, Hindu history and Hindu race experience—as its root foundations” (5/6/1950).

“For Mahatma Gandhi, secularism meant inalienable “rights” for the minorities for which they must “fight unto death”

That injunction appears now in 2023 to have reached its zenith.

In another article, under his pseudonym “Kamal” (lotus), Malkani proclaimed: “[T]he story of Islam is the story of violence, hate, murder, loot and rape.”

Meanwhile, the Hindu Mahasabha, condemning the “unscrupulous zealots of western secularism” asserted that: “Hindus have not only learnt it (secularism), but actually practiced it with success for centuries.”

However, another contributor to the Organizer demurred (while implicitly accepting that Hinduism was secular): “[E]qual respect for all religions has been the bane of Hinduism.”

What the Hindu Mahasabha aimed for was the “welding of conflicting elements in the state population into one homogenous nationalistic state based on the ancient culture of the land” (emphasis added).

Thus, Indian secularism, according to this school of thought, was to be secured through adherence to Hindu culture which was deemed to be essentially “secular” and aimed eventually at making the nation “homogenous” and founded in the “ancient culture” of the land.

This, shows Nair, led V.D. Savarkar to write letters to his followers to eschew “the mumbo-jumbo of Gandhian morals” and instead “take up the cause of Hindus for a Hindu India”. It also led Godse to argue in court that “because Gandhi appeased Muslims, Godse had to kill Gandhi” and that “retaliatory action” by Hindus was “at times also as spiritual and natural as kindness”.

But apart from some dissenting voices such as these, there was general agreement across the board that India would have to be “secular”—although there were wide and seemingly irreconcilable differences on the meaning and implications of secularism. Thus “secularism” as a word became, says Nair, “a means of papering over differences of opinion”. These differences were by no means confined to the ideological battle between the RSS/Hindu Mahasabha, on the one hand, and the “secular forces”, on the other. The word also “papered over” the numerous differences, sharp and subtle, in the secular camp on the meaning or definition and implications of “secularism”, and how it was to be implemented over the process of nation-building in Independent India.

Gandhiji reinforced his perception with the injunction: “I would not allow the Mussalmans to crawl on the streets in India. They must walk with self-respect.”

The most clear-eyed in the secular camp was Mahatma Gandhi. We have already seen that for him, secularism meant inalienable “rights” for the minorities for which they must “fight unto death”. For him, this meant “India would be a land where the people of every religion would live with equality, practice their religion fearlessly, and fully belong” (emphases added). Till date, the three key requirements for minorities to live in India is with their identity intact, their dignity unimpaired, their security assured. Without these three requirements being so much part of our composite nationhood that they may be taken for granted, the minorities, especially the large Muslim minority, will not feel they “belong” as they sense they are “not wanted”. That is the dilemma facing minorities everywhere in South Asia. Hence this book.

Gandhiji reinforced his perception with the injunction: “I would not allow the Mussalmans to crawl on the streets in India. They must walk with self-respect.”

In contrast to the wholesale denigration of Islam that characterized his ideological opponents on the Hindu Right, he held that “Islam stands for the unity and brotherhood of mankind, not for disrupting the oneness of the human family” (Harijan, 6/10/1946). While, therefore, emphasizing “equal regard for all religions” (Ishwar Allah Tero Naam) as the definition of secularism, and holding that “the preservation of pluralism was a public good” (Rochona Bajpai), Gandhiji elaborated that it ”entailed the freedom to practice religion, all religions, publicly”. The makers of the Constitution, on the other hand, while accepting this, stressed the right to freely practice religion, all religions, “privately”—as the State had no business to involve itself in religion. In opposition, others (even many within the ruling party) held that secularism “did mean the separation of religion from politics”, even if it was only the saffronites who went further to assert that “it most certainly did not mean equal respect for all religions”.

In consequence, both in theory and in practice, the author finds, there was a “steady chipping away at minority rights in the course of the drafting of the Indian constitution…political safeguards were whittled down and removed from the final draft of the Constitution”. It leads her to the somewhat exaggerated conclusion that in the end “little” remained to “distinguish between the Congress and the Hindu Right on their attitudes towards the Muslim minority problem”—somewhat exaggerated because while the Hindu Right sought to “nationalize” the minority in the name of “integration”, the Congress sought to reassure the minorities that the innate secularism of Indians, and particularly the Congress party, guaranteed an honorable and equitable place for the minorities in the life of the nation—an assurance that has often been breached and increasingly so since 2014.

The “minority problem” in Pakistan

Nair then moves, fascinatingly, to comparing and contrasting the process of dealing with the non-Muslim “minority problem” in united Pakistan (and, subsequently, in Bangladesh, after the secession of East Pakistan in 1971).

It was Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah himself who kicked off the debate with his inaugural address to the Pakistan Constituent Assembly on August 11, 1947, with a speech that might have been written by Nehru: “You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place of worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed—that has nothing to do with the business of the State.”

Had Pakistan lived up to that proclamation, it would have become the poster boy of secularism in South Asia. Instead, over the last 75 years, the Quaid’s words have been ignored, denied, censored, and perverted. It only ignited a controversy that remains alive to this day: should Pakistan be an Islamic state with only a Muslim as head of state; if so, where do the non-Muslim minorities fit in? And now that the bulk of Pakistan’s Hindu community is Bangladeshi, how has Bangladesh dealt with its minorities?

In a word, the minorities in Pakistan and Bangladesh have been treated in their respective Constitutions and laws much as in India: few specific, clear, concise, and justiciable Constitutional safeguards, especially with respect to representation in State/provincial and national legislatures proportionate in some measure to their population; some Constitutional measures such as protection to community personal laws and the running of minority educational institutions; some pro-minority legislative and administrative steps but offset by others blatantly aimed at the minorities; some backing to the minorities from the courts, especially when the legislative branch flinches from taking an unambiguous stand, preferring to hide behind the skirts of court judgments; and much discrimination in practice. In India, in a generalized sense, however, Chief Justice Gajendragadkar “and others…pointed out that the spirit of secularism permeated every page of the Constitution”.

Few of us Indians remember now, if we ever did note it at the time, that, as Nair shows, East Pakistan returned a number of Hindus to the Pakistan Constituent Assembly and West Pakistan returned some very important members of the Christian community, including the Deputy Speaker of the House, C. E. Gibbon.

They fought a valiant rearguard action in the debate on the Objectives Resolution (the equivalent of our Preamble), tabled in March 1949, against the labelling of Pakistan as an “Islamic state” in which only a Muslim could be “President”. The debate went on until the short-lived adoption of the 1956 Constitution—and has continued almost uninterrupted since then.

In the first phase, the most articulate of the minority representatives were the two Dattas, Bhupendra Kumar and Dhirendra Nath, and Basanta Kumar Das, ably supported by a host of others—Raj Kumar Chakravarty, Kamini Kumar Dutta, Sris Chandra Chattopadhyay, Bhabesh Chandra Nandy, Manoranjan Dhar and, from the Scheduled Caste Federation, Gour Chandra Bala, Rasa Raja Mandal, and Akshat Kumar Das.

The non-Muslim members were not so easily taken in about the validity of the essential philosophy of the idea of Pakistan as set out in the Objectives Resolution. Bhupendra Kumar Dutta argued that “if Pakistan is declared an Islamic republic”, it would “assign the near about a crore of non-Muslims in the State to a subordinate position to the limit of obliteration…To the common people, both Muslims and non-Muslims, ‘Islamic State’ has only one meaning. It has no place for non-Muslims”.

P.P. Gomez, a Christian representative from East Pakistan, poignantly asked: “Am I not a child of this soil?” Basant Kumar Das bemoaned that the Quaid-e-Azam’s inaugural address of August 11, 1947, was a “forgotten document”. He continued, “Is not Pakistan also the homeland of the persons who follow other religions? Do not the Muslims of India claim India as their homeland?” Dr. S.K. Sen asked, “tartly perhaps”, says the author, whether “the President would perform the duties of the imam of a mosque”; else what was the need to reserve the post only for a certified Muslim?

More to the point, it was underlined that the Basic Principles Committee set up by the Constituent Assembly had thoroughly examined the two related issues of Pakistan as an “Islamic state” and the President necessarily being Muslim and come to the conclusion that none of this was desirable.

Perhaps the most impassioned opposition came from the West Pakistan Christian member, C.E. Gibbon, whose intervention lasted several hours. He began by denouncing the “betrayal” of the “contract” between Jinnah and the Christian community, underlining that non-Muslim minorities could enjoy their rights in Pakistan only if in separate electorates they could elect representatives “who can reflect their deepest thoughts and feelings in their entirety and with the utmost sublimity, without let or hindrance from any quarter.” Poignantly describing the Christians as “a community within a nation”—an expression that we might appreciate applied equally to India’s minority communities—he conceded that while Pakistan might not be a theocratic state, it was an “experimental state” that should be “brought in line with the conception of political representation in an ordinary secular state”.

Significantly, virtually all East Pakistan non-Muslim League members, led by A.K.M. Fazlul Huq of the Krishak Sramik Party, H.S. Suhrawardy, who became Prime Minister in 1957, and, notably, Sheikh Mujib-ur-Rahman, the future Bangabandhu, were supportive, albeit initially subdued in the first phase of the debate but subsequently vocal, especially after the Awami (Muslim) League trounced the Muslim League in East Pakistan in the provincial elections of 1954.  “It is their habit,” said Mujib in 1956 of Muslim League majoritarianism, “to give bluff to the people in the name of Islam”.

Some West Pakistan members like Shaukat Hayat Khan of Punjab presciently warned that if these East Pakistan voices were not listened to, Pakistan’s leaders might have to “preside over the funeral” of their country. Sardar Asadullah Khan of North West Frontier Province was also supportive of the Bengali view.

Another Awami League member, Ataur Rahman, raised a pertinent point while requesting the House “not to fall into the trap laid by the mullahs”. He pointed out “that there were seventy-two sects in Pakistan, and each called the others non-Muslim and kafir.” (A glancing reference to the anti-Ahmedia riots of 1953 that had rocked West Pakistan and the persisting Sunni-Shia differences.) He further argued that “the ideology of Pakistan was not the creation of an Islamic State… nor intended to make it impossible for the others to live in this State”. He held “the great ideology of a State” to be “the improvement of the lot of the common people”.

Some West Pakistan members like Shaukat Hayat Khan of Punjab presciently warned that if these East Pakistan voices were not listened to, Pakistan’s leaders might have to “preside over the funeral” of their country. Sardar Asadullah Khan of North West Frontier Province was also supportive of the Bengali view.

The government and Muslim League leaders argued that as the ideals of Pakistan “represent the very core of fair play and tolerance…adequate provision shall be made for the minorities to freely profess and practice their religion and develop their culture”. (Significantly, the Zia regime subsequently dropped the word “freely” from this formulation. It was restored by the 18th amendment in 2010.)

Mian Abdul Bari, who led the debate from the Muslim League, described as “terrible allegations” the claim “that we want to get rid of non-Muslims in the Muslim State of Pakistan”. Nur Ahmed of the Muslim League added that Pakistan was not going to be a “theocratic state” for “there is no priesthood, no Pope in Islam, and there is no mediator between God and Man in Islam”. A Minister, Pir Ali Mohammad Rashdi, supported Bari and Nur Ahmed in arguing that Islam was not being invoked “to worry them (the minorities) or to put them in a lower position”.

He added: “If the name of Islam is taken away then there will be nothing common between East Pakistan and West Pakistan…we have put that word in to keep the whole fabric together”. Yet the fabric was to be ripped apart a few years later.

Maulana Mufti Mahmood of the Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Islam quoted from the Quran “to show how fairly non-Muslims had been treated during the time of the Prophet”. Therefore, if Pakistani Hindus were assured of similar treatment, “they would be content to live in Pakistan”. Hence, precisely because Islam as a religion ordained the fair and just treatment of the minorities, Pakistan needed to be declared an “Islamic State that belongs to the Muslims”. The tenets of Islam would ensure that the country “is also the homeland of Hindus and Christians”.

The argument paralleled the Indian saffron argument that Hinduism was the best guarantee of the place of the minorities in a tolerant and compassionate Hindu Rashtra, more than the secularism of the “western zealots”.

The counterarguments to the Objectives Resolution made little impression on the overwhelmingly Muslim League-dominated Pakistan Constituent Assembly. The Prime Minister, Chaudhri Mohammad Ali, closing the debate, emphasized that “it would be un-Islamic to ignore the rights of non-Muslims”. He held that “the cardinal values of Islam were justice and brotherhood”; hence, Muslims are “tolerant and good”. Therefore, fear of “obscurantism” and “bigotry” was misplaced. He went on to affirm that non-Muslims are “an integral part of life in Pakistan” who would “judge us not by our professions but by our conduct.” He added: “If as a people we fail to live up to the highest teachings of Islam, we shall have failed utterly.”

Unimpressed, the entire Opposition walked out and in their absence, the 1956 Constitution was adopted, declaring Pakistan an “Islamic state” in which the head of state (president) would necessarily have to be a Muslim, but the minorities would be assured their rights.

In other words, as in India where the minorities were being urged to rely on the essential secularism of the Hindu religion and the Nehruvian “idea of India” to place their “trust” in the “goodwill” of the majority, so in Pakistan were the religious minorities being urged to place their faith in the Islamic tenets of “justice”, “brotherhood”, and “tolerance” of the Muslim majority. And as in India, the minorities were betrayed, but on a far worse scale.

Also, as in India so in Pakistan, much of the debate took place outside the formal chamber of the Constituent Assembly, as the author underlines.

Maulana Maudoodi of the Jama’at-e-Islami had initially opposed Jinnah and his Muslim League as Westernized secularists incapable of creating a genuine Islamic state. However, once Pakistan had come into existence, Maudoodi moved his headquarters from Pathankot (that had remained in India) to Lahore, the capital of Pakistani Punjab. Once there, he fought with increasing tenacity for an Islamic state.

He prevailed when the Basic Objectives resolution was placed before the Constituent Assembly. He then asserted his belief that as, in making the Constitution, Muslim members should remember that “sovereign in Islam” means God, “not man” as possessing “the real power of legislation”, the Objectives Resolution as drafted “assumes the complexion and characteristics of an Islamic state”. That is why he endorsed it.

For Altaf Husain, the editor of Dawn, however, it was “the (Muslim) League’s enemies (i.e., Maudoodi and his ilk) who had raised “the bogey of a theocratic state”. He went on to categorically affirm that “the application of Quranic principles does not mean the theocratisation of a state”. A joint editorial published simultaneously in several newspapers at the instance of the establishment argued that “the danger of a theocracy has been eliminated because no priesthood had been entrusted with any special authority”. At the same time, the Resolution reflected the “basic ideals which are common ground between all schools of Islamic thought”, thus ensuring that “Pakistan will develop an Islamic society free from dissensions and controversies”. That proved no more than a pious hope.

Javed Iqbal, son of the great litterateur, Allama Iqbal, president of the seminal session of the Muslim League in 1930, shone a quite different light on the 1956 Constitution and its Basic Objectives Resolution. He held that the position of Islam in the 1956 Constitution “reflected the attitude of hypocrisy and vagueness of the Muslim framers of that Constitution”. Pakistan, he stated, “came into being because the Muslims of the Indian subcontinent sought for a State in which to implement the social order of Islam”. And as the “ultimate aim of Islam” was to establish “a spiritual democracy…the modern Islamic State should offer more security to believers in other faiths than a secular state”. He concluded, “Only if minorities are preserved can the true ideal of the Islamic State be attained”. He believed it be “obligatory” for true Muslims “not only to tolerate non-Muslims but also to protect them and to defend their places of worship”.

For his part, Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan, on a state visit to the US, held that the Objectives Resolution made it “unequivocally clear” that there is no room for “theocracy” in Pakistan because “Islam stands for freedom of conscience, condemns coercion, has no priesthood and”, in a swipe at India, “abhors the caste system”. While Pakistan had “delivered millions of Muslims” from “the perpetual fear of the majority”, it had also “solemnly pledged” that “our minorities shall enjoy full rights of citizenship and shall freely profess and practice their religions and develop their cultures” while adequately safeguarding the interests of “the backward and depressed classes”.

This rather complacent explanation of the purport of the Objectives Resolution was challenged by a well-known Christian intellectual, Joshua Fazl-ud-Din, in The Civil and Military Gazette, published from Lahore. He faulted the Objectives Resolution for “according (to) non-Muslims a second-class status”. He demanded that the Muslim League “formally withdraw the ‘two-nation theory’” by “amending the Objectives Resolution”. After he became a member of the West Pakistan legislature in 1974, Joshua stressed that Christians, as the largest minority in West Pakistan, “required separate electorates to safeguard rights that only elected Christian representatives could be trusted to protect”— a reprisal of Gibbon’s argument—as “mere concessions” would always remain “subject to the personal discretion of the majority.”

He talked of a social contract under which “the Muslims were bound to respect the culture of the non-Muslim minorities, grant them religious freedom and give full economic rights”. If that happened, then, in return, the non-Muslims could accept that the Muslims (please note he excludes non-Muslims) could continue to have their ideology (that is, a Pakistani Muslim ideology, not an all-Pakistan ideology) in respect of the two-nation theory”. This was a more nuanced suggestion than his earlier demand that the two-nation theory be withdrawn by amending the Constitution.

Maulana Mufti Mahmood of the Jamiat-i-ulema-i-Islam to declare “in unequivocal terms” that the official religion of the State would be Islam. He would never agree to “turn the State into a secular State”

Ayub Khan went further. He finessed the entire 1956 Constitution through a military coup two years later, but the arguments in the Constituent Assembly were not effaced. They re-emerged in the debates of 1962 on the unresolved issues of Pakistani nationhood, particularly the vexed question of separate or joint electorates. While Ayub’s Law Minister, Muhammad Munir, Pakistan’s leading jurist, had pointed to the “slipperiness” of the word “Muslim” in his report on the anti-Ahmadi riots of 1953, he trimmed his sails in accordance with the prevailing winds to argue that inserting the word “Islamic” before “ideology” would not affect the religious freedom of the minorities.

This gave the opening for the more Islamist members like Maulana Mufti Mahmood of the Jamiat-i-ulema-i-Islam to declare “in unequivocal terms” that the official religion of the State would be Islam. He would never agree to “turn the State into a secular State”, but the minorities need have no fear since the Prophet himself had set the example of how minorities were to be treated. Mohammed Abdul Haque of East Pakistan retorted that the word “ideology” was “vague” and there was no assurance that those in power would interpret the word “in a progressive way”, to which Z.A. Bhutto, by then a Minister in Ayub’s cabinet, held that the Preamble meant Pakistan would be a “democratic state based on Islamic principles of social justice”.

Syed Abdus Sultan of East Pakistan then brought up a further consideration. He enquired whether the expression “Islamic ideology” would not bar non-Muslim citizens from joining any political party. Bhutto’s response was that Pakistan had to be an “ideological state” as it could not be a “territorial state”. The argument went on and was never resolved to the satisfaction of either the minorities or the eastern Bengali wing of the country. Shaukat Hayat Khan’s prediction that this would lead to Pakistan’s leaders “presiding over the funeral of their country” was fulfilled.

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Mani Shankar Aiyar is an author, politician and former diplomat. He also had served as Indian Consul General in Karachi  

Courtesy: The Hindu (Posted on June 19, 2023)  

The post Hurt Sentiments: Secularism and Belonging in South Asia first appeared on Sindh Courier.

Arun Sharma

Two months after his release from British prison in August 1933, Nehru wrote a series of articles published in a pamphlet titled “Whither India?” It was his personal manifesto on the destiny he would want his country to follow, while she engaged herself in the struggle for independence from the British rule and thereafter as a sovereign nation.

Although not so widely known as his more famous Toward Freedom, Discovery of India and Glimpses of World History, the pamphlet was published in every major Indian language besides English and elicited tremendous response especially from the young, to whom it was primarily addressed.

As our country is still struggling with poverty, inequality of income and agrarian distress, this pamphlet remains as relevant today as it was eighty-seven years ago when it was published.

Nehru was at his rebellious best when he penned “Whither India?” it was the closest he came to “translating Lenin’s pamphleteering brilliance to the Indian scene”, says Stanley Wolpert in his biography of Nehru (p. 157).

Nehru was at his rebellious best when he penned “Whither India

Repeated incarceration in British prisons, the last one of twenty months duration, had embittered him and filled him with resentment for the British Raj, which he saw propped up by the twin evils of capitalism and imperialism says the biographer. Nehru was convinced that India’s salvation lay in social and economic change. “The alternative is fascism,” he insisted, “the last weapon which vested interests can employ to keep what they have” (p. 153, ibid.)

Nehru, the young Cambridge student, who had heard the great Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw deliver a lecture entitled “Socialism and the University Man”, was now a passionate freedom fighter and an avowed socialist and would expound his own views by writing ‘Whither India’ on the path his country must follow. Few in the audience on that afternoon sometime in the year 1907 would have imagined, however, that one of the Indian students listening to Bernard Shaw would one day become one of the leading proponents of democratic socialism and one of the most eminent figures of the Twentieth century.

Nehru was writing “Whither India?” at a time when the country was at the crossroads, unable to decide on the path she should follow for the attainment of independence. Nehru “felt let down, ignored for the most part during his long incarceration, his radical program at Lahore all but forgotten between the round tables”.

In a despondent mood, he met his mentor Gandhiji in Poona and, following a long discussion about Congress strategy and tactics, wrote to him, “In our recent conversations, you will remember that I had laid stress on…clearer definition of our national objective…we stand for complete independence. Sometimes a little confusion arises because of vague phraseology.” Complete independence, Nehru insisted, included “full control of the army and foreign relations as well as financial control” (Stanley Wolpert, p. 155)

One may point out that most of the Congress leaders found Nehru’s views too radical and the aim set out by him, impossible to achieve. However, Nehru was unyielding. He had “no regard for men afraid of the present inevitable charge of forces” and quoted Trotsky’s “if one is afraid of strife, disorder and revolution, one has chosen the wrong moment to be born” (p. 154, ibid.)

Nehru would, however, not let his revolutionary fervor get the better of reasoning and cold logic. The long prison term, he claims in the first page of “Whither India?” had enabled him to have a dispassionate view of things. “The newcomer from prison has long been cut off from the rough and tumble of life and politics”, he says, “yet he has a certain advantage on his side. He can take a more detached view; he is not so much wrapped up in the controversies of the moment” (Whither India?, p. 01)

So, rising above the limited nationalistic aim of freedom, he explains to the people what would real freedom mean to the Indian masses:

“What then are we driving at? Freedom? Swaraj? Independence? Dominion status? Words which may mean much or little or nothing at all. Again, whose freedom are we particularly striving for? For nationalism covers many sins and includes many conflicting elements. There is the feudal India of princes, the India of zamindars, big and small, of farmers and of workers and the middle class; A more vital conflict of interest arises between these possessing classes as a whole and others; between the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’.” (Whither India? p. 04, 05.)

Nehru made it clear where his sympathies lay. “The problem is primarily economic… in India… it is agrarian.” The future prosperity of India’s masses, Nehru insisted, required a complete ‘reconstruction of society’, starting with the diversion of profits and property from the “haves” to the ‘have-nots’ (Stanley Wolpert, Nehru, p. 153)

Equally was Nehru sick of too much constitutionalism and legalistic approach to things

In the later part of “Whither India?”, Nehru explains the journey of capitalism in Europe and America in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, laying emphasis on its limitations, as the world had then seen in the Great Crash of 1929 (p. 14-16).

“In India as in other Asiatic colonial countries”, Nehru says, “We find a struggle today between the old nationalist ideology and the new economic ideology… India’s struggle today is part of the great struggle we find all over the world for the emancipation of the oppressed. Essentially, this is an economic struggle, with hunger and want as its driving forces, although it puts on nationalistic and other dresses” (p. 18-19, ibid.)

Nehru was now the most radical leader of the Congress. He had no patience with and faith in the Round Table Conferences, which Jinnah considered as his brainchild. “The Round Table scheme is almost as dead as Queen Anne”, Nehru said, “and hardly deserves notice. It was not meant to give an iota of freedom to the Indian people; it sought to win over certain Indian vested interests (the princes and the Muslim League) to the British side and in this it succeeded!” (p. 19).

Equally was Nehru sick of too much constitutionalism and legalistic approach to things. Taking a dig at Jinnah, he says:

“We have got into this extraordinary habit of thinking of freedom in terms of paper constitutions. Nothing could be more absurd than this lawyer’s mentality which ignores life and the vital economic issues and can only proceed on the basis of status quo and precedents…even the lame go slowly forward; not so the lawyer who is convinced, like the fanatic in religion that truth can only lie in the past.” (p. 19)

Thenceforth, Nehru would remain at the forefront of the national movement, guiding the destiny of the nation toward freedom. The AICC resolution for the Quit India movement, which marked the beginning of the end of British rule in India, would be drafted personally by Nehru, as was the Lahore resolution demanding complete independence!

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Arun Sharma is an independent commentator.

Courtesy: ‘The Beacon’ (Published on June 9, 2023)

The post Nehru and the Freedom of India first appeared on Sindh Courier.

By Yasir Qazi

We all know that Muhammad Ali Jinnah (1876-1948) was born to Jinnah Poonja (1857-1901) and his mother’s name was ‘Mithi Bai’ (Sheerin Bai), but most people are not aware that the name of Jinnah Poonja’s father (Quaid-e-Azam’s grandfather) was ‘Poonja Bhai’. While the name of Poonja Bhai’s father (i.e. Quaid-e-Azam’s great-grandfather) was ‘Megh Ji’. The meaning of the word “Jinnah” is: “the Arm’s strength”.

Muhammad Ali Jinnah had two sisters and one brother. Muhammad Ali was the eldest among all of them. The name “Muhammad Ali” was given to him by his maternal uncle ‘Qasim Mohini’. Jinnah’s mother tongue was Gujarati, which the Quaid-e-Azam spoke fluently. While all the siblings had learnt ‘Kachhi’ as well as English as a “Second Language”, they were also proficient in both. Muhammad Ali was born in the city of ‘Jhirk’ in the Thatta district and his ‘Aqeeqa’ took place at the age of 5 months at the Shrine of ‘Paaneli’.

After attaining youth, Jinnah’s height was 5 feet and 10.5 inches. As quoted by Prof S. M. A. Sufi, in his Urdu book “Rehbar-i-Millat: Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah”, he was very fond of Halwa Puri, while according to Jinnah’s daughter ‘Dina’ Jinnah was very fond of rice and curry. She quotes that Jinnah had two chefs with him. One was Indian, and the other was an Irish chef. Jinnah was issued a passport by the Government of British India on July 4, 1936. His Passport Number was 400878. Jinnah was initially married to “Aimi Bai” in February 1892, who was a 14-year-old girl living in ‘Paaneli’ village. At the time of this marriage, Muhammad Ali was barely 16 years old. As it was the marriage of Poonja Bhai’s first son, and the first mega merriment of the family, it was celebrated in the entire community and the whole village participated in this occasion and lavish food was served to the entire public. In 1893, Jinnah left for England for higher education, and after his departure, Aimi could not live long because of her poor health and soon passed away. In this way, Jinnah’s first wedding could last only for a few weeks.

Jinnah married for the second time, 25 years after Aimy’s death, to ‘Ratti Bai’ (later: Maryam Begum), a girl from a wealthy Parsi (Zoroastrian) family, who was 24 years younger than Jinnah and was born on February 20, 1900. This bond was a result of their mutual choice. Therefore, Ratti embraced Islam on Thursday, April 18, 1918, a day before this wedding. This decision was Ratti’s personal decision, as a result of which he suffered the displeasure of his family and left his family and all her property for Jinnah. After embracing Islam, she became ‘Maryam Begum’ from ‘Ratti Bai’. On Friday, April 19, 1918, Maryam Begum married M.A. Jinnah and became ‘Maryam Jinnah’. At the time of the wedding, Jinnah was 42 years old and Rati / Maryam was 18 years old only. Maulana Nizam Ahmed Naqshbandi performed this marriage as a ‘Nikaah-Khuwaan’. The marriage certificate of this wedding was written in Persian according to the custom of that time. The dowry was set at Rs.1000, while the Groom – Jinnah gave Rupees 1 Lakh 25 thousand as a gift to his Bride (Maryam). The marriage took place at Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s Bombay residence “South Court, Malabar Hill Mansion”. The name of the Registrar, who registered the marriage certificate (Nikaah-Nama) was Maulana Hassan Najafi. Among the witnesses of this marriage were Raja Muhammad Ali Khan (on behalf of Jinnah) and Haji Shaikh Abul Qasim Najafi (on Maryam Jinnah’s behalf). One year later, a daughter was born to Jinnah and Maryam on August 14, 1919, and was named “Dina Jinnah”. Jinnah’s wife Maryam did not live long and died of cancer on February 20, 1929, 11 years after her marriage and 10 years after Dina’s birth, at the age of 29 only. Her funeral took place on February 22, 1929, in Aaram Bagh, Bombay.

In his youth, Jinnah was very fond of reading Shakespeare and acting in the theatre. According to his sister Fatima Jinnah, he would often read Shakespeare to his family after dinner at their residence in Karachi. As a student in London in 1893, he was offered a job as an Actor in a theatre company, but despite his interest, he declined the offer, as he had always wanted to become a barrister and was inclined towards politics.

It is interesting that in the same year (1906) when the All India Muslim League was established, Jinnah joined the ‘Indian National Congress’. He joined the Muslim League in 1913, 7 years after its formation, but until 1920, he was associated with both the Muslim League and the Congress for 7 years. After which Jinnah left the Congress officially in 1920. 14 years later, Jinnah was elected as the President of the All India Muslim League. Jinnah was first diagnosed with Tuberculosis (TB) in 1938. Colonel Elahi Bakhsh, Dr. Riaz Ali Shah and Dr. S. Alam were his personal physicians. Jinnah also suffered a murderous attack in 1943 by a person named Rafiq Sabri.

Muhammad Ali Jinnah was given the title of “Quaid-e-Azam” (Great Leader) by Maulana Mazharuddin, while he was given the title of “Baba-e-Qaum” (‘Father of the Nation’) by Qazi Muhammad Akbar. The British Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, used to call Jinnah an ‘Iceberg’. The first biography of Quaid-i-Azam was authored by ‘Hector Bolitho’ (1897 – 1974) titled: “Jinnah, Creator of Pakistan”. Quaid-e-Azam’s favorite game was ‘Snooker’, which he was an expert in. It is said about him, that he neither lost any political shot nor did he lose any of his ‘Billiard’ shots. The name of his special driver was Syed Shah Abdul Hayee, who was his driver in Bombay. Jinnah owned 5 of the most expensive cars of that time, including ‘The Chevrolet’, ‘Packard’, ‘LaSalle’, ‘Ghost Phantom’, ‘Graham Page’, ‘Rolls Royce’ (1924 Model) and ‘Sunbeam’. The ‘LaSalle’ was gifted to him by The Nawab of Jamnagar, while the ‘Pickard’ was given to him by the Nizam of Hyderabad. Nawab of Bahawalpur gifted Quaid-e-Azam a “Silver Ghost Phantom” with a number plate ‘BWP-72’, when he took oath as the first Governor General of Pakistan. When in London, he would go around in a chauffeur-driven Bentley, and in India, he used a top-of-the-line Rolls-Royce and a Cadillac. Jinnah was a chain smoker and it is said that he used to smoke around 50 cigarettes a day. His favorite brand of cigarettes was ‘Craven – A’, which was one of the best and most expensive cigarette brands of that time. He also owned the finest collection of Havana cigars.

In his later years, Jinnah gave up wearing the western outfit (only in public gatherings) and started wearing a Sherwani and a “Karakul Hat” (later called the ‘Jinnah Cap’). Shaikh Rahmatullah of Peshawar was the first cap manufacturer, who designed and sewed the first ever ‘Jinnah Cap’ for him. Apart from Jinnah, this type of cap was also worn by King Amanullah Khan, the former King of Afghanistan. In some gatherings, Jinnah put on Jinnah Cap with western attire (2-piece suit) too.

Quaid-e-Azam was sworn in as the first Governor-General of Pakistan by Justice Mian Abdul Rasheed in the presence of the Viceroy of British India, Lord Mountbatten (1900-1979), while there was an intelligence report about the bomb in that congregation. According to eyewitnesses, when Mountbatten and Jinnah, while sitting in the same Royal Buggy, were coming from the Governor General’s House (which is now the residence of the Governor of Sindh) to the oath-taking venue (the Supreme Court of Pakistan Registry, which is not a very long way), that on the way, because of this threat alert, sweat was dripping from Mountbatten’s temple, out of fear and anxiety. At some point during the event, when a private press photographer came in front of the podium (stage) to take a picture of the swearing-in ceremony with his camera, the security personnel immediately took him far away from the stage, due to the threat alert. (The photo of this event is also very popular.)

After a quick visit to NWFP (the Frontier Province, now Khyber Pakhtunkhuwa) in April 1948, Jinnah left for Quetta in May to finalize the formation of the Advisory Council for Balochistan. After that he travelled to Ziarat (Baluchistan), on the doctor’s advice, for his rest and recovery, from where he left for Karachi on July 1, 1948, to inaugurate the State Bank of Pakistan. His frail and fragile body began to weaken under the strain of these exhausting journeys. So, after some days of this inauguration, on the advice of his personal physician, he again left for Ziarat Residency with his sister Fatima Jinnah, where he spent the last 70 days of his life, where his nursing care was performed by A. S. Nathaniel (died 2013).

Jinnah met his creator at the age of 71 years, 8 months, 27 days, on Saturday September 1, 1948, at 10:25 pm in Karachi. He lived one year and 27 days (392 days) only after the creation of Pakistan. His funeral was held on the second day of his demise, on Sunday September 12, 1948, at 2:30 p.m. on a hill located at the Old Numaish Ground in Karachi. Yusuf Haroon and his companions carried out the work of digging his grave, while Maulana Shabbir Ahmed Usmani led his funeral prayer (Nimaz-e-Janaza). As quoted in the newspapers of those days, more than 5 Lakh people attended this enormous funeral. It is noteworthy that at the time of partition in 1947, the total population of Karachi was only 4.5 Million, which clearly means that a huge number of people from outside Karachi also attended this funeral. After the death of the father of the nation, mourning was commemorated for 40 days in the whole country, during which the national flag was lowered on all the government buildings. The mausoleum was designed by ‘Yahya Merchant’ (1903 – 1990).

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The author is a freelance radio and TV broadcast and print journalist, poet, prose-writer, researcher, columnist, blogger, translator, Media Expert, and author of 12 books in Sindhi. He writes regularly for esteemed English, Urdu and Sindhi papers and websites. He can be reached at djyasirqazi@yahoo.com

The post Some Interesting Facts about the Life of Quaid-e-Azam first appeared on Sindh Courier.

Kalyani Shankar

How did Pakistan react to the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi? This is important in view of the fact that it was Gandhi who opposed Partition. As a father, he did not want to divide the family. In fact, if Muhammad Ali Jinnah would forego Partition, Gandhi was willing to ask the Congress leadership to step aside and allow Jinnah to form the first Indian government. But Jinnah would say later “better a moth-eaten Pakistan than no Pakistan at all”.

Therefore, it was significant that not only did Jinnah pay lavish tributes to the departed leader on the day he was killed, but also the Pakistan parliament, presided over by Jinnah, showered praise on the Mahatma on February 4 when leaders from all parties contributed in the condolence messages.

According to official records, Jinnah said on the day Gandhi was assassinated, “I am shocked to learn of the most dastardly attack on the life of Mr. Gandhi, resulting in his death. Whatever our political differences, he was one of the greatest men produced by the Hindu community, and a leader who commanded their universal confidence and respect. I wish to express my deep sorrow, and sincerely sympathize with the great Hindu community and his family in their bereavement at this momentous, historical and critical juncture so soon after the birth of freedom for Hindustan and Pakistan. The loss of dominion of India is irreparable, and it will be very difficult to fill the vacuum created by the passing way of such a great man at this moment.”

Lavish praise indeed, but there were some murmurs in India about Jinnah’s stress on the word ‘Hindu’ to describe the Mahatma. After all, he lost his life stressing on communal harmony. An oft-quoted conversation between the two goes like this: “You have mesmerized the Muslims,” Gandhi said to Jinnah in the last years of British rule. “You have hypnotized the Hindus,” retorted Jinnah.

Significantly, both Jinnah and Gandhi hailed from Kathiawar in Gujarat. For nearly three decades, they followed contrasting styles of leadership. Jinnah joined the All India Muslim League in 1913 and was Pakistan’s first Governor-General until his death. Incidentally, records show that both the Mahatma and Jinnah wanted the Cabinet Mission Plan (1946) to succeed. When it failed, Jinnah called it the “saddest day of his life” and Gandhi refused to talk to Nehru for 4-5 days. Later, Gandhi also forced Nehru and Patel to give Pakistan’s revenue share of Rs.55 crore by going on indefinite fast.

Gandhi was scheduled to visit Pakistan in February 1948, a few days before his tragic death. He was accused of favoring Muslims in India. So Gandhi wanted to visit Pakistan and Jinnah reluctantly agreed to the visit. It would have been a turning point had Gandhi travelled to Pakistan, but it was not to be.

The Pakistan parliament also paid glorious tributes to the departed Indian leader. When the first session of parliament began on February 4, 1948, tributes were paid from all sections of the house. The leader of the house, Liquat Ali Khan, said, “It is with a deep sense of sorrow that I rise to make a reference to the tragic death of Gandhiji. He was one of the greatest men of our times, and during the last 20 years, he occupied a great and prominent place on the stage of Indian politics. It would be no great exaggeration to say that the present strength and greatness which the Congress party enjoys is due solely to the unifying efforts of this great leader.”

He concluded by saying, “We hope and pray that what Gandhi could not achieve in his life, might be fulfilled after his death viz establishment of peace and harmony between the various communities inhabiting this subcontinent. Mr. President Sir, I will request you to send the sympathies of this house to peoples of India and Gandhi’s relations.” Significant words indeed.

Khawaja Nazimuddin, the East Bengal premier, noted, “I feel that his death is simply not a loss to India: it is a loss to Pakistan too. He was trying to bring good relations between India and Pakistan.”

Sind Premier MA Khushro noted that the Mahatma struggled for freedom through non-violent means, but tragically was a victim of violence. “Let us hope that the work left undone will be done by peoples of India and Pakistan,” he added.

Jinnah, who was presiding over the assembly, concluded, saying, “His tragic death, however much we may deplore and condemn, was a noble death for he died in the discharge of the duty in which he believed. I will convey the message as desired by you Mr. Prime Minister, to the Indian peoples in due course.”

All these go to show that there certainly was some grace among the old time politicians even if they were on opposite sides. Except Russian president Stalin and former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, almost all the world leaders paid homage.

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Courtesy: News 18

The post ‘One of the Greatest…’ Jinnah’s Condolence for Mahatma Gandhi first appeared on Sindh Courier.

Eric Rahim

(Excerpts from an article which shares brief glimpses of the political landscape of the subcontinent, with emphasis on Pakistan, from the viewpoint of the author – as a student, a journalist and an active member of the communist party from the late 1930s to the 1950s)

Although by the middle of 1955 most of those arrested in 1954 had been released, the Karachi party did not achieve the kind of vitality it had enjoyed during 1953-54. (My memory fails me at this point for I cannot recall if by this time Hassan Nasir had also been released. He was in Lahore Fort, not in Karachi jail.) The generation of students who had played a leading role in the student movement completed their studies and left for colleges and universities. Many of them would go on to make significant contributions to social life in Pakistan, but not to politics. Student activity therefore significantly declined (On this, see my essay ‘Karachi communists in the 1950s’ referred to earlier). The work of the Pakistan-Soviet Cultural Association and the Pakistan-China Friendship Society continued in a modest way (with increased CID harassment), as did trade union activity. But the tempo of the earlier period was gone.

This raises the issue regarding the failure of the party not just in Karachi but throughout West Pakistan to recover and develop. Why was police repression so successful? What were the subjective (leadership) and objective factors responsible for this lack of development? It is difficult to separate these two sets of factors, and I focus on the objective factor.

Although by the middle of 1955 most of those arrested in 1954 had been released, the Karachi party (Communist Party) did not achieve the kind of vitality it had enjoyed during 1953-54.

First, the territories that constituted West Pakistan (where political power lay) were largely tribal in character (Balochistan and parts of the NWFP) or feudal (large parts of Punjab and Sindh). I do not think that there were any parts of the sub-continent that were as feudal in character as these. Social power therefore in the countryside lay with the feudal and tribal leaders.

Second, these regions had experienced very modest degree of industrialization. And much of the business life was dominated by the Hindus, who migrated to India at the time of Partition. So we had very little of the bourgeoisie and therefore very little of the industrial working class.

Third, the Muslim population of this region had had very little exposure to the independence movement (which was also a democratizing process). The Muslim League, where it existed, had only a flimsy organization. The feudal landowners were generally content with the Raj. In Punjab, politics was dominated by the Unionist Party (appealing mainly to the agricultural interest) which was staunchly pro-British. The big landowners fell into line with the demand for Pakistan only in 1946 when the realization of Pakistan became a distinct possibility. The economic and social conditions in Sindh, Balochistan and the NWFP were even more backward.

My conclusion is that the upsurge of the 1950s, where it occurred, failed to sustain itself in face of repression because the economic and social soil on which it operated was so infertile.

From what I have said it should be clear that when Pakistan came into existence there was no social class that had the capacity to run the state. There was a power vacuum that was naturally filled by bureaucrats such as Ghulam Mohammed, Chaudhry Mohammed Ali, Iskandar Mirza and others, and the army.

I was able to interview Miss Fatima Jinnah, the sister of Mr. Jinnah. I think this was the only time she agreed to be interviewed by a journalist.

I enjoyed my work for The Pakistan Times, reporting from the federal capital. A large part of the work centered on the proceedings of the constituent assembly. Looking back during this period two episodes (perhaps, one episode and one non-episode) come to mind.

First, I was able to interview Miss Fatima Jinnah, the sister of Mr. Jinnah. I think this was the only time she agreed to be interviewed by a journalist. She was 17 years younger than Jinnah, and she was his constant companion. (Jinnah’s wife died in 1929, and he never re-married.) The understanding was that the interview would only be about her memories of her brother. She reminisced movingly about her childhood and her relationship with her brother. Then at one point I asked her what kind of books the Quaid-e-Azam (the great leader, as he was called in Pakistan) read. She replied that the only works he read were law books , what he needed for his legal work, and official reports. I was taken aback, and insisted. What books other than those pertaining to law did he have in his library? None, she replied. And seeing the expression on my face, she remarked (or something to the effect) that he thought reading books affected one’s original thinking. The article was published in The Pakistan Times.

The second episode (or non-episode) refers to the scoop of the decade that never was. I have noted that in the 1954 election the ruling party was annihilated. The provincial government (dismissed within two months) that was formed was headed by A.K. Fazlul Huq, 80-year old leader of the Krishak Sramik Party, a relatively small component of the United Front.

Fazlul Huq was not the right person for the job, he lacked judgment. He was given to making contradictory statements. I remember him once talking to a group of journalists when someone pointed to his proneness to making contradictory statements. He responded by saying that his followers did not read newspapers.

During the period of his chief ministership, on his way from Karachi (where he was on an official visit) to Dhaka he stopped in Calcutta and made certain statements which were interpreted by some (The New York Times) as demanding independence for East Pakistan and by others as suggesting merger of the province with India. At this time there were also riots in certain jute mills in East Pakistan which resulted in large scale killing. The ruling circles were using all this material to construct a case against the United Front – a case based on the breakdown of law and order and a threat to the integrity of the Pakistani state. This was known to me, and many others.

To turn to the other side of the story: Through the Party’s work for the release of the conspiracy case prisoners I had come into contact with Naseem Akbar. We had a common cause though from different sides – we were interested in the release of our people, and she in the release of her husband. Through this activity I had established a friendly relationship with Naseem Akbar, and through her with her mother, Begum Shah Nawaz, a respected member of the Muslim League parliamentary party. She had become a good source.

One day I happened to be in their house in Bath Island when Begum Shah Nawaz returned from a meeting of a selected number of members of the Muslim League parliamentary party who, I had learned, were to be briefed on the East Pakistan political situation. Begum Shah Nawaz appeared very depressed. I asked her if she and others had been briefed on the situation in East Pakistan. She did not reply. When I asked her point blank if ‘they’ were going to dismiss the provincial government, without replying she walked out the room. I was convinced that that was what was going to happen.

I went to my office and wrote a report predicting the dismissal of the East Pakistan government by the central government. The report included a detailed discussion of the possible consequences of this momentous decision. The editor got cold feet and decided not to publish it. The decision to dismiss the United Front government would turn out to be an important milestone on the road to the break-up of Pakistan and the birth of Bangladesh in 1971.

In West Pakistan, the ruling junta had broken with the Muslim League and had created a new party, the Republican Party. This it had done in order to completely abolish provincial autonomy in West Pakistan (to which some of the League leaders were strongly opposed), and create one administrative unit for the western wing of the country called One Unit.

In 1956, I went to Dhaka to report for The Pakistan Times on the special session of the constituent assembly at which the new constitution would be adopted. The new assembly reflected the changed political situation in East Pakistan, and the ruling junta in West Pakistan had reached an accommodation with the Awami League (the United Front had by now split). HS Suhrawardy, the leader of the Awami League, was now prime minister. Suhrawardy was staunchly right-wing and equally staunchly pro-West. But he was completely secular in his outlook.

In West Pakistan, the ruling junta had broken with the Muslim League and had created a new party, the Republican Party. This it had done in order to completely abolish provincial autonomy in West Pakistan (to which some of the League leaders were strongly opposed), and create one administrative unit for the western wing of the country called One Unit. The idea underlying the new arrangement was to create a ‘balance’ with East Pakistan – West Pakistan would now confront East Pakistan as one united entity rather than as four separate units: Punjab, Sindh, the NWFP and Balochistan. There would be ‘parity’ of representation of the two units in parliament, an arrangement to which Awami League had agreed. (East Pakistan had a larger population than the West.)

I remember the speech Suhrawardy made on the adoption of the constitution, particularly the part dealing with the issue of separate/joint electorates. I thought at the time that it was the best speech (specially the part dealing with the issue of electorates) I had heard during my years attending the proceedings of the constituent assembly. He was defending the principle of joint, as opposed to separate electorate. It was finally decided that the choice of the system of electorates would be left to each wing. East Pakistan chose joint electorate, West Pakistan, separate electorate.

A day or two after Suhrawardy’s speech I was having breakfast with Mian Mumtaz Daultana in Dhaka’s poshest hotel. (Mian Iftikharuddin had booked me there for me to be easily accessible to him). Daultana, a graduate of Cambridge University, a big feudal landowner, was member of the constituent assembly and one time chief minister of Punjab. After a good, long discussion on the issue of separate/joint electorates, he said to me something like this: ‘Of course, you have two good reasons for supporting joint electorates.’ I knew exactly what he meant. First, I was a communist, second, I was a non-Muslim (Christian). On both counts I had no affinity with Pakistan’s (Muslim) ideology. It did not occur to him that East Pakistan had also rejected the system of separate electorates. Or, perhaps he did realize that they had also rejected what he thought was Pakistan’s Muslim ideology. (Continues)

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Eric Rahim, Glasgow, 14 October 2018.

Courtesy: Criterion Quarterly (Published on March 31, 2019)

Click here for Part-I , Part-II , Part-III 

The post A Memoir of the 1950s – Part-IV first appeared on Sindh Courier.

Nazarul Islam

Many of us are still hotly debating or discussing Imran Khan’s unceremonious ouster from power. Not in too distant future, at some point, Pakistanis will have to come to terms with the real ‘dent’ in  structure, that the ouster may have caused to his country. I belong to the generation that was born in the first five years of the country’s independence. Therefore, I have a deep rooted interest in the debate around Pakistan and its genesis, as a modern nation-state.

However, I fear that a deeper, more permanent change that Imran Khan may have created in the nation’s mindset, may bring about a generational change of outlook, parallel to the existing ideology and dogma. The youth in Pakistan, see the society with a critical eye. Perhaps, they view the nation’s moral fabric and the country’s national narrative in a totally different light today. It is the young generation of Pakistan that has outnumbered the other age groups, in terms of demography. What is the likely new direction, Pakistanis will tread after the old order ends?

Will a polarized Pakistan, seek refuge on a society governed by clerics? Or, shall the angry or frustrated young men forcibly try and take over the reins of leadership, after a sustained struggle with the traditional power bases including the country’s armed forces? A recent meeting of the Army’s leadership has raised pertinent questions.

I would like to talk about a recent book, ‘Creating a New Medina’ published in the US.

in 2015, Venkat Dhulipala, a relatively unknown Indian-American professor, who let his nationalism and personal antipathy towards Pakistanis get in the way of academic honesty, wrote a book titled Creating a New Medina to paint Pakistan as a ‘millennial theocratic dream’ that harked back to Medina. This is despite the fact that some of the biggest opponents of the ‘Pakistan idea’ during Partition were Muslim clerics.

The truth is, at no point did the All-India Muslim League or its president Muhammad Ali Jinnah invoke Medina or speak of a theocratic State of any kind. The entire idea of Pakistan had to do with a Hindu-Muslim counterpoise on secular issues such as representation, jobs, and so forth. Religion was just not the point.

This is the only narrative that explains the enthusiasm for the ‘Pakistan idea’ among modern Muslims in the 1940s and the almost universal disenchantment with it of the Muslim clerics. The latter, in fact, saw the new nation-state as a ‘Kemalist’ coup against their hegemony, and many of them called Jinnah ‘Kafir-e-Azam’ (the ‘great infidel’) and Pakistan ‘Kafiristan’ (the ‘land of the infidels’).

More importantly, this is the only narrative that can help Pakistan come out of the theocratic abyss it has fallen into since the 1970s.

In the 1980s, Pakistan’s military ‘dictator’, and President Gen. Zia-ul-Haq, left no stone unturned to prove that the nation was founded in the name of Islam. The ‘contradiction’ is that Pakistan was founded for the Muslim minority of India, (and not Islam) — you may disagree with it as many Indians do, but the distinction is a significant one. The logical extension of this was that former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, in his second term, tried to transform Pakistan into a full-blown theocracy. He would have succeeded, given his two-thirds majority in parliament, but General Pervez Musharraf’s coup had timely put an end to this fallacy.

Unconstitutional as it was, the by-product of the coup was that the new regime tried — in earnest — to undo some of the damage done by the Gen. Zia regime. Columnists and authors began to rediscover the ‘modern Muslim’ project. Ardeshir Cowasjee, a Zoroastrian and Pakistan’s great journalist and philanthropist, famously coined the term ‘Jinnah’s Pakistan’ as the byword for a modern, liberal, and progressive nation-state.

The Musharraf regime fell as all unconstitutional projects do, but the changes it had introduced had meant that the civilian political parties once again recalibrated their ideological calculus. The Pakistan People’s Party government from 2008 to 2013 took several strides toward a socially liberal Pakistan. Other than the ratification of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, this period also saw a significant change through the 18th Amendment of the Constitution.

It promised minorities in Pakistan the right to freely develop their cultures — a constitutional language that had previously been omitted by General Zia’s tinkering in the 1980s. Meanwhile, Nawaz Sharif, who, in 1999 tried to turn Pakistan into a theocracy, was greatly chastened in his third term and did not press further with any particular conservative agenda.

Indeed, in 2017, the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) government became the target of vociferous campaigning by religious parties because it tried, quite feebly, to extend the right to vote to Ahmadis who had been denied that right since the 1980s. Nevertheless, a broad political consensus was in the offing on the issue of the interaction between State and religion before it was shocked to the core by Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) in 2018.

Taking a leaf out of Creating a New Medina, Imran Khan ratcheted up the rhetoric of ‘Riyasat-e-Medina’. Even if we put aside the Muslim modernist view and look at it from a purely religious lens, could Pakistan become a new Medina without the Prophet’s guidance? Modern nation-states are temporal entities, not spiritual or otherworldly ones.

Pakistan is a multicultural, multiethnic, and multi-religious State. Given the sectarian divisions among Muslims, there can be no consensus on what the idea of a ‘Medina-state’ entails.

It is this rhetoric that has now metamorphosed into a grand conspiracy narrative. Imran Khan’s loyal followers are now painting him as a great Islamic leader who was targeted by the US because he was working to create a true Islamic State, modelled on Medina, with an independent foreign policy. In his numerous addresses to the nation, Khan made it a point to state that Pakistan was founded on the fundamental Islamic creed of ‘La ilaha illallah’, that ‘there is no God but Allah’.

The truth is that Jinnah had specifically distanced himself from the famous slogan “Pakistan ka matlab kya? La ilaha illallah” (What is the meaning of Pakistan? And so on). He said that he and the Muslim League had nothing to do with it and that some people may have used it to “catch a few votes”. Yet, such is the potent appeal of this manufactured slogan that in the midst of a grave constitutional crisis, Imran Khan doubled down on it. In Pakistan, it is religion, not patriotism that is the last refuge of an autocrat.

Even before it found itself in hot waters, in August last year, the PTI government introduced a retrogressive educational curriculum called the ‘Single National Curriculum’, which included compulsory recitation of the Quran and teaching of hadith in schools. Contrary to popular belief, the Constitution of Pakistan speaks of the State’s responsibility to enable Muslims to lead religious lives but not enforce it.

Much like his ideological predecessor Gen. Zia, Imran Khan was out to remake Pakistan’s future generations in his own mould — the ideal Pakistani Muslim who carries prayer beads with him everywhere and is gripped with superstitions and irrational fears.

This is the antithesis of the Jinnah ideal — a modern thinker who does not wear religion on his sleeve and is unfettered by meaningless rituals.

Imran Khan is an immensely popular figure, and his remaking of the Pakistani identity is likely to be more enduring than that of General Zia. Do not expect Pakistan to turn into a normal country anytime soon.

This heady mix of faux patriotism and religious populism will plague the country for decades.

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The Bengal-born writer Nazarul Islam is a senior educationist based in USA. He writes for Sindh Courier and the newspapers of Bangladesh, India and America. He is author of a recently published book ‘Chasing Hope’ – a compilation of his articles.

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