B D Sharma
Our neighbour celebrates Pakistan Day every year on March 23. It is a strange coincidence that both India and Pakistan derive links to their red-letter days from two resolutions passed at the same place, the beautiful city of Lahore. The ‘Purna Swaraja’ resolution -proclaimed on January 26,1930, later to be celebrated as independent India’s Republic Day, was passed by the Indian National Congress in Lahore, on the banks of Ravi. The Muslim League, on the other hand passed a resolution in the same Lahore city on March 23, 1940 for a separate and independent homeland for Muslims in India. Pakistan also adopted her first constitution on March 23, 1956 and the day came to be known as Pakistan Resolution Day/Republic Day, later shortened as Pakistan Day.
The idea of Pakistan- in the nascent form, was put forward by Poet Iqbal in his famous Allahabad Address of Muslim League in 1930. It was in fact Chaudhary Rahmat Ali and his friends at Cambridge who proposed the creation of a separate Muslim state known as ‘Pakistan’ for the first time in their famous ‘Now or Never’ pamphlet in 1933. Since some English bureaucrats had already nurtured similar notions so this idea began to make swift rounds in the corridors of power.
Pakistan day
Once it was decided that partition of the country would take place, Jinnah started to have a bout of fanciful dreams of having a grandiose Pakistan. He opposed the partition of Punjab and Bengal vehemently and argued before Mountbatten that Punjabis were first Punjabis and Bengalis were first Bengalis before they were Hindus or Muslims. But Mountbatten demolished his argument by reminding him that Indians were Indians first before they were Hindus and Muslims. As such there was no place for his two nation theory and consequently no justification for partition. Mountbatten made Jinnah to fall out of his own argument.
Having failed to block division of Punjab and Bengal, Jinnah tried to have at least the whole of Punjab in the ambit of his proposed Pakistan. Incidentally this would have enabled the new country to extend its boundaries to the doorsteps of Delhi. In furtherance of this design, Jinnah made attempts to woo the Sikhs through the good offices of friendly Governor of Punjab, Jenkins by promising that the Sikhs would retain their lands and enjoy full religious freedom in Jinnah’s Pakistan. But Giyani Kartar Singh, President of the Akali Dal dashed all his hopes to the ground by telling Jenkins that ‘he had seen a good deal of Jinnah and had no confidence in him’. Sikhs had known much of Jinnah and other Leaguers during the massive massacres of Sikhs in the District of Rawalpindi in March, 1947. Not to speak of coming forward to the rescue of the beleaguered Sikhs, Jinnah and his friends had not taken the trouble of even condemning those riots.
When the question of dividing Punjab came Jinnah again got a rebuff. Radcliffe saved Gurdaspur from going to Pakistan because the headworks of the canals that irrigated Amritsar District lay in Gurdaspur District and it was important to keep them under one administration. Moreover, according to Lapierre and Collins, Radcliffe had elected to follow the natural boundary line of the Ravi River instead of creating a Pakistani enclave protruding into the Indian territory. Jinnah’s Deputy Com, Mushtaq Ahmed Cheema could enjoy the loaves of his office for three days only, from August, 14 to August, 17,1947. Ferozepur and Zira tehsils, initially marked for Pakistan, were awarded to India because, according to Tunzelmann(author of Indian Summer) the headwaters that irrigated the princely state of Bikaner were located there.
Before framing his plans of having a grand Pakistan, Jinnah had, perhaps not taken, the statesmanship, astuteness and farsightedness of Nehru and Patel, adroitness and tactfulness of VP Menon, helpful hand of Mountbatten for tackling Princes in favour of India, into consideration. Consequently all his designs and schemes failed and he ended up in getting what he himself had once termed as ‘a truncated or mutilated moth-eaten Pakistan.’ Had he been realistic in his thinking and anticipated that he was getting a truncated Pakistan, he might not have insisted for the partition of the country. Jinnah got an ambiguous country of two distantly situated parts and the renowned international magazine ‘Life’ predicted in its issue of January 5, 1948 that the new country would disintegrate sooner than later.
Jinnah, the modernist, liberal, cigar-smoking, whisky-drinking and prohibited meat-eating Vakil soon started to feel the heat of his new found company of religious bigots and have a taste of his new religious state. Inevitably, in a Muslim country, he started to attract religious labels. ‘Maulana Mohammed Ali Jinnah, Zindabad’ shouted one excited crowd in a small town where he had stopped. Jinnah waved to the crowd to be silent and wagged his finger at them. ‘Stop calling me Maulana. I am not your religious leader. I am your political leader. Call me Mr Jinnah or Mohammed Ali Jinnah. Not more of that Maulana. Do you understand me? The crestfallen crowd melted away, embarrassed and bemused. According to Munir Hussain, the then Chief Secretary, when Jinnah was proceeding from his suite, one evening to interact with the leading Baloch Sardars during a visit to Baluchistan, he was being followed by his valet carrying a drink in a tray for him. The Khan of Kalat politely suggested Jinnah not to take the glass with him but the latter was visibly angry and retorted ” Whatever I am inside, I am the same outside. What business have you to advise me like this?” The liberal, Scotch-drinking Vakil was feeling ill at ease in the his new-found company of Mullahs and religious bigots.
Pakistan soon started to show signs of a confused State after its formation. Unfortunately it became evident from no other person than the Quad himself. His autocratic propensities started to show colours when he undemocratically dismissed two provincial Governments of NWFP and Sind. His political colleagues were also found to be enamoured of loaves and fishes of office. According to Dr Ishtiaq Ahmed, the famous Swedish historian of Pakistani origin, Jinnah wrote to his political adversary, Khan Abdul Ghaffar to join him as he wanted to get rid of ‘thieves and scoundrels’ surrounding him. He further wrote Ghaffar Khan that “I am being attacked by mad Mullahs and extremists.” The Quad who used to often boast that he had alone, with the assistance of his PA and a typewriter had created Pakistan, would himself face the ignominy of the worst kind in the hands of his Govt. His doctors advised to shift the ailing Jinnah from Quetta, where he had been taken for recuperation, to Karachi on September 11, 1948 but when his plane landed at Karachi, there was no senior functionary, not even the Chief Secretary or the IGP to receive him. The only ambulance sent to carry the ailing leader home broke down on the way. There was no backup. The shock of neglect and the enfeebling effect of hot humid weather during the two trying hours, hastened his end. The Quad breathed his last the same evening, a broken heart. The confusion and quandary, which had reigned over him for years, took ultimately his life also.
Pakistan was born out of religious hatred and fear-mongering. Blaise Pascal, the famous French philosopher and scientist, has well said that ‘Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction’. With religion becoming the spirit of new State policy, Pakistan got overtaken by the forces of intolerance, obscurantism and bigotry. With religious convictions in the forefront, the Pakistanis lost no time in passing of the Objectives Resolution giving primacy to one section and a short shrift to the minorities. Along with other allied factors, this resulted in- giving predominance to extremism and hatred for some of its own people and the next door neighbour, delay in the framing of Constitution for the country till 1956, shuffling of Prime Ministers in 50s after every few months, army takeover in 1958, adventure of war with India in 1965, atrocities in its eastern wing, war of 1971 and breakup of the country, declaration of Ahmedis as Non-Muslims in 1974, judicial murder of Bhutto, islamization of State instruments by the bigoted Kubba (Hunchback) Jarnail ,Zia-al-Haq, framing of the medieval Hudood ordinances and blasphemy laws, war in Afghanistan with the assistance of USA and transformation of the country into a nursery for fundamentalism and terrorism, Kargil adventure, pernicious role of army and its becoming owner of the country instead of the other way round, denial of its own history and historical heritage, distortion of its post-independence events, turning soldiers into jihadis and non-State actors, economic collapse and near bankruptcy due to diversion of scarce resources, radicalization of the society through Madrasas, needless and shameless nuclearization bravado, shamed Pakistani identity in western world, the hanging sword of Damocles of FATF, acquisition of client-state status first of USA and now of China, violated democracy and sham elections, declining rupee and IMF loans, compromised sovereignty with frequent US drone/Osama attacks. The artificial country is seen shining with all these inglorious hallmarks.
Pervez Hoodbhoy a Pakistani nuclear physicist and a prominent social activist has ascribed the lack of modern, secular and scientific education as the most important reason for the sorry state of affairs in Pakistan. He has also termed the two nation theory of Jinnah as something ‘non-sensical’. Further Jinnah’s split thinking, giving a free hand to the Muslim clerics to achieve his objective and their subsequent taking over of the State were the main reasons for bringing Pakistan to such an abyss. Jinnah had gotten a Moth-eaten Pakistan, the rest of structure of which is now being eaten up by the other termites.
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