Ashwani Kumar Chrungoo
Pakistan was established consequent upon the division of British india. Then the Princely ruled states in whole of India were given an option to choose one of the dominions, India or Pakistan, to accede. This right to accede, as per the Indian Independence Act of 1947, was limited to the rulers only and the subjects had no role to play in this decision. Pakistan movement originally started as the Aligarh movement, and as a result, the British Indian Muslims began to develop a political identity. Soon thereafter, the All India Muslim League was formed, which marked the beginning of the Pakistan movement as a religio-political thought process. Most of the top leadership of the movement were educated in England, Aligarh Muslim University and Dhaka University.
The Pakistan movement was a political movement in the first half of the 20th century that aimed for and succeeded in the creation of the Pakistan from the Muslim-majority areas of British India. Lahore Resolution was passed by the Musim League which caught the imagination of the politically oriented Muslims in india. The movement was a part of the Indian independence movement, but eventually it also sought to establish a new nation-state that protected the political interests of the Indian Muslims. Urdu poets such as Iqbal and Faiz used literature, poetry and speech as a powerful tool for political awareness.
The fundamental difference between the Islamic republic of Pakistan and the other Islamic nations remained about their national identities, which marked the national priorities of a nation. If one looks at Arabian countries, they claim that they are Arabs first and Muslims later. In Iran, they claim to be Iranian first and then Muslim. The people of Turkic race countries like Azerbaijan, Turkey claim that they are Turks first and Muslims later. All the Central Asian Countries are wedded to their civilizational and cultural moorings and they even don’t allow Arabic names to be given to their children. Indonesia is the biggest Muslim populated nation of the world but it has a great love and respect for its thousands of years culture, traditions and legacy. This speaks indeed of rich wisdom of many Muslim countries.
But in Pakistan, they call themselves as Punjabi in Punjab, Sindhi in Sindh, Baluchi in Balochistan and Pathans in Khyber Pakhtunkhua etc. They have been educated all these decades to hate India first, then identify themselves as Muslims and then as Pakistanis. Hate for India is a national duty that people in Pakistan are supposed to nurture. Their love and respect for their age old civilization and culture is insignificant. Pakistan has ceased to be a representative of its thousands of years of past history as it believes that it is Hindu history and has deep connection with the Indian ethos. Such a disgust in mind for past history got also naturally reflected in treatment meted out to its founding fathers as well. It was but natural for a nation that discarded its history and civilization to provide a cold shoulder to its founding fathers. While Indian freedom fighters are respected in their country, but those who are responsible for the creation of Pakistan were neglected and virtually put into dustbin of history.
How did Pakistan get its name? “Pak” means holy, and Pakistan means holy place. This name was given by Chowdhary Rahmat Ali. He was a resident of Uttar Pradesh but his grandfather had settled in London. Rahmat Ali was a student of Cambridge University in London who published a pamphlet in 1933. In that pamphlet, he discussed the future of Muslims in India and demanded a separate nation. It was the same pamplet in which he named Pakistan. After the formation of Pakistan, he came to Pakistan from London. This was the first time he had come out of London. When he saw the attitude of the Government of Pakistan, he commented on the Government of Pakistan regarding the killing of minority Hindus and Sikhs and said that the Government of Pakistan is not deliberately stopping the killing of minorities. He believed that Hindus and Sikhs should be deported from Pakistan to India, but the government of Pakistan was deliberately getting them slaughtered. He was arrested by the Pakistan government within 15 days & was kept in jail and all his property was confiscated. He was expelled from Pakistan and sent to London without any money. He died in a very poor condition in Britain in February 1951. There was a great fuss as to who would bear the cost of his funeral. His grave is in London.
After this we come to Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who is called Qaide-Azam in Pakistan. Though he created Pakistan, yet some people in Pakistan didn’t like him because he drank alcohol, smoked cigars and had never performed Hajj. He had also never offered Namaz in his life, so the fundamentalists in Pakistan called him by names and were always angry with him. He was a patient of TB and kidney disorder. In those days, Tuberculosis was considered an incurable disease. He became very ill in Quetta and was flown to Karachi by plane. The ambulance was waiting at Karachi airport. He was brought on a stretcher and put in an ambulance. The ambulance stopped due to some fault on the way. Another ambulance was not arranged for him. Meanwhile, Jinnah slipped into a coma and was shifted to the hospital in that state. But he was found dead on reaching the destination.
Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s wife and daughter left Pakistan and came to India while he was alive and Jinnah’s real sister’s condition became more dangerous than Jinnah’s. She was a dental surgeon from Kolkata Medical College, had her first marriage with a non-Muslim, that’s why radicals of Pakistan disliked her. After Jinnah’s death, Fatima Ali Jinnah entered politics and became very popular in Sindh province. Radical Maulanas disliked Fatima and was murdered. When her funeral procession was going on, her dead body was thrown on the ground and the police had to open fire in Karachi. Several petrol pumps were burnt and 12 people died in the riots.
Now we come to Liaqat Ali Khan. He was one of the men who fought for Pakistan. Liaquat Ali Khan was also a resident of Uttar Pradesh and was a student of Aligarh Muslim University. He was the first PM of Pakistan and made an agreement with his counterpart Pt. Nehru regarding the treatment of minorities in their respective countries. It was in this agreement that both the countries agreed to give full rights to their minorities in their respective countries and would also make a separate system for them in the constitution. In India, the agreement was welcomed by and large, but it angered the radicals and extremists of Pakistan and consequently Liaqat Ali was murdered. And the big surprise was that the killers were released from prison only after a few years and upon their release, they were given a warm welcome by the people. After that temporarily, two or three PMs ruled and finally, the army seized power.
Another important role in the creation of Pakistan is that of Hussain Shaheed Suhrawardy. He was a resident of Midnapore, the then East Pakistan, his father was a well-known judge of the Kolkata High Court. Suhrawardy himself had been the Deputy Mayor of Kolkata and had also been the Mayor of Midnapore. He played the most important role in the creation of Pakistan when on the call of Jinnah’s Direct Action Day, he led thousands in Midnapore, Dhaka, Chittagong on the unfortunate day which saw thousands of people dead. On the same day, the British, Gandhi and Nehru were so scared of the massacre of Hindus that they accepted the demand of Pakistan. In this way, Suhrawardy has the biggest role in the establishment of Pakistan. After the formation of Pakistan, present Bangladesh was part of Pakistan becoming East Pakistan for almost three decades and Suhrawardy was also made the fifth Prime Minister of Pakistan. Along with Urdu, he also proposed to make Bengali the official language of Pakistan, due to which the radical Muslims of Pakistan turned against him and the army also revolted against him. In a period of just 13 months, he was ousted from power. One of his daughters and son were also murdered, later he was expelled from Pakistan and he lived in Beirut and died in oblivion there. Then later, when a new country was formed, Bangladesh government opened the graves in Beirut and buried him back in Dhaka.
Barrister Zafarullah Khan also had a big role in the establishment of Pakistan, he was an Ahmadiyya and was a well-known barrister, he argued a lot about the need of Pakistan in many forums and in front of the British government. He also went abroad for the creation of Pakistan and put pressure on the British government in London. After the formation of Pakistan, he was made the first foreign minister of Pakistan, but later the fundamentalists declared Ahmadiyyas as non-Muslims and refused to accept them as citizens of Pakistan. Khan was jailed and later released on the condition that he would leave Pakistan and thus Zafarullah went to France.
In this way, the condition of all the people who played the most important role in the creation of Pakistan was made, indeed, miserable by the very state they created, which could never have been expected. However, it has a big moral lesson for the generations to come. Love, regard and connection with the nation’s civilization and history gets reflected in the treatment of its great national heroes and men and women of immence value.
(The author is a senior BJP and KP leader)
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