Pakistan's emergence was not just the emergence of a new state, it was created on the basis of Islamic ideology. If Pakistan had not been created, the Muslims would have been under Hindu majority in a united India and lost to the Hindu majority.
The object of the Pakistan Movement was not to separate some provinces to save them from Hindu domination. Had it been so the Muslims of the minority provinces would never have taken an active part they did in the Freedom Movement.
The fact is that they were the worst sufferers, both before and after the partition. They knew that if Pakistan was created they would stand to gain nothing, indeed they might lose everything.
Inspite of this the Muslims of the minority provinces jointed the Muslims of the majority provinces in their struggle for freedom simply because they believed that they were fighting not for a territory, but for the preservation of their culture and civilisation, language, literature and Islamic way of life.
IN THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS AT THE LAHORE SESSION OF ALL INDIA MUSLIM LEAGUE IN 1940 THE QUAID-I-AZAM DECLARED:
"Mussalmans are not a minority, as it is commonly known and understood. One has only got to look round. Even today, according to the British map of India, 4 out of 11 provinces, where the Muslims dominate more or less, are functioning notwithstanding the decision of the Hindu Congress High Command to non-co-operate and prepare for civil disobedience.
Mussalmans are a nation according to any definition of a nation, and they must have their homeland, their territory and their State.
We wish to live in peace and harmony with our neighbours as a free and independent people.
We wish our people to develop to the fullest our spiritual, cultural, economic, social and political life in a way that we think best, and in consonance with our own ideals and according to the genius of our people".
For the Muslims of the subcontinent the demand for Pakistan was an expression of their deepest emotions for their political and cultural identity, whose roots were embedded in the State of Medina founded by Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and that of the Khulafa-e-Rashideen.
In this sense the Pakistan Movement was based on the Islamic ideology. Pakistan thus was created as the first Islamic State after the establishment of the State of Medina in 622 A.D. as an ideological state on the basis of Islam.
Before discussing in detail the ideology of Pakistan it is necessary to explain why the Hindus and Muslims could not coalesce into one nation although they lived together for centuries.
IN HIS SPEECH AT ALIGARH ON MARCH 8, 1944 THE QUAID DISCUSSING THE BACKGROUND OF THE MUSLIMS AS A SEPARATE NATION SAID:
"Pakistan started the moment the first non-Muslim was converted to Islam in India long before the Muslims established their rule. As soon as a Hindu embraced Islam he was on outcaste not only religious by but also socially, culturally and economically.
As for the Muslim, it was a duty imposed on him by Islam not to merge his identity and individuality in any alien society. Throughout the ages the Hindus had remained Hindus and the Muslims had remained Muslims and they had not merged their entities that was the basis for Pakistan".
Discussing the philosophical difference between Islam and Hinduism the Quaid declared at the All India Muslim League, Lahore Session on 23rd March 1940:
"It is extremely difficult to appreciate why our Hindu friends fail to understand the real nature of Islam and Hinduism. They are not religions in the strict sense of the word, but are, in fact, different and distinct social orders, and it is a dream that the Hindus and Muslims can ever evolve a common nationality, and this misconception of one Indian nation has gone far beyond the limits and is the cause of most of your troubles and will lead India to destruction if we fail to revise our nations in time.
The Hindus and Muslims belong to two different religious philosophies, social customs, literatures.
They neither inter-marry nor inter-dine together and, indeed, they belong to two different civilisations which are based mainly on conflicting ideas and conceptions. Their aspects on life and of life are different.
It is quite clear that Hindus and Mussalmans derive their inspiration from different sources of history.
They have different epics, different heroes, and different episodes. Very often the hero of one is foe of the other and, likewise, their victories and defeats overlap.
To yoke together two such nations under a single State, one as a numerical minority and the other as a majority, must lead to growing discontent and final destruction of any fabric that may be built up for the government of such a State".
In his presidential address at the special Pakistan session of the Punjab Muslim Students Federation, on 2nd March 1941 discussing the ideological difference of the two nations the Quaid further said:
"Our demand is not from Hindus because the Hindus never took the whole of India. It was the Muslims who took India and ruled for 700 years. It was the British who took India from the Mussalmans.
So, we are not asking the Hindus to give us anything. Our demand is made to the British, who are in possession. It is an utter nonsense to say that Hindustan belongs to the Hindus.
They also say that Muslims were Hindus at one time. These nonsensical arguments are advanced by their leaders. They say, supposing an Englishman becomes Muslim in England, he does not ask for Pakistan. Have you got eyes to see and don't you have brains to understand that an Englishman, if he changes his religion in England, he, by changing his religion, still remains a member of the same society, with the same culture, same social life and everything remains exactly the same when an Englishman changes his faith? But can't you see that a Muslim when he was converted, granted that he was converted more than a thousand years ago, bulk of them, then according to your Hindu religion and philosophy, he becomes an outcaste and he becomes a maleccha (untouchable) and the Hindus cease to have anything to do with him socially, religiously and culturally or in any other way?
He, therefore, belongs to a different order, not only religious but social, and he has lived in that distinctly separate and antagonistic social order, religiously, socially and culturally.
It is now more antagonistic social order, religiously, socially and culturally. It is now more than a thousand years that the bulk of the Muslims have lived in a different world, in a different society, in a different philosophy and a different faith.
Can you possibly compare this with nonsensical talk that mere change of faith is no ground for a demand for Pakistan? Can't you see the fundamental difference?"
An awareness of a separate Muslim nationhood in the subcontinent can be traced back to a thousand years when it was noticed for the first time by Abu Rihan al-Beruni. He visited India in the ninth century and wrote in his famous work, "Kitab-al-Hind", as under:
"For the reader must always bear in mind that the Hindus entirely differ from us in every respect, many a subject appearing intricate and obscure which would be perfectly clear if there were more connections between us. The barriers which separate Muslims and Hindus rest on different causes.
First, they differ from us in everything which other nations have in common. And here we first mention the language, although the difference of language also exists between other nations".
He further said: "Many Hindu customs differ from those of our country and of our time to such a degree as to appear to us simply monstrous. One might almost think that they had intentionally changed them into the opposite, for our customs do not resemble theirs, but are the very reverse; and if ever a custom of theirs resembles one of ours, it has certainly just the opposite meaning".
Discussing the social structure of the two nations, Hindus and Muslims, al-Beruni further wrote:
Secondly, they totally differ from us in religion, as we believe in nothing in which they believe, and vice versa.
On the whole, there is very little disputing about theological topics among themselves; at the utmost, they fight with words, but they will never stake their soul or body or their property on religious controversy.
On the contrary, all their fanaticism is directed against those who do not belong to them - against all foreigners.
They call them maleccha, ie impure, and forbid having any connection with them, be it by inter-marriage or any other kind of relationship, or by sitting, eating, and drinking with them, because thereby they think they would be polluted.
This consciousness of a distinct national identity was later stressed by Hz-Mujaddid Alf Thani (D. 1624), Shah Waliullah (D. 1762), Sayyid Ahmed Shaheed (D. 1831), and Sir Syed Ahmed Khan (D. 1898).
The later happenings convince Sir Syed Ahmed Khan to plead two-nation theory. In one of his lectures at Ludhiana he said:
"Remember a nation is nothing unless it is a nation in the real sense. All individuals joining the fold of Islam together constitute a nation of Muslims. As long as they follow and practise this beloved religion, they are a nation. Remember you have to live and die by Islam and it is by keeping Islam that our nation is a nation.
Dear children, if someone becomes a star of the heaven and ceases to be a Muslim what is he to us? He is no longer a member of our nation".
Other Muslim leaders who often referred to the Muslim community as a nation or nationality were, the Aga Khan (1877-1951), Justice Ameer Ali (1849-1928), Choudhry Rahmat Ali (1895-1951) and others. Later on, in the beginning of the twentieth century, Muhammad Ali Jauhar (1878-1931) also declared that there were two nations in the subcontinent.
Allama Iqbal, our national poet and philosopher, went a step further and vigorously proclaimed the need of a separate State for the Muslims of the sub-continent.
In the Presidential address at the 21st session of the All India Muslim League at Allahabad on 29th December 1930, Allama Iqbal announced:
"The Muslim demand for the creation of a Muslim India within India is, therefore, perfectly justified.
The resolution of the All Parties Muslim Conference at Delhi is to my mind wholly inspired by this noble ideal of a harmonious whole which, instead of stifling the respective individualities of its component whole, affords them chances of fully working out the possibilities that may be latent in them. And I have no doubt that this house will emphatically endorse the Muslims demand embodied in this resolution.
"Personally, I would go further than the demands embodied in it. I would like to see the Punjab, North-West Frontier province, Sindh and Balochistan amalgamated in to a single State. Self-Government within the British empire, or without the British empire, the formation of a consolidated North-West Indian Muslim State appears to me to be the final destiny of the Muslims, at least of North-West India... India is the greatest Muslim country in the world.
According to Allama Iqbal a separate Muslim State within the subcontinent would not be a theocracy. It would provide, on the other hand, an opportunity for Islam 'to rid itself of the stamp that Arabian Imperialism was forced to give it to mobilise its laws, its education, its culture and to bring them into closer contact with its own original sprit and with the spirit of modern times'.
This mixture of modernism and fundamentalism, which he had in mind, makes hardly any provision for a secular State for the Muslims.
In the entire struggle of the Muslims of the sub-continent for a separate homeland, the attitude of Hindus was one of stiff opposition and antagonism. Initially, the Muslim leaders had demanded that legal and constitutional protection should be provided to the Muslims for their separate national entity.
However, when these safeguards were not provided and the Indian National Congress decided to impose Hindu culture upon the Muslims during the Congress Ministries (1937-39) and wanted to impose Hindu Raj, on the basis of their numerical majority, the Muslims put forward the demand of a separate homeland for themselves first at the meeting of Sindh Muslim League Conference in October 1938 and later on at Lahore on March 23, 1940.
The Hindus did not reconcile to the Muslim demand for a separate State as declared in the Lahore Resolution in 1940. It was described by Gandhiji as a "Suicide", a "Sin" and a "vivisection of Mother India" which could be allowed only over his dead body.
In a message to the Frontier Muslim Students Federation dated June 1945, while explaining the purpose of Pakistan the Quaid said:
"Pakistan not only means freedom and independence but the Muslim ideology which has to be preserved which has come to us as precious gift and treasure and which we hope others will share with us".
Pakistan was demanded so that the poor and needy people could live an honourable life, free from exploitation. Addressing the Delhi session of the All India Muslim League on 24th April 1943, the Quaid declared:
"Here I should like to give a warning to the landlords and capitalists who have flourished at our expense by a system which is so vicious, which is so wicked and which makes them so selfish, that it is difficult to reason with them.
The exploitation of the mass has gone into their blood. They have forgotten the lesson of Islam. Greed and selfishness have made these people subordinate the interests of others in order to fatten themselves. It is true we are not in power today. You go anywhere to the countryside. I visited some villages. There are millions and millions of our people who hardly get one meal a day. Is this civilisation?
Is this the aim of Pakistan? (Cries of "No, No."). Do you visualise that millions have been exploited and cannot get one meal a day? If that is the idea of Pakistan, I would not have it. If they are wise they will have to adjust themselves to the new modern conditions of life. If they don't God help them: we shall not help them (Shouts of 'Hear, Hear!' and applause)".
For the survival of Pakistan it is necessary that there should not be economic exploitation of any province. If we have to survive as a Muslim nation and want to translate our dreams about Pakistan and its Ideology into reality we must work on these lines.
The ideology of Pakistan should be drilled into the minds of Pakistanis. The new generation is confused about Islam, Islamic law and about Islamic way of life. It is high time that we sincerely work for the ideology of Pakistan.
For that we have to follow Islam completely. Unfortunately we preach Islam but we do not practice it.
To sum up, the ideological orientation of Pakistan is nothing but the Islamic ideology and ultimate aim of it is the establishment of the Islamic welfare State where no one is exploited.
Also in the Islamic welfare State, it is the duty of the State to see that there is none without food and clothes and every individual is provided at least with all the bare necessities of life.
(The writer is Director, Quaid-i-Azam Academy, Karachi)
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