History (Important Articles)
 

[CENTER][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="5"]Two-nation theory[/SIZE][/FONT][/B][/CENTER]
March 19, 2012
By Tanvir Ahmad Khan

In the beginning was the word –– in the lower case –– that created myths of compelling power and legends that provided the woof and warp of the culture of human communities. The world got industrialised and became modern but this substratum of civilisation was not discarded; only reinterpreted. Man did not live by bread alone.

In Pakistan the situation is different. Every element of its ancient heritage, and more recently, its history since Muhammad bin Qasim led an Arab army to Sindh and Multan, is under attack. The orthodox bigot does not want to know much about the 5,000 years before the fateful Arab expedition. On their part, some highly educated Pakistani liberals blithely sidestep causality and context and want to shake every pillar on which the state of Pakistan has rested during the last 65 years. Much too sophisticated to need a vision, they want millions of fellow Pakistanis to do so as well.

I do not intend to locate the article published in this newspaper on March 14, under the title “Founding Stories” by Feisal H Naqvi in the domain of this arrogant ‘liberalism’. But it did occur to me that it might have paid insufficient attention to the context of events between 1857 and 1947. Approaching the two-nation theory merely from the stand-point of western notions of nationhood is, at best, an abstract exercise.

South Asia’s struggle against alien rule is not without aspects that rile a modern mind. India was a not a nation state, but fragments of a collapsing empire when the wily British conquered it. Paradoxically, Great Britain’s triumph triggered off a renovation of existing belief systems. Hinduism went through an extraordinary renaissance, particularly in Bengal. Muslims were systematically weakened in the aftermath of 1857 as a religious community most likely to challenge the new empire. Once their initial shock of the retribution was contained, they began an internally contested search for salvation and rehabilitation. There was the spiritually fortified inward-looking Islamic seminary (madrassa) with a hallowed tradition of religious learning and the opposing, somewhat anglicised, open space of Aligarh.

Religious revivalism amongst Hindus and Muslims of India deeply affected Indian politics that had become possible as the paramount power developed a particular version of the western mission civilisatrice aiming at an eventual grant of limited ‘home rule’ to its Indian subjects. Mahatama Gandhi effectively sidelined secularists like Subash Chandra Bose; Nehru kept his brand of secularism alive through sheer tact in handling the ‘Bapu’; Abul Kalam Azad, a far-sighted political leader, foresaw the danger posed by the deepening of the communal divide by various contenders for power in a postcolonial era but was unable to do much even in the Congress. Documents now compiled by Lionel Carter reveal that in the first post-independence winter even Gandhi-ji, strongly supported punitive military action against Pakistan. Apparently, India considered invading Pakistan in October, as well as, in December 1947.

Amongst the Muslims, there was no clear concept of a nation as defined in western treatises; only a painful consciousness of a dispossessed and defeated ‘millat’. Iqbal was the bard par-excellence of its revival and also one of the principal exponents of a renaissance in the Arab-Islamic world. Jinnah came under his influence but retained his distinctive place as a workman-like constitutionalist who would, realistically, protect Muslim rights under an inevitable future majoritarian dispensation. A long and tortuous road wound its way through the Congress sessions, Jinnah’s Fourteen Points, the Nehru Report and the 1937 provincial governments to the articulation of the two-nation theory. It was more an attempt to create an imagined identity than a theory per se; it marked a shift to mass mobilisation of the Muslims. The last general election in undivided India gave this identity a form and substance that few had foreseen.

Jinnah understood the need to re-establish viable parameters for the two-nation theory in the postcolonial context of nation-building. He sought to do so as early as August 11, in his celebrated speech in Karachi. Public statements made by him as the first governor general of Pakistan have invited commentaries about a certain inherent ambivalence, but we also know from independent sources that he came down hard on those who demanded a theocratic state or, for that matter, talked –– like some hawkish political leaders in India –– of a complete exchange of population on communal basis. He easily remains the most eloquent defender of equal rights of religious minorities in Pakistan’s history. Jinnah’s characterisation of Hindus and Muslims as two ‘nations’ cannot be fully understood without mapping the dialectics of the politics that the Raj sanctioned and that snowballed as all stakeholders failed to build safeguards into it.

The Express Tribune

[CENTER][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="5"]Pakistan Day – Strange March 23 Celebrations: View the Mirror[/SIZE][/FONT][/B][/CENTER]
March 22, 2012
Mahboob A. Khawaja, Ph.D.
Exclusive Article

[I]Pakistan and its moral, political and intellectual culture is being ruined and destroyed by those rulers who share nothing in-common with the masses. The princely rulers and the ordinary folks live far part in conflicting time zones, unable to find a meeting ground, and people paying for their own pains and anguish under the false pretext of democracy. Obsessed with foreign-thinking and control, morally and intellectually incompetent and money-making Generals support and co-exist with the corrupt and prostitution-run PPP Zardari regime and the bogus assemblies, all demonstrate cruelty and perpetuated indifference and insanity to the interests and priorities of the Muslim people of Pakistan. Come to the present and see the mirror – how Pakistan is being governed by the wrong people, with wrong thinking and doing the wrong things. Its existence and freedom are under fire. The THINKING people of the nation must initiate planned steps and organize revulsionary collective ideas and ideals to deter threats to the national freedom, integrity and future of Pakistan. The priorities must be focused on developing a new system of economic and political governance by disconnecting the interdependence on foreign aid, debts and dictates. The nation has been dehumanized to its critical and painful juncture of very survival. Under the circumstances, what is there to celebrate? The symbolic Pakistan Day celebrations will remain devoid of much needed change and reformation aim of the institutionalized corrupt system of governance. Pakistan is in desperate need of a New Political System befitting to its people and values to ensure a sustainable future.[/I]

With continued planned scrutiny, the Western intelligencia framed Pakistan as a “failed state” surviving on foreign loans and unpayable IMF debts of some 65 billions. Most Western politicians view Pakistani rulers as beggars flourishing by trading their national interests. In recent years, the Foreign Policy magazine ran focused coverage on “Pakistan as the most dangerous place on earth.” These vindictive claims were outcome of planned scheme of things to question the integrity of Pakistan as an independent Muslim nation. The embodying scenarios and contentions explain how internal conflicts, denial of services to the common citizens, legitimacy of the government, measures against corruption, poor management of the nation’s resources and affairs are counted as dysfunction factors to assert the conclusion. Conscientious Pakistanis should have taken serious notice of these challenging indicators and how they will affect the governance and futuristic development of a nation; certainly, the military regime of General Musharaf at the time and now the PPP Zardari in power would reject these claims. Undoubtedly, the deprived masses appear tense and uncertain of a promising future. The US policy has articulated the “Islamic terrorism” phenomenon originating from Pakistani soil and has enlarged its scope to make unchallenged drone attacks on the Pakistani civilians in the tribal belts killing almost eight -nine thousands civilians so far. If this would have happened in the US, American president would have launched many retaliatory wars against the intruders. Pakistani politicians are complacent in killing their own masses to maintain the politics of power and foreign influence.

General Musharaf, the then self-styled president was bribed and bought to make common Pakistanis look like as “terrorist” , the image America and Britain wanted to carve out for the Muslim nation. His Masters rewarded him for his prolonged cruelty and treachery to the Nation of Pakistan and lives comfortably in $1.4 million mansion in London under 24 hours British security protection. The Pakistani masses bleeding hearts and neglected talents could only hold demonstrations and strikes against the present Zaradri regime that does not represent the will of the people. If you want to analyze the progress and history under broader perspectives, most pages will go blank for the chapter on Pakistan. Intellectual and moral data ceases to exist because there was no moral or intellectual leadership to generate such vital information. Comparatively, India could gather data and considerable insights to illustrate its own contemporary progress and ancient history-though mostly developed by Muslim rulers and Islamic civilization. What freedom meant to India, is not the same to Pakistan. India enjoyed continued political leadership, whereas, Pakistanis with Jinnah’s death, lost what could have been their ideological foundation and viable political values. Secular India developed parliamentary system of government, short and long range planning models for public institutions, sustainable economic and industrial infrastructures, educational development and strong armed forces. It can celebrate what it has achieved so far. Painful as is to find rational space to have celebration for the Pakistan Day-March 23. After more than six decades of freedom from the British colonial rule, almost 50 years were stolen by the military Generals, who could not think right nor act as Muslim Generals in the interest of the Pakistani nation. The ordinary folks are still looking for recognition of basic human rights, survival needs of foods and shelters, equality, security and justice. There are full time high life privileges for the affluent class but nothing for the ordinary citizens except demonstrations, social and intellectual deprivation and lost sense of identity. How would the nation reconnect itself to the forgotten purpose and meaning of the Lahore Resolution of March 1940 for an independent Pakistan?

The Lahore Resolution (March 23, 1940) of the Muslim League unanimously demanded a separate homeland for the Muslim majority living in the Indian sub-continent, democratic rights, and freedom to establish and practice Islam as a system of life and to be progressive country in a global community of independent nations. None of it reflects from the half leftover Pakistan after India invaded the eastern part in 1970, and carved up Bangladesh, out of what was called East Pakistan. Defeated Generals should have learned a lesson to be shameful and accountable to the nation. Not so, they became the rulers of the militarily weak nation for long time to come. While this historical drama was in progress in concert with the then military dictators and accomplice politicians, the friendly US diplomats were describing Pakistan as “ drowning dog.” They knew well what was happening, not the common Pakistanis. After almost forty years, what has changed, if any? Nothing at all. Few years back, the Washington Post displayed its own freewill journalistic caricature- depicting General Musharaf as “dog” – a friend of America and active collaborator in its “War on Terrorism” – in reality, a new form of crusade against Islam and practicing Muslims across the globe. President Bush and General Musharaf worked hard to convince the humanity that the war on terrorism is real. Muslims opposing the war are called “foreigners”, “terrorists” and “insurgents”, while Americans are described as advisors. Deception is known to be the art of diplomacy and war. Most Western intellectuals with living conscious, would tell forthright,” it is a lie”, and “this war is a fraud.” Not to the Pakistani Generals and Mr. Zardari, it is a means of survival, and a reason to afloat their combined powerhouse. The masses and the national ideology have no role to play in this paradigm. Zardari gang and the Generals appear immune from any accountability. Those daring to challenge the absurdity of the military sponsored governance, often become ‘insurgents’ and undesirable ‘foreigners’ in their own homeland. No wonder, who is truly Pakistani, the colonial based institution of the Generals, the known thugs like Zardari or the freedom loving masses who demanded, strived and created the free homeland?

America and British policy planners are happy, their plans and strategies are effectively in place to break up the integrity of Pakistan. Conflict-making and conflict keeping is the order in Baluchistan and the Northwest Frontier Pakhutoon provinces and the adjacent tribal areas. The foreign strategic planners contend that the Baluchis and Pakhtoons are minorities in Pakistan. India will be keen to see more dismemberment of Pakistan. In recent months, the BBC broadcast several bogus interviews with political activists and so called specialists on Pakistan. These planned efforts are aimed at to fuel the provincial insurgency and conflicts and disintegration of the Muslim nation. American drone attacks and the war in Afghanistan have made things worst for the security of Pakistan. After Ms Bhutto, Sharif, General Musharaf, and now Zaradri is the best hope for futuristic hegemonic rule both of the US and India. Therefore, to appease the friendly nations, the ruling elite must celebrate Pakistan Day to forge relationship with the ideology of Muslim homeland. They are stranger to the essence of the Pakistan Day. To an educated Pakistani, it may be an insult to watch the military parade on Pakistan Day while the nation experiences daily bloodbaths and terrorism. What good the military has done for the common citizens? History tells us, there was no military factor involved, and it was the help of God and will of the people contributing to the emergence of Pakistan Movement and the birth of a free Islamic nation.

What has been destroyed systematically by the stupid Generals and the wicked politicians, cannot be recovered on its own. Educated Pakistanis used to describe the fertile lands of Sind and the Five Rivers-Punjab, “our culture is agriculture.” Not any more, once home grown foods like sugar, wheat and other commodities are now imported from abroad. What went wrong with the fertile lands of Pakistan? The Al-Qura’an (Surah Al-Furqhan), mentions, how the deeds of the people affect the environmental growth and natural productivity of human development. Ignorance to the Divine message and man-made corruption spoils the fertility of land and creative energies of humanity. A fact most often unknown to agricultural scientists. Recently, an American scholar remarked on President Bush led bogus war on Iraq: “we know the enemy, he is in us”, so do most Pakistanis. The military rule has stolen more than forty years of lifetime of the country. The nation’s agriculture lifeline has been endangered by the official neglect and corrupt practices of urbanization. Economy makes no headways under the continued IMF debts of $64 billion dollars, being unable to pay the annual interest without additional borrowing. No national productivity except on bureaucratic papers, political institutions dismantled, only dummy Parliament and the Senate are in session to float the PPP thieves and deceive the masses. To rationalize the irrational, Zardari makes references to the dead Bhuttos. How could dead people be a hope for the future of Pakistan? Would the Pakistani history offer any honorable reference to thugs and criminals?

India and China are the emerging new superpowers, acknowledged and considered by the Western strategic policy interests and economic development agendas. Nobody wants to invest in a society governed by the military dictators and criminals like Zardari, as they have neither relevance nor value in the contemporary global affairs. India with the blessing of the Western powers, have plans for “dissecting” Pakistan, and ‘slicing’ it into half in its preparation of the war games. Ironically, most will agree, this is not the time and age for the secular military Generals to run a culturally sensitive, Islamic value-based nation of Pakistan. Those fellow Pakistanis with living conscience and Thinking Power, must contemplate, how the corrupt politicians and their accomplice military Generals, devoid of reason and intellectual foresights, could possibly help to reform and rebuild the nation? If agreeable, what are the practical solutions and a way out of the accumulated insecurity and instability? Another military coup? Not so. Obviously, that is going to create more problems than resolve any peacefully. With political institutions dismantled by the Generals, the nation does not seem to have the intellectual capacity to come out of the problematic box and see beyond and the above for its sustainable future and protective measures for its integrity. Understandably, when people are governed and victimized by ignorant and insane politicians, they lose sense of rational thinking about the self and the environment and become void of productivity. This appears to be a clear burden on human conscience prevalent throughout the Pakistani culture.

Leaders create leaders. The Generals, Bhuttos, Sharifs and Zardari are not the leaders but bootlickers of the Western Masters and by-products of the neo-colonial military rule. There is nothing to celebrate except a time to see the MIRROR and reflect on our own wrong thinking and incapacitated state of the national affairs, so helpless that instead of being active reformers, most have succumbed to be pacifist spectators. Pakistan needs change but there is no systematic mechanism to foresee or visualize a democratic plan for political change and future-building. Some 30 years earlier, I asked late General Zia ul-Haq, what would our history say, why the succeeding generations of Muslims failed to produce leaders like Salahuddin, Allama Iqbal, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Qutb, Al-Mushraqi, and Mowdoodi? He replied to me without attempting to answer the focal question. Contemporary history finds no respectable place for the oppressive military rulers and wicked politicians in nation building.

Ruined agriculture cannot be restored nor lands ploughed by tanks and guns and criminal leaders. Educated people educate others, and build public institutions, not the army. Traders and private investors run economic markets; nobody invests where military dictators and political thieves control the country. Whether you like it or not, look at today’s Pakistan where the ruling elite and the masses seem to be living in two different time zones, without meeting of minds, necessities for survival and priorities for security. American led war on terrorism is killing Pakistanis and large scale daily civilian blood baths speak their own language of the political cruelty of the so called leaders. Tanks, guns and bullets produce nothing, they destroy all living things. With Zardari, Pakistan is losing its respect and integrity. Shame to their common sense if India will talk on Kashmir. Shame to Pakistani Generals and their level of professional morality and intelligence if they expect politically strong Indian leadership to have a genuine dialogue on the settlement of Kashmir. Pakistan under Zardari is operating from a position of extreme weakness, not of strength to search for a peaceful resolution of Kashmir. There is an overwhelming sense of political insecurity. Will you celebrate the Pakistan’s 72 years of democratic demand for an independent homeland? It will be reasonable and responsible to ask for the legal trial and accountability of General Musharaf, Sharif, Zardari, Malik, Gilani and so many other thugs and indicted criminals in the PPP governance who have stolen the future of the besieged Nation. The educated and visionary Pakistanis particularly those living abroad and non-partisan would need to THINK of a Navigational Change and take initiatives for planed change and reformation of the corrupt political governance. If they hope that Zardari or Sharif or the Generals will change, it is mere a hope without a hope as criminals and insane people never learn nor admit their mistakes and cruelty.

If Allama Iqbal, Chaudry Rehmat Ali, Quaid-e- Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah and Liaquat Ali were alive today, most likely they would have refused to be identified as people of Pakistan or part of the Pakistani political culture. The major paradoxes of Pakistan’s history illustrate that its time for change, opportunities for development and resources for progress were stolen by its own egomaniac and insane rulers. To undo the darkened past and reshape the present, Pakistan urgently NEEDS educated, visionary and proactive leadership and public institutions to rebuild its essential capacity to safeguard its integrity, survival and future as a Muslim Nation moving forward to pursue change and social and economic development infrastructures for the deprived people. The Generals, Bhuttos, Sharif, and Zardari are part of the problem, not a remedy for the future. The solution must come from the THINKING people of the new generation of educated, honest and proactive Pakistanis to facilitate HOPE and PROMISE for a sustainable future. The essence of time would demand prompt collective thinking and action for change and reformation process of the corrupt political governance, not a space for neutrality, confrontational argument, unthinking and inaction. This should be the agenda and resolve of the Pakistan Day.

(Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja specializes in global security, peace and conflict resolution, and comparative Islamic-Western cultures and civilizations, and author of many publications in international affairs. Comments are welcome at: [email]kmahboob@yahoo.com[/email]).

The article is contributed to pkarticleshub.com

[CENTER][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="5"]Meaningless celebration?[/SIZE][/FONT][/B][/CENTER]
March 25, 2012
By Farhan Bokhari

Pakistan’s annual Resolution Day on March 23 was hardly a moment of celebration for the South Asian country. Remembered in the memory of a landmark resolution passed by the Muslim leaders of India in 1940 to carve out a separate country for themselves, the event was followed by the creation of Pakistan in 1947.

While Pakistan was born in adversity as a country, and saw one of the largest movements of migrants in modern history, its ultimate fate as a nation could not have been visualised by its founding fathers.

Accounts of millions of migrants sacrificing most of their worldly belongings, all for the journey towards a new country and a new nation, remain central features of the story of Pakistan’s birth.

Yet the many ironies surrounding Pakistan’s story today stand in sharp contrast to the dream of Pakistan when it was born. On Friday — the commemoration of the 1940 resolution saw Pakistan observe a public holiday though with many glaring ironies.

In a country which is starved of electricity, prominent buildings were well lit, while the top leaders hosted lavish meals to mark the day, at least a third of Pakistan’s population went to bed underfed. Meanwhile, in sharp contrast to the unity which surrounded Mohammad Ali Jinnah, a credible and well-respected leader of the Pakistan movement, the country he created remains divided politically, ethnically and geographically.

On Friday, the mediocrity of those in charge of Pakistan was evident at the event held to give out civil awards by Asif Ali Zardari, the president. Barring the well-deserving illustrious few such as Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, the Oscar-winning Pakistani filmmaker, the event was devoted to the services of political cronies from the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party.

This followed a year in which Zardari, Prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and other notable figures of the ruling party have only wrapped themselves with new controversies. Defying the Supreme Court and thereby the rule of law has become the norm in today’s Pakistan — a country, whose founding father, Jinnah, an illustrious barrister, would never have compromised on his principles.

Nepotism

The collapse of Pakistan’s political and economic institutions in the past four years since Zardari, Gilani and the PPP came to power, is a glaring example of how the dream of Pakistan has gone sour.

And the writing on the wall for the foreseeable future will likely be no different. As the leaders seek to consolidate their hold on a country which is surrounded by widespread accounts of corruption and nepotism tied to the top tiers of the ruling structure, Pakistan remains poised to see further aggravation.

In a year which is likely to witness the next parliamentary elections, Pakistan’s story of everything that will be in contrast to Jinnah’s vision will increasingly become the norm. Some of the PPP’s leaders recognised through awards on Friday have a history of blind loyalty to the party. Their examples are now set to be emulated by others among their compatriots, for such blind loyalty to a partisan cause has in fact become the route to success in today’s Pakistan.

As for the fate of Pakistan itself, more of the same will hardly make things better. The state of affairs is a complete departure from its founding vision.

Ultimately, Pakistanis must decide if they want to return to the vision of the country’s founding fathers or simply accept a fact of life that surrounds the country’s ruling structure today.

March 23 could well work as a powerful reminder of the need to rescue Pakistan from those in charge of the country, as they neither have the means nor the apparent desire to take the country towards its founding principles. A failure by the people of Pakistan to change the status quo will sadly continue to make anniversaries, such as the one on Friday, no more than a moment of rejoicing without meaning.

Farhan Bokhari is a Pakistan-based commentator who writes on political and economic matters.
Source:Gulf News

[CENTER][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="5"]A new ‘two-nation’ theory[/SIZE][/FONT][/B][/CENTER]
March 27, 2012
By Yaqoob Khan Bangash

Just a few days ago we observed the anniversary of the passing of the ‘Lahore Resolution’ of 1940 by the All India Muslim League which asked for ‘independent states’ to be carved out of the north-west and north-east of India which had Muslim majorities. By the end of British rule, however, just one ‘Muslim’ state was carved out of the Raj, Pakistan, with two wings, separated by a thousand miles of Indian territory.

The Lahore Resolution was based on the ‘Two-nation theory’ which claimed that India was inhabited by two nations — Hindus and Muslims — and that both these ‘nations’ required a separate homeland for themselves. This theory, as time as shown, was very simplistic in its outlook. While religion is certainly a strong marker of identity, this theory assumed that religion was the sole basis of identity and that people with the same religion naturally formed one nation.

This theory showed problems even before the partition of India when the Khudai Khidmatgar movement, a nationalist yet very religious movement, led by Abdul Ghaffar Khan in the Frontier province disagreed with the ‘fear of Hindus’ concept and aligned his party with the Indian National Congress. Abdul Ghaffar Khan’s movement was based in the Pakhtun concept of ‘Pakhtunwali’ whereby anyone, Muslim, Hindu or Sikh, observing its principles was part of the Pakhtun community and treated as an equal. Ghaffar Khan was a very conservative Muslim, but his personal faith did not deter him from making common cause with Gandhi in promoting non-violence and toleration — with both inspired by their own respective faiths. Similarly, the Unionist party, a composite party of Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs, was the best example of political cooperation between people who were supposed to be so different. People like Sir Fazl-e-Hussain were pioneers of the idea that Hindus and Muslims can indeed work together and showed cooperation, in fact, in the Punjab.

Fate had it that the proponents of the ‘two-nation’ theory won the day and established Pakistan. However, the theory did not stop being significant after the creation of Pakistan. The concept of a two-nation theory negated the existence of differences amongst the Muslims of Pakistan. So the Baloch could not argue for autonomy, the Bengalis could not get their language recognised as an official language and the making of Sindhi an official language in the Sindh was termed an act of secession by some quarters in Pakistan. The persistence of this two-nation theory has not only thwarted the creation of a multicultural identity in Pakistan, but also adversely affected the Muslims living in India. Not only did the 140 million Muslims in India had to grapple with the fact that their upper and educated class had mostly moved to Pakistan, they had to, and in some cases still have to, convince their fellow Indians that they are not fifth columnists for Pakistan. After all, a legitimate argument could be made that since Pakistan had been created for the ‘Muslim nation,’ there was no place for them in what was supposed to be a ‘Hindu’ nation.

On the 72nd anniversary of the Lahore Resolution, however, let me posit another ‘two-nation’ theory. This new theory is based on India and Pakistan as two distinct nations which work together on topics of mutual concern and benefit. I recently visited Delhi and was rather surprised to note that even when I spoke very good Urdu, people recognised that I was from Pakistan, and even the most Muslim of neighbourhoods in old Delhi seemed ‘foreign’ to me. I know this is a generalisation but the separation of nearly 65 years has created significant distinctions between the polities of Pakistan and India.

Therefore, the time has come to refashion the old two-nation theory into one which takes citizens of India and Pakistan as basic members. After all, except for the extreme right there is no constituency in India which wants to annul the partition and most Indians would actually like a strong and prosperous Pakistan with which they can trade and visit. The Muslims in India, too, want to develop independent of a reference to Pakistan — after all, they are as Indian as anyone else. Similarly, there are at least five million non-Muslims in Pakistan, who want to be recognised as full citizens of the country and not live like an uneasy appendage to the Muslim majority. Such a two-nation theory I would like to believe in.

The Express Tribune

[CENTER][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="5"]Nation states do not need ideologies to exist[/SIZE][/FONT][/B]

[I][B]It is time to get rid of the excess baggage of a distorted history[/B][/I][/CENTER]

Opinion By Yasser Latif Hamdani


Scientific thinking has an inbuilt mechanism with which it corrects errors of a previous generation. What Karl Popper called the doctrine of falsifiability helps uncover anomalies and inconsistencies in an established paradigm. Since science has its eyes on precision, the focus is on devilish details.

Ultimately, through observation, facts that are inconsistent with the reigning paradigm emerge. Slowly, one of the alternate paradigms triumphs over the competing paradigms for several possible reasons: its solution to the crisis is more elegant, and holds promise of future inquiry. Soon enough, a new crisis emerges and alternate paradigms are proposed. As science experiences a paradigm shift, presumptions are reset.

One of the greatest examples of this phenomenon is the Copernican Revolution, which changed the Earth's status as the center of universe. Before the Copernican Revolution, the Earth's status as the center of the universe was considered fundamental to everything from explanation of why the clouds move to why water pumps work. Faced with the new idea that it is in fact the Earth that revolves around the Sun, all fields of science had to gradually adapt to this new idea. Since then, Copernican Revolution has become a metaphor used in various fields, including Philosophy where Kant used it in his "Critique of Pure Reason".

Politics is also a science. Political science deals with political ideas and theories of statehood and nationalisms with its own established paradigms. One such paradigm is the ideology of Pakistan. It is the view of this author that Pakistan's ideology needs a Copernican Revolution.

The two standard established myths on which our ideology stands are the following:

1) Pakistan was created in the name of Islam to establish an Islamic state.

2) Hindus and Muslims are two nations and therefore cannot live together.

The facts do not fall quite in line with these myths. For example, if Pakistan was created in the name of Islam, why were Jinnah and the Muslim League ready to abandon the idea of Pakistan for the federal scheme proposed by the Cabinet Mission Plan? Contrary to the claims made by ideologues of Pakistani ideology, the Cabinet Mission Plan had no reference or guarantee for a future Pakistan, though it is true that Jinnah's selling point to his own people for the Cabinet Mission Plan was that Muslims never expected the British and the Congress to give them Pakistan on a platter. This selling point, interestingly, was suggested by Woodrow Wyatt who was a confidante of Jinnah. When first suggested, Jinnah is reported to have responded excitedly "there you've got it".

Secondly, had the idea of Pakistan irrevocably committed the League to an Islamic state, why is it not mentioned in the Lahore Resolution? Indeed the words "Islam" or "Islamic state" do not emerge once. Then we have the testimony of Raja of Mahmudabad who claims that he was told by Jinnah not to forward the idea of an Islamic state from the Muslim League's platform. In fact Muslim League all throughout the Pakistan Movement did not pass a single resolution calling for an Islamic state.

The issue of the two nation theory is also not as clear cut as our textbooks make it out to be. Two nation theory was a purely constitutional argument changing the status of Muslims from a community to a nation. It did not at any place say that Muslims and Hindus could not co-exist. What it did say was that the constitution of India had to recognize this fundamental reality so that a large community - no less than 90 million - was not disadvantaged in India. This is what was later coined as consociationalism which is a standard mechanism to bring deeply divided communities with competing aspirations together under one constitutional scheme. In order to establish the status of Muslims as a nation, an argument had to made in terms of established parameters of nationalism ie culture, common history, dietary habits, personal law etc. The argument forwarded by Jinnah rested entirely on these four points - none of which were directly linked to theology per se. Piercing the veil one sees that this Muslim nationalism was exclusively Indian, ie Indian Muslims constituted a nation, and not that all Muslims everywhere constituted a nation. To put it mildly, it was a skilled lawyer's argument which was neither ideological nor irrevocable.

That the two nation theory was revocable - at least to the mind of its greatest and most successful proponent - is patently obvious in the famous 11th August speech. When he says "in due course of time Hindus will cease to be Hindus and Muslims will cease to be Muslims, not in a religious sense because that is the personal faith of an individual but in a political sense," Jinnah is not just talking about fair and generous treatment of minorities - something which he did many times - but is actually speaking of gradual elimination of religious identity in favour of a single Pakistani nationality. Before 1940, by and large his attempt had been to bring Hindus and Muslims together in one yoke as Indians. After Pakistan was formed, his goal became a single Pakistani nationality without any discrimination of religion. It was for this reason that Jinnah had appointed a Hindu as the first law minister of Pakistan and asked a Hindu to write Pakistan's first national anthem.

It might be added of course that Jinnah's own life does not conform to the two nation theory as it is taught to the children of Pakistan. Most of Jinnah's professional adult life was spent amongst Hindus and Parsis and it was in these communities he had his closest friends and colleagues such as Gokhale, Tilak, Sir Ferozeshah Mehta, Kanji Dwarkadas, Durga Das, Diwan Chaman Lal, Dalmiya etc. The unkindest cut he was to receive at the hands of his great rival Gandhi was that Gandhi called him "Jinnah the representative of the Mohammaden community". He was a shareholder in most of the leading Hindu owned business concerns such as Tata and Birla and owned securities in Air India right till the end. He might not have entirely approved of his daughter's marriage - as the story goes - but it did not stop him from sending her flowers. Contrary to myth fed to us, Jinnah never disowned his daughter. As a Khoja Shia Muslim, the inheritance law applicable to Jinnah's estate is Hindu personal law. How ironic for a man who our textbooks say created a state based on irreconcilable religious differences between Muslims and Hindus.

Finally it may be said that Jinnah was at his finest as a luminary of the freedom struggle, as a lawyer-parliamentarian and as a statesman when he spoke out in the defence of Bhagat Singh, the great Lahori freedom fighter that our state - the state that is said owe its existence to Jinnah - refuses to honour. Here is an excerpt:

"The man who goes on hunger-strike has a soul. He is moved by the soul and he believes in the justice of his cause; he is not an ordinary criminal who is guilty of cold-blooded, sordid, wicked crime.

"What was he driving at? It is the system, this damnable system of Government, which is resented by the people.

"And the last words I wish to address the Government are, try and concentrate your mind on the root cause and the more you concentrate on the root cause, the less difficulties and inconveniences there will be for you to face, and thank Heaven that the money of the taxpayer will not be wasted in prosecuting men, nay citizens, who are fighting and struggling for the freedom of their country."

Nation states do not need ideologies to exist. Nor can all generations to come be held to ideas of a previous generation. Pakistan's ideology - distorted as it is - is responsible for many of the ills that plague Pakistan today. Let us jettison this ideology as outdated and face the fundamental fact that it is not sine qua non to Pakistan's survival as a state. It is time to get rid of the excess baggage of a distorted history.

[url]http://www.thefridaytimes.com/beta2/tft/index.php[/url]

[CENTER][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="5"]Why Ziaul Haq should not be forgotten[/SIZE][/FONT][/B][/CENTER]
April 8, 2012
By Saroop Ijaz

Reportedly, when the relationship between China and the USSR was at its most tense and just before the Sino-Soviet split, the top leaders of both countries, Zhou Enlai and Nikita Khrushchev, met to see if the situation was still salvageable. After reaching a stalemate, the Russian premier Khrushchev said to his Chinese counterpart that he now understood what the problem was: “I am the son of coal miners,” he said. “You are the descendant of big feudal mandarins. We have nothing in common.” “Perhaps we do,” replied the great Zhou Enlai, “we are both traitors to our class.” I cannot hear or read about this story without thinking about how that could so easily be the conversation between Ziaul Haq and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Zia were both traitors to their respective classes. The son of Sir Shahnawaz Bhutto and the scion of one of the largest landowners of the country is now revered mostly by the most downtrodden of the masses. Whereas Ziaul Haq, the common man who climbed to the top, remains so alien and so painful to remember that ironically only a very small particular segment of the urban middle class can reluctantly associate with him.

I feel compelled to shed any pretense of theoretical, objective analysis and at the outset put forth my belief that Bhutto was the greatest and ablest leader that this country has witnessed. My purpose here is not to write an obituary for Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, I feel myself thoroughly ill-equipped for that task. The death anniversary of Bhutto was commemorated a few days ago, and a considerable bit has been said about his life, works and death, although not enough attention has been given to the implications of his death on the trajectory of our state. It would be an understatement and probably a misstatement to say that we have not quite recovered from Bhutto’s murder, since ‘recovery’ would imply that the infliction of damage has ceased.

There is a lot of easy, room-temperature analysis at offer these days about the decline of our state. An example of juvenile analysis is that why do people keep on electing the same corrupt politicians over and over and, perhaps, we deserve these leaders etc., and this is laced with reminiscence of the better times gone by. This often pretends as if it was some process of natural erosion or atrophy which has gradually led us to this point. Pakistani society and politics did not fade away or go giggling into the sea. They were destroyed very deliberately by the use of repression by the theocratic, tyrannical and maniacal dictatorship of Ziaul Haq. One need not be an admirer of Bhutto to see how the ghastly murder of Bhutto destroyed our moral fabric and integrity.

Coming back to the class treason bit, the 1970 election allowed the highest number of common people to be elected to the assemblies, with more feudal lords and industrial barons swept aside, than in any other election in our history. Bhutto did lose the plot slightly in 1977. However, compare this with the shamefully poorly-conducted farce of the non-party election in 1985, which returned to the assemblies the worst bit of our politics and more. Student politics was destroyed, it became a sin to be woman and the list goes on. Ziaul Haq was indeed pathological with visions about him guiding him, it was a shame that medical research could not benefit from him. Yet he did not and could not have done it alone. While Bhutto was being killed and people publicly flogged and executed, there was no meaningful opposition from the common man and that was the real damage. Weakness of this sort is regressive, as we have seen many times after that.

Due emphasis is being placed on the corruption of our leaders these days. Amongst other politicians, the Zia era produced some very brilliant army children, including his sons, who were to become very wealthy in a matter of few years. It is a shame that Pakistan has not benefitted more from the business acumen of Ijazul Haq and Humayun Akhtar Khan etc. It is indeed surprising that nobody has asked them to render accounts of how they moved from army salary allowances to the tycoons that they are today.

I could go on about Ziaul Haq, but it would be unnecessary. His political progeny have disowned him; association with Zia is now a stigma. His death anniversary passes almost unnoticed every year. Even his son does not seem entirely keen or comfortable relying on the works and wisdom of his father. The opening batsmen of his team would not like to be caught praying at his tomb. Yet, it is very important that we never forget Ziaul Haq and what he did and stood for. Actually, merely opposing what he represented is a fairly decent model of good political conscience and responsibility. The reluctance to bring up Zia cannot be solely attributed to the tedium of recollection of pain inflicted on the Pakistani people in general but also because Zia remains the most horrifying and shameful skeleton in many important closets. To use a term, unironically, a thorough post-mortem of Ziaul Haq and his legacy is essential, if for nothing else, then for closure. It is also necessary, perhaps, because we are still not completely immune to the lure of that demagoguery.

Ziaul Haq should remind us of the evil, mediocre and I stake everything and say; common men are capable of. In the comparison between Bhutto and Zia to mention the verdicts of history etc., will be a cliché. Admittedly, some Bhutto supporters go a tad too far in their devotion, yet he certainly was a man worth admiring. Even his political opponents feel compelled to praise him before attacking other members of his party; I suspect this is not merely genteel courtesy dictating that one not speak ill of the dead, but the feeling of guilt, of blood on their hands and their complicity in his murder.

The Express Tribune

[CENTER][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="5"]Unseemly tirade against Sharif[/SIZE][/FONT][/B][/CENTER]
April 8, 2012
By Farhan Bokhari

President Asif Ali Zardari’s brief visit to India today may have counted for more but for his failure to unite the country that he leads.

Ahead of the trip during which Pakistan’s head of state is expected to meet with India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as well as visit the famous Muslim shrine in Ajmer, Zardari has launched a new political battle with his main foe.

Speaking to an audience in Lahore, Zardari chose to target Nawaz Sharif, the former prime minister and leader of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) with what could not be characterised as anything less than a tirade.

Ranging from a personal attack targeting Sharif for a lacklustre turnout at his late father’s funeral some years ago, Zardari went on to claim that Sharif’s political rise was possible only with Zardari’s generosity. Zardari claimed that his ruling Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) is widely popular in the Punjab province of which Lahore is the capital.
Though Zardari’s comments may be evidence of Pakistan having entered the season prior to the country’s national elections which must be held by March 2013, his choice of words is clearly unacceptable. Coming ahead of his trip to India today, the first such journey by a Pakistani head of state in years, Zardari has clearly further vitiated an already tense atmosphere across his native country.

Expecting key members of Pakistan’s present day ruling structure to be scrupulous in politics is hoping for the unlikely. The PPP-led ruling structure which came to power in 2008, just months after the tragic assassination of its former leader, Benazir Bhutto, has been dogged by more controversy than Pakistan’s previous governments.

Ordinary Pakistanis just do not recall another regime which similarly became infamous for its failure to address popular concerns. In the 1970s during the high days of the PPP under its founding father, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, the party’s slogans of roti (bread), kapda (clothing) and makaan (housing) stood at the centre of its ideological message.

Today, an apt message like bijli (electricity), gas (gas for cooking) and paani (water) could well be at the centre of the present day PPP’s ideology, for these are in short supply and therefore at the centre of widespread popular lament. Under Zardari’s watch alongside Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and the rest of the PPP, there has been nothing but a glaring failure in successfully addressing such challenges.

Though late in the day, the ruling structure appears to be angling to seek a victory in Pakistan’s next elections. Plans for the future between now and election time reportedly range from handing out cash grants to giving rickshaws to unemployed youth, all supposedly to win favour at the popular level.

No credible reforms

Yet, these gimmicks and they are indeed nothing but gimmicks, will not change the fundamental gaps which surround Pakistan. The country’s troubled economy and the major gaps in managing the public sector deficit, speak volumes about the inability of the ruling structure to begin reforming Pakistan in a credible way.

While in India, Zardari will likely portray himself as a peacemaker, seeking to end a chronic dispute which has run for more than six decades. While such overtures are clearly welcome in the India-Pakistan context, Zardari’s main dilemma lies at home.

With widespread evidence of failure all around, he must first get down to addressing some of the key challenges faced by Pakistanis in their daily lives. But his tirade against Sharif ahead of his departure to India, only illustrates a deeply alarming trend. Left without much to show in terms of the ruling structure’s performance over the past four years, the government and the top leaders now appear determined to raise Pakistan’s political temperature.

By doing so, their hope is probably to vitiate the country’s atmosphere further and slide to the next elections by portraying themselves as the best hope to consolidate Pakistan’s democracy.

For the opposition too, Zardari’s recent remarks present a dilemma. Sharif has time and again gone through opportunities to step up pressure on the government by choosing to agitate on the streets of Pakistan. But each such occasion has seen him back away from confrontation in the apparent hope of protecting and promoting Pakistan’s young democracy.

But the circumstances which follow Zardari’s latest comments may well prompt Sharif to action on the streets, snowballing into episodes of violence. For Pakistan, following the controversies of the past four years, stability may not be in sight for the foreseeable future.

Farhan Bokhari is a Pakistan-based commentator who writes on political and economic matters.
Source: Gulf News

[CENTER][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="5"]Blood on the tracks of history[/SIZE][/FONT][/B][/CENTER]
April 18, 2012
Mahir Ali

“PEOPLE from both sides behaved like beasts,” says Sarjit Singh Chowdhary, a retired brigadier, offering an indisputable overview of the events in Punjab during the year that India was partitioned.

His testimony is among the innumerable first-person accounts that comprise the core of Ishtiaq Ahmed’s meticulously researched thesis on the direst events of 1947, The Punjab Bloodied, Partitioned and Cleansed (Oxford University Press).

Essentially an invaluable oral history of events in the Punjab during that decisive year, it serves as an overarching cautionary tale.

A number of themes emerge from its pages as the circumstances of 65 years ago are graphically resurrected in the words of those who experienced them firsthand. Among the crucial incidents that preceded the bloodbath was Master Tara Singh’s provocative waving of the kirpan outside the Punjab Assembly in Lahore following the resignation of the Unionist-led Khizr ministry, in the wake of a Muslim League agitation.

Here, one of the numerous counterfactuals of that period rears its head. The League, hitherto not particularly influential in provincial affairs, won the largest number of seats in the 1946 elections but fell short of a majority. A coalition with the Congress was within the realm of possibility, but the largest nationalist party’s hierarchy decided against it. On the one hand, its demurral is perfectly understandable. On the other, it is hard not to wonder whether such an arrangement might not have saved lives.

Some of the initial instances of communal strife involved attacks by Muslim mobs on Sikhs in villages near Rawalpindi in March 1947, as well as clashes in the garrison town itself. There was turmoil in Lahore during the same period. It was still unclear at that point whether a Muslim-majority state called Pakistan would emerge — and the question of the shape it might take was even murkier.

Many Sikhs and Hindus believed, for instance, that if a divide occurred, Lahore would be a part of India; after all, much of the city’s property belonged to non-Muslims, and it hosted crucial Sikh shrines. At the same time, quite a few Muslims in Amritsar and Jalandhar expected those cities to be assigned to a putative Pakistan, notwithstanding their non-Muslim majorities. These seemingly unrealistic notions were prodded in some cases by political leaders.

It’s useful to remember, though, that in those days reality was a rapidly morphing construct. As Ishtiaq Ahmed points out time and again, the Radcliffe boundaries — delineated by an Englishman who had arrived in India for the first time just a few weeks earlier — were officially announced a couple of days after partition. The mid-August cut-off point wasn’t public knowledge until Lord Mountbatten’s June 3 announcement.

The haste with which the British colonial power withdrew from the subcontinent has often been cited as a leading cause of the gory disarray that followed. After all, the initial deadline for the transfer of power was June 1948. Whether the Punjab situation would have been ameliorated to some extent by a longer deadline and an earlier demarcation of the new international boundary is a moot point, although it’s certainly possible that a more orderly transition would have facilitated a less rancorous divide. It might have helped, too, had Mountbatten been able to fulfil his ambition of serving as governor-general of both countries in the immediate aftermath of independence.

Another question that the book raises is whether a division of Punjab was an inevitable consequence of the subcontinent’s partition along communal lines. The Muslim League was keen to claim the province as a whole, and entered into comprehensive negotiations with the Sikh leadership as a means of facilitating this outcome. The Sikhs were understandably wary of Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s assurances of virtual autonomy, given the focus on Islam as a determining factor for the forthcoming divide.

The vast majority of witnesses, including many of those who lost most of their families in the Punjabi holocaust, testify to a broad communal harmony in the run-up to 1947. Some Muslims resented the deplorable Hindu tradition of excluding them from kitchens, but many others accepted the prohibitions on breaking bread together as a cultural norm. The extent to which class resentment might have contributed to the conflict is insufficiently explored in the testimonies, possibly because it was largely a subliminal factor.

It is universally accepted that innocents were subjected to the vilest atrocities, but it’s vital to remember that they were perpetrated by Sikhs, Muslims and Hindus alike — with reports or experiences of incredible cruelty elsewhere commonly cited as a provocation. It is perhaps even more important to note the innumerable instances of folks from all backgrounds keeping their heads when all about them were losing theirs, and not letting the vitriol that was seeping through the land of the five rivers poison their hearts. An incredible number of survivors acknowledge that they owe their lives to awe-inspiring acts of kindness by friends, neighbours and sometimes even strangers belonging to supposedly rival communities.

In some cases, political affiliations clearly played a role: for instance, nationalist Muslims resistant to the clarion call for a separate homeland and communists on both sides of the deepening divide often did what they could to ameliorate the consequences of the communal frenzy that climaxed in the weeks following freedom at midnight. The appearances of the resolutely secular Jawaharlal Nehru are often cited as a crucial factor in quelling or pre-empting outbreaks of violence. By the same token, the instigative acts and rhetoric of the Muslim League National Guard, the RSS and the Akalis frequently figure as retrograde influences.

Could anything short of a renunciation of the partition project have prevented the bloodbath? Eventually, well-armed military escorts protected many a refugee convoy. It should, of course, never have come to that. Although the tragedy lies 65 years in the past, it has vitiated relations between India and Pakistan ever since and continues to undermine the powerful logic of harmonious coexistence. Ishtiaq Ahmed’s probingly piteous account of how the Punjab suddenly went pear-shaped in 1947 ought to serve as prescribed reading particularly for those who continue to pursue the pathetic notion that the carnage was either inevitable or necessary.

[email]mahir.dawn@gmail.com[/email]
-Dawn

[CENTER][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="5"]Justification of Partition in Books & Educational Syllabi Breeds Hatred and Terrorism[/SIZE][/FONT][/B][/CENTER]
May 2, 2012
By Nasim Yousaf

“The last remedy under the present circumstances is that one and all rise against this conspiracy [partition of India] as one man. Let there be a common Hindu-Muslim Revolution…it is time that we should sacrifice…in order to uphold Truth, Honour and Justice.” ? AllamaMashriqi, 1947

Repeated justification and endorsementof the partition of the Indian sub-continent within the Pakistani and Indian educational syllabi and general books arein fact breeding hatred and terrorism. This is not only damaging peace in South Asia but has obvious implications for the rest of the world.

The way history has been currently written, it endorses partition and highlights those who ratified it. This is because in August 1947, power was handed over by the British to the All-India Muslim League and Indian National Congress for Pakistan and India respectively. Therefore, the educational syllabi and books have been written from their perspective, glorifying their leaders’ roles and eliminating key facts from history.

What most people do not know or comprehendis that partition was avoidable and that the confrontational politics of the Muslim League and the Congress leaders in the 1930s and 1940s not only delayed freedom, but served to spread hatred between Muslims and Hindus, as the two parties and their leaders could not resolve their differences. This hatred led to deadly riots in August 1946 and thereafter these riots spread into other parts of India.

AllamaMashriqi watched the political events and developments very closely. He could foresee India breaking up and hostility taking hold in the region forever. In an effort to free the nation from the British and to keep the nation from breaking up, he took steps to bring about unity and a revolution.

In his statements, he warned the public, calling for a revolution, and said:

“after the advent of Lord Mountbatten India will be a heap of slaughter and tyranny henceforth…the only way to get out of this calamity was that the Hindus and the Musalmans should unite for a common revolution against the dirty politics of the present day.”
?AllamaMashriqi, May 10, 1947

“The last remedy under the present circumstances is that one and all rise against this conspiracy [partition of India] as one man. Let there be a common Hindu-Muslim Revolution in which not hundreds but millions will lose their lives by the bullets of Birla and the British. Millions will die, no doubt, in this way but hundreds of millions will be saved forever. If man has decided to kill man for sheer lust of power and with nothing to show to the world except tyranny and loot, it is time that we should sacrifice men in millions now in order to uphold Truth, Honour and Justice.”? AllamaMashriqi, May 14, 1947

In addition, under his direction, his KhaksarTehrik movement (a private army of the masses) undertook intense activities, such as publishing of revolt material, mock wars, parades and meetings with defense personnel; he also presented “The Constitution of Free India 1946 AC”, which sought the freedom and protected the interests of all communities, and called 300,000 Khaksars to Delhi on June 30, 1947. He also alerted Khaksar leaders to get ready for the dawn of freedom. All of these actions speak loudly that a well-planned coup by Mashriqi was forthcoming.

Mashriqi’s actions did not go unnoticed; brisk activity and an unusual rush within the circles of the Viceroy of India and non-Khaksar leaders became visible. As a result, within an unusually short time (when there was no other compelling reason), the partition plan was announced. Jinnah and Gandhi accepted the plan instantly and then pleaded to their respective parties, i.e. the All India Muslim League and the Indian National Congress, to endorse it, which they did. This approval was given prior to the assembly of the Khaksars in Delhi. It is to be noted that when the Muslim League was holding a meeting (on June 09, 1947 at Imperial Hotel) to approve this plan, fires were shot on Khaksars and many who came to the hotel were seriously injured. To ensure that Mashriqi did not stand in the way, a fatal attack was made on Mashriqi’s life on the same day and he was arrested. Announcement and acceptance of the partition plan in this unusual hurry, especially prior to the assembly of Khaksars on June 30, confirms that these steps were taken in fear of Mashriqi taking over India, which was neither in the interest of the British (as they did not want to leave behind a united India which could become a superpower and for other reasons) nor the other parties’ leaders (who had obvious vested interests).

Thus, in August 1947, power was handed over to Muslim League and Congress and the region was divided into Pakistan and India. From there onwards, the educational syllabi and general writers began re-writing history from these parties’ perspectives only, glorifying their leaders’ roles and eliminating Mashriqi’s pivotal role in bringing about freedom. Instead, he was portrayed as a villain, as were other nationalists who had sought to maintain unity of the sub-continent.

In fact partition was avertable, had the leaders not played in the hands of the rulers and come to agreement for the sake of the region’s long term future. The general people would have followed suit and focused on commonalities rather than differences. Time and ground realities have also proven that partition has only produced harsh suffering and dangerous animosities including the proliferation of deadly weapons.

Today, the reality is that the countries are divided. But what is shocking is that there seems to be no realization (by educationists, speakers, writers, media etc.) that by distorting history and by justifying partition, hatred is being taught to children in their most prime and impressionable ages. There is no realization of the obvious that under these circumstances – in which partition is explained, justified, and internalized by the countries’ youth – peace between the two countries cannot be achieved and Aman Ki Ashacannot be successful.

Justifying and endorsing partition goes beyond unsuccessful talks to broader consequences of automatically breeding hate and terrorism. For the sake of peace in South Asia and for subsequent implications for the world, the history of the region needs to be corrected and the ongoing brainwashing since 1947 needs to come to an end. To this end, the hidden facts surrounding partition and why and how India was divided need to be unburied and made public, the idea that partition was inevitable must rectified in both countries, and personalities when highlighted should also be held accountable for their mistakes. The human devastation at the time of partition, a rare episode in human history, and its consequences should provide a lesson for the world to learn from. Going forward, the educational syllabineed to be over-hauled and books must be written from the perspective of the future of South Asia.

NasimYousaf is a scholar and historian who has presented papers at U.S. conferences and written many articles and books. He has also contributed articles to the “Harvard Asia Quarterly”, “Pakistaniaat” and the “World History Encyclopedia (USA).” His forthcoming book entitled “Mahatma Gandhi & My Grandfather, AllamaMashriqi” uncovers many hidden realities behind the freedom of British India.

Copyright © NasimYousaf 2012

[CENTER][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="5"]Our sad history[/SIZE][/FONT][/B][/CENTER]
May 3, 2012
By Rasul Bakhsh Rais

The decision of the apex court of Pakistan to convict an incumbent prime minister on charges of contempt of court and sentencing him ‘till the rising of the court’ is more than symbolic. It should be regarded among those decisions in our history, which generated great political consequences rather than resolve them. The modern court system is based on the philosophy of resolving social conflicts, maintaining order and disciplining society by interpreting established laws. The role of the Supreme Court, however, is much larger on two counts. It is the Court of final resort, as well as the final interpreter of what established law entails.

In any democratic system, the courts must have the highest regard, respect, and support of the government and that of society at large. What earns them societal respect is their degree of fairness, independence, courage and the ability to stay above social and political divides. Courts and societies give energy to each other, progress together and complement each other — one provides support and the other justice.

Sadly, this is not how things have worked in our history. The courts and the society in Pakistan’s crisis-ridden political history have not worked out that relationship. They found each other on opposite sides when the Supreme Court threw its weighty justice on the side of political adventurers, usurpers and violators of the Constitution. The law of necessity and the law of popular sovereignty, which assigns power to the people, have been in natural conflict. In the past, courts have sanctified the law of necessity, giving legitimacy to usurpers and on the opposite side, the people of Pakistan have put faith in their representatives and parliament.

Being on opposite sides, the courts and society could not build a congenial relationship that could benefit both, and ultimately could have provided better safeguards for democracy, fundamental rights and civil liberties. The courts would have then equipped themselves, not only with raw legal power, but also with social power and political respect.

This did not happen until Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry stood up to General (retd) Pervez Musharraf. His conversion, from conferring legitimacy upon Musharraf by taking oath under the Provisional Constitutional Order more than six years earlier, to an independent chief justice, surprised and shocked the military ruler. Musharraf humiliated him, locked him and his family up and went on to recreate a pliant Supreme Court to support him. Look at the magical and dramatic effect of saying no to a military ruler on the public — the chief justice became a national hero, all political parties, except those sharing power with Musharraf, launched a national movement and never rested until the old judiciary was restored.

That is the only time when we saw the judiciary and the society in Pakistan united, and that raised hopes for democracy and constitutionalism. I do not wish to comment on the merit of the contempt of court case. That is the job of legal experts. The point I am trying to make is that when a court makes an unprecedented decision of convicting a prime minister for not implementing one of its orders — writing a letter to Swiss courts to open cases against President Asif Ali Zardari — which the prime minister thought was not politically possible for him to implement, it will produce political consequences for the Court and the political order.

Had we not had the history of the Court and the people having conflicting positions, perhaps the effects of the judgment against Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani would not have gone beyond inflicting personal pain and a political setback for him. Now, however, we may see the political community divided along partisan lines, and the PPP mobilising its constituency on the victimhood card. This may not augur well for the Court-society relationship.

The Express Tribune

[CENTER][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="5"]Competing narratives of Partition violence[/SIZE][/FONT][/B][/CENTER]
June 2, 2012
By Ajmal Kamal

In one of the endnotes to his outstanding essay titled The partition of India and retributive genocide in the Punjab, 1946–47: Means, methods, and purposes Paul R Brass, Professor Emeritus of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Washington, Seattle, and the author of a number of important books and articles on ethnic politics and collective violence in South Asia, remarks: “The absence until very recently — and even now the very meagre presence — of serious research on what happened during the partition is regrettable… It has meant that the partition exists as a disastrous (for the Indian side) disjuncture in the arrival of the Indian state on the world scene and, on the Pakistan side, as a regrettable but necessary catastrophe that made possible the creation of the Pakistan state. But the sharpness and horrific character of the partition has made it appear as a kind of terrible accident that cannot be fit into the perceptions of the people of India and Pakistan concerning their past and future.”

The return to this highly revealing academic essay was occasioned by the recent publication of an interesting newspaper article “Manto and Sindh” (Dawn, May 27) by Mr Haider Nizamani. The writer correctly points out the marked difference between the ways Sindh and Punjab (the two provinces of present-day Pakistan as well as the two multi-ethnic, multi-religious larger communities on either sides of the border) experienced collective violence and mass migration at the time of Partition. As such, Nizamani justly complicates and questions what is taken as the dominant ‘national’ narrative of the 1946-47 violence that needs to be seen exclusively belonging to Punjab based on its unique experience, during and after Partition.

Sindh, clearly, did not undergo the kind of “retributive genocide” and the consequent total ethnic cleansing that the partitioned Punjab suffered. Nizamani argues that the experience of Punjab at the time of Partition should not be generalised as that of other parts of the present federation that do not share in full measure the high level of anti-non-Muslim rhetoric and fascination with the so-called ‘Pakistan ideology’ and its resultant militarism.

Nizamani expresses satisfaction on the fact that “Sindh has no equivalent of Saadat Hasan Manto as a chronicler of Partition. And the absence of a Manto-like figure in Sindhi literature on that count is good news. It shows the resilience of Sindh’s tolerant culture at a time when Punjab had slipped into fratricidal mayhem”. However, it was Manto who made a point similar to the one put forward by Brass and which we can benefit from even today, when the compulsions of domestic identity politics have created at least three competing historical narratives held by Punjabis, Sindhis and the Urdu-speaking Mohajirs of Sindh respectively.

Manto says: “Both Hindus and Muslims were being massacred. Why were they being massacred? There were different answers to the question; the Indian answer, the Pakistani answer, the British answer. Every question had an answer, but when you tried to unravel the truth, you were left groping.”

Let us begin with the ‘Mohajirs’ in Sindh — the community that I happen to belong to — who are as diverse a lot as any other in our country. As a result of a series of political decisions of inclusion and exclusion, they define themselves as the people (and their descendants) who migrated into Sindh mainly from UP/MP, Bihar, Gujarat, Rajasthan and Hyderabad, although the first category seems to dominate the rest culturally and politically.

It is interesting to note that those who came from East Punjab even to Sindh are excluded from the list; the popular community narrative nevertheless takes exclusive ‘credit’ for the ‘sacrifices’ made as a result of the Partition massacres that uniquely took place in the East and West Punjab! The ‘Mohajir’ narrative — as well as the current demand for ethnic division of Sindh being raised by a minority among them — is, therefore, more easily dismantled and shown to be wanting than the other two competing ones.

The current Sindhi narrative of the Partition events is not so seamless and impregnable either, as it is no less shaped by the event that occurred afterwards. True, the kind of violence that shook the two parts of Punjab was not experienced by Sindh as it decided to join Pakistan and a large part of its Hindu population left without being massacred. But the period in question was no less traumatic for the Sindhi Hindus who were made homeless.

Mohan Kalpana, the renowned Sindhi fiction writer, notes in his autobiography, “India’s freedom brought me no joy and in the last 35 years I have never once offered salutes to the Indian flag. I always found this freedom lacking and I never participated in the Independence Day celebrations. It reminds me that on this day we were dispossessed of our country.”

Nizamani goes on to present a rather uncomplicated explanation: “The violence against Sindhi Hindus and their mass migration to India was a tragic loss scripted, orchestrated and implemented by non-Sindhis in Sindh.” However, there are historical references that seem to question this view.

One such reference is a quote from Mohammad Ayub Khuhro, when he held the portfolio of Public Works in the Sindh ministry after the 1946 elections. He is quoted by Parsram V Tahilramani in his 1947 book Why the Exodus from Sind: Being a Brief Resume of Conditions Responsible for Exodus of Hindus, Sikhs and Harijans from Sind as saying: “Let the Hindus of Sind leave Sind and go elsewhere. Let them go while the going is good and possible; else I warn them that a time is fast coming when in their flight from Sind, they may not be able to get a horse or an ass or a gari or any other means of transport.”

Tahilramani is clearly of the view that their exodus was the result of a concerted campaign conducted by the leaders of the Sindh Muslim League during and after the 1946 elections.

The Express Tribune

[CENTER][U][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="5"]Events leading to Pakistan Resolution[/SIZE][/FONT][/B][/U][/CENTER]
By Malik Tariq Ali
Published: March 23, 2013



The Lahore Fort has witnessed many a rise and fall of conquerors, rebellion, downfall of dynasties and bloodshed, but never a revolution where 100 million Muslims of the subcontinent pledged to wage an unarmed constitutional struggle for the creation of a sovereign independent nation for themselves, as took place at the historic Minto Park on March 23, 1940.

Events preceding the March session in Lahore, when Punjab’s Unionist Party premier, Sir Sikandar Hayat Khan, banned all private armed militias, had created tensions. This ban also impacted Allama Mashriqi’s Khaksar Tehreek, whose party’s newspaper, Al-Islah, launched a very critical and provocative campaign against him. On March 19, contingents of the Khaksar Tehreek, carrying spades, started gathering near Bhati Gate. When the police tried to stop them, a fight ensued, resulting in the death of a British police officer and injuries to many policemen. Later, police reinforcements arrived and mercilessly brutalised many Khaksars, killing several of them. This evoked a lot of anger amongst the Muslims living within the walled city, who vented it against Sikandar Hayat. The situation became so critical that Sikander Hayat pleaded with the Quaid on telephone to postpone the planned session of the All-India Muslim League (AIML). However, the Quaid was adamant that the historic meeting would go ahead as planned.

On March 21, the Quaid arrived in Lahore, where a grand reception was planned and he was to lead a huge rally on his way to the League office on Davis Road. However, in deference to the Muslim families mourning their dead, he instructed the organisers to cancel the rally. He issued a press release in which he revealed that important decisions were to be taken in Lahore. In the evening, a meeting of the AIML Council was held, which finalised the list of members for the Subjects Committee.

On March 22, an open session of the AIML was held, where the Quaid delivered his presidential address in which he gave a brief account of political developments in the preceding two years. Towards the end of his address, while elaborating upon the two-nation theory, he made a reference to a letter written by Lala Lajpat Rai to Bengal’s famous leader CR Das in 1924, where the former had stated that Hindus and Muslims are two separate nations and they can never form part of one united nation.

In the evening, the Subjects Committee met, where the Quaid made it clear that the focus of the Lahore sessions would be on the Pakistan Resolution. Nawab Liaquat Ali Khan read out the proposed draft of the Resolution in Urdu, prepared by 21 members of the working committee. The resolution, translated into English by Maulana Zafar Ali Khan, read, “That geographically contiguous units are demarcated into regions which should be so constituted, with such territorial readjustments as may be necessary, that the areas in which the Muslims are numerically in majority as in the North Western and North Eastern Zones of India would be grouped to constitute ‘Independent States’ in which the constituent units shall be autonomous and sovereign.”

When discussions resumed, Mr Ashiq Hussain Batalvi, proposed some changes, to ensure that Punjab and Bengal were not divided. Nawab Liaquat Ali Khan, however, assured him that this would not be allowed. Thus, no changes were made, the draft resolution was adopted and it was decided by the Quaid-e-Azam that Maulana Fazlul Haq would present the resolution in the open session on March 23, at Minto Park.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 24th, 2013.

[CENTER][U][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="5"]Aims of Pakistan's creation- Two main views[/SIZE][/FONT][/B][/U][/CENTER]
March 24, 2013
Anwar Jalal

Two-nation theory is the pedestal on which Pakistan came into existence though many did not agree with the rationale of two-nation theory but few could dispute that Pakistan came into existence on its basis. However, what was the real aim of Pakistan. This is disputed and is being debated since its inception by political thinkers and researchers since the day one. In this regard there mainly are two views. One view contends that Pakistan was created for Islam.

The other one argues that its purpose was to safeguard the political, religious and cultural as well as economic interests of the Muslims of India. In simple words, the first view is that Pakistan meant to be Islamic state while the other insists that Pakistan was to be a Muslim State. The supporters of the first view base their arguments by referring to the thoughts and concept of Allama Iqbal and some speeches of Quaid Azam and also refer to some well known slogans raised and chanted during the struggle for Pakistan. Like wise they contend that Allama Iqbal, considered as the creator of concept of Pakistan, demanded in his address a separate state for the Muslims of north India so that they could adopt a system according to Islamic laws
About Quaid-e-Azam concepts they refer some of his following like statements. We have to fight a double edged battle, one against the Hindu Congress and the British Imperialists, both of them being capitalists. The Muslims demand Pakistan where they could rule according to their own code of life and according to their own cultural growth, traditions and Islamic laws.” (Speech at the Frontier Muslim League Conference on November 21, 1945)
In August 1941, Quaid-e-Azam gave an interview to the students of the Osmania University to a question that what are the essential features of religion and a religious state? Q A said —- that —- In other words, the Islamic state is an agency for enforcement of the Quranic principles and injunctions Similarly they also refer to- the slogan—-Pakistan Ka Matlab Kia ? La Illaha Illa Allah chanted during Pakistan Movement The contender of the second view– Muslim state – have their own arguments besides other arguments they also quote from different speeches and statements of Quaid Azam with the aim to prove that he (Q A ) never meant Pakistan to be a theocratic state. Some of their arguments are as under – If Pakistan was being created for Islam why the religious political parties and most of Ulema (religious scholars) opposed it. Quaid-e-Azam and other League leaders were though Muslims but they were all secular regarding politics. Quaid Azam well known speech of 11 August 1947 to the constituent assembly in which he declared that religion has nothing to do with the affairs of the state “you will find that in course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the state.” The first Law minister of Pakistan appointed by Quaid-e-Azam was Mundle,a Hindu. IF Quaid Azam meant to make Pakistan as religious state he would have appointed some Muslim scholar instead of him on that very important post.

Besides the above arguments the supporters of this view also bring forth counter arguments in response to the arguments of the first view. Regarding Allama Iqbal concept they affirm that of course he did talked about Islamic state but he never meant it to be theocratic state if looked in proper context of his thoughts and philosophy. No doubt he dreamed and wished for such independent Muslim state in the Muslim majority areas of India where the Islamic principles and laws may be applied in such way where it should also be compatible with the modern thoughts and requirements With it they also add, that except some random excellent views and comments, Iqbal had not sorted out a detailed and feasible plan for it at the moment (though he did urge the need for Ijthihad in this regard). As for Quaid Azam views they argue that of course he too have exalted the great and high principles of Islam and its importance and efficacy in his various statements however this did not mean that he wanted a theocracy. They contend that his views are quoted with out context otherwise his approach was secular and liberal.( Secular does not mean anti religion as often wrongly understood mainly due to the propaganda of orthodox ) they refer different quotations from the speeches of Quaid Azam which show that his concept of Pakistan was of modern and liberal state.

Apart from the above arguments the holders of this stance also bring forth arguments by recounting the political background of Pakistan movement Allama Iqbal had presented his well known Address in 1930 while Muslims league under Jinnah for a long time continued efforts for reaching some sort of arrangement with the congress and the British government where the political cultural and economic rights of the Muslims could be given constitutional guarantee. For this he made many efforts encompassing a whole decade and it was after league and Jinnah become convinced that no such guarantee could be granted then in march 1940 Pakistan resolution was passed which stated that in the light of lot experience ML has reached to the conclusion that only separate state could be the only solution of Muslims political problems. Of course on that occasion Jinnah did talk of two nations and elaborated the two nation theory – However that did not mean that the demanded state was aimed for Islam. Here it could be further said that if congress would have not been adamant in granting what the League were demanding then league would have never passed the Lahore resolution. Supporters of this view elaborate that though ML did pass Pakistan Resolution however as politics is the name of seeking different possibilities and a politicians has several alternative options so Quid-e-Azam too as a politician had several options for the protection of Indian Muslim material interests and preservation of cultural identity.

Among which one was though division of India but it was not inflexible. Jinnah continued talks with both British government and Congress leaders, even after the 1940 resolution, for seeking some other constitutional ways of the Indian problem It means that Pakistan was not the final and un negotiable option before League and Jinnah. Similarly League and Jinnah accepted the cabinet mission plan in 1946 though it had rejected the demand for Pakistan and instead a sort of loose federation or say confederation was proposed. The acceptance of that plan by league and Jinnah meant that creation of separate state was not their main and ultimate demand.

As in the cabinet mission plan Muslim could have got the safe guards of their rights for which they were demanding since long so league accepted it. The arrogant and imposing attitude of Nehru and Patel and the prejudiced policy of congress regarding the plan compelled Jinnah to withdraw his earlier acceptance of the plan otherwise India would have not been divided.
(A prominent Indian politician Jaswant Singh has also said that in his book- Jinnah, Partition and Independence) The positive response of Jinnah regarding the cabinet mission plan shows that if the establishment of Islamic state was his basic aim he would have been totally adamant for exclusively independent Muslim state and would have never shown any elasticity.

About the Islamic factor in the movement they ( adherents of this stance ) are of the view that the slogan of Islam raised during the movement of Pakistan was, in the first place, not the official slogan of Muslim League as nor Quaid-e-Azam nor the top leaders of the movement raised it, rather it was being chanted by the workers at the lower level and secondly it was just for motivating the Muslim masses and mustering their support while basic end was protection of political cultural and economic interests of the Muslims of north India. According to them if some sections of league adopted the slogan of Islam for its movement. it was justified and was a proper approach seen in the context of the situation of that time. They argue that such slogan was aimed at the success of such movement which had a very great objective. Argue that in political affairs his approach was of course, that of secular and liberal politician while with this he was a Muslim too. Though Quaid-e-Azam never claimed nor thought of himself any saintliness or holiness, but as common and simple Muslim he was fighting for the rights of Muslims of India with all sincerity which even his worst but honest opponents cannot deny, It was due to his being Muslim that he considered Muslims as separate nation and who had different interests from those of Hindus- and because of it he was holder of Two-nation theory What Quaid-e-Azam thought about the lofty principles no believing Muslim can disagree with. About the Islamic ideal and principles in particular those related with social economic aspects, his observations were that it were not only fully compatible with the modern world but in several respects were also more better and suitable compared to westerns ones.

Here it need to be mentioned that his approach towards religion different from that of the orthodox religious class, who mainly confine Islam to the petty fiqi issues or Hadood laws or insist only in its form, For Quaid-e-Azam, the spirit of Islam was of real importance. In this regard his views were in line with that of Iqbal, though he was not scholar of Iqbal’s caliber however the source of his Islamic insight was, besides his own personal reading, the views of Allama Iqbal and some other enlightened scholars. In line with his distinctive solemnity he sincerely believed that Islamic ideals and principles, in particular those related with the socio and economic aspects and rule of justice etc had great value and importance so he earnestly thought that these principles and ideals must be guiding source for the constitutional set up of Pakistan.

Though religion as understood and preached by Mullahs was never the aim of Quaid-e-Azam however in spite of his all secularism he was also not averse to the Ideals of Islam — It is reasonably supposed that had he been alive for some time he would have recommended such set-up for Pakistan where both the Islamic ideals and modern thoughts essential for progress would have been fully accommodated and Pakistan would have been such modern welfare Muslim State which would be secular and also the bearer of moral and spiritual culture.

[url]http://www.thefrontierpost.com/article/213450/[/url]

[CENTER][U][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="5"]Friends of Bangladesh’
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April 02, 2013
Momin Iftikhar 7



Thirteen ‘Friends of Bangladesh’ were recently honoured in Dacca for raising their voice against the launch of military operations by Pakistan in March 71. An account published by one of the participants, a leading anchor who received the posthumous award conferred on his father, a veritable journalism icon, poignantly reflects the anti-Pakistan narrative that the Hasina Wajid government has taken upon itself as a mission to proliferate. The honour was bestowed for leading a delegation of Punjab University Students Union to Dacca in Oct 71 followed by holding of a press conference to castigate the military action that was launched in March 71 to foil the Indian sponsored secessionist movement led by Bengali nationalists at the forefront of Mukti Bahini. The award receiving visit coincided with a charged political environment which has taken hold of Bangladesh amidst bloody street violence triggered by conviction of Jama'at-e-Islami leadership for perpetrating the ‘crime’ of resisting the breakaway of East Pakistan. It is manifest that the Bangladeshi Prime Minister wants to consolidate the discredited legacy of his father and the questions which the honoured guests were most frequently asked, as reported by the scribe, help comprehend the zeitgeist obtaining in the host capital.

According to the anchor two questions topped the list of inquisitive Bangladeshi journalists; first regarding his validation for the ongoing trial of supporters of Pak Army’s military operation of March 71 by the incumbent government and second, whether he thought that there was reason enough for the Jama'at-e-Islami to be banned in Bangladesh for its pro-Pakistan bent in 1971. He sheepishly accommodated answers to these manifestly anti-Pakistan questions, obviously made under the compromising shadow of an obliging guest trying to humour his overbearing hosts. That could be justifiable from perhaps the perspective of a cornered diplomat, yet for a media man of some repute, it only served to bare his inadequate command and comprehension of facts related to the 1971 breakup of Pakistan, during which worst kind of human rights excesses were committed by the Bengali nationalists under the camouflage of a ‘liberation war’. Though he doesn’t mention it in his piece yet he must have also been aware, if not specifically confronted with, unrelenting propaganda concerning the myths of genocide of three million Bengalis and rape of one hundred thousand ‘heroines of Bengal’ by Pakistani troops, which the vested Bangladeshi quarters keep projecting from time to time without even making a passing reference to any supporting proof or reference. A little research would have shown that Sheikh Mujibur Rahman himself was the manipulative promoter of these baseless themes for which he or his daughter, the incumbent Prime Minister of Bangladesh, have never revealed any source to validate such staggering accusations. It would have been instructive for him, in the given context, if the learned journalist had had a glimpse of Oriana Fallaci’s An Interview with Mujibur Rehman, conducted on 24 Feb 1972, to stand his ground as a hard pressed Pakistani and avoid being embarrassed before a strident section of the Bangladeshi press. He is observant enough to have noticed that most of the Bangladeshi intelligentsia tend to accept the preposterous myths, hook, line and sinker, without cross checking facts.

Such a hand wringing apologetic demeanour is not uncommon among most Pakistanis who generally tend to self-flagellate rather than challenge the vile accusations on ground of reasoned facts. There is also not much comprehension about the stellar role and a high standard of discipline and self-sacrifice displayed by the Pakistan Army which was desperately trying to salvage the solidarity of Pakistan while confronted by unprecedented odds piled up by an unholy nexus of India and the Bengali nationalists. Army action, launched on 25 March 1971 came after a violent spell of three weeks of blood lust against non-Bengalis and unrestrained mayhem in rural and urban population centres following the postponement of national assembly session on 1March 1971. The announcement had forced a paralysis of the federal government leading to an open revolt in which armed Awami League cadres lynched non-Bengalis, particularly Biharis with an unrestrained abandon. The murder of the army officers caught in ones or two became a routine during this period even as the army remained under orders not to use force on violations of curfew, which became rampant. As all this was happening Bengali renegade officers were freely passing sensitive information to Sheikh Mujib. It speaks volumes for the discipline of the Pakistan Army that its officers were able to keep the soldiers in check during what was to them a nightmare of 25 days.

While looking at the pain and trauma of secession, Pakistan as well as Bangladesh suffer from a crippling denial syndrome which has become a serious hindrance to objectively looking at the painful events and ascertaining the truth. While in Pakistan there is an appeasing silence, the Bangladeshi bitter narrative plays melodramatically on the themes of Bengali victimhood and Pakistani villains, genocide, rape and mass graves ‘with scant regard for factual accuracy or analytical sophistication’. In Bangladesh there is a stunning silence on the widespread reign of terror and brutalities which were unleashed by Bengalis against West Pakistanis (all dubbed Punjabis), Biharis and others who were not willing enough to join the maelstrom of hatred to rent asunder Quaid’s Pakistan. The accusations of atrocities come thick and fast in a spate of propaganda castigating Pakistan, yet despite all rancour Bangladesh has failed to produce a single well researched, documented and investigative history of the 1971 climactic events which should lend credence to their blood chilling claims in convincing the world of their victimhood. There have been no credible investigations during the last four decades. The alleged massacre on the premises of the Dacca University, which was visited by Professor Waris Mir in Oct 1971 to show solidarity with East Pakistanis students and the presence of a mass grave presumed to be containing a large number of students killed during the army action in March 71, under international scrutiny, should be an appropriate place to start an objective search for truth. This till now happens to be the most prominent casualty of the 1971 tragedy.

The writer is a freelance columnist.

[url]http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/opinions/columns[/url]

[CENTER][U][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="5"]Friends of Bangladesh or traitors of Pakistan
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Mohammad Jamil

Anchorperson and columnist of a large media group Hamid Mir, in his recent column titled ‘Pachtaway’ (repentances) has apprised the audience about details of ceremony held to honor friends of Bangladesh on 24th March 2013. He had gone to Dhaka to receive the award of his father Late Professor Waris Mir, who stood for freedom of speech and enjoyed respect in literary circles and in media.

Hamid Mir had every right to accept this award, but the way he commented negatively in his column has brought disgrace to Pakistan. Anticipating the reaction, Hamid Mir wrote: “Some people lacking intelligence may dub them as traitors, yet 13 Pakistanis decided to accept the award”. It is true that some people had genuinely felt that Awami League having a clear majority in the national assembly should have been given the right to form the government. And Professor Mir was one of them. But one would not know that if Professor Waris Mir were alive, whether he would have gone to Bangladesh to receive such award.

Some writers had opposed Bangladesh government for its decision to honor friends of Bangladesh and opined that only unconscionable Pakistanis would accept such award. In December 2012, when the names of ‘Friends of Bangladesh’ were announced, Sheikh Hasina had refused to attend D-8 conference in Pakistan unless Pakistan tendered apology for, what she said, genocide of Bengalis. Mst Asma Jahangir also received award on behalf of his late father Malik Ghulam Jilani, who was Vice President West Pakistan Awami League, it was understood that he was awarded. Otherwise also people know Asma Jahangir’s views about Pakistan and its military. Salima Hashmi, who received the award on behalf of his father late Faiz Ahmed Faiz by the Bangladesh government on 24th March 2013, said: “The Pakistan government should formally apologise to the people of Bangladesh for the atrocities committed by Pakistan occupation army during the War of Independence in 1971”. This is exactly the same language that Sh. Hasina Wajid speaks.

Late Mir Ghous Bakhsh Bizenjo was posthumously given ‘Bangladesh Liberation War Honour Award’, which was received by his son Mir Hasil Bizenjo. Tahira Jalib received the award declared for Habib Jalib. Begum Tahira Mazhar Ali Khan, Ahmed Salim, Dr. Iqbal Ahmed, Sindhi poet Inwar Pirzada and Qazi Faez Isa were also given awards for opposing military operation in then East Pakistan. One should differentiate between opposing the military action in the then East Pakistan and those receiving awards for being friends of Bangladesh.

If Bangladesh government is pro-India and continues Pakistan-bashing, then those who received awards are not sincere with Pakistan. They do not feel qualms in condemning and blaming Pakistan while turning a blind against the horrors of Mukti Bahini and India’s role; hence they are not patriots. Pakistan had formed Hamood-ur-Rehman Commission to investigate into the causes of the tragedy of disintegration of Pakistan, and the excesses perpetrated in then East Pakistan, of course by the rebels and the military that was trying to quell the rebellion.

Hamood-ur-Rehman Commission Report observed that formation of One-unit, principle of parity, unitary form of government and system of basic democracies were the reasons for alienating the people of smaller provinces that led to disintegration of Pakistan. Whereas the commission criticized the then military and politicos for their ineptness, it had debunked the propaganda by India that two to three million Bengalis had been killed by the Pakistan army. The Commission had put the figure of casualties at twenty six thousand including the killings of West Pakistanis, members of Pakistan’s security personnel and Biharis that were butchered by Mukti Bahini guerillas. Anyhow, former prime minister of Bangladesh Khaleda Zia is on record having said that figure of three million dead was highly exaggerated. Many books have been written calling the genocide of Bengalis farce; however those under the influence of India or writers with anti-Pakistani streak put the figure as high as 3 million.

It has to be mentioned that people have not forgotten the genocide of non-Bengalis during the civil war and afterwards at the hands of Bengali nationalists. However, Pakistan considered the matter settled, as Sheikh Mujib had made no demand for apology during his visit to Lahore to attend Islamic Summit or even after that. But Sheikh Hasina has shown complete obedience towards Indian masters, be it humiliating Pakistan or be it providing and unwavering support to India, which has deprived Bangladesh of its right over river Barak when India unilaterally decided to build a Tipaimukh dam on this site with huge reservoir. This means that River Barak, which flows into Bangladesh from the Indian state of Manipur, will go dry completely. India is also concentrating small rivers flowing from India to Bangladesh to make a mainstream in India to use water for its domestic needs; thus depriving Bangladeshi farmers of water by diverting its rivers. There was also dispute between India and Bangladesh on the matter of fencing the border by India.
Many writers hold the view that on 16th December 1971, Pakistan was dismembered as a result of international terrorism. India was, of course, on the forefront whereby the former USSR helped India in implementing the insidious plan to disintegrate Pakistan. Unfortunately, Pakistan’s so-called friends - America and the West - acted as silent spectators. A lot many books, theses and reviews have been written on the causes of fall of Dacca and disintegration of Pakistan. It was unfortunate that in 1971 the UN and the big powers did nothing to stop India to dismember independent country with recognized international boundaries.

After the break-up of Pakistan, India declared that two-nation theory had sunk in the Bay of Bengal. But eidetic reality was that Bangladesh became an independent country with Muslim identity, and in general Bengladeshis are not willing to accept India’s hegemony. Bangladesh had also refused to send its troops to Afghanistan, which seems to be the result of the fact that Bangladeshis guard their freedom very jealously, despite Sheikh Hasina’s appeasement policy towards India.

[url]http://www.thefrontierpost.com/category/40/[/url]

[CENTER][U][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="5"]Pakistan resolution and ‘where are you from?

Inayat Ali Gopang[/SIZE][/FONT][/B][/U][/CENTER]

It’s very strange, that in abroad when two Pakistani meet to each other, then there first and foremost question comes that ‘where are you from’?

With ample enthusiasm and happiness a couple of days ago 23rd March was observed across the country and the world by Pakistanis to celebrate a historic resolution that was passed during a three-day meeting of All India Muslim League held on 22-24 March 1940.

Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah addressed to the participants of that meeting and truly said that Muslims are a different nation than Hindus in terms of their belief system, culture, literature and philosophies.

Therefore, it was demanded that ‘’the areas in which Muslims are numerically in majority as in the North-Western and Eastern zones of India should be grouped to constitute independent states in which the constituent units shall be autonomous and sovereign.”

This resolution played a significant role in making the dream of a separate nation come true.

The leaders who put their all efforts for the constitution of that dreaming state considered all Muslims of that territory as a single nation with the name of ‘Pakistani Nation’.

The line was drawn in terms of religion not in terms of other ‘ethnic identity’ such as region, race, language, sect, caste etc. But along-with this, it was also mentioned in the resolution that “adequate, effective and mandatory safeguards shall be specifically provided in the constitution for minorities in the units and in the regions for the protection of their religious, cultural, economic, political, administrative and other rights of the minorities, with their consultation. Arrangements thus should be made for the security of the Muslims where they were in minority.”

However, at the moment it is necessary to analyze today’s Pakistan in the light of that resolution and ask ourselves that are we that single nation our great leaders dreamed for and put their efforts for separate state. We will know that there is a lot of difference between the dream of our leaders and, actions and reflections of we people.

Interestingly, today, it has been observed in Pakistan that whenever two unknown persons meet to each other, then most likely, their first or second question becomes ‘where are you from’? Even in the interviews this question is being asked. Then answers start at different levels.

For instance, if both the persons belong to different provinces then answer most probably ends after telling the name of province such as I am from Punjab, Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtun Khawa, Sindh, Gilgit-Baltistan etc. Generally the listener says that Oh! So you are from that province or you are a Punjabi, Baloch, Pathan, Sindhi, Gilgiti etc. And if the persons belong to same province then answer starts from district, Tehsil, City/Village, Family and so on and so forth.

In the premises of Pakistan it makes some sort of sense again, but it’s very strange, that in abroad when two Pakistani meet to each other, then there first and foremost question comes that ‘where are you from’? Here I would like to give an example of a person, who first time goes abroad considering himself as a Pakistani. When that person meets to other Pakistani then they ask in their introductory conversations that how are you? Afterwards, next question comes ‘where are you from’? At that time the person feels surprised and shocked that a Pakistani is asking from another Pakistani that where are you is from. For a while the person thinks that what could be the more suitable reply to give.

Isn’t it Pakistani identify enough for another Pakistani to tell? Here in abroad, still it is needed to tell about one’s region, language, sect, district, Tehsil, village, family etc. especially in the first meeting?

When I discussed it with some of my highly qualified friends that why we ask this question ‘where are you from’ particularly in our first meeting, then they replied that because we want to know about each other so that we can treat each other in a better way.

However, it does not work most of the time and after knowing its answer we treat each other very different way not the better way. After asking and knowing the answer of this question, usually stereotypes play their role and we become biased and discriminatory in our attitude and behaviour. Because, we learn a lot of stereotypes during our socialization process which derive our behaviour then.

We have good examples of these stereotypes. We have borrowed the most respectable terms and titles from each others’ language such as ‘Sain’, ‘Baloach’, ‘Sardar’, ‘Khan’ etc. which are used for showing high level of respect in their respective languages, but in other languages they are used in a very negative sense and generally used for ‘mentally retired persons’.
It would not be an exaggeration that these words are used as an equivalent to English words ‘non-sense’, ‘idiot’, ‘mad’ and ‘mental’ etc. Even when a person is titled as ‘Sain’ in other than Sindhi language, he minds it and becomes angry.

Moreover, as far as considering and treating minorities is concerned, it is also not hidden the way they are being treated in spite of the consideration, respect, space and acceptance given to them by our leaders while making the Pakistan.

The killing of Hazara community, incident of Badami Bagh and migration of Hindu community are solely the most recent incidents to be quoted; otherwise list will be go long.

As, one foreigner rightly said about Pakistani nation that either they are Punjabi, Balochi, Pashtun or Pakhtun, Sindhi etc. There, one can hardly find a Pakistani. This is true that we lack a unity in true terms.

In order to face and solve the challenges of Pakistan together there is a dire need to create coherence between our present and our past state. To ensure the unity, this is the time; we should analyze our actions and behaviors in the light of concept and cause of Pakistan’s creation.

It will be quite helpful to delete this question ‘where are you from’, from our introductory list of questions at least while meeting to an unknown person first time in the country in general and in the abroad in particular. I think it’s more than enough that s/he is a Pakistani.

Moreover, we should break the stereotypes about each other, not to judge any person on the basis of stereotypes and avoid using the respectable words of any language in negative terms for showing our respect to that language and its speakers. We should also treat and consider ‘minorities’ as Pakistani. We should ensure them that you are also part of this country. We are one nation and together we can make Pakistan peaceful and prosper.


[url]http://www.thefrontierpost.com/category/40/[/url]

[CENTER][U][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="5"]The Mystery about our National Anthem

Roohan Ahmed
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Among a few things that are truly the identity of any nation, national anthem holds a significant position. Along with the national flag, it represents the country throughout the world and adds to the national pride. It is basically a patriotic hymn or other song adopted by a nation for use on public or state occasions and is the individuality of any state.


Coming back home, Pakistan’s national anthem, written by Hafeez Jalandhari, has always been a subject of criticism as it is completely in Farsi (Persian), rendering it incomprehensible for majority of Pakistanis. While the current national anthem is hardly approved, Pakistan’s first national anthem remains a mystery and just a few people know the existence of another national anthem approved by founding father Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah (R.A) prior to Hafeez Jalandhari’s ‘Pak Sar Zameen Shaad Baad’.

Jagan Nath Azad, a Lahore based Urdu poet commissioned the first national anthem of Pakistan just three days before the independence on 11th August 1947 at the behest of M.A. Jinnah. According to a Professor of History hail to University of Karachi, Jagan Nath was equally excited and amazed when came to know that Jinnah wanted him to commission Pakistan’s national anthem regardless of his religious identity.

The lyrics of the anthem were….

“Aye sar zameen-i- paak
Zarre Tere hain aaj sitaron se tabnak
Roshan hai kehkashan se kahin aaj teri khaak
Tundi-e-Hasadan pe hai ghalib tera swaak
Damon wo sil gaya hai jot ha mudatton se chaak
Aye sar zameen-i-paak”

About a year and a half after the partition, after Mr Jinnah’s death in September, 1948, the government of Pakistan, headed by its first Muslim Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan, decided to discard the anthem. National Anthem Committee was formed in December, 1948 to recommend new anthem.

However, unfortunately, we do not have any account pertaining to the first national anthem in our history books. With all these accessible evidences, none of the historians ever tried to discover the fact that what prompted the then leaders of Pakistan to discard the first national anthem as envisioned by Mohammad Ali Jinnah to get it written by a non-Muslim writer in Urdu.

The question arises: what prompted the then government to discard Azad’s ‘Aye sar zameen-i-paak’ that was also in our national language? And it remains unanswered.

It is common observation that cognizance of a minor child to an adult person is restricted to the given facts that Hafeez Jalandhari commissioned the first national anthem of Pakistan. Misleading people is a crime but concealing historical facts to its nation is beyond the criminal act. One must think about it with all dimensions opened.

[url]http://www.thenews.com.pk/[/url]

[CENTER][U][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="5"]Myth of 300,000 raped in Bangladesh

Asif Haroon Raja[/SIZE][/FONT][/B][/U][/CENTER]


It has been alleged that Pakistani troops raped 300,000 women on and after March 25, 1971 in former East Pakistan. This allegation has generally been accepted by the world at large and even by some Pakistani secular pseudo intellectuals like Tahira Abdullah, Asma Gilani and others. Sheikh Mujib was the inventor of this themes fed to him by India. This was phenomenal exaggeration which has no parallel in history. Rather than blindly buying the bloated figures, it should have been coolly analyzed by saner elements whether it was humanly possible to perform those unholy acts at such a gigantic scale. No one questioned as to how the Indians had gathered the data since the Army had gained total control over the province from May 1971 onwards. Direct linkage between the people and rebels housed in India had been broken.

The version of refugees who had fled to India after the military operation couldn’t be relied upon, being entirely at the mercy of Indian Army and BSF living in unsavory conditions. Foreign journalists based in Dacca had been asked by Lt Gen Tikka Khan to leave because of their biased reporting. Jilted journalists moved to Calcutta where they were lavishly entertained by Indians. Nursing ill-feelings, they went out of the way to magnify the stories fed to them by Indian media and broadcasted exaggerated news the world over.

Even if the entire Army and paramilitary forces numbering 12000 on 25 March 1971, later increased to 45000 had only one objective in mind of raping any female coming their way day in and day out, even at the cost of sleep and other essential daily rituals, it was still impossible to reach anywhere near the stated figure. It can now be safely concluded that the rapes committed by Awami League (AL) urchins in March-April 1971, and again in November- December 1971, as well as by Indian staff supervising refugee camps from March 1971 till February 1972 were all lumped in the account of Pak Army. Indian Army soldiers and officers had also indulged in daily sex for the entire period of their stay in Bangladesh after 16 December 1971.

Roman Catholic Relief Agency put the figure of rapes to as low as 4000. (New York Times, January 30, 1972). In fact, only ten cases of rapes had been reported till August 31, 1971, and the culprits tried and punished. These few cases were swollen to the exasperating figure of 300,000. The falsity of Sheikh Mujib’s repeated allegation of rape of 300,000 Bengali women was exposed when the abortion team he had commissioned from United Kingdom in early 1972 found that there were no more than a hundred or so pregnancy cases they could deal with throughout their stay in Bangladesh. (Bangladesh Papers, Vanguard, Lahore, page 287). The AL government opened many centres in Bangladesh and gave wide calls to the rape victims named as ‘heroines’ to come forward and register their names so that they could be rehabilitated. Not more than one hundred or so who reported to the centres were given into marriages and perforce the centres had to be closed down. These cases were also in all probability the victims of rapists in Indian refugee camps.

Dr. M. Abdul Mumin Chowdhry, a Bengali nationalist who actively participated in the separatist cause, writes in his book ‘Behind the Myth of Three Million’, writes, ‘It was reported that on arrival in Dhaka on 10 January 1972, the lobby behind the fabrication of the absolutely impossible figure promptly briefed the returning Bangladesh leader Sheikh Mujib with added ‘fact’, of 300,000 women raped, who in turn immediately went on parroting it. Thus the fiction of three million killed and 300,000 women raped was created’. He gives research-based details of each major incident that was blamed on Pakistan; and the rapes of 300,000, now enhanced to 400,000 women, resulting in 200,000 pregnancies.

One of Pakistani prisoner of war (PoW) Maj (now retired Brig) M. Azad on his way to India after the surrender had stayed a night in transit along with others at Krishanagar in West Bengal. The camp in which they were housed was well laid out and didn’t like a hurriedly made make-shift arrangement. The in-charge of the camp, a Sikh major, in usual Sikh style of light-heartedness and frankness, got chummy with Azad and told him that the camp had not been prepared for Pak PoWs but was meant to keep rebellious Bengalis who refused to participate in guerrilla war. He added that sissies were taken to task and made to perform allotted tasks, while their womenfolk were kept as hostages to serve their carnal needs. He boasted that he and his colleagues had thoroughly enjoyed raping thousands of Bengali women during their nine-month confinement. Laughingly he added that many virgins were impregnated. He divulged that many more suchlike camps for unwilling Bengalis had been established in other areas. This inadvertent disclosure would give an idea to independent readers that who were the actual rapists of Bengali women.

Besides resorting to series of atrocities, Indian security forces are using rape as a weapon of war to subjugate the Kashmiris demanding their birth right of self-determination. Kashmiris want independence from India at all costs.
Incidents of rapes and gang rapes in Indian occupied Kashmir (IOK) are on the increase, but no Indian soldier or policeman has ever been punished. While there was lot of hue and cry over gang rape of an Indian woman in New Delhi, no voice has ever been raised in India over rapes of thousands of Kashmiri women, as if they are not human beings. It is puzzling as to why the ever vigilant western media has never mentioned a word about thousands of rapes committed in IOK? Or is it that it has different yardstick for Muslims and non-Muslims?

The writer is a retired Brig, author of several books and a defence analyst. Email:asifharoonraja@gmail.com

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[CENTER][U][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="5"]Absolving enemies of Pakistan Movement

By M Ziauddin[/SIZE][/FONT][/B][/U][/CENTER]

There is no mention of the phrase “Ideology of Pakistan” in the Objectives Resolution [Article 2(A) of the Constitution]. It does, of course, mention Islam saying “ … the principles of democracy, freedom, equality, tolerance and social justice as enunciated by Islam shall be fully observed”. And that “… the Muslims shall be enabled to order their lives in the individual and collective spheres in accordance with the teachings and requirements of Islam as set out in the Holy Quran and the Sunnah”. The phrase does not appear even in the oaths prescribed for all elected offices, members of all houses and the governors. In these oaths, there is a mention of “Islamic Ideology” (That I will strive to preserve the Islamic Ideology which is the basis for the creation of Pakistan). Islam is a faith, a religion like Christianity and Judaism. It is not an ideology like communism, socialism or capitalism. Therefore, I am not sure if it is advisable to limit the eternal and universal faith that is Islam into an ideology, which is inherently a temporary phenomenon.

Since I first heard the phrase in the late 1960s, I have been trying to find out the real meaning or definition of “Ideology of Pakistan”. Once, I conducted a small survey to determine the precise drift of the phrase. To my utter disappointment, the definitions I received were not only as varied as the sample was, but each answer differed in substance from what the rest believed the phrase meant. When I came across this phrase again in Articles 62 and 63 after the 1973 Constitution was mutilated by General Ziaul Haq, I was intrigued by the wording of Article 62, as according to this Article, those who had opposed Pakistan before its establishment were exempted from its purview, which meant that all those who had called the Quaid-e-Azam “Kafir-e-Azam” and opposed his struggle for Pakistan were absolved of their animosity towards the Pakistan Movement. We all know who these people are and how they have succeeded in becoming the thekeydaars (keepers) of Pakistan and how they have managed since to distort the very basis for the creation of the country by coining misleading slogans like Pakistan ka matlab kia … which to me sounds more like a blasphemous utterance. So, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know the hands that held the pen that wrote the clause.

I am doubly happy that they picked Ayaz Amir to intimidate the majority into owning the minuscule minority’s view of “Why Pakistan?” Perhaps, they thought that with the disqualification of an intellectual of considerable standing on the trumped up charges of violating the “Ideology of Pakistan” clause, they would terrorise the majority resisting their obscurantism all these years into falling in line. But Ayaz is no easy pick for anybody, least of all for the minuscule minority that has been trying its level worst since the very inception of Pakistan to push the country back into the cave age. Ayaz has been fighting this minority since the day he entered the media world in the late 1970s. His columns in Dawn during Zia’s brutal and Musharraf’s birdbrain rules, especially during the Kargil misadventure and right when Musharraf was selling Pakistan cheap following 9/11, or his columns in The News in support of the movement for the restoration of the judiciary are evidence enough — if any evidence is needed — to prove Ayaz’s love for this country and his scorn for those who try to take liberties with Pakistan. The sound and fury that swept across the country and among every section of society following the verdict of the returning officer, who despite all his powers is no mufti to issue a fatwa (edict), has exposed the hollowness of the clause in question.

Both Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the author of the 1973 Constitution, as well as those who voted unanimously for the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment, were not theocrats. They were all politicians. All three had aimed for unanimity while seeking their respective objectives. That is the context in which their utterances and actions should be read and we should not insist on basing arguments on selective parts of their speeches and deeds.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 10th, 2013.

‘[CENTER][U][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="5"]The truth about Pakistan’

Inayatullah
[/SIZE][/FONT][/B][/U][/CENTER]

If ever there was clear-cut evidence of some Indians not having accepted Pakistan as an independent sovereign country, one has only to look at the views unambiguously expressed by Justice (retd) Markandey Katju, who heads the Press Council of India. He is on record in his speech delivered in New Delhi in early February and in the article published in TheNation of March 2, 2013, as well as in his letters addressed to the publisher/editor of TheNation and Mr Shamshad Ahmad, a former Foreign Secretary of Pakistan, that inter alia:

n “I do not believe that there are two nations; there is one nation and that is India…....

n “Pakistan is a fake and artificial country created by the British and their agents in pursuance of the wicked British policy of divide and rule and the bogus Two Nation Theory. In reality, there is no such thing as Pakistan.......

n “Pakistan is, in fact, a part of India and we will be reunited, may be, in 20 years or so.”

Katju’s article as published in TheNation bears the caption “The Truth About Pakistan”.

What, indeed, is the truth about the creation of Pakistan?

The best answer (and the most convincing) to this question is provided by another Indian legal luminary, Mr H. M. Seervai, who was honoured with one of India’s high awards, Padma Vibhushan, and who has been recognised by the International Bar Association as a ‘Living Legend of Law’.

In his famous book, “Partition of India: Legend and Reality”, published in 1989, Seervai quotes chapter and verse from authentic published British and Indian records elucidating how the Indian National Congress decided to opt for Pakistan and how it came into existence.

He establishes, to the hilt, how virtually the Congress top leadership, in particular Patel, Nehru and Gandhi, decided to reject the Cabinet Plan of 1946, while Jinnah even at that late stage had expressed the Muslim Leagues’ willingness to preserve the unity of India by accepting the Plan proposals.
This is what Seervai says about Maulana Abul Kalam Azad’s book, “India Wins Freedom”, published in 1988 (30 years after the first edition in which a number of pages were not included): “The publication of “India Wins Freedom”, in ‘a complete version’, in November 1988 has provoked much controversy and public discussion. This is not surprising for the 1988 edition, fixes the responsibility for the partition of India, at one place on Jawaharlal Nehru and at another place on Vallabhbhai Patel by observing that ‘it would not, perhaps, be unfair to say that Patel was the founder of India’s partition’.” Page 201 reads: “I was surprised that Patel was now an even greater supporter of the Two Nation Theory than Jinnah. Jinnah may have raised the flag of partition, but now the real flag-bearer was Patel.” One may, here, recall that Azad was for many years President of the All India Congress Party during the period of negotiations with the Cabinet Mission.
The Cabinet Plan was the last serious effort made by the British government to keep India a united country.

Seervai in a remarkably succinct paragraph sums up the reality of the role of the League, Jinnah and the Congress leaders in the making of Pakistan: “In considering whether Jinnah and the League were responsible for the partition of India by raising the cry of Pakistan, it is necessary to ask, and answer, two questions: First, were the fears of the Muslim community that it would be permanently dominated by a ‘Hindu Raj’ genuine? If so, was the community entitled to effective and not mere paper safeguards against such permanent domination? That the fears of the Muslim community were genuine is beyond dispute. The Desai-Liaquat Pact, Sapru Committee Report, Azad’s letter to Gandhi, as well as his interview with the Cabinet Mission and the interview of Nationalist Muslims with members of the Mission, all recognised that those fears were genuine. But the Sapru Committee, Azad, the Nationalist Muslims and the Cabinet Mission whilst recognising those fears, nevertheless, rejected Pakistan as a solution for removing them. All the witnesses before the Cabinet Mission, except the Muslim League, had supported a constitution for a united India. Equally, most of them had recognised that the fears of being dominated by a ‘Hindu Raj’ required effective safeguards, and ‘parity’, or near ‘parity’.
“The Cabinet Mission Plan, if worked in the spirit of goodwill, supplied effective safeguards, and Jinnah recognised this when he accepted the Cabinet Mission Plan. However, the Hindu Mahasabha, and leaders like Gandhi, Nehru and Patel (disregarding the views of Sapru, Azad and the Nationalist Muslims) considered parity as ‘undemocratic’. They forgot that if, as they firmly held, the unity of India was the paramount object to be achieved in framing a new constitution, theory would have to yield to the need to provide effective safeguards for a community of nine crores. It is reasonably clear that it was the Congress, which wanted partition. It was Jinnah, who was against partition, but accepted it as the second best.”

Seervai also deals with the evolution of Jinnah’s views about Hindu-Muslim political relations. How come, the “ambassador of goodwill”, hailed as such by both Congress and Muslim League, switched over to the role of a formidable adversary championing the cause of the Muslims?

The watershed came in 1937 when the provincial elections were held. There was then a tacit understanding in UP (to be extended to other provinces) that a coalition ministry would be formed. To quote Seervai: “After Nehru’s resounding victory in the 1937 elections.......the Congress adopted an imperious attitude and ‘the League’s offer of cooperation was treated with disdain’.......But even after the 1937 elections, Jinnah did not demand partition. He appealed to Gandhi for a Nationalist solution of the Hindu-Muslim problem. It was only when that appeal failed that he braced himself to organise the political power of the Muslim League.”

Thereafter, it did not take long for Jinnah to demand independence for Muslim majority areas. The year 1940 saw the adoption of the Lahore Revolution. By early 1946, Muslim League had attained the status of a representative of the overwhelming majority of the Muslims, having secured 30 out of 30 Muslim seats, by polling 86 percent of the total votes cast in Muslim constituencies. Gandhi and Nehru, in writing, accepted the claim that Muslim League was the “authoritative representative of the overwhelming majority of the Muslims of India” and “alone” had the “unquestionable” right to represent them.

Seervai’s well researched book written after the release of 12 volumes of Transfer of Power by the British government demolishes the half-baked notions trotted out by Justice (retd) Katju. One wonders how the honourable ex-Judge could stoop so low as to use the kind of language he chose in writing about one of the most upright leaders of the subcontinent who was universally respected and admired for his impeccable integrity and unblemished record of adherence to the rule of law, even by his adversaries.

As for Pakistan (a nuclear power and a country of 180 million people) being dubbed “a part of India” is, indeed, preposterous. Even the BJP Prime Minister of India after visiting the Minar-i-Pakistan, formally acknowledged Pakistan as a manifest reality. It is sheer wishful thinking and day-dreaming on the part of Mr Katju to assume that Pakistan will, during the next few years, merge into India. It is best to resist the temptation of indulging in such wonky fantasies.

The writer is an ex-federal secretary and ambassador, and a freelance political and international relations analyst.
Email: [email]pacade@brain.net.pk[/email]

[url]http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/opinions/columns[/url]

[CENTER][U][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="5"][COLOR="DimGray"]India schemed for East Bengal since 1947

Asif Haroon Raja[/COLOR][/SIZE][/FONT][/B][/U][/CENTER]


When India was partitioned and moth eaten Pakistan deprived of West Bengal, East Punjab, large slices of West Punjab and Kashmir came into being on August 14, 1947, West Punjab was relatively more developed than all other provinces which became part of Pakistan. Balochistan, Sindh and East Bengal were under developed but East Bengal was the poorest of all. In united India, it had been among the most prosperous provinces during the golden rule of Mughals. However, it was ruthlessly plundered by the British joined by the Hindus after the battle of Plassey in 1757 in which Siraj-ud-Daulah was defeated because of the treachery of ill-famed Mir Jafar and some Hindu Mahajans.

If Mir Jafar knew beforehand that he will be kicked out by Robert Clive two years later and that within a decade the Muslim ruling elites of Bengal will lose all their powers and privileges, Mir Jafar would not have committed treachery in 1757. People of Bengal had to pay a very heavy price for Mir Jafar’s betrayal. In matter of 50 years, the entire nobility of Muslim Bengalis was reduced to serfs and lowly Hindus became big landlords and business tycoons. While Hindu dominated West Bengal prospered leaps and bounds, Muslim heavy East Bengal became the hinterland for extracting raw material only. No factory, mill or industry was built in East Bengal but business, agricultural lands and property remained in the hands of moneyed Hindus. The Muslims deprived of government jobs could only take up menial jobs.

The Muslims of East Bengal were so fed up of their cruel masters that they became the ardent supporters of Pakistan Movement. A.K. Fazl-ul Haq, the then chief minister of Bengal, moved the historic 1940 Lahore Resolution. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and Maulana Bhashani were among the passionate supporters of Pakistan who later changed colors. In the 1946 elections, Muslim League secured maximum votes from East Bengal. In 1948 when Quaid-e-Azam addressed a huge gathering in Dacca and asked the audience to tell him whether they wanted to remain with Pakistan or join India, the people vociferously shouted ‘Pakistan’. Their love for Pakistan was slowly and gradually transformed into hatred by the psychological operators of India and influential Hindu minority residing in East Bengal. Their major focus was directed against the youth and the seculars who felt more homely with Hindu culture rather than Islamic culture. They saw the latter too suffocating and devoid of fun and frolic.

A large section of the educated Bengali Muslim elite saw themselves more as Bengalis and less as Muslims and they did not even bother to find out how the Indian political regime were treating the Kashmiri Muslims and Indian Muslims. Blinded by their hatred for Islam, those Secular-Bengali-Muslims remained totally ignorant that the Bengali Muslims in West Bengal were facing far greater discrimination than the discrimination they faced within Pakistan. They completely forgot the extreme atrocities and discriminatory behavior of the upper-caste Hindu Bengali Bhadroloks against Muslim Bengalis before 1947. It was imbecile and unforgivable on their part to consider West Pakistanis as sworn enemies and Hindus as friends and to seek independence with the help of India.

India not only wanted to divide Pakistan to give a deathblow to two-nation theory, but also to do it in a bloody and vicious manner to ensure that the separation of Bangladesh from Pakistan should take place through the most bitter and vicious struggle possible so that the memory of those atrocities could be used to legitimize the suppression of Islam in Bangladesh, just as the Zionists use the memory of the Nazi Holocaust to oppress the Palestinians and deprive them from their right of self determination and their right of return. They wanted to show to the world that Muslims cannot rule themselves and the Muslims of the sub-continent will be better off if they submit to the Indians. It was also necessary to show to the millions of Muslims in India that they are lucky indeed that they are citizens of India and not Pakistan.

Basant Chaterjee revealed in his book ‘Inside Bangladesh Today’, that Pundit Nehru had been scheming since August 1947 to reclaim East Bengal and to make it an integral part of Indian Union.

The long-term master plan to reclaim East Bengal was always there since August 1947, but the reclamation project suddenly became extremely urgent for the Indian Political High Command after the 1962 debacle. In that war India was thoroughly humiliated by the Chinese Army. Indian defense completely collapsed and the Chinese were able to march down into the Assam plain without any Indian resistance whatsoever. The entire state machinery collapsed and panic set in.

After the humiliating defeat in 1962, the Indians realized that if they ever have to fight against China again, they will need a better transport and logistics infrastructure.
The Chicken Neck obstacle had to be removed and India needed to establish unfettered road, rail and-river right-of-way through East Bengal to North East Frontier and Arunachal. Creation of Bangladesh was the solution and Awami League under Sheikh Mujib was the answer. Agartala Conspiracy was a tactical element in the long-term North-East Strategic Plan of India. Treachery of Mir Jafar in 1757 was to be repeated by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and East India Company was to be replaced by All India Company, i.e. RAW.

Mujib was invited to Agartala on November 3, 1963, just a year after 1962 war. That was the only occasion he visited Agartala. The “Bangabandhu” had come to test the waters to secure Indian help for his cause. Satya Deb, a former Class IV staff of Smarajit Chakrabarty, the then Sub Divisional Officer of Khowai in West Tripura is among the three living men in Bangladesh who had seen Mujib during that top secret trip to Tripura. After holding series of discussions with Mujib, Tripura Chief Minister Sachindra Lal Singh accompanied by Chief Secretary B. Raman flew to New Delhi to meet Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. In his book, B. Raman disclosed the meeting with Nehru in which Indian help for Mujib’s contemplated secession movement was discussed.

It is puzzling as to why no one in Bangladesh talked of this critical visit where the foundation of secession plan had been laid. Dr Kalidas Baidya in his book ‘Ontoraler Sheikh Mujib’, Kolkata, 2005 ultimately spelled out the details of Mujib’s connections with the Indian policy makers as early as 1950s. Current Bangladesh PM and daughter of late Mujib, Sheikh Hasina Wajid claimed, as reported in Bangladesh media on 8 March 2010, that Mujib planned separation from Pakistan in 1969 in London.

In the Indian game plan for East Bengal, the most crucial role was played by the Bangladeshi academics and journalists who consciously opted or unconsciously got ensnared, due to their lack of historical perspective and short-termism. The first shot in this Indian game plan was fired by Rehman Sobhan. He was an economist at the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics and was an extremely close and long-term associate of economist Amartya Sen. He wrote a paper in 1966 in which he highlighted economic disparities between two wings and step motherly attitude given to East Pakistan. He fudged the figures.

The entire East Bengal press and political activists took the issue on board and soon it snowballed into a secessionist movement. RAW coordinated and guided the movement behind the scene. RAW also provided unlimited financial, intelligence and material support.

On 22 February 2011, on the anniversary of the withdrawal of Agartala conspiracy case, a surviving conspirator and Deputy Speaker of the Bangladesh Parliament Colonel Shawkat Ali confessed to the parliament at a point of order that the charges read out to them were accurate, stating that they had formed a Shangram Parishad under Sheikh Mujib for secession of East Pakistan. He was among the 35 accused in Agartala case.

Oli Ahad, Jatio Rajniti 1945 to 1975, 2nd Ed., Bangladesh Cooperative Book Society, Dhaka, p. 450, gives out details of Tajuddin Ahmed’s seven-point secret agreement which he signed with India. It amounted to making Bangladesh a vassal state of India. It read:

1. A paramilitary armed force for Bangladesh will be raised under supervision of Indian military experts; this force shall be stronger and more active than regular armed forces of Bangladesh.
2. Bangladesh shall procure all military equipment from India and under planned supervision of Indian military experts.
3. Bangladesh shall direct her foreign trade under supervision and control of Indian government.
4. Yearly and five-yearly development plans for Bangladesh shall conform to Indian development plans.
5. Foreign policy of Bangladesh must be compatible with and conform to that of India.
6. Bangladesh shall not unilaterally rescind any of the treaties without prior approval of Indian government.
7. In accordance with treaties signed before December (1971) war of Pakistan and India; Indian force shall enter into Bangladesh at any time and shall crush any resistance that may erupt there.

(The writer is a columnist and a defense analyst)

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[CENTER][U][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="5"][COLOR="Sienna"]Let bygones, be bygones

Khalid Khokhar[/COLOR][/SIZE][/FONT][/B][/U][/CENTER]


Whilst Salima Hashmi, an acclaimed TV artist, social activist and columnist, has been handpicked by the Caretaker Punjab Chief Minister Najam Sethi as a Minister in the interim set-up, the civil intelligentsia is quite mindful of her recent anti-Pakistan rhetoric on the eve of 6th BD Foreign Friends Award ceremony held on March 24, 2013.

After receiving the posthumous “Bangladesh Liberation War Honour Award” of her late father poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Salima Hashmi said that Pakistan government should formally apologise to the people of Bangladesh for the atrocities committed by Pakistan occupation army during the War of Independence in 1971.

As a part of its larger campaign, Bangladesh has planned to confer awards of “Bangladesh Liberation War Honour” and “Friends of Liberation War Honour”, to the nation's foreign friends for their wholehearted support to its liberation in 1971. Besides inviting 568 foreign friends from all over the world, a phased-wise invitations to 41 Pakistani were also extended. During the recent phase, the Bangladesh government had honoured 68 foreign nationals, including 13 Pakistani nationals. Amongst Pakistanis, the Human right activist Asma Jahangir also received award on behalf of his late father Malik Ghulam Jilani, who was Vice President West Pakistan Awami League. Late Mir Ghous Bakhsh Bizenjo was posthumously given ‘Bangladesh Liberation War Honour Award’, which was received by his son Mir Hasil Bizenjo. Tahira Jalib received the award declared for Habib Jalib. Begum Tahira Mazhar Ali Khan, Ahmed Salim, Dr. Iqbal Ahmed, Sindhi poet Inwar Pirzada and Qazi Faez Isa were also given awards for their contributions to oppose military operation in the then East Pakistan. While some patriotic people may call the ceremony as well-articulated campaign to belittle Pakistan, yet 13 Pakistanis revealed their inclination to accept the award and inadvertently or consciously involved in incriminating their own motherland. However, some experts in foreign diplomacy had termed this “Bangladeshi move” as a litmus test on the faithfulness/allegiance towards Pakistan of the incumbents in question.

Pakistan-Bangladesh relations have been eclipsed by the tragic events of 1971, which led to the formation of Bangladesh as a separate state. The war between East and West Pakistan in 1971 lasted only for nine months. Actively supported by Indian Army, the eastern flank of Pakistan was separated from the rest of Pakistan. While Pakistan acknowledged that the unpleasant incidents that took place during the 1971 war, the excesses were done in retaliation against Indian Army’s wickedness coupled with Mukti Bahini’s brutalities. What Mukti bahinis did to the Pakistani families is also equally horrified and gruesome. Mujibur Rahman’s Awami League, the political party that advocated for an independent East Pakistan, is blamed for the provocation in the West Pakistan army to commit these excesses on their part. Most of the incidents alleged by Bangladesh authorities did not take place at all, while other incidents were distorted in such a manner to appear as atrocities on the local populace, manipulated for the purpose of maligning the Pakistan army and gaining world sympathy. Indian writer Sharmila Bose’s book titled ‘Dead Reckoning: Memoirs of the 1971 Bangladesh War”, is a testimony to the facts that makes Bangladesh’s demand for an apology illogical and unfounded. Nobody knows exactly how many people were killed, but the claim that Pakistani soldiers aided by local collaborators killed 3 million people was too much exaggerated. Nonetheless, Hamood-ur-Rehman Commission to investigate into the excesses perpetrated in then East Pakistan, had put the figure of casualties at twenty six thousand including the killings of West Pakistanis, members of Pakistan’s security personnel and Biharis that were butchered by Mukti Bahini guerillas.

Despite repeated expressions of grief over 1971 tragedy, the Bangladesh’s demand for an apology has not only become a regular feature in Bangladesh-Pakistan foreign relations, it took the form of an electioneering campaign to gain political mileage over opponents at domestic level. The issue was raised by PM Hasina Wajid when she demanded an ‘unconditional apology’ from the visiting Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar to Bangladesh last year. This shows that some internal as well as foreign forces are hell-bound to re-ignite the dead issue to incriminate Pakistan Army and create a wedge between Bangladesh-Pakistan good relations. The statements of Salima Hashmi and many other recipients of the award, may be seen in the context of promoting reconciliation between Pakistan and Bangladesh, but at what price? The country is passing through such a critical stage that any misadventure will make the country in a position of strategic peril. Working on a well deliberated strategy, the detractors are leaving no stone un-turn to defame the sacred institution with an aim to draw a wedge between the people and armed forces. Cornering our own armed forces would be disastrous blunder for the country, especially when it is coping with militants in tribal areas, besides facing a perennial wave of suicide attacks on the security officials across the country.
Such like developments have not only undermined public’s confidence in the military, it is also creating rifts amongst the high command with low-tier hierarchy command of the military. Pakistan Army is one of the most professional, responsible and goal-directed segment of the Pakistani society and this nation can never repay the debt of the Martyrs of our Armed Forces.

Asking to apologize from Bangladesh for the wrong done by West Pakistan would be adding more vagaries to the guilt, especially in the light of Tripartite Agreement-1974, where Pakistan had already regretted the incidents that took place in 1971. At this critical juncture of Pakistan history, it is the duty of every patriotic and peace-loving citizen of Pakistan to stop the anti-Pakistan elements from disparaging the army/ISI/civil administration. Criticism is always healthy for a thesis, but it should have been a balanced one, otherwise unnecessary criticism may be causing demoralization in military ranks. The COAS Gen. Kayani said that media campaign against Pakistan Army cause demoralization within institutions.

Nonetheless, harboring a four decade old resentment is not going to solve the rift between the two countries. We can take a fresh start by agreeing to forget past disagreements and differences. Although Pakistan shares a common cultural heritage and maintains kinship and religious affinity with the Muslim brethren of Bangladesh during all seasons, both the countries should mutually agree to strengthen cooperation in the fields of trade, economy, diplomacy, culture and people-to-people interface. However, the relationship between Pakistan and Bangladesh is still based on leaders and their perception of their own country’s relationship with India that determines the nature of bilateral ties between the two parts of what was undivided Pakistan. Both the countries need to reconcile with the historical facts that the large scale genocide in that distasteful era would not do good to respective future generations of both the Nations.

This may be in contravention of the vision of Shiekh Mujibur Rahman who dreamt of prospective Bangladesh as a progressive and developed nation. There appears to be significant difference between opposing the military action in the then east Pakistan and those receiving awards for being friends of Bangladesh, especially in the backdrop of stated stance of Pakistan. Just as ‘unbiased scrutiny’ by the ECP has rejected the nomination papers of the former Pakistan Muslim League-N lawmaker and noted columnist Ayaz Amir, similarly, a closed scrutiny of remaining anchorpersons, bureaucrats, technocrats, politicians etc, who have sneaked into the Interim set-up, should be undertaken meticulously with the people having questionable track record ought to be brought to justice by democratic forces.

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