Naveed Aman Khan
CH Rahmat Ali born in Balachaur, Hoshiarpur, India on 16 November 1897 and died in Cambridge, England on 3 February 1951, a veteran Pakistani nationalist who was one of the earliest proponents of the creation of Pakistan. He is credited with creating the name “Pakistan” for a separate Muslim homeland and known as the originator of the Pakistan Movement. His seminal contribution was when he was a law student at the University of Cambridge in 1933, in the form of a pamphlet “Now or Never; Are We to Live or Perish Forever?”, also known as the “Pakistan Declaration”. The pamphlet addressed the British and Indian delegates to the Third Round Table Conference in London. The ideas did not find favour with the delegates or any of the politicians for close to a decade. They were dismissed as students’ ideas. By 1940, the Muslim politics in the subcontinent came around to accept them, leading to the Lahore Resolution of the All-India Muslim League, which immediately dubbed the “Pakistan resolution”.
In 1946, he founded the “Pakistan National Movement” in England. Until 1947, he continued publishing various booklets about his vision for South Asia. The final Partition of India disillusioned him due to the mass killing and mass migration it ended up producing. He was also dissatisfied with the distribution of areas among the two countries and considered it a major reason for the disturbances. In April 1948, Rehmat Ali returned from England, planning to stay in the country, but his belongings were confiscated in October 1948, he left Pakistan empty-handed. He died on 03 February 1951 in Cambridge “destitute, forlorn and lonely”. The funeral expenses of the insolvent Rehmat Ali were covered by Emmanuel College, Cambridge on the instructions of its Master. He was buried on 20 February 1951 at Cambridge City Cemetery. In 1932, he moved to a house in Cambridge, on 3 Humberstone Road, where he coined the word ‘Pakistan’ for the first time. During my visit to Cambridge, I visited this historic room. Yasar Khaleeq arranged my visit to Cambridge. Abdul Hamid Bama and Dr Shahbaz Anwar led and guided me around.
Rehmat Ali’s writings, in addition to those of Allama Muhammad Iqbal and others, were major catalysts for the formation of Pakistan. By the end of 1933, ‘Pakistan’ had become common vocabulary. ‘Pakistan’ is both a Persian and an Urdu word. His pamphlet had a clear and succinct description of the Muslims of his proposed ‘Pakistan’ as a ‘nation’, which later formed the foundation for the two-nation theory of the All-India Muslim League: Our religion and culture, our history and tradition, our social code and economic system, our laws of inheritance, succession and marriage are fundamentally different from those of most people living in the rest of India. The ideals which move our people to make the highest sacrifices are essentially different from those which inspire the Hindus to do the same. In 1933 he believed that the delegates of the first and second Round Table Conferences committed ‘an inexcusable blunder and an incredible betrayal’ by accepting the principle of an All-India Federation. He demanded that the national status of 30 million Muslims of the northwestern units be recognized and a separate Federal Constitution be granted to them. Rehmat Ali’s biographer, K K Aziz writes, “Rahmat Ali alone drafted this declaration” in which word “Pakistan” was used for the first time, but in order to make it “representative” he began to look around for people who would sign it along with him. This search did not prove easy, for so firm was the grip of ‘Muslim Indian Nationalism’ on young intellectuals at English universities that it took Rahmat Ali more than a month to find three young men in London who offered to support and sign it. Later on, his political opponents used name of these signatories and other friends of Rehmat Ali, as creator of word ‘Pakistan’.
He gave the name to the piece of land Quaid and his companions struggled for. His devotees and admirers constituted “Chaudhry Rehmat Ali Memorial Committee” in London in 1989. Choudhry Muhammad Aslam, Choudhry Muhammad Zafar and Tariq Azeem were made Chairman, Convener and General Secretary of the Committee respectively. This Committee has long been struggling a lot to highlight and acknowledge the political contribution of Coudhry Rehmat Ali. The Committee struggled hard to bring the coffin of Choudhry Rehmat Ali to Pakistan for burial in Shakarparian, Islamabad. All the arrangements of bringing of the coffin of the national hero were unanimously finalised during the premiership of Choudhry Shujaat Hussain. The British Government approved the shift of the coffin. The then President Pervez Musharraf showed his consent and the grave of the national hero was opened but at the eleventh hour the decision was reversed by Pakistan. No body knows why? Pakistan kept quite. Nevertheless the Committee under the chairmanship of veteran Choudhry Muhammad Aslam continued struggling for cause. Former Premier Nawaz Sharif on his visit to London in the presence of Choudhry Jaffar Iqbal in a meeting with the Committee announced to take the coffin to Pakistan. Imran Khan and Asad Umer on 8July 2018 overwhelmingly signed a memorandum in presence of signatories Choudhry Muhammad Ashraf Gujar and Choudhry Mushtaq Gujar in Convention Centre Islamabad for bringing coffin but afterwards PTI leadership never even talked on this matter. Today under the chairmanship of Choudhry Muhammad Aslam a meeting of “Ch Rehmat Ali Memorial Committee” was held at the residence of Convener Choudhry Muhammad Zafar in which Vice Chairman Asif Saleem Mitha, General Secretary Yasar Khaleeq, Choudhry Muhammad Afzal and myself participated and pledged that in a year coffin of national leader will be taken to Islamabad for burial.
—The writer is book ambassador, columnist, political analyst and author of several books based in United Kingdom.
