THE Father of Nation acknowledged the contribution of various minorities in undivided India who made common cause with All India Muslim to fight against exploitation and domination of Hindu supremacist against all other faiths. Jinnah Sahib realized the gravity of the crisis that afflicted Muslims of the subcontinent and the power of Congress which represented Hindu majority.
Congress had support of many within British Raj, especially the last Viceroy Lord Mountbatten and had cultivated support of Muslims such as Abul Kalam Azad, including many Muslim religious parties, that opposed even demand of AIML for separate electorates as early as 1928, when they chose to favor Nehru Report published in August. It is a fact that many minority groups such as Hindu Dalits, Christians, Parsis etc, expressed their confidence and trust in MAJ, by cooperating with AIML to protect their members from harassment of Hindu fundamentalists.
One such group comprising 22 legislators representing Hindu Dalits from East Bengal, supported AIML and voted for amalgamation in Pakistan. Had it not been for the vote of Jogendra Nath Mandal group the majority numbers required would have fallen short. It was because of this that MAJ appointed Jogendra Nath Mandal as first Law Minister of Pakistan, under whose supervision the Constitution was to be drafted by the First Constituent Assembly.
This assembly comprised all those members of parliament, irrespective of their political affiliations, including those who opposed AIML political struggle, but were elected from their respective constituencies in the 1946-46 general election, and who had opted to be citizens of Pakistan. It must be understood that Two-Nation Theory was the basis of the political struggle for creation of Pakistan, and in Jinnah’s opinion was not a state policy to be pursued after creation of a sovereign homeland, where the Muslim majority would live in peace and harmony with members of other faiths.
On 11 August 1947 MAJ had stated clearly that “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”. All citizens in Jinnah’s Pakistan were to be equal citizens, irrespective of their faith, creed, sex or ethnicity. The Quaid had earlier elaborated on this issue in detail when he addressed the AIML Annual Session in Lahore on 22 March 1940, where he narrated contents of letters written by Hindu nationalist Lala Lajpat Rai in 1924 to a Bengali Hindu nationalist CR Das that the Muslims and Hindus were two separate nations and cannot co-exist together as one nation.
It was this mindset of Hindu supremacists which today manifests itself with all its brutality in Modi’s India. Muslims of India are being butchered and do not have liberty to practice their faith freely, without any fear or threats of being subjected to collective punishments by enraged Shiv Sena affiliated armed mobs. Unfortunately, the legacy of “Divide and Rule” by British Raj has been adopted by political engineers, associated with adventurers, who have created many a Frankenstein, who haunt this country from within. They are funded by foreign agencies to destabilize Pakistan.
Events such as the brutal vandalism at Jaranwala in Faisalabad were perpetrated by these Frankenstein, bringing the country into disrepute. The State must put an end to this madness and restore Jinnah’s vision that “Islam came in the world to establish democracy, peace and justice, to safeguard the rights of the oppressed. It brought to humanity the message of equality of the rich and the poor, of the high and the low”.
We must give credit to Nawab Viqarul Mulk, who in 1906 laid down the foundations of a separate political party Muslim League at Dacca. M.A. Jinnah, Allama Iqbal and other pioneers of AIML had the vision and intellect to understand that the sole solution lies in a separate homeland ‘Pakistan’. Stanley Wolpert stated “Few individuals significantly alter the course of history, Fewer still modify the map of the world, Hardly, anyone can be credited with creating a nation-state. MAJ did all three”.
—The writer is contributing columnist, based in Lahore.
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