Qurratulain Hyder once plaintively said to Lachman Komal that she fails to understand why do people acknowledge her as the writer of Aag Ka Darya? Even before this awe-inspiring novel she has inked unprecedented fictional pieces.
Same is the case with K.K. Aziz, people used to admire and discuss him as the writer of Murder of History. However, he has penned unconventional narratives on the history of the Indian Subcontinent. The Making of Pakistan: a Study in Nationalism, it is also a chain of such narrations.
He has incarnated the text with aphoristic style by making it a free-verbatim book. It can be ascertained from the following statement that he has encapsulated decades struggle into a single sentence;
“From 1858 to 1905 the Muslims were in a state of neutrality vis-à-vis the Hindus; from 1906 to 1911 the Hindus-Muslim rift was first marked and later ominous; from 1911 to 1922 the two communities co-operated against what they considered a common enemy — Britain.” Eight chapters of the book, including epilogue, lay bare the spirit of strenuous efforts that made for independence of the Muslims of India.
First two historical factors set tone for the aspects which become ultimate reason and key factors for the partition. Political, religious, cultural and psychological perspectives are explicitly identified in the book.
Without an iota of doubt that an event is nourished decades of time for its occurrence; it is not merely an incidental outcome.
Similarly, the role of Congress nourished decades to the occurrence of partition. In the words of K K Aziz “…where there is no trust there is no cooperation, and where there is no cooperation there is no national spirit. It is in this sense that the Congress is to be held responsible for the creation of Muslim nationalism and, ultimately of Pakistan.”
Apart from that the bitter and treacherous role of Congress is a thesis statement in the political factor where the writer shows that the Muslims with Congress were in the same sense in which the British were with the French in the Second World War.
Religion plays an important role not only in an individual’s life but also efficiently influence on state affairs.
In a way, the Subcontinent is one of the best paradigms where political doctrines were clothed in the phraseology of religious ‘isms’ therefore a pro-religious leader declared himself as a secular whereas the one who leads Muslim community purely on the basis of religion ultimately being declared by world community as a secular leader of the Muslims of India.
The ideology is based on Two-Nation theory, in ideological phase not only Jinnah played his active part but the writer traces its roots from struggling life of Sir Sayyid who addressed Muslims as a quam (nation).
However, as far as the writer’s point of view is concerned, he claims that if Two-Nation theory is the root cause of partition then why have we left behind forty-million members of this nation? However, this assertion is not factually correct, in personal opinion; its credit also goes to a Radcliffe who was hijacked by particular forces in the lodge of Viceroy.
Nations are known by their cultural heritage, in a similar way, the subcontinent was a cradle of civilizations.
The claim of author in this background is a clear-cut caption of cultural differences that become in fact the core of separatism. This segment of the book opens new vistas of learning that there are multiple reasons played due role in the Muslims’ decay.
First and foremost, the Muslims were lagging behind in education, even after partition some Muslim areas suffered badly owing to insufficient number of colleges and universities; Sindh and Baluchistan were the finest examples of such negligible number. Second, the literature was incomprehensive to the Hindu masses.
Expecting Hindus to understand bulk of Iqbal is like asking someone completely ignorant of Greek Mythology to enjoy Milton’s work. Subsequently, the writer emphasized on language and literature that both factors are responsible for the Indian disunity which helped the formation of more than nationalism.
The author has overlapped nationalistic spirit with psychology that people consider themselves separate entity and it was the will of people to be a nationalist on the basis of different creed, caste, culture and ideology.
Meanwhile, British introduced the term and here people made their own definitions and they supposed to die for them. So, concluding on a stunner line of the book; “What Sayyid had said in speech and prose Hali put in measured stanzas and Iqbal sang with the abandon of Shelley.”
However, the sole spokesman is missed who politicized and constitutionalized their prosaic, poetic and stanzaic feelings to fight with the oppressors for the freedom of oppressed class.
—The writer is contributing columnist, based in Islamabad.
