Bharat Rakshak

Mahendra wrote: "He who is at home in a foreign country makes the entire world his country"I don't think it matters how long he has been away from his mother country, his views will not change regardless of location.

History must not lie

By Shahid Javed Burki

EVER since gaining independence Pakistan has done a remarkable job of either ignoring its history or simply not telling the truth about it. The first is true for economic history, the second for the part of history that concerns the country`s political evolution.

In a well-known work Khursheed Kamal Aziz — or simply KK as he was known to his friends and admirers — wrote about the series of lies and distortions that crept into the writing of history. In , one of his last works, he confessed that he was also guilty of committing this crime. The Making of Pakistan

In the officially sponsored which for many years remained the definitive account of the founding of Pakistan as a separate state for the Muslim community of British India, Aziz gave greater prominence to Muslim nationalism as the reason for the creation of Pakistan than suggested by the facts.

This line of argument was pursued in a number of works by several other political historians who followed Aziz`s work. They identified religion as the motivating factor behind the movement for the creation of Pakistan. The question of why a segment of the Muslim population of British India came to believe that separation from the Indian mainland was the only way to protect their interests acquired importance in the writings on the founding of Pakistan. Increasingly, the answer came to be provided in religious terms.

This interpretation of history is not only wrong, it is also dangerous. What we are seeing now in terms of the rise of extremist Islam in the country can be attributed to this line of thinking. This approach to history has also resulted in casting `Hindu` India as the eternal enemy. I have advisedly put the word `Hindu` in quotation marks since India is not by any stretch of the imagination a Hindu state. It is a secular state that defines itself as such in the constitution it has followed carefully and dutifully. It is no doubt a Hindu-majority country but has permitted all religious communities to exercise their rights according to the law of the land. How to Win a Cosmic War

Distorting the Indian political entity has already done considerable mischief and has influenced Pakistan`s relations with its large neighbour. As Raza Aslan, the young Islamic Iranian-American scholar of some repute has emphasised in his recent book, , conflict based on ideologies can only be waged if the enemy can be defined as the `other` — an entity, political or otherwise, against which a struggle must be waged no matter what the cost.

These conflicts become dangerous, prolonged and unending when both sides take recourse to a higher being. This is what Al Qaeda has done globally and what various Islamic groups are doing in Pakistan at this time. For the first the Christians, Jews and what it calls the “crusaders” constitute the `other`. For some of the Pakistani groups India has been cast in that role.

This approach has done an enormous amount of damage to Pakistan. As Raza Rumi recently wrote in a weekly newspaper devoting considerable space to K.K. Aziz`s work, the writing of history was brutalised during the Zia era. “Pakistan`s military-bureaucracy complex reinvented an ideological state based on a sectarian world view; history was an instrument propagating this ideology; and the jihad factories were flourishing. Jinnah`s Pakistan was irreversibly shattered and perhaps destroyed. For K.K. Aziz`s generation this was nothing short of betrayal.”

As I have written in several of my own works, the Pakistan movement may have used the idiom of Islam as a way of drawing mass support; it was not a movement for creating an Islamic entity but an attempt to secure a better economic future for the Muslims of British India. This is why there was a paradox in the way the movement achieved its ultimate objective — the creation of Pakistan.

The movement was led by a group of people who belonged to the Muslim minority areas of British India and who felt that their economic future would be threatened in a state in which the Hindu majority would rule. However, they created a state in the part of British India in which Muslims constituted a large majority and felt secure about their economic future even after the departure of the British from India. It was for this reason that Punjab and the Frontier were at best lukewarm to the idea of Pakistan. But once Pakistan came into being these two elements coalesced to define a view in which the economic betterment of the citizenry was the main goal to be pursued.

However, then Islamists under Gen Ziaul Haq entered the picture and began to distort the original idea of Pakistan. Mohammad Ali Jinnah`s famous words uttered as he was preparing to launch the new state of Pakistan — “You are free. You are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place of worship in this state of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion, caste or creed — that has nothing to do with the business of the state” — meant nothing to these ideologues. They got busy in rewriting the meaning of the idea of Pakistan. n

The inherent conflict between the two ideas of Pakistan remains unresolved. What is it that we want to create in what is now the second largest country in the Muslim world? Do we want a state ordered according to the `principles of Islam` whatever that term implies or to improve the economic and social circumstances of the country`s citizens? There is enough evidence around to suggest that it was the latter objective that was in the minds of the founders of the country. It is that objective that we need to follow.

Embattled Pakistan
November 11, 2010 2:36:55 AM

Granta: Pakistan
Author: John Freeman (ed)
Publisher: Granta
Price: 599

Torn between the modern and medieval worlds, Islamabad is fighting for its survival, writes Ved Marwah

Granta, “the magazine of new writing”, has focused on Pakistan in its 112th issue. The issue includes contributions by some well-known literary figures like Lorraine Adams, Nadeem Alam, Fatima Bhutto, Yasmeen Hameed, Uzma Aslam Khan, Daniyal Mueenuddin, Jane Parlez and Sher Zaman Taizi.

I usually find it difficult to read in one go poems and stories by journalists in a magazine like this. But reading this issue on Pakistan was an exception. All the contributions fit in so smoothly with each other that the issue reads more like one continuous book than a magazine containing so many works by different authors.

It makes compelling reading particularly for an Indian reader, who was born and brought up in Peshawar, now in Pakistan. I am familiar with the violence that prevailed in that part of Pakistan. But the violence and brutality that have been described in most of the contributions in this volume came as a shock even to me. Then, there was little violence and brutality for the sake of violence. The tribal society had its own moral code where brutality against the innocents had no place. We Hindus, a minuscule minority in the NWFP, now called Khyber Pakhtunwa, did not feel unsafe. In fact, when there were widespread communal riots in Punjab, there was complete peace in that remote province at the time of Independence.

Of course, things changed after the Khan Sahib Congress Government was dismissed by the new Pakistani Central Government. But it was not because the people in NWFP were anti-Hindus. I vividly remember how enthusiastically we used to celebrate Hindu festivals. But the situation in today’s Pakistan has undergone a sea change, as narrated in this volume, not so much for Hindus because there are hardly any left there, but for the Pakistani people, especially women.

The first contribution is a story, ‘Leila in the Wilderness’, by Nadeem Aslam, who lives in Britain and is the author of a number of novels in English. It is a moving tale of love and violence, of the cruelties by feudal landlords, and of low status of women, sanctioned by traditional social values. Women themselves can be the biggest enemy of women. How the tradition-bound Razia, the mother-in-law of Leila, sides with her son Taimur and blames Leila for delivering a daughter instead of a son. Male chauvinism is so deeply ingrained in Pakistani society that women not only accept their low status, but also side with and support male domination. Landlords who own thousands of acres of land have their own code of conduct and treat women as slaves.

The essay, ‘Portrait of Jinnah’, by Jane Perlez, a Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent for the New York Times, who has spent a number of years covering Pakistan, gives a perceptive account of a complex character and the earlier history of that country. Many of the present problems confronting the country and its crisis of identity date back to Mohammed Ali Jinnah’s days. Though his rule lasted only nine months, as he died of terminal illness before he could learn from his serious initial mistakes, Jinnah laid the foundation of the dominant role of the Pakistan Army and its unending hostility towards India.

Of course, the anthology of Pakistani writings cannot be complete without including a contribution on Kashmir. ‘Kashmir’s Forever War’, by Basharat Peer is a biased account of the tragedy that is unfolding in the Valley. The author does not clarify that the Valley is only one part and not the dominant section of the erstwhile State of Jammu and Kashmir. He also conveniently ignores the atrocities that are being perpetrated in the Northern Areas by the Pakistani ruling establishment and complete violation of the democratic norms in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir. The jihadi forces, aided and abetted by the separatists in the Valley, have created an explosive situation that has only got more complicated with inept handling by the State and the Central Governments. The author is a fellow at the Open Society Institute, New York, and has also written another book, a memoir of the Kashmir issue.

‘Arithmetic on the Frontier’ by Declan Welsh, The Guardian’s correspondent in Pakistan and Afghanistan, is a fascinating account of the situation in this explosive region, the battleground between the traditional tribal forces and the Pakistani Taliban. In this brief contribution, the author has given an informative account of what is happening there and why it is happening. To the traditionalist Kamal, “customs and traditions are more holy than the laws of the country. You live with them and you die with them, whether you like it or not”. They are in direct conflict with the extremist Pakistani Taliban ideology. Taliban are the creation of the ISI and the shortsighted policies of the Parvez Musharraf Government.

“As Taliban violence started to spill out of the tribal belt and into NWFP, the cleric-led MMA Government did not directly aid the militant. But it did little to stop them.” The author rightly concludes that “the foolish ‘jihadist’ meddling of Pakistani Army” has exposed “the deep inequalities in Pashtun society — and perhaps, even the limitations of the centuries-old Pashtunwal” — to such an extent that the conflict is unlikely to die down any time soon.

‘The Trials of Faisal Shahzad’ by Lorraine Adams is another realistic narration of the story of the recent failed attempt to explode a bomb in the Time Square, New York. The deep-seated hatred against the United States in the Islamic world, too, is not going to go away easily.

The smaller contributions are no less interesting. ‘Mangho Pir’ by Fatima Bhutto, ‘The Sins of the Mother’ by Jamil Ahmed, ‘Butt and Bhatti’ by Mohammed Hanif — all make fascinating reading. A must read for the lay reader interested in creative writing and also those who want to get a feel of what is troubling Pakistani society today.

--The reviewer, a retired IPS officer, is a former Governor of Jharkhand

chetak wrote:http://public.dawn.com/2010/11/09/histo ... burki.html

History must not lie

By Shahid Javed Burki

EVER since gaining independence Pakistan has done a remarkable job of either ignoring its history or simply not telling the truth about it.

Lalmohan wrote:prem-ji, in previous page you mention that pak has been exploiting pashtuns since 47... yes, but the seeds of this exploitation go back to 1857. the jihad faction of the deobandis decided that since the british empire could not be defeated from inside india, the jihad had to be taken first to dar-ul-islam and then from their solid base there to bring the jihad back to dar-ul-harb and re-establish the mughal empire and thence the caliphate. there began a deliberate effort then to relocate the 'movement' to afghanistan from UP/Bihar, which then culminates in the numerous pathan tribal insurrections of the north west frontier (not the first two afghan wars) against the british empire going on into the 1920's and 30's
all the frontier tribes - the mehsuds, ghilzais, etc., were already coopted into jihad since the 1860's and therefore found it a natural extension to participate in the invasion of kashmir in 47 and so on and so on...
i conclude therefore that the ideological fraternity between the islamists and the pak jarnails is a far older vibe than just zia... he may have resurrected it, but it was already there

A_Gupta wrote:http://criticalppp.com/archives/36002

So, when I heard about the Kashmir uprising in mid-August, the first place for me to go to was the British Council. I had a bicycle at that time and after college, I rushed to the library about five miles away to scour the British press as well as the Times of India. The Times of India came daily to Pakistan and was only stopped after September 6, when Indian invaded Pakistan. The British and Indian press were clear; the skirmishes in Kashmir were not an uprising, but were infiltration by regular Pakistani troops dressed up as Kashmiris.

Next day I discovered that the College library also got the Times of India and carried reports of the Pakistan ‘invasion’ and how the Pakistani troops were being met with hostility by the Kashmiri Muslims. This was the first time in my life I realized that Pakistanis were being lied to, but loved to be lied to. It was a sort of an addiction. Soon the senior students of the college demanded the library not carry any Indian papers. They did not have to wait. On September 6, 1965, Indian attacked Lahore and the last time I read an Indian newspaper in Pakistan was August 29, 1965. I remember it had the maps of the Pakistan infiltration route and how a Pakistani tank column was advancing towards Chamb.

The following 17-day war with India shaped my life permanently. I saw through the deception of the Pakistan Establishment very early in life. I was a mere 15, but had already recognised that we mainstream Pakistanis, the Urdu-speaking elites and my own Punjabi nationality, were a flock of sheep, seeped in bigotry and a false sense of a fake identity. This was a falsely constructed identity that was masquerading as some sort of B-grade Persians of Arab ancestry, but certainly did not want anything to do with the rich 5,000 year old Indian identity of the Indus valley where we all lived.

Today, the Left is generally suffering the same sickness it confronted in 1967. In the late 1960s, Left activists were being lynched, beaten and murdered by the Islamist thugs; today significant sections of the Left have latched on to these very same Jamaat-e-Islami and Muslim Brotherhood thugs as a way to express their irrational hatred of the West. Today when Fatima Bhutto in particular and to a lesser extent, Mubashar Hassan echo Imran Khan and the Taliban, I refer to them as Sharia-Bolsheviks who have unwittingly become the hand maidens of the Islamofascists of the world.

In the ten years that I spent researching the subject and the 45 years I have spent fighting the forces of medieval darkness that wish to drag the world’s Muslims into the past as a path to the future, it dawned on me that even those who knew the truth about the fraudulent nature of the Islamic State, were not prepared to say so, guilt-ridden in their minds, thinking this would be an act of betrayal of the Muslim community. Such a state of affairs was possible because while liberal or secular Muslims were busy caught up in the challenges of their day-to-day lives, their Islamist counterparts were having a field day, unchallenged and unopposed, where even the communists would use the phrase, “Comrade, Bismillah karo” to start their meetings.

In brief, whereas Islam is a religion based on the five pillars of our faith, Islamism (al-Islamiyah as the Ikhwan claims) is the use of the religion of Islam as a political tool and doctrine, whose logical end is Islamofascism (or Islamoanarchism in the words of Tariq Ali).

The difference between a Muslim and an Islamist is along the same lines. Whereas a Muslim follows Islam, an Islamist sticks to the political doctrine of Islamism. This makes it possible for even non-Muslims and atheists to be Islamists. For example, George Galloway is an Islamist as is Ken Livingstone (former mayor of London) and even Noam Chomsky who I am told addressed a large gathering of the Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba in Punjab University.

I shall only state here that if even today Pakistan’s elite cannot see through the con men who divided India’s Muslims into three parts as a bizarre way to unite them, then we are all collectively blind.

SSridhar wrote:

CRamS wrote:This outpouring of sympathy from Indian liberals for this low life RAPE Taseer is getting tiresome if not a tragic comedy.

KLNMurthy wrote:These are not liberals but superficial silly people with no moral compass.

I think that you two gentlemen have gone overboard without reading the op-ed.

There is not one sentence of sympathy for Salman Taseer in that article, leave alone an outpouring. Ms. Nirupama has suggested just one approach to recovering the space lost to extremists in Pakistan, a suggestion that is absolutely ridiculous. We can and should fault her for that, but not otherwise.

Nirupama and others like her who somehow think that the Pakistani clock can be turned back, have either not really understood the very foundations of the problem or pretend so for various reasons. Salman Taseer's assassination is somehow touted as a watershed event. No, it is not. It is just another event in the continuum that was set ticking by Aga Khan, Sir Syed Ahmed Khan and the like in 1906, then taken forward by Allama Iqbal, Mawdudi, Sheikh Usmani, Sheikh Thanvi et al. In earlier times (17th & 18th centuries), it was set ticking by the likes of Sirhindi, Waliullah et al. These people and their thoughts have reinforced each other and led to the current pass.

Most people believe that somehow the Berelvis are not as frothing-at-the-mouth-corners as the Salafi/Wahhabi/Deobandi/Ahl-e-Hadees (SWDA) and hence acceptable. Wrong. While in some aspects and practices, they might be different from the latter and appear therefore to be more enlightened, the Berelvis are as extremist as their more well known brothers. The following is what Ibn Taymiyya (whom the SWDA revere): ‘if infidels take shelter behind Muslims, and these Muslims become a shield for the infidels, it is permitted to kill Muslims in order to get at the infidels.’.This is exactly the basis on which the Berelvis have carried out Salman Taseer's assassination now. Though a small group (not in Pakistan but elsewhere) has tried to argue that the Mardin Declaration (as it is called) of Taymiyya quoted above was a misrepresentation because of a typographical error, go and tell that to Mumtaz Qadri and see him commit another murder. Such is the hold of some of the concepts of Islam on people.

It is also ridiculous to expect the PA to change the omnipresent radicalism. This is like asking the thief to be the cop. Let the question be first asked if the PA can tackle the extremism widely prevalent within itself. Forget about serving officers, can anybody take action against retired PA offficers like Hamid Gul or Mirza Aslam Beg or Javid Nasir for preaching jihad and hatred ? Chiefs of Armed Forces and Intelligence (both serving and retired) regularly attend the Tableeghi Jama'at's annual conference at Raiwind. What kind of message does a military send when it names its missiles after some of the most savage Islamist marauders who committed genocide of the worst kind, just because they were Muslims and most of those killed were Hindus and most of the places looted and plundered were Hindu temples ?

Nirupama should know better than what she has written, having spent four years in Islamabad. I am always intrigued whether it is The Hindu that attracts people with this attitude or people change after getting a job there.

RajeshA wrote:

SSridhar wrote:Salman Taseer's assassination is somehow touted as a watershed event. No, it is not. It is just another event in the continuum that was set ticking by Aga Khan, Sir Syed Ahmed Khan and the like in 1906, then taken forward by Allama Iqbal, Mawdudi, Sheikh Usmani, Sheikh Thanvi et al. In earlier times (17th & 18th centuries), it was set ticking by the likes of Sirhindi, Waliullah et al. These people and their thoughts have reinforced each other and led to the current pass.

SSridhar garu,
Salman Taseer's assassination may not even register in the big scheme of things, but for current politics it is a sort of watershed.

There was a compact between the Pakistani military and the RAPE. The RAPE's part of the deal was to sell Pakistan to the Western elite and opinion-makers, to make the Western elite comfortable in dealing with the Pakistani Army, to increase the level of trust for the Pakistani Army in the eyes of the West. The Army's part of the deal was to protect RAPE's lives and lifestyle from Army's 'other partners'.

Now the RAPE are crying foul, because Army is not doing its part of the bargain.

Moreover RAPE need language, lifestyle, and a facade for Pakistan as a modern state, e.g. as a protector of minority rights (read Christian rights), in order to provide the deliverables to Western audiences, and thus prolong the Western embrace of Pakistan. With this Aasia Bibi's case, and RAPE's own weakened standing, this proposition is looking more and more difficult.

With Salman Taseer's assassination, a man at the core of the RAPE socialite circle, in fact one of their main flag-bearers, and considered to be an influential and powerful RAPE, has been bumped off. And the Army, which was supposed to protect the lives of RAPEs, has not even put out a statement.

It's no wonder that the RAPE have started feeling betrayed by the whole Establishment (Army, Feudals, etc.) wondering whether there is anything to salvage in Pakistan for them.

Sooner or later, the division between the RAPE and the Establishment are going to spill over into the public arena. After the Hindus, the Christians, the Ahmediyas, and the Bengalis, Pakistan has now started dispossessing the RAPEs as well.

So in a sort of a way, another Partition is taking place before our eyes - the Partition of RAPE from Pakistan. It is to be seen what impact it has on Western embrace of Pakistan.

To start with, both Pakistan and Israel declared their creation within a year of each other — 1947 and 1948 respectively. Both states were founded in the name of religious ideologies, thus making them the only two ideological states in the world, i.e. created in the name of religion. Ever since their formation, both have fought numerous wars and have persistently put serious efforts toward defending themselves from actual or perceived security threats that emanate from their ‘surroundings’. Israel and Pakistan are both nuclear-armed states and their threat perception has forced them to invest heavily in arms build-up. These factors have determined the political systems that govern each of the two states, i.e. heavily influenced by their respective security establishments and centred on the few individuals who are in charge.

Civilians in Israel and Pakistan also share some interesting commonalities. Upon the creation of Pakistan and Israel, huge migrations occurred in both the newborn states. Between 1948 and 1951, over 600,000 Jews arrived in Israel, significantly altering the demographics of the region. In the case of Pakistan, 7.2 million Muslims immigrated, creating a huge Mohajir population in the country. In both cases, the migrations occurred on a religious basis, i.e. in the name of Judaism and Islam. Both these mass population movements created demographic complexities that continue to wreak havoc in Pakistan and Israel to date. Israel and Pakistan contain two of the world’s most armed civilian populations. This fact might not be very surprising considering the history of violence in both countries. While Israelis like to practice their shooting at stone pelting kids, Pakistanis have some eccentric vocations of their own.

The most interesting point that came about concerns their respective national languages. In both countries, languages that were, for all practical purposes, alien to the local people were proclaimed as the vernacular. Israelis practically revived a dead language — Hebrew — which is an incredible feat on its own. Pakistanis, in a very similar fashion, made Urdu their national language — a language that is the mother tongue of less than eight percent of Pakistan’s population. New identities were therefore stamped upon a diverse mix of people, creating discomfort in some sections of society and, in others, a sense of belonging.

The ethnic conflicts, the rift between provinces, the migrant ruling families that continue to wield power, the ever powerful generals, the India-centric defence policies and the feudal culture in the robe of democracy, all have a well defined context in Pakistan — and our Israel analogy explains this very well.

All these points give background to the ethnic fault lines in our society. They explain why we have Punjabi, Baloch, Pashtun and Sindhi political parties rather than national political parties. They explain to us the reasons behind the insecurities that Punjabis have with other ethnic groups in the country. These points explicate why certain cultural realities have been suppressed and others have been imposed, forcibly. These points also give a background to the economic disparities in our country — they explain to us why the interests of a few families have always been protected against those of the masses. They also explain how the insecurities of Pakistan’s establishment have held hostage the whole nation for so many years. The parallels that we share with Israel delineate for us the reasons why certain sections of our society take an uncompromising stand on their religious beliefs and identity.

Once we start looking we will find many clues to the sources of our problems and perhaps also some solutions, if only we have the will to solve our problems. We will also have a lot to learn from our own history and the history of other nations that had a similar legacy as ours. But alas, we pay no heed to the lessons that history has for us. Our failure as a nation stems from our inability to comprehend the historical context in which our problems are grounded. True, we cannot change our legacy but we can change our future.

Our broth always gets spoilt because we have too many ‘fake-degree’ cooks. Or perhaps our recipe is all wrong. We have been eating spoiled broth for over 63 years and we keep blaming all the wrong things for our stomach ache. While Pakistan has afforded unsuccessful military dictatorships and individual-centred democracies for over six decades, it will not harm us much if we try something out of the box — just for a change of taste.

Airavat wrote:For this thread an excellent book is The Shadow of the Great Game by Narendra Singh Sarila. Many of our BRF members have read this amazing book including Shiv and Johann.

The summary of this book is that the British administration in India allied with the Muslim League to keep the nationalist movement for Independence under check. They helped Jinnah against his Muslim rivals in the Punjab, UP, and Bengal, forcing these leaders to apply for dual membership to the League. But they stopped short of agreeing to the formation of Pakistan.

It was the Second World War, which started the process of the unravelling of the British Empire. It saw the emergence of the Soviet Union as a global power, once again reclaiming its postion in Central Asia and pressing south into Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan. To protect the oil wells, controlled by western companies, from falling into Soviet hands, the British Empire needed a reliable partner in northwestern India from where military and spying operations could be carried out against the Soviet Union.

If WWII had not occured, the British had plans of continuing their occupation of India well into the 1960s. Jinnah and his Muslim League would have been happy to continue as serville partners of the British in this situation, all their claims for Pakistan forgotten. With the war forever destroying Britain's global standing, the British administration in India and the UK, followed a policy of violence and intimidation against the nationalists (the massacre of civilians in Bombay during the naval ratings mutiny, the brutal use of military force during the Quit India movement where people were straffed by machine-guns from aircraft).

By contrast, to the planned communal terrorism of the Muslim League the British adopted a policy of: look the other way, take no effective action. NPA Smith, director of the Intelligence Bureau, wrote in a memorandum to the Viceroy Wavell who forwarded the same to London:

Grave communal disorder must not disturb us into action which would reintroduce anti-British agitation. The latter may produce an inordinately dangerous situation and lead us nowhere. The former is a natural, if ghastly, process tending in its own way to the solution of the Indian problem.

Pakistanis, in a very similar fashion, made Urdu their national language — a language that is the mother tongue of less than eight percent of Pakistan’s population. New identities were therefore stamped upon a diverse mix of people, creating discomfort in some sections of society and, in others, a sense of belonging.

The ethnic conflicts, the rift between provinces, the migrant ruling families that continue to wield power, the ever powerful generals, the India-centric defence policies and the feudal culture in the robe of democracy, all have a well defined context in Pakistan — and our Israel analogy explains this very well.

Not just a Jinnah show
February 09, 2011 9:13:40 PM


TINDERBOX: The Past and Future of Pakistan
Author: MJ Akbar
Publisher: HarperCollins
Price: Rs 499

Prafull Goradia and KR Phanda wonder why MJ Akbar, while dealing with the creation of Pakistan, ignores the separatist tendencies inherent in Islam

The book under review is a masterly exposition by a journalist distinguished for his knowledge. He is also perceived to be objective in his views on communal issues. With his high credibility, he has tried to put the weight of the blame for Partition on the Congress, especially Jawaharlal Nehru. By implication, he has attempted to free Indian Muslims of all responsibility. If he has blamed any Muslim, it is Mohammed Ali Jinnah.

Like other Muslim authors of the past, MJ Akbar’s book, Tinderbox: The Past and Future of Pakistan, puts the entire blame for Partition on the Congress leadership. Akbar writes: “There were five swivel moments in the relations between the Congress and the Muslims before the formation of Pakistan. The pact negotiated by Jinnah in 1916, in which the Congress accepted separate electorates, was widely described as the basis on which the two communities could unite against the British. The second moment, Gandhi’s Khilafat struggle, promised liberation but ended in despair. Jinnah crafted the third opportunity, in 1927 and 1928, when an all-party effort was made to create a constitution for India by Indians; he failed to bridge the League-Congress gap. In 1937, the two parties could have cemented an ongoing understanding with a post-election coalition, but an ascendant Congress underestimated the potential of a disappointed Jinnah. The fifth and the most tantalising chance appeared at the very last minute, in 1946, when the Congress and the League accepted the British Cabinet Mission Plan to retain a united India, but the Congress, fearful of balkanisation, reversed its decision. After this, their separate paths became irreversible.”

Muslim writers, including Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad, have blamed Nehru for Partition. He had not agreed to the inclusion of Muslim League candidates in the United Provinces Cabinet formed in 1937. Again, in 1946, it was Nehru who had rejected the Cabinet Mission Plan. Since he did not clarify his stand on these issues, it encouraged Muslim writers to put the blame on the Congress for Partition.

The fact of the matter is that separatism is an integral part of Islamic theology. Islam divides humanity into momins and kafirs. It is ordained in the holy book that momins should persuade non-Muslims to embrace Islam. On their refusal to do so, they should be killed.{Self-Ghettoization or forming Kabilas. In the limit they want separate countries till all the world is dar ul Islam} The imposition of jizya on Hindus (kafirs) by Muslim rulers was an exception. The status of dhimmi or zimmi was accorded to ahle-kitab or people of the Book only. According to the Hanafi law, Hindus had only two options: Convert to Islam or face death. For economic advantage to the rulers, however, Hindus were allowed to survive on payment of jizya.

{Ziauddin Barani's construct of Zawabit vs Shariat.}

In short, non-Muslims cannot coexist with Muslims under Islamic rule as equal citizens. What is happening to Christians in Lebanon, Sudan, Nigeria today is a replay of the Armenian Christian genocide by the Turks in the last quarter of the 19th century. The advent of British rule in India deprived Muslims of their privileged status, and reduced them to the status of common people. They were unhappy and made their last attempt to restore Muslim rule in 1857. Having failed, they decided to cooperate with the British. Sir Syed Ahmad Khan even told Muslims not to join the Congress. He was also one of the original exponents of the two-nation theory.

Akbar assigns a prominent role to Jinnah in the struggle for the creation of Pakistan. He quotes what Jinnah said on June 5, 1946, to the Muslim League Council: “Let me tell you that Muslim India will not rest content until we have established full, complete and sovereign Pakistan. Acceptance of the Cabinet Mission’s proposal was not the end of their struggle for Pakistan. They should continue their struggle till Pakistan is achieved.”

The fact is that Jinnah did not lead, but was led by the Muslim consensus. His role was that of a sincere and clear-headed lawyer who could formulate and articulate in precise terms what his client really wanted (Studies in Islamic Culture by Aziz Ahmad). This is further reinforced by the election results of 1945-46. Prof M Mujeeb writes: “The party which demanded the creation of Pakistan, a separate homeland for Indian Muslims, was the Muslim League. In the elections held early in 1946, which proved decisive, it secured 425 out of 492 seats reserved for Muslims in the central and different provincial legislatures. It could be said, therefore, that Muslims were overwhelmingly in favour of Pakistan. It insisted that the right to a separate homeland should be conceded first (Islamic Influence on Indian Society).

Partition, therefore, took place because Indian Muslims felt themselves to be Muslims first and Indians later. Given this background leading to the creation of Pakistan, it is surprising that the Congress leadership — Mahatma Gandhi, Nehru and Vallabhbhai Patel — did not ask Muslims to leave for their dar-ul-Islam. Jinnah, on the contrary, was clear. He along with other seven League leaders had asked for an exchange of population. The Congress did not agree. It seems the Indian leadership deluded itself that Partition was territorial and not a religious division!

ramana wrote:So Blackwill's Plan B will lead to the consumption of the Persain and Turkic lobbies leaving a more self assured Arab (Syeds and Sheikhs) and Pakjabi(Rajput and Jatt) lobbies.

Where do you put the Pushtuns (Ghilzai) in this taxonomy?

I think they are Islamised Hindus for if you see the medevial history they allied with Rajputs like Rana Sangha and the Marathas.

SSridhar wrote:A perceptive comment

By the end of the 18th or 19th century, the Sufi movement had come to a close and what were left were the rituals of the Barelvi mullahs and sajjada nasheens (holders of the saintly seat). The Sufi tradition could only survive in a multi-religious society, which Punjab and Sindh had before 1947. The purging of Hindus and Sikhs from Pakistan created an anti-Sufi environment. Therefore, it is not surprising at all that the followers of the Sufis, namely the Barelvis, have become just like the Wahabi and Deobandi maulvis. They could not avoid the dictates of the environment they lived in. In contrast, the Barelvis in India are much more tolerant of other religions because they have to live with them. More Hindus visit the Ajmer shrine of Moeenuddin Chishti than Muslims.

As a matter of fact, the Barelvis had abandoned the Sufi tradition long ago. They had become a ritualistic sect that considered khatam darood (rituals) as their basic distinction. The Sufi shrines had become the jagirs (estates) of sajjada nashins who were running them like feudal dynasties. This trend had started much earlier in history. Baba Farid and his ilk had refused to see kings and their men but his great grandsons joined the Tughlaqs and were awarded a huge estate in Pakpattan. It was a noteworthy estate when Ranjeet Singh conquered Punjab and he had to negotiate with the then sajjada nasheen.

Brad Goodman wrote:India-Pakistan: Hand of Friendship

However, the legacy of conflict built on the bedrock of mistrust is hard to dislodge. As I have argued in my forthcoming book, Aparna Pande. Escaping India: Explaining Pakistan's Foreign Policy the mistrust that the Muslim League felt towards the Indian National Congress carried over even after Partition.

A majority of Pakistanis -- not just leaders but also lay public -- believes that India has never accepted the creation of Pakistan and that India's foreign policy is geared towards the undoing of Partition. The fact that all Indian prime ministers and a majority of Indian leaders -- even those belonging to the Hindu nationalist movement -- have repeatedly expressed their acceptance of Pakistan and offered their hand of friendship, has not changed this perception.

Brad Goodman wrote:SSridhar ji excellent post. Thanks for taking time and drafting it. The only comment I have is if you can please fill the gap which would help mango abduls like me to understand this piece of history. I agree Jinnah, Nehru, Azad and host of leaders on both sides thought initially that Pakistan was either temporary (congress thinking) or the relationship will be what is between US & Canada (Jinnah line of thought) but everything was shattered by the brutal violence that erupted when radcliffe line was announced. We need to understand the players who encouraged violence and what they gained in this process. Same time we need to understand what made Jinnah keep his house in Bombay (hoping to return to it one day) and become a pawn in hands of superpower to play the great game. Was he only hoping to extract money from unkil so run the country? or was he looking to arm himself beyond his capacity to take on India (as his army thinks since 1947 till today). If experts like you, Ramana ji, Rajesh ji & Shiv ji can add details it can be an excellent post to be archived.

For example, later day Indian President Dr. Zakir Hussain decided to stay in India while his brother moved over to Pakistan and ended up as a federal minister later on. Pakistan’s Foreign Secretary in the early 60s was M.Ikramullah who was the brother of the then Chief Justice (later Vice President) of India, Justice M.Hidayatullah. Such examples, not only among elite sections of the Muslim society but also among ordinary folks, are plenty.

SSridhar wrote:Sherry Rehman must get a Canadian Visa *now". She is surely next.

The Mawdudis and the Usmanis must feel very gratified. What they strove to achieve but could not succeed in their lifetimes, has taken shape now. From here, it is but a short leap now to implement the salafist vision.

Deobandis, led by Husain Ahmed Madani, supported a united India and the freedom movement of the Congress. Maulana Madani issued a fatwa in October, 1945 against muslims joining the Muslim league. However, a small but vociferous section of Deobandi Hanafis led by Maulana Zafar Ahmed Usmani, forbade a united India unless jurisprudence in free India was based on Islam, which meant that Islamists ruled the country. This breakaway group ended up in the Land of the Purest.

Maulana Shabbir Ahmed Usmani, brother of Maulana Zafar Ahmed Usmani, then apostatized Shi'as and Ahmedis. He called for the Believers to stone the Ahmedis to death. Usmani saheb was rightly conferred the title Sheikh-ul-Islam-i-Pakistan. . Maulana Usmani famously demanded ‘jiziya’ from non-Muslims in the Constituent Assembly and told Pakistan’s first Minister for Law and Labour, Jogendra Nath Mandal, a Hindu, that non-Muslims should not hold such key posts. Usmani saheb's followers have gone a step further today eliminating a non-Muslim as unworthy not only of being a Minister in an Islamic cabinet but even of living in the Lu Lu Land.

Just for completeness' sake, Maulana Shabbir Usmani’s student was Maulana Yusuf Banuri who founded the famous Banuri seminary in Karachi that has been in the forefront of jihad. AoA only.

Added later: This is surely retribution of the Believers against the kafir. Let us remember there is the Fourt Jihad going on now in the Land of Milk, Honey and the Purest.

A_Gupta wrote:Wisdom from the chaighar:

Whether it was right or wrong, the fact is that vast majority of the Pakistani population wants Pakistan to be Islamic and ruled under sharia laws. It does not matter what Jinnah thought or Zia-ul-Haq did because the only issue that matters, today, is what does the present generation of Pakistanis want for Pakistan.

Zia-ul-Haq is just a blink of the eye in the narrative and Zia only put the capstone on the work that was started in 1947. In 2011, it really does not matter what was promised in 1947 or what was the reason for Pakistan in 1947. The vast majority of Pakistanis believe that Pakistan was created in the name of Islam and it is their perceptions of Pakistan, which matters and will decide how Pakistan’s future evolves.

It took about a hundred years for Islam to take root in the Middle East in the conquered lands. This was done by madrassafication of the education system to create committed Islamists to fill the governing apparatus. Zia also did the same by his emabracing Bhutto's ideas of Nazariya-e- Pakistan }

This is what the majority of the Pakistanis think and if true democracy is allowed in Pakistan, the majority of the Pakistanis will vote in favor of Islam and sharia. Therefore, true democracy of one person-one vote cannot be allowed to exist in Pakistan. The denial of this demand then creates an emotional and instinctive hatred for the centers of power in Pakistan, which keep proming this eventuality, but do not deliver on it.

The logical outcome of this is a massive sense of alienation between the people and the rulers as their interests in Pakistan and its forms of goverance are diametrically opposed. The electoral dissatisfaction of the Pakistani populace, once it has grown disenchanted of its ruling cadres, automatically sought other alternatives of pursuing their vision of Pakistan.

{The masses have been Islamised while the RAPEs are only partially. Hence the disconnect.}

This vision, then, finds a sense of identity and commonality with the religious parties in Pakistan and thus, the people support the religious parties not because they agree with them, but because the religious parties are seen to be representing the ideas that the people wish to see being implemented.

{Chicken and egg syndrome. More like dog chasing its tail.}

The ideas in politics are not measured in the grains of reality but in the sands of perception. There are been a silent coup d’ etat in Pakistan and this coup has forever changed the balance of power in Pakistan. This coup has given substance to three new political ideas in Pakistan, which influence the direction of Pakistani politics. These ideas are the people, the mosque and the Pakistani army.

There is a common linkage between these three ideas. The common thread is all of these ideas; the people, the religious right and the army stand for Islam and see Islam as the source of their identities. Not only does this troika see a common purpose between them; they also see any obstacle to this idea as a common threat and they will support each other in order to remove this threat.

Once this new trinty of power is understood in Pakistan, it also explains the fissures in Pakistani society that came to surface in the aftermath of the assassination of Salmaan Taseer and the popular reaction to it. The religious right refused to blame the murder and instead glorified the murderer of Salmaan Taseer and the people cheered their verdict by coming out on the streets in demand for religious laws and army supported all of this by its silence on the matter.

{Wrong analysis. Salman Taseer was RAPE and did not belong to the N-e-P school. Hence the dichotomy between him and those he ruled. He was playing to the West to be the new leader after Zardari.}

If there was a doubt as to where the Pakistani army’s heart was in the matter, it should have been disspelled by its silence over the killing of Salmaan Taseer and Shahbaz Bhatti. There is a duality in the policies of the Pakistani army vis-a-vis the issue of religion and extermism in Pakistan. Pakistani army encourages religious extermism where it suits its interests, as in the case of patronizing certain religious groups, which are seen as strategic assets and it fights religious extermism, as in the case of the Taliban, where such activities are seen as a threat to its ideas of being govering Pakistan and being the defenders of its “ideological and geographic frontiers”.

The day Salmaan Taseer was killed, January 4th 2011, was the day that Jinnah’s Pakistan and any dream or hope associated with it died. It was on that day that the first shots of this coup were fired which changed Pakistan forever. The Pakistan of today, in the aftermath of the murders of Salmaan Taseer and Shahbaz Bhatti, is a theocratic state dedicated to the principles of sharia and Islam and it refuses to tolerate any more dissent against those ideas.

Pakistan is not at a cross-roads any more, old friend; it has crossed the Rubicon!

{Wrong river. Its the Styx and not the Rubicon!}

Mohammad Iqbal”s “Hindustan Hamara” is the National Song of Pakistan

Written by: Dipak Basu
March 14th, 2011

Mohammad Iqbal and Communalism in modern India: Iqbal’s Hindustan is the Mughal India as Dar-Ul-Islam – We are Muslims and the whole world is our homeland.

Iqbal was the greatest political thinker of the Muslims in British India. Although he was described as a Sufi, his doctrine went counter to the quietism and acceptance preached by traditional Sufism. Iqbal’s philosophy was a rather militant doctrine of action, of fight to achieve an ideal placed before man, and this ideal was of that of a primitive Islam, which in Iqbal’s opinion was preached by the Prophet

He was one of the earliest proponent of the ‘Two Nation Theory’ after Syed Ahmed Khan, the founder of the Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental College, now Aligarh Muslim University. One of the most prominent leaders of the All India Muslim League, Muhammad Iqbal encouraged the creation of a “state in northwestern India for Muslims” under the British rule. In his Presidential Address at the All-India Muslim League Session at Allahabad in 1930, he suggested that for the healthy development of Islam in South-Asia, it was essential to have a separate Muslim state at least in the Muslim majority regions of the north-west of British India. Later on, in his correspondence with Muhammad Ali Jinnah, he included the Muslim majority areas in the north-east also in his proposed separate nation for the Muslims.

Iqbal, just like Jinnah, has three phases in his life. He has started as a nationalist, then he became a staunch loyalist of the British Raj, ultimately he became the philosopher-creator of Pakistan. The early phase was characterised by three categories of poems – (i) Ghazals and lyrics (e. g, Gul-i-Pashmurdah); (ii) romanticist and nature poems (e.g “The Himalayas”, “Kashmir” and “On the Bank of Ravi”) and (iii) patriotic and nationalistic poems. To this last category belongs poems like Hindustan Hamara, Hindustani Bachoon Ka Qaumi Geet, Naya Shiwala, and Taswir-i-Dard. Unfortunately those in India promote Iqbal forgot to read the poems in full, where he had glorified the Muslim conquests in general.

After his return from Britain and Europe, Iqbal later has transformed himself. While he was in jail in 1932, Mahatma Gandhi decided that Iqbal had become anti-nationalist. After going through an account of Iqbal’s speech to the Muslim League published in the newspaper, Mahatma Gandhi commented: “Other Muslims too share Iqbal’s anti-nationalism; only they do not give expression to their sentiments. The poet now disowns his song Hindustan Hamara”. However, Gandhi never knew that ‘Hindustan’ of Iqbal is a pan-Muslim concept, alien to Gandhi’s concept of India.

Iqbal was against secularism and was a fanatical Muslim. In his book, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, he expressed fears that secularism would weaken the spiritual foundations of Muslim society. India’s Hindu-majority population would destroy Muslim heritage, culture and political influence.

In a letter to Jinnah on 21 June 1937, Iqbal wrote: “Why should not the Muslims of north-west India and Bengal be considered as nations entitled to self-determination just as other nations in India and outside India are”? Iqbal approved the concept of Aurangzeb that “the strength of Islam in India depended not on the goodwill of its inhabitants but on the strength of the ruling Muslims”. Aurangzeb, according to Iqbal, was the “first exponent of Muslim nationalism in the Indian sub-continent”.

Tarana-e-Milli, written by Iqbal, reveals his mindset. “China and Arabia are ours. India is ours .We are Muslims and the whole world is our homeland. We have grown up in the shadow of swords. Our mascot is the crescent shaped dagger. Our prayer calls have reverberated in the valleys of the west. The force of our flow could not be stopped by anyone”.

Iqbal’s ‘Hindustan’ has nothing to do with India, but it is a mythical land for the Muslims. He evolved a synthetic concept of ‘Muslim’ nationalism, which should be according to Iqbal, a multi-nationalism within Islam. He had promoted that concept of communalism in a message to the Central Khilafat Committee, Bombay, on March 10, 1922.

Iqbal wrote, “Communalism is its higher aspect, is indispensable to the formation of a harmonious whole in a country like India. The units of Indian society are not territorial as in European countries. ….The principle of European democracy cannot be applied to India without recognizing the fact of communal groups. The Muslim demand for the creation of a Muslim India within (British) India is, therefore, perfectly justified.” Initially Iqbal sought a Muslim province with the British India, as he was then a loyal servant of the British Empire. Later, when it was clear after 1935 reform, that the British would give India a kind of self-rule sooner or later, Iqbal demanded a separate state.

Iqbal considered the Koran not only as a book of religion in the traditional sense, but also a source of foundational principles upon which the infrastructure of any organization must be built as a coherent system of life. In his Rumuz-e-Bekhudi (Hints of Selflessness), Iqbal seeks to prove the Islamic way of life is the best code of conduct for a nation’s viability.

In Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam he wrote: “I confess to be a pan-Islamist. The mission for which, Islam came into this world will ultimately be fulfilled, the world will ultimately be purged of infidelity and the worship of false gods, and the true soul of Islam will be triumphant. This is the kind of pan-Islamicism that I preach”. “Islam as a religion has no country”. In his zeal to promote the unity of the Muslims, he has no hesitation to falsify the world history, when he wrote, “The history of Islam tells us that the expansion of Islam as a religion is in no way related to the political power of its followers”; and again “that Islam gained its greatest and most lasting missionary triumphs in times and places in which its political power has been weakest, as in South India and Eastern Bengal.” Karl Marx in his book ‘Notes on Indian History’ would have seriously disagreed with Iqbal for this concocted history, when Marx has described in detail the destruction of Vijaya Nagar in South India by the Muslim invaders and the Muslim invasion of Bengal.

Iqbal did supported Muslim conquests by various means. He writes to Miss Farquharson: “The Jews also have no right over Palestine. They had bid farewell to Palestine willingly long before its occupation by Arabs.” [Miss Farquharson was the President of the National League of England. Iqbal’s letters dated July 30 and September 30, 1937 respectively, regarding Palestine, are included in Iqbal Namah (Makatib I Iqbal) Vol. 1, pp. 446-50]

About the Jews he wrote:

“The usurious Jews are waiting since long

To whose deceit the prowess of the tiger is no match

The West is bound to fall by itself like a ripe fruit

Let us see in whose lap the West falls”

About the Muslim conquest of Spain, Iqbal wrote in his poem A Ia mosquée de Cordoue:

“Oh! Holy Mosque of CórdobaOnly in a true Muslim’s heart”

Shrine for all lovers of art
Pearl of the one true faith
Sanctifying Andalusia’s soil

Like Holy Mecca itself
Such a glorious beauty
Will be found on earth

[The so-called Holy Mosque of Cordoba was created by demolishing a massive Christian Cathedral, when most parts of Spain was occupied in 711 by the Muslims of Morocco. Later in 1236, Córdoba was liberated by King Ferdinand III, who had turned it back into a Christian church.]

The common Muslim idea that ‘“ We came to Hindustan and we ruled’ is reflected in Iqbal’s poem ‘Sare Jahase Acha’, where he wrote:

“Our caravan landed on the banks of your Ganges”,

That indicates Muslim conquest of India. Iqbal’s Hindustan is the Mughal India as Dar-Ul-Islam, where Muslims were the rulers, and Hindus were subjugated.

Iqbal also wrote his Shikwah in sorrowful remembrance of the failure of the Muslim invasion in India, when he mourned that the invincible armada of the Muslims, that had swept over so many seas and rivers, met its watery grave in the Ganges. Iqbal wept over the defeat of Islam in India and elsewhere in the past, and looked forward to a re-conquest. He wrote:

“Qahar to yeh hai ke kafir ko mile Hur-o-qusur

Aur bichaare Muslmaan ko faqt vada i Hur . . .”

“The shameful thing is that Kafirs enjoy Houries in this life

But Poor Muslims have only a promise of Houries in after life”

His two poems Shikwa (complaint) and Jawab-I-Shikwah (Reply to the Complaint) are about the Muslim revivalists in India who were for the separation from India in both spirit and political rehabilitation to his proposed Pakistan. These poems are in the form of a complaint before Allah, about the adverse circumstances in which the Indian Muslims had fallen, and the sequel, given the remedies prescribed by God for Muslim upliftments.

Mysticism and Iqbal:

Iqbal in Pakistan is being propagated as a mystic poet. In India he is propagated as a Sufi. Both of these ideas are wrong. As Iqbal did his PhD in Persian Philosophy in the University of Munich, Iqbal’s so-called mysticism was heavily influenced by two German philosophers, Emile Durkheim and Friedrich Nietzsche, both of whom are considered to be the philosopher of the Nazism.

Nietzsche was in turn influenced by the Persian philosopher Zorathrustra. Nietzsche’s thought was that of a Superman or the Übermensch. In his book, ‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra’, Nietzsche wrote, “ “The Overman is the meaning of the earth. Man is a rope, tied between beast and Overman, he is a bridge and not an end.”

Iqbal has interpreted the basic element in Nietzsche’s idea , the “will to power” (der Wille zur Macht), as the basis for understanding human behavior. The natural condition of life and the struggle to survive are less important than the desire to expand one’s power. Iqbal has a critical view of mysticism. He believes that life is activity, and a person having communication with God cannot be a passive individual. A human being, coming in touch with the Supreme Being gets illuminated. He becomes a moving spirit in the society. It seems that such an individual is having a burning fire within him and he is part of God’s activity in this world.

Iqbal urges for the restoration of the Caliphate, and seeks that mobilization of the spirit which would make it:

“To once again establish,

The foundation Khilafah in the world,

You must bring from somewhere,

The mettle of your ancestors.”

“Out of the seclusion of the desert of Hejaz,

The Guide of the Time is to come.

And from this far, far away valley,

The Caravan is to make its appearance.”

[in Khidr-e-Waqt]

Iqbal has translated a number of poems of the Turkish poet Ziya Gokalp, pseudonym of Mehmed Ziya, who had promoted the Pan-Turkic Muslim Empire, from China to Europe, the dream of Iqbal. Ziya used the writings of Dukheim to repudiate secularism as a disuniting factor and proposed religion as a uniting force–all concepts found in Iqbal‘s Reconstruction of Islamic Thought (“Aik ho Muslim haram kee pasbani keh liyeh, Neel keh sahil seh ta ba khak e Kashghar”).

Iqbal claimed that his writings were influenced by ‘Surah e Nafas’ of the Koran, but in reality it reflects the views of Ziya who had translated the works of Émile Durkheim. Both Iqbal and Ziya concluded that Western ‘liberalism’, as a social system, was inferior to ‘solidarism’, because ‘liberalism’ encouraged ‘individualism’, which in turn diminished the integrity of the state. For Iqbal, religion is a mean to unify a population socially, and the life of the group was more important than the life of the individual.

Iqbal has rejected Sufism by saying in his book The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam that, “The rise and growth of ascetic Sufism… was developed under the influences of a non-Islamic character, a purely speculative side. The spirit of total other-worldliness in Sufism obscured men’s vision of a very important aspect of Islam as a social polity” (p21, p 221). Khalid Alavi has observed, “For Iqbal, Sufism is an activity and a “source of inspiration; but the unworthy occupants of spiritual seats have destroyed its image and spoiled its usefulness”. Iqbal accepted mystic experience or inner experience of the Sufis as a source of knowledge, but he has pointed out that The Koran declares that there are other two sources of knowledge, history and nature, which Sufism does not acknowledges. Thus, it is wrong to say that Iqbal was a Sufi poet, as Iqbal did not appreciated the Sufi idea of universal love and existence of ‘The God’ in every creature, which had their origins in Hindu Bhakti movement of Sri Chaitannya and Ramanuj with its ultimate expression in Rabindranath Tagore. For Iqbal, “Sufi orders ….caused disintegration of the social cohesiveness of the Muslim community”.

Conclusion:

Iqbal was against both democracy and secularism. The Muslim communalism in the British India had its origin in the fear of the Muslim of a democratic system with the majority rule, where Muslims would be a permanent minority, and in a romantic concept of the history of the Muslim conquests in Eurasia and North Africa, that had glorified anti-Hindu sentiments.

Iqbal has promoted that “Utopian intellectualization of the Muslims minority complex”, as Nadeem Paracha wrote in The Dawn on 24 Jan, 2010. To Iqbal, Indian nationalism that propagated a joint Hindu-Muslim struggle against the British, was contrary to the concept of a united Muslim Ummah, spanning from Morocco to Indonesia. After a meeting with Egyptian and Palestinian Arab leaders in 1946, Mohammad Ali Jinnah has repeated the idea of Iqbal, “If a Hindu empire is achieved, it will mean the end of Islam in India, and even in other Muslim countries.”

Iqbal feared the exploitation of the Muslims in a Hindu-dominated future India, and as a result, promoted separatism among the Muslims. He said, in his 1930 speech for the creation of Pakistan, that “The Muslim demand ……is actuated by a genuine desire for free development which is practically impossible under the type of unitary government contemplated by the nationalist Hindu politicians with a view to secure permanent communal dominance in the whole of India.”

To achieve that dream he was prepared to go at any length when he wrote, “khanjar hilal ka ho qaumi nishan hamara”. He also said in his speech in 1930 in Allahabad, “India is a continent of human groups belonging to different races, speaking different languages and professing different religions. …. To base a constitution on the conception of a homogeneous India …. is to prepare for a civil war”.

Islam, according to Iqbal, is a complete way of life. No other path is acceptable to God. So, in the absence of an Islamic polity, it is difficult for the Muslims to lead their lives entirely in accordance with the rules of Islam, which apply to social affairs as much as they do to personal affairs. Muslim’s duty must be to work to establish an Islamic dispensation in the lands where they live so that they can lead their lives fully in accordance with Islam and its laws.

Iqbal’s book in English, the Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, expressed fears that not only would secularism weaken the spiritual foundations of Islam and Muslim society, but that India’s Hindu-majority population would crowd out Muslim heritage, culture and political influence. He thus became the first politician to articulate the Two-Nation Theory — that Muslims form a distinct nation and thus deserve political independence from other communities of India. Thus, it is a great shame that Indians, without reading Iqbal’s writings, accepted the poem Hindustan Hamara, which is the National Song of Pakistan, as the most popular national song of India. It demonstrate that the campaign of the Aligarh school, to rewrite Indian history to glorify the Muslim invaders as social reformers, is highly successful due to the continuous support of a group of pro-Pakistani historians in India and their Western followers along with the assorted journalists in English language newspapers both in India and in the Anglo-American world. For them, both Mohammad Ali Jinnah and Mohammad Iqbal are the symbols of secularism and Hindi-Muslim unity, although they are the creator of Pakistan, due to which millions of people of all religions were butchered, and million more have lost all their livelihood.

KLNMurthy wrote:

Airavat wrote:^^^^^^

The true architect of the Partition plan was Viceroy Wavell, who had earlier been the C-in-C when the British were defeated by the Japanese in SE Asia. He wrote a letter to King George V soon after taking office:

"I can never entirely rid my mind of the recollections that in 1942 at almost the most critical period of the war in India, when I was endeavouring as C-in-C to secure India with very limited resources against Japanese invasion, the supporters of the Congress made a deliberate effort to paralyse my communications to the eastern front by widespread sabotage and looting (ie the Quit India movement)."

Wavell had been stunned to learn that Indian POWs, to the number of 10,000 (British estimate but the INA sources claimed 50,000 recruits), had joined SC Bose to form the Indian National Army.

...

Would it be fair to infer that, following Quit India and the formation of INA, the British decided that India will never be their proxy as a successor state to the empire, and therefore threw their lot in with Jinnah and the Pakistan movement?

http://pakteahouse.net/2011/03/16/nations-within-a-nation-the-search-for-a-pakistani-nation-2/comment-page-2/#comment-54364

Bin Ismail wrote:Thank you for raising those questions. Let’s examine the various aspects.

1. What was the demand for Pakistan? The demand for Pakistan was the demand for a “Secular State” comprising of the Muslim-majority states of British India.

Bin Ismail wrote:2. Was he sure he would achieve Pakistan as had envisioned. He was more than sure. Uncertainty was never really his problem. His problem – rather our problem was that he could not live long enough.

Bin Ismail wrote:3. Jinnah’s speech of 11th August 1947 was very much his Magna Carta, and might I add, a brilliant one. It is a uniquely elegant blend of pragmatism and foresight – by no means a “little speech”.

RajeshA wrote:

Bin Ismail wrote:3. Jinnah’s speech of 11th August 1947 was very much his Magna Carta, and might I add, a brilliant one. It is a uniquely elegant blend of pragmatism and foresight – by no means a “little speech”.

Jinnah's speech of 11th August 1947 is a drop of ink in the ocean of blood that forms his legacy - Pakistan - the laboratory of Islam!

RajeshA wrote:An exchange at chaighar between me and a Paki on Jinnah and secularism.

Code: Select all

http://pakteahouse.net/2011/03/16/nations-within-a-nation-the-search-for-a-pakistani-nation-2/comment-page-2/#comment-54364

"Secularism" in Pakistan is merely a slogan by the Pakistani Elite to preserve their lifestyle of debauchery and superficial practice of Islam! It is to provide a shield to keep the dirt of Islam to touch their white linen! But the Muslim Elite cannot keep Islam at arms length forever! The Muslim Elite could delay the handover of power to the masses by use of the Ghazis (The Pakistani Army) amongst their ranks, who were still held in fascination by the Muslim masses!

However now even that firewall has started to crumble! The Ghazis are truly becoming Islamic!

So Jinnah's children - the Muslim Elite - are losing out to Maududi's children - the Muslim Masses!

This is a class war alright!

......Sheikh Husam-ud-Din, another equally important leader, wavered for some time and eventually decided to come over to Pakistan to take charge of a hotel, known as the Vira Hotel, in Lahore, which a Congressman Parbodh Chander by name had handed over to him.

Ahrars Support Pakistan

Moulana Mazhar Ali Azhar, M.L.A., the leader of the All-India Ahrar Conference in the course of a statement in support of Rajaji's stand, in the "Zamzam" dated May 11 observes:-

"The simple question is: Should Indians establish Pakistan and get India liberated from the British bondage or should the Indian nationalists adopt the postion that unless the Muslims gave up the demand of Pakistan, India should be left in bondage of slavery.

"We, Ahrars, have taken the position for a long time that we should not oppose Pakistan. We cannot tolerate a fratricidal war among the Muslims on the issue of Paksitan. If Pakistan is established there will be no harm to Muslims. The duty of the nationalists at this crisis is that they should not prefer the slavery of India to Pakistan. They should, by support Mr. Rajagopalachariar, help in clearing the political horizion of India of all clouds of communal animosities. So what we may be able to present a united front in face of every foreign powers."

RajeshA wrote:may I use your points elsewhere, places where people worship Jinnah as a secular god?

" I have just sent you a telegram, which will show, you, how we have been to a complete break up between Hindus and Muslims, i have been giving greatest attention to this possibility, and i have the greatest assistance from, Mr.shafi, on my council, who is a highly respectable Mohammedan"

Thus in late January 1947 when the Muslim League launched its direct action campaign in the Punjab against the government of Khizr Tiwana, the Punjab governor, Sir Evan Jenkins, met the visiting all-India Muslim League leader Khawaja Nazimuddin on 18 February and later wrote in his fortnightly report to the viceroy:
In our first meeting Khawaja Nazim-ud-Din admitted candidly that he did not know what Pakistan means, and that nobody in the ML knew, so it was difficult for the League to carry on long term negotiations with the minorities. (March 1947: L/P & J/5/250, p. 3/79).

I think an additional reason why the Muslim League could not have allowed such ideas to be associated with its ideology and objective, at least at the highest formal level, was that they would have undermined its position as the moderate voice of Muslims vis-à-vis the Indian National Congress and the British government. The great skill of Jinnah was that until the last moment he did not explain what his idea of Pakistan was.

The Pir of Manki Sharif…founded an organisation of his own, the Anjuman-us-asfia. The organisation promised to support the Muslim League on condition that Shariat would be enforced in Pakistan. To this Jinnah agreed. As a result the Pir of Manki Sharif declared jehad to achieve Pakistan and ordered the members of his anjuman to support the League in the 1946 elections (p. 166).

Atri wrote:There is one story narrated by lapierre in his book freedom at midnight.. The last sentence of Jinnah before he died according to the testimony of his personal physician was "Oh, what have I done!!"...

" I have endeavored to encourage Mahasabha etc, by reverting to the topic of unity of India, sufficiently guarded so far as the Muslims are concerned to avoid giving Jinnah, a legitimate grievance. But i have also thought it well for the point is a most important one, and the center of our position to bring out that the difficulties of this country are not due to our reluctance to transfer of power, but to the fact that we have offered to transfer power"