The Quixotic dreamer

Khalid Hasan

In Pakistan, few people seem to be interested in facts. Most of us have our version of events which reflects opinion rather than reality. Some of the confusion that prevails in our country is a by-product of this convoluted thinking. There is also much myth-making and what is astonishing is that there should be myths even about events that are part of living memory. This is one reason there is no agreed version of either history or politics. To this day, over six decades after the passage of the Pakistan Resolution in Lahore, there is still a debate going on as to why Pakistan was demanded and what brought it into being. Since most of us already believe that our version of history is correct and all other versions are not only wrong but possibly unpatriotic, if not downright treacherous, it is only natural that almost all discussions involving history and politics should become shouting and slanging matches.

I have written this long preamble to distinguish between Chaudhry Rehmat Ali as he was and as some imagine him to have been. Recently Ihsan Aslam, who lives in Cambridge and in his own words is “interested in biography and history” (he also writes periodically for Daily Times), wrote: “With the passage of … time, it seems that the contributions of the likes of Rehmat Ali have been obliterated from Pakistan’s history. Pakistan chooses to forget its national heroes, or turns heroes into zeroes, but Cambridge remembers.” A meeting held there recently to pay homage to the man who is said to have coined the name Pakistan also credited Rehmat Ali with having championed the Kashmir cause after independence (though of that there is no record). Aslam Khattak, Rehmat Ali’s contemporary at Cambridge, has repeatedly rejected Rehmat Ali as the man who invented the name Pakistan, insisting that it was he and not him who thought it up.

My theory that what appears in newspapers has little lasting effect is once again proved considering that what I am about to write, I have written on at least two occasions in the past. It is obvious that those who are celebrating Chaudhry Rehmat Ali as a great and unsung hero whom the country he helped create has failed to honour, do not allow facts to stand in the way of their imagination. So let me make another attempt at setting straight the record. In 1933, Rehmat Ali wrote a pamphlet

called Now or Never; it bore three signatures, one of the signatories being Aslam Khattak. He criticised Iqbal for proposing an Indian federation in which the Muslims would be a minority. He castigated other Muslim leaders whom he called camp followers of British imperialism and blind imitators of Congress who had placed the Muslims at the mercy of British imperialism and caste Hindu nationalism. Since all Muslim leaders had failed, he wrote, “Allah has assigned that fateful task to me, that He commanded me to do it; that He wanted me to challenge the might, to oppose the Indian federation, to propose the Islamic federation.” He called his mission divinely inspired.

Rehmat Ali’s concept of Pakistan was nebulous, impractical and fantasy-ridden. It was to include the entire northwest of India, Kashmir, the Kathiawar peninsula, Kutch, several enclaves deep within UP, including Delhi and Lucknow. There were to be two independent Muslim states besides Pakistan: Bangistan comprising Bengal and Assam in the east and Osmanistan in the south. These two were to form a federation with Pakistan. The 243 principalities or Rajwaras were to be divided among caste Hindus and “others” and then herded together in a ghetto called Hanoodia. As for the Sikhs, they were to be pushed into an enclave called Sikhia. Other races and religions were to inhabit an encampment by the name of Hanadika. Every non-Muslim was to remain subservient to the master race he called “The Paks”. And yes, the subcontinent was to be renamed Dinia. He did not say how he was going to bring all that about.

Exactly six days after the Muslim League’s acceptance of the June 3 Plan in 1947, Rehmat Ali denounced the Quaid-e-Azam in venomous language. Ten weeks later, he published a pamphlet called The Greatest Betrayal condemning the Quaid and the League for having written “the most shameful and treacherous chapter” in Muslim history. He said Mr Jinnah was responsible for betraying the Millat and for having committed “the blackest treachery” by re-enacting the fall of Islam in Spain 455 years earlier. He wrote, “Mr Jinnah has acted the Judas and betrayed, bartered and dismembered the Millat, animated by ambition for recognition as the Quisling-i-Azam of Pakistan and Bangistan.” He said the Quaid was a “far worse traitor than Miss Janki in 712, Mir Jaffer in 1757 and the Muslim aristocracy in 1857.” He said Mr Jinnah had shattered the foundations of Muslim nationhood and sabotaged the future of 100 million Muslims living in the “continent of Dinia and its dependencies”. He called on all Muslims to rise against Jinnah and “repudiate and nullify his treacherous plan”.

Rehmat Ali said Mr Jinnah had dealt six “deadly blows” to the Muslims. He had destroyed Muslim unity, and paralysed and battered Bengal and Assam, turning them into dominions bearing allegiance to “the King of Britain”. Mr Jinnah had abandoned the Muslim seats of learning, Muslim forts and citadels and Delhi, Agra and Lucknow. He had left the Hindus free to plan the “division, degradation and exploitation of the Millat”. Mr Jinnah had surrendered Muslim shrines and mosques to the Hindus and turned Muslim victories of the past into defeats. He said the Quaid

had perverted the verdict of history and was making “desperate attempts to whitewash the betrayal”. According to him, Mr Jinnah “is asking the Muslims to treat Marg-i-Millat as Jashn-i-Jinnah,” adding, “Little does he realise he is adding the smear of shame to the sorrow of disaster suffered by Islam.” He wrote that Mr Jinnah had not accepted Pakistan but “PASTAN, the shadow of Pakistan”. He denounced the founder of Pakistan for having “done British and Bania bidding” and “playacting” throughout to divide the Millat.

Rehmat Ali called the creation of Pakistan “the blackest and bloodiest treachery in our history”. He denounced Pakistan as a “slave state” which owed allegiance to a foreign master, as did Mr Jinnah, whom he called “a loyal, glorified servant of the King of Britain who is witless, powerless and weaponless”.

Dr Ashiq Hussain Batalvi used to tell me in London in the late 1970s that in Pakistan Rehmat Ali used to spend most of his time abusing the Quaid and calling him names that even his worst non-Muslim detractors had never called him. The Quaid ignored both the abuse, of which he was aware, and the man who was heaping it on him. It is ironic that Chaudhry Rehmat Ali chose to return to the land of the very imperialists whom he had denounced. He died in anonymity, a bitter and unhappy man. It is best that his bones rest where they lie and those who are trying to resurrect him as a hero, at least read what he wrote.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 2nd, 2004 at 12:17 pm .

AS Bokhari’s sparkling genius, 50 years later

Khalid Hasan

he other day, our man at the United Nations in a mystifying letter to the UN secretary-general warned him that if the hordes running around Khyber were not stopped, they would march down to Panipat. I wondered then if we were

the same country once represented at the world body by Prof. AS Bokhari. It brought me close to tears.

I felt moved because it is 50 years since Bokhari passed away in New York, which is where he lies, gone but not forgotten. Earlier this year, his grandson Ayaz Bokhari pointed out that it was always Bokhari’s Patras ke Muzameenthat got quoted, but hardly ever his scintillating addresses at the United Nations and elsewhere in America. That indeed is true, and I am going to make up for it, but not without first reproducing a passage from his classic Lahore ka Jugrafia. “All kinds of stories are told about Lahore’s climate. They are wrong for the most part. The fact is that recently the residents of Lahore expressed the desire that, like other cities, they too should be given a climate. After a good deal of debate, the municipality came to the conclusion that in this day and age when self-rule was being conferred on many countries and there was a general awakening among the people, the demand made by the residents of Lahore was not unreasonable and should, therefore, be given sympathetic consideration. Unfortunately, the municipality is short of climate and, consequently, it has had to ask the residents of the city not to make too wasteful a use of the air they breathe. They have been advised to practise the utmost frugality when it comes to the use of air. Day-to-day needs, therefore, are now met by breathing in not air but dust, and in some cases, smoke. The municipality has dotted the city with hundreds of dust and smoke-producing facilities at no-cost in the hope that this will produce the desired results.”

What Bokhari would have made of today’s Lahore, one dare not even speculate. Abe Rosenthal, who became editor of the New York Times, was its UN correspondent in March 1953 when Bokhari became, for that month, president of the Security Council. He called Bokhari a “diplomat’s diplomat” and “one of the ablest representatives of the Asian-Arab bloc to turn up in the United Nations’ seven years.” Once the British ambassador compared himself to a tortoise and Bokhari to a hare, adding sardonically that the British Commonwealth was large enough for all kinds of political animals. Bokhari answered, “That is probably true. But if in the British Commonwealth there are any ostriches they are not found in my country.” There was no disagreement that Bokhari was the best speaker the UN had ever heard and its greatest wit.

Speaking in May 1955 at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Bokhari said therewas a vast amount of mutual ignorance between the part of the world he came from and the part where he had lived for the last five years. “It was not so long ago when it became a habit with me in lecturing on Asian problems to remind the audience that more than half the people of the world lived in that continent. I invariably received the somewhat disturbing reassurance the next day, from some telephone callers at least, that I was right because they had ‘looked it up.’ That was the first puzzling sign of the maladjustment in understanding that came my way.” His advice to the Americans given 53 years ago remains valid today. Bokhari said, “It will be a new experience for other countries but also for America itself, to submit itself and its art

both in humility and in pride to the gaze of the world, and to open their hearts to the artists and the critics of other lands, which after all is the most creative and the most affectionate way in which human beings can seek to reach each other’s minds. And thus there is a great deal in this country which could carry inspiration abroad, and I think you have the resources and the will to provide the same facilities for people from abroad for the same kind of understanding.”

Gertrude Samuels of the New York Times once called Bokhari UN’s “cosmopolitan crusader.” Dag Hammerskjold, who picked Bokhari as head of UN information, regarded him as a genuine man of the world. Of Bokhari’s appointment, the correspondent wrote that the secretary general has “chosen an Asian who has dedicated his life to a better understanding between the Orient and the Occident, and who, perhaps more than anyone else at the UN, is a synthesis of the cultures of both worlds.” She recalled Bokhari’s words during the sharp debate on Tunisia and the colonial question when he told the Security Council that, by its refusal to discuss the issue, it was inviting the people of Asia to “go to hell.” He told Samuels, “The UN cannot be sold in the way that a commodity is sold. Internationalism is a tiny baby with, so to speak, 60 nationalistic nurses. The surprising thing is not that the darn thing is weak but that it is living at all.”

In 1957, a year before his sudden death, he addressed the US National Commission for UNESCO. While acknowledging that Asians had been mentioned in flattering terms earlier that morning, he said, “It is, however, not as an Asian that I should like to share my thoughts with you this morning. It is true that I cannot, even if I wished, which I do not - I cannot shut my eyes entirely to the light that I received from the skies, the rather distant skies, under which I was born. Much less, however, can I deny the many benedictions that have fallen upon me from other skies during the rest of my life when I strove and struggled for maturity. Besides, it would, I think, be perfectly in tune with the purpose of this conference as indeed with my own disposition, if I did not dwell too much on rooting myself in any particular land.” He continued, “Ours is the age of questioning. There are more questions to ask and more people asking them than in any previous age. If people do not get the right answers, they will work with the wrong ones and breed ignorance, bewilderment and unhappiness on a scale hitherto unknown to men.”

What Bokhari said next should become our guiding light today so that we do not lay to waste this beautiful world through hate, violence and religious bigotry. Bokhari said man lives in a colourful vibrant world which is “new and we have to understand it, for as we roam through it, questions raise their head at every turn. We see strange faces, strange ways, strange art, strange aspirations. We hear strange voices. We must give all this some meaning. That is our problem today: how to give meaning to God’s plenty which has increased so rapidly. We cannot continue to grope about in darkness. But our world is crowded and unless we open the windows of the mind we shall be suffocated and live blindly in a mental and spiritual night of our own making.”

Manto, on murder

Khalid Hasan

 

 

Khalid Hasan privateview

 

     have come upon a rare and forgotten piece of

writing by Saadat Hasan Manto, sent to me by a friend some time ago. Written within days of the

assassination in Rawalpindi of Pakistan’s first prime minister and the Quaid-I-Azam’s right-hand man and confidant, the piece titled “Murder, Murderer and the Murdered One – In one frame” was published in Afaq , Lahore on October 23 1951, exactly one week after the October 16 murder of Liaquat in the same cursed area where, 56 years later, Benazir Bhutto was to be done to death.

This is vintage Manto. I have translated excerpts from this dramatic re-creation of a crime that plunged the young and struggling state of Pakistan in gloom. Here is the maestro himself:

Man: Enemy of man. Party: Enemy of Party. Government: In conflict with government. This is the story of the 20th century, as it was the story of the 1st century. Like other goods and commodities on sale, human flesh has also always been on sale. Gallows used to be erected to hang people by the neck then, as they are now. Human blood was shed in the past, as it is shed today. Murder, oppression, savagery and violence were present in the past as they are present today. So many prophets, savants, mystics and men of God came and went but they all failed to reform human

beings. They pointed out what was wrong and criminal but they were unable to eliminate the instincts that make men commit crimes. But mankind is so shamefaced that it has refused to abandon hope. As thousands of years earlier, man also continues to feel moved by the finer feelings of love and desire and longing. And this is what constitutes the greatest of man’s tragedy and triumph. But if in between tragedy and triumph something crude happens, it is irritating. In this drama, there is no drop scene. If one slips and falls, one gets hurt.

On the evening of October 16 when I learnt of the murder of Liaquat Ali Khan, I was shaken. Everyone knows that life has to one day end. Being brought down by a bullet could not have come as much of a surprise for Liaquat Ali Khan but what bothered me was the manner in which this tragic drama ended. The first news flashes said: The killer fired two shots from pointblank range. After he fired, the policemen standing next to him began to fire in the air, causing great panic in the crowd present there, which seemed unaware of what had happened. But crowd control was soon established and the deputy commissioner of Rawalpindi imposed Section 144 in both the city and the cantonment. Liaquat Ali Khan was rushed to the hospital where he was given a blood transfusion. He had fainted after being shot. These were all first reports.

People drew different conclusions from these reports but I could not understand why the police had fired in the air. Although it is said of Punjab Police that when occasion demands, it bans even the wind from blowing, but when the murderer was out there, visible to all and easy to arrest, why did the police fire in the air to disperse a crowd estimated at between 15,000 and 20,000? The policemen who stood close to the killer kept firing in the air but failed to save the killer. Because of the confusion caused by the incident, with the crowd running pell-mell, it became difficult to remove Liaquat to the hospital for urgent medical care. By the time he arrived at the hospital, he had lost so much blood that a transfusion became necessary.

One eyewitness to the murder, a Mr Irfani, in a long article published in Afaq on October 20 reports that the attacker was sitting to his left at an angle no more than six yards away. With the police firing in the air, it was all so sudden

and unexpected that no one could think straight. The man who rushed towards Liaquat Ali Khan when he fell was the Rawalpindi deputy commissioner Hardy. Was it not Hardy’s duty to grab the killer first, who was just six yards from him? There were others on duty who could have attended to the prime minister. Who authorised the police to fire in the air?

We also know that that the Frontier government had conveyed to the Punjab government that it considered Said Akbar, the killer, a suspicious character. What thickens the plot is that Rs 2,040 were found on his person and 10,000 from where he was staying. One can assume that he was a hired gun. I do not wish to analyse the psychology of the murderer or the act of murder, but why was he carrying so much money when he knew that there would be little chance of his getting out alive? Two more questions spring from this one then. Maybe the killer was hopeful of getting away. If that was so, there must have been others around who he believed would save him. If this is accepted, then the murder assumes an entirely different dimension. There were several men around the killer who shot him dead after he had done the deed. But then one has to ask oneself why those who planned the murder took so many in confidence. Was it not unwise? And then there is the disappearance from Peshawar of the Afghan consul-general, a member of the ruling royal family, five hours before the murder. Is there a link of some sort there?

Since the Frontier government had shared its suspicions about the murderer a day before with the Punjab government, what did the latter do? The Punjab police, known for arresting even flies and mosquitoes at the slightest pretext, failed to act after receiving this important report. Why was an eye not kept on the movements of Said Akbar? The police are also looking for the 10-year-old boy who was with the murderer. Before leaving Hazara, Said Akbar had left a note with the police saying he was going to Pindi and he would be staying at the Grand Hotel. He had also asked that he not be tailed as had happened when he went to Murree. It is all very strange. Said Akbar arrives in Rawalpindi on October 13 and does not leave his hotel until October 16. He remains a mystery and everything he does is most unusual. Three people visit him every day, who, he says, are from the CID. In the hotel register, Said Akbar

describes himself as “CID pensioner.” It is just not possible to understand why, given all this, he was not kept under surveillance. The killer was killed. But where is the revolver with which he shot Liaquat Ali Khan? On October 19, Punjab chief minister Mian Mumtaz Daultana said in a speech, “I am ashamed that this vile act took place in my province but I assure you that your government and police were not lax in making security arrangements.” May God will that it be so!

Said Akbar murdered our beloved prime minister and leader and he deserved to die for it, but he should have been saved from the lynch mob. No matter what we say, and even if we come up with a million reasons, the fact is that on October 16 two human beings were murdered. One was Khan Liaquat Ali Khan, prime minister of Pakistan, and the other, a resident of Hazara by the name of Said Akbar.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 7th, 2008 at 12:24 pm .

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