Ideology of Pakistan Syed Osman Sher, Mississauga, Canada

As Mr. Pervaiiz Alvi’s letter on Pakistan relates to a subject very dear and sensitive to us,  i.e. the ideology and history of our country, I feel it my duty to make some comments and correct his statement by quoting the true facts.

When Mr. Alvi says that “Pakistan was not created to accommodate the 130 million Muslims of India”, I am inclined to agree with him, although with great sadness. I must add that this fact makes the demand for Pakistan and its creation all the more a very queer phenomenon. History has shown that the breakup of a country is an extreme measure and the people who wanted it, and those who did not, both had to plunge into bloodbaths before achieving their respective objectives. In this case, all the concerned parties agreed to the division of the country without going through the necessary trauma.  It also appears to be a strange sort of demand, unique in the annals of political struggle: it was a demand not solely by the inhabitants of a specific area to grant them a separate homeland, rather more by a very sizeable portion, more than one third of the Muslim population of India, who never intended to live in the new country. Further, a demand for separation  is  made when the minority community is oppressed by the majority. In this case, the majority had not yet been in power and they never had the occasion to brutalize the minority.

I, however, beg to differ with Mr. Alvi’s second point that “The ideology of Pakistan is based on the historic March 23, 1940 Resolution passed in Lahore which clearly spelled out that the inhabitants of the Punjab, Frontier, Kashmir, Balochistan and Sindh have a common Islamic heritage, culture, history and geography distinct from the other nations of the world and therefore they had a right to have a sovereign nation state of their own where they could live according to their own wishes”. Firstly, it is sad to note that Mr. Alvi has denied East Bengal a place in the future Pakistan. Instead, he has declared in a tone and vein as if Pakistan is a  property created for  the people of the present area.  From the speech of the Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, speaking from the platform of the All-India Muslim League on March 22, 1940, a day before the Pakistan Resolution was passed, it becomes clear that while striving for Pakistan he was speaking about the identity of religion, culture, social philosophy  and historical heritage of the Muslims of the whole India as different from those of the Hindus. Further, the Pakistan Resolution does not specify the provinces of Pakistan, rather it mentions about the north-western and eastern zones of India where Muslims were in the majority.  The speech and the Resolution are reproduced below.

Excerpts from Mr. Jinnah’s speech of March 22, 1940: “It is extremely difficult to appreciate why our Hindu friends fail to understand the real nature of Islam and Hinduism. They are not religions in the strict sense of the word, but are, in fact, different and distinct social orders, and it is a dream that the Hindus and Muslims can ever evolve a common nationality, and this misconception of one Indian nation has gone far beyond the limits and is the cause of most of your troubles and will lead India to destruction if we fail to revise our notions in time. The Hindus and Muslims belong to two different religious philosophies, social customs, literatures. They neither inter-marry nor inter-dine together and, indeed, they belong to two different civilizations which are based mainly on conflicting  ideas and conceptions. Their concepts on life and of life are different. It is quite clear that Hindus and Mussulmans derive their inspiration from different sources of history. They have different epics, different heroes, and different episodes. Very often the hero of one is a foe of the other and, likewise, their victories and defeats overlap. To yoke together two such nations under a single state, one as a numerical minority and the other as a majority, must lead to growing discontent and final destruction of any fabric that may be so built up for the government of such a state”.

Lahore Resolution of March 23, 1940: “Resolved that it is the considered view of this session of the All-India Muslim League that no constitutional scheme would be workable  in this country or acceptable to Muslims  unless it is designed on the following principle, viz., that geographically contiguous units are demarcated into regions which should be constituted with such territorial readjustments as may be necessary,  that the areas in which the Muslims are numerically in majority, as in the north-western and eastern zones of India, should be grouped  to constitute independent States in which the constituent unit shall be autonomous  and sovereign”.