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August 15, 2003
Reflections on Pakistan’s Independence Day
Pakistanis at home and abroad will be celebrating on August 14, 2003, their 56th Independence Day. Considering some recent irresponsible and myopic statements of some of their leaders as to future of the state vis-à-vis its neighbor, it would be advisable to recall the factors that led to the creation of this state so that the issue remains in its proper perspective.
Pakistan came into being because the Muslims considered themselves as a separate entity from the majority Hindu community - their well-known two-nation theory. Several movements were launched to promote a rapprochement between the two communities. Most forceful of these was the one started by Bhagat Kabir of the fifteenth century that posited that spiritual attainment was more important than the rituals of Islam or Hinduism. While it enraged the Hindu priests, the Muslims viewed it as subversive. So, it did not make much of a dent.
The Brahmanic caste system did not admit of the acceptance of Muslims in a class other than the lowest, the menial, and the untouchable -the ‘maleech’. Naturally this status was not acceptable to the Muslims who had ruled over India for centuries. Not surprisingly enough, when a Hindu converted to Islam, it meant his complete break from the past. He acqquired a new name, a new personality, radiating confidence, grit and courage, and membership into a community adhering to the concept of brotherhood and equality of man. This set free the convert’s spirit from the bondage of the caste system to labor and live well as an equal. This concept of the equality of man was the chief attraction in a society given to discrimination by birth.
Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism were all for the concept of equality and therefore opposed to the Brahmanic domination. But the shrewd Brahmanic elite
maneuvered to absorb all of them into the Hindu fold. They failed to do that with the Muslims.
Let us now look at the problem from Hindu viewpoint.
Waves after waves of Muslim armies invaded India and invariably defeated and subjugated the opposing Hindu forces. Mahmood Ghaznavi invaded India seventeen times. Qutbuddin Aibak established the first proper Muslim empire, the Slave Dynasty, towards the end of the twelfth century. This was perhaps the most outstanding incident in the annals of world history where meritocracy was taken to the highest extreme -one slave king handing over power to another slave, no relation at all. The Slave Dynasty was followed by another hundred-year rule of Khilji dynasty. Then came the Lodhis who were replaced in 1526 by Babur, a Mogul from Farghana in central Asia, who founded the Mogul empire which lasted 331 years till the British took over the state in 1857.
Throughout these seven centuries of continuous Muslim rule over India, the Muslims comprised between 15 to 20 per cent of the total population. Although the Moguls adopted many Hindu customs, married into Hindu families and accommodated them in senior echelons of administration, there never was a true assimilation of the two communities and the development of a composite culture. The Muslims continued to be the ruling, warrior class with a compatible, congruent status in Indian society.
The Hindus, smarting under the dominant position of the Muslims, always looked for a leveler, an equalizer. They saw the opportunity approaching them as the combined struggle of both communities for independence from British rule gathered momentum. Muslim intellectuals had started suspecting the designs of the Hindu (Brahman) leaders as far back as the eighteenth century.
The idea of the two-nation theory had thus been germinating for a century or more before it was articulated by Sir Syed and his team and formally presented by Iqbal at the Allahabad session of the Muslim League in 1930.
The seeds of Hindu-Muslim discord were sown much earlier during the partition of Bengal in 1909 that effectively divided that area into two parts -one dominated by Muslims and the other by the Hindus. Hindu community’s opposition to the grant of separate representation to the Muslims strengthened their apprehensions towards the hidden Hindu agenda.
The grant of provincial autonomy and the induction of elected Congress ministries in 1937 and their clear communal bias alerted further the Muslim community. The Hindu leaders kept denying that there was any Muslim problem as they steadfastly maintained that India had but one community. The disillusionment among even the nationalist Muslims over the arrogance of the Congress leadership and the unsympathetic treatment meted out to the Muslim by Congress-led provincial governments solidified the idea of a separate homeland in the minds of the Muslims of the subcontinent.
As Victor Hugo says, there are no armies as powerful as an idea whose time has come. Pakistan resolution of March 23, 1940 was the formal manifestation of that idea. It received an impetus from Hindu opposition to it. Nationalism thrives on opposition. The stronger the opposition to it, the more coherent it grew.
Theoretically though the idea had a serious flaw. It did not cover the entire Muslim community of India. It was understood that the presence of a large Hindu minority in Pakistan would assure the protection of the Muslim minority in Hindu India. Subsequent developments have proved this wrong.
The idea had, anyway, taken firm roots. Quaid-Azam led eminently the nation in pursuit of that idea. As Stanley Wolpert, professor of history at UCLA describes it succinctly in his biography of the Quaid: “Few individuals significantly alter the course of history. Fewer still modify the map of the world. Hardly any one can be credited with creating a nation-state. Mohammad Ali Jinnah did all three.”
Even his opponents acknowledge his eminent role in the realization of the idea. But, this does not mean that Pakistan would not have come into existence had the Quaid not been there. Some one else would have emerged to lead the people in the pursuit of that idea whose time had come.
When Mahatama Gandhi, representing the Hindu community, agreed to the division of India and the creation of Pakistan, he called his acceptance “a Himalayan blunder”. A fanatic Hindu, Godse, shot him dead for that “blunder”.
It was no blunder; it was an acceptance of an unavoidable reality. Mr. Gandhi’s statement was merely to assuage the feelings of nationalist Hindus.
Let me add here that Mr. Gandhi was a great thinker, a far-sighted intellectual, with the uncanny quality of practicing what he preached for the uplift of the menial class -the Harijans (Children of God). He had no compunction in doing the work of Harijans including the cleaning of lavatories. He was by any standard a great benefactor of the downtrodden. He turned the Hindu trait of non-violence into a point of strength that played a significant role in the struggle for independence.
Unfortunately, under the current Hindu nationalist leadership, the basically non-violent community has elected to pick up arms to settle the scores pending for centuries. The demolition of the Babri mosque has symbolized to the Hindu community a reversal of the process of Muslim conquests. The TV coverage of the episode showed the excitement and passion with which the fanatics attacked the mosque and demolished it in no time. The same psyche was in operation when the Pakistani prisoners of 1971 war were taken by train to various parts of India to flaunt the victory over a Muslim army.
From the perspective of a student of history of the subcontinent, Pakistan was inevitable, so was the split and creation of an independent Bangladesh.
Pakistan is not a failed state, as the Indian leadership would like the world to believe. Many of its self-serving, greedy leaders both civilian and military have badly let down the people. How should one view the statements of the leaders of certain political parties following their tete-a-tete with Indian leaders?
The people of Pakistan are made of excellent material. The system that is keeping them under the heel need must change. Give them freedom and education and see how they shine.
May this Independence Day mark the beginning of the process of their independence from the oppressive heel of the jack-boot of the ruling elite.
Naheim mayoos Iqbal apni kisht-iI-veran say
Zara hum ho to yeh matti bari zarkhez hai saqi - Iqbal
( Arifhussain@hotmail.com)
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