Stanley Wolpert paid tributes to the Quaid in following words, ‘Few individual significantly alter the course of history. Few still modify the map of the world. Hardly anyone could be credited with creating a nation State. Muhammad All Jinnah did all three’.
True, the Pakistan resolution was not over-night exploit of a single figure. It was culmination of the series of event; and movements that converged into the idea of Pakistan: Muhammad bin Qasim established the first Muslim state in the Sub-Continent in 712-715 AD. Shahab-ud-Din Ghouri wrote to Prithvi Raj in 1192 AD that the latter should cede the MusIim-majority areas of the Punjab, NWFP and Sindh to him or be prepared for a war at Tarain battlefield (page 101, tareekh-e-farishta). After Qasim, Qutub-ud-Din Aibak and the Moghul established their rule in India. There were 76 Muslim rulers who ruled over India for about 690 years. Since early 1870s, there were several movements, which asserted ‘Muslim nationhood’. They covered a broad spectrum of Muslim religious, educational, cultural and political life Aligarh Movement (1870s), the Mohammedan Educational Conference, the Urdu Defence Association (1900), the demand for separate electorates, the foundation of the Muslim League, the Muslim university movement (1910), the pan-Islamic movements beginning with Italy’s raid on Tripoli (1911) and ending with the Khilafat movement (1918-24), and the Kanpur Mosque agitation (1913). From Sir Syed Ahmed Khan to the Quaid-i-Azam, all the Muslim leaders kept striving for Hindu-Muslim amity. The Quaid began his political career by attending Congress meeting, for the first time on July 28, 1904, Thereafter he struggled for about three decades for the rights of Muslim whom he regarded as a ‘minority’, rather than a nation.
On October 27, 1945, the Quaid said at Ahmedabad, ‘Pakistan is the question of life and death for us. I shall live and die for Pakistan.’ ‘The moon of Pakistan is shining and we shall reach it’ (Dawn, October 28, 1945). ‘We must get Pakistan at any cost. For it we live and for it we will die. (November 24, 1945, Mardan). ‘Without Pakistan, there is only death for Muslims.’ (February 24, 1946, Calcutta).
Did the Quaid have any concept of Pakistan? What was his vision? The architect of Pakistan had a dream; he visualized a welfare state. He had conceived Pakistan based on foundations of social justice and Islamic socialism which stress equality and brotherhood of man. Like Allama Iqbal, he was concerned with the problem of poverty and backwardness among Muslims for the eradication of which they looked, on the one hand, to the urges of dynamism, struggle and creativity in Islam and, on the other, to the Islamic principle of distributive justice.
Mr. Jinnah’s speech at the 30th session of the Muslim League during the freedom struggle reflected his vision. “It will be a people’s government. I should like to give a warning to the landlords and capitalists who have flourished at our expense by a system which is so vicious, which is so wicked and which makes them so selfish that it is difficult to reason with them. The exploitation of the masses has gone into their blood. They’ve forgotten the lesson of Islam. Greed and selfishness have made these people subordinate to the interests of others in order to fatten themselves ‘If they’re wise they’ll have to adjust themselves to the new modern conditions of life. If they don’t, God help them; we shall not help them.’
The Quaid’s vision has been translated into reality?
SAMAN JAAVED MALIK,
Rawalpindi, June 18.