WHAT WENT WRONG WITH PAKISTAN??

 RASUL BUX PALIJO

  One of the intriguing "ifs" of Pakistan history is "What would have happened I if the founder of Pakistan had not been terminally ill at the day of Pakistan and had not died within a year and a month of its establishment?" Intellectual Strait-jacket:- To those whom adequate study of the abundant fresh material on the evolution of socio-political thought and action in India in this century, which has become available in recent years, (for instance see "Legend and Reality" by H.M. Seervi" The high politics of India's partition" by Asim Roy in "India's Partition" edited by Mushirul Hassan, " A History of Freedom Struggle" by E.M.S. Namboodripad, "The sole Spokesman, Jinnah...." by Anita Indersingh, Indian's struggled for Independence" by Bipan Chandra etc.) has liberated from the mental and intellectual strait-jacket of the one-sided and simplistic congress-league- CPP propaganda, whatever the short-comings and sins of omission and commissions of Mohd. Ali Jinnah after and before Partition, including those in such matters relating to the Provinces of Pakistan as endorsement of Liaquat Ali Khan coterie's usurpation of Sindh's socio-political, cultural-economic heart, the City of Karachi and the fatal refusal to accept in time Bengali as one of the State languages of Pakistan etc, one thing is absolutely clear about him. He was neither the reactionary religious fanatic of the congress propaganda version nor the modern version of Mohmood Ghaznavi and Ghazi Salahuddin that Muslim League propaganda painted him to be.

The other day, on the 8th June 1995, to be exact, I was sitting with Professor Muzaffar Ahmed, President of Bangladesh NAP_ in his No. 50 Kakrail, Dacca house in Bangladesh. As usual on much occasions, he was questioning me in detail regarding my views about various political questions connected with the sub-continent. This time the subject was the genesis of the current situation of India-Pakistan and Bangladesh.

A man enters the house while we were conversing and spoke to the Professor in English. I noted that his English accent was unlike that common and told him so, later on, when he spoke to me. It transpired that he was a much traveled and a very well-read man. Explaining his English accent, he told me that one of the reasons was that he was fond of Shakespeare and read him aloud. That reminded me. I said “Do you know that a famous Indian Leader was also very fond of the great poet and used often to declaim his poetry. “Yes! I know, "he said.”Mr. Jinnah was a unique man." Coming from a Bengali intellectual who was apparently nationalist and secular this statement extremely surprised me and He said “I too, at first, thought him to be only an opportunist, a rank reactionary and a British stooge. But he (Mr. Jinnah) did he had to do, under the circumstances. He was never a communalist & never advocated theocracy. No transfer and Burdens of Population envisaged.

No transfer of population was ever suggested or contemplated at any stage of the struggle for Pakistan. In fact the Pakistan Resolution of 1940 itself, which is the founding document of the struggle for Pakistan, dose not envisage imposing population burdens upon the constituent Provinces. It does not oblige any Province to accept a single person from any other place including India. Much less does it envisage people having their historical homelands, turned into petty minorities in these very homelands by wholesale population transfers. Nothing could be clearer on this point than Quaid-e-Azam's Famous historic inaugural speech to the first Constituent Assembly of Pakistan's three days before the coming into existence of Pakistan, in which he directed the people of Pakistan to forget, nay, change the bitter past, bury the communal hatchet and treat all Pakistanis as equal citizens of Pakistan, so that the entire story of Hindu-Muslim strife and communal hatred may become a thing of the past. The self-appointed inheritors and owner of Pakistan. It is tempting to speculate how, if Mr. Jinnah had lived longer, peremptorily and summarily his no-nonsense nature would have dealt with the pompous pronouncements and arrogant edicts of British Deputy Commissioner's-darbar-level feudal politicians, deputy and joint Secretary-level bureaucrats, Brigadier level uniformed "statesmen" and the self-proclaimed bearded viceroys of God in fancy beards, who overnight became the owners and masters of Pakistan by "inheritance" as soon as the founder of Pakistan closed his eyes. An out of order ambulance, a swarm of flies - how Liaquat Ali Khan Coterie abandoned the dying Quaid.

Establishment on a war-Path against people of Pakistan. Pakistan establishment has been on a war-path against the people of Pakistan from day one of the establishment of Pakistan. The unstated but implied political catechism prescribed by them went on something like this. "Are you a Muslim?" "Yes." "Do you believe in Quran as the only word of God and the Supreme Law for Muslims? "Yes..... and I want a democratic order ensuring my social, political and economic rights and liberties including the right of forming political parties, having a free Press, Fair and free elections  in the country, human rights......" Show us where in the Holy Quran all these things mentioned as are required by God for a true believer!"

"But you see in the modern democratic world....."

" In the Holy Quran is the word democracy ever mentioned even in passing? Is the Holy Quran, as it is, not sufficient for you that you are asking for. Something about which there's not even a single mention in our sacred book". Rule by Naked Sword, the whip, the dungeon and the fatwa. In utter disregard, nay contemptuous rejection of the concept of the Quaid-e-Azam about Pakistan as a Human, liberal and democratic modern Muslim State, they dreamed of transforming it into a medieval slave-holders state run by the naked sword, the whip, the dungeons the fatwa of the unscrupulous obscurantist priest close who made the manufacture and sale of pseudo - religions edicts (fatwas) as their sole privilege and business - monopoly. Instead of relying upon the democratic them and creativity of the  people of Pakistan and on develop their untapped material resources , they relied upon  rule by the iron rod ,by the discredited policy of divided and rule and upon the begging bowl , which last drew foreign comments this: "It is obvious from this approach Pakistan's request of Oct - Nov. 1947) that Pakistan was thinking in terms of the U.S. as a Primary source of military strength and that this would involve virtual U.S. military responsibility for the new dominion. Our reply to this Pakistan request was negative....." (Action taken by U.S. on Pakistan's request of Oct-Nov. 1947 - "American-Pakistan Relations - Documents edited by K. Arif p. 9 ")

Basis of Partition - Majority Provinces. It may be noted here that the official basis of  Partition of India and establishment of Pakistan was not that India was divided among Muslims or Hindus population of India, so that all Indian Muslims were meant to live in Pakistan and all Hindus were to live India. It was divided on the basis of majority provinces. Four Muslim majority provinces - Punjab, Bengal, Sindh and Frontier were allowed to form a separate State, which they named Pakistan and seven Hindu majority provinces remained with India. The Hindu population residing in those Muslim majority provinces was to remain there. Similarly the Muslims in the Hindu majority provinces were to continue residing there. The existence of Hindu and Muslim majority Provinces, the old States, the ancient homelands of the peoples of India were the basic unit of constitutional and political give and take. These provinces occupied the center of the stage in the scheme of the Act of 1935, which started the electoral battles of the thirties and forties in India culminating in Partition with the elections of 1946 and the referendum of 1947. Victories in the provincial election in 1937 gave Congress the first taste of power and accelerated the face of All-India political struggles. "All power to the majority provinces" was or less the crux of the matter in both the Cripps's offer of 1942 and the Cabinet Mission Plan of 1946. Pakistan Resolution referred to these Muslim majority provinces as would-be sovereign States. Quaid-e-Azam called the future Pakistan as a state and the four Muslim majority provinces as homelands of the people living there since centuries.  "They must have their homelands" Quid. He said in his presidential address at Lahore in March 1940, during the historic Muslim league session in which the famous Pakistan Resolution was passed,"...... according to British map of India, 4 out of 11 provinces, where the Muslims dominate more or less are functioning.....Musilamans are nation according to any definition of nation and they must have their homelands, their territory and their State......." (The concept of "homeland" regarding above provinces used by Mr. Jinnah has now become anathema to pro-terrorist ideologue like Mr. M.B. Naqvi). Maulana Azad also referred to these Muslim majority provinces as the guarantee of the security and prosperity of Muslims of India in the future Undivided India. In his presidential address at the Ramgarh session of the Indian National Congress in Dec. 1940, said "......... in four provinces out of eleven in India there is a Muslim majority, the other religious groups being minorities. If British Baluchistan is added, there are five Provinces with Muslim majorities..... The position of the Muslims is not that of a minority only. If they are in a minority in seven provinces, they are in majority in five."  Sindh - an ancient sovereign state for centuries. The five Muslim majority provinces of former united India, which formed Pakistan, are the homelands of the Sindhi, Punjabi, Pashtoon, Bengali and Baloch people since centuries and even millennia. For instance Sindh was regarded as a country at par with India by the Arab Geographers in medieval times. It had attained statehood long before such famous states as Russia, England, Germany and France and was represented in the Battle of Maha Bharata by its Raja Jaidrath. It has existed as a state independent of any imperial power for centuries. It was independent when the British conquered it in February 1842 and later designed it as a Province. In all fairness, it became entitled, under international law, to resume its previous independent states as a sovereign state in August 1947, when the British Raj came to an end. Along with three other Muslim majority provinces out of the total of level provinces of India, Sindh chose to become a part of Pakistan.  Sindh Targeted for conquest and Subjugation. As soon as Pakistan was formed however, one of the Muslim majority Provinces, to form Pakistan viz. Sindh Muslim majority province of Sindh was made a target for conquest and subjugation by U.P=C.P elite led by khan Liaquat through planned demographic aggression represented by a flood of Indian, mostly illegal, immigrants directed at Sindh to transform the SINDHI majority into a tiny, obedient minority, to serve the super-civilized Indian immigrant masters and conquerors. First to be robbed from the Sindhi peoples was its most valuable piece of real estate viz. the City of Karachi, the capital of the province. Draconian, confiscatory black laws, called the Evacuee Laws, were used as a weapon for usurping Sindhi property worth billions of Rupees and for making them virtual aliens in their own towns and cities.  The illiterate Peasant and the bania. In Sindh, as else-where, illiterate peasants and petty agriculturists used to purchase their daily necessities from the shops of Hindu village merchants. Whenever, the debt accumulated beyond a certain point, the merchant would tell the peasant or petty abadgar to go to the Tapedar with him and sign a statement acknowledging that such and such piece of land belonging to him was mortgaged without possession with the bania for such and such a sun. Under the relevant law of the land viz. Transfer of property Act and the Registration Act, signing of such statements was just meaningless, as the possession of the pieces of land in question was never handed over and no prescribed sale-deed according to law was executed before the concerned Registrar. The transaction was appropriately called "Khokho khato" i.e. empty transfer. Lacks of acres of land of peasantry was involved in such empty and meaningless transactions before the Revenue Tapedar without any sanctity in the eyes of the law of the land, a family arrangement! The central government, which controlled the operation of Rehabilitation and Evacuee Laws, had so arranged the matters that the establishment which implemented this law was totally dominated by Indian immigrants from top to bottom. One immigrant merely claimed by word of mouth that he had so many gardens, buildings, wheat fields in such and such province. Another immigrant said that the claim was correct. Third immigrant who was the Rehabilitation officer "investigated" and "verified" the claim. If someone wished to challenge the validity of such a claim, he had to go for a favorable decision from a higher official, who in most cases, was himself an Indian immigrant. So, as they say in Sindhi "The cook was the grandmother and those who ate the food were the grand children." It became an internal community affair. Property worth billions of Rupees which in law never belonged to Hindus and was lawfully owned and possessed by Sindhi Muslims, was overnight declared by such " family arrangement" as Hindu property and hence, further, a booty to be divided among the community and then sold at fancy prices, not to one, but to more than one, two, and sometimes even three, four different purchasers, who then went on fighting in law courts for the same property for generations. The seller just vanished from the scene after collecting the amounts from all the duped purchasers.  The First Generation of Terrorists. I cannot forget some of my encounters as an advocate with the immigrant officials who were supposed to be performing "Judicial" functions. One noted C.S.P. bureaucrats who terrorized Tharparker District for a number of years, as Deputy commissioner and who became a big Rehabilitation authority at Hyderabad, was sitting in the super store of the present sessions Court, Hyderabad, I went to him and stood before him for quite some minutes. He did not deign to look at me. Ultimately, I had to open my lips and say "Sir! A Wish to present my appeal. This is the last day. There is no one in the office of receive it." "What is your name? A told him "On whose behalf are you filing the appeal?" "On behalf of a poor peasant." "Appeal dismissed." He declared. "I was flabbergasted. I had no such experience before any other authority in my whole life of the profession. I took courage in my both hands and submitted humbly, "But sir, you haven't yet seen the memo of appeal and then I have to argue it." he extended his hand stiffly, half-snatched the application from my hand, noted some-thing upon it and threw it into the waste paper basket, Lying under the table and said "Next case!". Later in the day, I read the noting in the office "Heard Advocate. No merit. Rejected." On another occasion nice-looking slim, officer with glasses heard me patiently for three four minutes in his office in saddar barracks at Karachi. I argues about the requirements of law for making a Muslim property a Hindu property and hence an evacuee property under the Transfer of Property Act, Registration Act and the relevant Evacuee Laws. While I was in the midst of my submissions, he looked at me intently and pointing to the wall behind me, said in a very measured, deliberate voice "Do you see that wall?" I said "Yes Sir!" "Go and strike your head against it! Appeal dismissed!" Now that I recall these experiences I realize that these bureaucrats were the first generation of terrorists. They wielded the Law and the pen as weapons for their terroristic rampages.  A Regular Loot and plunder - A Racket of the Century. For the type of officer law, propriety, fair, play meant less than nothing. They considered it below their dignity to evince anything but contempt for the law, justice and fair-play. They enjoyed parading their lawlessness and arbitrariness, free from all ethical, moral and level restraints. They had just conquered Sindh and Sindhi people and wanted everyone to know it. It was a regular loot and plunder which went on for many decades, a racket of the century. This whole crowd (the bogus ex-owners of fictitious gardens and palaces, left behind in India, battalions of regular "Witnesses" and "verifiers", the swarms of touts and sifarishis, the gangs of looters and robbers posing as upholders of law, fair-play and good conscience tall) robbed thousands of poor Sindhi people of their properties, lands businesses, even the grave-yards of their fore-fathers and threw them out of urban centers of Sindh. In due course of time, some of our dear Indian immigrant guests from across the border, many of them illegal immigrants, have begun to claim not just one or a few properties but whole towns and cities of Sindh as their sovereign domain with the powers of life and death by horrible tortures and racial cleansing.  Criminalized politics - A Bunch of Moneys with swords In Hands. Politics has been criminalized from day one in Pakistan. As if a bunch of monkeys have somehow got hold of swords and are striking at everything within their sight. Ethical, moral, social and political standards, legal and constitutional limitations, considerations of patriotism, of safety and welfare of the state and society, norms of self-respect and decency nothing has been spared.   A state at war with it's people. The state of Pakistan has been at war with and within itself these last 48 years of its existence its protective institutions charge cores of Rupees annually only to destabilize their own society and governments! The organs and agencies of state spend Crores of their huge shares of the national budget to enlist, train and operate cut-throats, gangsters, hooligans mass-murderers and torturers to sow confusion, despondency and terror in the hearts of the loyal and peaceful subjects of the state, whom it is their sacred and bounden duty to protect and cherish! The shepherds have taken on the roles of the wolf-breeders. This is over and above the cruel sufferings and calamities, the civil and military dictatorships have been themselves imposing upon the people during the last half a century.  A Matter of faith and geo-politics. I firmly believe as a matter of faith based upon sound reason and a sense of geopolitics and history that the countries of Al-Sindh (now Pakistan) and Al-Hind (Now Bharat) are sisters and their peoples are brothers, despite the rich variety of our faiths and sub-cultures. We complement each other just as other neighboring countries like France and England do. I also believe that short -sightedness and foul play is not the monopoly of any one of over two neighboring countries. We have no dearth of problems requiring urgent solutions. We have not a penny in excess of our immediate requirements to spend on perfecting the war machines for killing and maiming our brothers and sisters and our children and parents. We do not have any real need to spend our meager resources for enlisting and training terrorists to torture innocent people living across our borders. Common sense, restraint, mutual accommodation and understanding, magnanimity of heart and mind and a realistic appraisal of our mutual possibilities and limitations are the only course of action realistically available to us. Amity and peace, not strife and war point the way out of the percent impasse.  The Country in real danger from within and without. I also believe that thanks to the criminal misdeeds of our establishment during the last 50 years. Pakistan in real danger from within and without as it has never been before. I do not believe that it is in the real, long-term interests of the majority of our working masses and the democracy- loving people that the present crisis should be allowed to take its own course and become worse. It is high time that our thinking and conceptions pro-people forces awaken the people from their present state of apathy and despondency and persuade them to take up their destiny in their own hands and compel the powers that be, to resist from continuing with the irresponsible, course of action, they have hither to been following. As far as the vociferous pro-terrorist intelligentsia of Sindh is concerned, would like humbly to submit before them:  If you really believe. If you really believe that through the torrent of media propaganda you can persuade the world at large that terrorism, torture by drilling machines, skinning fellow human beings alive etc.  is a civilized democratic and legitimate mode of protest against perceived lack of perceived rights, deserving sympathy and support of civilized men and women, and if you think that by this kind of attitude of establishment and terrorists Sindh will become a colony of establishment and mostly illegal Indian immigrants, to be ruled through drilling machines, torture cells etc. You are welcome to your fantasies and day-dreams. But if you really believe such a thing as that terrorism is the only course now left open to our Urdu-speaking brothers and sisters in Pakistan, I would humbly like to disagree.  MOST OF US NEED PEACE TO WORK, TO STUDY, TO LOVE..... After all we are all human beings. We are not all criminals, who can do nothing other than brutally kill and main and mutilate fellow-human beings. Most of us are poor people who have to earn a meal or two for our children. Most of us need peace to work, to study, to live, to marry, to sing, to dance, to live like human beings with our share of pains and pleasures. Pursuing wild dreams of conquest, supremacy, hegemony, brutal power, enslavement of fellow human-beings, are to the only courses left to enterprising and spirited men and women. Fellow-ship, mutual help and cooperation in peace and amity offer more job-satisfaction and rewards than running drilling machines and torture cells. Sindh will never bow down before any would-be Nadir Shah, Hitler or Mussolini, but Sindh's arms are open for all who approach it in peace and filial love. To all our brothers and sisters speaking various languages including Sindhi, Punjabi, and Urdu etc. I would like humbly and sincerely to say: "Our brothers did not give birth to us to live in constant necessity of either killing some other human beings or being in constant danger of being killed. Let us refuse to remain prisoners behind the dark dungeons of hatred and violence. Let us look at the sun, the moon, the flowers, and the flowing water, the eyes of the beloved and the less of children. Let us recognize one another as what we really are fellow human-beings, compatriots, brothers and sisters. Why can we not differ stoutly without falling prey to brutal violence? Why can we not disagree and argue without endangering our lives and the lives of our loved ones?  GRIEVANCES AGAINST THE GOVERNMENT, THE STATE AND THE SYSTEM. As far grievances, thousands of us have passed the best years our lives in jails, during almost continuously in prison during both the Bhutto and Zia regimes. I have given no less than ten best years of my life to the worst prisons of Pakistan. I can never forget that injustice. Almost every honest and working man and woman has serious grievances from the governments and establishment and socio-political system of our country. It is only through exchanging our views and joining our hands in peace and friendship and struggling together that we can lessen the pans and sufferings of our lives. I can assure you that the majority of the laboring masses of the people of Sindh are ready to embrace and clasp the hand of any and every one of his compatriots who is ready and willing to march forward with them on the path of a peaceful and democratic struggle for a better and fully satisfying life for all of us not excluding any one and including those who abandon the path of violence and strife and take the high road unity of all oppressed and deprived people, of happiness for all people.  Why not give peace a chance for a change.   We are witnessing the wages of hypocrisy, hatred, violence, crime and terror. For once, for a change why not give sincerity, amity, peace, cooperation and joint peaceful democratic struggle for the rights of all our brothers and sisters a chance.