Every year when this day approaches, a rampant euphoria that engulfs the air makes me increasingly nervous about our collective intelligence to understand history and putting it in perspective. Whereas one can differ on varying approaches on how to interpret history and applied to the current situations – déjà vu or sui generis – but statement of facts in a manner that doesn’t compromise factual correctness, can not be overemphasized. It is not difficult to ascertain how crucial it could become in engineering the psyche of a whole generation and changing the course of events for all the times to come. Even if it is as little a thing, as changing the dates of events!
This twenty third day of March is invariably painted in all the media around us, as “Pakistan Day”. Little does the term offer for a toddler to understand what the term means? I say toddler because this little piece of information I saw my daughter memorize when she was not even in grade one. And that was the day that I decided state run schools and even the private schools that are made to follow state prescribed curriculum are just not the place for my daughter’s education. I wonder why people of Pakistan let their children become the fodder of wrong state propaganda, through poorly conceived textbooks, so easily? I’ve been shrieking at the top of my throat since now almost a decade that these text books are telling white lies to our children who’re growing with strange notions and hollow rhetoric. No one is moved. Not even for the sake of our posterity. So much to talk of responsible parenting!
Sorry for this digression, thanks to my state of mind after almost a life time struggle for truth! So my dear reader, we were to talk about twenty-third day of March. Here is how a textbook for grade 12 describes Pakistan Day:
For those who can’t read Persian transcript, the transliteration would be:
“Annual Session of All India Muslim League was held on 23rd March 1940 at the historical Iqbal of Lahore. Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah presided it over and a large number of Muslims from all over India participated. Maulvi Fazl-e-Haq of Bengal Province presented a resolution with the title Lahore Resolution and the participants adopted the resolution amid loud slogans. Muslims had determined their destination. That was a historical day. Mianr-e-Pakistan has been built in Iqbal Park to keep the memories of that day alive”.
What a farce! This is a Punjab Text Book Board textbook for grade 12, whose authors are some Mr Mohammad Farooq Malik, Dr Sultan Khan, Rai Faiz and Khadim Ali Khan. The book has been published by Punjab Textbook Board Lahore printed by Malik House Ganpat Road Lahore. It does neither tell the date of printing nor the number of printed copies. On the first page however, it carries messages from General (the then President of the country) Pervez Musharraf and Chaudhry Pervez Ilahi (the then Chief Minister of Punjab).
These two messages tell that it must have been printed sometime between 2002 and 2007, and must have been in force since atleast three years. I’m amazed that there’s no one from amongst the parents who could be at least as much conscious about their children’s education, as to ask at least about the authors! There’s just no mention of where the authors come from, what’s their profile etc.
All this aside, come to the twenty-third day discussion.
The quoted passage is not the only instance. This propaganda is being done at state level, at media level and in all public spheres. The notification of public holiday on March 23 every year also tells that the day marks “Pakistan Resolution”’s adoption in 1940.
Let me challenge this sheer rape of history in clearest of terms. The said resolution is not Pakistan Resolution, One. It is very clearly named Lahore Resolution in all the documents that record the happenings of that year (1940). The evidence can be had in 12-volume compilation The Partition Papers, kept in India Office Library London. The other document that could be consulted is the Proceedings of All India Muslim League’s 27th Annual Session, kept in National Archives of Pakistan.
Secondly, the Day is commemorated as if the said resolution came as a shock in which a “separate country for Muslims” was demanded. It didn’t. One can quote several dozen proposals of partition, with different details, prior to this Resolution year (1940). Whereas the Muslims may continue to fool themselves by asserting that the idea of separation was home grown by the Muslims of India starting from the era of Sayyid Ahmad Khan, the facts will remain facts. The idea of separation in terms of establishing five or six presidencies with complete autonomy and ultimately becoming independent states first came in 1858. Hold your breath, the author was John Bright, not (Sir) Sayyid Ahmad Khan! John Bright while speaking in House of Commons on June 24, 1858 elaborated on his ideas of the solution to Indian problem during the debate on Government of India Bill.
Knighted by the English, Sayyid Ahmad Khan took forward the idea and started with his famous “Muslims and Hindus are two separate nations” in 1867 as probably a prelude to the physical partition of Indian nation into two religious nationalities. It had to be this way. People had to be convinced of their being “different” before they were physically and territorially separated. The idea then started growing with at least a dozen different proposals till the turn of century. The authors of partition included Joh Bright, Sayyid Ahmad Khan, Jamaluddin “Afghani”, Theodore Beck, Abdul Halim Sharar, Theodore Morison. In the 20th century more than 155 proposals of partition with different details were carried forward till the day of adoption of Lahore Resolution in 1940. The 20th century campaign was, interestingly, started by Bhai Parmanand, a well meaning leader of Hindu Mahasabha with a statement, “Divide India on Hindu-Muslim lines” in 1904. Since then, Hindu Mahasabha could not liberate itself with the idea of partition. Although this idea saw multiplication by many other Muslim, British and Hindu leaders of the time including Akbar Allahabadi, Mohammad Ali (Johar), Joseph Stalin, Hasrat Mohani etc. Almost seventy different proposal had already been taken rounds in media, public discourse and corridors of power before Chaudhry Rehmat Ali distributed his much talked about Pamphlet in 1933.
In the backdrop of the above information gathered from a host of sources, it seems ridiculous to take 1940 as the origin of the idea of Pakistan, the information shamelessly transferred to the children in Pakistan.
Continued
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