The Naming of a Nation

Chaudhry Rehmat Ali
1897 – 1951
As the South Asian sub-continent struggled for its
independence from colonial rule, the communal mistrust between India’s Hindus
and Muslims had boiled over repeatedly. The failed 1928 All-Parties Conference
resulted in a parting of the Congress Party and Muslim League, marking the end
of the Lucknow Pact that had been authored by
Mohammed Ali Jinnah in 1916. The man who would one day be known as the “Quaid-e-Azam” returned to England leaving behind India and
its political intrigues.
Then a new movement began to take place. Dr. Mohammed “Allama”
Iqbal envisioned a homeland for the Muslims of
India. In 1933 a student in England
named Chaudhry Rehmat Ali
wrote a paper titled “Now Or Never: Are We to Live Or
Perish For Ever?” In this paper he
offered the name “PAKSTAN” for the regions of India where Muslims were in
majority.
Full text of Rahmat Ali's Pakistan Declaration (Now or Never) follows.
Rahmat
Ali issued this document on January 28, 1933 from his student address in
Cambridge. This Declaration comprised the first part of his Pak Plan, and only
dealt with the area of Pakistan.
NOW OR NEVER: ARE WE TO
LIVE OR PERISH FOR EVER?
[Document is headed by Arabic script from the Qur'an,
13:11: "Verily, Allah does not change the condition of a people unless
they change their inner selves".]
At this solemn hour in the history of India, when British and Indian statesmen
are laying the foundations of a Federal Constitution for that land, we address
this appeal to you, in the name of our common heritage, on behalf of our thirty
million Muslim brethren who live in PAKSTAN - by which we mean the five
Northern units of India, Viz: Punjab, North-West
Frontier Province (Afghan Province), Kashmir, Sind
and Baluchistan - for your sympathy and support in
our grim and fateful struggle against political crucifixion and complete
annihilation.
Our brave but voiceless nation is being sacrificed on the altar of Hindu
Nationalism not only by the non-Muslims, but to the lasting disgrace of Islam,
by our own so-called leaders, with reckless disregard to our guture and in utter contempt of the teachings of history.
The Indian Muslim Delegation at the Round Table Conference have
committed an inexcusable and prodigious blunder. They have submitted, in the
name of Hindu Nationalism, to the perpetual subjection of the ill-starred
Muslim nation. These leaders have already agreed, without any protest or demur
and without any reservation, to a Constitution based on the principle of an
All-India Federation. This, in essence, amounts to nothing less than signing
the death-warrant of Islam and its future in India. In doing so, they have
taken shelter behind the so-called Mandate from the community.
But they forgot that that suicidal Mandate was framed
and formulated by their own hands. That Mandate was not the Mandate of the
Muslims of India. Nations never give Mandates to their representatives to
barter away their very souls; and men of conscience never accept such self-anhilating Mandates, if given - much less execute them. At
a time of crisis of this magnitude, the foremost duty of saving statesmanship is to give a fair, firm and fearless lead,
which, alas, has been persistently denied to eighty millions of our
co-religionists in India by our leaders during the last seventy-five years.
These have been the years of false issues, of lost opportunities and of utter
blindness to the most essential and urgent needs of the Muslim interests. Their
policy has throughout been nerveless in action and subservient in attitude.
They have all along been paralysed with fear and
doubt, and have deliberately, time and again, sacrificed their political
principles for the sake of opportunism and expediency. To do
so even at this momentous juncture of Bedlam. It is idle for us not to
look this tragic truth in the face. The tighter we shut our eyes, the harder
the truth will hit us.
At this critical moment, when this tragedy is being enacted, permit us to
appeal to you for your practical sympathy and active support for the demand of
a separate Federation - a matter of life and death for the Muslims of India -
as outlined and explained below.
India, constituted as it is at the present moment, is not the name of one
single country; nor the home of one single nation. It is, in fact, the
designation of a State created for the first time in history, by the British.
It includes peoples who have never previously formed part of India at any
period in its history; but who have, on the other hand, from the dawn of
history till the advent of the British, possessed and retained distinct
nationalities of their own.
In the five Northern Provinces of India, out of a total population of about
forty millions, we, the Muslims, contribute about 30 millions. Our religion,
culture, history, tradition, economic system, laws of inheritance, succession
and marriage are basically and fundamentally different from those of the people
living in the rest of India. The ideals which move our thirty million
brethren-in-fath living in these provinces to make
the highest sacrifices are fundamentally different from those which inspire the
Hindus. These differences are not confined to the broad basic principles - far
from it. They extend to the minutest details of our lives. We do not
inter-dine; we do not inter-marry. Our national customs, calendars, even our
diet and dress are different.
It is preposterous to compare, as some superficial observers do, the
differences between Muslims and Hindus with those between Roman Catholics and
Protestants. Both the Catholics and Protestants are part and parcel of one
religious system - Christianity; while the Hindus and Muslims are the followers
of two essentially and fundamentally different religious systems. Religion in
the case of Muslims and Hindus is not a matter of private opinion as it is in
the case of Christians; but on the other hand constitutes a Civic Church which
lays down a code of conduct to be observed by their adherents from birth to
death.
If we, the Muslims of Pakstan, with our distinct
marks of nationality, are deluded into the proposed Indian Federation by
friends or foes, we are reduced to a minority of one to four. It is this which
sounds the death-knell of the Muslim nation in India for ever. To realise the full magnitude of this impending catastrophe,
let us remind you that we thirty millions constitute about one-tenth of whole
Muslim world. The total area of the five units comprising PAKSTAN, which are
our homelands, is four times that of Italy, three times that of Germany and
twice that of France; and our population seven times that of the Commonwealth
of Australia, four times that of the Dominion of Canada, twice that of Spain,
and equal to France and Italy considered individually.
These are facts - hard facts and realities - which we challenge anybody to
contradict. It is on the basis of these facts that we make bold to assert
without the least fear of contradiction that we, Muslims of PAKSTAN, do possess
a separate and distinct nationality from the rest of India, where the Hindu
nation lives and has every right to live. We, therefore, deserve and must
demand the recognition of a separate national status by the grant of a separate
Federal Constitution from the rest of India.
In addressing this appeal to the Muslims of India, we are also addressing it to
the two other great interests - British and Hindu - involved in the settlement
of India's future. They must understand that in our conviction our body and
soul are at stake. Our very being and well-being depends upon it. For our five
great Northern states to join an All-India Federation would be disastrous, not
only to ourselves, but to every other race and interest in India, including the
British and the Hindu.
This is more especially ture when there is just and
reasonable alternative to the proposed settlement, which will lay the
foundations of a peaceful future for this great continent; and should certainly
allow of the highest development of each of these two peoples without one being
subject to another. This alternative is a separate Federation of these five
predominantly (sic) Muslim units - Punjab, North-West Frontier (Afghan
Province), Kashmir, Sind and Baluchistan.
The Muslim Federation of North-West India would provide the bulwark of a buffer
state against any invasion either of ideas or arms from outside. The creation
of such a Federation would ot
materially disturb the ratio of the Muslim and Hindu population in the rest of
India. It is wholly to the interest of British and Hindu statesmanship to have
an ally a free, powerful and contented Muslim nation having a similar but
separate Constitution to that which is being enacted for the rest of India.
Nothing but a separate Federation of homelands would satisfy us.
This demand is basically different from the suggestion put forward by Doctor
Mohammed Iqbal in his Presidential address to the
All-India Muslim League in 1930. While he proposed the amalgamation of the
provinces into a single state forming a unit of the All-India Federation, we
propose that these Provinces should have a separate Federation of their own.
There can be no peace and tranquility in the land if we, the Muslims, are duped
into a Hindu-dominated Federation where we cannot be the masters of our own
destiny and captains of our own souls.
Do the safeguards provided for in the Constitution give us any scope to work
for our salvation along our own lines? Not a bit.
Safeguard is the magic word which holds our leaders spellbound, and has dulled
their consciences. In the ecstasy of their hallucinations they think that the
pills of safeguards can cure nation-anhilating
earthquakes. Safeguards asked for by these leaders and agreed to by the makers
of the Constitution can never be a substitute for the loss of separate
nationality. We, the Muslims, shall have to fight the course of suicidal
insanity to death.
What safeguards can be devised to prevent our minority of one in four in an
All-India Federation from being sacrificed on every vital issue to the aims and
interests of the majority race, which differs from us in every essential of
individual and corporate life? What safeguards can
prevent the catastrophe of the Muslim nation smarting and suffering eternally
at the frustration of its every social and religious ideal?
What safeguards can compensate our nation awakened to its national conscious
for the destruction of its distinct national status?
However effective and extensive the safeguards may be, the vital organs and
proud symbols of our national life, such as army and navy, foreign relations,
trade and commerce, communications, posts and telegraphs, taxation and customs,
will not be under our control, but will be in the hands of a Federal
Government, which is bound to be overwhelmingly Hindu. With all this, how can
we, the Muslims, achieve any of our ideals if those ideals conflict - conflict
as they must - with the ideals of Hindus?
The history of the last century, in this respect, is full of unforgettable
lessons for us. Even one who runs may read them. To take just
one instance. Despite all these safeguards and gurantees
we have enjoyed in the past, the very name of our national language - URDU,
even now the lingua franca of that great continent - has been wiped out of the
list of Indian languages. We have just to open the latest census report to
verify it. This by itself is a tragic fall. Are we fated to fall farther? But that too is dust in the scales by comparison
with the tremendous national issues involving our whole future as a nation and
a power not only India but also in the whole of Asia.
In the face of these incontrovertible facts, we are entitled to ask for what
purpose we are being asked to make the supreme sacrifice of surrendering our
nationality and submitting ourselves and our posterity to Non-Muslim domination? What good is
likely to accrue to Islam and Muslims by going into the Federation is a thing
which passes our understanding. Are we to be crucified just to save the faces
of our leaders or to bolster up the preposterous that India can be a single nation? Is it with a view to achieve a compromise at all
costs, or is it to support the illusion that Hindu nationalism is working in
the interests of Muslims as well as Hindus? Irony is
flattered to death by a mental muddle of such a nature and on such a scale. We
have suffered in the past without a murmur and faced dangers without demur. The
one thing we would never suffer is our own strangulation. We will not crucify
ourselves upon the cross of Hindu nationalism in order to make a Hindu-holiday.
May we be permitted to ask of all those statesmen - Muslim or British or Hindu
- supporting the Federal Constitution, iff it is really desirable to make our
nation sacrifice all that Islam has given us during the last fourteen hundred
years to make India a nation? Does humanity really stand to gain by this
stupendous sacrifice? We dare say that still in Islam
the ancient fire glows and promises much for the future, if only the leaders
would let it live. Whilst in Europe, excluding Russia, in about the same area
as that of India and with about the same population, there live and prosper as
many as twenty-six nations, with one and the same religion, civilisation
and economic system, surely it is not only possible but highly desirable for
two fundamentally different and distinct nations, i.e. Muslim and Hindu, to
live as friendly neighbours in peace and prosperity
in that vast continent. What bitter irony is it that our leaders have not the
courage to stand up and demand the minimum for our political salvation.
We are face to face with a first-rate tragedy, the like of which has not have
been seen in the long and eventful history of Islam. It is not the question of
a sect or of a community going down; but it is the supreme problem which
affects the destiny of the whole of Islam and the millions of human beings who,
till quite recently, were the custodians of the glory of Islam in India and the
defenders of its frontiers. We have a still greater future before us, if only
our soul can be saved from the perpetual bondage of slavery forged in an
All-India Federation. Let us make no mistake about it. The issue is now or
never. Either we live or perish for ever. The future is ours only if we live up
to our faith. It does not lie in the lap of the gods, but it rests in our own
hands. We can make or mar it. The history of the last century is full of open
warnings, and they are as plain as were ever given to any nation. Shall it be
said of us that we ignored all these warnings and allowed our ancient heritage
to perish in our hands?
Rahmat Ali (Choudhary).
Mohd Aslam Khan (Khattak). President, Khyber Union.
Sheikh Mohd Sadiq (Sahibzada).
Inayat Ullah Khan (of Charsaddah).
Secretary, Khyber Union
Reference:
http://www.zyworld.com/slam33/non.htm