In the elections of 1945-46, Muslims voted almost unanimously for ‘Quaid-i-Azam’. Jinnah won all the seats reserved for Muslims in the central assembly of India. Majority of these Muslims lived in areas which were not going to be included in Pakistan.
One question which has occupied my mind for quite some time now is why and how Muslims in present day India have come to stop taking pride in the unique achievement of their ancestors who created a sovereign state, outside the borders of their own country, with the sheer power of vote?
Nor was it just any state. It was the largest Muslim state at the time of birth. To me it is the greatest tribute to the moral strength of humanity that a cart-driver in the colonial Delhi could feel that by using nothing except his right to choose, he could create a sovereign state many times bigger than Great Britain.
Therefore the question: Who has robbed the hearts of Muslims, especially the present-day Indian Muslims, from taking a just pride in the unparalleled achievement of their ancestors?
See also:
Pakistan is in a fight for its soul. Things are not as black and white as sometimes made out to be and terror does not just come in green colour.
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Sikander Hayat, thanks. I have often visited your blog and often found it to be very inspiring despite a few differences here are there :).
ReplyDeleteI will strongly recommend others to visit it too.
This history you recount for us is TRULY amazing to such as me of little knowledge of your history. Having read some of the brutal history surrounding the Persian Poet Hafiz' time which did not dim the UNDER LIGHT that comes through in his music of soul - despite patronage from the corrupt and overdoing his metaphors to please the same?
ReplyDeleteSo why are we letting so much disunity on every corner destroy the great opportunity for more and more light from our most vital souls of letters, poetry, philosophy and politics today?
That such healing could nevertheless come
from such violent roots to form the Nation Pakistan - a true democracy - had to be the hand of God. Yet more than His hand will be needed to restore and sustain the same.
Certainly - despite so much discouragement and "enemies" within - and the brutal nature of the default of war rather than something ever so much more interesting and sustaining...
still...everything is in place in BOTH Pakistan and America to restore a true and beautiful democracy - albiet of two unique varieties.
Let's not let ANYTHING - certainly not our petty arguments and loss of energies over the BIO of past leaders who were nothing like Cheney/Bush get in our way.
Our Common Soul needs better! And we desperately and gladly must stand strong for one another for each our own survival and the viability of DEMOCRACY itself!
Connie, well-said. Sometimes when I write some of the posts about troubled memories, I wish that I didn't have to write them but then, some of these records of the past need to be put straight so that we all may recover that lost self-esteem which is so much needed to build a peaceful future.
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