The fifty nine years after Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan's tragic death, his work and achievement could be seen in a better perspective than it was possible immediately after his death in 1951. Through the years, his compelling personality has risen in stature, in popular esteem, in public estimation. To the average Pakistani today, his stewardship of the country during 1948-1951 represents a glorious period in our existential career.
Liaquat's attributes and achievements were such as to earn any one in any country the esteem and gratitude of his people. To name only a few, Liaquat was sincere and steadfast, able and hard-working. A decade of apprenticeship under his supreme political mentor, the Quaid-i-Azam, had prepared him for a life of selfless service and of responsibility. Service-before-self was his motto in life even as it was of his leader - the motto to which he stood steadfast to the last breath of his life.
Before he became Prime Minister of Pakistan in August 1947, Liaquat Ali Khan had held four important offices at the all-India level - (i) General Secretary of the All-India Muslim League for over eleven years (1936-47); (ii) Deputy Leader of the Muslim League Assembly Party in the Central Legislature for some seven years; (iii) Secretary of the Muslim League Parliamentary Board (1944-47); and (iv) Leader of the League group in the Interim Government during 1946-47.
These were some of the highest offices that a Muslim could occupy in pre-Partition India, and these Liaquat had occupied with singular success and distinction. The decade immediately before the birth of Pakistan when he lived under the towering shadow of his political mentor and his close scrutiny and guidance was a period when Liaquat's abilities, intellectual prowess and honesty, as well as his steadfastness to the cause he avowedly stood for, were tried and tested.
Many indeed were the temptations and baits for a man in Liaquat's position in those hectic, uncertain days. But it is to Liaquat's credit that he wavered not even for a moment and stood by his leader and his cause all the way - even to the extent of disowning his very inheritance. Liaquat also played a leading role in the Muslim struggle for freedom.
So that when Pakistan was born, Liaquat was the best man around for the exacting job of the Prime Minister, both in the view of the Quaid and the people.
His passion for selfless service brought him close to his people. He believed in them and their destiny. To quote him, "the sheer determination of the people and their intense patriotism" were "our greatest asset, and... a very steadying factor in an uncertain world".
He, therefore, confided in the masses, tried to earn their confidence and allegiance, and in tandem to take them along with him in what he said and did. Not only did he sweat and toil for their weal and welfare; he also inspired them and impelled them forward to energetic and constructive action.
Faith, it is said, begets faith. Because Liaquat had such faith in his people and wished to take them into confidence on various issues of national interest, the people, in turn, most willingly reposed their faith in him and followed him overwhelmingly. More refreshing, Liaquat lived up to his leader's faith and to his people's expectations. And he occupied his office with singular success and distinction and dignity.
Jinnah, as Richard Symonds says, "had contributed more than any other man to Pakistan's survival". But, even so, as the first Prime Minister of Pakistan, Liaquat did a good deal not only in consolidating what had already been achieved in Jinnah's life-time, but also, in enlarging those gains and in carrying the process of building Pakistan further.
No wonder The Times of India (Bombay) remarked, "No man played more successfully the role of Cavour to his leader's Mazzini." And, to quote The Statesman (Calcutta), "he guided the fortunes of his country with a certainty which amounted to genius".
And because of his tenacity of purpose and his devotion to Pakistan, he achieved a good deal in making Pakistan not only a going concern, but also a growing concern. Internally, Pakistan was then one of the most unified and stable nations in Asia. Internationally, Pakistan's stature was rising almost daily, with her friendship being coveted by the big powers.
And all this he could achieve during his three brief years (1948-51) because, following the Quaid, he visualised the destiny of Indian Muslims in terms of Pakistan, and of Pakistan in terms of "free Islam in a free India". And when Pakistan did emerge, he conceived it in terms of "a laboratory for practical Islam".
"The underlying idea of the movement for the establishment of Pakistan", Liaquat had told the Motamar al-Alam al-Islami gathering in Karachi in February 1951, "was not just to add one more country to the conglomeration of countries in the world or to add one more patch of colour to the multi-coloured global map."
Believing thus, Liaquat lost no time in initiating the process through which this nation was formally and constitutionally confirmed in its ideological outlook. Indeed, in the ideological march of this nation - a march, slow at times and checkmated at other - the formulation, in 1949, of the Objectives' Resolution under Liaquat's guidance represents the first concrete step. It served as a beacon-light, shedding uninterruptedly a narrow streak of light across the prevailing gloom and beckoning the nation to the basic ideology of Pakistan.
Commending the Objectives' Resolution to his colleagues in the Constituent Assembly he said, "This Objectives' Resolution is the first step in the direction of the creation of an environment which will again awaken the spirit of the nation. . . . It is not every day that people stand on the threshold of renaissance; it is not every day that Destiny beckons the down-trodden and the subjugated to rise and greet the dawn of a great future. It is the narrow streak of light heralding the brilliance of the full day, that we salute in the form of his Resolution."
As against Liaquat's other achievements, this one represented the concreting of our ideological orientation that grows, that is bound to grow with the years, and that is more lasting. Hence all things considered, this was the supreme achievement of Liaquat Ali Khan, an achievement for which he will be remembered as long as Pakistan lives.
No wonder, the Times (London) remarked on Liaquat's demise that "the grievous and irreparable loss of a sincere, devout Muslim convinced of Islam, has a message for the world that was never more needed than today". The Christian Science Monitor (Boston) considered his exit "a blow to Pakistan, to Islam and to the West". And the Manchester Guardian saw in his demise "not only a desperate misfortune for Pakistan but also a blow to the Commonwealth and the whole stability of the Middle East".
In the words of the British Ambassador to the United States. Liaquat's "loss will be felt far beyond the borders of Pakistan itself, throughout the rest of the commonwealth, throughout Islam and indeed throughout the world."
While the then UN Secretary General called his demise "a great loss to the UN", Ambassador Warren Austin of the United States considered it a "disaster to the cause of peace". And as The Times of India remarked that "he died in the line of duty. He fell for his country".
If anything, these tributes indicate how in three years of national leadership Liaquat had built for himself a place in the hearts of men and a niche in the corridors of history.
(The author, HEC Distinguished National Professor, has recently co-edited Unesco's History of humanity, Vol. VI, and edited In Quest of Jinnah (2007), the only oral history on Pakistan's founding father.)
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