It is often considered to be no good to rake up the past. But those, who talk in similitude, I think, do not do full justice to their coming generations. If the people do not have had enough knowledge of their past, how will they know as to who worked for the good of their country, and as to so and so had been disloyal to their people.
To us, it is necessary to make the mention of the past deeds of their forefathers now and again before the younger generations so that they may hold themselves aloof from doing such deeds that may have undone the most of good works of their ancestors or try to tread in the footsteps of those who have really done excellent works. If we do not tell them the truth and try to keep all of their forefathers good/wrong deeds out of the eyes of the younger people, then how could we, the elders, expect that they would on day deliver the nation out of the pit of a dissolution in which it is lying owing to the follies of their ancestors?
That is, I have tried my level best to write this piece of paper so that our youth could get (by studying it) firsthand knowledge of the events that had happened in a homeland that was obtained after great sacrifices. Indeed doing so was necessary for we (as a nation) abstain from reading books. But those, who do not spend their leisured time in the pursuit of knowledge, lag far behind the rest of those who utilize their maximum time in studying books. We (as Muslims) do not like to hear/say/read the truth. If someone dares do so, he/she forthwith finds his/her shelter either in a grave or in a jail for we tolerate only those who compromise on the facts. Let me start briefly our past from the rule of Indian Muslims.
Prior to the capture of power by the English of Indo-Pak sub-continent, both the Hindus and the Muslims used to live together in perfect harmony. They were not only the companions in adversity but also the sympathizers with each other as and when they would have come across the unforeseen calamities. There seemed to have existed the harmony of views in the both. Had it not been so, India would have presented an ugly picture of disorderliness and mismanagement and indeed it would have been an act of folly on the part of the English men to hail in India. Moreover, if the Indians had lived in utter degradation, perhaps the English would not have made violent efforts in taking the control of such a country where poverty-stricken people might have resided. And apart from all these things, both Hindus and Muslims would not only have been at daggers drawn with each other but would have also been the victims of Hindu-Muslim riots.
We do not intend to go into more details of how cordial or friendly relations existed between the Hindus and the Muslims of India. The history of Indo-Pak sub-continent is, no doubt, full of such events that Hindus and Muslims lived together like good neighbours, and hardly anyone might have read about the Hindu-Muslim riots ever occurred in between the two up to the times the Muslims ruled in India. Massive efforts were made on their part to achieve a complete social justice, and no preferential treatment was given to the Muslims in regard to any matters. They used to attach much importance to Hindus and considered them to be an integral part of their kingdoms. That is, the Hindus were more well-to-do people in India compared to Indian Muslims, while hey had been in power for more than 1,000 years.
It is certain that generally in the reign of every Muslim ruler and particularly in the reign of Akbar the Hindus were recruited for the highest cadres of government's civil and military services. However, the English no sooner put their feet on the Indian soil than they tried their hard to put the seeds of ill-feeling and discontent in the hearts of the Hindus against the Muslim rulers of India and on account of this, their close and friendly relations began to worsen. Look at the irony of fate that those, who had since more than ten centuries been coming to have had their homes adjacent to each other and residing together in a very friendly and peaceful environment, started looking daggers at each other and made the aliens as their rulers in return for having a profound hatred of Muslims. They did not think over this fact as to why their tolerance turned into intolerance and as to why Hindus began feeling hatred for the Muslims, and in turn as to why the Muslims started looking at Hindus with hatred.
In short, this hatred resulted in the fall of Muslim rule in India and thereafter in the division of Hindustan. In this regard, both the non-Muslims (i.e. Hindus and Sikhs) and the Muslims are to blame. When the English made a dart at the Muslims to snatch power from them, Hindus and other non-Muslim communities should not have taken sides with the aliens but rather they would have stood side by side with Muslims in their struggle against them so that they would have failed in their nefarious designs of capturing India. But it was not to be so. The Hindus provided full support to the English in all matters and because of this stroke of luck; the power had gone into the hands of the aliens. Sadly, the Hindus accepted them as their new masters and disliked the very idea of helping the Muslims in their efforts to make the English run away from India.
The books on the reign of the English in India are full of their step-motherly treatments and tyrannous acts that were done to the Muslims. They considered their betterment in bringing Hindus forward in all matters and keeping Muslims in darkness, ignorance and utter degradation. But after having governed India for some time, they realized this fact that they could not rule over it for an indefinite period for now the Hindus begun to feel their folly in helping the English establish their hegemony over India. That is, they started becoming fed up with them. When they saw Hindus realize their blunders in supporting them, they had begun to set a trap for the Indian Muslims. It was now the Indian Muslim leaders turn to think well prior to putting them in Hindus shoes.
But unlike the Hindus, the Muslims too did not take a wise and judicious step prior to becoming a party to solving such imbroglios in which foreign masters were caught on account of Hindus uncompromising attitudes. It should have been on the part of the Muslims that they would have denied connections with the foreign rulers and cultivated their relations with the Hindus. They would have further made them feel certain of their help and taken collective steps in making the alien rulers leave Hindustan (India). They were such type of people to whom the trust could have hardly been reposed. If Hindus had not played the role of hangers-on for the English, they could never have succeeded in snatching power from the Indian Muslims.
Nevertheless, one cannot rid of evils by means of evils. Even a layman knows that wicked deeds are always put an end to by way of good deeds. In this connection, both Hindus and Muslims were at fault. They did not show any magnanimity towards each other, and were not ready even to make some changes in their uncompromising political attitude so that they might be able to reach an agreement. Both had reached the point of no return and that is one fell like a ripe fruit into the lap of the English to which they had conceived as an absolute godsend, while other became their enemy and began to go at a gallop on the road of a complete defiance. Hindus began to be favoured much, while the Muslims day in, day out started becoming the victims of their hatred, disfavour and atrocity.
It's not right that the desire for a separate Muslim entity did arise out of the fear nourishing in the hearts of the Indian Muslims against the Hindus that they would swamp them if they became the only masters of India. The two-hundred-year old British presence had largely finished the power that the Muslims had once possessed by their domination of the sub-continent for centuries. Greatly outnumbered, the Muslims feared that the Hindu population would totally engulf them. But the one fact that is constantly overlooked is that this fear largely took hold in the provinces where the Hindu population was dominant. But in the provinces of British India where the Muslim majority prevailed, there was no such fear. They were actually the areas around them the future Pakistan was eventually to be built. Ironically, it was in these same areas that the Muslim League was politically at its weakest. Moreover, if it is admitted that the establishment of a separate homeland was necessary to safeguard the interests of the whole Indian Muslims, why had the new country's borders been closed to those Indian Muslims who were coming to Pakistan in its early years of inception? Why had they been left behind at the tender mercies of the Hindus when Pakistan had to serve as shelter to all the Indian Muslims?
Now, both the Hindus and the Pakistanis should learn a lesson from their past and use all their energies in solving all their outstanding issues including the core dispute of Kashmir as the present moment seems to be a very ripe for its settlement. If they still remain unsuccessful in resolving their disputes, then it would be considered that the two countries' rulers do not intend to bury their hatchet and are desirous of keeping all their issues in abeyance similar in the way as their predecessors used to keep them intact. Strictly speaking, if they do not take advantage of the present favourable circumstances that are really conducive to the solution of all the outstanding disputes pending for long between India and Pakistan, the two countries' people will, sooner or later, be forced to opining that the guy of Kashmir had either been raised intentionally or kept unsettled to cause immense benefits to foreign masters in return for giving freedom to India and making a separate homeland for the Muslims of Indo-Pak sub-continent.
What is the use having an independent and separate homeland for the people of India and Pakistan when their plight has not yet been bettered? It is a fact that enslaved people offer a lot of sacrifices in the hopes of a change in their hard days and of better future for their coming generations. They get freedom from foreign yoke in return for unprecedented sacrifices not for the speedy progression of their elite class but for the good of all the segments of their society. Isn't it pity that on the one hand the lives of the majority of both the countries population are suffering from endemic corruption, heavy taxes, high cost of living, an absence of the rule of law, lack of civic facilities, a severe shortage of medical facilities, rampant unemployment, a disintegrating educational system, unclean and contaminated drinking water, and on the other, a few percent of their fellowmen is progressing by leaps and bounds?
After all, it is no good that a few percent lives of a well-to-do population of a country may flourish at the expense of the lives of its majority population. Freedom is for all the people. If its fruits are not allowed to touch the level of all the segments of the society or made unlawful for them, it is a fact that human beings have the instinct to despair of their country no matter it is running by their own people. At that time, they start comparing their rulers to foreign masters and arrive at the conclusion that they were far better than those of their countrymen conducting the affairs of the government.
The similar situation has, no doubt, occurred in Pakistan. It is certain that the people have now openly started speaking ill of the founder of the nation. In this regard, an onerous responsibility devolves on the shoulders of the Press. They do not publish the truth lest the rulers should feel offended at their acts of publishing the facts and made them the victims of their excesses. This is the main reason that the rulers remain quite unaware of what the majority of their population thinks about them and they (the rulers) disappear by asserting that they have spared no efforts in rendering better services to their people.
Here are some pertinent questions: What have the majority people to do with such sort of freedom where they are dying of extreme hunger or committing suicides? Have they to lick it when they are forced to leading their life below the poverty line? What is the use having a country when its majority people do not have had enough clothes to cover their bodies? Is it not a sin that they and their children may live in rags and the progeny of the rulers live in all kinds of comforts and luxuries? What have the poor to do with their country as to when they and their offspring do not have enough money for their medical treatment? Again, what is the use of an independent country for its youth when they have to run from pillar to post for the jobs and may have been a regular source of burden to their poor parents/guardians? Again, what is the use having their own masters when the people do not have clean and fresh water for drinking even after the lapse of 56 years, nothing to speak of other basic needs of life?
(TO BE CONTINUED)