Sultana Daku still hero of the poor?

A youth developed in his mind a novel idea of social and economic justice during his childhood when he saw the landlords and capitalists flourish at the expense of the lower class of society by a system which the pro-poor considered vicious, wicked and based on self-interest. So he decided to take back the money from the persons he called the exploiters and ‘looters’ and return the same to the victims of the greedy rich. That man soon became most popular among the masses.
The surviving old citizens of Rawalpindi and Islamabad — even in Lahore and Karachi — have not forgotten Bijnore in whose administrative set-up were included Nagina, Najibabad and Sherkot etc.
Years before the Partition of 1947, Bijnore had earned unique fame for its progressive social, economic and democratic life reflecting all the colours of the rainbow. Elders say Sir Syed Ahmad Khan served that district as a ‘munsaf’ (judge) for some time.
People of Bijnore moved to various cities of the Punjab, for instance Lahore and Rawalpindi, to establish themselves as teachers, traders and publishers of books and periodicals. Bijnore House was built Sheranwala Gate to temporarily solve the housing problem of people coming from the said district in search of employment in public and private sectors.
Bijnore produced a number of poets and writers and revolutionaries who were in fact wedded to the cause of the downtrodden as were some enlightened non-Muslims. But the man who won the hearts and minds of the lower segment of society exploited by the ‘mahajan’, the capitalist and the landlord of the area was Sultan nicknamed Sultana Daku by the then ‘ajnabi’ (foreign) rulers.
He was in fact the youth who rebelled against the prevalent system born out of feudalism and capitalism; he laid his hands upon the usurers and returned the money to individuals and families looted by the rich who flourished at the expense of others. That’s why he was called and is still remembered as ‘Sher-i-Bijnore’ by social and economic justice seeking masses.
Sultana was so smart in his action against the moneyed class of self-interest that police could never succeed to catch him, because the suffering masses were at his back.
“Anyhow, he was trapped by a gentle looking ‘banya’ informer and handed over to the administration; he was hanged to death in Najibabad secretly for fear of violent protest against the then government”, disclosed to this scribe octogenarian accountant Ataullah Khan the other day.
City olds assert there was basically no difference in the outlook of Sultana and that of Mohammad Ali Jinnah on socio-economic life: they differed in the modus operandi to evolve an exploitation-free society. There were hundreds of thousands who struggled for such a society, one of them being Maulana Mazharuddin of Bijnore who out of respect called Jinnah Quaid-i-Azam (great leader). He was murdered by a fanatic in his newspaper office in New Delhi.
Many lovers of liberators of the poor from economic slavery migrated to Lahore and Rawalpindi, hoping freedom from exploitation, but they seem disappointed. Hence, they recall the pro-poor adventures of ‘Lion of Bijnore’ as well as vision of the Quaid encompassing the common man’s welfare.
One of ‘The News’ readers says he heard from his aunt that Sultana Daku was a respected friend of her father and “at one point Sultana and his mates came to help him upfront in need of time; after that incident our family at that time in Bijnore was considered to be the relatives of Sultana”.
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