The day of unity, faith and discipline

The common people called ‘awaam’ across the country always exhibited enthusiastically their feelings about 14 August and 23rd March but their memory now appears to have been overshadowed by social and economic problems compounded by wrangle over administrative system.

Fight for political power among parties dividing the masses in name of democracy from national to local level and waste of precious time and energy may be another factor which diverted the people’s attention from struggle for Pakistan.

Until closed down in 1998, Pakistan National Centres played a vital role regarding social and economic development of the country and its security, integrity and survival by promoting harmony and unity.

The print media objectively continues to project the cause of the welfare state as envisioned by Allama Iqbal and Ch. Rahmat Ali who coined and proposed the word Pakistan, and Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah who worked hard for freedom from imperialists. However, it’s the city olds who, by way of encouraging the economically and politically saddened citizens, proudly say March 23 is a day of rejoicing because on this day in 1940 was passed a resolution which demanded an independent homeland for Muslims in South Asia. The resolution brought about a revolutionary change in the people’s outlook.

The government-people ties after the death of the Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah and murder of Liaquat Ali Khan have not been smooth.

It is the senior teachers, selfless poets and writer and professional journalists who tell the exploited masses on Pakistan Day about the first observation the founder of Pakistan had made in the Assembly: “The first duty of a government is to maintain law and order, so that the life, property and religious belief of its subjects are fully protected by the state; if we want to make this great state of Pakistan happy and prosperous we should wholly and solely concentrate on the well-being of the people, especially of the masses and the poor.”

Today, Pakistan seems lurching from one crisis to another.

Worth recalling is the fact that in 1938, under Mr. Jinnah’s leadership, the Muslim League formally repudiated the federal scheme of the Government of India Act 1935, and began considering other constitutional possibilities. In 1939 it declared Muslim India was ‘irrevocably opposed’ to any federal objective; and in March 1940 was passed the Lahore Resolution, demanding the partition of India and formation of the Muslim majority zones of the north-west and north-east into an independent sovereign state. Thus, ostensibly, the party accepted as its goal the chimerical scheme of students led by Ch. Rahmat Ali.

The great task both Ch Rahmat Ali and the Quaid-i-Azam had taken upon themselves couldn’t be accomplished in their life-time, hence the question: What to do on Pakistan Day?

The answer is: Revisit the selfless student leader and the Pakistan National Movement (PNM) founded by him in 1933, and now kept alive by senior citizens and many old professors and freedom movement workers.

On Pakistan Day every citizen is morally bound to unite for realization of the vision of the Quaid-i-Azam and Ch. Rahmat Ali.

— zasarwar@hotmail.com