There could be no doubt about Mumtaz Dualtana’s intellectual orientation, which was towards a socialist ideology, but there was no practical manifestation of it. The basic reason behind this was his struggle for power with landlords like Iftikhar Hussain Mamdot and Firoz Khan Noon.

Daultana, the son of Khan Bahadur Mian Ahmed Yar Khan Daultana, hailed from, Luddan in Vehari district. His support base was firmly entrenched among the landlords of Multan, Sargodha, and Rawalpindi districts. It included Nawab Sajjad Ali Khan, the brother of Nawabzada Liaquat Ali Khan and Sardar Shaukat Hayat Khan, the son of Sir Sikander Hayat Khan. Daultana, an Oxford graduate, rose to eminence after the demise of his father on August 6, 1940.

Both Daultana and Sardar Shaukat rendered valuable services for the Muslim League in upstaging Khizar Hayat Khan. They played a vital role in the League’s campaign in the Punjab by taking the message of Pakistan to the countryside. They toured most of the areas in the Punjab and addressed conferences at Montgomery (now Sahiwal), Lyallpur (now Faisalabad), Sheikhupura, Sargodha, Jhang, Sialkot and Rawalpindi. These conferences attracted large audiences.

In 1946, Mamdot was elected president of the Punjab chapter of the League and Daultana its general secretary. With independence and partition in 1947, Mamdot became chief minister of the Punjab and Daultana a minister in his cabinet. Soon, however, a factional conflict started between them for gaining control of the province and the party.

Within a few months, Daultana and Hayat had started protesting against Mamdot, alleging that he was relying upon the advice of some of his friends, particularly Hamid Nizami, then editor of Nawa-i-Waqt, instead of his cabinet. They threatened to resign. In this conflict, Mamdot lost his ministry and was forced to leave the party. The provincial government was put under the control of Governor Francis Mudie.

Daultana was eventually elected president of the Punjab Muslim League in 1949 and chief minister of Punjab on April 15, 1951, only to be replaced by another beneficiary of factional politics—Firoz Khan Noon—on April 3, 1953. Daultana’s government was accused of failing to quell the anti-Ahmadiya movement, which turned into a rebellion against the state. Subsequently, the army took over control on March 6, 1953, by imposing martial law. Daultana resigned on the advice of the then prime minister, Khawaja Nazimuddin. Daultana’s cabinet, which contained only one refugee politician, was described as a ‘cabinet of landlords’.

Daultana advocated land reforms but never spoke for radical ‘land to the tiller’ reforms. As head of the agrarian reforms committee he recommended modest reforms. The council of the Pakistan Muslim League had, in its very first meeting (from February 19 to February 21, 1949), directed the Working Committee of the party to study the flaws in the existing land tenure system in the country, and to recommend suitable proposals to fix those flaws. This was mainly in response to several clashes and riots between tenants and landlords and subsequent growing tensions among rural classes.

In response, the Working Committee constituted an ‘Agrarian Committee’, headed by Daultana, on April 12. Begum Shah Nawaz, Khan Abdul Qayyum Khan, Qazi Muhammad Isa, and Haji Akbar Shah were the other members of the committee, which recommended that an evolutionary, rather than a revolutionary, programme for economic reform was needed in the agrarian sector.

The committee’s recommendations were: first, that the land ownership ceiling should be set at 150 acres for irrigated land, 300 acres for semi-irrigated land, and 450 acres for un-irrigated land; second, that land in excess of the ceiling should be acquired by the government, either gradually or in one move (depending upon the circumstances); third, that considerable compensation should be made for the expropriation of large landed estates; fourth, that legislation be made in order to stop landowners’ expanding estates by way of purchase, gift or inheritance; fifth, that land acquired through ceilings should be distributed among landless tenants, agricultural farm labourers, and small landholders; sixth, that right to ownership be considered for occupancy tenants, tenants-at-will, landless labourers, and village artisans under certain rules and conditions; seventh, that haboob and begaar should be abolished; and eighth, that the tiller’s share of the crop be regularised.

Daultana’s government was accused of failing to quell the anti-Ahmadiya movement, which turned into a rebellion against the state. Subsequently, the army took over control on March 6, 1953, by imposing martial law. Daultana resigned on the advice of the then prime minister, Khawaja Nazimuddin.

Again Daultana went for moderate land reforms when he became the chief minister of Punjab. It is related that Daultana led a group of legislators who proposed a moderate set of land reforms in September 1951 in Punjab Assembly. The landed aristocrats responded swiftly and resolutely. For instance, in one meeting, the assumed ‘leader’ of the anti-reforms group, Syed Naubahar Shah, dramatically waved his cap and declared that his land, like his cap, belonged to him. Incidents and arguments such as this led to significant amendments in the wording of the bill, a final—much more muted—form of which came to fruition as the Daultana Land Reforms was, in fact, an amended version of The Punjab Protection and Restoration of Tenancy Rights Act, 1950.

However, these reforms included some additional clauses, too: the share of the tenant being increased from 50 per cent to 60 per cent in proportion to the share of the landlord; the abolition of jagirs without compensation; the regulation of the khud-kasht (owner-cultivated-area), and so on. These reforms also stipulated that the payment of land revenue was the responsibility of the landowners whereas inputs (seeds and other expenses) would be shared equally.

Critics dubbed these reforms as merely ‘cosmetic’. However, one of the clauses that was inserted in the first recommendation had to be removed—the idea of land ceilings. Actions such as that of Syed Naubahar Shah had been instrumental in forcing this change, and in effecting the deletion of this clause. The absence of such a ceiling meant that the primary change was only to the share of the tenants. This was, on the whole, not enough of a change.

Apart from this, Daultana collaborated with the local officials and bureaucrats to ensure the victory of his valued allies (landlords, rather than peasants or workers) by practising two key strategies—electoral rigging and gerrymandering. AM Khan Leghari’s official report on the 1952 elections to the district boards in Sargodha found that Daultana’s government collaborated with local officials and bureaucrats to amend both electoral rules and the demarcation of the electoral constituencies, in order to favour particular candidates. For example, some purely urban or semi-urban constituencies—where a majority of voters lived in cities—were demarcated in such a way that they became rural-urban constituencies with a majority of the voting demographic living in rural areas. In such constituencies, landed aristocrats from rural areas were inevitably elected.

Daultana’s policies and efforts to protect the landed interests also received severe criticism from peasant leaders such as Chaudhary Fateh Muhammad and Sheikh Muhammad Rashid. They alleged that Daultana had, for instance, formed his own Kisan Committee to counter the increasing popularity and influence of the Punjab Kisan Tehreek, mainly, by dividing the peasantry. Moreover, Daultana countered leftist parties by appropriating their slogan of land reforms. Hence any distinction in the manifestos of the parties locked in power struggle could hardly be made. These strategies, definitely, served the interests of the landlords rather than the peasantry.

Daultana and other landlords such as Mamdot and Noon were rivals only for their personal pre-eminence and power and there were no perceptible policy differences among them. It is amazing, but a fact nevertheless, that higher education and exposure to the values and ways of modernity do little to overcome the deeply ingrained influences of a feudal upbringing. They all partook of the same frame of mind.

The writer has a PhD in history from Shanghai University and is a lecturer at GCU, Faisalabad. He can be contacted at mazharabbasgondal87@gmail.com