GUARDIAN ANGELS BEHIND PAKISTAN
Qaid-i-Azam has been aptly described as the architect of Pakistan. But for his far-sighted, fearless and selfless leadership, Muslims now within the territories of Pakistan, Western as well as Eastern, would have met the grim fate that was visited upon those in East Punjab and Delhi. The plans to liquidate Islam and Muslims and make India a land of Hindus, of Hindu faith and Hindu culture, were laid long long ago when the first streak of Hindu nationalism dawned on Hindu leaders like Tilak Gokhale, Lajpat Rai and others. That was a period when Muslims were a mere nonentity in the political picture of India. The question “What to do with Muslims when India has attained freedom” was posed by Hindu leaders among themselves and the views it elicited show that the Muslim question has always proved a shorn in the side of Mother India. It must not be forgotten that unlike any other people in the world Hindus attach to the soil of India a sanctity which borders on Divinity. Devotion to Mother India is no mere patriotic sentiment with a Hindu. It is part and parcel of his religion. That is at the back of the extreme intolerance shown towards everything alien. In this paper we have been reproducing speeches by Mahasabha leaders like Moonje, Savarkar and many others, openly preaching from Presidential chairs of the Sabha conferences that Muslims in India occupied the same position in India as the Jews did in Nazi Germany, that India was the land of the Hindus and Hinduism was the official religion of the land. All this is recorded history. Extermination of Islam and Muslims has thus been a long-cherished dream of the Hindu mind. What happened in East Punjab was but a logical sequel to that mentality. If, however that dream could not see fullest fulfilment, if the whole of Bharat Varsha could not be purged of malecha Muslims, if a big slice of the country has been saved for Islam and Muslims, if this greatest Muslim and fifth largest country in the whole world has been carved out in the midst of such subtle and deep-laid designs, it has been due entirely to the leadership of Qaid-i-Azam Jinnah.
This is what every Muslim feels in his heart of hearts and gratefully acknowledges. There is however a deep aspect of the whole of this remarkable phenomenon which few eyes seem to have noticed. Pakistan is no common event. We have called it a phenomenon and a phenomenon it undoubtedly is. Like the eruption of a mountain, the disappearance of a river, the sinking or emerging of an island, Pakistan also is a phenomenon and has, working behind it, some definite forces of Nature. And the Qaid-i-Azam has been only the fortunate instrument in the hands of these forces, but for these forces, no amount of human ingenuity – not even that of the Qaid-i-Azam – could have brought Pakistan into existence or having brought it into existence; saved it from, extinction at its very birth.
The impossibility of the creation of Pakistan is a story too well-known to need recapitulation. Britain, the ruling power would not think of it. “You cannot change geography”, said Lord Wavell. World opinion, including Muslim countries, failed to understand a thing so preposterous on the face of it and considered it wicked on the part of Muslims to make a silly demand like this. Muslims shouted themselves hoarse that under a united India, with Hindu majority dumped on their heads, their very existence was in danger. Nobody believed them. On the other hand, the world dubbed them “communists” “unpatriotic”, British “stooges” and what not. Hindu propaganda abroad had done its job with right Hitlerian thoroughness and blacked out the true state of things. As to Hindus, they considered Pakistan an unspeakable profanity, too horrible to think of. Even the good Mahatmaji put it down as cutting up the cow in twain and till the last moment put the whole weight of his forceful personality against partition. Pakistan, however, was destined to come and it came in the teeth of this universal opposition.
What followed, however, shows more vividly that behind all this worked the invisible Hand of Providence. Pakistan was conceded but behind this apparent surrender was the ill-concealed determination that it was only a matter of a few days when Pakistan would have to beg on bended knees to be reunited to India. Pandit Nehru who now says that even if Pakistan made a request to be reunited, he would not consider it, spoke in a different strain then. The U. P. Assembly Speaker actually called upon the Hindu youth that the country looked to their strength of arm for undoing this sacrilege and reuniting the Bharat. Almost every Hindu leader thought so and spoke so. The East Punjab tragedy, unprecedented in history, was planned and prepared in advance – a catastrophe which should have broken the backbone of a well-established State. That Pakistan survived this gigantic onslaught is nothing short of a miracle. If the emergence of Pakistan was the first miracle, its survival after such a well-aimed and overwhelming blow was the second miracle that followed it in quick succession.
Other events, however, were yet in store, each one of which by itself stands out as miraculous. First of all, the hopeless weakness of Pakistan. It was a State practically without a rifle or a bullet to defend itself, with a spiteful enemy standing right at the door. The most sanguine resident of Lahore could not on earth understand how the general stampede which had driven millions of Muslims out of East Punjab could be averted, in case of an attack from across the border. Master Tara Singh the modern Nero of the East Punjab conflagration boastfully declared that if he were given, just two Divisions he could drive Muslims out of Western Punjab across the Indus. Yet Pakistan has not only stood its ground. It has turned the tables on Tara Singh & Co. Instead of two Divisions that he wanted to end Pakistan, there are now operating full three Indian Divisions in Kashmir and they cannot cope with a handful of “raiders”. A few irregular, ill-equipped, ill rationed leaderless bands of Muslim fighters have put so much fright in the enemies of Pakistan that they have gone all the way to the UNO, with their hue and cry imploring in God’s name to save them from “these savage Pathans”.
Has all this happened just for nothing? It is as plain as anything that Kashmir has added cent percent to the strength and prestige of Pakistan, whereas it has taken all the wind out of the bravado of Patel, Tara Singh & Co. Even a sceptic will not dare deny that the Kashmir event turned up just at the right moment, as if to lend a helping hand to Baby Pakistan on its way to strength and stability. This one event has turned the trembling baby into a terror to India. The Sikhs in Gurdaspur, Amritsar and Jullundur are deserting their homes at mere rumours of the approach of Pathans. Is it a mere chance that from an easy prey which India considered Pakistan to be the latter has become a power to be counted with? Even a sceptic dares not deny the miraculous nature of these developments.
Mahatma Gandhi’s death, which has been mourned by the whole of Pakistan and mourned most sincerely, comes in as another very important link in the chain of extraordinary events which have led to the strengthening of Pakistan. It is not only extraordinary. It baffles all human understanding, all human explanations. The assassination of a man like Mahatma Gandhi at the hand of a Hindu and as a result of a whole conspiracy involving top-ranking figures of Hindu society is no ordinary event. One would much rather disbelieve one’s eyes and ears than accept as true the fact that Mahatma Gandhi has been actually killed and by a Hindu, with the backing of two most potent and militant Hindu organizations, the Mahasabha and the Sangh. And yet the incredible has actually come to pass. Why? Is it just for nothing that an event like this which has convulsed the whole of the world has taken place?
Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination is the loudest possible proclamation to the world at large that the Muslims fears of Hindu designs against their very existence were well-founded. Hindu propaganda had been busy for a quarter of a century, trumpeting on the one hand the gospel of love and tolerance for which Hindu society stood and the fanatical narrow communal outlook of Muslims on the other. As said before, even Muslim countries had fallen victim to this clever propaganda. Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination has shown the world where the truth lies. It has convinced everybody abroad that Hindus would not spare even a man of the Mahatma’s moral heights, if he stands in the way of their designs against Muslims.
What is it that poor Gandhi, lifelong servant and benefactor of India, has been punished for? His only crime was that he did not approve of the Hindus’ studied campaign of extermination of Muslims of which he was an eyewitness, so far as Delhi is concerned. First, he undertook a fast against it and thereby averted a well-planned offensive against Muslims which was about to break out. This was too much for militant Hinduism which decided that the man who stood between it and Muslim extermination must be removed out of the way once for all! That is the significance behind the bullets of Nathuram Vinayak Godse, the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi.
This has exposed as nothing in the world could have done the hollowness of Hindu propaganda that Muslims’ fears of Hindu domination were unfounded. With a single stroke the conviction had been driven home to everybody who counts in world affairs that Hindus are by no means the harmless lambs that they had been painted to be and that what Muslims apprehended was turning out too true. And mark the beauty of this counterblast designed by the hand of Nature. The very man, Mahatma Gandhi, who had served as the instrument of Hindu propaganda as to the high humanitarian qualities of Hindu culture has been chosen to become the instrument to explode that myth.
It is not for nothing that Ayyangar and Setalvad are talking of withdrawing their case from the Security Council? India stands damned before world conscience. Gandhiji’s assassination has pronounced Divine judgment on the dark designs of the Hindus against Muslims and Pakistan. India’s credit in foreign countries which had been boosted up by propaganda tricks stands at the lowest ebb. Pakistan’s integrity has been vindicated.
The Baby State which Hindu machinations had conspired to strangulate at its very birth is hardly six months old when it has turned the tables on those who wanted to finish it. On the field of battle, Kashmir has pricked Patel’s bubble of self-conceit. In the field of international prestige and good name, which till yesterday was the monopoly of India vis-a-vis Pakistan. Mother India’s face stands tarnished with the blackest brush known to history. Are all these just chances, mere freaks of fortune? He who thinks so must be stark blind. Kashmir and Gandhi’s assassination are both Providential arrangements. Pakistan is the act of God. Behind Pakistan are working His good guardian angels, coining to its rescue through ways beyond common human ken.
Muhammad Yaqub Khan
(Editor: The Light – February 8, 1948)
