FIFTH COLUMNIST WITHIN YOU – 1947

We have been hearing of Muslims who have been actually aiding and abetting the machinations of the foes of Pakistan for the proverbial mess of pottage. From the Amritsar black sheep who sold rifles meant to defend Muslims in that town to those bent upon the destruction of Muslims, up to Sh. Abdullah of Kashmir who is just now selling his people to the Dogra for a little personal aggrandizement, all are traitors to Pakistan and fall under the category technically known as Fifth columnists. So are the Pakistan officials who have been helping the smuggling of essential commodities out of Pakistan in return for dirty lucre. The percentage of such deliberate saboteurs, however, is very small. The average Musalman is now devoted heart and soul to Pakistan. He is convinced that his very existence is bound up with Pakistan. And yet we are afraid 99 per cent of those of us so thoroughly devoted to Pakistan are at the same time suffering from the same evil known as Fifth Column, the only difference being that their sabotage is unconscious and in very many cases they weaken Pakistan with the best of intentions. In smaller or greater degree this kind of Fifth-columnism is found within almost all of us, within the writer as well as within you, dear reader, if you would permit us to say so. Let us explain how.

Ten crores of Muslims are just now in the thick of a life and death struggle. We have to deal with foe before whose barbarity, Hitler, Goebells and the worst of Nazi´s were angels. Conquest of one country by another has been going on throughout history. But wholesale extermination of the vanquished foe is met with nowhere in history, ancient or modern – not even the recent history of Fascism in Germany, Italy or Japan. It has been the exclusive peculiarity of the Hindu culture. Thousands of years ago when the ancient Aryans, ancestors of the present-day Hindus swept down the plains of Hindustan they were not content with mere subjugation of the aborigines of this land. They were uprooted from the soil of their birth root and branch. The whole race was exterminated. Their very faith and culture were wiped off the face of their homeland. And such of them as survived this process of extermination by taking shelter in far off inaccessible or hills and jungles have from generation to generation for thousands of years past, been subjected to the most grinding slavery known to the recorded or unrecorded annals of mankind. That exactly was the process repeated in East Punjab, in Patiala, in Kapurthala, in Faridkot, in Alwar, in Bharatpur. Hundreds of thousands of Muslims, who had been living there for generations were unceremoniously put to the sword. That is the process carried on just now by the combined forces of Hari Singh and Patel in Kashmir where, after this mass massacre of Muslims, Pandit Nehru proposes to hold a referendum over the dead bodies of Muslims.

This is the struggle that Destiny has forced on the present generation  of Muslims – a struggle fraught with devastating consequences, a struggle which threatens to leave not a vestige of Islam in India from Wagah (only 10 miles from Lahore) right up to Delhi – in the whole of this territory, would you believe it, the cry of Allah-o-Akbar which till August 15 used to ring five times a day from thousands of mosques has  now been hushed for ever. That is what is going to happen to the whole of this sub-continent including Pakistan, so far as Hindu-Sikh designs are concerned. Pandit Pant has from his Premier’s gaddi called upon U. P. Muslims to wind up the Muslim League. Even that sweet Nightingale of India, Mrs. Naidu, from her high seat as Governor of that Province, advised Muslims to forget their past and take to the learning of Hindi and Sanskrit. As to Patel, he is out to wipe out the very memory of Islamic association. During his recent visit to Junagadh, the other day, he made it a point to visit the ruins of the historic temple of Somnath and gloated, in triumphant strains: “This is the temple which 900 years ago was ransacked by Mahmud of Ghazni. It shall now have the biggest idol deities once again installed in it”.

We put it to every Muslim, man or woman, old or young : Are you alive to this gigantic struggle that is on and, if so, are you making an all-out effort to save Pakistan and Islam from these dark forces that are fast mobilizing to finish Islam and Muslims once for all and make this is sub-continent once again the land of Hindu faith and culture? If not, excuse us to tell you point-black is that you are an unconscious Fifth columnist, strengthening by your very inertia or negligence or any other lapses that you may have, the hands of the foes to undermine Pakistan and Islam.

An official of Pakistan, whether a minister or a chaprasi, who is corrupt or given to nepotism or does not put in the maximum of work, is a Fifth columnist. A young man who does not cultivate to the full his intellectual, moral and physical faculties in order to be able to make a worthy contribution towards the national cause is a Fifth columnist. If Islam is at all to survive the present crisis, it needs all-out effort by every citizen of the State of Pakistan, from the highest, to the humblest. And anyone, whatever his walk of life or sphere of activity, who does not pull his full weight in this national struggle for the very existence of the faith and culture of Islam, is a Quisling in disguise, though, of course, unwittingly and on a smaller scale.

There is, however, one aspect of our national life, in respect of which we feel we are Fifth columnists on a national scale, almost every one of us being vitiated with the same poison. This is the spiritual aspect of our life. It is our firm belief that the present calamities with which Muslims find themselves hemmed in on all sides is the wrath of God visited on them for their turning away from the path of God. God has practically no place in our thoughts or hearts or life. We have absolutely use for God. As a matter of dead form, His name may be on our lips. But that is not much use. Faith in God, to be something live and dynamic, must sink into the subconscious mind, become part and parcel of our being and illumine and inspire the deepest springs of our thought and conduct. That was what Islam meant in its hey-day. That is what Islam means to-day. And that is exactly what in almost every one of us is conspicuous by its absence.

At the battle of Badr the handful of Muslims were in a similar   situation. Far outnumbered by the foe, the ill-equipped Muslim warriors were faced with utter extinction.  But they were Muslims of different brand. Their leadership was different. The Prophet ﷺ in person constituted their High Command. And how did he meet the situation? The whole night in a hut on the field of battle, he stood and bowed in supplications before Almighty God with deep devotion in his heart and tears in his eyes. “O God Almighty!” he was heard to murmur “if this day You allow this handful of Thy servants to perish, never in future, shall Thy name be glorified on earth!” And this worked more than a battalion. The battle ended in a signal victory for Muslims.

How far is our attitude in the present national crisis modelled on anything like this pattern? Let every one of us pause and ponder – the Ministers of State as well as the common citizen. God blessed us with the greatest blessing known to history in granting us Pakistan, but it left us untouched, so far as this inner mental attitude towards the Creator and Bestower Of all favours is concerned. Our hearts should have overflowed with gratitude to Him for this unique favour. But in this hour of victory not once did our thoughts turn to Him in thanksgiving. Then came the greatest tribulations known to history. This also failed to touch our hearts and bring about any change in us. Neither in the hour of the greatest blessing nor in that of unprecedented misery did we turn towards God. And like the Jews of old whom the Quran depicts as   ثُمَّ قَسَتْ قُلُوبُكُم   our hearts have actually become God-proof (Al-Baqara (The Cow) 2:74)

This, to our mind, constitutes the greatest danger of Islam and Pakistan. There is much talk and quite honest talk of building up Pakistan. The press, the platform, the radio, every machinery has been harnessed to the reconstruction of Islamic life. But if there is one big force which has been left quite untapped, it is God, the fountainhead of all light and strength.

This Islam-minus-God attitude will not do. We are engaged in a total war. It is an all-out struggle between Islam and the forces of Kufr in this land which are out to banish Islam bag and baggage. A situation like this cannot be met by the kind of divided loyalty that we are giving Islam. Unless we rediscover this very, core of Islam, viz., God, as a living Reality, we are missing the one Force which can pull Islam and Pakistan through the present crisis. As it is, however, there is hardly one in a thousand Muslims who has even an intellectual realization, to say nothing of practical implementation, of this urgent national need of Pakistan. And that is what we mean when we say that almost every one of us carries within himself the deadly germs of Fifth-columnism, in so far as he turns a blind eye to this greatest ever-ready Force and thereby weakens the foundations of Pakistan. The Mard-i-Momin is the greatest asset of Pakistan. Anyone who does not in this present crisis pull himself up to that spiritual stature is decidedly acting as a Fifth columnist and a more dangerous Fifth columnist at that. Whether Pakistan ultimately lives or falls shall depend not so much on the number of our Air Force Squads or Tanks or Armoured Corps, as on this spiritual background of our national life, which alone can sustain and infuse life into our material resources and equipment.

M.Y.K.

(The Light – Monday,  November 24, 1947)