Pakistan kaise bana Book launched at Arts Council Karachi
The second edition of the book titled Pakistan kaise bana by Zahid Chaudhry and Hasan Jaffer Zaidi was launched at the Arts Council Karachi on Friday.
Former finance minister Dr Mubashir Hasan, who presided over the event, said everything written in the book was based on facts. He argued no one could hold back the bigger movements in history. For example, when feudalism was rendered ineffective in Europe it paved the way for monarchy (badshahat). Similarly, in the 18th century nation-states began to emerge on the global map and the trend was still on. He claimed the creation of new countries could not be stopped. “The one who favours the creation of a new country becomes a leader,” he opined.
Dr Hasan said Pakistan came into being because Muslims had ruled the Subcontinent for centuries, and after Aurangzeb’s death their decline was imminent. He told the gathering that in 1888 Sir Syed delivered a speech in Meerut in which he had commented that after the British pulled out of India, Hindus and Muslims could not be able to share power and therefore bloodshed was inevitable.
According to Sir Syed, if Muslims did not beat Hindus, their brethren from north-west would help them attain victory. Dr Hasan said Muslims’ struggle for power was not for religious reasons but for the fact that when Muslims ruled, their army and its commander belonged to their religion. He said in the past the judiciary comprised people who knew the sharia, which was why today the mullahs had a stake in the country because they wanted to be ‘judges’.
Dr Hasan said for 34 years (till 1940) Mohammad Ali Jinnah was an all-India leader, a flag-bearer of Hindu-Muslim unity. Then Jinnah realised what Muslims wanted, just like when in 1965 the people of Punjab realised that India could not be their friend and when they heard this sentiment from Z.A. Bhutto, they fell in love with him. He maintained leaders could not control or shape the significant changes that occurred in history; the one who had his/her finger on the pulse of history became a leader. He also talked with affection about the co-author of the book, the late Zahid Chaudhry.
Media person Ghazi Salahuddin said it was important to know what happened in history. He likened it to a patient’s visit to a psychiatrist who tried to find out the details of the patient’s childhood so that his/her problem could be identified. He added it was also important to be aware of the facts because we lived in a time when intellectual and economic degradation had already caused great harm to society.
Journalist Nazir Leghari said the establishment could never succeed in what it was trying to tell the people for the last 64 years. He added we did not know about the dialectical history of Pakistan because we were never taught that.
Writer Zahida Hina lamented that in our society second-rate works of literature were received with critical acclaim but nobody gave a hoot about historians or their work. She said the book discussed the impacts of the Second World War, the dropping of atom bomb in Japan and the independent movements that took place in India, including the bloody
struggle for Pakistan’s independence.
Dr Masooma Hasan confessed she had not read the whole of the two-volume book and argued that the real history of a revolution or war could be written at least 100 years after they had taken place, because by that time all of the relevant material (official or unofficial documents) was readily available.
The co-author of the book Hasan Jaffer Zaidi (the chief guest of the event) said it was important to find the answer to the question how Pakistan was made because the answer that the establishment had given to the query was false and the fallacy was imposed on the country with consistency.
(Dawn)
