NON-FICTION: THE SAGA OF YAHYA KHAN

Shuja Nawaz Published January 24, 2021

Yahya Khan (centre) with Lt Gen Abdul Hamid Khan (left) and Air Marshal Abdul Rahim Khan (right) in East Pakistan | Dawn file photo

The man who comprehensively lost a war against India — and thereby lost half his country — Gen Agha Mohammad Yahya Khan deserves a full and accurate telling of his story and the story of how the Pakistan Army dutifully followed him into the abyss.

This slim volume — General Agha Mohammad Yahya Khan: The Rise and Fall of a Soldier 1947-1971 by Brig (Retd) A.R. Siddiqi — is not that book, especially since the author was responsible for Gen Yahya’s image-building during the critical waning period of his rule.

It brings to mind the title of the classic autobiography of Gen Sir Francis Tuker, the last British commander in Eastern India, who presided over the end of the British “watch and ward” function in the colony before its independence in 1947. While Memory Serves was Gen Tuker’s title. Brig Siddiqi, a journalist inducted by direct selection into the public relations branch of the military, and author of two previous and most useful books on the military, ends his new book with the coda “Reproduced as best as memory serves.”

Gen Tuker relied heavily on detailed contemporaneous diaries and notes; Brig Siddiqi’s book is an amalgam of anecdote and war stories without the sourcing and overarching contextual analysis that would peel back the layers of the onion that is the Pakistani military, and its fraught relationship with the country’s politics. It also appears to rely on segments of the author’s more useful and less hagiographic The Military in Pakistan: Image and Reality. The result is a gap-toothed volume that provides some interesting glimpses, but leaves you wanting for more. Brig Siddiqi needed a heavy dose of fact-checking and detail on Gen Yahya and the events that brought him to the pinnacle of power and his fall from grace.

Gen Yahya belonged to the generation of the British Indian Army that acquired the habits and accent of the British. But, unlike some of his colleagues in both independent Pakistan and India, he was not a reader or deep thinker. Rather, he saw himself as a man of action. Luckily for him, he became a favourite of Gen Ayub Khan — the first Pakistani army chief — and was carried along in the wake of that relationship into key positions at different stages of his rapid rise in independent Pakistan.

President Ayub Khan reviews the war strategy in Sialkot, 1965 with his military men. Yahya Khan is first from the right | Photo courtesy Vintage Pakistan

Brig Siddiqi refers to his role in the early building of the military relationship with the United States, but fails to note that Gen Yahya, as deputy chief of general staff, was in the first key meetings that then defence secretary Iskander Mirza called to prepare for the meetings with the US military aid review team under Brig Harry Meyers.

Gen Yahya Khan was at the helm of state and the army when Pakistan was torn asunder in 1971. Both he and the armed forces deserve a more full and accurate telling of their stories

Gen Yahya was reportedly also involved in helping Gen Ayub write the plan for the reorganisation of the Pakistan Army. He was also in that small, supporting cast that descended on Karachi when Lt Gen Wajid Ali Khan Burki and others were sent on the dangerous mission to Karachi to inform Mirza that he was no longer needed as president.

Gen Ayub chose to repair to the north at that juncture. Brig Siddiqi notes that, when Gen Ayub decided to relocate the capital from Karachi to the north, Gen Yahya was chosen to lead the team that helped select the site of Islamabad and interact with Doxiadis Associates, the firm that designed the new metropolis outside Rawalpindi.

Earlier in his career, Gen Yahya was among a group of Indian officers captured by the German Afrika Korps in North Africa and handed over to the Italians as prisoners of war. Gen Yahya used to tell the story of his attempts to escape from captivity and always wrongly denigrated Sahibzada Yaqub Khan for not wanting to participate in the prison break.

He told me the same story in his hospital room in Washington DC when he was recovering from a stroke in his waning days. The author retells the story from Gen Yahya’s somewhat flawed perspective. In fact, Yaqub did try to escape and was caught and kept in an Italian camp. Gen Yahya ended up succeeding in a later escape attempt. A more detailed and accurate story of that period is contained in the detailed account by Maj Gen Syed Ali Hamid in The Friday Times.

Gen Yahya’s attitude reflected the general anti-intellectual biases that pervade the military.

Similarly, the author does not identify Maj Gen Thomas “Pete” Rees as Gen Ayub’s division commander in Burma, when Gen Ayub was sent back for “tactical timidity”, as quoted in my own book Crossed Swords: Pakistan, its Army, and the Wars Within and in a more recent piece in The Daily Star.

Fanboy. Yahya Khan with Madam Noor Jehan | Dawn file photo

The repeat of a risqué joke doing the rounds during the Gen Yahya period, about an alleged assignation with the actress Tarana, is also cited as an actual incident without citing a source. Brig Siddiqi was in a position to give much more of the background to events leading to the downfall of Gen Yahya and how the Pakistan Army did an accurate post-mortem after the end of the lost 1971 war with India, and then buried that report in its general headquarters’ Historical Section, keeping it away even from the new President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

Gen Yahya’s role in halting the Chamb offensive short of Akhnoor is told in general terms, but no new information is provided that would help us understand why and how Gen Yahya decided to delay the offensive by 48 hours, giving India a chance to regroup in that critical sector.

The book conveys a keyhole view of events in the public eye. For example, the aborted March 1, 1971 Yahya speech on a new constitutional arrangement for Pakistan that Gen Yahya failed to deliver himself. As mentioned in Crossed Swords, instead of simply introducing Gen Yahya before his live address on Pakistan’s state television, I was told to read the prepared text written in the first person for him. An announcer read the same text on Radio Pakistan.

Was Gen Yahya inebriated, or was there some debate among his staff about that speech? Why was an attempt made to get back the advance text of that speech from foreign journalists and me? As director of the Inter Services Public Relations Directorate, Brig Sidiqqi was in the inner circle and could have shed light on the behind-the-scenes actions that helped explain the chaotic decision-making in the Yahya cabal. For that, we need to go to other sources, often by authors inside and outside Pakistan, who trawled archives and interviewed participants to connect the dots. If the author had approached Maj Saeed Akhtar Malik, whose father was a celebrated general in the 1965 war, he would have learned the following.

Maj Saeed recounts in an email to me his visit soon after the 1971 war, with Brig Gul Mawaz, a decorated Second World War veteran then retired, when the brigadier recounted two episodes about Gen Yahya and Gen A.A.K. Niazi, the man who surrendered in Dacca [Dhaka]. Gul Mawaz and Akhtar Malik were close friends.

Gul Mawaz recalled to Saeed Akhtar Malik: “I was commanding 103 Brigade in Lahore. Niazi was commanding 5 Punjab under me. I thought he was not up to the mark. Thus, I informed him that I would be initiating a report recommending that he should be reduced in rank.

“Within a week of this, when I returned from office, my batman informed me that Brig Akhtar Malik had driven in from Pindi and was occupying the guest bedroom. In the evening, he brought up the issue of Niazi. ‘Listen, Gul,’ he said to me. ‘I know Niazi is not the most brilliant man in the army, but I assure you he is not the very worst lieutenant colonel either, so can’t you just let him be? After all, there is no danger he will end up being a general, is there?’

“I was amazed that he [Niazi] had brought to my door the only man whom he knew I could not refuse. And so I ‘let him be’, as your father put it, and see what he has wrought!

“But in all fairness, let me also relate to you another story. Yahya, your father, Hamid [whom I hated] and I were all instructors at the Staff College together. More than once, your father confided in me what bothered him about Yahya [with whom I had a deep friendship]. It was his view that Yahya was a nice man, but was so given to drink that he frequently crossed the point where he could not cope with his imbibing. He felt certain that one day he will do himself or his friends considerable harm, if not to Pakistan. But I would always brush off his observations by saying that he was being unduly harsh on good old Agha.

“But when [the 1971] war broke out on the western front, I drove over to the President’s House. It was early evening, and I found both Yahya and Hamid pretty high, in advanced stages of inebriation. I was keen to know what their plans for the western front were. Each time I asked him this, Yahya would brush away the question with a wave of his arm, saying that he was the commander-in-chief who launched his forces, and that it was now up to his generals to fight out the war!

“And then his telephone rang. He picked up the receiver, immediately covered it with his hand, and with the smile of a child who had just received the toy of his dreams, he said, ‘Gul, this is Noor Jehan. She is calling from Tokyo…’

“He then made a request that she sing to him ‘Sayeeon nee mera mahi meray bhaag jagawan aa gaya’.

“As he listened to the song, I sat there, stunned. And then disgusted, I left. I never tried to meet him again, nor to speak to him. I have since often thought over what your father warned me so many years [ago] about Yahya, also about what I had thought about Niazi and the action I was about to take with regard to him till your father dissuaded me.

“I guess, most tragically, we were both right — your father about Yahya, and I about Niazi.” Brig Siddiq mentions this call from Noor Jehan, but without the sourcing or detail and background.

The picture Brig Siddiqi paints of Gen Yahya is of a detached and distracted military chief and president, who was being manipulated by competing cliques of subordinates, and had no clear handle on the centrifugal forces that his poorly informed actions unleashed in Pakistan during his short stint as head of state.

Gen Yahya was increasingly out of his depth in terms of knowledge and intelligence from the field, especially from East Pakistan. He played favourites and allowed others to make decisions on his behalf. Some of his subordinates were involved in political machinations with politicians such as Bhutto. He was failed by his subordinates but, in the end, he was the instigator and owner of that failure. Pakistan suffered inestimable damage as a result.

Any book on the military by a retired officer should help readers and civilians in government better understand the army as the predominant institution in the country. Pakistani military officers are not in the habit of writing rigorous, introspective accounts of key historical events. A lifetime in uniform, imprisoned by strict hierarchy, trains them to expect that rank allows them to substitute assertion for arguments supported by sources and references.

Officers who have tried to write meaningful books risk incurring the wrath of the institution, if they break ranks in terms of accepted narratives or divulge stories that do not accord with the standard ‘truths’. A good example is the magisterial work on the 1965 war by Lt Gen Mahmud Ahmed, a serious and well researched work that he began in 1990 and completed after retirement. The army changed the title of his superb book from Illusions of Victory to an anodyne History of Indo-Pak War 1965, and all copies were removed from the marketplace by the army. Outliers are not tolerated.

Another former director general of the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), Lt Gen Asad Durrani, is currently feeling the heat for his non-fiction and fiction writings. The nation as a whole is the poorer as a result of these conditions.

Brig Siddiqi’s slim volume moves the needle of knowledge about the Pakistan army only slightly forward. But, we must wait for others to come forth now on more recent history before Pakistan can recalibrate its moves to a future that strengthens centripetal forces and serves a wider national base, rather than pander to regional, linguistic or institutional biases.

Both Pakistan and its army deserve to be much better informed about themselves.

The reviewer is the founding director and Distinguished Fellow at the South Asia Centre of the Atlantic Council in Washington DC and the author of The Battle for Pakistan: The Bitter US Friendship and a Tough Neighbourhood and Crossed Swords: Pakistan, its Army, and the Wars Within www.shujanawaz.com

General Agha Mohammad Yahya Khan: The Rise and Fall of a Soldier 1947-1971
By Brig (Retd) A.R. Siddiqi
Oxford University Press, Karachi
ISBN: 978-0190701413
167pp.

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, January 24th, 2021

https://www.dawn.com/news/1602835

How successful was the establishment of an independent nation between 1947 and 1948?

• What do you think was the most important reason of violence in 1947? [14]

The most important reason in my opinion was the partition of Punjab and Bengal. I hold the British and Congress equally responsible for this. Muslim League voted for partition of India and Quaid-e-Azam had rightly demanded that Punjab and Bengal must not be divided and Pakistan should be given whole of these provinces. If Quaid-e-Azam’s advice had been followed, violence could have been avoided to a large extent.

The partition of Punjab in particular was more critical than Bengal. It had a sizeable population of the Sikhs who had a history of opposing the Muslims. Partitioning Punjab would definitely have consequences. The British and the concerned parties (the League and the Congress) also did not realise the sensitivity of this issue.

Since British had ruled India for less than 200 years and during this period they had amassed immense wealth from the country which was used to develop and modernise Britain, it was their prime responsibility to make sure partition was safe and secure. The British showed criminal negligence by leaving India immediately, and by leaving Indians at the mercy of circumstances. The British must have stayed back looking after the law and order in the transition period.

Security was not provided to the people in sensitive areas. It wasn’t also provided to the people who were migrating. Indian troops supplied the largest contingent to British Empire. Where were those troops in 1947?

Communal violence had already begun in 1946, and it increased greatly because the British were heedlessly in a hurry to leave India. In the beginning they had announced that India would be partitioned by 1948 but then they forwarded the date by one year. If partition had actually taken place in 1948, and the Boundary Commission had decided the borders in 1947, people would not have panicked that much. They would have had ample time to decide about migration.

In the end I conclude this analysis by establishing that the British were solely responsible for this great violence as they were the rulers of India, they were the in charges of all affairs. They showed a very careless attitude as well as extreme negligence.

• What were the reactions of Pakistan and India to the Radcliffe Award? [7]

Muslims in Pakistan were not satisfied by the Radcliffe Award due to a few important reasons.

Ferozpur (in Punjab) was given to India even though it had a Muslim majority. Since Ferozpur had the head-works which supplied water to parts of Pakistani Punjab, it was of a great economic importance. Gurdaspur also had a Muslim majority and it was also given to India. Jinnah was convinced that this was done deliberately to give India a border with Kashmir and allow it to intervene in areas of Kashmir which Jinnah believed were righty part of Pakistan. The Muslims were also very disappointed that when Bengal was partitioned, Calcutta went to India. The city of Calcutta was the capital of the province and its biggest industrial, commercial and educational centre. The raw material which East Bengal produced had to be sent to Calcutta because all factories and mills were in that city.

The Sikhs (in India) were disappointed because they made up a large proportion of the population in the Punjab and had important historical and religious associations with it. They wanted a separate Sikh state if partition was to go ahead. This wasn’t approved. The Hindus too had some complaints about the Award. For instance, they most resented the fact that the Chittagong Hill Tracts were not awarded to India. These had a large Hindu majority and Nehru believed they should become part of India. However, the Tracts were regarded as having a vital economic relationship with East Bengal, so Radcliffe awarded them to Pakistan. Here it should be noted that Radcliffe had ignored this principle of ‘economy’ in the case of Ferozpur and Calcutta.

• What geographical problems did Pakistan face as a new country in 1947? [7]

An important problem with the partition of India was that both countries came to exist on the basis of demography or more precisely on the basis of religious affiliation. It meant that the boundaries were not drawn along natural borders, such as rivers, mountains or the sea.

Pakistan was split into two separate parts which were more than a 1000 miles apart. This geographical problems led to disrupted and delayed communications. People to people contact was made difficult by the hostile nation of India between the two parts.

This geographical problem also weakened the defense of the country and it consequently led to the fall of East Pakistan in 1971.

Geography of both countries also caused Canal Water Dispute and distribution of river waters between the two countries. It meant that geography negatively affected the relations between the two nations.

• Source

A prominent member of the Constituent Assembly said in 1951:

‘Pakistan is a unique country having two wings which are separated by more than one thousand miles. The two wings differ in all matters except two things: namely that they have a common religion, barring a section of the people in East Pakistan, and we have achieved independence by a common struggle. All other factors, the language, the tradition, the culture, the customs, the dietary habits, the calendar, the standard time – practically everything is different.’

According to this source what problems did Pakistan face in 1951?

The source is highlighting the geographical as well as social problem faced to Pakistan in its early years. Due to the physical distance of over 1000 miles between the two wings of Pakistan, people in the east and the west were socially and culturally different. It meant that ruling such different people required a different approach rather than a traditional one.

• Source

In a speech to government officials on 11 October, 1947, Jinnah said: If we are to exist as a nation and give shape to the dream of Pakistan, we will have to face the problems with determination and force. Our people are disorganised and disheartened by the difficulties we face. Their morale is low and we will have to work harder to pull them out of their despondency and galvanise them to action. All this throws a greater responsibility on government servants, to whom our people look for guidance.’

1. How does Jinnah describe the people of Pakistan this source?

Jinnah is saying that the people are overwhelmed by the problems they are facing. They are disorganized, demoralized and require guidance and support from government officials.

2. What does he see as a possible solution to the people’s problems?

In his view the possible solution was hard work and a sense of responsibility with which the government officials would guide and serve the people.

• Source

In a speech to students at the Islamia College, Peshawar, in 1947, Jinnah said: Our duty to the state takes us beyond provincialism. It often demands that we be ready to submerge individual and provincial interest to the common cause for good. Our duty to the state comes first, then our duty to our province, district, town, village and last, ourselves.

1. To what political problems is Jinnah referring to in this source?

Pakistan was a nascent state, it needed to be established as a viable state. But Jinnah could see provincialism as a problem to the establishment of Pakistan. Provincialism was a hurdle in the nation building process that Pakistan was going through at that time.

2. Why do you think he made this speech?

He made this speech because the audience consisted of students who were prospective leaders of the country. He was trying hard to unite socially and culturally different people as one nation, as Pakistanis.

• Why do you think the Kashmir Issue has still not been resolved? [14]

There are many reasons why this issue is still unresolved:

The most important reason is the attitude and general performance of the United Nations Organisation. It was referred to in 1948, and until 1999 it failed to hold a plebiscite in the region in order to allow the Kashmiri people to decide about their future.

Another reason is poor relations between India and Pakistan since their inception in 1947. Both countries have lacked strong leaders who can take bold steps and make a right decision which should be acceptable to all the parties concerned.

Unfortunately India from day one has attempted to dominate Pakistan due to her larger size and better economy. It illegally occupied the states of Junagarh and Hyderabad Deccan in 1947 and 1948, and sent its troops to Kashmir after a controversial accession to India by the Maharaja. Since India was not willing to talk to Pakistan over Kashmir, Pakistan had no chance but to attempt twice or thrice to look for a military solution. In this atmosphere of hostility and intimidation nothing positive can be achieved.

The British government has played a very important role in this issue exactly as it did in the Palestinian issue. Like Palestine, Non-Muslims were imposed on majority Muslim population using different excuses. For example Gurdaspur was unfairly given to India so that it would have access to Kashmir through this only land route. India sent its troops to Kashmir when the British royal family member and the last viceroy of India (Louise Mountbatten) was serving as the first governor general of India. Throughout 1930s, there had been tensions between the Kashmiri Muslims and their Hindu ruler, but the British failed to realize the sensitivity of this matter as it ignored the Sikh demand in Punjab. The British also did not consider what economic importance Kashmir held for Pakistan as all main rivers flowed through Kashmir.

Lastly the main Kashmiri leadership is influenced by either Pakistan or India. It’s important that Kashmiris have their own independent and indigenous leadership who is not directed or guided by any of the rival countries. This lack of good and strong leadership is a very important factor which is needed for the unity of Kashmiris on either side of the Line of Control.

To wrap up this discussion, I must say that all the above reasons are important and are responsible for this issue being alive until today.

• Some American and Pakistani politicians claim that Kashmir is a nuclear flashpoint. Do you agree? Explain your answer. [14]

This statement shows the sensitivity of the Kashmir issue and that it may lead the two south Asian countries to a nuclear battle. Now this is a debatable question.

Practically, both India and Pakistan became nuclear in 1998 when they officially tested their nuclear weapons. Within a year, the two countries were in the Kargil conflict and they comfortably remained in it without using any nuclear weapons. It should be noted that both the nations have avoided wars since the Kargil war.

There are other reasons why a nuclear war is unlikely between the two countries over any issue including the Kashmir problem. A valid question is what will happen next if both countries fight a nuclear war? They will destroy each other, make peace again and start rebuilding themselves. Is Kashmir worth this heavy price? Absolutely not. I am sure the leadership in both countries is aware of this fact of the matter.

Looking at the warring history of both countries, we see that they always had brief wars, and afterward sat together for a dialogue. It happened because both have other real problems to solve. They have soaring populations with high levels of hunger and disease. They both are developing countries who can’t afford the luxury of a war, let alone a nuclear war.

Human greed has no bounds. Sadly there are some people whose business grow in regional conflicts. They never want peace. Peace does not suit them. Their businesses grow when there’s a high demand of weapons, and coffins. They have better opportunities of business when two neighbours cannot have cheap exchange of goods.

On the basis of the above arguments, I am convinced that even though some people are sincerely hoping that Kashmir issue will be resolved, there are some other people who are just playing with words to serve their own unknown purposes. And therefore, I do not agree that Kashmir is a nuclear flashpoint.  

• How grave was the refugee crisis in 1947? [7]

At the time of its inception in 1947, Pakistan was facing so many challenges. It lacked resources with which to deal with them. For example immediately after partition it was forced to fight a war over Kashmir. This war led to other problems such as the Canal Water Dispute, transfer of financial and military assets. There were other problems too, e.g. the distance between the two parts of the country, challenges for nation building etc. All these were made worse by a weak economy.

When millions moved across the border, the newborn country was faced to challenge of refugee rehabilitation. It was not easy to provide for them a shelter to live, food to eat, and other commodities to utilize. The healthcare, education and security was feeling pressure. Refugee crisis was so grave that it was still unresolved to some extent when Ayub Khan was in power, who had to accommodate 75000 refugees in newly built dwellings of Karachi.

How successful were the religious thinkers in spreading Islam in the subcontinent during the 18th & 19th centuries?

• What did Shah Waliullah think were the main causes of the problems of the Muslims? [7]

Since this is a [7] mark question; write 3 factors in 3 paragraphs.

By the time Shah Waliullah returned to Delhi from Arabia (in 1732), the Mughal Empire was in decline and Muslims were vulnerable to attacks on their religion. Marathas had become very powerful and influential. Therefore the loss of the political power was very important.

He also believed that many of the problems of the Muslims resulted from their incomplete knowledge of the Quran and about Islam in general. There was a lack of academic institutions which taught religion to people. Islam being the uniting factor was important for the community.

Another major problem was that Muslims were divided into sectarian groups, such as Sunnis and Shias.

• What did he believe was essential to create a good society? [4]

He believed it was essential to follow the moral and spiritual principles of Islam in order to create a good society. Un-Islamic principles were not acceptable in any area of society, whether politics, economics or just the day-to-day lives of the individual Muslims.

• Why were the writings of Shah Waliullah important? [7]

Shah Waliullah was a prolific author; he wrote 51 books in Arabic and Persian languages. He also translated Quran into Persian. His books meant to spread awareness of religion in the Muslim community.

Another purpose served by his books was they made him popular among the religiously motivated section of the society. He attained importance and influence which he actually used to mobilise the community against the surge of Marathas effectively in the 3^rd Battle of Panipat in 1761.

His writings were not limited to his time; they were read and followed by the next generations which adopted his ideology in their struggle for independence.

• What role did he play in opposing the Marathas? [7]

One of Shah Waliullah’s most important contributions to the Muslim community was his organization of opposition to the Marathas, who were threatening to over-run the Mughal Empire from the south. He realized that the Muslims had to unite to deal with this threat, and that the Sikhs who were attacking in the north.

Shah Waliullah wrote to all the Muslim nobles calling on them to join together to save the Mughal Empire. It was partly his influence which helped to persuade Ahmad Shah Abdali of Persia to intervene. Because of Shah Waliullah’s efforts, Ahmad Shah Abdali joined forces with local Muslim leaders and defeated the Marathas at the Battle of Panipat in 1761.

Due to the defeat in this battle, Maratha dream to establish and all India Empire could not come true.

• How did Shah Waliullah influence the next generations? [7]

Shah Waliullah’s struggle to revive the Muslim rule in India revolved around one ideology; which is actually the ideology of Pakistan.

Shah Waliullah wished to unite Muslims in the fold of Islam; Pakistan was also created in the name of Islam using the Two Nation Theory. The theory claimed that Hindus and Muslims were two different nations who followed different ideologies; therefore it was not possible for both of them to coexist peacefully under the same system. India was partitioned in 1947 under the same idea.

Shah Waliullah directly influenced reformers namely Syed Ahmad Barelvi, Titu Mir, and Haji Shariatullah who were contemporaries (belonged to the same era). Later reformers like Sir Syed Ahmad Khan and the founding fathers of Pakistan i.e. Allama Iqbal and Quaid-e-Azam, although were not religious like Shah Waliullah, followed the same path and worked to get a state or a governing system for the Muslims.

• Why was Syed Ahmad Barelvi a very suitable person to lead opposition to the British? [7]

Syed Ahmad Barelvi was the first person in the British colonial history of India who was able to unite people in the name of Jihad (religion) for an armed struggle against Non-Muslim rule. He had successfully gathered some 80,000 followers who actually gained ground by defeating the Sikhs in early clashes.

His aim was to establish an Islamic state in the areas ruled by the Sikhs and those next to Afghanistan. He probably wanted to create a safe zone for the Mujahideen in the North West from where they could expand their influence. And in doing so they would certainly come into conflict with the British who had occupied the largest part of India by that time.

If he had not fallen into controversies because of imposing his own interpretation of Islam (the Wahabi school of thought) upon the tribals, and if people like Yar Muhammad had not betrayed him, he could have posed a great threat for the British rule in India by collaborating with the Afghans who later achieved comprehensive victory against invading British troops. It was really possible because he was already effectively opposing the Sikhs under Maharaja Ranjit Singh who was undefeated by the British.

• What role did Syed Ahmad play in opposing the Sikhs? [7]

Syed Ahmad Barelvi was the first person to oppose the Sikhs after the Mughals. Otherwise Ahmad Shah Abdali’s forces had destroyed only the Marathas in the 3^rd Battle of Panipat.

Before beginning his military campaign, he warned Ranjit Singh of a war from mujahideen if did not allow Muslims freedom of worship. In early clashes he defeated the Sikhs and was able to make a mujahideen force numbered 80,000 strong.

However, he was not able to gain support from the local leaders who not only betrayed him but also took sides with the Sikhs. The Sikhs on the other hand used propaganda against him which actually worked. It happened because he fell into controversies by imposing his interpretation of Islam in a tribal culture which was not accustomed to his ideology. He also made a big mistake by fighting wars with the locals who opposed him. It simply meant that he was not aware of the tribal culture in the North West; instead he should have tried to win the hearts and minds.

I think he was trying to achieve so many objectives in a short time. His military campaigns began in 1826 and he was killed in 1831; which means it was a brief struggle which did not last long.

The Sikhs were successful in the end, undefeated by the Mujahideen. They were defeated only after the death of Ranjit Singh when the British forces beat them in battle.

• Jihad Movement is regarded by many historians as the forerunner (precursor) of the Pakistan Movement in India. Do you agree? Explain your answer. [10] or [14]

Jihad Movement is regarded by many historians as the forerunner of the Pakistan Movement in India. Syed Ahmad’s efforts were an inspiration to all Muslims in defending their religion, their culture and their freedom. Those Muslims who later campaigned for their own homeland saw Syed Ahmad as an example of a Muslim fighting for the Muslim cause in much same way, since he too wanted to see a state which was based on the principles of Islam.

To differ from the above view, one can say that the first person who actually gave the ideology of Pakistan in its early form was Shah Waliullah. He also professed Jihad and partly due to his efforts Muslims fought against the Non-Muslim domination in the 3^rd Battle of Panipat.

There is one more contrast of the Pakistan Movement with the Jihad Movement that the former was not totally led by religion or religious personalities. Pakistan’s struggle was ‘largely’ made on the basis of ‘western democracy’. India was partitioned because there were elections, people had cast their votes, and Britain decided to partition India due to the pressure of Muslim representatives who had been elected and who did not want to live under united India. Pakistan’s founding fathers had gained education from western schools and universities and not religious seminaries.

For the same reason, since the inception of Pakistan in 1947 until today, the country has not yet adopted an Islamic system of governance which was the aim of Syed Ahmad Barelvi.

How much Pakistanis follow the ideology of Syed Ahmad can be seen from the condition of his resting place, compared to the tombs of Allama Iqbal and Jinnah.

Therefore my conclusion is that the Jihad Movement was not actually the forerunner of the Pakistan Movement. It only served the purpose of Pakistan’s ideology to this extent that Muslims in the subcontinent could not live under Non-Muslim domination.

Why did Haji Shariatullah declare India as Dar-ul-Harb? [7]

Though the Mughal rule was not purely Islamic but it still allowed Muslims to practice their religion freely. However, when the Mughals declined, the country gradually fell to the Non-Muslims namely the Marathas, the Sikhs and the British who interfered with the religion of Muslims, promoted Un-Islamic practices and oppressed the Muslim community in general.

Haji Shariatullah wanted to officially declare that India was under the Non-Muslim rule as Muslims were being denied their political, social, economic and religious rights by the Non-Muslim rulers (Hindu zamindars and their British masters). As a religious leader of his community, he announced that India was Dar-ul-Harb i.e. a land ruled by Non-Muslims; and therefore Muslims should stop offering Friday and Eid prayers which according to his interpretation are obligatory only under Islamic or Muslim rule.

It was undoubtedly an attempt to spread social and political awareness in the Muslim community. This actually worked and the Sepoy Mutiny started from Barrackpore (West Bengal). In the beginning of the next century, political leadership of Bengal sat together in Dhaka and founded All India Muslim League which won independence for the Muslims in the east and the north west of the subcontinent.

Why did Hindu landlords (zamindars) drive Haji Shariatullah out of East Bengal? [7]

Bengal had been under Muslim rule for quite a long time. It fell to the British when East India Company defeated Nawab Siraj-ud-Daulah in 1757 and then a joint Muslim force in 1764 at Buxar. The company rule entrusted local management to the Hindu landlords who were rich and influential. These landlords had hired Muslim peasants in their lands.

When Haji Shariatullah began his Faraizi Movement, it spread his influence and Muslim cultivators started getting united against religious and economic oppression which alarmed the landlords who were not willing to grant these rights to the Muslims. They collaborated with their British rulers and drove Haji Shariatullah out of the region to Nawabganj in Dhaka district.

Why did the British imprison Mohsin-ud-Din? [7]

Haji Shariatullah was causing trouble to the influential Hindu landlords, so he was driven out of the region in order to make him ineffective. He died but his mission was carried on by his son, Mohsin-ud-Din who introduced important economic measures.

He divided East Bengal into areas and appointed in charges to look after the social and spiritual welfare of the people in their area. he helped the peasants to oppose the excessive taxes imposed by the Hindu and British landlords. this opposition to the payment of taxes led to unrest in East Bengal, but he went even further and threatened to declare a jihad against the British government.

The British had colonised India, and they were not willing to give people their due rights. So they arrested Mohsin-ud-Din, a troublemaker for them, and put him in prison.

The 1974 ouster of the ‘heretics’: What really happened?

Nadeem F. Paracha | Published November 21, 2013

The legacy of Pakistan’s former Prime Minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, is a mixed bag of praise, platitudes and panning.

Where, on the one hand, he is hailed as being perhaps the sharpest and most dazzling politicians ever to grace the country’s political landscape, he is also panned for being a megalomaniac and a demagogue, readily willing to sideline his democratic principles in pursuit to retain political power.

Applauded for successfully regenerating a demoralised and fractured country’s pride (after the 1971 East Pakistan debacle), and igniting within the working classes a sudden sense of political consciousness, Bhutto is also remembered as the man who (to remain in power) continued to play footsie with reactionary political outfits and (thus) ultimately betraying his own party’s largely secular, democratic and socialist credentials.

Not only did he attract fierce opposition from the right-wing Islamic parties, over the decades, the left and liberal sections of the Pakistani intelligentsia have also come down hard on him for capitulating to the demands of right-wing parties on certain theological and legislative issues that eventually (and ironically) set the tenor and the tone of a reactionary General (Ziaul Haq) who toppled his regime.

With the ever-increasing problem of religious bigotry and violence that Pakistan has been facing ever since the 1980s, many intellectuals, authors and political historians in the country have blamed the Bhutto government’s 1974 act of constitutionally redefining the status of the Ahmadiyya, formerly recognised as a Muslim sect, as the starting point of what began to mutate into a sectarian and religious monstrosity in the next three decades.

The Ahmadiyya community was (almost overnight) turned into a non-Muslim minority in Pakistan.

Many observers correctly point out that by surrendering to the demands of the religious parties in this context (especially after they had resorted to violence), Bhutto unwittingly restored their confidence and status that was badly battered during the 1970 election.

But I believe panning Bhutto for introducing legislative and constitutional expressions of bigotry has become too much of a cliché. It’s become a somewhat knee-jerk reaction, and an exercise in which the details of the 1974 event have gotten lost and ignored in the excitement of repeatedly pointing out the starling irony of a left-liberal government passing a controversial theological edict.

I will not get into the theological aspects of what was then called ‘the Ahmadiyya question,’ because I’m not academically qualified to do so.

Nevertheless, it is important that one attempts to objectively piece together the events that led to the final act. Events that seem to have gotten buried underneath the thick layers of polemical theological diatribes exchanged between orthodox Muslim scholars and those associated with the Ahmadiyya community; and also due to the somewhat intellectual laziness of the secular intelligentsia that has exhibited a rather myopic understanding and judgment of and on Bhutto’s role in the episode.

This article is by no means an attempt to judge the theological merits or political demerits of the bill that constitutionally relegated the Ahmadiyya community as a non-Muslim minority.

It is just an attempt to bring to light certain events that culminated in the relegation of the Ahmadiyya community.

To do so I did go through some literature produced by orthodox Sunni and Shia ulema and those associated with the Ahmadiyya community during the commotion, but that literature is largely theological.

So I have ignored it because I lack the theological training to comment on it, and anyway, it is hardly helpful in understanding the day-to-day on-ground happenings that led the Bhutto government to turn a demand of his Islamic opponents into a law.

Instead, my findings in this respect are squarely based on, and culled from the writings of historians and authors who, I believe, have transcribed the history of the event in the most objective and informed manner.

I have also used a plethora of information available in the day-to-day reporting of the commotion by certain Urdu and English newspapers of the time (especially between May 1974 and July 1974).

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The schism

A series of modern, as well as puritanical reformist Muslim movements emerged after the complete fall of the Muslim Empire in India in the mid-1800s.

Mirza Ghulam AhmedThe Ahmadiyya movement was one of them. The Ahmadiyya community was founded in 1889 by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, who claimed he was under divine instruction to fulfil the major prophecies contained in Islamic and other sacred texts regarding a world reformer who would unite humanity.

He announced to Christians awaiting the second coming of Jesus, Muslims anticipating the Mahdi, Hindus expecting Krishna, and Buddhists searching for Buddha, that he was the promised messiah for them all, commissioned by God to rejuvenate true faith.

When Mirza died the Ahmadiyya split into two sects: the ‘Qadianis’ and the ‘Lahoris’. The Qadianis claimed that Mirza was a prophet, and accused all Muslims who did not accept him as being non-Muslims.

Claiming prophethood is regarded to be a major and unpardonable sin by a majority of Muslims, even though the Lahori faction believes that Mirza never claimed prophethood. Orthodox Muslim sects in South Asia believe that he did.

As the 19th century reformist movements competed among themselves to gather and organise the Muslim community in India, they often clashed with each other and in their polemical publications and literature denounced their counterparts as either being ‘bad Muslims’ (fakir) or outright heretics/infidels (kafir).

For example, the Sunni Muslim reformists emerging from seminaries in the Indian city of Deoband (the ‘Deobandis’) denounced another Sunni Muslim sub-sect, the ‘Barelvis,’ of introducing questionable innovations in the practice and rituals of Islam. The Barelvis, a less puritanical Sunni sub-sect, responded in kind.

Both, however, were on the same page when it came to Shia Islam and accused the Shias of heresy.

Interestingly, the more conservative sections of all three sects in the region vehemently criticised the modernist/rationalist reformist Muslim movements of the time led by scholars such as Sir Syed Ahmed Khan and Syed Ameer Ali.

Till about 1913, the Ahmadiyya movement was seen as a spiritual and evangelical branch of the modernist reformist Muslim initiatives triggered by the likes of Sir Syed and Syed Ameer Ali.

In fact, for a while, a number of Indian Muslim intellectuals were closely associated with the Ahmadiyya movement and considered Mirza Ghulam Ahmad as a modern redeemer of faith in India.

Brilliant poet and philosopher, Muhammad Iqbal, too was once a great admirer of the movement.

Iqbal (left) takes a walk with prominent Ahmadiyya leader in the Muslim League, Zafarullah Khan, in London. Iqbal was a great admirer of the founder of the Ahmadiyya community, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, before breaking away from the movement in 1935. Zafarullah went on to hold a top position in the Pakistani government after the country’s creation in 1947.

Contrary to popular belief, agitation against the Ahmadiyya movement (by the orthodox Muslim sects and sub-sects in India) was not an immediate happening that emerged right after the formation of the community in 1889.

The more vocal accusations against the community first arose 24 years later in 1914 when an influential Ahmadiyya leader, Mirza Muhammad Ahmad, began to publicly declare that Mirza Ghulam Ahmad was a messiah and those Muslims who disagreed with this were infidels.

This further split the movement, with the so-called ‘Qadianis’ sticking to Mirza Muhammad Ahmad’s assertions and the ‘Lahori’ faction denouncing him and accusing him of inferring something that Mirza Ghulam Ahmad had not claimed.

Nevertheless, the schism within the Ahmadiyya community and Mirza Muhammad Ahmad’s unabashed claims left the movement vulnerable against accusations of being heretical.

The accusations began piling up in earnest from 1915 onward and by the 1940s the orthodox ulema began to pressurise Muslim leadership in India to address the ‘Ahmadiyya question.’

Interestingly, the Ahmadiyya movement allied itself with Jinnah’s All India Muslim League (AIML).

For example, during the crucial 1946 election in the Punjab, the main opposition to the Ahmadiyya came from Islamic groups allied to the Indian National Congress or from Islamic scholars who did not recognise the League to be the sole representative of Indian Muslims.

The League at the time was a mixture of modernist Muslims, secular democrats, pro-Jinnah ulema and even Marxists.

In fact, the League’s manifesto for the 1946 election was largely authored by socialists and Marxists, whereas much of the campaigning was done by the pro-League Islamic lobbies.

The latter in fact advised Jinnah to dissociate himself from the party’s Ahmadiyya members because Islamic outfits that were being backed by the Congress were using the issue to question the party’s Muslim credentials.

Jinnah ignored the suggestion.

Volunteers from Pakistan’s Ahmadiyya community train to take part in Pakistan’s first battle with the Indian military in Occupied Kashmir in 1948.

In 1951, three years after the creation of Pakistan, due to a failed ‘communist coup’ attempt by some left-wing military men in league with the Communist Party of Pakistan (CPP) and a group of progressive intellectuals, the government initiated an intense crackdown and bans against left-leaning officers in the military, the CPP and affiliated trade, student and labour unions.

This created just enough of a void for some radical rightist forces to seep in.

This opportunity was further widened by the disintegration of the ruling Muslim League (ML) that was by then plagued with infighting, corruption and exhaustive power struggles among its top leadership.

In 1953 after smelling an opportunity to reinstate their political credentials, the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) and the Majlis-i-Ahrar gladly played into the hands of the then Chief Minister of Punjab and veteran Muslim Leaguer, Mian Mumtaz Daultana, who was plotting the downfall of his own party’s prime minster, Khuwaja Nazimuddin.

With a burning ambition to become the Prime Minister after former Prime Minister Liaqat Ali Khan’s enigmatic assassination in 1951, Daultana was bypassed when the ML government chose the Bengali Nazimuddin as PM whom Daultana considered to be incompetent.

As Chief Minister of Punjab, Daultana was being criticised for the rising rate of unemployment and food shortages in the province.

Anticipating protests against his provincial government’s failure to rectify the economic crises in Punjab, Daultana began to allude that economic crises in the province were mainly the doing of the Ahmadiyya community.

The Ahmadiyya had played a leading role in the creation of Pakistan and were placed in important positions in the military, the bureaucracy, the government and within the country’s still nascent industrial classes.

Daultana did not accuse the Ahmadiyya directly. Instead, he purposefully ignored and even gave tactical support to JI and the Ahrar who decided to use the crises in the Punjab by beginning a campaign against the community and demand their excommunication from the fold of Islam.

General Azam Khan: He led the crackdown in Lahore against anti-Ahmadiyya agitators and leaders. As JI and Ahrar members went on a rampage destroying Ahmadiyya property in Lahore, Daultana was able to shift the media’s and the nation’s attention away from his provincial government’s economic failures.

But his ‘victory’ was short-lived. The Nazimuddin government with the help of the military crushed the movement and rounded up JI and Ahrar leaders.

It then went on to dismiss Daultana. The demand to throw the Ahmadiyya out of the fold of Islam was rejected.

The brutal crackdown against the protesters and the arrest of the movement’s main leaders (on charges of instigating violence against the state) seemed to had buried the Ahmadiyya question once and for all.

No significant move to reignite the issue was made for the next 20 years. But when the move did come, it took everyone by surprise.

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The ouster

Along with the working classes and the petty-bourgeoisie of the Punjab, the Ahmadiyya had overwhelmingly voted for the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) in the province during the 1970 election.

The community’s members were well entrenched in the country’s economy and had not faced any major acts of persecution from the orthodox Islamic parties and the ulema ever since 1954.

On May 22, 1974, some 160 members of the Islami Jamiat-i-Talaba (IJT — the student of the Jamaat-i-Islami), boarded a train headed for Peshawar in the former NWFP.

On its way to Peshawar, the train stopped for a while at the Rabwa railway station. The city of Rabwa was predominantly an Ahmadiyya town and also housed the community’s spiritual headquarters.

A religious gathering of the Ahmadiyya in Rabwa in the 1960s.

As the train stopped at Rabwa, IJT students got out and began to raise slogans against the Ahmadiyya and cursed the community’s spiritual figurehead, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad.

The train then left the station taking the charged students to Peshawar. No untoward incident was reported apart from the slogan-chanting and cursing.

However, when the incident was related to some Ahmadiyya leaders in Rabwa, they ordered Ahmadiyya youth to reach the station with hockey sticks and chains when the train stops again at Rabwa on its way back from Peshawar.

After finding out that the students would be returning to Multan from Peshawar on the 29th of May, dozens of young Ahmadiyya men gathered at the Rabwa station.

As the train came to a halt, the men fell upon the bogeys carrying the IJT members. A fight ensued and 30 IJT men were severely beaten for insulting the religious sentiments of the Ahmadiyya.

A group of Ahmadiyya youth in 1973.

A non-Ahmadiyya man who witnessed the commotion at the station told reporters that both the incidents (the slogans and retaliation) were unprecedented.

‘Someone wanted this to happen,’ he said, without saying who that someone was.

Interestingly, whereas the first incident had only been briefly reported by the newspapers, the news of the attack on IJT was prominently displayed in the country’s conservative Urdu press.

JI demanded that the culprits of the attack be apprehended or the party would hold countrywide protest rallies.

Police arrested 71 Ahmadiyya men in Rabwa and the Punjab government headed by the PPP’s Chief Minister, Hanif Ramay, appointed K M Samadani, a High Court judge, to hold an inquiry into the incident.

But this did not stop the JI from launching a protest movement. It was soon joined by other opposition parties which included the centre-right Muslim League, the right-wing Majlis-i-Ahrar and even the centrist Tehrik-i-Istiqlal headed by Asghar Khan.

Joining the protests were also various bar associations of the Punjab, orthodox ulema and clerics and the student wing of JI, the IJT.

They demanded that Ahmadiyya members be removed from the bureaucracy and the government; Ahmadiyya youth outfits be disarmed; and that Rabwa be declared an open city because it had become ‘a state within a state.’

The protests turned violent and spread across various cities of the Punjab. Mobs attacked houses and businesses owned by the Ahmadiyya and also attacked Ahmadiyya men and women. Dozens of members of the Ahmadiyya community lost their lives, most of them dying in Gujranwala and Sargodah.

The leaders of the protest movement then demanded that the Ahmadiyya be excommunicated from the fold of Islam.

On June 4, while speaking on the floor of the National Assembly, Prime Minister Bhutto refused to allow opposition members to speak on the Ahmadiyya issue. He accused the opposition of being ‘hell-bent on destroying the country.’

His party had an overwhelming majority in the assembly and protests from the members on the opposition benches were briskly subdued.

Then, when the riots escalated, Bhutto gave the Punjab CM the green signal to use force to quell the riots. The police came down hard on the rioters and managed to reduce the intensity of the turmoil after a week.

On June 14, opposition parties called for a wheel-jam strike. It was successful in the Punjab and in some cities of the NWFP, but was largely ignored in Sindh and Balochistan.

A café owned by an Ahmadiyya Pakistani set on fire after being looted.

On June 19, newspapers quoted Bhutto as saying that the government was committed to protecting the lives and property of all Pakistanis and that his government was even willing to use the army for this purpose.

He was reminding the opposition how the army had brutally cracked down against anti-Ahmadiyya rioters in 1954.

Bhutto then appealed to the opposition that the ‘Ahmadiyya question’ can be settled in a more civilised manner without resorting to violence and bigotry. He said now was not the right time.

He appeared on TV and radio and insisted that he will not allow ‘savagery and cannibalism’. He said the Ahmadiyya issue had been around for 90 years and could not be solved in a day. He suggested that the issue be referred to the Advisory Council of Islamic Ideology (ACII) — a non-legislative advisory body that was formed by the Ayub Khan dictatorship in the early 1960s and was mostly headed by liberal Islamic scholars.

After the June 14 strike, Bhutto allowed the issue to be discussed in the assembly and told the press that his party members in the House were free to vote on the issue according to their individual conscience.

Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (JUI) chief, Maulana Mufti Mehmood, who was heading the opposition’s stand on the issue, responded by accusing Bhutto of trying to put the ‘Ahmadiyya question’ in cold storage.

‘A mere resolution in the assembly will be an eyewash,’ he told reporters. ‘Bhutto is trying to sweep the issue underneath the carpet.’

Religious parties, the fundamentalist JI, the Deobandi Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (JUI) and the Barelvi Jamiat Ulema-i-Pakistan (JUP) had formed an ‘Action Committee’ with the centre-right Pakistan Democratic Party (of Nawabzada Nasarullah) and Pagara’s Muslim League. They called it Qadiyani Muhasbah Committee (Committee for the Exposition of Qadyanism).

Opposition parties such as the left-wing National Awami Party (NAP) remained silent.

Mufti Mehmood demanded that a bill be passed in the assembly that would once and for all declare the Ahmadiyya community as a non-Muslim minority.

Jamaat-i-Islami’s Mian Tufail demanded the same and warned Bhutto that ‘his double-talk on the Ahmadiyya issue would trigger his downfall.’

The centre-right PDP also joined the chorus and demanded that a bill be introduced in the Parliament declaring the Ahmadiyya as non-Muslim.

JI’s Mian Tufail and the party’s founder, Abul Ala Maududi, holding a press conference in June 1974.

Opposition parties and clerics again threatened to take to the streets to force the government to introduce the suggested bill.

Bhutto maintained that declaring the Ahmadiyya a minority and pushing them out from state and government institutions would be detrimental to the economy and political stability of the country. He also protested that the issue was a religious one and hence the National Assembly should not be used to resolve it.

The religious parties disagreed. They reminded him of the constitution all the political parties had approved only a year ago (1973). They told him that the constitution had declared Pakistan as an Islamic Republic so how could he claim that a religious issue had no place in the National Assembly?

It was about this time that some advisors of Bhutto warned him that if the crises was allowed to simmer or be sidelined, the party might lose some members in the Punjab and National Assembly who were sympathetic towards the demands of the opposition.

On Bhutto’s orders, one of his ministers, Kausar Niazi, led a government delegation that held a series of meetings with the ulema belonging to Sunni (both Deobandi and Barelvi) sub-sects, and the Shia sect.

They agreed to form a parliamentary committee to look into the demands of the parties that were leading the anti-Ahmadiyya movement.

The government convinced the opposition members of the committee that the spiritual leader of the Ahmadiyya community also be given the opportunity to present his thoughts and opinion on the issue.

A heavily edited version of the report authored by the parliamentary committee.After weeks of intense dialogues among the parliamentary committee, the ulema and the head of the Ahmadiyya community, the committee decided to finally introduce the bill in the assembly.

Sections of the press reported that a majority of PPP legislators were unwilling to vote for the bill. But even though the report that was prepared by the committee was never made public, parts of it were leaked to the legislators and the report allegedly recorded the head of the Ahmadiyya community telling the committee that he only considered those who were Ahmadiyya as Muslims.

On Sept 7, 1974, the bill was passed and the Ahmadiyya became a non-Muslim minority.

Though the violence stopped after the passage of the bill, a large number of Ahmadiyya who were actively involved in the fields of business, science, teaching and the civil service began to move out of Pakistan, leaving behind the less well-to-do members of the community who till this day face regular bouts of violence and harassment.

A collage of Urdu newspapers (all dated Sept 8, 1974) with headlines announcing the excommunication of the Ahmadiyya in Pakistan.In another series of ironies, in 1977, the parties that had rejoiced the excommunication of the Ahmadiyya in 1974 were out on the streets again — this time agitating against the very government and the man who had agreed to accept their most assertive demand.

In the final act of this irony, in April 1979, the same man was sent to the gallows (through a sham trial) by the military dictatorship of Ziaul Haq, who decided to stay on to ‘turn Pakistan into a true Islamic republic’, and would go on to explain how Bhutto had become ‘a danger to both Islam and Pakistan’.

In 1984, the Zia dictatorship further consolidated the state of Pakistan’s stand against the Ahmadiyya by issuing an ordinance (Ordinance XX) which prohibited the Ahmadiyya from preaching or professing their beliefs.

The ordinance that was enacted to suppress ‘anti-Islamic activities’ forbids Ahmadiyya to call themselves Muslim or to pose as Muslims.

Their places of worships cannot be called mosques and they are barred from performing the Muslim call to prayer, using the traditional Islamic greeting in public, publicly quoting from the Quran, preaching in public, seeking converts, or producing, publishing, and disseminating their religious materials.

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Resources:

Anwar H. Syed: The Discourse & Politics of Z A. Bhutto (McMillian Press, 1992)
Aysha Jalal: Self & Sovereignty (Routledge, 2000)
Hassan Abbas: Pakistan’s Drift into Extremism (M E. Sharpe, 2005)
Nawa-e-Waqt, May 31, 1974
Jang, June 9, 1974
Pakistan Times, June 1, 1974
Dawn, June 15, 17 and September 9, 1974

https://www.dawn.com/news/1057427

The Rawalpindi Conspiracy: The history and legacy of Pakistan’s first coup attempt

In more than a few ways, General Akbar Khan’s adventure of 1951 has cast a long shadow on Pakistani politics

Ibrahim Moiz | February 04, 2021

This month marks the 70^th anniversary of the first military coup plot in Pakistan’s history: the so-called “Rawalpindi Conspiracy” against Liaquat Ali Khan’s cabinet in February 1951. Comprising a curious cast of characters led by the distinguished ground forces commander General Akbar Khan, the 1951 coup plot differed from its many successors in Pakistani history in that it was the only such military plot to receive support from the political far-Left. Nonetheless, it set a pattern that has repeated itself in Pakistani history, where officers frustrated with various real and imagined shortcomings of the civilian leadership decide to seize power.

Left out? The Pakistani Left and Liaquat Ali Khan

The broad popularity of Pakistan’s first prime minister has never been shared by the Left. This is hardly surprising given that Liaquat Ali Khan’s government, like many other newly independent post-colonial governments, banned the country’s communist party. Mutual mistrust of communism was widespread among Pakistan’s founders – Muhammad Ali Jinnah blamed his hostile reception at Dhaka in 1948 partly on the agitation of “a few communists” – and it rested on two factors: first, that like most postcolonial leaders the Muslim League founders came from a background unlikely to view communism with any warmth; and second, that various communists in the Global South at this early stage of the Cold War made no secret of their aspirational links to the Soviet Union.

The regional communists’ own view of the Pakistan Movement had been decidedly unenthusiastic – viewing it as both reflective of bourgeois Muslim interests and inordinately influenced by religious politics. Sajjad Zaheer, the West Pakistan communist secretary-general, had initially supported, then opposed the idea of Pakistan in the 1940s, and eventually accepted it as a fait-accompli; his stance was openly transactional. Unlike other early sceptics of the Pakistan Movement – such as Islamist ideologue Abulala Maududi’s Jamaat party, which had initially criticized Pakistan as insufficiently authentic to Islam, but which quickly supported the new country once it had been founded – the communists lacked any political common ground on which to repair their relations with the fledgling Pakistani state.

Sold out? The Kashmir campaign and Liaquat Ali Khan

If Liaquat Ali Khan’s aristocratic background and largely conservative politics condemned him to the Pakistani Left, some officers viewed the prime minister with misgivings for an entirely different reason. They saw the government’s agreement to a ceasefire with India over Kashmir in 1949 as premature and overly cautious; in retrospect, it may be added that their scepticism about the United Nations-mediated plebiscite stipulated by the ceasefire proved justified, given that no such plebiscite has ever taken place. The fledgling Pakistani government in 1949 had justifiable doubts about its ability to wage a protracted war with India, but perhaps understandably the result – a divided Kashmir whose capital and east remained in Indian hands – embittered many veterans of the war.

Foremost among them was “General Tariq” Akbar Khan, the first ground commander of the Pakistani army. Restless and ambitious, he had played a major role in mobilising, planning, and leading the Kashmir campaign; thus he resented both British restraints on Pakistan and the government’s capitulation to such pressures. Other military dissidents included Mohammad Janjua, the senior-most air force officer at independence and another key planner; General Akbar’s former commander Nazir Ahmed, now retired; and General Akbar’s former lieutenant, Mohammad Abdul-Latif, who now served as Quetta commandant. Most such officers did not belong to the Left but shared, for different reasons, its dissatisfaction with Liaquat Ali Khan.

Connecting these circles was the famous leftist poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz, a former soldier who had fought under General Akbar in Kashmir. General Akbar’s wife Nasim Shahnawaz helped arrange meetings where Akbar promised the communists that he would rescind their ban in return for their levying support among the working class for a military government. The communists’ own motivation can be summed up by Zaheer’s statement that the path to socialism required “a jump at any adventure” – better to be within the loop than without. Unfortunately for them, several plotters soon regretted the venture and leaked the plot to army commander Ayub Khan, the only officer above Akbar in the hierarchy and one who would prove a strident anti-communist. Ayub thereby imprisoned the plotters who were put on trial.

General Akbar’s personal popularity as well as the resonance of the Kashmir angle lent the plotters considerable public sympathy, even within the elite. Huseyn Suhrawardy, the former Bengal premier who would later become Pakistani prime minister, took on General Akbar’s defence as a personal project. Both of the plotters received relatively light sentences; indeed, General Akbar would be excavated by Zulfikar Bhutto as a security advisor in the 1970s – at a point, not unironically, where Bhutto was cracking down on eftist insurgents in Balochistan.

Conclusion: A long shadow

In the short term, the Rawalpindi Conspiracy proved more titillating for Western diplomats – who, in these early years of the Cold War, saw signs of communist “world government” in much less – than it impacted events. The much-maligned Liaquat Ali Khan was assassinated later that same year, but it had nothing to do with the conspirators; meanwhile, Pakistan’s political instability of the 1950s helped Ayub, an arch-rightist officer, seize power in 1958. During his decade in power the Left was systemically repressed – as it was, after a brief early flirtation, by Bhutto, before Mohammad Ziaul Haq delivered the coup de grace in the 1980s. The truth was that the Left was never as popular across the Pakistani public as it liked to imagine itself. Today, Pakistan’s Marxists have either retired into comfortable sinecures at business universities or else reinvented themselves as neoliberal democrats. The perfect storm of a popular figurehead in General Akbar and a popular cause in Kashmir was the closest they have ever come to taking power.

More relevant is the role of the army in politics. General Akbar led the first of what were to be many coup attempts in Pakistani history; ironically Ayub, who thwarted his attempt, established the first military dictatorship. Even when the aim has not been a military regime, activist officers have played a role; for instance, in December 1971 it took a mutiny by Furrukh Ali to end Yahya Khan’s junta and install Bhutto, while Ziaul Haq survived at least two coup attempts over his regime. Along with condemnations of civilian ineptitude, the Kashmir cause has similarly often catalyzed such interventions – most notably when Pervez Musharraf seized power after accusing former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of having sold out the 1999 campaign in Kashmir. In more than a few ways, therefore, General Akbar’s adventure of 1951 has cast a long shadow on Pakistani politics.

https://tribune.com.pk/article/97280/the-rawalpindi-conspiracy-the-history-and-legacy-of-pakistans-first-coup-attempt