Suhrawardy & Liaquat Ali Khan
Pakistan has become what Suhrawardy had predicted, an extremist and violent state.
Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy (d.1963) was an all-Bengal leader who gravitated to the Muslim League only after the Congress abandoned separate electorates, going back on its pledge of accepting Muslim majority in united Bengal. He worked for Jinnah, but did not share his negative view of Gandhi. Later, he fell foul of Liaquat Ali Khan. President Iskander Mirza made him prime minister of Pakistan for 13 months in 1956. General Ayub disliked him cordially.
In Memoirs of Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy with a brief account of his life and work; Edited by Mohammad HR Talukdar; Foreword by Kamal Hossain (OUP 2009), more facts have come to light.
Suhrawardy was more advanced in consciousness than most Muslim leaders. He was secular like Jinnah and could not have liked what Liaquat Ali Khan did with the Objectives Resolution in 1949. He writes: “The Constitution of 1956 had renamed Pakistan as the Islamic Republic of Pakistan; there were references to the Quran and Sunnah in several places in the text; there were special provisions to see that the laws were in conformity with them.”
“The Muslim League lost no opportunity to arouse fanaticism and champion the cause of Islam as the surest and easiest way of getting support from the Muslims of West Pakistan, and its propaganda was so full of blood and thunder and potential for violence that other non-fanatical parties were finding it increasingly difficult to hold meetings peacefully. The central government, which could have taken steps to curb such threats of violence, refrained from doing so” (p.123).
He says: “The constitution of 1956 had made five references to the Quran and Sunnah as the basis of Islam; that of 1962 deleted all these references”. But General Ayub could not fight religion for long. Suhrawardy and his Awami League stood for joint electorates, the Muslim League did not. Ayub later declared that he would restore the previous name and all the deleted reference to the Quran and Sunnah, refer all proposals or legislation to the Council of Islamic Ideology and ask them to revise all existing laws to conform to the Islamic spirit.
Suhrawardy writes prophetically in 1963: “The nation had to reap the whirlwind. This involvement with Islam brought controversial doctrines to the fore. Clashes between two schools of thought, Deobandi and Barelvi, ended in several murders. The smouldering fires between the Shias and the Sunnis once again burst into flame and led to serious clashes marked with the utmost savagery in a remote village in Sindh and in the sophisticated capital city of Lahore”.
He accused General Ayub Khan of letting this happen: “Once fanaticism had been encouraged — and for this the president must be held responsible — no one knew what turn it would take. The old controversy between Qadianis and the others could easily have been raked up. Already one of the maulvis, who had, through sheer flattery and opportunism, worked his way into the confidence of the president and was a member of the assembly, was demanding that separate electorates must once again be restored as a cardinal tenet of Islam and the minister of law echoed it as a matter which still was not decided” (p.143). The general did restore separate electorates later on.
General Ayub in his Selection of Talks and Interviews (Oxford University Press, 2010) says of him: “Suhrawardy possessed a very intelligent mind and tremendous energy, but was an opportunist of the highest order. I did not like to associate with him much” (p.94).
Today, as the founder of the Awami League, Suhrawardy is very much a part of the political pantheon of Bangladesh. Pakistan has become what he had predicted, an extremist and violent state.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 9th, 2011.
In Memoirs of Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy with a brief account of his life and work; Edited by Mohammad HR Talukdar; Foreword by Kamal Hossain (OUP 2009), more facts have come to light.
Suhrawardy was more advanced in consciousness than most Muslim leaders. He was secular like Jinnah and could not have liked what Liaquat Ali Khan did with the Objectives Resolution in 1949. He writes: “The Constitution of 1956 had renamed Pakistan as the Islamic Republic of Pakistan; there were references to the Quran and Sunnah in several places in the text; there were special provisions to see that the laws were in conformity with them.”
“The Muslim League lost no opportunity to arouse fanaticism and champion the cause of Islam as the surest and easiest way of getting support from the Muslims of West Pakistan, and its propaganda was so full of blood and thunder and potential for violence that other non-fanatical parties were finding it increasingly difficult to hold meetings peacefully. The central government, which could have taken steps to curb such threats of violence, refrained from doing so” (p.123).
He says: “The constitution of 1956 had made five references to the Quran and Sunnah as the basis of Islam; that of 1962 deleted all these references”. But General Ayub could not fight religion for long. Suhrawardy and his Awami League stood for joint electorates, the Muslim League did not. Ayub later declared that he would restore the previous name and all the deleted reference to the Quran and Sunnah, refer all proposals or legislation to the Council of Islamic Ideology and ask them to revise all existing laws to conform to the Islamic spirit.
Suhrawardy writes prophetically in 1963: “The nation had to reap the whirlwind. This involvement with Islam brought controversial doctrines to the fore. Clashes between two schools of thought, Deobandi and Barelvi, ended in several murders. The smouldering fires between the Shias and the Sunnis once again burst into flame and led to serious clashes marked with the utmost savagery in a remote village in Sindh and in the sophisticated capital city of Lahore”.
He accused General Ayub Khan of letting this happen: “Once fanaticism had been encouraged — and for this the president must be held responsible — no one knew what turn it would take. The old controversy between Qadianis and the others could easily have been raked up. Already one of the maulvis, who had, through sheer flattery and opportunism, worked his way into the confidence of the president and was a member of the assembly, was demanding that separate electorates must once again be restored as a cardinal tenet of Islam and the minister of law echoed it as a matter which still was not decided” (p.143). The general did restore separate electorates later on.
General Ayub in his Selection of Talks and Interviews (Oxford University Press, 2010) says of him: “Suhrawardy possessed a very intelligent mind and tremendous energy, but was an opportunist of the highest order. I did not like to associate with him much” (p.94).
Today, as the founder of the Awami League, Suhrawardy is very much a part of the political pantheon of Bangladesh. Pakistan has become what he had predicted, an extremist and violent state.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 9th, 2011.