The reason for celebrating Pakistan Day on March 23 is generally stated to be that a resolution in favor of establishing a separate state for Muslims was passed at a meeting of the All India Muslim League at Manto Park Lahore on that day.
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The greatest tragedy of us Pakistanis is that we have always been told half the truth about our history. The geography of the Pakistan that was built on the building of half truth has changed and we have lost half Pakistan. Even today it is very difficult to discuss in a public forum in Pakistan that the Dhaka where the All India Muslim League was born in 1906 and the Dhaka where AK Fazlul Haq, who introduced the resolution of March 23, 1940, is buried, is in Dhaka on December 16. Why did the Pakistani army surrender to the Indian army in 1971? It is a pity that the reasons for the fall of Dhaka are not discussed in our universities and colleges, let alone the whole truth about March 23. Until we start telling the whole truth about March 23, we will not be able to reach the truth of December 16.
The reason given for celebrating Pakistan Day on March 23 is that a resolution in favor of establishing a separate state for Muslims was passed at a meeting of the All India Muslim League in Manto Park, Lahore on that day. Some historians have questioned whether the word “separate state” or “states” was used in the resolution. The 1946 resolution in Delhi has the answer to this question because the demand for a state has replaced the states. The whole truth of March 23 is that not only one resolution was passed at the annual meeting of the All India Muslim League in Lahore on March 22, 23 and 24, but four resolutions were passed and the second resolution was on Palestine.
The actual date of March 23 is that Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah delivered a 100-minute speech on March 22 in the meeting held before the passage of these four resolutions. The speech and the full proceedings of the Lahore meeting were published by the Muslim League in a book in October 1940 from Bombay. During his lifetime, Quaid-e-Azam declared the Lahore Resolution as the Pakistan Resolution and for four consecutive years from 1941 to 1947, the Muslim League used to hold rallies on Pakistan Day on March 23. Shortly after the formation of Pakistan, the Quaid-e-Azam passed away on September 11, 1948, and unfortunately Pakistan was gripped by military officers and bureaucrats loyal to the British government. Pakistan Day was limited to a military parade and Quaid-e-Azam’s speech on March 22 was omitted from the textbooks without which it is very difficult to understand the Pakistan resolution.
Quaid-e-Azam’s speech in Lahore on March 22, 1940 was in fact his presidential address. At the beginning of her speech, she announced that it was very important to involve women in their struggle, so a women’s section of the Muslim League should be established in every province and district. The founder of Pakistan went on to expose the collusion between the Congress and the British government in clear terms and said that he had never imagined that the Congress and the British government would have such collusion and secret pledges in writing. So they do not exist, but they will be treated in such a way that we Muslims will not hear a thousand screams. In his speech, Quaid-e-Azam said that we Muslims are not a minority but a nation but the Congress and the British government only want to keep us as a minority. The Quaid-e-Azam then referred to a letter written by a famous Hindu leader Lala Lajpat Rai to CR Das and said that this letter is contained in the book of Indra Prakash and in this letter Lala Lajpat Rai wrote that Muslims And there can be no unity of Hindus because the religion of Muslims is an obstacle to this unity. This is the same Lala Lajpat Rai who built Gulab Devi Hospital in Lahore in the name of his mother. Excerpts from Lala Lajpat Rai’s letter were presented by Quaid-e-Azam at a meeting of the Muslim League and he said, “Why doesn’t Gandhi understand what Lala Lajpat Rai understood long ago?” Quaid-e-Azam said that the philosophy of life of Muslims and Hindus is separate, religious customs and traditions are separate, literature is separate, these are two civilizations, they can never become one nation. He also said that the artificial unity that India enjoys today is based on the seriousness of the British.
Unveiling Gandhi’s philosophy of non-violence, the Quaid-e-Azam said in his speech that Gandhi had advised the Hindus of Sukkur to form their own armed private parties and resist.
A closer look at Quaid-e-Azam’s speech reveals that he saw in 1940 that the Congress and the Hindu Mahasabha were one from within. Even today, Muslims in Narendra Modi’s India can be seen through the eyes of Lala Lajpat Rai. In his speech, Quaid-e-Azam also mentioned Palestine and called on the British government to end its oppression of Palestinian Muslims. Some claim that the March 23 Lahore resolution was drafted by the British through Sir Zafarullah Khan. Historical facts refute all such claims. The Quaid-e-Azam’s speech on March 22 reflected the March 23 resolution that was passed on March 24. Bengali leader AK Fazlullah, who introduced the resolution, was declared a traitor after the death of Quaid-e-Azam. After discussing the first resolution, the Quaid-e-Azam announced the introduction of the second resolution. This resolution was presented by Abdul Rehman Siddiqui. The resolution warned the British military to refrain from trying to subjugate Palestinian Arabs. The third resolution was to condemn the police attack on Khaksars in Lahore and the fourth resolution was to make the provincial Muslim Leagues bound by the rules and regulations of the Central Working Committee, which clearly showed that the Quaid-e-Azam believed in running the party democratically, did not establish dictatorship in the party.
The same Khaksars who were condemned by the police in this meeting had also assassinated the Quaid-e-Azam and tried to disrupt his meetings but the Quaid-e-Azam did not believe in making political differences a personal revenge. After the death of Quaid-e-Azam, if the democratic and military dictators had not limited March 23 to a single military parade and told the whole truth about March 23 to the nation, this nation would not have been divided into two countries. When politicians abolished democracy within political parties, military generals deprived Pakistan of democracy.
We became free from the slavery of British imperialism but sometimes became slaves to American imperialism and sometimes to our own half truth. Both Allama Iqbal and Quaid-e-Azam were against dictatorship and monarchy but today’s rulers also accept the slavery of foreign kings and the slavery of international financial institutions because they have to hire these kings after retirement. Freedom from slavery is possible only when we learn to speak the whole truth.
