As
we write the Muslims of India and Pakistan are celebrating the birthday
of the Quaid-i-Azam. As the man who has propelled, guided and
controlled the national policies of nearly hundred million human souls,
the man who has been responsible for the birth of a major State and the
liberation of a major nation from economic and political bondage, the
Quaid-i-Azam has already passed into history. With the establishment of
Pakistan the mandate entrusted to him by his people may be considered to
have been fulfilled and his historical role as the architect of our
national State may be said to have reached its glorious consummation.
The attainment of this objective demanded a steadiness of vision, fixity
of purpose, an amount of unflagging devotion and courage that are
rarely found among a people, broken and debased by enslavement and
exploitation. The history of nations however is continuum like time, and
the culmination of one struggle merely means the commencement of
another. The mission of our national leaders, therefore, is far from
complete and the national objective we have formally attained still
awaits its material content. The future of Indian Muslims who have done
as much and suffered far more for Pakistan than we the Muslims of
Pakistan have, is still uncertain, and the State of Pakistan has still
to require the constitutional flesh and bone. Both these problems are of
as great an importance to us as the achievement of Pakistan itself and
their satisfactory solution will require an equal amount of vision,
determination and courage. There are already many among us, men of small
minds and smaller vision, who think that the future of our brothers
beyond the border need not enter our national calculations and now that
we have got Pakistan, the future of non-Pakistanis is none of our
business. The happenings in East Pakistan have utterly negated our
thesis and proved that our kinsmen in the neighboring Dominion are very
much our business that we have got to take them into calculation while
formulating our national policies. We have got to ensure that these
policies do not in any way adversely affect the national existence of
our co-religionists in the other land, through injudiciousness or lack
of imagination. Similarly we have to ensure that both the constitutional
structure and the governmental practice of the Pakistani State conform
to the ideals that we put before ourselves when we embarked on our
national struggle. We have not yet had a glimpse of the Pakistan of our
dreams, for we are still besieged by all the ills that have plagued us
in the past and the common man has yet to taste the contentment,
physical and spiritual, of a free and prosperous existence. The helmsmen
of the nation, therefore, of whom the Quaid-i-Azam is the greatest and
the most indefatigable, have far from reached the end of their labours
and the future of the nation depends as much on their sagacity today as
it has dependent on their industry and devotion in the past.
Faiz Sahib’s editorial of the Pakistan Times dated Dec 27, 1947. The original title was: HOMAGE
Faiz Sahib’s editorial of the Pakistan Times dated Dec 27, 1947. The original title was: HOMAGE
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