“You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other places of worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed — that has nothing to do with the business of the State.”
These were the famous golden words of the founder of Pakistan Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah while delivering his speech at the first Constituent Assembly on August 11, 1947, three days ahead of actual independence on August 14-15.
In his speech Mr. Jinnah, in fact, laid the foundations of the principles for a new country by describing it as being a state with no business with any religion.
Before concluding his historic speech, Quaid-e-Azam stated: “Now, I think we should keep that in front of us as our ideal and you will find that in course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the State.”
But Quaid-e-Azam’s vision for a secular Pakistan was just ignored by his predecessors especially his Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan, who even presented the famous Objective Resolution on 12th March 1947 few months after Quaid’s death, which made many clauses which clearly mention the state would be a Muslim one.
This Objective Resolution has remained part of all the Constitutions including the present one of 1973. The official name of the new country was described as the “Islamic Republic of Pakistan.”
“Wherein the principles of democracy, freedom, equality, tolerance and social justice, as enunciated by Islam, shall be fully observed” is one of the points of Objective Resolution states. The later amendments in the 1973 Constitution have further restricted the fundamental rights of non-Muslims. For example, a non-Muslim cannot become the President and Prime Minister of Pakistan according to the Constitution.
“A person shall not be qualified for election as President unless he is a Muslim of not less than forty-five years of age and is qualified to be elected as member of the National Assembly,” Article 41(2) of the Constitution states.
Article 91(3) of the Constitution clearly describes: “After the election of the Speaker and the Deputy Speaker, the National Assembly shall, to the exclusion of any other business, proceed to elect without debate one of its Muslim members to be the Prime Minister.”
Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah had a different vision for a new state like Pakistan and he clearly described in his 11th August 1947 speech.
“We should begin to work in that spirit and in course of time all these angularities of the majority and minority communities — the Hindu community and the Muslim community — because even as regards Muslims you have Pathans, Punjabis, Shias, Sunnis and so on and among the Hindus you have Brahmins, Vaishnavas, Khatris, also Bengalese, Madrasis and so on — will vanish.
Unfortunately, there is no hope for me that such angularities of the majority or minorities communities would vanish in Pakistan soon as we have actually missed the directions set by the Father of the Nation at the time of independence due to frequent military interventions and derailment of the democracy in Pakistan.
Even the Federation concept, described in the Objective Resolution was abandoned when the notorious system of “One Unit” was introduced on 22nd November 1952 in Pakistan thus all the federating units (provinces) and autonomous princely states were dissolved. “There will be no Bengalis, no Punjabis, no Sindhis, no Pathans, no Balochis, no Bahawalpuris, no Khairpuris. The disappearance of these groups will strengthen the integrity of Pakistan” the proponents of the One Unit scheme described it.
In fact Sindh, Punjab, then NWFP and Balochistan provinces were merged into a unit called West Pakistan. East Bengal province, which was in majority population wise was named as East Pakistan and both the units were given parity in the national resources. This decision was resisted by people in East Bengal, Sindh, NWFP and Balochistan.
Although after the 1971 War and the separation of East Bengal the four provinces were restored, the princely states were restituted.
The angularities pointed out by the Father of the Nation have further reshaped as the religious zealots have gripped their power in the state authorities and there is a visible discrimination with the religious minorities in the Constitution and the laws of the state.
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