This day 87 years
ago, has great significance for our neighbouring Nation sharing not only
borders but also history with us !
Wasim Khan, the
Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) chief executive officer, has rubbished reports
claiming that Pakistan won’t send its team to India for the 2021 T20 World Cup
if the BCCI doesn’t allow its team to tour Pakistan in the Asia Cup later this
year. “This has been completely taken out of context. Even though we would
still want to host the Asia Cup in Pakistan, the Asian Cricket Council needs to
decide on what it will do about the matches involving India,” Khan is quoted as
saying. Earlier, reports claimed that PCB would skip the World Cup T20 — to be
held in India next year — if Indian team didn’t travel to Pakistan for the Asia
Cup.
After years of
slogan shouting and empty rhetoric from across the border, the World knows that things are not
greener over there. Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan recently stated
that Islamabad is willing to hold a
referendum in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir to give people the right to decide
whether they want to remain in the country or be independent… .. for those who
had supported Imran Khan stating him to be able and good administrator – here
is some update on the political situation.
For almost five
years, Talat Hussain, a well-known Pakistani journalist, hosted a popular
current affairs talk show on Geo TV, openly discussing the political issues of
the day. But last year all that changed. Forced to comply with a “total
blackout” of news that criticised the military or the government of the new
prime minister, Imran Khan, Hussain found himself unable to speak freely. “My
programmes were being repeatedly censored,” said Hussain. “I was told that any
suggestion that the 2018 elections were rigged or that the army was part of the
running of the government by Imran Khan was unacceptable.” While Pakistan has a
turbulent relationship with media freedom, under Imran Khan, elected as prime
minister last year with strong backing from the military, censorship is felt
heavier than ever before.
A high-profile
civil rights activist has been arrested recently in Pakistan on charges of sedition in the
latest incident in a mounting crackdown on critics of the army. Manzoor Ahmad
Pashteen was arrested in the north-western city of Peshawar on five charges,
including criminal conspiracy and sedition. The 28-year-old is the charismatic
leader of the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM), which defends the rights of of
Pakistan’s largest ethnic minority, the Pashtuns. He has established himself as
a thorn in the side of the powerful military, publicly accusing it of human
rights abuses including kidnappings and forced disappearances, and of secretly
allying with the Pakistani Taliban. The PTM has also drawn thousands of people
on to the streets in protests against the military over the past two years. The
civilian Pakistan government, led by the prime minister, Imran Khan, is
notorious for its alleged close ties to the military. Since Khan’s election,
journalists, activists and critics of the military have increasingly been
targeted, silenced and detained.
The oncoming 2020
decade will likely be an age of ‘democracy in trouble’ across major parts of
South Asia. Greater oppression, dictatorial policies, and leadership, one-party
domination – the challenges are immense. In Pakistan’s case, the long-ailing
democracy under the Imran Khan government is now dead. The country, in the
aftermath of General Qamar Javed Bajwa’s tenure extension, signals a total
reverse of American political scientist Francis Fukuyama’s ‘End of History’
thesis. In the early 1990s, after the end of the Cold War and the collapse of
the Soviet Union, Fukuyama had predicted a phase of human history in which
liberal democracy and economic liberalism will be the only flag flying
throughout the world. Notwithstanding the growth of neo-liberalism,
politically, the opposite happened in Fukuyama’s own country and other large
democracies like India. But in countries struggling to find their way to
democracy, it’s been a disaster. ~ comically these
people talk of democracy being in danger in India !
Now getting back to
history, this day on 1933 - came the
voice in the form of a pamphlet titled "Now or Never; Are We to Live or
Perish Forever?" – as also the reference to Pakstan. The word 'Pakstan' referred to "the five
Northern units of India, viz., Punjab, North-West Frontier Province (Afghan
Province), Kashmir, Sind and Baluchistan”.
Known as the "Pakistan Declaration", this pamphlet written and
published by Choudhary Rahmat Ali used
word Pakstan (without I) for the first
time and it was circulated to the delegates of the
Third Round Table Conference in 1932.
Choudhry Rahmat Ali
[16.11.1897 -3.2.1951] is credited to be the earliest proponent of the creation
of the state of Pakisthan. He is credited with creating the name
"Pakistan" for a separate Muslim homeland in South Asia and is
generally known as the originator of the Pakistan Movement. Rahmat Ali's seminal contribution was when he
was a law student at the University of Cambridge in 1933, in the form of a
pamphlet "Now or Never; Are We to Live or Perish Forever?", also
known as the "Pakistan Declaration". The pamphlet was addressed to
the British and Indian delegates to the Third Round Table Conference in London.
The ideas did not find favour with the
delegates or any of the politicians for close to a decade. They were dismissed
as students' ideas. But by 1940, the Muslim politics in the subcontinent came
around to accept them, leading to the Lahore Resolution of the All-India Muslim
League, which was immediately dubbed the "Pakistan resolution" in the
Press.
But as it would
dawn, sadly after the creation of Pakistan, Ali returned from England in April
1948, planning to stay in the country, but his belongings were confiscated and
he was expelled by the prime minister Liaqat Ali Khan. In Oct 1948, Ali left
empty-handed. He died on 3 Feb 1951 in Cambridge "destitute, forlorn and
lonely". The funeral expenses of
insolvent Ali were covered by Emmanuel College, Cambridge on the instructions
of its Master. Ali was buried at Cambridge City Cemetery. He is all but forgotten in the "country
he coined".
With regards – S.
Sampathkumar
28th Jan
2020.
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