A Selfless Patriot: The Life & Times of Khwaja Nazimuddin

Abstract

(The main focus of the piece is on Nazimuddin’s innings as prime minister, an insight is also provided into his family history and the remainder of his long and distinguished political career. However, there is no intention to pen a panegyric; on the contrary, the mistakes and errors of judgment made by Nazimuddin are also objectively discussed, so that the readers can gain a full view of the man who undoubtedly ranks among the five titans of the Muslim League during the Pakistan Movement. – Author)

When Pakistan’s third governor-general, Malik Ghulam Mohammed, passed away in Karachi on 29 August 1956, the first person of note to promptly visit the deceased’s residence for condolences was Khwaja Nazimuddin. In normal circumstances, the veteran leader’s condolence visit would not have caused any comment, since not only had he been Ghulam Mohammed’s predecessor as the country’s second governor- general, but he had also served as Pakistan’s second prime minister. Therefore the two men had known each other all too well.

But on 17 April 1953, Ghulam Mohammed had unjustifiably dismissed Khwaja Nazimuddin from the prime minister’s office, even though the latter enjoyed the confidence of the constituent assembly, as evidenced by the smooth passage of the government’s budget only a few days earlier. Although Nazimuddin had been hurt to the quick by what he described as the “rape of democracy”, he had decided against challenging his dismissal in the courts or at the altar of public opinion, because he felt that the last thing which the fledgling state needed was infighting and discord at the highest level¹. Nazimuddin’s approach in this matter had reflected selfless patriotism of the highest level.

Bearing this tortuous background in mind, the former prime minister’s immediate appearance for condolences at the residence of the man who had wronged him and Pakistan so grievously, was indeed noteworthy and reflective of the gentleman’s large-heartedness, decency and high morals.

Sadly, few in Pakistan today know much about Nazimuddin. I suspect the overwhelming majority of Islamabad’s residents may not even be remotely aware of the life and times of the man after whom one of the city’s main roads is named. Therefore, this article seeks to make a few amends and to honour the memory of the late leader. While the main focus of the piece is on Nazimuddin’s innings as prime minister, an insight is also provided into his family history and the remainder of his long and distinguished political career. However, there is no intention to pen a panegyric; on the contrary, the mistakes and errors of judgement made by Nazimuddin are also objectively discussed, so that the readers can gain a full view of the man who undoubtedly ranks among the five titans of the Muslim League during the Pakistan Movement².

Family Background

Nazimuddin was a member of one of the most prominent and prosperous families of Bengal, namely the House of the Nawabs of Dhaka. Ironically, while the family dominated the politics of Dhaka in particular and Bengal in general, it was not ethnically Bengali; instead it was of Kashmiri origin, hailing from the Banday clan of Srinagar.

In the early 1730s, two brothers, Khwaja Abdul Wahab and Khwaja Abdullah, set out from Kashmir to chart their destiny. Fate brought them over 2500 kilometres away to Dhaka, a city which they made their home. Having commenced a modest trading business dealing with gold, animal hides, salt, spices and jute, in a few decades the family had become East Bengal’s leading traders. With abundant cash on their hands, the Khwajas next turned to the acquisition of land and by the early part of the 19th century they had also become the leading zamindars of Bengal. Undoubtedly it was a testament to their industriousness, diligence and determination that the family was able to achieve such great wealth and influence in an alien province, far away from their ancestral home of Kashmir.

In the 1857 War of Independence, the then head of the family, Khwaja Abdul Ghani, bet on the winning side by rendering loyal service to the British government, which in turn expressed its gratitude to the Khwajas by granting Ghani the title of Nawab of Dhaka in 1875, raising it to hereditary status in 1877 and upgrading the position to Nawab Bahadur in 1892.

However, it is pertinent to mention that the story of the Nawabs of Dhaka was not just all about their flair for wealth-creation and their dedicated service to the British Empire. On the contrary, they had an impressive penchant for philanthropy and the financing of public works on a grand scale, which made them a rarity among Indian aristocrats. Whether it was the supply of filtered water free of charge to the residents of Dhaka in the 1870s, the provision of electricity to the city in 1901 or the establishment of several schools, mosques, hospitals and institutes of higher education, the Dhaka Nawabs distinguished themselves on all of these counts.

Early Life

It was in this privileged background that Nazimuddin opened his eyes in August 1894 in the house of his father, Khwaja Nizamuddin. The then Nawab of Dhaka, Nawab Khwaja Sir Ahsanullah, was Nazimuddin’s maternal grandfather, while the famous future Nawab, Khwaja Sir Salimullah, was his maternal uncle.

Initially schooled at home, and subsequently at Aligarh Muslim School, Nazimuddin completed his secondary education at an English private school, Dunstable Grammar. After gaining a BA degree from the Aligarh University, he proceeded to Trinity College, Cambridge for an MA (his fellow students there included Sir Sikander Hayat Khan and Nawab Chattari), following which he was admitted to the bar at the Middle Temple.

Political Career in India

Upon returning to Dhaka, Nazimuddin plunged into the city’s civic affairs and politics and it was not long before he had become the Nawab of Dhaka family’s main standard-bearer in the political arena. In the two decades from 1922 to 1943, Nazimuddin served as the Chairman of the Dhaka Municipal Corporation from 1922 to 1929, a member of the Bengal Legislative Assembly in 1923, 1926, 1929 and 1937 (on the last occasion he was elected in a bye-election, after losing in the general election of that year to Sher-e-Bengal, Maulvi Fazlul Haque), Bengal’s Education Minister from 1929-1934, member of the Governor’s Executive Council from 1934-1936, Bengal’s Home Minister from 1937-1941 and Leader of the Opposition in the Bengal Assembly from 1941-1943.

In 1943, Khwaja Sir Nazimuddin³ reached the apogee of his political career in British India by becoming the Premier of United Bengal as the head of a Muslim League Ministry⁴. However, the better part of his two year premiership was marred by the horrors of the devastating Bengal Famine which resulted in the deaths of over two million people. The causes for this calamity had arisen during the premiership of his predecessor, Maulvi Fazlul Haque, but the resulting whirlwind had to be faced by Nazimuddin. Opinion is divided on whether Nazimuddin and his government could have better handled this great crisis; e.g. the Bengal Governor, Sir John Herbert, felt that Nazimuddin and his government “were keen enough but practically the whole press is against them and will give them no credit for what they do and spreads despondency and panic with a view to discrediting the Ministry and the Government…”⁵, while the Viceroy, Lord Wavell, was of the view that Nazimuddin had failed to properly handle the fallout of the famine and he even proposed the dismissal of the premier and his government but was overruled by Winston Churchill who supported the League Ministry against the alternative option, i.e. a Congress Ministry⁶.

But one point that emerged without any doubt during his premiership is that Nazimuddin was often unable to act as an effective administrator and that on occasions his political judgment appeared to lack soundness. An incident narrated by the prominent civil servant, the late Qudratullah Shahab,⁷ provides proof of the first point. Shahab had volunteered to be seconded to Bengal in order to assist with the famine relief efforts. Upon his arrival in Calcutta, he discovered to his dismay that the British chief secretary of Bengal had posted him to a desk-job in the provincial secretariat. Upset at the denial of an opportunity to be in the thick of things through a field posting, Shahab decided to seek the help of Premier Khwaja Nazimuddin.

Shahab was ushered into the premier’s presence without a prior appointment or any “sifarish” and the latter was decent and sympathetic enough to give a junior civil servant such a patient hearing, which impressed Shahab greatly. Then, to Shahab’s further amazement, instead of calling the chief secretary on the phone or summoning him to his presence, Nazimuddin himself humbly went over to the chief secretary’s room to discuss the matter with him. However, a few minutes later he returned back to his room and informed Shahab that the chief secretary has said that the matter has already been settled and that is all there is to it! This essentially meant that Nazimuddin, as the Premier of Bengal, was unable to prevail on the chief secretary to change his decision, even though the case definitely merited reconsideration.

The next day, Shahab went to see the Civil Supplies minister, Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, in order to raise the matter of his posting. The latter there and then picked up the phone and issued orders to the chief secretary to post Shahab to a famine-hit area. When the chief secretary sought to demur, Suhrawardy closed the conversation by peremptorily restating the orders. A few hours later the necessary orders were issued.

This incident illustrated all too vividly that Nazimuddin’s grip on the administration was not marked by the show of strength and authority that is a pre-requisite of successful governance in the sub- continental tradition. But equally, his humility and decency were traits rarely displayed by sub-continental political leaders, quite possibly because these traits have not been the keys to successful rule in the sub- continental style.

An example of the less than sound political judgement occasionally displayed by Nazimuddin was witnessed when he became the Premier of Bengal in 1943. Defying the dictates of conventional political sense, leave alone the question of optics, he included his younger brother and fellow Muslim League politician, Khwaja Shahabuddin, into his cabinet, and followed it up in good measure by making his cousin, Khwaja Nasrullah, a parliamentary secretary. This unnecessary agglomeration of political power in the hands of the family, at a time when the Dhaka Muslim League was already their personal bailiwick, stuck out like a sore thumb in the eyes of Nazimuddin’s rivals within the Muslim League and was a major cause for the destabilization of his government.

After two tumultuous years of his premiership, marked by the ravages of the famine, defection of several Muslim League MLAs to Sher-e-Bengal’s Krishik Proja Party, soaring inflation and repeated failed no-confidence motions, Khwaja Nazimuddin was finally defeated in a no-confidence motion. Soon thereafter, his ambitious former cabinet member, Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, successfully challenged Nazimuddin for the secretary-ship of the Bengal Muslim League. Severely depressed by losing the contest to Suhrawardy, Nazimuddin took a back-seat from the political arena (he had declined to contest the Bengal Assembly election of 1945-1946) and even contemplated retiring from politics altogether and taking up the position of President of the Executive Council of Hyderabad State.

But fate had something else in store and within a year, Nazimuddin was back in front-line politics. At the initiative of Mohammed Ali Jinnah, Nazimuddin was elected to the Central Legislative Assembly in 1946 through a bye-election on account of the demise of Hasan Suhrawardy. He was then appointed deputy leader of the Muslim League parliamentary party, filling in the vacancy triggered by Liaquat Ali Khan’s joining of the Interim Government.

When the partition of Bengal became inevitable, the central leadership of the Muslim League threw its weight behind Nazimuddin to become the leader of the party in the East Bengal Legislative Assembly. Once again, the contest was between Suhrawardy and Nazimuddin, but this time the latter bested the former and was elected the first chief minister of East Bengal, the largest province of the newly-created state of Pakistan.

The Pakistan Years

Nazimuddin’s political career in Pakistan can be divided into four distinct phases: 1947-1948, Chief Minister of East Bengal; 1948-1951, Governor-General; 1951-1953, Prime Minister; and, 1953-1964, the final years. Each of these phases is addressed below.

1) Chief Minister

Nazimuddin served as Chief Minister of East Bengal for little over a year, from partition until he succeeded Mohammed Ali Jinnah as Pakistan’s second governor-general in September 1948. Two features of this short chief ministerial tenure deserve mention.

The biggest challenge to Nazimuddin’s authority was posed by the non-Bengali civil bureaucracy best represented by Aziz Ahmed, the province’s first chief secretary⁸. Known among official circles as “Mr. God” for his hauteur, arrogance and disdain for politicians, Aziz Ahmed was a constant thorn in the flesh of the chief minister and his cabinet; he would reportedly even keep members of the provincial cabinet waiting outside his room before he would deign to see them. With his grip on administrative affairs not being very effective, Nazimuddin was unable to rein in the chief secretary and to assert the supremacy of the people’s representatives over the bureaucracy.

An incident narrated by Shahabuddin Rehmatullah⁹, the first Deputy Commissioner of Dhaka, drives home this point. In his memoirs, Rehmatullah has mentioned that Nazimuddin once asked him to help find an official residence for Justice Shahabuddin Ahmed of the East Bengal High Court. Upon Rehmatullah’s query as to why the chief minister had not raised the matter with Aziz Ahmed, who was the chairman of the provincial accommodation board, Nazimuddin replied that the chief secretary was unwilling to assist, citing a shortage of accommodation; hence Nazimuddin had decided to seek Rehmatullah’s assistance, and he beseeched him not to let Aziz Ahmed get wind of the matter.

The second major aspect of Nazimuddin’s innings as chief minister was the Bengali language controversy. Soon after partition, the demand to make Bengali one of the state languages of Pakistan began to gain force, particularly among a segment of Bengali politicians, university students and other members of the province’s civil society. The chief minister unwisely tarnished the persons raising the demand as Hindu agents and communists. However, faced with a growing clamour from the Action Committee for the National Language, which was holding strikes and demonstrations province-wide on the issue, Nazimuddin met with the committee’s representatives on 15 March 1948 and signed an agreement accepting their eight demands, which included making Bengali as the province’s official language and stipulating that the Bengal Assembly would pass a resolution recommending to the central government to make Bengali a state language at par with Urdu.

The latter resolution was never passed by the Bengal Assembly, and this was in no small measure due to the fact that this and certain other aspects of Nazimuddin’s agreement with the committee were repudiated by Mohammed Ali Jinnah when he made his one and only trip as governor-general to East Bengal in March 1948. During this visit, Jinnah himself categorically ruled against making Bengali one of the state languages of Pakistan, and Nazimuddin faithfully upheld this dictate of his leader, even at the cost of his own political standing in his home province. Therefore, it can well be said that if the decision to deny state language status to Bengali was an act of questionable, if not flawed, political judgment, Nazimuddin was in august company in this regard.

When the summons came from Liaquat Ali Khan to succeed the Quaid as the country’s second governor general, Nazimuddin must have heaved a sigh of relief since the chief-ministership of Bengal had proven to be a veritable crown of thorns for him. On the other hand, the governor-general’s office was ideally suited for a man who was clearly cut out for a non-executive head-of-state role and whose qualities of head and heart made him the best candidate to serve as a father figure and a unifying force for the nation.

2) Governor-General

Having the unique honour to occupy the governor-general’s chair vacated by Mohammed Ali Jinnah, Khwaja Nazimuddin truly distinguished himself in the role. Rather, it would not be inapt to state that Nazimuddin acted, in letter and in spirit, as the model constitutional head of state in a parliamentary democracy. This was all the more creditable because the only precedent that was before him was that of the Quaid-e-Azam as governor-general, and that model was of a very different mould. The Quaid was the Father of the Nation and the undisputed paramount leader of the Muslim League, and when he became Pakistan’s first governor general the country was beset by a myriad of dire challenges, many of which required the Quaid’s personal attention. For these reasons, the Quaid had in many respects acted not as a figure-head governor-general but as the final decision-maker, including in relation to the selection of members of the cabinet, chairing of cabinet meetings, formulation of government policy and determination of complex political issues.

However, when Nazimuddin succeeded the Quaid as governor- general, he immediately adopted the neutral and non-interfering role envisaged for the head of state in the Westminster style of democracy, eschewing any personal ambition that he may have had to assert the constitutional authority of the governor-general’s office. In this new era, Liaquat Ali Khan ran the government fully and effectively as befits a prime minister in a parliamentary democracy, while Nazimuddin acted as the apolitical head of state and a father figure for the nation. A relationship of mutual trust and respect developed between the governor- general and the prime minister, the likes of which has rarely been seen in Pakistan.

But one respect in which Khwaja Nazimuddin fully upheld the principles established by the Quaid was in the maintenance of the highest standards of integrity. This fact was best highlighted by Fakhr-e-Alam Zuberi, a member of the official staff who served with Nazimuddin during his time as governor-general. In his memoirs¹⁰, Zuberi narrates that the governor-general once asked him if he knew the amount of money in his bank account. When Zuberi stayed silent and shook his head in the negative, Nazimuddin swore him to secrecy and then asked him to take down a letter to his cousin in Dhaka. Zuberi was no doubt astounded to hear the country’s governor-general request his cousin for a loan of ten thousand rupees on the basis that he had no money in his bank account. Later, Nazimuddin took out a five rupee note from his pocket and handed it over to Zuberi, with the direction that the cost for sending this personal letter should be defrayed from this amount. Such was the unimpeachable level of integrity among the founding fathers of Pakistan.

Sadly, Nazimuddin’s tenure as governor-general came to a sudden end in October 1951, following the tragic assassination of Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan, when he agreed to step down and become the country’s second prime minister (more on that in the next section). Had this sad occurrence not come to pass and if Nazimuddin had continued to hold the governor-general’s office, the history of Pakistan would have been markedly different, for the better. The simple reason for this is that Nazimuddin had not permitted the governor-general’s office to become the hot-bed of intrigue and conspiracies and a parallel centre of power against the prime minister that it was destined to become in the tenures of his successors, Messrs Ghulam Mohammed and Iskander Mirza.

3) Prime Minister

At the time Liaquat Ali Khan breathed his last at Company Bagh, Rawalpindi, Nazimuddin was then on a visit to Nathiagali. Hearing the fateful news, he immediately rushed to Rawalpindi with a view to flying from there to Karachi for the funeral of the late leader. However, at Rawalpindi he was waylaid by Nawab Gurmani, the then Minister for Kashmir Affairs, who met with him and sought to convince him to step down and become the prime minister as a supreme national duty in this grave hour. Twice Nazimuddin refused the poisoned chalice, pointing out to Gurmani that he had retired from active politics and he did not feel himself capable of taking up the onerous duties of prime minister. However, Gurmani continued to press his suit and kept appealing to Nazimuddin’s deep sense of patriotism. The simple-minded and honest patriot finally agreed to become the prime minister, albeit much against his better judgement. Gurmani then proposed Ghulam Mohammed’s name as the next governor-general, and Nazimuddin silently nodded acceptance. The first major intrigue of Pakistan’s history had succeeded.

Why was Nawab Gurmani, who was reportedly acting in concert with Ghulam Mohammed, so keen to prevail upon Nazimuddin to become the prime minister? The reasons were manifold: first, Nazimuddin was known to be a less than firm administrator, hence it was hoped that he would be pliable and easy to control as prime minister; second, the path of Abdur Rab Nishtar to the prime-ministership was sought to be blocked, since he was considered a strong administrator and an independent- minded person (only Nazimuddin among all Muslim Leaguers could out-rank him in the race to become prime-minister); and, third, and most importantly, the governor-general’s office had to be captured by a member of the pro-Punjab/pro-bureaucratic lobby so that it could be used to pursue the preferred policies of these groups on foreign policy issues, constitutional matters and contentious political arrangements – hence getting Nazimuddin to vacate the governor-general’s office was imperative, and installing Ghulam Mohammed in his stead was equally critical.

But if the conspirators had thought that Nazimuddin would prove to be a dummy prime minister and would do their bidding, they were in for a rude surprise. In his 18-month tenure as prime minister, Nazimuddin may not have set records of administrative efficiency and firmness, but in his own simple and honest manner he definitely endeavoured to protect the national interest on the key issues facing the state. That is why he came into serious conflict with the governor-general/civil-military bureaucratic combine, resulting in his premature dismissal from office through a conspiratorial plot.

The key issues which became a bone of contention between Nazimuddin and his opponents were as follows:

(a) Constitution-making

The assassination of Liaquat Ali Khan had thrown a spanner in the works on the matter of constitution-making. However, Nazimuddin took up the gauntlet and in a little over a year into his prime-ministership, his government submitted the revised version of the report of the Basic Principles Committee (BPC) of the Constituent Assembly to the full House for its approval.

The BPC report was, in effect, a full constitution with over 250 articles. Its most critical feature was the concept of a bicameral legislature with the principle of parity. The upper house was envisaged to have 120 members, 60 from each wing of the country, while the lower house was to have 400 seats, with 200 seats allocated for each wing. However, the report foundered on the hard rock of the Punjab/civil-military bureaucratic alliance. The reason was that the representation for the Punjab was 27 seats out of the 60 seats allocated to the western wing in the upper house, while in the lower house the Punjab received 90 seats out of the 200 seats allotted to the western wing. Since Bahawalpur was then a separate state and not part of Punjab, like it has been since 1970, therefore at the time it was given its own separate seats in parliament; hence, the population of the Punjab at the time did not override the combined population of all other regions of the western wing, and the province could not stake a claim to have more electoral seats than the other parts of the western wing combined.

The leaders of the Punjab feared that if Nazimuddin’s formula for distribution of seats was enshrined into law, an alliance between the majority representatives of East Bengal and one or the other of the smaller provinces of the western wing could work to perpetually deny the Punjab any viable prospect of national leadership. Hence, they were determined to oppose the adoption of this constitutional arrangement, and in this regard they had the backing of the governor-general and the civil-military bureaucratic combine. Of course, to them it was of no value that Nazimuddin had selflessly prevailed upon his fellow Bengalis to swallow the principle of parity, even though morally, legally and equitably it was unjustified to water down their numerical majority. To them, it was anathema that the Bengalis were to be allowed to rule the country; this was simply a pre-cursor of the tragic events of 1971.

(b) Foreign Policy

In relation to his government’s foreign policy, Nazimuddin desired to continue with his predecessor’s approach and to keep Pakistan out of any entanglement with a western military alliance. However, the army chief, General Ayub Khan, was extremely keen to forge a warm relationship with the US military, and in this regard he had the strong backing of governor-general Ghulam Mohammed and defence secretary, Iskander Mirza.

Clearly, the right and the power to set policy was solely that of the prime minister. Government officials were simply bound by law to accept and implement the policy set by the prime minister. But in this case the authority of Nazimuddin was being challenged and defied, and that also not too surreptitiously, by key members of the civil-military bureaucracy. Perhaps an assertive and shrewd prime minister may have detected these undercurrents of defiance and quickly taken measures to tackle them. However, this task was beyond Nazimuddin, who was a trusting, pious and honest soul. But even if Nazimuddin had tried to checkmate his powerful opponents, who had the control of the military and civil bureaucracy, the events of 8 October 1958 may simply have been expedited by five years and the nation put under martial law as early as April 1953.

Nevertheless, Nazimuddin did not demur in the face of heavy pressure and he continued to resist joining any US-sponsored military pact, which was a testament to his patriotic sentiment for upholding Pakistan’s sovereignty. His opponents realized that if Nazimuddin was able to secure the passage of the BPC report and to thereby become a powerful prime minister, with the governor-general in the process becoming a figure-head president bereft of any powers, his ability to set the country’s foreign policy would be reinforced manifold. Hence, Nazimuddin’s removal from office became doubly necessary in order to take Pakistan into the US orbit.

(c) The role of religion in the state

Khwaja Nazimuddin was known for his piety and religiosity, therefore it was not unnatural for him to sympathise with demands from the ulema that the future constitution should have an Islamic character. At his initiative, the BPC report contained a provision for the setting up a board of ulema who would assess whether any law passed by parliament was repugnant to the teachings of the Quran or Sunnah. However, the ulema board had no veto power, rather it could only render an advisory jurisdiction on the matter and even its unanimous advice could be overridden by a three fourth majority of the Muslim members of parliament. So, in essence, the ulema board’s significance was more a matter of form than of substance and Nazimuddin had placated the ulema without actually giving them any real share in power.

Still, the proposed ulema board and other Islamic provisions of the proposed constitution stuck like a sore thumb in the eyes of the secular-minded Ghulam Mohammed and General Ayub Khan, and they realized that their plans for embracing the US military alliance could be jeopardized if the religious lobby gained a foothold, tenuous though it may be, in the affairs of the state. On this count, also, Nazimuddin’s fate was sealed.

(d) Anti-Ahmadiyya agitation

Ever since partition, the Majlis-e-Ahrar, a primarily Punjab-based political party, had from time to time been demanding that members of the Ahmadi community be declared outside the pale of Islam and that Foreign Minister Zafarullah Khan, an Ahmadi, be dismissed from the cabinet. In 1952, the anti-Ahmadi movement picked up force in the Punjab and various other religious parties threw in their lot with the Ahrars. However, the Punjab government continually failed in its duty to throw the book at the leaders of the movement for their repeated incitement to violence¹¹.

As a matter of his personal beliefs, Nazimuddin was probably in agreement with the demand that the Ahmadis be declared non-Muslims. However, he was intelligent enough to understand that as a matter of principle he could not give in to mob rule and sacrifice his cabinet member. Therefore, he declined to accept the demands of the ulema, and this resulted in the movement assuming violent proportions, until it was finally quashed in March 1953 by the imposition of Pakistan’s first bout of martial law, albeit limited to Lahore.

It is generally accepted that the Punjab government allowed the anti- Ahmadi agitation to get out of hand because Mian Mumtaz Daultana, the powerful provincial chief minister and champion of the Punjabi feduals, was the leading opponent of the BPC report. By stoking these religious fires, Daultana wished to de-stabilise Nazimuddin and achieve his own burning desire to become the prime minister. However, the fire first engulfed Daultana, who resigned from office, but it also provided the governor-general with one of the pretexts to dismiss Nazimuddin as prime minister a month later, even though this was a specious ground for dismissal, since the law and order situation had by then definitely been brought under control by the imposition of martial law.

(e) Wheat crisis

Poor seasonal rains in the summer of 1952, compounded by speculative hoarding of grain-stuffs, raised the spectre of wheat shortages in 1953. This gave the opponents of Khwaja Nazimuddin the opportunity to raise the questionable bogey of a famine and to taunt him with undignified labels, such as “Quaid-e-Qillat” and “Hazimuddin”- the latter a reference to his allegedly voracious appetite. This was actually a fake allegation because while Nazimuddin was a connoisseur of good food, he was no glutton.

Nazimuddin’s government took effective steps to deal with the potential food shortage, through imports of wheat from the USA, Canada and Australia. In the event, Pakistan had a bumper wheat crop in 1953- 1954 and by the time some of the imported wheat arrived, there was no need for it and it had to be sold off as animal feed in the European market.

But the wheat “crisis” still served as a useful tool for the prime minister’s enemies to portray his government as weak, ineffective and incompetent.

4) The Dismissal

On Friday 17 April, 1953, Khwaja Nazimuddin received a summons from the governor-general’s military secretary, Colonel Hamid Nawaz Khan¹², to attend upon Ghulam Mohammed at 4pm along with his cabinet. When the meeting began, Ghulam Mohammed made references to the country’s deteriorating economic condition and the shortage of foodstuffs and the worsening law and order and situation. He then abruptly asked for the prime minister’s resignation. The prime minister refused to do so, pointing out that his government enjoyed the confidence of the constituent assembly. The governor-general then simply announced the dismissal of the prime minister and closed the meeting.

As a dazed Nazimuddin returned to his vehicle, he found that the national flag had been removed from it. Upon reaching his official residence he discovered that his telephone line had been disconnected and the overseas telegram service had also been cut off, to prevent him from contacting Buckingham Palace to request the termination of the governor-general’s commission of appointment. The depth of the betrayal was such that within four hours of Nazimuddin’s dismissal, the majority of his former cabinet members, some of whom had been actively colluding with the governor-general, had joined the cabinet of the new prime minister, Mohammed Ali Bogra¹³.

The governor-general’s palace coup, which had been aided and abetted by C-in-C General Ayub Khan and Defence Secretary Iskander Mirza, had struck a mortal blow to take the country off from the rails of constitutionalism, rule of law and democracy. The irony of ironies was that this highly shabby and undignified treatment was meted out by this trio of serving and former bureaucrats to a person who was the country’s senior-most politician, a close lieutenant of the Quaid and one of the handful of leaders from East Bengal who enjoyed popular support in the western wing.

5) Final Years

Such was the honesty and integrity of Nazimuddin that he had no house of his own to reside in when he left the prime-minister’s official residence. As a mark of respect, a leading industrialist of Karachi, A.W.Adamjee, placed one of his houses at Nazimuddin’s disposal, and that is where he resided for the next few years. His financial situation was so parlous, that he even had to request the Sindh government for the allotment of some land for poultry-farming in order to help make ends meet¹⁴.

After the dissolution in 1954 of the first constituent assembly, of which he had remained a member even after the dismissal of his government, Nazimuddin’s political career effectively came to a close. A few years later he moved back to Dhaka and lived there in quiet retirement.

However, in 1962 the aged leader came out of retirement at the request of Ms. Fatima Jinnah and assumed the president-ship of the Council Muslim League, the faction of the party which opposed the Ayub dictatorship and his king’s party, the Convention Muslim League. Although a heart patient and nearly 70 years of age, Nazimuddin toured the length and breadth of Pakistan to rally public support against the Ayub regime. The reception given to him in the various cities of West Pakistan was particularly unprecedented, both in the huge numbers which turned out to receive him and the gushing adulation with which the public heralded his arrival¹⁵.

It was thanks to the untiring efforts of Nazimuddin that the opposition parties formed an electoral alliance, the Combined Opposition Parties, and fielded Ms. Fatima Jinnah against Ayub Khan in the presidential election. However, before the election was held, over-exertion and fatigue took its toll on Nazimuddin and on October 22, 1964 a sudden heart attack robbed the nation of this faithful lieutenant of the Quaid.

Conclusion

If ever there was a contest to determine which Pakistani prime minister was the most distinguished on the combined count of piety, honesty, humility and integrity, Khwaja Nazimuddin would have won hands down¹⁶. And if such traits were the sine qua non for a successful Pakistani prime minister, then surely Nazimuddin would have gone down in history as Pakistan’s best leader.

But in actual fact Khwaja sahib’s qualities of head and heart made him a misfit in the ruthless and intrigue-ridden arena of Pakistani politics of the day. Like Dr. Rajendra Prasad, the veteran freedom fighter and India’s first president for 12 years, Nazimuddin would have made a fine constitutional president on this side of the border. However, he became the victim of vile political machinations at the hands of lesser men, nearly all of whom were former or serving bureaucrats who had played no role in the creation of a country for which Nazimuddin had sacrificed his all.

A country in which the front-rank freedom fighters were either physically assassinated (Liaquat) or politically eliminated (Nazimuddin) or deliberately sidelined (Nishtar) can scarce hope to achieve its true potential unless it expiates for such ingratitude. Sadly, that national atonement is still awaited, more than seven decades after these sorry events came to pass.

References

1. See Political Parties in Pakistan 1947-1958 Vol.1 by M.Rafique Afzal at page 47
2. Jinnah, Liaquat, Nishtar and Nawab Ismail Khan being the other four.
3. Nazimuddin was knighted in 1934; he renounced the title in 1946 upon the Quaid’s demand for Muslim League leaders to give up all honours received from the British.
4. Nazimuddin had merged his United Muslim Party with the Muslim League in 1936.
5. Fazlul Huq and Bengal Politics in the years before the Second Partition of Bengal (1947) at page 242 https://ir.nbu.ac.in/bitstream/123456789/2707/18/18_chapter%206.pdf
6. Ibid at page 244
7. See Shahabnama by Qudratullah Shahab at pages 146-147
8. Aziz Ahmed, formerly of the Indian Civil Service, served in several key positions, including as Cabinet Secretary, Foreign Secretary, Ambassador to the USA and Chairman NPT. During the Bhutto years, he served as the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs.
9. See “Shahab-beeti” by Shahabuddin Rehmatullah at page 250.
10. See “Governor-General House say Army House tak” by Fakhre Alam Zuberi at page 43
11. See the Report of the Court of Enquiry 1954 (Punjab Disturbances 1953), Manager of Government Publications (1954)
12. Hamid Nawaz Khan retired as a brigadier and later served as Pakistan’s ambassador to several countries. He then entered politics and was twice elected a PPP MNA from Pasrur, in 1977 and 1988.
13. Only Sardar Abdur Rab Nishtar honourably declined the offer to accept a role in the new cabinet or to proceed overseas as an ambassador.
14. See “Roodad-e-Chaman” by Pir Ali Mohammed Rashdi at pages 52-53
15. When he arrived in Lahore in December 1962, the welcoming crowds were so great that he nearly collapsed on account of the pressure of such a huge mass of people and his trademark fez cap was lost in the melee; mercifully it was returned to him the next day. His public meeting in Mochi Gate, a few days later, drew over 40,000 people.
16. The high level of Nazimuddin’s humility and piety can be assessed from the fact that in Ramadan he would partake the iftar meal with all of the governor- general’s official household staff and then join the congregational maghrib prayers, which would be led by a junior member of the clerical staff.