by Yusuf Zaman*
*The author is a barrister and entrepreneur. Pakistani history and politics hold great interest for him. He can be contacted at: [email protected]
The second president of the USA, John Adams, once said, “always stand on principle even if you stand alone”. In Pakistani politics, if ever this adage held true for a politician it did so for Mian Iftikharuddin of the noteworthy Mian family from Baghbanpura in Lahore. Hereditary custodians of the famed Shalimar Gardens, an honour bestowed on them by none other than the Mughal emperor Shah Jehan, the Arain Mian family produced a bevy of famous politicians and jurists in the last century. These included: Justice Mian Shah-din, the founder of the Punjab Muslim League and the first Muslim judge of the Lahore Chief Court (later renamed the Lahore High Court); Justice Mian Sir Abdur Rashid, the first, and arguably the most respected, Chief Justice of Pakistan; Mian Sir Mohammed Shafi, a leading politician, lawyer, educationist and a member of the Viceroy’s Executive Council; and his daughter, Begum Jahanara Shahnawaz, a senior Muslim League politician in the run-up to partition and one of the two ladies elected to the first Constituent Assembly 1.
However, even in the presence of such distinguished relatives, in my view Mian Iftikharuddin can rightly be considered the most famous scion of the family in the 20th century. This is not because of his conventional achievements in politics; rather, his claim to fame rests on his unique courage of convictions, adherence to principles and solitary voice of dissent on some of the great political and constitutional issues in the formative years of Pakistan. These rare qualities of head and heart definitely qualify Iftikharuddin to be considered one of the keepers of the nation’s conscience in the early years of Pakistan.
6 June marked the 60th death anniversary of Iftikharuddin and it is therefore befitting to explore the life and times of a man who was a maverick politician, an ideological socialist, a fiercely independent newspaper magnate, a leading feudal landlord, a humanist and, last but not least, a man of integrity.
Iftikharuddin was born in 1907 in Baghbanpura with a silver spoon in his mouth. His father, Khan Bahadur Mian Jamaluddin, was the owner of over 1200 acres of land in various parts of Lahore district and served as an honorary magistrate and a zaildar. Jamaluddin was also the holder of the keys to the main gate of Shalimar Gardens, which upon his death were passed on to his only son, Iftikharuddin. Shortly after the latter’s death in 1962, the Ayub government instructed the West Pakistan Auqaf Department to take over the Shalimar Gardens. The officials took possession of the keys to the gardens from Mian Iftikharuddin’s cousin, Mian Khurshid, and thus ended the Mian family’s 300 year plus custodianship of the gardens 2.
Schooled at Aitchison College, Lahore, Iftikharuddin later proceeded to Balliol College, Oxford, where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree. While at Oxford, Iftikharuddin was influenced by leading members of the Communist party and even attended various workshops run by them on the principles of communism. Thus began his lifelong commitment to the cause of socialism and left-politics.
Upon his return from Oxford, Iftikharuddin primarly devoted himself to the care of his feudal estate, his father having passed away quite a few years earlier. But by the mid-1930s he decided to enter the political arena. At a time when the overwhelming majority of Punjab’s Muslim feudals adorned the ranks of the Unionist Party, Iftikharuddin, true to form, bucked the trend and instead joined the Indian National Congress in 1936. The Muslim League was a party he was then not prepared to touch even with a ten foot barge pole, since he saw it as a communal and reactionary grouping.
In the 1937 provincial assembly elections Iftikharuddin was one of only two Muslims elected to the Punjab Legislative Assembly on the Congress party’s ticket. Whereas the other Muslim victor, Chaudhry Muhammad Hasan, was elected from Ludhiana in present day Indian Punjab, Iftikharuddin was the party’s only Muslim victor from present day Pakistani Punjab, winning the election from his Kasur constituency.
By 1940 Iftikharuddin had been elected president of the Punjab wing of the party, an impressive achievement for a Muslim in a party which was overwhelmingly dominated by the province’s Hindus and Sikhs. He continued to hold this office for the next five years, of which a considerable period was spent in jail during the Quit India Movement; Iftikharuddin was perhaps the only one of Punjab’s leading Muslim feudals who spent such a long period of imprisonment on political grounds.
Being a socialist at heart, Iftikharuddin soon became a supporter of the right of self-determination of the Muslims of today’s Pakistan and Bangladesh, and in his view the cause for India’s freedom and unity could only be furthered if the Muslims in these parts of India were given the right to decide their own future. Iftikharuddin held these views even while he was the president of the Punjab Congress party, in stark opposition to the bulk of his party colleagues. It was for this reason that when in 1942 the senior Congress leader, C. Rajagopalachari, presented his formula to the powerful Congress Working Committee, the main plank of which was to concede the demand for Pakistan, Mian Iftikharuddin was one of the 15 members in the minority who voted in support of the resolution. However, with 85 members in opposition, the resolution was defeated and Rajagopalachari left the Congress party. Iftikharuddin stayed in the party and tried his utmost to get the Congress high command to concede the Muslim right to self-determination. With his efforts having come to naught, in 1945 Iftikharuddin finally stepped down both from the presidential office and the primary membership of the Congress party and joined the Muslim League.
For the League, it was a coup to have poached such a senior leader of the Congress party, and for this reason a big public meeting was held at Mochi Gate to welcome Iftikharuddin into the party fold. During the 1945-1946 provincial assembly elections, Iftikharuddin was one of the most energetic and formidable campaigners for the Muslim League in Punjab. At the polls, the League won an overwhelming majority of the Muslim seats in the Punjab Legislative Assembly (Iftikharuddin retaining his Kasur seat) and the Unionist Party was routed. However, the Muslim League was kept out of power in the province through an un-holy alliance between the Congress, the Akalis and the Unionists which allowed Malik Khizar Hayat Tiwana to continue as the province’s premier, albeit with a considerably eroded moral authority.
Iftikharuddin was one of the strongest parliamentary performers for the Muslim League in the Punjab Assembly, and he lost no opportunity to attack his former Congress colleagues for their rank political expediency and betrayal of the principle of majority rule, by cynically supporting their former foe, the reactionary Unionist party’s minority government, just to keep the popular Muslim League out of power. In a memorable speech on 28 March 1946 he addressed the Congress MLAs in the following words:
I tell you to your face that you all are capitalists and now you are helping the reactionary Unionists. You have spurned the eighty rightfully elected representatives of the Musalmans and have formed a coalition with six or seven men who are no representatives in their character. In forming such an ugly coalition you have got in your mind nothing else but enmity towards the Muslim organization – the League is your guiding spirit and motive in this transaction 3.
Following independence, in September 1947 Iftikharuddin joined the Punjab cabinet as the first ever minister for refugees and rehabilitation, the need for such a position having arisen on account of the colossal influx of refugees into the Punjab in the days and weeks following partition. Confronted with the dire challenge of feeding, clothing and resettling millions of battered, bruised and bloodied refugees, Iftikharuddin came up with a drastic solution. He advocated a radical redistribution of wealth by proposing a land reform setting a maximum 50 acres of agricultural land per person, and the distribution to the refugees of all the excess land to be thereby expropriated, sans payment of any compensation, by the government. The imposition of a stringent income tax on all agricultural income earned above a threshold of 25 acres was another of his revolutionary proposals.
Iftikharuddin justified his solution to the refugee problem on a two-fold basis: first, he argued that the initiative had religious sanction, since Islam supports the principles of social justice, fairness and an end to exploitation; and second, he believed that such a measure was imperative for Pakistan to quickly progress as a nation and for all its people to receive the opportunity for a fair go. Not surprisingly, the Mian’s revolutionary idea met with an unbreakable wall of opposition from the Punjab cabinet and the overwhelming majority of MLAs in the Punjab Legislative Assembly, nearly all of whom represented the landed gentry of the province. Iftikharuddin saw the writing on the wall and he resigned in protest from the cabinet at the rejection of his proposals. This two and a half month stint in office marked his first and last entry into the corridors of power.
A couple of days after leaving ministerial office, Iftikharuddin was elected president of the Punjab Muslim League, a testament to his popularity among the party’s rank and file, particularly when his opponent was strongly supported by Nawab Mamdot. Thus, Iftikharuddin enjoys the unique distinction of having been the president of the Punjab Congress and of the Punjab Muslim League! As the party’s provincial president, Iftikharuddin toured the length and breadth of the province and he kept hammering home the need for socio-economic justice and a redistribution of wealth – this policy obviously did not endear him to the party grandees.
Simultaneously, Iftikharuddin was also a member of the Constituent Assembly, and in that regard he came to prominence when in March 1949 Nawabzada Liaqat Ali Khan presented the Objectives Resolution before the house. As its name suggested, the resolution sought to set out the guiding principles on the basis of which the future constitution of Pakistan was to be drafted. Each and every non-Muslim member of the assembly spoke out against the resolution since for them it denoted a departure from the principles of separation of religion and state espoused by Quaid-e-Azam, particularly in his memorable speech of 11 August 1947. However, save for one person, each Muslim member who spoke on the resolution supported it whole-heartedly and all amendments moved by the non-Muslim members were comprehensively rejected by the Muslim members.
The one exception was, unsurprisingly, Mian Iftikharuddin who struck a discordant tone on the Objectives Resolution. In his memorable speech in the Constituent Assembly on 11 March, Iftikharuddin criticized the resolution as failing to prescribe the basis for a constitution which would make Pakistan a real democracy; in his words, the Objectives Resolution was merely a prescription for a “passive democracy”. Iftikharuddin also criticized the reference in the resolution to authority being delegated by Allah Almighty to the State of Pakistan to be exercised through its people. He pointed out that the state is an artifi construct and is not separate from the people and, therefore, the correct position is that authority is delegated by the Almighty to the people of Pakistan. In a show of remarkable prescience, Iftikharuddin pointed out that if the state is considered as a separate entity a time may come when the state may refuse to obey the people because in its view the latter has failed to uphold the limits prescribed by the Almighty 4
Finally, Mian Iftikharuddin bemoaned the fact that the Objectives Resolution said nothing concrete and definite about ushering in a system of government founded on Islamic principles of democracy, social justice, economic freedom, equality and an end to exploitation. He even went to the extent of saying that the “words used in the Resolution do not say anything at all”. And yet again, in a remarkable show of foresight, he stated that:
The fight in this country is not going to be between Hindus and Muslims. The battle in times to come will be between Hindu have-nots and Muslim have-nots on the one hand and Muslim and Hindu upper and middle classes on the other 5.
Although Hindu upper and middle classes have been all but removed from the scene in Pakistan after the break-up of the country in 1971, the essential truth in Mian sahib’s prediction still rings true. Today, with the gulf between rich and poor increasing steadily and no end in sight to the economic exploitation of the poor and marginalized classes, the Objectives Resolution has clearly failed to set the foundations for the establishment of a truly welfare-oriented state in Pakistan, where the democratic will of the people, rather than the vested interests of the elite, would prevail.
Iftikharuddin’s above-mentioned views on land reforms and the Objectives Resolution had markedly clashed with the stance of his colleagues in the Muslim League. His defence of civil liberties and freedom of speech and his vocal support for an independent foreign policy brought this in-house conflict into sharp focus. Finally, when he spoke out against the invoking of the draconian colonial era Public Safety Act, Liaqat Ali Khan and the top echelon of the Muslim League felt that they could not tolerate this dissent any longer, and Iftikharuddin was duly expelled from the party in April 1950.
However, not one to back down, in November 1950 the Mian and Sardar Shaukat Hayat, another expelled member of the Muslim League, established their own party, the Azad Pakistan Party. Although it never really gained traction in electoral politics, the party gave Iftikharuddin a useful platform from which he continued to espouse his leftist and anti-imperialist politics. In 1957, the Azad Pakistan Party merged into the newly-formed National Awami Party, with Mian Iftikharuddin becoming the only prominent Punjabi politician to join this party. Sadly, the imposition of Pakistan’s first Martial Law in October 1958 brought all political activities to a halt, and this effectively ended Iftikharuddin’s political career.
But no account of Mian Iftikharuddin is complete without a mention of the matter of the Progressive Papers Limited (PPL). This entity was established in 1946, primarily by Mian Iftikharuddin but in concert with a handful of other Muslim League leaders (the share- holding of the other owners was soon bought out by Iftikharuddin), to promote the cause of the Muslim League particularly in the Punjab. In February 1947, the PPL launched the English language Pakistan Times with the renowned poet, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, as its chief editor. In due course, Urdu language sister publications, the daily Imroze and the weekly Lail-o-Nahar, were brought out. The Pakistan Times played a crucial role in advocating the Muslim League’s cause during the civil disobedience movement against the Malik Khizar Hayat administration in February 1947.
After independence, the Pakistan Times became one of the country’s leading and most respected newspapers, and its name was synonymous with the freedom of the press and the support of social justice, trade unions, civil liberties and a non-aligned foreign policy. Obviously, Mian Iftikharuddin’s bold political views provided crucial inspiration and support for the newspaper’s independent editorial line. Once Faiz Ahmed Faiz departed from the scene following his arrest in the Rawalpindi Conspiracy Case, the chief editor’s mantle passed on to the indomitable Mazhar Ali Khan. The latter was still in the saddle on 18 April 1959 when Ayub Khan’s regime took over the PPL, in an arbitrary, sudden and clandestine operation, which was masterminded by Brigadier F.R.Khan, under the supervision of federal ministers, Lt General K.M.Sheikh and Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. Mazhar Ali Khan immediately resigned in protest at this naked act of muzzling of the free press, and Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi, the editor of Imroze, followed suit 6.
Mian Iftikharuddin bravely fought the take-over in the courts, but it was a losing battle since the regime had undertaken its fell action on the basis of sweeping Martial Law regulations. To make matters worse, the regime gave no compensation to Iftikharuddin for the confiscation of his shareholding of PPL, which on a conservative estimate was valued at around 5 million rupees in 1959.
Three years later, Iftikharuddin died, untimely, at the age of 54, an embittered and exhausted man after all his trying travails in the courts and tribunals. But till his dying day he could take pride in the fact that he had always fought the good fight, nearly always single-handedly, whether it was for the rights of refugees or the principles of social justice or the cause of the freedom of the press. And above all, he had never bent before the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
The best tribute to Mian sahib was given by his friend and admirer Faiz Ahmed Faiz, who said the following verse in his honour:
Jo rukey tu koh-e-garan thay hum, jo chalay tu jaan say guzar gaye
Raah-e-yaar hum ne qadam qadam, tujhay yaadgaar banaa diya
(I was a mountain when I stopped / And when I moved I sacrificed my being
O path to my beloved, I have, step by step / Turned you into a memorial)
References
- Begum Shaista Suhrawardy Ikramullah was the other lady member of the assembly
- Interview with Commissioner Inland Revenue (Sialkot Zone) Mian Ahmad Kamal, nephew of Mian Khurshid
- Punjab Legislative Assembly Debates at https://www.pap.gov.pk/uploads/verbatim/text/en/pb-legis-assembly-debates-vol-xxv-1946.pdf
- For example, one of the grounds given by General Zia-ul-Haq for the dissolution of the National Assembly in May 1988 was that the government of prime minister Mohammed Khan Junejo had failed to enforce Islamisation in the country. This was a case of the state using a nebulous religious basis to override the will of the people, the popular sovereign, as expressed through its chosen representatives.
- Speech of Mian Iftikharuddin in the Constituent Assembly, 10 March 1949 at https://na.gov.pk/uploads/documents/1434604288_514.pdf
- Pakistan, The First Twelve Years (The Pakistan Times Editorials of Mazhar Ali Khan), OUP, at pages 740-746
