Introduction
Sometime in 1943, Mohammed Ali Jinnah asked one of his close associates within the Muslim League to go to Lahore and to evaluate whether or not a house for sale in the city’s cantonment area, owned by a gentleman by the name of Nazir Ahmed, was worth purchasing. The Quaid also handed over a blank cheque to his associate in order to effect the transaction, in the event that the house met with the latter’s approval.
The person in question baulked at the prospect of having to make an independent judgment call about the suitability of the house and potentially incurring the ire of his leader in the event that the house failed to meet his expectations. He expressed this apprehension to the Quaid, but the response he received was that if the house met with the associate’s approval, then it should be assumed that it would also be looked upon favourably by the Quaid himself. With such a blanket authority at his disposal, Qazi Isa journeyed to Lahore and acquired the house in question for his leaderi. Tragically, on 9 May 2023, that historic building, known to all and sundry as Jinnah House, was brazenly attacked and set on fire in the backdrop of the arrest of the then chairman of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf.
To those familiar with the Quaid’s austere, reserved and non-emotional personality, it does not appear to have been in character for him to have generously placed such unqualified confidence and trust in a party-man on a personal matter of property acquisition. But for those who know of the unique bond between Qazi Mohammed Isa and the Quaid, this incident will not seem out of place. In truth, the entrusting of this responsibility by the Quaid to Isa is just one of the many pieces of evidence which substantiate the claim that the former looked upon the latter as one of his closest and most devoted lieutenants.
Bearing the above aspect in mind, it is strange, to say the least, that little is known by Pakistanis in general about the role of Qazi Muhammad Isa in the freedom struggle, the services rendered by him for the cause of Pakistan and how he fared in the post-1947 era. The reason for this is probably because once Pakistan came into being, Qazi Isa never earned his rightful place under the sun. Instead, persons who had had little, if at all any, role in the Muslim League’s struggle for Pakistan muscled out stalwarts such as Qazi Isa and arrogated to themselves the position of Pakistan’s rulers and powerbrokers. And since we as a nation are swayed more by the trappings of office rather than by the power of selfless service, therefore it was but natural that Qazi Isa, who neither became a governor nor a chief minister nor a federal minister in Pakistan, simply fell off the national political radar.
However, I believe it is never too late to make amends for past mistakes. Today, when the son of Qazi Isa occupies the position of the Chief Justice of Pakistan, this being the first, and will remain the only ever time in the country’s history when the son of a genuine freedom fighter and one of the leading lights of the Pakistan Movement has attained the position of the country’s chief justice, it is all the more appropriate to honour the memory of the Lion of Baluchistanii. This article makes a humble start to fill the unforgivable deficiency of the published historical material on Qazi Isa, with the hope that this effort will trigger the interest of scholars and historical researchers and in the fullness of time a more comprehensive and detailed analysis will emerge on the life and times of this freedom fighter par excellence.
Background
Qazi Isa was born in Pishin, then a dusty little town of British Baluchistan, in July 1914. His father, Qazi Jalaluddin, had been the hereditary Qazi (judge) of Kandahar in Afghanistan, before he fell out with the then Afghan monarch, Amir Abdur Rehman, in the late nineteenth century and migrated to Baluchistan, settling down in Pishin. Impressed by his status as a jurist and as a man of learning, the Khan of Kalat, the foremost ruler amongst the princely states of Baluchistan, appointed him as his prime minister. Qazi Isa was one of the three sons born to Qazi Jalaluddin, the other two being Qazi Musa – who himself remained active in Muslim League politics until his untimely death in 1956 in a car accident – and Qazi Ismail.
After completing his schooling in Quetta, Isa proceeded to England for his further studies and in due course he qualified from the Middle Temple as the first barrister-at-law from Baluchistan. Upon returning to India in 1938, Isa decided to undertake a visit of different Indian cities before settling down to the practice of law. During one such visit, to Bombay in January 1939, it was fortuitous that he had an introductory encounter with Mohammed Ali Jinnah at the Bombay Race Club, thanks to Nawab Talah Mohammed Khan of Palanpur, who was a friend of both men. The Quaid invited them to lunch at his house the next day, and by the end of the lunch proceedings Qazi Isa was prevailed upon by his host to return to Baluchistan and to set up the Muslim League in the province. Clearly, Isa must have impressed the Quaid in no small measure to have been handed this onerous task. It was obviously a singular achievement for Isa, since the Quaid was considered a shrewd judge of character and a man driven by cold logic rather than by emotions.
From that momentous day onwards, Isa never looked back. Perhaps few Pakistanis today would know that from the summer of 1939, when he actually established the first formal branch of the Muslim League in Balochistan at the age of 25, to partition eight years later, Qazi Isa virtually single-handedly shouldered the burden of building and operating the party in the province. He not only remained the elected president of the Baluchistan Muslim League throughout this period but he also represented the province in the powerful Working Committee of the All India Muslim League (AIML) from 1940 onwards, becoming the second-youngest member to be nominated by the Quaid to this body – the youngest member being the Raja of Mahmudabadiii.
Qazi Isa and the Baluchistan Muslim League
To understand the significance of the role played by Qazi Isa as the leader of the Baluchistan Muslim League, one needs to consider the overall state of leadership of the AIML in the late 1930s/early 1940s. At that time, in the Muslim-majority provinces of NWFP, Punjab, Sindh and Bengal, there was no dearth of front-ranking politicians who adorned the provincial branches of the party. In the Muslim-minority provinces, such as UP, Bihar, Madras and Bombay, the League similarly boasted of an abundance of senior leaders. However, in Baluchistan, the province that was destined to become the largest federating unit of present-day Pakistan and the most resource-rich area of the country, the Muslim League, far from having a bevy of senior leaders, was not even in existence until 1939.
It should be pointed out that Baluchistan of the 1930s and 1940s was a heavily tribal society with a galaxy of princely rulers and powerful sardars dominating its politics. Very few of these worthies was inclined to dirty his hands in grassroots politics by promoting the cause of the Muslim League in the province. Further, Khan Abdus Samad Achakzai’s Anjuman-e-Watan, which was allied with the Indian National Congress, had already made significant inroads among the Pushtun population of Baluchistan, in particular amongst the educated segments of society and members of the nascent middle class – a potential vote-bank without the support of which the Muslim League could not hope to succeed in the province. In addition, in Kalat, the largest princely state of Baluchistan, the Kalat State National Party, a nationalist party seeking independence for Baluchistan, was active and it counted amongst its ranks leading political figures, such as Mir Ghous Buksh Bizenjo and Mir Gul Khan Naseer.
With such an adverse terrain on which to operate, it was not surprising that the Quaid had not been able to establish the Muslim League in the province. But Qazi Isa took up the gauntlet with gusto. As the League’s standard-bearer in the province, over the next few years he toured the length and breadth of Balochistaniv, setting up city and district branches of the party, pursuing aggressive membership drives at the grassroots level, publishing a weekly journal, Al-Islam, which served as the mouthpiece of the party, convincing notables and other persons to join the League and popularizing it in various nooks and crannies of the province through a series of public meetings and rallies and by arranging the visits of Muslim League heavy-weights like Liaqat Ali Khan, Maulana Zafar Ali Khan, Maulana Abdul Hamid Badayuni and Nawab Iftikhar Hussain Mamdot to the province.
On the matter of public meetings, the hard fact is that within a short period of time after he launched the Baluchistan Muslim League, Isa was regularly able to hold public meetings in Quetta and other cities in Baluchistan which were often attended by an impressive number of attendees. To gather a couple of thousand people at a public meeting was then considered an achievement by Quetta standards, but many of the public meetings addressed by Isa witnessed attendees in the range of eight to ten thousand persons, which was even more of a remarkable feat for a fledgling political party. At one particular public rally in Quetta in 1939 which was addressed by Maulana Zafar Ali Khan, the crowd numbered around fifteen thousand persons!
A little over six months after he had established the Muslim League in the province, it was Qazi Isa who led the Baluchistan delegation to the Lahore session of the AIML in March 1940, and it was he who enthusiastically seconded the Pakistan Resolution on behalf of the province of Baluchistanv.
These yeoman efforts of Qazi Isa to entrench the Muslim League in Baluchistan bore fruit in 1943, when the Quaid made his first visit to Baluchistan and was greeted by enthusiastic and cheering crowds wherever he journeyed in the province. It is said that the public procession which escorted the Quaid on his arrival in Quetta numbered around fifty thousand persons, which was a formidable number in the context of the demographics of Baluchistan. The Quaid attended a session of the Muslim League in Quetta, and on that occasion, Qazi Isa presented his leader with a sword which supposedly belonged to Ahmed Shah Abdali.vi
The same overwhelming display of public support was on hand when Jinnah made his second visit to Baluchistan in 1945. Interestingly, during this second visit to the province, which lasted for nearly eight weeks, the Quaid was a guest of Isa and he stayed at the latter’s house in Quetta, another proof of the closeness of the relationship between the two menvii.
To take the party from a zero ranking in the province in 1939 to such a formidable position within a period of five years was a tremendous feat and it would simply not have been possible without Qazi Isa’s grit and determination.
This is not to suggest that Qazi Isa had an easy ride as the leader of the Baluchistan Muslim League. In actual fact, his authority was constantly challenged by various factions within the party. In particular, elements among the tribal chiefs/land-owning sardars were opposed to his domination of the party, primarily because he was not from amongst their class and they could not accept playing second fiddle to an urbanite professional. The prime case was that of Mir Jafar Khan Jamali, a leading Muslim Leaguer and tribal potentate from Naseerabad, who severely criticized Isa’s handling of party matters and who regularly petitioned the Quaid and Liaqat Ali Khan to sack Isa as president of the Baluchistan Muslim League. However, the criticism against Isa failed to move the party’s central leadership or to dent the confidence that it placed in the president of the Baluchistan Muslim League, and from this one can infer that the criticism against Isa was largely unfounded.
Nevertheless, it is true that on occasions Qazi Isa displayed too undiplomatic a mien, particularly in the context of the exigencies of sub-continental politics. For example, in a speech in 1947 he criticized the sardars of Baluchistan in particularly blunt terms and this caused considerable consternation in the ranks of the pro-Muslim League sardars, while at the same time it provided the Congress and Abdus Samad Achakzai with the opportunity to whip up anti-Pakistan propagandaviii. Such an attitude obviously won Qazi Isa few adherents among the powerful sardars of the province. This was perhaps one key reason why Isa was not selected as the Muslim League’s candidate for election to the Indian Constituent Assembly in 1946 against Baluchistan’s sole seat in that legislature – the nomination going instead to Nawab Mohammed Khan Jogezai, one of the leading Pashtun sardars of the province.ix
However, notwithstanding his general inability to get on with the province’s sardars, it is an undeniable fact that Isa’s services for the Muslim League in Baluchistan proved invaluable for drumming up support amongst a cross-section of society for the Pakistan Movement. Thus, when in 1947 the time came for the fate of Baluchistan to be decided, i.e. whether the province would join Pakistan or India, the matter was settled by the members of the Baluchistan Shahi Jirga and the Quetta Municipal Corporation, both of whom overwhelmingly voted to tie the province’s fortunes to Pakistan, a result that would have been difficult to achieve had it not been for the sustained efforts of Qazi Isa to popularize the idea of Pakistan over the preceding eight years. Of course, this is not to gainsay the efforts of many others, foremost among them being the likes of Mir Jafar Khan Jamali, Nawab Mohammed Khan Jogezai, Nawabzada Abdul Rehman Bugti, Arbab Karam Khan Kansi, Fazal Ahmed Ghazi and Naseem Hijazi, all of whom played varyingly important roles to deliver Baluchistan’s verdict in favour of Pakistan. However, in his capacity as the president of the Baluchistan Muslim League and as Baluchistan’s representative on the AIML Working Committee, throughout the years of the Pakistan Movement, Qazi Isa’s role in bringing Baluchistan into the fold of Pakistan was simply unparalleled and for this the nation owes him a debt of gratitude.
Qazi Isa’s services to the Muslim League outside Baluchistan
Astoundingly, even while he was building up the Muslim League in Baluchistan, Isa still found time to provide various key services to the AIML outside the province. In actual fact he became the trusted point-man of the party’s central leadership, in other words of the Quaid himself, and was regularly deputed to deal with challenges confronting the party in other provinces.
One other province in relation to which Isa played a key role on behalf of the AIML, was the then NWFP. In the summer of 1944, Isa was appointed as a one-man commission to revamp the affairs of the provincial Muslim League, which had been beset by ruinous factionalism. Isa undertook this mammoth task, first by dissolving the moribund League branch and then by launching an aggressive province-wide membership drive, which helped reset the foundations of the party and well-positioned it for the forthcoming elections of 1945-1946.
Prior to that mission, in 1943 Isa had been tasked by the Quaid to spearhead the election campaign for four by-elections to the NWFP Assembly. These by-elections were of crucial importance to the future of the recently formed Muslim League ministry of premier Sardar Aurangzeb Khan, the first ever time that the party had formed a government in the NWFP. The Quaid had hoped that at least one or two of the by-elections would be won by the League, but Isa ran such a successful election campaign that the party won all four of the electoral contests, another testament to the political skills of the leader of the Baluchistan Muslim League. This was one of the prime examples of the sort of selfless services that Qazi Isa rendered to the Muslim League even outside Baluchistan.
Interestingly, when an elated Quaid-e-Azam inquired from Isa about the funds that had been expended on the by-elections from the Muslim League treasury, Isa responded that the sum was Rs 2500. The Quaid wrote out a cheque for Rs 10,000, assuming that Isa meant Rs 2500 per constituency. However, when Isa informed the Quaid that this was the total sum spent on all four by-elections, the Quaid was nonplussed at the smallness of the amount and it was with great difficulty that he accepted Isa’s statement and wrote out a fresh cheque for Rs 2500x.
In all the mandates that Isa undertook for the party outside Baluchistan, he enjoyed the full backing and confidence of the Quaid. Participating in the party’s Committees of Action to investigate the anti-Muslim riots in Bihar and the Calcutta killings, setting up and operating the League’s central publicity department – which was a critical tool to counter the propaganda emanating from the Congress’ well-established publicity department – overseeing of the Sindh Assembly elections and the writing of a booklet for the Central Legislative Assembly members on the need for political and constitutional reforms in Balochistan were just some of the key tasks that Isa successfully performed at his leader’s calling.
The Pakistan Years
Bearing in mind such an impressive legacy of public service, it is all the more tragic that Isa was politically marginalized and all but excluded from the corridors of power once Pakistan came into existence. The only time he held a governmental office in Pakistan was when he served as the Chief Advisor to the Agent to the Governor General in Baluchistan from 1949-1950. But this short tenure was marred by serious differences between Isa and the Agent to the Governor General, Mian Aminuddin, a senior bureaucrat who had been a member of the Indian Civil Service. The root cause of the differences was the division of power between the two offices: Isa, not one to take things lying down, chafed at what he perceived to be the toothlessness of the Chief Advisor’s office, and he repeatedly sought to expand its remit on the lines of a chief ministerial office; however, Aminuddin wished to exercise full executive authority as the Agent to the Governor General, and he saw the chief advisor’s role as subordinate to his own position.
The clash between the two men led to an untenable situation, and it was obvious that one of them would have to go. With the bureaucracy gaining more and more strength in the corridors of power and Liaqat Ali Khan being unable to assert himself against this powerful group of men, it was no surprise that Isa vacated the Chief Advisor’s office, while Aminuddin remained firmly in the saddle.
The following year, Isa was sent out as Pakistan’s first ambassador to Brazil, but this proved to be a brief stint, which ended with Isa’s early recall in 1953 on account of differences with the new government of Mohammed Ali Bogra who had replaced the venerable Khwaja Nazimuddin as prime minister following governor-general Ghulam Mohammed’s palace coup of April 1953. Never again did Isa hold any governmental office in or outside Pakistan.
Upon his return from Brazil, Isa again plunged into Muslim League politics, but this time at the national level. Ghulam Mohammed and his coterie were not content with having wrested the premiership from Nazimuddin, and their sights were also set on the president-ship of the Muslim League. With the governor-general having become the all-powerful fount of executive authority, it was a given that the majority of the party would side with him in any contest to dethrone Nazimuddin as the party’s president. Seeing the writing on the wall, and being loath to enter into a fractitious political bout to save his position, Nazimuddin voluntarily resigned from the party’s leadership. Mohammed Ali Bogra, who had been appointed as prime minister in Nazimuddin’s stead, threw his hat in the ring and it was a foregone conclusion that he would be elected president of the Muslim League. However, his hope for an unopposed election was dashed to the ground, when one senior member of the Muslim League decided to enter the electoral contest as a matter of principle, namely that the office of prime minister and Muslim League president should not be fused in one person. That person was none other than Qazi Isaxi. Although Isa lost the presidential election by 258 to 36 votes, he emerged with his reputation enhanced as a principled politician and an upholder of democratic values. No wonder such a person was anathema to the powers-that-be of the time.
When elections were held to the West Pakistan Assembly in 1956, Nawab Akbar Bugti and Qazi Isa both contested for the two seats comprising Quetta city and its adjoining areas. However, both of these persons failed to secure success in the electionsxii. Around the same time, Isa was elected as the secretary general of the Muslim League, while Sardar Abdur Rab Nishtar took the helm as the president of the party. It was a rare combination to have two of the closest associates of the Quaid in-charge of the party. However, the party was then in a state of steady decline, as the machinations of president Iskander Mirza had sapped it of its inherent strength and denuded its ranks of the electables of the day. Sadly, in the short time available to them, Nishtar and Isa were unable to stem the rot within the League.
The whole political edifice came crashing down with the military takeover of General Ayub Khan in October 1958. Qazi Isa, like several other leading politicians, was disqualified from electoral politics under the EBDO. He then returned full-time to his legal practice and for the rest of his years he largely disassociated himself from active politics.
When Qazi Isa passed away in June 1976, a month shy of his 62nd birthday, it was expected that he would be allowed to be buried in the precincts of the Quaid’s mausoleum, in view of the special bond that he had enjoyed with the Quaid. However, inexplicably, the then government of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto did not grant permission for Isa to be buried close to his beloved Quaid, even though the same government had allowed the late Bengali leader, Nur-ul-Amin, to be buried next to the Mazar-e-Quaid. Nur-ul-Amin had never been considered particularly close to the Quaid, and the decision to grant him the burial spot in question had been taken purely on political grounds, since he had remained loyal to Pakistan in 1971. Nevertheless, he had a far lesser claim to be buried next to the Quaid’s mausoleum than did Qazi Isa, whose own claim rested not on political considerations but on a deep personal connection with the Quaid. But such are the vagaries of fate.
Consequently, Qazi Isa was buried in his ancestral graveyard in Pishin, but this was done on an “amanatan” (trust) basis, with the hope that if and when the permission was granted for Isa’s burial in the Quaid’s mausoleum, his mortal remains would then be transported to the Mazar-e-Quaidxiii. However, no such permission was forthcoming from the government of the day, and Qazi Isa remains in eternal repose in the Pishin graveyard.
Conclusion
It is truly a tragedy that a freedom fighter like Qazi Isa was marginalized in the country he had helped to create. But sadly, it was just not Isa who suffered such unjustified treatment. Several other leaders of the Pakistan Movement, foremost among them being Khwaja Nazimuddin, Sardar Nishtar and Raja Mahmudabad, suffered a similar fate. Fatima Jinnah herself was given a raw deal by the powers-that-be, and the murky circumstances of Liaqat Ali Khan’s physical elimination from the scene raised many question marks which remain unresolved to date.
In the last 76 years, the country has achieved a mixed bag of success in various fields, but it still remains mired in a myriad set of grave challenges, ranging from a foundering economy to a broken system of law and justice to increasing poverty and joblessness and the spectre of vicious terrorism. There are tangible and hard reasons for the existence of these challenges, but I believe that one of the abstract reasons for the country’s continuing adversity is on account of comeuppance for the unfaithfulness shown by successive governments to the nation’s founding fathers, and the disregard shown to Qazi Isa is a prime case in point. Without making amends for this ingratitude, I fear this country will never be able to set right its moral compass. As the recent decision of the Supreme Court of Pakistan in the ZAB Reference shows, it is never too late to expiate for past errors and omissions, as long as the will is there. Thus, the memory of leaders like Qazi Isa should also be honoured posthumously, so that the country can reconcile with its bitter past.
References
i. Qazi Muhammad Isa, “Quaid-i-Azam Meri Zindagi Main; Chand Jhalkian”, Mah-iNao (Islamabad, November-December, 1976)
ii. “Mountbatten & Baluchistan: An Appraisal”, by Muhammad Iqbal Chawla, Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, Vol 75, Platinum Jubilee (2014), note 31 at page 955
iii. Raja Mohammed Amir Ahmed Khan of Mahmudabad, the long-standing treasurer of the AIML and a member of its Working Committee, was born in November 1914, thus making him four months younger than Qazi Isa.
iv. It is reported that in the years from 1939-1947, Isa traversed over 300,000 miles to undertake his campaigns on behalf of the Baluchistan Muslim League.
v. At the time of his passing away, in June 1976, Qazi Isa was the last living person from amongst the five persons who had seconded the Pakistan Resolution at the Lahore session on behalf of Bengal, Punjab, Sindh, NWFP and Baluchistan – the future provinces of United Pakistan.
vi. Speaking on the occasion, Isa stated: “Throughout history, the sword has been the constant companion of the Muslims. When the Muslims did not have an Amir, this sword was lying in safe custody. Now that you have taken over as the Amir of this nation, I hand over this historic sword to you. This has always been used in defence. In your safe hands also, it will be used only for this purpose”.
vii. During the visit, Jinnah even journeyed to Isa’s ancestral home in Pishin and spent a night there.
viii. Isa stated: “The Britishers are about to leave. The time has come when all the Sardars who, in reality, are the offspring of the British, must also pack up and go” (See “Baluchistan: Historical and Political Processes”, by A.B.Awan, page 170).
ix. Nawab Mohammed Khan Jogezai, backed by the Muslim League, won the seat by defeating Khan Abdus Samad Achakzai, who was backed by the Congress party.
x. Ibid 1
xi. Is there none among the seven crores of Muslims of Pakistan who can be found to shoulder the responsibility of this office? It is for this reason that I have allowed my name to be proposed. Even if I get one vote, I shall contest to vindicate the principle”. Qazi Isa, Dawn, October 18, 1953
xii. Ibid 8 at page 220.
xiii. “Baluchistan ki namwar shakhsiyat” by Akhat Ali Khan Baloch, volume 1, page 119
