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Muhammad Ayoob
Khuhro: The
Iron man of Sindh
Part-XX
Review
& Excerpted by Momin Bullo
Working for freedom
Khuhro’s acquittal on the 3rd
August 1945 came after the victory of the Allies in Europe in May
earlier that year and just three days before the atom bomb was
dropped on Hiroshima forcing surrender by Japan on 2nd
September to General Mac Arthur. The world had changed and the
era of the Cold War was coming in as well as the second unraveling
of world empires in the twentieth century. Although Lord
Linlithgow, the Viceroy of India, had declared as late as December
1939 that:
“It is no part of our policy... to
expedite in India constitutional changes for their own sake, or
gratuitously to hurry the handing over to India hands at any pace
faster than that which we regard as best calculated, on a long
view, to hold India to the Empire.”
But by the end of the war it was
clear that the British would leave as soon as agreement could be
reached about the form freedom would take in India. The elections
in England had thrown out Churchill the hero of the war, and had
put the Labour Party under Clement Attlee in power. The British
were anxious to get out of India. They no longer had the heart or
the will to hang on to the Empire. The exercise of disengagement
was about to begin when Khuhro came back on the political scene.
Khuhro was now the undisputed hero
of Muslim Sindh and of Muslim League. His ordeal had succeeded in
uniting the Muslims of Sindh as never before and of convincing
them that anyone who had their welfare at heart could not be
tolerated by the Hindus be they of the Congress or any other
variety. According to the views of a pro Congress observer:
“The Muslim League which had failed
to make an appeal to the Sindh Muslims now became as popular as
the Congress organisation in the rest of India - the liberator of
the Muslims from the ‘tyranny of the Hindus and Hindu Congress’.
In the whole of Sindh there never had been more than a few hundred
members of the League all these years. Thanks however, to the war
on Khuhro by the ‘Hindu press’ the League membership in Sindh
swelled to hundreds of thousands.”
The Khuhro trial had widened the
gulf between the two communities considerably and time was running
out for any rapprochement.
At the same time the year that he
had been absent from the political scene had seen a most
unedifying spectacle of political intrigue and rivalry between the
Syed group and Hidayetullah over control of Muslim League and of
the Ministry. The intrigues had started as soon as the Ministry
had been sworn in, in October 1942 and centered around Syed’s
ambitions to control the organisation of Muslim League and to be
the power behind the throne of the Sindh government. Khuhro was
one of the casualties of this intrigue but after his exit the
struggle between Syed and Hidayetullah became more direct and much
more bitter. Immediately after the resignation of Khuhro, Syed
called a meeting of the Muslim League Assembly Party, to select a
new Minister. Hidayetullah realising that a nominee of Syed would
be thrust on him cancelled the meeting. He wrote to Jinnah to
complain:
“The position has now become very
difficult as Mr. G. M. Syed wishes to establish a Sayed Raj here,
and wants me to appoint a Sayed as Minister. We have a Sayed as
Speaker, and Pir Sahib whom they count as one of them and Mr.
Gazdar is Mr. Syed’s ally, as you know already.”
Hidayetullah asserted that it was
his right to select his own Minister. He accused Syed and Gazdar
of intriguing with non-Muslims. More to the point he complained:
“He is the nominated president of
the Provincial League, and he has nominated his whole Council. You
can very well realise what he can do with a council so constituted
who are everything to him.”
And again:
“You know very well that Mr. Syed
does not like me. After getting rid of K. B. Khuhro, he and his
friends wish to get rid of me too.... He wants to have his own Raj
at any cost.”
The charges and counter charges
continued to fly to Jinnah. Syed in his turn accused Hidayetullah:
“... it is not unlikely that the
Premier of the so-called League Ministry may form a new Ministry
under a different label.”
After a delay of some weeks
Hidayetullah appointed Mir Ghulam Ali Talpur as Minister instead
of Syed’s nominee Mohammed Ali Shah of Darbelo. The fight became
even more bitter and intense when the question of the bye-election
of Shikarpur came up on the death of the sitting Muslim League
member. Hidayetullah wanted his son Anwar to be given the Muslim
League nomination whereas Syed’s candidate was Agha Ghulam Nabi
Pathan of Sultankot. The Parliamentary Board had a majority of
Syed’s supporters and Pathan was nominated but his position was
weak. The deceased Muslim League member from this constituency,
Khan Bahadur Sadhayo had been elected mainly by the influence and
efforts of Khuhro and the election would not be so easy now with
Allah Baksh Soomro’s brother Maula Baksh in the field. Syed
realizing that the position was hopeless withdrew Pathan and put
in another candidate without consulting the Parliamentary Board.
The outcome of the continuing conflict was the election of
Maulabaksh Soomro. The confrontation came to a head with the
removal by the Premier of Gazdar from the Cabinet. Jinnah refused
to interfere leaving the choice of his Ministers to the Premier.
This was not the end of the matter
however as in the next bye-election which was in Tando Mohammed
Khan in Hyderabad district, the story was repeated with different
candidates of the different Muslim League groups, except that in
this case the Ministerial candidate won. The loser in any case was
Muslim League as the official Muslim League candidate, nominated
by Syed, was defeated. Syed issued a long press statement in
January 1945, throwing aspersions on Hidayetullah’s principles and
his loyalty to Muslim League. By early 1945 the breach was out in
the open and the whole country was aware of it and as Syed himself
said, the affair:
“had become a major scandal
throughout the country, causing immense damage to the prestige and
reputation of the entire organization.”
In February the Muslim League ‘High
Command’ sent Qazi Isa the Muslim League leader from Quetta, to
bring about a compromise but the differences were too serious for
him to deal with. Jinnah summoned Syed to Bombay where he spent
three days explaining his point of view. Jinnah then sent Liaquat
Ali Khan, the General Secretary of the Party and two members of
the Working Committee, Nawab Ismail Khan and Chaudhri
Khalique-u-zaman, to solve the dispute but they too had to go back
without anything to show for their efforts. Syed went ahead with
his efforts to throw out the Ministry and on 24 February the
Ministry was defeated on a cut motion by twenty five votes against
nineteen. The Governor however gave another chance to Hidayetullah
to save his government, which he, a past master at wheeling and
dealing, was well able to take. He got Maulabaksh Soomro, the new
non League member from Shikarpur, to join the Cabinet and gained
the support of other non League or ‘Nationalist’ Muslims for
himself.
Syed complained to Jinnah about
this, sending him some explanatory telegrams, but Jinnah was
convinced that Syed was following a policy which, by forcing a
League Ministry to go outside for help, was not serving the Muslim
League cause at all. He took strong exception to Syed’s actions:
“...you have adopted
unconstitutional methods have lent yourself to unworthy intrigues,
playing into the hands of enemies, have let down your leader and
party to which you belonged, thereby you have already damaged our
cause and the prestige of the Muslim League. You have precipitated
a crisis, have broken party discipline, caused a split, shaken the
solidarity of Sindh Muslims notwithstanding your assurance to me
at the conclusion of our Bombay talks and against my advice...”
Syed was furious at what he
considered Jinnah’s backing of Hidayetullah who while
“professing to be a loyal member of
the League, could afford to defy and break its discipline by
admitting a non-Leaguer in his Cabinet and still earn the
benediction of the League president while I had brought down upon
my head the wrath and open denunciation of Mr. Jinnah...”
In fact Hidayetullah had given an
undertaking to Maulabaksh that he would stand by him even if
Jinnah did not like his inclusion or if he insisted on his joining
Muslim League -
“In case Mr. Jinnah or the League
high command does not agree in this coalition, I shall not call
upon any of you to resign and compel any of you to sign the League
pledge. In that case I shall remain with you and stick to this
coalition.”
In the face of Jinnah’s attitude
Syed backed down and agreed to compromise with Hidayetullah with
the result that Hidayetullah went back on his word to Maulabaksh
and removed him from the Cabinet making up the difference by
taking Syed’s candidate Mohammed Ali Shah as well as two
representatives of the Hindu Independent party. The crisis was
resolved for the time being and “Sir Ghulam Hussain breathed a
sigh of relief and protected by the Governor and the Quaid-e-Azam,
he could only see ahead of him a long stretch of smooth sailing
and unchallenged authority at the helm of the Sindh Government.”
Syed had given in for the moment to
the pressure from Jinnah but he had not really surrendered. In
June 1945 he held a meeting of the newly elected Council of Muslim
League which was packed with his supporters. He brought in Shaikh
Abdul Majid who had left Muslim League and formed an Azad Muslim
group to try and fill the gap left by the death of Soomro and, it
was said, to try for the post of premiership on the same basis.
But his plans failed as Maulabaksh made a more credible substitute
as the brother of the late leader of Azad Muslims. Shaikh was
appointed Chairman of the Committee of Action by Syed, who also
welcomed Rashdi now no longer taken up with Hur affairs. In the
meeting of the Council held on 3rd and 4th
June the Council passed several resolutions some of which struck
back at the ‘High Command’ for “divesting the Provincial League of
all their inherent powers of control and supervision over
Provincial Assembly parties and Ministries.”
(Continued)
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Hamari
Manzil:
Walking
with History
(Part-VII)
Review & Excerpted by Momin Bullo
After this, Rughumal devised an
ingenious way to defend himself. Before
commencing the day’s
proceedings he showered abuses on himself uttering words like
“Rughu you must be mad to work with people like those assembled in
your Court” or “Rughu why don’t you take poison and get away from
these people?”. And when the witnesses and the Advocates heard
Rughumal addressing himself in such a manner, they did not mind
how he addressed them!
Rughumal was very fond of using
Latin words in his judgments, like ‘abinitio’ and ‘apropos’. As I
was inspecting his diary, I came across the following order which
he had passed in a theft case: ‘The case is adjourned sine die.’
The accused had remained in custody for six months before that
order was passed, as he could not furnish any bail. I was
perturbed at the prospect of the accused languishing in jail as
the order was six months old by the time I had inspected the
‘darter’. When I asked Rughumal why he could not decide the case,
he replied. “This, Sir, is a sad story. I have been an ass.” The
story was that a lame person was fast asleep in the upper storey
of his house in Mirpurkhas. His wife and children were away
attending a wedding in his village in Digri Taluka. He was
awakened at midnight and saw a thief running away with his purse and watch. He got up,
pursued him for a furlong and caught him eventually. The
complainant’s version was that he could not catch him red handed
as he had thrown away his purse and watch in the bushes on the
way. None of the stolen articles were found. The version of the
accused was that he was walking from the Railway Station to a
friend’s house when suddenly the complainant pounced upon him
shouting “Thief, Thief’ He took the complainant to be a mad chap
but his shouts attracted a large crowd and he was taken to the
Police Station. The accused told Rughumal that the complainant’s
version was ‘abinitio’ absurd since he was a lame person and could
not catch him in a pursuit. He requested the Magistrate to order a
practical demonstration to test the veracity of his statement.
Rughumal made the complainant lie in his bed and made the accused
stand at a distance of a few steps and then shouted “one, two
three”. By the time the complainant got up from his bed, the
accused had rushed downstairs and when the complainant came down,
the accused was not to be seen anywhere. Rughumal and his
Sarishtedar too ran to trace the accused, who apparently was a
fast runner, and was never found. I told Rughumal to decide the
case since the veracity of the version of the accused had been
proved and to acquit the accused in ‘absentia’.
Rewarding life
The law and order situation was under control. There were no
political disturbances nor
any repercussions of the “Quit India” campaign launched by the
Congress during my time in Tharparkar and Larkana Districts.
The Muslims of Sindh had decided
that their future lay with the Muslim League and not with the
Congress. The Pakistan Movement was gaining momentum. Two years
before the resolution generally known as the “Pakistan Resolution”
was passed in Lahore on 23rd March, 1940, by
the All-India Muslim League, the Sindh Muslim League had resolved
that since the Muslims and Hindus were two different nations, the
British must divide India before quitting it.
Although the Congress as well as
the Muslim League had accepted the Cabinet Mission Plan negotiated
by three Cabinet Ministers deputed by Prime Minister Attlee in
1946, Pundit Jawaharlal Nehru, the person next to M.K. Gandhi in
the Congress hierarchy, made a public statement to the effect that
the Constituent Assembly of India would have the power, as a
Sovereign Assembly, to modify the Cabinet Mission Plan.
The Muslim League had accepted the
Plan, although it had not conceded Pakistan, in the hope that the
provinces grouped as ‘A’ ‘B’ ‘C’ would, in due course, be in a
position to determine their constitutional future. The result of
Pundit Jawaharlal Nehru’s statement was that the Muslim League
modified its stand and decided to boycott the forthcoming
Constituent Assembly Session.
I had been appointed Secretary to
the Sindh Delegation to the Constituent Assembly which comprised 4
members but the delegation never went to Delhi. H.M.G. eventually
conceded the demand of the Muslim League to partition India into
Bharat and Pakistan. Two Constituent Assemblies functioned after
August 14, 1947, one for Bharat and the other for Pakistan.
In August 1945, I was transferred
as Secretary to Government, Department of Education, Health and
Local-Self Government. Since I had already worked as Deputy
Secretary in this Department, it was smooth sailing for me. I had
hardly worked in this job for a month when the Governor, Sir
Francis
Mudie, asked me whether I
would like to work as his Secretary and I responded to his call
with pleasure. He had many qualities of head and heart. He was a
wrangler and since his correspondence passed through me, I was
able to see a letter which he wrote to a colleague of his, the
Governor of Assam, Sir Andrew Clow, saying that when they were
attending the Viceroy’s Executive Council meeting together a
couple of years ago, Sir Andrew had set a mathematical problem
which he had promised to solve when he got the time. It was only
that morning that he got the time and solved it - Q.E.D.
It was in my capacity as Secretary
to Governor that I was present at the
Mauripur Airport to receive
Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Governor General, designate of
Pakistan, on the 7th August, 1947. He was received with
unprecedented enthusiasm and acclaim. The formal transfer of power
took place in a meeting of the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan in
Karachi on the 14th August, 1947, which I witnessed from the
Visitors’ Gallery.
Lord Mountbatten read the King’s
message wishing Pakistan a bright future and the Quaid-e-Azam made
a reply in his capacity as President of the Constituent Assembly
of Pakistan. An appreciative Constituent Assembly conferred the
title of ‘Quaid-e-Azam’ on M.A. Jinnah.
The Secretary of State had given
the members of All India Services the right to opt out for either
of the two Dominions. He had laid down a scale of compensation for
those who wanted to retire in August, 1947. The Indian members of
the ICS resolved not to ask for any compensation.
Although my home was in the U.P., I
opted out for Pakistan. The succeeding service was designated
first as the Pakistan Administrative Service and later on as the
Civil Service of Pakistan. I was afforded an opportunity to serve
as Collector of Karachi in 1947 and as the First Administrator of
the First Federal Capital of Pakistan Karachi, in July, 1948. A
brief account of the problems which we faced has been given in an
article which I contributed to ‘Dawn’ Karachi for its special
supplement dated 14th August, 1976, under the caption “The
Challenge of 1947 and how Pakistan faced it”.
After my retirement from the C.S.P.
in July 1966, I have contributed some other articles on the
problems of Administration in post-Independence period which are
listed below:
Advent of Pakistan - published in
“Morning News”, March 23, 1968.
Address at the Graduation Ceremony
of the Fourteenth Advanced Course in Administration and
Development of National Institute of Public Administration,
Karachi, 26th July, 1969.
The Quaid on the Role of Civil
Servants - “Dawn”, March 23, 1969.
Politicians Vs Administrators in
Pakistan - “Leader”, August 13, 1971.
In 1988, at 78, 1 am not too far
from the end of my life and I am filled with
gratitude for the kindness
of my people.
I climbed to the top of the greasy
pole in July-August 1961 as Governor of East Pakistan, now
Bangladesh.
It was my training in the I.C.S.
which equipped me to face exacting jobs like the Administrator of
the Federal Capital (1948-195 1), Chief Settlement Commissioner of
Pakistan (1958-1960), Chief Secretary, East Pakistan (1961) and
Central Secretary in the Ministry of Health, Labour and Social
Welfare (1962-1966).
I have lived a full and rewarding
life and I would not have exchanged it for any other career.
Pakistan Movement Gathers
Momentum
After the General Elections of
1937, the Muslim League leaders proposed coalition governments in
all the 11 provinces of India but the Congress rejected this
proposal and formed exclusively Congress Ministries in 8
provinces. The Muslims publicly voiced their grievances against
the Congress Ministries and the Muslim League appointed a
Committee of Inquiry headed by the Raja of Pirpur to look into
these grievances.
The Pirpur Report depicted an
unhappy picture of Muslims in these 8 provinces and pin-pointed
the hostility of the Congress Ministries towards the culture and
language of the Muslims, e.g. the Muslim students were required to
sing a song “Bande Matram” which was an anathema to them. The song
was taken from a historical novel of the well-known Bengali
novelist, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee. It was the story of the
revolt of the Hindu subjects against their Muslim rulers. The song
recounts the prostration of militant young men in front of a
goddess declaring that they will destroy the enemy.
The Congress Ministries adopted a
hostile attitude towards Urdu. This language was evolved as a
result of the intermixture of Muslims and Hindus during the 700
years of Muslim rule in India. It contained as many words of Hindi
as of Arabic and Persian. Its grammar was Hindi though the script
was Persian. The Congress Ministries adopted a policy to replace
Urdu with Hindi which perturbed the Muslims considerably.
When the Congress Governments
submitted their resignation, M.A. Jinnah instructed Muslims all
over India to observe a “Day of Deliverance”. This was done with
great enthusiasm. The gulf between Hindus and Muslims was widening
rapidly. Several communal riots took place resulting in bloodshed.
On March 23, 1940, the All India
Muslim League meeting in Lahore passed a resolution demanding
formation of Muslim States in the North East and North West of
India when the British withdrew from India. This resolution is
popularly known as the Pakistan Resolution.
The political and law and order situation in Sindh was different
from that prevailing in the provinces where Congress ministries
had ruled. There were no communal disturbances in Sindh. The only
instance of Hindu-Muslim clash was when a dispute arose over a
building in Sukkur named ‘Manzilgah’.
(Continuted)
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