KARACHI: A series of lectures has been organised by the Pakistan Institute of International Affairs to discuss the ‘creation of Pakistan and relations with the community of sovereign states’.

The first part of the series was held at the Institute on Thursday and though the subject matter held great promise to showcase personal histories of people directly and indirectly involved in partition, the overall talk was a great letdown.

The PIIA had invited a former Pakistan high commissioner in the United Kingdom, Abdul Kader Jaffer, to speak on the topic as well as introduce his esteemed father, Ahmed E. H. Jaffer, who not only was a former member of parliament in India and Pakistan, but also a close associate of the Quaid-i-Azam.

For Mr Kader, charting the annals of history is essential and should be done more frequently as “very few people know why and how Pakistan was created”. This endeavour deserves appreciation. However, the execution of it left much to be desired as the talk revealed very little that can be easily accessed in history books.

The trajectory of the creation of Pakistan, the historic Pakistan resolution passed in 1940 and the services of personalities such as Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, Allama Iqbal and Chaudhry Rehmat Ali were recalled.

References were also given to the dynamic personality of the Quaid and time and again his honesty, integrity and personal character was appreciated.

Credit for partition was given entirely to the Quaid as a result of his “patriotism, cohesion and national unity” towards the new state of Pakistan.

Mr Kader also quoted from Stanley Wolpert’s Jinnah of Pakistan, a biography of the Quaid, stressed the importance of religious minorities’ rights in the newly created nation and other civil and social rights.

Mr Kader then recounted his father’s services rendered to the Pakistan Movement and the struggle to secure the rights of the Muslims in undivided India.

Mr Jaffer was the youngest member of parliament from Bombay in 1934, later to be unseated only because he did not satisfy the minimum age limit for being a member. He also attended the 1940 meeting in Lahore and never looked back. He was actively involved in political and public welfare issues, pre- as well as post-partition. He belonged to a well-established business family, yet he dedicated his life to uplift the conditions of the Muslims.

Mr Jaffer especially worked to increase Muslim representation in the civil services, the armed forces, as well as in the political arena.

The services by Mr Jaffer were innumerable as he also set up the Pakistan Olympic Association in 1947 and was its first president. He was also responsible for organising Pakistan’s first participation in the international Olympics as a sovereign state for which he was much appreciated by the Quaid.

Mr Jaffer was also an adviser to prime minister Bogra on the issue of refugees, who were still trickling into the state. Mr Jaffer made it his mission to understand and improve the plight of the refugees.

Though there were a few interesting details revealed by Mr Kader about the creation of Pakistan, and the main leaders involved in the movement, with a walk down memory lane into his personal family history, the talk would have benefitted from a more coherent structure and more focus on the topic. Such digressions can easily be avoided and overall improve the quality of these lectures.

Published in Dawn, October 17th, 2014