THIS refers to the letters on Chaudhri Rahmat Ali, the man who coined the word ‘Pakistan’.

A former chief justice of Pakistan believed that it was his farsightedness that “ultimately culminated in a separate homeland for the Muslims, and that “if the rulers at that time had subscribed to Rahmat Ali’s views they would have succeeded in avoiding the excessive bloodshed”.

Before his death, Chaudhry Rahmat Ali visited Lahore where he was allotted a house, and he managed to get books from his library in Britain. This shows he planned to settle down in Pakistan. Once, before partition, Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah wrote a letter to him (Feb 8, 1940) asking him to meet him in Delhi

In recognition of his services, the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation named a road after him. The Islamabad administration has constructed a 500-bed Chaudhry Rahmat Ali Memorial Community Centre Hospital with financial help from the government. A postal stamp was also issued to commemorate his memory. I suggest his body be brought to Pakistan. There are examples where heroes who died in other lands were brought back home.

Udham Singh, who assassinated Michael O’Dwyer, Punjab’s Lieutenant Governor, was hanged by the British in London in 1940. The Indian government brought his remains to India.

Seventy-four years after Anwar Pasha’s death in Tajikistan, Turkey brought his remains back. Napoleon Bonaparte’s grave is in France, even though he died at St Helena.

PAF’s renegade pilot Mati-Ur-Rehman wanted to hijack a PAF plane to India. Rashid Minhas foiled his plan. The plane crashed within Pakistan, but Bangladesh later brought Mati-Ur-Rehman’s body to BD. King Amanullah Khan of Afghanistan died in Rome but his grave is in Afghanistan, as is that of Jamaluddin Afghani, who died in Turkey.

Prof. Azad Bin Haider

Karachi

Published in Dawn, January 11th, 2018