ON the occasion of the country’s Independence Day (Aug 14), the name of Chaudhry Rehmat Ali (seen in the accompanying image) also comes up during discussions every year. Ayesha Jalal in her book, The Sole Spokesman, has mentioned that Chaudhry Rehmat Ali had called Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah an ‘an agent of British’. According to Stanley Wolpert, the author of Jinnah of Pakistan, the Quid actually ignored Rehmat Ali and his angry attacks.

The pamphlet, Now or Never, was published in 1933, while much before that, Sir Syed Ahmed Khan in 1883 in a wider perspective had talked about two different nations that became the basis of the two-nation theory. In 1944, Rehmat Ali published another pamphlet, The Millat and Her Ten Nations, in which he advocated for 10 separate nations. It was only the vision and farsightedness of the Quaid that today we are one nation.

Had it been otherwise, we would have been standing divided. Some historians even argue that the word ‘Pakistan’ was not coined by Rehmat Ali, which is quite in contrast to what is mentioned in our textbooks.

On the country’s Independence Day, we should pay tribute to freedom fighters, like Sir Syed, Muhammad Ali Jauhar, Shaukat Ali Jauhar, Maulvi Fazle Haq, Huseyn Shaheed Suhra- wardy, Nawab Saleemullah, Raja Sahib Mahmoodabad, Sardar Abdul Rab Nishtar, and the unknown soldiers of Meerut cantonment, who actually triggered the movement for independence from the British.

Aamir Aqil
Lahore

Published in Dawn, August 30th, 2024