LET me congratulate you on the special report highlighting deep-rooted issues facing the nation (March 23). Prof Hasan Askari Rizvi’s article, ‘An Interpretation of the Lahore Resolution’, is a unique attempt at eulogizing the historical evolutionary process of our politics rather than a static bigoted statement of March 23, 1940.

Prof Rizvi is right in pointing out that distinct socio-cultural and political features were taken as a modern political tool to safeguard the Muslim community from the tutelage of Hindus.

“The journey from the Lahore Resolution in March 1940 with its changes in April 1946 followed by the Objectives Resolution is a converging point to what? What and which controls our social ethos and cultural outlook? Why are we worried that we are losing our social and cultural values? Then we must define that something.”

Prof Askari goes on: “The Muslim League goal since its inception in December 1906 was to protect and advance Muslim socio-cultural identity, rights and interests in British India’s socio-political and constitutional context.” The Muslim League experience of the Congress government (1937-39) was that they were “imposing Hindu culture and ethos under the name of Indian identity,” causing isolation from the Indian Congress, thus manifesting a growing desire for Muslims to “assert their separate-political identity”.

We have to look into what makes a separate socio-cultural identity. If Hinduism generated a distinct Hindu social culture then, on the same analogy, Islam created a distinct culture of its own. Reassertion of Hinduism in India and Islam in Pakistan was and is the logical outcome of this attitude.

Prof Rizvi has raised three basic issues regarding the Lahore Resolution. The first: the non-name of Pakistan, and the second: the word autonomous states.

In fact, Prof Rizvi has discussed two issues. The third should have been the ideology of Pakistan as a post-independent issue, taking sharpness in the current intellectual debate.

When Islam has shaped a distinct culture in the subcontinent, then it is obvious we have to see Islam in itself. It is here much is needed to put our lives as per the dictates of Islam and run the state machinery as per its fundamentals.

Yes, I agree there is failure in this regard. But then where isn’t our failure? The good thing is that some sense is coming up among the modern educated class to think over and above sectarianism and invoke the fundamentals of Islam in the light of current intellectual developments.

Hopefully, a day will come when we will overcome many such problems as the development process goes on.

IFTIKHAR A. MALIK Lahore