I
firmly believe in the finality of the Prophet Muhammad and any person who does
not believe so is not a Muslim. But this does not mean that a person who does
not believe so should have no right to live in the country. All those people
who live in Pakistan and are loyal to Pakistan, be they Hindus, Christians or
of any other sect or religion, come under the protection of the Government of
the country and also of the people. To protect each one of the countrymen is
the foremost duty of a Muslim as also of the Government; so long as I am at the
helm of affairs I will see that no harm is done to any loyal Pakistani purely
because of his different faith, caste, or creed. The question of declaring the
Ahmadis a minority is not a religious but a constitutional issue, which should
be treated as such and discussed dispassionately and coolly. I appeal to the
Ahrar and other religious organisations to create a calm atmosphere for the
consideration of such a question”.
In his
speech at Nizamabad on 25th October, 1952, he deprecated sectarianism and said
that people who were creating disunity among the Musalmans were destroying not
only the unity of Islam but the integrity of Pakistan. He advised the public to
abstain from joining the disruptionist activities of the communalists. The
point stressed in these speeches was that a person who did not believe in the
doctrine of khatm-i-nubuwwat was not a Musalman, that the demands in respect of
the Ahmadis flowed from this theological position, that the demands in their
nature were constitutional and political which could only be tackled by the
Central authorities, constitutional or Muslim League, that the Province was not
concerned with the demands and that the Ahrar should make no fuss over this
matter in the Punjab.
SUBSEQUENT
EVENTS
All
preventive orders having been recalled, the cases arising out of their
contravention withdrawn and the sentences imposed for such contravention
remitted, and the existence of the demands having been officially recognised,
the Ahrar and their associates were left free to adopt any method they
considered to be constitutional to press the demands and to carry on propaganda
in their support. Taking advantage of the opportunity offered, they intensified
their campaign and increased the vigour and extent of their propaganda.
According to the Secret Intelligence Abstract which is an official document and
used to be submitted for information to the Chief Minister, as many as 390
public meetings of which 167 were arranged exclusively by the Ahrar, were held
all over the Province till the proclamation of Martial Law on 6th March. Sayyad
Muzaffar Ali Shamsi said Sheikh Husam-ud-Din, Sahibzada Faiz-ul-Hasan, Master
Taj-ud-Din Ansari and Muhammad Ali Jullundri who are all prominent members of
Majlis-i-Ahrar, literallyconverted themselves into peripatetic missionaries of
the movement, as if their differences with the Ahmadis were their sole concern
in life. At the meetings all conceivable arguments were reiterated against
Ahmadiyyat and abuses hurled on the Ahmadis and their leaders. The vocal
campaign was supplemented by cease-lees posters, leaflets, handbills,
pamphlets, newspaper articles and processions. On 24th July, 1952, Mr. Anwar
Ali, D. I. G., C. I. D, brought to the notice of Government some mock funerals
of Chaudhri Zafrullah Khan, which were being taken out in several places in the
Province, proposing action under section 23 of the Punjab Public Safety Act,
but the Home Secretary remarked that that Act was not to be used in such cases
and suggested instead that the Chief Minister should talk to the Ahrar leaders
and ask them to abide by the assurance which they had recently given. The
proposal was put up through the Chief Secretary before the Chief Minister who
initialled it on 30th July.
The
students of the M. B. High School, Wazirabad, carried in procession a charpoy
with a dog tied on it representing Chaudhri Zafrullah Khan. Another procession,
which had marched through the streets of Kasur on 25th June, 1952, after Friday
prayers and which was reported by the Additional Superintendent of Police,
Kasur, in his diary dated 26th July, 1952, also came to the notice of the Chief
Minister. In that procession, Chaudhri Zafrullah Khan had been grossly abused
in slogans such as ‘Zafrullah kanjar’, ‘Zafrullah dog’, and ‘Zafrullah swine’,
and at a later stage the processionists had procured a she-ass and written on
it ‘Begum Zafrullah’. A man wearing a top hat and a garland of shoes round his
neck with the name Mirza Ghulam Ahmad written on him had seated himself on the
she-ass. On receiving report of this incident, Mr. Qurban Ali Khan remarked
that the incident was the natural outcome of the agitation that was going on in
defiance of law, that one lawlessness was producing another lawlessness and
that unless some preventive method was discovered it would end in a revolution,
and that this was a lesson of history which could be delayed but could not be
belied. The case was seen by the Chief Minister but no notice of the incident
was taken.
Several
other incidents of lawlessness were also reported during this period. These,
which are all mentioned in the official documents were as follows:—
(1)
the rifling of an Ahmadi shop and throwing of stones at an Ahmadi mosque in
Lyallpur on 20th July, 1952;
(2)
assault on an Ahmadi on 5th August, 1952, in Misri Shah, Lahore;
(3) an
Ahmadi non-Ahmadi clash in Chak 497, Jhang ;
(4)
assault on Mt. Tale’ Bibi on 2nd September, 1952, in the course of an
altercation arising because of her being an Ahmadi;
(5)
assault on Dr. Muhammad Husain Khan, an Ahmadi, in Mandi Jaranwala. on 18th
September, 1952, by a person who was prevented by the doctor from reading
objectionable verses from a pamphlet against Ahmadiyyat;
(6)
hartal and blackening of faces of men objecting to observe hartal, besieging
of, and throwing brickbats at, the Dyal Singh College and the throwing of
stones at the Ta’lim-ul-Islam College, breaking its main gate, on 16th
February, 1953, when Khwaja Nazim-ud-Din came to Lahore;
(7)
rioting outside the Muslim League office on 27th July resulting in injuries to
46 policemen and damage to cars; and
(8)
attempt to set fire to an Ahmadi mosque in Muhalla Arazi Yaqub, Sialkot.
NEWSPAPERS
Ceaseless
propaganda continued to be carried on in the press throughout this period. The
‘Zamindar’, which was one of the four papers patronised by Government and which
in certain transactions with Government had received a large sum of money,
continuously went on writing in support of the demands and against Ahmadiyyat.
The ‘Azad’, an Ahrar paper, did the same; in fact, the differences with the
Ahmadis was the main topic in the columns of this newspaper.
THE
‘AZAD‘
An
article of this paper published in the issue of 9th September, 1952, was
examined and a prosecution of the editor was considered to be worthwhile, but
the Home Secretary, the Chief Secretary and the Chief Minister thought that
another warning may be administered and the result thereof watched.
The
issue of this paper for 11th September, 1952; called the ‘Mutaliba Number’, was
exclusively devoted to denunciation of the Ahmadis. One important article in it
was the poem ‘Multan puchhta hai’ (Multan asks) which eulogised men who had
been killed in the Kup firing. This article was examined by the Director of
Public Relations on 12th September, 1952, and by the Legal Remembrancer on 17th
September, 1952, and though they were both agreed that the publication was
actionable, nothing was done in the matter.
The
paper also published on its front page a cartoon, which the officer who
examined it interprets as follows:—
“On
the title page the paper has published a multicoloured cartoon showing John
Bull as a snake-charmer, who is producing snakes from the basket of Ahmadism.
One big snake arises from that basket and is shown to have overwhelmed Qadian
(represented by a high minaret). From there it
wriggles
into a hole and reappears at Rabwah in the shape of Mirza Bashir-ud-Din Mahmud,
who is shown to be blowing out three big snakes from his mouth. One of those
three snakes is shown biting the late Quaidi-Millat at Rawalpindi; the other
one is shown to be sabotaging an aeroplane (implying the Jungshahi air
disaster); and the third one, depicted in the shape of Chaudhri Zafrullah Khan,
is shown to be threatening to bite the Prime Minister of Pakistan”.
The
attention of the Provincial Government was drawn to this cartoon by the Central
Government by letter No. 28/43/52-Poll (1), dated 11th October, 1952. The
letter stated that it was presumed that the Provincial Government had noticed
this cartoon and would take suitable action which would be communicated to the
Central Government. In reply, by letter No. 3754-PB-52/985, dated 23rd October,
1952, the Director of Public Relations merely informed the Central Government
that the Provincial Government had directed the District Magistrate to send for
the Printer-Publisher of the paper and to give him a warning that if he did not
desist from publishing matter of this kind, Government would have to suppress
the newspaper.
In its
issue for 12th November, 1952, this paper published a leader with an enigmatic
heading in the form of an interrogation mark, in which it grossly abused the
present head of the Ahmadiya community and charged the Government with
encouraging infidelity and apostasy. The exact words used by the paper in this
respect were: —
“Akhir
kab-tak ek zani wa sharabi, ghunde aur bad-ma’ash, muftari wa kazib aur Dajjal
ko is mulk men hamare kan nabi, Masih-i-mau’ud aur Ahmad wa Muhammad ke nam se
pukare jate sunte rahenge aur kab-tak ummat ki muqaddas wa mutahhar maon ko ek
nang-i-insaniyat aurat ke liye apni qabron men be-chain hona parega, aur
kab-tak ambiya’, aulia ki tauhino- tazlil aur aqaid-o-sha’air-i-din ki ruswai
ka tamasha-i-be-hamiyati jari rahe ga. Akhir yeh zindagi be-hayai-o-be-ghairati
aur daiyusi ki zindagi nahin to aur kiya hai. Qaum aj mujassam taur par ek
sawaliya nishan ban kar khudawandan-i-hukumat aur qaumi zimmadaron ka munh tak
rahi hai. Lihaza un-ka farz hai keh woh un-ke jane pahchane sawal ka jald az
jald koi mufassal wa mudallal aur do-tok jawab den warnah samajh len keh yeh
khamoshi yeh be-itinai-o-be-niyazi, yeh mudahanat-o-taghaful, yeh
kufr-o-irtidad parwari aur ghaddar-nawazi ka socha samjha hua
sharamnak
rawiya ziyada der tak barqarar na reh sakega”.
(TRANSLATION)
“After
all, for how long will our ears continue hearing an adulterer, drunkard,
vagabond, knave. slanderer, liar and Dajjal being called, in this country, a
prophet, promised Messiah, Ahmad and Muhammad and how long will sacred and pure
mothers of the nation continue to remain restless in their graves for a woman
who is a disgrace to humanity? How long will this disgraceful exhibition of
insult and degradation of prophets and saints and debasement of religious
beliefs and observances continue? If this sort of life is not a life of
dishonour and shamelessness, what else is it? Today, the nation is looking
expectantly, like a sign of interrogation personified,
towards
men at the helm of the State who are answerable to the nation. It is,
therefore, incumbent on them to give a detailed, reasonable and decisive answer
to the well-understood question, otherwise they should bear in mind that their
considered, and shameless attitude of silence, disregard, carelessness,
hypocrisy and negligence and encouragement of disbelief, apostasy and treachery
will not last long”. By its letter, dated 21st November, 1952, the Central
Government drew the attention of the Provincial Government to this article and
also sent for disposal a complaint in the form of a resolution by the Ahmadiya
community of Montgomery respecting it which had been received by the Central
Government. The article was considered to be actionable under section 153-A,
P.P.C. and section 21 of the Punjab Public Safety Act,, but Mr. Anwar Ali, D.
I, G., C. I. D., took the curious view that the Central Government had given no
guidance in the matter and that the Provincial Government for some time past
had been deploring this attitude on the part of the Central Government. In view
of the indifference of the Central Government, he thought, the Provincial
Government should not initiate any proceedings and said that he himself would
talk to the Editor, Master Taj-ud-Din Ansari, about it. The Home Secretary
agreed with this view and the Chief Minister initialled the case.
Again
on 10th December, 1952, the Ministry of the Interior, by its D. O.No.
44/9/52-Poll (1), to Home Secretary, Punjab Government, drew the attention of
the Punjab Government to the activities of this paper. The letter referred to
Home Secretary’s previous letter, D. O. No. 273-ST (HS)/52, dated the 30th
October, 1952, and to Mr. Nur Ahmad’s letter in reply to that Ministry’s letter
No, 28/43/52-Poll (1), dated the 11th October, 1952, and pointed out that
despite several warning which the Provincial Government said had been given to
this newspaper, it had continued to indulge in publishing matter which
definitely outraged the religious susceptibilities of a class of people in,
Pakistan and which was designed to create enmity between different classes of
people, and conveying the Central Government’s view that since warnings in the
past had had no effect, the Provincial Government should not hesitate to take
the only other alternative, namely, to prosecute the paper. The Provincial
Government was requested to intimate the action taken to the Ministry at an
early date. No action was taken on this letter and the Ministry of the Interior
had again to remind the Home Secretary by letter No. 44/9/52-Poll (1), dated
27th December, 1952. This letter referred to that Ministry’s earlier letter of
10th December, 1952 and stated that since the date of that letter another
objectionable poem ‘Dard-mandan-i-Qaum’ had appeared in the issue of the paper
of 21st December., 1952, which attracted the mischief of not only the Press
(Emergency Powers) Act and the Punjab Public Safety Act but also of the
substantive criminal law of the land. The letter again requested the Provincial
Government to inform the Central Government at an early date of the action
taken on, this article. This letter was seen by the Chief Secretary as well as
the Director of Public Relations, but no further notice of it seems to have
been taken.
THE ‘AFAQ‘
The
issue of ‘Afaq’ of 19th July under the heading ‘Qadianiyon ke imam ki ek
nihayat afsosnak taqrir’ reproduced an address by the head of the Ahmadiya
community which had been published in the ‘Alfazl’ of 11th January, 1952, and
adversely commented upon it, while the issue of 20th July published reports of
the celebration of Yaum-i-Mutalilba in different places in the Province.
The
issue of this paper for 30th July devoted a leader to the discussion of Muslim
League’s resolution on khatm-i-nubuwwat. The article pointed out that one of
the demands made of the Provincial Muslim League was that the Mirzais should be
declared to be outside the pale of Islam and that the correctness of this
demand had been admitted by the Muslim League because in his speech Mr.
Daultana had unequivocally declared that, in the unanimous opinion of the
Muslim League, Mirzais who did not believe in the doctrine of
‘khatm-i-nubuwwat’ were not Musalmans. The article appreciated this declaration
and asked if any other responsible leader had ever made such an unequivocal
declaration and proceeded to compliment the Punjab Muslim, League and its
leader for it. The article explained that while the Muslim League had expressed
itself in favour of the demands, it had not taken a decision on the subject
because the question, being a constitutional one, related not only to the
Punjab but to the whole of Pakistan, and that it was for this reason that the
settlement of the issue had been left for the All-Pakistan Muslim League and
the Constituent Assembly. The article hoped that the Pakistan Muslim League and
the Constituent Assembly would not now hesitate to declare the Qadianis a
minority, and drew pointed attention to that part of the resolution which had
impressed on Musalmans their religions duty of protecting the life, property
and honour of all citizens of Pakistan.
Another
article appeared in the issue of 19th July, 1952, which attempted to make the
point that the alarming and menacing situation, prevailing in the country was
the result of addresses and speeches delivered by Mirza Bashir-ud-Din Mahmud
Ahmad and aggressive designs of the Ahmadis. The issue of 6th August published
a selection of objectionable extracts from the
‘Alfazl’
containing statements by the present leader of the Ahmadiya community, while
that of 1st September reproduced Mr. Daultana’s speech in Hazuri Bagh. In the
issue dated 28th February there appeared a letter from a contributor, Akbar
Muradpuri, in which some questions together with their answers from Ahmadiya writings
were published in order to show that Qadianis were a separate ummat.
THE
‘EHSAN’
The
‘Ehsan’ of 21st July published an appeal by the Majlis-i-Amal of All Muslim
Parties Convention advising the people to remain peaceful despite provocation
by the Mirzais and requesting the imams of mosques to advise their
congregations on next Friday to abstain from creating any disorder. The appeal
pointed out that the demands relating to the declaration of the Ahmadis as a
minority and for the removal of Chaudhri Zafrullah Khan were constitutional
demands which should be pressed in an atmosphere free from breaches of the law.
The
issue of 3rd August published a report of resolutions passed in different
mosques on Friday the 1st August supporting the stand taken by the All Muslim
Parties Convention and expressing the determination to keep the movement
peaceful and urging an acceptance of the demands. The speeches made in the
mosques also appreciated the resolution of the Punjab Muslim League in which
the Mirzais were held to be non-Muslims but expressed dissatisfaction with that
part of the resolution in which the demand to declare the Mirzais as a minority
was not accepted. The article also published the alarming news that a letter
threatening to kill Maulana Abul Hasanat, Maulana Maudoodi, Sayyad Ata Ullah
Shah Bukhari., Maulana Ahmad Ali and Maulana Muslim
had
been received. The issue of 8th August, 1952, contained an article on ‘Qadiani
Nubuwwat’ by Sayyad Faqir Husain Bukhari, M, A., B. T., Professor, Islamia College,
criticising Ahmadiya beliefs and promising another outstanding article on the
subject in the next issue.
The
issue of 10th August contained a leading article in violent denunciation of the
Ahmadiya Jama’at and Chaudhri Zafrullah Khan, in which it was sought to prove
that the Qadianis were a real danger to Pakistan and that they were not members
of the Muslim community, it also contained news that Khwaja Nazim-ud-Din had
promised to announce in his Pakistan Day speech on 14th August the acceptance of
the demands against the Mirzais and the people were impatiently waiting for
this historical announcement. The issue of 18th August contained a comment on
the Prime Minister’s speech on the Pakistan Day, and expressed disappointment
on his omission to make any reference to the question of Mirzaeeat which had
become a real internal danger in Pakistan. It also appreciated the communique
issued by the Government of Pakistan declaring that no Central or Provincial
Minister was to preach sectarian doctrines to his subordinates, and deprecated
the disorders, processions and public meetings that were being held against the
Mirzais and suggested that the issue should be placed in a constitutional
manner before the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan and in the form of a
resolution before the Council of All Pakistan Muslim League that was about to
meet at Dacca.
The
issue of 31st January, 1953, published a review on a book ‘Qadiani Fitna’
written by one Atiq-ur-Rahman Chishti. It was alleged in the comments on that
book that Mirzaeeat had been deliberately implanted by the British, that it was
devastating Islam and that the book exposed false doctrines of a murtadd sect
and depicted a disgraceful picture of the character of the false prophet of
that sect. Similarly the issue of 5th February published a one-column review on
Professor Ilyas Burney’s book ‘Qadiani Mazhab’ which was in fact an original
comment on Qadiani doctrines.