This 3 part series recounts religion based disorder that unfolded in Punjab, particularly Lahore, between 1950-53 resulting in several hundred deaths, violent street agitation and imposition of first martial law in our history. It also covers the religious, political and administrative deficiencies in the system which led to general deterioration of law and order, and ultimately the fall of both central and provincial governments.
The first part is factual, second is ideological and last is analytical. The source of this series is the “REPORT of THE COURT OF INQUIRY constituted under PUNJAB ACT II OF 1954 to enquire into the Punjab disturbances of 1953” also known as Justice Munir report.
In the beginning of March 1953, widespread disturbances broke out in the Punjab and these took so alarming a turn and assumed such a menacing form that in several places the military had to be called in, and Pakistan’s first Martial Law had to be proclaimed, which remained in force till the middle of May 1953.
The disturbances were the direct result of the rejection by Khwaja Nazim-ud-Din, the then Prime Minister of Pakistan, of an ultimatum by a deputation of the ulama constituted by the All-Pakistan Muslim Parties Convention. The ultimatum was to the effect that if within a month the Ahmadis were not declared a non-Muslim minority and Chaudhri Zafrullah Khan, the Foreign Minister who is an Ahmadi and other Ahmadis occupying key posts in the State, are not removed from their offices, the Ulama would resort to direct action (rast iqdam).
It all started with an organization called Majlis-i-Ahrar which was part and parcel of Congress in Pre-partition days and was vehemently against formation of Pakistan. It conferred the titles like Palidistan / Khakistan to Pakistan and Kafir-e Azam to Quaid-e-Azam. The establishment of Pakistan came as a great disappointment to the Ahrar because all power passed to the Congress or the Muslim League, and no scope for activity was left for the Ahrar in India or in Pakistan. The new Muslim State came to them as a shock, disillusioned them of their ideology and finished them as a political party. Have being sidelined and seeing the level of mistrust against them in the new state, in middle of 1948, they announced their decision to cease functioning as a political party and to continue their future activity as a religious or tableeghi group. Soon to gather traction and attention, Ahmadis started featuring in their conferences and demand was raised to declare Ahmadis as non-Muslims, remove Chaudhri Zafrullah (who was nominated as Foreign Minister by Quaid-e-Azam) and all other Ahmadis from Public office.
At a time when Pakistan was struggling for resources on day to day basis and faced a multitude of challenges, the Ahrar made Ahmadis their sole focus of speeches invoking feelings of hatred and disgust amongst public against the minority. The first incident occurred when a certain major Mahmud was lynched by participants of a conference on Khatm-e-Nabuwat. No one claimed responsibility and no one was arrested. The adviser for the law made the following despicable comment “They have made the Ahmadis the target of their attack in order to gain a hearing from the public. They are trying to exploit the religious feelings of an average Musalman against the Ahmadis ; but I do not think it would be advisable to take any action against the Ahrar for the present as the Muslims are very touchy on the point of Ahmadism and to prosecute the Ahrar for their vituperations against the Ahmadis, would, give them an air of martyrdom in the eyes of public which they do not deserve. I would not, therefore, advise any action against the Ahrar leaders for the present”.
In the next few years Ahrar ramped up their rhetoric, delivered hate speeches and circulated booklets/pamphlets across the country. They calculated that if they could arouse public feeling and the masses against the Ahmadis, nobody would dare oppose them and that the more the opposition to this activity of theirs, the more popular they would become. They issued fatwas against Ahmadis, declared them Kafirs, called them traitors to Pakistan, called them Indian spies, while repeating their original 3 demands. Calls to Muslims such as “not only be nimazies but also Ghazies had no other meaning but to say that Ahmadis should be put to sword.”
The civil government machinery did keep an eye on this development over the years and several references and letters were written to Chief Secretary and Chief Minister by the Central Intelligence department, department of Law and the Police. One of the reports by DIG CID reported “I will be failing in my duty if I do not point out to Government that the atmosphere aroused by Ahrar leaders is pregnant with dangerous possibilities and may lead to individual cases of violence against Ahmadis”. Several similar toned letters and notes can be found in records which were sent to higher authorities in government through formal and official channels. But to no avail…
The maximum that was done was a series of warnings issued to Ahrar leaders both in letter and in person. While the Ahrar leaders agreed to adhere to warnings in principle but in practice they completely ignored the warnings and continued with their agenda. Later on, they openly defied warnings and instructions by Police and justified their actions by blaming the government for its inaction.
More murders of Ahmadis followed across Punjab during 1950-51 and Ahmadi mosques were burnt. In some cases, even a few non-Ahmadis were killed as some people misled the mobs to settle their own personal grievances.
On the political front, Ahrar aligned itself with the Muslim League as a tit-for-tat arrangement. Ahrar brought the goodwill of the general Muslim public who always takes pleasure in satire against the cult of new prophet hood in Islam while Muslim League brought support of a popular ruling organization.
In 1952, after careful consideration, Government decided that in the general interest of the public peace and tranquility, neither the Ahrar nor the Ahmadis should be permitted to hold public meetings under any name or garb. In a clever move, the Ahrar shifted the venue of the meetings from public places to mosques which were under the control of Imams etc. The Imams were subsequently instructed by government not to become a party to violation but it didn’t work. On several occasions, public meetings were held in a Sargodha and Gujranwala mosques in violation of section 144 of criminal law with the usual ranting. Some of the people responsible were also prosecuted in court and sentenced to imprisonment but most of the senior leaders were released on bail.
Soon the Ahrar began to confound the issue by making it a grievance that for purely religious activities inside the mosques the worshippers were being arrested and prosecuted and that the Government was thus encroaching on people’s religious beliefs and observances. This is illustrative of the propaganda that began to be carried on against the Government.
The warnings continued, the hate speeches continued, violation of law continued, propaganda against government continued, CID kept informing government of the imminent dangers but the inaction also continued all the while.
Having created a lot of noise and gathered attention of the Muslims, it was at this stage that the Ahrar enlisted the support of the ulama relating to other religious parties by calling a convention of all Muslim parties at Lahore on 13th July 1952 and giving out that the doctrine of khatam-i-nubuwwat had become a general issue for all creeds and sects of Muslims. Invitation was sent to 14 religious parties including Jami’at-ul-Ulama-i-Pakistan, Jami’at-ul-Ulama-i-Islam, Jama’at-i-Islami. During the days the convention was held, section 144 was in place in Lahore but still it was decided not to interfere with the proceedings. Also at this Convention the three demands, namely, that the Ahmadis be declared to be a minority, that Chaudhri Zafrullah Khan be removed from the office of Foreign Minister and that the Ahmadis be removed from key posts in the State, were adopted and a Council of Action (Majlis-i-Amal) was formed of the following to decide upon the future plan of action.
Qurban Ali Khan, Inspector-General of Police, noted “That Ahrar are assisted by someone is accepted in all quarters. The Ahrar by themselves are not strong enough to have raised this demand but someone from amongst them or those who are behind them are clever enough to have foreseen that none of the so-called religious jama’ats would be foolish enough to lag behind on an issue over which every Musalman has the strongest feeling against the Ahmadis. That every single Muslim will rise on this issue cannot be denied.”
In all this chaos, some of the local Muslim Leaguers started presiding over the Ahrar conferences, particularly in smaller towns. This was declared breach of discipline by the provincial Muslim League office and, as a policy; members were prohibited to preside over non-Muslim League meetings. Paying no head to the warning, resolutions were passed by local offices demonstrating support for the Ahrar cause.
Between the Lahore convention in July 1952 and February 1953, Punjab was marked with several incidents of lawlessness. From street protests to lathi charge, from police opening fire to police officers getting killed, from social boycott of Ahmadis to burning of commercial shops, it was chaos all around.
The Prime Minister Nazim-ud-din finally rejected the demands of Ahrar and leaders of Ahrar were arrested on 27th February 1952. The agitation then took on a completely different course. Mobs all over Punjab, particularly Lahore & Gujranwala, defied the law, attacked police cordons injuring and even killing policemen. As the situation went out of control and Army was called in, Martial law was declared and curfew was imposed on March 5th.
Daultana, the Chief Minister of Punjab and head of Punjab Muslim League issued a statement on March 6th giving assurance that the demands will be raised to the Centre and also demanded immediate forced resignation of Chaudhri Zafrullah. This statement was later on withdrawn by Daultana on March 10th based on the argument that it was an appeal to citizens of Lahore to maintain law and order and since that hasn’t happened and martial law had to be declared to bring order to the province the statement is withdrawn. This demonstrates the complicity of the Muslim league leaders with the Ulama to suit their political agendas.
Post these events a commission was formed to make an inquiry. The commission conducted interviews with a large number of people i.e. from civil administration to law enforcement agencies, from Chief Minister to Prime minister, from Ulama to Masjid Imams etc. It also conducted a highly academic research into almost every important branch of human knowledge—religion, philosophy, science, ethics, attributes of God, reason and revelation, origin and destination of man, aim and object of life, functions of the State and the church, sovereignty, democracy and theocracy, in short, all subjects highly relevant to the functioning of a state.
However, the most fascinating part of the report is the ideological dichotomy which stubbornly exists in the minds of Ulama as well as ordinary citizens. The horror of it all is NOT that a handful of Ulama preached a certain ideology and were able to impose it on general population BUT that the majority of people in the citizenry and in complete control of government allowed them to.
(To be continued)…
