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Choudhry Rahmat Ali

Pakistani politician (1897–1951)

Choudhry Rahmat Ali (Urdu: چودھری رحمت علی‎‎; 16 November 1897 – 3 February 1951) was a Pakistani nationalist who was one of the earliest proponents of the creation of the state of Pakistan. He is credited with creating the name "Pakistan" for a separate Muslim homeland in South Asia and is generally known as the originator of the Pakistan Movement.

Quotes

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  • At this solemn hour in the history of India, when British and Indian statesmen are laying the foundations of a Federal Constitution for that land, we address this appeal to you, in the name of our common heritage, on behalf of our thirty million Muslim brethren who live in PAKSTAN—by which we mean the five Northern units of India, Viz: Punjab, North-West Frontier Province (Afghan Province), Kashmir, Sindh and Baluchistan.
  • India, constituted as it is at the present moment, is not the name of one single country; nor the home of one single nation. It is, in fact, the designation of a State created for the first time in history, by the British. It includes peoples who have never previously formed part of India at any period in its history; but who have, on the other hand, from the dawn of history till the advent of the British, possessed and retained distinct nationalities of their own. In the five Northern Provinces of India, out of a total population of about forty millions, we, the Muslims, contribute about 30 millions. Our religion, culture, history, tradition, economic system, laws of inheritance, succession and marriage are basically and fundamentally different from those of the people living in the rest of India. The ideals which move our thirty million brethren-in-faith living in these provinces to make the highest sacrifices are fundamentally different from those which inspire the Hindus. These differences are not confined to the broad basic principles - far from it. They extend to the minutest details of our lives. We do not inter-dine; we do not inter-marry. Our national customs, calendars, even our diet and dress are different. It is preposterous to compare, as some superficial observers do, the differences between Muslims and Hindus with those between Roman Catholics and Protestants. Both the Catholics and Protestants are part and parcel of one religious system - Christianity; while the Hindus and Muslims are the followers of two essentially and fundamentally different religious systems. Religion in the case of Muslims and Hindus is not a matter of private opinion as it is in the case of Christians; but on the other hand constitutes a Civic Church which lays down a code of conduct to be observed by their adherents from birth to death. If we, the Muslims of Pakstan, with our distinct marks of nationality, are deluded into the proposed Indian Federation by friends or foes, we are reduced to a minority of one to four. It is this which sounds the death-knell of the Muslim nation in India for ever. To realise the full magnitude of this impending catastrophe, let us remind you that we thirty millions constitute about one-tenth of whole Muslim world. The total area of the five units comprising PAKSTAN, which are our homelands, is four times that of Italy, three times that of Germany and twice that of France; and our population seven times that of the Commonwealth of Australia, four times that of the Dominion of Canada, twice that of Spain, and equal to France and Italy considered individually. These are facts - hard facts and realities - which we challenge anybody to contradict. It is on the basis of these facts that we make bold to assert without the least fear of contradiction that we, Muslims of PAKSTAN, do possess a separate and distinct nationality from the rest of India, where the Hindu nation lives and has every right to live. We, therefore, deserve and must demand the recognition of a separate national status by the grant of a separate Federal Constitution from the rest of India.
  • THE “Seven Commandments of Destiny” enunciated by Choudhary Rehmat Ali in“ The Millat and the Mission” (1942) are as follows:
    (1D) Avoid Minorityism, which means that_we must not leave our minorities in Hindu lands, even if the British and the Hindus offer them the so-called ‘constitutional safeguards. For no safeguards can be a substitute for nation- hood which is their birthright. Nor must we keep Hindu or Sikh minorities in our own lands, even if they themselves were willing to remain with or without any special safeguards. For they will never be of us. Indeed, while in ordinary times they will retard our national reconstruction, in times of crisis they will betray us and bring about our re-destruction.
    (2) Avow Nationalism. We must assert and demand the recognition of the distinct national status of out minorities in the Hindu majority regions ‘of Dinia and its dependencies, and reciprocally offer to give similar status to the Hindu and Sikh minorities in Pakistan, Bangistan and Osmanistan.
    (3) Acquire proportional territory to create Siddiqistan, Farugistan, Haideristan, Muinistan, Moplistan, Sufistan and Nasaristan. "Now in the orbit of Pakasia we form about one-fourth of the total population, and, according.to the laws of nature and nations, are entitled to about one-fourth of its area. ‘We must, therefore, press our claims to the proportional areas in all such regions of the Continent and do so without delay.
    (4) Consolidate the individual nations. It is dangerous to leave dispersed ‘our minorities in the Hindu-majority regions of Dinia and in Ceylon, we must unify and consolidate then as nations in the countries that will comprise the Proportional areas acquired under the previous commandment.
    (5) Co-ordinate the nations under the Pak Commonwealth of Nations. To us the Pakistanians, union is not only a source of strength but also a sacred duty.
    (6) Convert the sub-continent of India into the continent of Dinia. We must write fnis to the most deceptive fiction in the world that India is the sphere of Indianism.
    (7) Organize the continent of Dinia and its dependencies into the orbit ‘of Pakasia. This is the last commandment and is meant to consolidate the results of the previous commandments. Pakasia connotes that part of Asia wherein our Pak culture is actually or potentially, predominant, and geographically it includes the Continent of Dinia.
    • Khosla G. D. (1989). Stern reckoning : a survey of the events leading up to and following the partition of india. Oxford University Press. 303


Attributed

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  • ‘What is the fundamental truth about minorities……… remember that, in the past ‘Minorityism’ has ever proved itself a major enemy of the Millat; that at present it is sabotaging us religiously, culturally, and politically even in our national lands; and that in the future, it would destroy us throughout the Continent of Dinia and its dependencies, Hence the Commandment (one of the seven commandments laid down in the pamphlet “The Millat and its Mission”), Avoid ‘Minorityism’, which means that we must not leave our minorities in Hindu lands, even if the British and the Hindus offer them the so-called constitutional safeguards. For no safeguards can be substituted for the nationhood which is their birthright. Nor must we keep Hindu and/or Sikh minorities in our lands, even if they themselves were willing to remain with or without any special safeguards. For they will never be of us. Indeed, while in ordinary times they will retard our national reconstruction, in times of crisis they will betray us and bring about our redestruction.
  • “(a) To leave our minorities in Hindu lands is:-
    (1) To leave under Hindu hegemony 35 million Muslims who form no less than 1/3 of the whole Millat, which in her struggle for freedom has no allies in the continent.
    (2) To deny their resources to the cause of the Millat at a time when she needs the maximum contribution of every one of her sons and daughters.
    (3) To devote their lives and labour to the cause of the Hindu Jati. I hope people who argue that an equal number of (35 millions) Hindu and Sikh minorities in Pakistan, Bangistan and Osmanistan will be working for the Millat overlook the fact that the work of one can never compensate for that of the other………”
    “(b) To keep Hindus and/or Sikh minorities in our lands is:
    “(1) To keep in Muslim lands 35 million Hindus and Sikhs who form no more than 1/8 of the total strength of the force opposing the Millat in the Continent of Dinia.
    (2) To condemn to permanent servitude our 35 million brethren living in Hindu Dinia, i.e., outside Pakistan, Bangistan and Osmanistan. The reason is that unless and until we accept this commandment we cannot liberate them from the domination of ‘Indianism’.
    (5) To forget even the unforgettable lesson taught to us by the disappearance of our own Pak Empire and of the Turkish Empire, namely that one of the major causes of their decline, defeat and downfall was the treachery and treason of their religious, racial and political minorities.”

About Ali

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  • Rehmat Ali, whatever else he might be, has been quite fertile in the devising of catching, though somewhat megalomaniac names. Besides Pakistan, he has been responsible for the concept of India as Dinia, a cleverly suggestive anagram. Dinia would be the continent which, if not at the moment the home of an Islamic State, was such in immediate conception, waiting to be converted and subordinated to Islam through the proselytising and conquering zeal of its sons. Bengal and Assam, conceived as a joint Muslim-majority area by a logic partial to Muslim reasoning, was rechristened by Rehmat Ali Bang-i-Islam or Bangistan, redolent of the Feudal Moghal name of Bengal, Bangush, which has been offensive to the Hindu, suffering for centuries under the hell of the Muslim. The Muslim Homelands parcelled out of Bihar, the U. P. and Rajputana (the Ajmer area, where is the shrine of the great Muslim Saint, Khawaja Muinuddin Chisti) were to be called respectively Faruquistan, Haideristan and Muinistan. Hyderabad, ruled over by a Muslim Prince, with its 86% Hindu population, was to be called Osmanistan, after the name of the present Nizam; and the Moplah tracts of Malabar were named Moplistan. There would, besides, be areas known as Safistan and Nasaristan. On the map of India (or Dinia) as drawn by Rehmat Ali, non-Muslim areas make unimpressive, miserable patches, interspersed on all sides with Muslim states, born out of conflict with Hindu India, and pursuing a set policy of converting, conquering and amalgamating this Hindu India into themselves.... Thus, in a thorough and relentless way Rehmat Ali has pleaded for the total elimination of minorities from Pakistan.
  • ...Rehmat Ali, whose pamphlets provided the germ of the Pakistan idea, and the Muslim League Plans and such bodies as the Muslim National Guards, which were subsidiary to it. Rehmat Ali had the dream of reviving the old Muslim glory. His ultimate vision was of a Muslim India or Dinia, over which Islam must rule in its traditional manner. The areas carved out for Muslims in the midst of Hindu India mentioned above, were called by Rehmat Ali. ‘footholds’. Footholds from which presumably the Muslims were to plan expansion into the heart of the neighbouring non-Muslim areas, and to link up with one another, for tightening up their stranglehold in these non-Muslim areas. Jinnah’s own abortive proposals for a ‘corridor’ to link up Eastern and Western Pakistan was somewhat of this nature. Have an area running all over Northern India, cutting India into two-and plan for the rest from this advantageous position.
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Wikipedia
Wikipedia has an article about:
  • Kamran, Tahir (2017), "Choudhary Rahmat Ali and his Political Imagination: Pak Plan and the Continent of Dinia", in Ali Usman Qasmi; Megan Eaton Robb (eds.), Muslims against the Muslim League, Cambridge University Press, pp. 82–108
  • G. Allana: Pakistan Movement Historical Documents (Karachi: Department of International Relations, University of Karachi, 1969), pp. 103-110 http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00islamlinks/txt_rahmatali_1933.html
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