The Pakistan movement was an expression of Muslim India’s firm desire to establish an Islamic State. The movement was inspired by the ideology of Islam and the country was carved into existence solely to demonstrate the efficacy of the Islamic way of life. This constitutes a social contract, a historic reality and not an imaginary theorization.

Islam came to India through Muslim traders, travelers and sufis. With the spread of Islam, the desire to establish an Islamic polity in the sub-continent gained strength. Muslim rulers, in response to the aspirations of the Muslim masses, introduced certain Islamic law and established the number of Shari-e-Islamic Institutions. Although there was monarchy and despotism, institutions alien to the letter and spirit of Islam, but the Shari’ah, at least a significant part of it, did constitute the law of the land. There was no mass- deviation from Islam, despite some serious efforts to weaken Islam by certain rulers. This was not an ideal situation, as the Islamic programme was not being implemented in its entirety. It was during the reign of Akbar that a calculated endeavor was made to purge Islam from the socio-political life and to evolve a new religion – a hotch-potch of Hinduism, Buddhism, Paganism and Islam under the patronage of the State. This produced a strong reaction among the people who revolted against this idea and the movement for the establishment of the Shari’ah emerged in full force. It was pioneered by Shaikh Ahmad of Sarhind, popularly known as Mujaddid Alf-i-Thani who propagated the teachings of Islam in a systematic manner, proclaimed the truth undeterred by threats, created public opinion for social and political reforms, fought for Islam un­daunted by the tempests of adversity and suffered long imprison- ment in the historic Gwalior Fort. It was as a result of this movement that the anti-Islam policy of Akbar fizzled out almost immediately after his death and gradually even the Mughal emperors became Islam- oriented, so much so that history witness Aurangzeb in whose reign codification and introduction of Islamic law was accomplished.

The torch which Mujaddid Alf-i-Thani lit was kept burning by the later generations and the movement progressed under the guidance of different leaders of thought and action. Shah Waliullah of Delhi reconstructed the Islamic thought and laid the foundations of Islamic renaissance in the country. All the reformers of the nineteenth and twentieth century’s drew their inspiration from this beacon of learning.

Shah Ismail Shahid and Sayyid Ahmad Shahid waged a movement for the establishment of the Islamic State. They fought the Sikhs and the British imperialists and their ultimate objective was to establish Khilafah ‘ala minhaj-Khilafah al-Rashidoon (Islamic State on the pattern of the State established by the Rightly- Guided Caliphs). In the words of Sayyid Ahmad Shahid:

“The only desire that spurs me is that the law revealed by the Almighty, which we call the Shari’ah may be enforced in all the lands and on all the peoples and there should remain no conflict or tussle in this respect. My objective is to accomplish this task – this may be achieved through my hands or through anybody else’s. What I want is that this must be done. And I resort to all those means and devices which seem to help in the achievement of this end.

(Makateeb Shah Ismail, p. 50, quoted by Ghulam Rasool Mahr, Sayyid Ahmad Shahid, vol, 11, Lahore, p, 266).

Although Sayyid Ahmad and his armies could not succeed, they ignited a fire in the hearts and souls of the people and the Movement continued even after their martyrdom. This movement left such indelible impressions upon the minds of the Indian Muslims that no amount of British repression could efface them. The blood-stains at Balakot continued to inspire the people and indeed the movement has survived in all its pristine force up to the present day.

Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan tried to strike a compromise with Western thought but despite his sincerity, modernism could not gain ground. Shibli Nu’mani, Abul Kalam, Maulana Muhammad Ali, Iqbal and Maududi all represent the original renaissance movement and each one of them gave a new impetus to this movement. Shibli tried to inspire confidence in Muslim culture and brought to light the historical role of Islam and of the Prophet of Islam. Abul Kalam shook Muslim India from its stupor and called it back to the original message of Islam. Muhammad Ali revived the Muslim interest in Indian politics, strengthened the pan-Islamic feelings and championed the Khilafat Movement which constitutes a turning point in the modern political history of Muslim India. Iqbal, through his poetry and prose, moved the soul of the younger generations and inspired those to re- achieve the glory that is Islam. Maududi gave the revivalist trend its new intellectual formulation and organized these forces into an all embracing movement.

This is the intellectual background in which the demand for Pakistan arose. The Pakistan movement was not the making of any one individual event. It was the natural crescendo of history and it goes to the credit of Iqbal and Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah chat they grasped the slow whisper of history and piloted the movement on such lines that within a decade Pakistan became a reality.

The idea of Pakistan owes its origin to the belief that Muslims are a nation, an ideological community, and it is a dictate of their faith to establish a state, a society and a culture in the light of the principles given by the Qur’an and the Sunnah.

Iqbal, while suggesting the idea of Pakistan in his Presidential Address to the Annual Session of All-India Muslim League in 1930, said that:

“The life of Islam as a cultural force in this country very largely depends on its centralization in a specified territory. This centralization of the more living portion of the Muslims of India … will eventually solve the problem of India as well as o£ Asia.”

(Muhammad Iqbal, Speeches and Statements of Iqbal, compiled by “Shamloo”. Lahore. 1948, p. 13.)

This was essential so that Indian Muslim may become “entitled to full and free development on the lines of his own culture and tradition.”

Quaid-e-Azam based his plea on the same grounds. During the Jinnah-Gandhi talks he said:

“We claim the right of self-determination as a nation and not as a territorial unit.”

(Muhammad All Jinnah, Jinnah-Gandhi Talks, Delhi, 1944, p.20)

In March 1944, while elaborating the concept of Pakistan he said:

“Our bed-rock and sheet-anchor is Islam. We are one and we must move as one nation and then alone we shall be able to retain Pakistan”.

(Muhammad All Jinnah, Some Recent Speeches and Writings of Mr. Jinnah, Lahore, p. 89.)

In June 1945, he said:

“There is only one course open to us; to organise our nation. And it is by our own dint of arduous and sustained efforts that we can create strength and support our people not only to achieve our freedom and independence but to be able to maintain it and live according to lslamic ideals and principles.

“Pakistan not only means freedom and independence but the Muslim Ideology which has to be preserved, which has come to us as a precious gift and treasure and which we hope others will share with us.”                                                          (ibid, p. 366-67)

In November, 1945, he said:

“The Muslims demand Pakistan, where they could rule according to their own code of life and according to their own cultural growth, traditions and Islamic laws …. Our religion, our culture and our Islamic ideals are our driving force to achieve our independence.”                                                                                                                                (ibid)

Mr. Liaquat Ali Khan affirmed the same concept of Pakistan when, while moving the Objectives Resolution, he said:

“Pakistan was founded because the Muslims of this sub-continent wanted to build up their lives in accordance with the teachings and traditions of Islam, because they warned to demonstrate to the world that Islam provides a panacea to the many diseases which have crept into the life of humanity today.”

(Constituent Assembly of Pakistan Debates, vol. V, p. 3, March 7. 1949)

Here we may also quote Prof. Smith who in his book Pakistan as an Islamic State says:

“In the case o£ Pakistan the whole raison d’etre of the state is Islam: it is Islam alone which holds it together.”

(Wilfred C. Smith, Pakistan as an Islamic State, Lahore, 1954, p. 29)

In his later work Islam in Modern History, he says:

“It is this Islamic nature of the State (quite independent of its form) that explains the joyous and devoted loyalty that it initially aroused. The establishment of Pakistan was greeted by its Muslim citizenry with a resonant enthusiasm, despite the catastrophic terror and chaos of its early months. Indeed, without the stamina and morale generated by religious fervor, the new dominion would hardly have survived the devastations of its first disorders,”

(Wilfred C. Smith, Islam in Modern History, op. cit. p. 212)

This was the real concept of Pakistan.

The above discussion clearly shows that;

1. The movement for the establishment of Islamic State has a glorious background and the Muslims’ demand and support for Pakistan was a part of that very movement.
2. The idea behind Pakistan has been the establishment of a country where Islamic State and Islamic society could be established.
3. The leaders of the movement made this very promise with the people whose support and unbounded enthusiasm for the demand was motivated by this very Islamic nature of the enterprise.
4. This constituted a social contract, to which almost the entire Muslim population of the Indo-Pakistan sub-continent committed itself. Pakistan was not the demand of the Muslim majority provinces alone; it was the demand of the entire Muslim India which saw it as its destiny and which strived and sacrificed for its establishment. This is the social contract on which the state is based. It is not possible to run away from this contract and survive. That is why the Islamic basis of the state had to be acknowledged in all the Constitutions that have been framed in the country over the last forty years. That is why even Bangladesh, after tearing away from West Pakistan (mostly because of our own follies but also through direct foreign inter­vention) and after eloping with secularism and socialism had to come to its Islamic identity. Pakistan has also only one future: And that is Islamic Pakistan.