By Usama Khawar

https://www.dawn.com/news/2043470/paperwork-for-the-heer-singer-with-punjabs-new-drama-bill

Commercial theatres are businesses and can be regulated as such, for safety, wages and harassment, with a clear obscenity standard applied after a show, by a magistrate. The bill’s minimum-wage clause is worth keeping, as is its dropping of the colonial power to send police in “by force”.

The rest needs serious work. The law should cover only ticketed commercial theatre, the problem the government says it has, and say plainly that melas, urs, festivals, folk and devotional music, and schools are outside it. “Scandalous”, “disaffection” and “vulgar” should go, with the power to add bans by rules. Officials could get a week to object to a script, with reasons, and then the show goes ahead. Registration should be voluntary and tied to welfare and pensions or, at the very least, as committee members suggested, a one-time fee with concessions for children and the old. The live feed should go. Artists and elected members should sit on the boards, appeals should go to a court, and nobody should face jail over a play.

I keep coming back to the dholi. He has never heard of this bill. Nobody from the Arts Council has ever been to his village, and if this passes, the first visit will be to watch him rehearse. The British left him alone because they didn’t think he mattered. Our own officials have finally noticed him, and the first thing they want is his paperwork.

Yes, I think Iqbal was not envisioning population exchanges. He died in 1938. I don’t think population exchanges were considered a serious idea even in the immediate lead-up to Partition.

Q has provided the text of his June 21, 1937 letter to Jinnah which does mention that the Muslims of Bengal are also a nation entitled to self-determination.

Why should not the Muslims of North-West India and Bengal be considered as nations entitled to self-determination just as other nations in India and outside India are?

Asad Rahim Khan wrote a very detailed piece yesterday which clarifies that the 1930 Allahabad address implied that the provinces of NW India would be a unit in an Indian federation. By 1937, Iqbal is talking about a separate constitution for what would become Pakistan. So his views clearly changed in those seven years.

He was more specifically the father of West Pakistan. He was a political theorist of non-dualism, focused on the sovereignty of a muslim-majority NW India and pan-Islam simultaneously. He wanted autonomy from the gangetic region and Bengal, and I doubt he would have wanted forced population exchanges. The provinces of the NW formed a natural future polity by nature of its historical evolution.

He was an Oswal Jain more specifically. Marwadi merchant lenders spread in direct conjunction with the Mughal Empire’s territorial expansion. They were the traditional bankers to the Rajputs, and when the latter became assimilated into a Mughal-Rajput ruling complex, the Marwadi firms provided the financial capital for the conquest of Bengal. So taking a look at the longer arc of modern history, they financed the Mughal expansion, then the EIC takeover, then finally the early nationalist industrialists who create the modern republic. Maybe this is not so unusual for market infrastructure to be more durable than the State.

btw can u post again please i think we may have fixed ur commenting issue..

Asad Rahim Khan’s article (linked above) does quote from this letter, particularly the line that ” To my mind the new constitution with its idea of a single Indian federation is completely hopeless”.

But the point is that Iqbal’s views in 1930 were not his views in 1937. It is historically inaccurate to say that the Allahabad address of 1930 called for Pakistan.

The mainstream “Pakistan Studies” understanding is that Iqbal is the spiritual father of Pakistan. Which is fine. Every nation needs some kind of propaganda for nation-building purposes.

This year Iqbal Day was a national holiday after many years. But this is something that is taken seriously at the state level and not necessarily at the popular level.

plus c’est change, plus c’est la meme chose..

oh wow I thought Jagath Seth was Bengali..

excellent comment

Iqbal’s letters to Jinnah in 1937 did call for seperate nation states for Muslims in NW India and Bengal. A lot of liberals simply lie that he never called for it, true publicly but privately he was advocating for Pakistan:

Private and Confidential

Lahore

June 21st, 1937

My dear Mr. Jinnah,

Thank you so much for your letter which I received yesterday. I know you are a busy man; but I do hope you won’t mind my writing to you so often, as you are the only Muslim in India today to whom the community has a right to look up for safe guidance through the storm which is coming to North­West India and perhaps to the whole of India. I tell you that we are actually living in a state of civil war which, but for the police and military, would become universal in no time.

During the last few months there has been a series of Hindu-Muslim riots in India. In North-West India alone there have been at least three riots during the last three months and at least four cases of vilification of the Prophet by Hindus and Sikhs. In each of these four cases, the vilifier has been murdered. There have also been cases of burning of the Qur’an in Sind. I have carefully studied the whole situation and believe that the real cause of these events is neither religious nor economic. It is purely political. I.e., the desire of the Sikhs and Hindus to intimidate Muslims even in the Muslim majority provinces. And the new constitution is such that even in the Muslim majority provinces, the Muslims are made entirely dependent on non-Muslims.

The result is that the Muslim Ministry can take no proper action and are even driven to do injustice to Musiims partly to please those on whom they depend, and partly to show that they are absolutely impartial. Thus it is clear that we have our specific reasons to reject this constitution. It seems to me that the new constitution is devised only to placate the Hindus. In the Hindu majority provinces, the Hindus have of course absolute majorities, and can ignore Muslims altogether. In Muslim majority provinces, the Muslims are made entirely dependent on Hindus. I have no doubt in my mind that this constitution is calculated to do infinite harm to the Indian Muslims. Apart from this it is no solution of the economic problem which is so acute among Muslims.

The only thing that the communal award grants to Muslims is the recognition of their political existence in India. But such a recognition granted to a people whom this constitution does not and cannot help in solving their problem of poverty can be of no value to them. The Congress President has denied the political existence of Muslims in no unmistakable terms. The other Hindu political body, i.e., the Mahasabha, whom I regard as the real representative of the masses of the Hindus, has declared more than once that a united Hindu-Muslim nation is impossible in India. In these circumstances it is obvious that the only way to a peaceful India is a redistribution of the country on the lines of racial, religious and linguistic affinities. Many British statesmen also realise this, and the Hindu-Muslim riots which are rapidly coming in the wake of this constitution are sure further to open their eyes to the real situation in the country. I remember Lord Lothian told me before I left England that my scheme was the only possible solution of the troubles of India, but that may take 25 years to come.

Some Muslims in the Punjab are already suggesting the holding of [a] North-West Indian Muslim Conference, and the idea is rapidly spreading. I agree with you, however, that our community is not yet sufficiently organised and disciplined and perhaps the time for holding such a conference is not yet ripe. But I feel that it would be highly advisable for you to indicate in your address at least the line of action that the Muslims of North-West India would be finally driven to take.

To my mind the new constitution with its idea of a single Indian federation is completely hopeless. A separate federation of Muslim provinces, reformed on the lines I have suggested above, is the only course by which we can secure a peaceful India and save Muslims from the domination of non­-Muslims.

Why should not the Muslims of North-West India and Bengal be considered as nations entitled to self-determination just as other nations in India and outside India are?

Personally I think that the Muslims of North-West India and Bengal ought at present to ignore Muslim[-minority] provinces. This is the best course to adopt in the interests of both Muslim majority and minority provinces. It will therefore be better to hold the coming session of the League in the Punjab, and not in a Muslim minority province. The month of August is bad in Lahore. I think you should seriously consider the advisability of holding the coming session at Lahore in the middle of October when the weather is quite good in Lahore. The interest in the All-India Muslim League is rapidly growing in the Punjab, and the holding of the coming session in Lahore is likely to give a fresh political awakening to the Punjab Muslims.

Yours sincerely,

(Sd). Mohammad Iqbal

 Bar-at-Law