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PAKISTAN AND THE MODERN WORLD
(Liaquat Ali Khan)
In conferring a degree upon me, you and the University of Kansas City have bestowed upon me and my country an honour for which I cannot adequately thank you.
For my address today I have advisedly chosen the subject of Pakistan and the Modern World. I have done this for two reasons. In the first place, I am conscious of the fact that you have been kind enough to select me as the recipient of your recognition, in order to do honour to my country rather than to reward me for my inadequate merits. It is fitting, therefore, that in expressing gratitude for your generosity, my country more than myself should speak to you on this occasion.
In the second place, we live today in an era of widening horizons. It is in a sense an era in which new countries are being discovered. More than four centuries ago great explorers from Europe, voyaging out to discover the continent from which I hail, discovered your great land. You, with your growing interest in the affairs of the world, are poised in a moment of history when you cannot but carry that voyage forward. If I may be permitted to say so, that discovery of Asia has not yet been accomplished. In fact it has only just begun. In speaking to you today, I trust I shall be of some assistance to you in discovering a part of Asia which I know well and which is very dear to me; and in pointing out some of the links that destiny is forging between your people and ours.
Pakistan is a new State; or to be more exact, a new democracy. As a democracy it is not yet three years old. There was a time when your country, where the traditions of civil liberty, freedom and democracy have now taken such firm root, was new and young democracy and the memory of your struggle for independence was yet fresh in the minds of men. If you can, in your imagination, reconstruct those times for a little while you will in many ways be reading in the history of Pakistan and of the first three years of its new life.
Till three years ago, Pakistan was only an ideal and a longing. In the vast sub-continent where present-day Bharat and Pakistan were situated and where British held sway, there lived a hundred million Muslims who for centuries had made this part of the world their homeland. They lived side by side with three hundred million others -- mostly Hindus who had come to this continent in an earlier era. As the day of freedom to these four hundred million people drew near, it became increasingly obvious that at the end of the British rule the one hundred million Muslims would have to live their new life as a perpetual political minority. Long experience and the history of several centuries had taught them that under a dominating majority of three to one, freedom from British rule would mean to the Muslims, not freedom but merely a change of masters.
It was not merely a question of religious differences, as that phrase is generally understood. It was not merely that, whereas the Muslims were monotheists, the Hindus were polytheists, or that the Muslims believed in the Prophet of Arabia and in Christ and the prophets of the Old Testament, whereas the Hindus did not. The differences were even more pervasive than this and created a maladjustment between the two peoples in almost every situation of their daily lives. The Hindus believed in a caste system, which made it a sin for those at the top of the hierarchy to eat with the so-called lower human beings or in some cases even to touch them; the Muslims believed in the equality of all men, regarding even priesthood as unnecessary and a negation of the bond which exists between God and each of His creatures. Their economic outlooks were also very different. The Muslims believed in the right of private ownership for everyone, whether man or woman, and had laws of inheritance and economic institutions, which unlike those of the Hindus were designed to promote the distribution of wealth and discourage vast unearned accumulations.
(Liaquat Ali Khan)
In conferring a degree upon me, you and the University of Kansas City have bestowed upon me and my country an honour for which I cannot adequately thank you.
For my address today I have advisedly chosen the subject of Pakistan and the Modern World. I have done this for two reasons. In the first place, I am conscious of the fact that you have been kind enough to select me as the recipient of your recognition, in order to do honour to my country rather than to reward me for my inadequate merits. It is fitting, therefore, that in expressing gratitude for your generosity, my country more than myself should speak to you on this occasion.
In the second place, we live today in an era of widening horizons. It is in a sense an era in which new countries are being discovered. More than four centuries ago great explorers from Europe, voyaging out to discover the continent from which I hail, discovered your great land. You, with your growing interest in the affairs of the world, are poised in a moment of history when you cannot but carry that voyage forward. If I may be permitted to say so, that discovery of Asia has not yet been accomplished. In fact it has only just begun. In speaking to you today, I trust I shall be of some assistance to you in discovering a part of Asia which I know well and which is very dear to me; and in pointing out some of the links that destiny is forging between your people and ours.
Pakistan is a new State; or to be more exact, a new democracy. As a democracy it is not yet three years old. There was a time when your country, where the traditions of civil liberty, freedom and democracy have now taken such firm root, was new and young democracy and the memory of your struggle for independence was yet fresh in the minds of men. If you can, in your imagination, reconstruct those times for a little while you will in many ways be reading in the history of Pakistan and of the first three years of its new life.
Till three years ago, Pakistan was only an ideal and a longing. In the vast sub-continent where present-day Bharat and Pakistan were situated and where British held sway, there lived a hundred million Muslims who for centuries had made this part of the world their homeland. They lived side by side with three hundred million others -- mostly Hindus who had come to this continent in an earlier era. As the day of freedom to these four hundred million people drew near, it became increasingly obvious that at the end of the British rule the one hundred million Muslims would have to live their new life as a perpetual political minority. Long experience and the history of several centuries had taught them that under a dominating majority of three to one, freedom from British rule would mean to the Muslims, not freedom but merely a change of masters.
It was not merely a question of religious differences, as that phrase is generally understood. It was not merely that, whereas the Muslims were monotheists, the Hindus were polytheists, or that the Muslims believed in the Prophet of Arabia and in Christ and the prophets of the Old Testament, whereas the Hindus did not. The differences were even more pervasive than this and created a maladjustment between the two peoples in almost every situation of their daily lives. The Hindus believed in a caste system, which made it a sin for those at the top of the hierarchy to eat with the so-called lower human beings or in some cases even to touch them; the Muslims believed in the equality of all men, regarding even priesthood as unnecessary and a negation of the bond which exists between God and each of His creatures. Their economic outlooks were also very different. The Muslims believed in the right of private ownership for everyone, whether man or woman, and had laws of inheritance and economic institutions, which unlike those of the Hindus were designed to promote the distribution of wealth and discourage vast unearned accumulations.